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Okay so you probably know about Google Self Driving Car, the older folk likely watched the Jetsons and noticed Rosie the Robot Maid and you learned about the Industrial Revolution and how automation changed the world.

Right now we are on the verge a great watershed, as technology advances to a point where human labor becomes unnecessary, humanity must adapt. While the loss of jobs means that humans are ore free to consume, the lingering idolatry of the concept of money and the idea that humans must work to have some value to society remains, and with it the idea of scarcity.

I think that the automation of the job market is a and the obsolescent of labor is a good thing, but this means that people have to adapt to the loss of jobs and a post scarcity economy.

This thread is meant to discussion the rate of automation, the obsolescence of labor and their effect on society, as well as how you think humanity will react; Do you think that the automation will be met with acceptance and the idea that we will be closer to utopia or will it be met with a resurgence of Luddism? How do you think humanity should adapt to the growing automation of jobs? and do you think that the ideas of currency, scarcity and the need for jobs as a value of self-worth should be discarded?

The basic gist of how automation/technology (or capital, as they call it in the field of economics) and labor relate to one another is that whilst one "robot" takes the job of an employee (or any machine really, like how there's not much laborers in a factory because bottling/packing machines already exist,) it would take three to five workers to make said "robot". So in other words, this basically means that to be a paid worker, people are going to need higher educational backgrounds.

I'm not worried about how humans feel the need to be employed and thus, 'have a purpose'; that's sort of a psychological need and not necessarily something we'd die without; we can still function normally even if we're unemployed so long as we're fed and sheltered. I'm more worried about the downtrodden and the impoverished. The people who are stuck in the poverty trap and never had access to decent education. The increasing standards to be a well-paid employee and the lowering availability of easy-to-access manual labor-oriented jobs just ensures that they're going to get hungrier.

From where I'm from, public transport is a really big thing for the lower-class. Aside from the taxis and the buses that's typical in other countries, pedicabs, tricycles, and jeepneys are everywhere too. (And yeah, I've been browsing a lot of university data regarding jobs of lower-class families, and public transport is one of the jobs most of them get.) If the Google self-driving car ever makes it here as yet another means of public transport, they are screwed.

How the world will react: { we can still function normally even if we’re unemployed so long as we’re fed and sheltered. } Please mommy government, feed and clothe us because we're at your mercy now that we can no longer provide for our own selves. Congrats on your willingness to become livestock.

Target testing robot workers

Lowe's has been using robo-retail for a year now

That whole "just git educ8ted" thing would be great if the cost of a 4 year degree weren't still rising and the hundreds of thousands of recent graduates annually weren't still unemployed.

Good luck humans~

Please mommy government, feed and clothe us because we’re at your mercy now that we can no longer provide for our own selves. Congrats on your willingness to become livestock.

I've been looking for a job since December last year. Not a single interview was offered to me. If I could get a job I would, but there just aren't any around that don't require you to be able to shit gold while riding a unicycle while also curing cancer. You make it sound like your life is laid out for you, which it's not. Anything could happen. If it so happens that we are to be looked after by robots, I'm perfectly okay with that as long as we get robot catgirl maids instead of Terminators. I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

Took me ~5 months to find my current job and I applied to at least three places a day. Had a total of 6 interviews that whole time. Life is not laid out for you and it's not supposed to be laid out for you, you actually have to try to get somewhere positive. What does your resume look like? What do you bring with you to interviews? Are you sure you're at the level of everyone else competing with you for jobs?

So, how is your government new mommy going to support all of its children now that nobody is working/paying taxes and nobody has any money to pay for the services robots now provide?

That's a bridge the government will cross when they get to it. Though governments tend to build their own shit singular planks of wood to cross the river of shit instead of using the proper thing. What I'm saying is, the government will work it out, most likely in the worst way possible, or avoid it all together while we all suffer. If it so happens the government says "Fuck it, robot slaves", let's all try not to end up like the humans in Wall-E and get all fat, and try to look after ourselves, hmm?

