Will we have to reform our whole system of economics once robots do everything?

[Matty]

In most societies around the world, money is earned by doing jobs and services for people, firms, nations, etc. Once robots can literally do everything for us, how will people get money? Note that I am making a distinction between robots and technological advancements of the past (such as the car).

In my view, the only way for a capitalist system dominated by robots to survive is to have a guaranteed income for everyone. Otherwise, you'd have unprecedented millions of people with no means to make money, since money is gained through working.

[AggregateDemand]

In most societies around the world, money is earned by doing jobs and services for people, firms, nations, etc. Once robots can literally do everything for us, how will people get money? Note that I am making a distinction between robots and technological advancements of the past (such as the car).

In my view, the only way for a capitalist system dominated by robots to survive is to have a guaranteed income for everyone. Otherwise, you'd have unprecedented millions of people with no means to make money, since money is gained through working.

Why must an economy be built on manufactured durable and non-durable goods?

Robots don't do service industry or intellectual property particularly well. If robots do take over our jobs, then we probably will need some kind of guaranteed minimum income.

[Person Man]

In most societies around the world, money is earned by doing jobs and services for people, firms, nations, etc. Once robots can literally do everything for us, how will people get money? Note that I am making a distinction between robots and technological advancements of the past (such as the car).

In my view, the only way for a capitalist system dominated by robots to survive is to have a guaranteed income for everyone. Otherwise, you'd have unprecedented millions of people with no means to make money, since money is gained through working.

Why must an economy be built on manufactured durable and non-durable goods?

Robots don't do service industry or intellectual property particularly well. If robots do take over our jobs, then we probably will need some kind of guaranteed minimum income.

That's where robots are going next- the service industry. I think it will be coming into force in 15 or 20 years, if its going to happen at all. At that point, if it comes, only good, white collar jobs that need college degrees will be left. Even though it might be another 15 or 20 years after that when there is a machine in every home or pocket that can past the Turing Test, it will then come the time when we need to stop thing as work as something people are expected to do to participate in society and rethink what it means to be "normal" or "good" in modern society. That all being said, it then might be time to have something like a guaranteed minimum income.. or guaranteed minimum investable assets.

[Foucaulf]

Let me give out a more careful prediction here. By separating robots from other technology, you're making a common but significant distinction: you have defined robots as something that substitutes labour power instead of something that improves labour productivity. From this abstract definition we can see a parallel between robots and other forms of labour; specifically, immigrants.

Has mass immigration harmed the U.S. significantly? I don't think so, for at least this commonly cited reason. By taking the jobs native born citizens refuse to take, immigrants restore equilibrium in markets with labour shortages. Then economic transactions restore to a level desired by all, and native citizens can pursue their more innovative, economy-growing activities. Win-win for everyone.

The one subtlety between migration and robots is that robots can be produced much more quickly than migrants can. It takes eighteen years for a human to grow to an adult; it takes eighteen hours to produce a robot. Native citizens need time to create their more innovative activities, conditional on them not being fired while conjuring it up. With robotic labour, the probability of them figuring something useful in the lag time vanishes.

While I don't mind the idea of a minimum income, there are other non-monetary ways to increase the above probability. One is to artificially increase the lag time by increasing the amount of red tape needed for a robot to be approved for working in a certain profession. Another is to legislate a tax on corporate profits that is funneled specifically to financial aid for higher education for those displaced. Both policies probably lead to long-term consequences on which someone else can elaborate.

[Hamster]

Let me give out a more careful prediction here. By separating robots from other technology, you're making a common but significant distinction: you have defined robots as something that substitutes labour power instead of something that improves labour productivity. From this abstract definition we can see a parallel between robots and other forms of labour; specifically, immigrants.

Has mass immigration harmed the U.S. significantly? I don't think so, for at least this commonly cited reason. By taking the jobs native born citizens refuse to take, immigrants restore equilibrium in markets with labour shortages. Then economic transactions restore to a level desired by all, and native citizens can pursue their more innovative, economy-growing activities. Win-win for everyone.

The one subtlety between migration and robots is that robots can be produced much more quickly than migrants can. It takes eighteen years for a human to grow to an adult; it takes eighteen hours to produce a robot. Native citizens need time to create their more innovative activities, conditional on them not being fired while conjuring it up. With robotic labour, the probability of them figuring something useful in the lag time vanishes.

