Labor Policy vs. Automation

[Person Man]

I see these alt-right memes on the internet that state, probably to varying degree of accuracy, that increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their job to automation. How likely do you think that this will come to be? What do you see if Trump making it, putting up tariffs and a wall? Do you think that will encourage AI/automation?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     In the long run I fear that mass unemployment through automation may be inevitable no matter who we put into office. At that point, I'll probably go off the grid and be a survivalist in Montana.

[White Trash]

Maybe the Luddites were right.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

     In the long run I fear that mass unemployment through automation may be inevitable no matter who we put into office. At that point, I'll probably go off the grid and be a survivalist in Montana.

Yup.

A dream come true for me.

[Person Man]

    In the long run I fear that mass unemployment through automation may be inevitable no matter who we put into office. At that point, I'll probably go off the grid and be a survivalist in Montana.

Yup.

A dream come true for me.

There is a tribe of white sepratists out there. The Indians ran em out of Wyoming. They basically live between Billings and Spokane. Pepe the Frog is their Chieftain. They try to avoid stoners moving out there but with limited success. Guess which part of this is false, if any.

[IceAgeComing]

It'll happen anyway in the long-run unless you make the minimum wage pitifully small: and there'd only be a very small window where automation would be cost-effective at $15/hr but not at $12/hr.  Its naturally going to be an issue first in developed industrial economies first; but that's standard with most automation - its still cheaper to pay Bangladeshi children peanuts to produce clothes than it is to automate production anywhere in the world, and it'd be the same for service industries in the developing world at least until their economies develop to the point where automation is cheaper there as well.

There is a wider debate about just how the governments of capitalist states will have to react to the affects of automation and what policies they'll need to implement - especially since welfare policy in the last few decades has moved towards having much stricter work requirements.  You already see what the impact might be in deindustralised areas in Western states: and honestly its not pretty and not something that anyone should ever want to see happen more widely.  In a dream world you'd see people moving towards a more socialist economy but honestly that's incredibly unlikely, it hasn't happened the other 1,000 times that its been predicted!  Its not something that you can easily solve though; its not just as simple as "give unemployment benefits to the people that don't need to work".

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

    In the long run I fear that mass unemployment through automation may be inevitable no matter who we put into office. At that point, I'll probably go off the grid and be a survivalist in Montana.

Yup.

A dream come true for me.

There is a tribe of white sepratists out there. The Indians ran em out of Wyoming. They basically live between Billings and Spokane. Pepe the Frog is their Chieftain. They try to avoid stoners moving out there but with limited success. Guess which part of this is false, if any.

The Northwest Front includes all of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, too, if their flag is of any indication:



White separatists exist in every state, of course.  I just want to be left the hell alone.

[Intell]

Disastrous free trade policies are a lot to blame.

[parochial boy]

Agree with IceAge, if a machine can do something for $2 an hour, it is basically irrelevant whether the minimum wage is $7 or $30, the machine is still cheaper.

Obviously, Universal Basic Income has been posited as a response to this, however, on a wider scale, it would mean having to look hard at the economic model we have.

If capitalism is destined to lead us to a system of chronic unemployment against a hugely wealthy, rentier, share and property owning class, then I dare say the concept of private property may no longer be adequate.

If machines can do everything, then the problem of incentive starts to go away, and we might as well have wholesale nationalisation of large swathes of the economy, so that the profits could be distributed equally.

[White Trash]

Take a club to the machines and rip up all trade deals.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Automation is going to happen anyway, and any policy aimed at preventing it will have even worse consequences.

We have the means to ensure that automation doesn't result in massive poverty. We all know what they are: redistibution, progressive taxation, and the welfare state. Focusing on automation itself is a mistake.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Automation is going to happen anyway, and any policy aimed at preventing it will have even worse consequences.

We have the means to ensure that automation doesn't result in massive poverty. We all know what they are: redistibution, progressive taxation, and the welfare state. Focusing on automation itself is a mistake.

[Cassius]

Take a club to the machines and rip up all trade deals.

Basically this (although maybe not rip up all the trade deals).

[White Trash]

Take a club to the machines and rip up all trade deals.

Basically this (although maybe not rip up all the trade deals).

This is non-negotiable. We must achieve autarky.

[Arturo Belano]

Automation is going to happen anyway, and any policy aimed at preventing it will have even worse consequences.

We have the means to ensure that automation doesn't result in massive poverty. We all know what they are: redistibution, progressive taxation, the welfare state, and seizing the means of production. Focusing on automation itself is a mistake.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Take a club to the machines and rip up all trade deals.

Basically this (although maybe not rip up all the trade deals).

This is non-negotiable. We must achieve autarky.

     I suspect you're right on this. If other countries have replaced their workers with machines and we've chosen the path of frame-smashing, I'm not sure how we could compete with them in terms of trade. At that point, automation will have proven cheaper than traditional labor.

[Orthogonian Society Treasurer]

Automation is the final stage of the ritual sacrifice of human dignity that has been taking place in the west for fifty years. UBI would keep the victims alive but they would be reduced to an impoverished and alienated consumer class. Anything that can be done to stop it must be done. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

[White Trash]

Automation is the final stage of the ritual sacrifice of human dignity that has been taking place in the west for fifty years. UBI would keep the victims alive but they would be reduced to an impoverished and alienated consumer class. Anything that can be done to stop it must be done. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

I am of the firm opinion that a backwards economy, and perhaps a small and noncompetitive one, is certainly preferable to a Brave New World-esque situation. The government dole will rot your soul.

After typing that, I'm not sure if I'm kidding or not.

[RFayette]

Automation is the final stage of the ritual sacrifice of human dignity that has been taking place in the west for fifty years. UBI would keep the victims alive but they would be reduced to an impoverished and alienated consumer class. Anything that can be done to stop it must be done. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Thou shalt not crucify mankind with a batch of source code!  

In seriousness, I largely agree with your sentiment, but as someone who is aspiring to enter a field which is responsible for much of the automation (CS), I can't really say I personally oppose it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm sentimentally in agreement with the Neo-Luddite position too--I don't even use ridesharing apps because I think the entire concept is anti-worker and also because I don't own a smartphone--I just think it's a non-starter.

[DavidB.]

The luddite argument didn't prove to be true 150 years ago and it won't prove to be true this time. There will always be new sorts of demands that need to be fulfilled by actual people as the economy becomes more advanced. But yes, I'm feeling like a red for saying this, but it is utterly necessary to not allow income and wealth inequality to get out of hand in the process of automation. That process needs to serve humanity, not the other way around.

I oppose UBI because it makes people dependent. Dependency does not make people happy, and fundamentally I believe adults should depend on themselves in the first place and on the government (or, ideally, their own community) only when this does not work.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The luddite argument didn't prove to be true 150 years ago and it won't prove to be true this time. There will always be new sorts of demands that need to be fulfilled by actual people as the economy becomes more advanced.

I hear there's a lot of demand for "fresh blood" from those Soilent Green reps.

[muon2]

Frederick Pohl's 1954 classic novella "The Midas Plague" should be required reading for this thread.

[Person Man]

Frederick Pohl's 1954 classic novella "The Midas Plague" should be required reading for this thread.

Yes. But is this time "it"?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Frederick Pohl's 1954 classic novella "The Midas Plague" should be required reading for this thread.

From a quick Wikipedia skim, I find the premise too far removed from present concerns to be of any value here.