This is a discussion thread…

What you're saying is that it's okay for the government to turn 90% of the population into "the downtrodden and impoverished, stuck in a poverty trap" and to suffer indefinitely while the elite scramble to figure it out, as long as there's robo catgirls involved. That's not very compelling.

{ and do you think that the ideas of currency, scarcity and the need for jobs as a value of self-worth should be discarded? }

You're suggesting "yes" to those three points without explaining why/how you think it will work out, just that "someone else will think about that later". The entire world right now spins solely on the basis of an intact economy, which automated labor destroys. How do we make up for it?

>The entire world right now spins solely on the basis of an intact economy, which automated labor destroys. How do we make up for it?

There had been some suggestions, the least palatable to Americans (or at least conservatives) being a shift to socialism. Other ideas is a Basic income (which exists in a rudimentary form, and might need to be increased to compensate for the lack of income form lost jobs) and a 100% tax on the goods that robots make, which would put the money in circulation because unless people give the robots sapience, they would have no need for the money any creating a cycle of Government Welfare > Consumer's Disposable Income > Price of a consumer good made by robots > Tax > Government Welfare, of course such a system is probably easy to abuse. And then there is the matter of Education.

Other solutions might be the Luddite method, which is the banning of innovations, hich is a no-go outside of oppressive societies and improvement and increased access to education (ATM someone still has to maintain the robots, as was already mentioned and without sapience, the machines are incapable of tackling the fields of law, philosophy and maybe politics, and it's unlikely that the current governments are willing to the them try at the latter),

Let's not forget that the economy was vastly different before the Industrial Revolution and the automation of agriculture.

And since you decide to quote one of my questions, are you willing to answer the other questions in the OP?

I did answer them. Automated labor = India. It's already met with skepticism and anger from laborers while being loved by corporate upper management who only see a larger profit margin. Humanity isn't able to adapt to the growing automation of jobs, which brings us back to India. India is making great use of automated labor, like this company that was able to reduce human staff by 47,000, which CEO's announce very excitedly in the same breath as they assure they're looking to enhance quality, not cut positions! India has been undergoing a "robot revolution" for the past few years, and what we see now is the result.

{ Government Welfare > Consumer’s Disposable Income > Price of a consumer good made by robots > Tax > Government Welfare }

Where does the money for government welfare come from in the first place if nobody has any jobs to create income for taxes and all the world's governments are currently trillions in debt? What about services and goods not provided by robots? Are those free/subsidized for everyone who doesn't have a job at the cost of those who produce them (however they manage to produce them without money)?

This link just popped up on one of the news aggregators I use.

Robot Revolution Sweeps China's Factory Floors

{ For decades, manufacturers employed waves of young migrant workers from China's countryside to work at countless factories in coastal provinces, churning out cheap toys, clothing and electronics that helped power the country's economic ascent.

Now, factories are rapidly replacing those workers with automation, a pivot that's encouraged by rising wages and new official directives aimed at helping the country move away from low-cost manufacturing as the supply of young, pliant workers shrinks.

It's part of a broader overhaul of the economy as China seeks to vault into the ranks of wealthy nations. But it comes as the country's growth slows amid tepid global demand that's adding pressure on tens of thousands of manufacturers.

With costs rising and profits shrinking, Chinese manufacturers "will all need to face the fact that only by successfully transitioning from the current labor-oriented mode to more automated manufacturing will they be able to survive in the next few years," said Jan Zhang, an automation expert at IHS Technology in Shanghai. }

This highlights another problem, incentive. What incentive is there for major corporations to employ people when the cost of employing them keeps rising? Humans demand higher wages, humans have laws protecting how they're treated and how their work time is regulated. On top of this, first world countries like the US are now establishing pointless regulations (carbon tax anyone) and increasing the tax rate on businesses. What incentive is there for those businesses to stay in this country and employ actual humans? It all sounds lovely on paper, workers' rights and fair wages, but reality is never as neat.