While I don't mind the idea of a minimum income, there are other non-monetary ways to increase the above probability. One is to artificially increase the lag time by increasing the amount of red tape needed for a robot to be approved for working in a certain profession. Another is to legislate a tax on corporate profits that is funneled specifically to financial aid for higher education for those displaced. Both policies probably lead to long-term consequences on which someone else can elaborate.

Immigrants, unlike robots, are human beings who need jobs to survive. Automation deprives humans of the jobs they need to survive in the current system. Slowing down the automation of new industry only buys you more time to change the system. Encourage even more people to get a college education will only increase the number of people burdened by exorbitant debt. What good is education for a workforce that is unneeded (by the current system)?

The solution is to change that system. Automation within a capitalist framework is simply a more efficient way for the owners of that capital (i.e., the robots) to accrue wealth. As much as it will pain free-market believers to admit, automation is a new destructive force which requires policies of redistribution to keep from destroying the social fabric. The irony is that this crisis is simultaneously an opportunity for human liberation. If robots can do all the bullsh**t, mindless jobs, that is great! That frees people to be creative, to be innovative, to build relationships, to grow spiritually, to do all the things humans need to do but capitalism does not value.

To achieve that vision, every person must be guaranteed by their status as a human being an equal portion of the fruits of automated production. There are many schemes existent to do this, from classic socialist utopias, to basic income schemes favored by economists. What cannot be allowed to happen is the response in some quarters to cover their ears and pretend like automation is nothing new, that a return to the "normalcy" of the nineties or the sixties is eminent.

[Blue3]

Post Scarcity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity

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[Indy Texas]

We'd have to revise the welfare state away from a work-based approach where taxes are derived from labor (payroll taxes) and where a major goal is to facilitate employment and use of labor.

That would be an incredibly difficult thing to accept, particularly for many in the Republican Party, who see "work" less as a means to an end (getting money to buy things with) and more as a virtue in and of itself. The old "the best form of welfare is a job" mantra would quite literally become obsolete.

[AggregateDemand]

We'd have to revise the welfare state away from a work-based approach where taxes are derived from labor (payroll taxes) and where a major goal is to facilitate employment and use of labor.

That would be an incredibly difficult thing to accept, particularly for many in the Republican Party, who see "work" less as a means to an end (getting money to buy things with) and more as a virtue in and of itself. The old "the best form of welfare is a job" mantra would quite literally become obsolete.

Marginal output of human labor and intellectual property is never going to disappear. I don't know why liberals like to daydream otherwise.

[Person Man]

We'd have to revise the welfare state away from a work-based approach where taxes are derived from labor (payroll taxes) and where a major goal is to facilitate employment and use of labor.

That would be an incredibly difficult thing to accept, particularly for many in the Republican Party, who see "work" less as a means to an end (getting money to buy things with) and more as a virtue in and of itself. The old "the best form of welfare is a job" mantra would quite literally become obsolete.

Marginal output of human labor and intellectual property is never going to disappear. I don't know why liberals like to daydream otherwise.

Though it may be correct to assume that to work has also been preferable, it has only been in the last dozen generations that its cultural emphasis has been so high.

[DINGO Joe]

Better add Robot Insurance to Obamacare.

https://screen.yahoo.com/old-glory-insurance-ad-000000469.html

[Matty]

I agree that by the time robots do everything, we will live in a post-scarcity society, which is an amazing concept in itself.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Hopefully this will finally prompt us to realize there is no reason for everybody to break their backs working 40-50 hours a week, and reevaluate the importance of rest and leisure in the human experience.

[Matty]

Hopefully this will finally prompt us to realize there is no reason for everybody to break their backs working 40-50 hours a week, and reevaluate the importance of rest and leisure in the human experience.

But on the other side of the coin, would humans grow "weaker" and more "clumsy" in a post-scarcity world?

[Indy Texas]

Hopefully this will finally prompt us to realize there is no reason for everybody to break their backs working 40-50 hours a week, and reevaluate the importance of rest and leisure in the human experience.

But on the other side of the coin, would humans grow "weaker" and more "clumsy" in a post-scarcity world?

