Originally Posted by Xei
This thread will take as read the (in my opinion uncontroversial) assumption that science will continue to progress, and at some time in the future we will have created machines which have physical dexterity and mental agility exceeding that of humans (at a lower expense).
At such a point, the vast majority of the populace will be unemployed, due to automation of human jobs.
This is sometimes claimed to be an economic fallacy. We will also take it as read that such a claim is a risible absurdity.
The argument for the claim goes something like, "in past instances of automation, although the original jobs were superseded, the new abundance of energy and the technological progress that this engendered created a whole new echelon of higher-level jobs which were then occupied, stabilising employment rates. Therefore, automation will never create permanent high unemployment".
This is, of course, not a rigorous argument, but just an extrapolation from events in different circumstances in a previous era. What is a rigorous argument, however, is that when machines can do everything that a human can but for less money, there patently be no rationale in hiring humans any more. New jobs will be created, but a priori, this time, the existing machines will already be able to do those, too.
So, the question is this: how will the free market economy (where the companies creating these machines will presumably arise) deal with this situation, in which virtually all jobs are automated?
It seems to me that a small number of people who own the 'means of production' will end up with all of the wealth and income. Everybody else will have a finite and dwindling wealth (actually a significant number will presumably have negative wealth, looking at the current economic situation), and no income, nor any means of ever attaining an income.
The great irony is that labour will have been rendered obsolete; and yet with contemporary economic models, it looks like we will end up with a potentially nightmarish situation rather than a utopia.
That's the focus, but feel free to discuss the effect on the state, and other types of economy.
This is one of the major reasons I support a more collectivist attitude in regard to ownership. When the controllers of Capital refuse to support their labor with more than a temporary contract, they are not just refusing the labor their share for the time they gave, they are killing their legacy for the future. We built the future together, and we should all share it.
Communities could run participatory governments with each other. Communities collectively keep watch over the industry and infrastructure within their control. With this smaller model, they are not forced to take care of individuals that feel entitled. Generally, there would be a lot less labor to go around, but just as much capability to maintain shelter, food, water and energy for large communities meaning a large group of people could live together without having to work very much at all. The fear people have right now is that if the state enables people to live without work, they won't do anything. Conversely if you reward people to live a lot better than the rest of society, he will be more ambitious.
Competition does provide something for progress but historically cooperation has been just as imperative in all aspects of evolution. While societies should maintain capitalism, if communities were collectivist then they could compete together rather than amongst each other and when one of them is inspired by ambition to drive society forward then that person's community could benefit together from the invention and if they don't like that person's ideas he/she could migrate to a place that would. When people share their ambition, they double their potential. And simply because you remove a person's fear of losing their homes and starving if they fuck up, that does not mean no one will want to perform the work that is still required. You're still driven by the ambition to survive, you would just be driven by the ambition to survive as a community rather than an individual. The community would regulate this themselves and run their own government to maintain its own requirements and even threaten people with exile who refuse to lend substantiate aid; essentially a "have a broomstick or the door" policy. Social safety nets would take the form of community empathy, more or less. The disabled, pregnant, sick, injured etc. could excuse themselves as necessary. Because it would be so easy to survive, there would be no reason to hold back from helping these people. The only reason to even maintain regulations is for a sense of fairness. Maybe you're a police officer two days a week and that's all you're asked to do, but you also volunteer at the school as a councilor at your leisure and you would be out hunting right now but you're busy directing a school play. People like to be busy. They choose to be busy. Maybe you're required to sit behind a security camera for the three nights a week you work and you spend the rest of the time playing video games and smoking pot. Should the cop be angry at your lifestyle just because you don't do any of the stuff he's just doing for fun anyways?
There's this weird assumption that if you decide to be a lawyer or a doctor you should have a better life than your neighbors. Basically, you need to make more money so you can buy a bigger house and a better car and a jacuzzi and a cruise. I don't understand this philosophy, but I do believe competition drives you to be the best and progresses society forward. Football players drive themselves to be the best so they can get traded to the richest team that can offer them the strongest contract. Communities could also offer contracts in order to compete for the best doctors, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and other vital assets. These contracts wouldn't need to be for cash, they could be for the best living conditions possible. So communities would be driven to let certain individuals to live much better off than the rest because that's the only way to get them to come live there.
The next questions I would like to address are these:
1. Shouldn't the cop be living at least slightly better off than the lazy stoner required to do nothing else but stare at a screen from the corner of his eye while he plays video games? (He's not even required to pay attention or stay awake, an alert system goes off when the automated sensor detects movement.)
2. If currency is eliminated from individual communities how do they trade with each other? For example, what does a community built around a steel mill get for the steel they trade, and why should they bother? For another example, what would store owners give for products they import, and why should they give these products to the community?
A single occupation could overlook both facets of trade. The store owner would be the same job (or shared work) as the steel trader. Regional Capitals would take the form of trade cities, as regions could haul goods to a single epicenter where middle-men would purchase the steel in order to sell to another community which uses it to build treadmills. (This community may also delve in cheese processing, circuit boards, etc.) This middle man exists, just as the trade city exists, in order to bottle neck stock so that the trader from the steel mill community can exchange all the steel at once in return for all the necessities the community doesn't have plus whatever luxuries they asked him/her to get.
This is where I get back to question one. If a member of a community is just partying all the time then dragging herself to a restaurant to wait people for her required eighteen hours a week, hungover every single day, even dropping her four kids off at the day-care center to feed and entertain so she can go drink, should this be enabled? Should she live just as well off as everyone else despite the fact that she's forcing them to look after all her kids and she doesn't even have to motivation to do her job well?
If the town has one export, then the hours a person puts into work and the type of work they do could entitle them to a share of that export. Individuals can make requests to the local trader for certain luxury items, and their item cap depends upon the value of the product they partially own. There's no reason to impose statewide measures to take care of the town drunk. If they aren't bad enough to face exile, that doesn't mean they deserve the same lifestyle as people that work much, much harder. They simply won't be granted as much ownership over the community's export to afford any of its imports.
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