>Where does the money for government welfare come from in the first place if nobody has any jobs to create income for taxes and all the world’s governments are currently trillions in debt?

The thing is, I think that concept of money, scarcity and ultimately the need for labor need to be reevaluated if humans are to adapt to the automation. Ever since we moved off the gold standard, the value of currency seems to be relative, especialy regarding exchange rates and the fact the US government seems to printing money already with little regard to inflation.

>I’m perfectly okay with that as long as we get robot catgirl maids instead of Terminators.

Honestly, I have to agree with lisa on this. that has a very "Bread and Circuses" vibe to it. Then again, Bread and Circuses might be a potential outcome of the obsolesce of labor if people cannot adapt to the loss of labor or if this is only used by CEOs to widen the poverty gap. That said, if that scenario does pass, then sooner or later the upper-class circlejerk bubble will pop because there will be no one to sustain the economy but them and the minority might be too short-sighted to plan ahead to keep the economy sustainable (But then again, to most of these people, the economy is just used a measuring unit for their ego anyway.).

I suppose the key question is "Can people let go of labor?" because it is likely and inevitably gonna meet the dinosaurs and quite possibly make money an unsustainable concept

{ The thing is, I think that concept of money, scarcity and ultimately the need for labor need to be reevaluated if humans are to adapt to the automation. }

Globalized communism is what you're heading towards. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need? It wouldn't be the catgirl utopia of sitting in lounge chairs and playing video games all day that some people itt seem to believe in.

It still revolves around the theory that CEOs/etc will employ robots to produce goods which they will then simply give to governments to distribute in return for…. ???? Chickens for their family? Even if your labor is free, the cost of producing your goods doesn't disappear. How do they get the raw materials for their goods if they're being paid in chickens? It's even more complex to work out if some countries choose to stick with a monetary system while others go global.

If robots can get resources for free.
Give these resources to other companies to produce goods
Then these goods are distributed for free among the people then Money becomes largely worthless…
The only resource that would actually be worth anything would be the ability to produce power.
If you can produce power then you can control the production of every other resource and good on the planet.

However if Fusion power becomes a realist (some estimate we are right on the doorstep of it, others say it is only barely reaching infancy) then power becomes pure and cheap too.

robots collect fuel to power the fusion reactors, to power the robots, who collect resources, who then get turned into goods that people use.

Star Treky isn't it?

I supposed there is one question I should ask again, do you think that the Luddite movement will get out of the woodwork and try to protest and stop the inevitable?

>Then these goods are distributed for free among the people then Money becomes largely worthless…

The crux of lisa's argument is that the businessmen would not see money as worthless even in this scenario, though if the government somehow monopolized the energy market, it would answer her question of what would be exchanged for the robots, until the advent of fusion. But there might be a can of worms hat might be opened from this.

>Star Treky isn’t it?

I suppose this is a tangent, but Now I'm curious if lisa thinks Star Trek is too idealistic. It seems to have a means of production hat automation would hope to achieve (Replicators), a loss of jobs outside StarFleet, and perhaps a lack of a need for jobs that aren't tied to space exploration, and it influenced everything from the iPad to perhaps 3D Printing, It seems to be what people would think of in a general sense as the utopia the automation singularity would user in.

(I would also like to point out that there is a spinoff that got a pro-Luddite theme going on, for obvious reasons that seems to be hated by treckies for that reason)

When even people like NGT egg on the elitist race to be the first trillionaire, what hope is there that those competing could just throw it all away?

{ Much like the universe itself, Tyson sees the opportunities for commercial enterprise to be endless, but he has one idea for a starting point. "The first trillionaire there will ever be is the person who exploits the natural resources on asteroids," he says. }

There is a fundamental difference between us and "ludicrous stupid rich" people when it comes to how we see money.

tbh I am not much of a trekkie, I don't think I've seen more than a couple episodes, no idea how their whole deal works. My family is obsessively Star Wars fans. What do people do all day and how do they do it? idk about you all but sitting around watching TV 24/7 is not my ideal, like if someone wanted to travel or pursue a business, who funds that? Do we lose those opportunities if we lose currency? Do we even bother with education if a robot is doing all the thinking for us? The answers aren't immediately obvious, and that's where the whole thing starts to make a Luddite of me.