There are plenty of examples of human beings who have no economic reason to engage in labor of any kind - people who have inherited so much money that their capital is far more economically productive than their labor could ever be. Some of them lead full lives traveling, learning about arts and culture, and participating in philanthropy and volunteerism. And some of them spend their days snorting coke and wrecking expensive cars.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Ideally we'd plateau at something like Star Trek--nearly all menial jobs are automated, but most people "work" anyway in something they enjoy doing and is in some way productive. This post-scarcity state of being would be known as "communism".

[Blue3]

Hopefully this will finally prompt us to realize there is no reason for everybody to break their backs working 40-50 hours a week, and reevaluate the importance of rest and leisure in the human experience.

But on the other side of the coin, would humans grow "weaker" and more "clumsy" in a post-scarcity world?

People would simply do what they want to do, become good at what they want to become good at, even if it wouldn't have had much material value in today's world.

And if some want to be lazy, let them. They would no longer be a drain on resources. Live and let live, as long as no one's being harmed.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Hopefully this will finally prompt us to realize there is no reason for everybody to break their backs working 40-50 hours a week, and reevaluate the importance of rest and leisure in the human experience.

But on the other side of the coin, would humans grow "weaker" and more "clumsy" in a post-scarcity world?

"Weakness" is the hallmark of civilization.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

"Some of them are friendly."-C-SPAN Republican caller, March 2003.

[muon2]

Fredrick Pohl considered this problem in his novella The Midas Plague. It made the list of the 22 best science fiction novellas before 1965 as voted by writers.

[Cory]

I've always though about this concept. I think in the future automation and advanced AI will do almost everything for us but the transition will be tough.

Eventually as this goes on we will enter into the "20/80" society (as per The Global Trap). What happens when not only are 80% of people permanently employed, but only 20% of the population is physically needed and thus capable of getting a job? The fact is we will have to institute a guaranteed income, and most of the population will be on it. Perceptions about the inherent morality of "earning your keep" will fade as work itself as we know it becomes increasingly a thing of the past.

The problem isn't necessarily when we enter a 20/80 society, but when we enter in a "80/20" society. Meaning that although about 80% of society still is needed to work but 20% or so are unemployed. The problem is that the "80%" may come to resent the unemployed 20% and smugly not realize that they will be next to be replaced soon. These people will vote against the institution of social-democratic reforms need to stabilize this situation because they stupidly view the unemployed as "freeloaders".

And then there will be the "machine-breakers". The people who think we should ban or restrict this new technology because it increases unemployment. This would be the "left" of the reaction to this development. This is a foolish position as the technology is objectively good, and they should the social system that makes it necessary for increases in productivity to be matched by increases in poverty.

I don't think capitalism as we know it can survive this, as wage labor becomes a thing of the past and incomes level out and people have unlimited free time the profit motive will dissipate.

[MadmanMotley]

I think there will be a lot of unknown and unintended consequences (not necessarily bad). We will see a lot of the monotonous and simple labor jobs go away, but not everything will be automated. Ultimately we will still have capitalism (something I am in favor of, but that's a different subject). We will just see a reduction in manufacturing and other easily automated jobs. But as those jobs are phased out we will see new jobs at a different phase. Ultimately I am glad to see this greater automation, as it will mean a greater focus on science and technology, and a greater stress on education (Who wants to be able to do nothing better than robot?).

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Will we abolish gender once everyone owns an oral sex robot?

Robots will never "do everything". This is a stupid question. Notice that we essentially have robots that do everything: they're wage slaves in widget factories across the developing world. We don't utilize the gains from this trade to work twenty hours a week sipping on the finest of wines, a bigger portion of our economy produces "non-tradeable goods" aka the so-called service sector of the post-indsustrial economy. This is a crude and probably offensive example but it's obvious that value doesn't emanate from q shifting to q* thus satiating us before we lounge around all day. People prefer more goods all else being equal and, according to the definition of economics, this includes services that are not quantifiable by bushels of wheat or flatscreen TVs. If robots allow us to stop producing goods or whatever OP suggests, labor will be devoted to something else that can't be satisfied by robots.

[Hamster]

Will we abolish gender once everyone owns an oral sex robot?

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