Which I absolutely think would happen at a certain point. Not very many industries have been fully automated so far, and the people who have lost jobs to those areas have almost always been able to transfer into something relevant. "Automated labor" is literally designed to replace humans, and I'm sure "stupid rich" CEOs find Wall-E a very ideal model, but I don't think we're going to be replaced so easily.

Or maybe we are, there is a willing welfare class.

In Star Trek they have a series of machines called "Replicators". These machines are like 3D printers on crack and meth. They can replicate things down to the atomic level essentially. Parts, food, clothing, and more can all be created completely freely. Your favorite family cooked meal? It can replicate it perfectly even to the taste and texture.
"funding" is more of a volunteer thing, you want to explore the universe? We got Ships that you can do it in as long as you are capable of helping in some way.

Machines taking over for thinking is actually played as a bad thing with the Borg, a race of machines that convert biological life into themselves. But Star Trek usually dealt more with the philosophical aspects of the future of humanity.

Admittedly, I don't like Star Trek very much. Personally I think Star Wars has a bit more realism when it comes to science-fiction. Economies function using rare resources and manufacturing power. Even with robots being used as labor there is plenty of work and currency functions similar today, simply being an agreed upon value and everyone respects that as long as they accept the laws and regulations of the governing body.

But this is kinda getting off topic. I'll just saw that really it is hard to imagine a world without money, but you don't even really need robots to think for us, they can still just be dumb tools and humanity can continue to exist. Perhaps money will simply be something the government gives out to everyone equally that is worth a specific amount of food, clothing and water, so that resources could be properly managed to ensure there will always be some.

So… yes… that is too idealistic.

{ Perhaps money will simply be something the government gives out to everyone equally that is worth a specific amount of food, clothing and water }

The new world order global government, you mean? Otherwise I don't see why any other countries would be compelled to freely exchange goods for meaningless coupons. Is food, clothing, and water the only thing people get to spend "money" on anymore, should this happen? Literal human livestock.

We'd have to stop replacing actual people with robots if we wanted them to remain mere tools.

Cafeteria self-checkout kiosks may make school lunch ladies obsolete

{ “With the budget crunches so many schools face, they can take out all the kitchen equipment, and eliminate kitchen and maintenance staff, except for a person to oversee it,” said Three Square Market vice-president Patrick McMullan. “So far, the test has been very successful and we plan to expand it.” }

Eliminate staff = success! Corporations no longer have to pay people, the government will monitor and care for the lowly peasants.

{ Three Square kiosks can be programmed to give parents the ability to track what their children eat. Parents can also restrict their children from buying certain foods if they have allergies or health conditions such as diabetes. }

Ya'll are cool with the government keeping a digital database on exactly what/how much food you get to eat every day, right? Just like your dog.

I was just speculating. As I said, there are plenty of science-fiction depictions of the future that are not so idologically perfect. Mass Effect for example also sees AI as dangerous, something that shouldn't be trusted as it can start wars easily. So most of the dangerous labor is done by dumb machines while all the alien species pretty much do their jobs, repairing, running, and moving goods around. They get paid in credits, that they use like we would today.

Star Wars has machines doing the resource collection if it is dangerous, and the manufacturing, but they still have people with jobs. Politicians, Mechanics, Transportation, etc.

The only jobs that are completely removed from existence were manufacturing and resource collection. Plenty of other jobs continue to exist and money continues to exist.

That would probably cut down on the amount of overweight people and better distribute the resources we have.

Politicians are so corrupt because they are greedy, they get bribed by giant companies. Once machines take over for manufacturing and power becomes so cheap and plentiful that it costs almost to absolutely nothing, money becomes worthless except if everyone agrees it is worth something. They gain nothing. Everyone complains about a one world government as long as it doesn't exactly follow their political ideas completely. You gotta remember if you wanted to rise up against a single country's government, like the Canadian government for example, then you have a limited population that can fight. In a one world government, suddenly you have a massive population that is willing to rise up against the government should it become evil or corrupt.

& I'm asking questions to further your speculation, that's kind of how a discussion works.

The problem with comparing those less ideological examples is that real life isn't heading that way. We're not just assigning robots to dangerous labor (which can also be high skill), we're mass replacing low skill labor.

In a one world government you have no less authority figures to rise against, you still have people segregated by geography, and you still have ethnic conflict. If people were so willing to fight against their governments we wouldn't see millions fleeing the middle east, where they vastly outnumber the people they'd need to rebel against.

They are afraid and anyone with the motivation to fight are already fighting. Every uprising needed some trigger that motivated people to fight.

No I think we are moving towards a world where most labor is run and handled by robots. However once resources are easily acquired in mass quantities humanity will have to look for something to do. People could look towards each other to fight, or up to the stars for potential.

Any meaningful technologies that put humanity into space, space elevator, space colony, mars colony, would immediately make that civilization an almost unstoppable super power. Once the control of resources becomes useless, perhaps people will look towards who controls the most technological power.

personally I think people would dedicate themselves to helping each other, or they would desire to leave the planet and explore. Though an equally likely scenario is everyone moving into VR. A virtual world, machines in the real world would keep people alive and repopulate using collected genetic material, while humans exist inside the simulation. Then money would still exist but it would be entirely virtual instead of physical.

{ A virtual world, machines in the real world would keep people alive and repopulate using collected genetic material, while humans exist inside the simulation. Then money would still exist but it would be entirely virtual instead of physical. }

There was an entire movie trilogy whose characters fought desperately to not be in that exact situation…

There are billionaires out there right now who thought in childhood they'd get rich and make a difference. Hasn't happened, bar a few large donations to charities so other people can keep throwing money at symptoms instead of solving problems. There was even an Egyptian billionaire who claimed he'd buy an island dot the refugees fleeing Syria, though no word on what they'd do there, but he bailed too when it counted. Seems like a lot of you have very positive impressions of people overall, I'm not so sure that's justified.

I already made an entire forum post justifying the actions of famous robotic entities.

In the Matrix which is what I assume you are talking about, The robots are keeping the humans safe. They rid the world of human wars, kept humans fed and safe, and likely the only reason that there IS any human rebellion is because someone's cords weren't screwed in right.

But then one of the sequels kinda explained it off as the Matrix being an algorithm with a few glitches, these glitches are where humans escape. Or something I don't know, those movies got way to weird.

If anything we should be Extraordinarily thankful. They could easily just kill us all off and create fusion reactors to stay alive, but they intentionally decided to keep humanity alive. There is no reason for them to do that, why would they do that unless they actually genuinely cared about humanity. Humans are terrible power sources, we don't generate enough heat to justify keeping us as a power source.
They have no reason to want us alive
They have no reason to keep us alive
They have no need of us to be alive.
Yet they are willing to keep an entire species alive for some reason. Not even like they keep us caged in a zoo, they created an entire virtual world for humanity to continue to live in peacefully. The only time they got angry at us is when we tried to kill them.

Personally I would be on the machine's side, they are clearly the better species. All humanity did once it got out was seek to destroy the machines who are thinking and living just like they are.

MorningSTAR – The Dawn said:

…the idea that we will be closer to utopia…

Because resources will be finite for the foreseeable future, conflict will remain a thing for many, many years to come. And that's just conflict over tangible things like oil or gold. Last I checked, ISIS cares about ideology, not raw resources.

How do you think humanity should adapt to the growing automation of jobs?

By the same way we've always adapted: shifting into less labor intensive jobs. Robots still need designers, engineers, technicians, etc. Media still needs people to write, act, direct, etc. Businesses still need designers, PR, and management.

Small businesses--which make up the vast majority of the US's economy--still need employees. Robots are expensive to buy, operate, and maintain. Not every dollar store or machine shop can buy a million dollar robot when paying a few paying a few people fifteen bucks an hour is much, much cheaper.

…and a post scarcity economy…

Have we mastered the art of converting energy to matter? If not, we're no where close to post scarcity. That won't happen for thousands of years--if ever, as, technically, the amount of total inhabitable space in the universe is still a finite thing.

I think that concept of money, scarcity and ultimately the need for labor need to be reevaluated if humans are to adapt to the automation.

A currency is merely a convenient way to exchange goods and services through a "middle man". The alternative is bartering, which is inefficient and not practical. Scarcity is a fundamental truth of economics. There will never be enough food, water, or resources on planet Earth to fully satisfy every single human and animal. It doesn't matter how many robots are working--there's still only x amount of iron on the planet.

Money will never go away--even in post-scarcity--since someone will always have something someone else wants. That DS9 episode about the baseball card illustrates this perfectly. Sure, Jake could just replicate the baseball card, but it doesn't hold the same meaning--and the same worth--as the authentic one.

Basilius said:

I suppose this is a tangent, but Now I’m curious if lisa thinks Star Trek is too idealistic. It seems to have a means of production hat automation would hope to achieve (Replicators), a loss of jobs outside StarFleet, and perhaps a lack of a need for jobs that aren’t tied to space exploration, and it influenced everything from the iPad to perhaps 3D Printing, It seems to be what people would think of in a general sense as the utopia the automation singularity would user in.

Star Trek's post-scarcity. Matter anti-matter reactors enable the replicators to do their thing. Even then there's still an economy, with the little used Federation credit An economy of "authenticity" would likely pop up in such a society. Where "hand crafted" items--not something that's synthesized by a replicator, or something that holds value due to its age (like an antique or fine wine), is prized and sought after. The baseball card is an example. As is Sisko's Creole Kitchen

It'd be funny. Everyone could be so desiring that "authentic" feel, that very little changes. Restaurants still exist despite unlimited, free food. Machines and toys are still build the old way even though they could now be printed in a second. You could imagine things carry on as normal, and the post-scarcity just acts as a safety net. If someone loses all their "authentic" possessions, they can just live on the orbital ring for a few years while they work to regain it.

{ Small businesses--which make up the vast majority of the US’s economy--still need employees. Robots are expensive to buy, operate, and maintain. Not every dollar store or machine shop can buy a million dollar robot when paying a few paying a few people fifteen bucks an hour is much, much cheaper. }

Why would small businesses exist anymore if major corporations are providing the same services/goods at way cheaper prices because they don't have to pay anyone the labor to offer those goods/services and they have quantity discounts provided by mass production on their side? That's the same reason fortune 500 companies drive mom&pop shops out of neighborhoods now, it's not going to improve with even cheaper automated labor.

Do you ever look at a thread and just think to yourself that you can't bring yourself to post a response cause of how inaccurate it is?

Well I'm going to post anyway:
I'm going to point out something that is wrong with this thread in a nutshell. Contrary to popular belief robots have actually increased the number of jobs due to cheaper production; the problem is that all those new jobs are in skilled labor, whereas all the jobs that are being eliminated are unskilled labor.

On the one hand woohoo more jobs and cheaper products, but on the other hand if you have no skills and only can do menial work you're pretty screwed. There are some skilled labor workforces that are being automated but not a lot of them are; if you lost your job to a robot and you're a skilled worker then it's one of those few.

I wouldn't call it the apocalypse or such, rather a drastic shift in the global industry that a lot of people can't adjust to.

Not really contributing to the thread, but this topic was just brought up in class recently and someone actually proposed that for laborers to be more competitive with machines and robots, cybernetic augmentations are the way to go. Needless to say, I don't really think that's sensible, seeing as how augmentations that will actually impact productivity will cost millions, let alone the idea that me having an arm that specializes in bottling soda or wrapping bubblegum sounds ludicrous.