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 Chongara wrote:
As the need for human input into production at any level approaches zero and the population stabilizes at the robot's carrying capacity the value of all things also approaches zero. Your question becomes nonsensical as there is no money to waste.

This... isn't remotely true. Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with. The method of production changing doesn't matter; goods aren't priced or valued based solely on what it cost to produce them. They are priced/valued at what the seller can get you to pay. There are plenty of items nowadays whose production methods have gotten easier and cheaper, but whose actual prices haven't come down at all. Food is perhaps the best example. We are getting more and more crop yield with smaller and smaller amounts of resources (time, water, everything). And yet food prices continue to go up; it's a pretty inelastic good because everyone needs to eat. Robo-farmers instead of human farmers doesn't change the fact that the population has to eat to survive, and that food has to be grown somewhere. Are you just going to magically turn all land into publicly owned areas?

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
In 20 years 50% of you will be unemployable due to automation. This debate is pointless. Technology will eventually make most all human beings unemployable (withing 100 years) . So what will people do to earn a living then? It sure will be interesting.

In 50 years I will most likely be dead or living in a VA retirement home. Automation is not going to replace that many jobs in 20 years (and in 25 years I'll be retired). My advice? Learn how to build, install, fix and repair the automated units.

We already have robots that fix other robots; we even have robots that can design other robots. It's simple stuff right now, sure, but it's advancing pretty rapidly.

 streamdragon wrote:
Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with.

Almost. Value is completely and totally arbitrary, the price of a thing is what people are willing to pay for a thing. Claiming there is a 'fair' price for a thing that isn't what people are willing to pay assumes a truth that has no connection to fact, a 'fair price' is just as mythical as the concept of 'moving up the evolutionary ladder'. An emergent thing is credited to some arbitrary higher power. I don't know if there's an all-powerful God who has given His chosen people a price sheet on what the 'fair prices' for everything are, but where I'm sitting there's no basis for it.

We already have robots that fix other robots; we even have robots that can design other robots. It's simple stuff right now, sure, but it's advancing pretty rapidly.

The Wiener Legions and I welcome our now robo overlords. Being as you're so efficient you're going to have a lot of leisure time. We have an activity no sentient being can resist, the endlessly addicting act of rubbing our bellies.
Help us... help you!

 streamdragon wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
As the need for human input into production at any level approaches zero and the population stabilizes at the robot's carrying capacity the value of all things also approaches zero. Your question becomes nonsensical as there is no money to waste.

This... isn't remotely true. Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with. The method of production changing doesn't matter; goods aren't priced or valued based solely on what it cost to produce them. They are priced/valued at what the seller can get you to pay. There are plenty of items nowadays whose production methods have gotten easier and cheaper, but whose actual prices haven't come down at all. Food is perhaps the best example. We are getting more and more crop yield with smaller and smaller amounts of resources (time, water, everything). And yet food prices continue to go up; it's a pretty inelastic good because everyone needs to eat. Robo-farmers instead of human farmers doesn't change the fact that the population has to eat to survive, and that food has to be grown somewhere. Are you just going to magically turn all land into publicly owned areas?

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.

The land won't be publicly held, it will be "held" by the robots. Human ownership of land will have been rendered obsolete at some point by more efficient land-owning robots. If we're running with the view that:

A) Robots will grow to be more efficient than humans at every conceivable function of production.
and
B) Robots being better & more efficient at role necessarily replaces the humans in those roles.

The ultimate is conclusion that any factor in production including ownership, decision making, and distribution will eventually be overtaken by robots. This means that humans would really only continue to exist so far as they relate to the robots production optimization. The only niche I can really see for us in that scenario is consumption "Eating, Drinking, fething". Humanity basically becomes like plants in a garden and the robots the Gardner. The only reason we aren't disposed of entirely is because the robots exist to produce and manage for us, presumably if that mission somehow got written out of us they'd probably just allow us to cease to exist.

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
In 20 years 50% of you will be unemployable due to automation. This debate is pointless. Technology will eventually make most all human beings unemployable (withing 100 years) . So what will people do to earn a living then? It sure will be interesting.

How do you know this? Do you have a time machine? Are you secretly trapped in a movie and read the script? We're you given a prophecy? I said how do you know this?

Unfortunately this isn't really my revelation this has been a hot topic in the field of robotics for a long time. I'd say I know because I read a lot and know what technology is capable of even today and technology increases pretty much exponentially so we can expect some pretty large jumps in the near future.

Here is an excellent video to spark your interest. It's a great place a to start I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

 Chongara wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
As the need for human input into production at any level approaches zero and the population stabilizes at the robot's carrying capacity the value of all things also approaches zero. Your question becomes nonsensical as there is no money to waste.

This... isn't remotely true. Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with. The method of production changing doesn't matter; goods aren't priced or valued based solely on what it cost to produce them. They are priced/valued at what the seller can get you to pay. There are plenty of items nowadays whose production methods have gotten easier and cheaper, but whose actual prices haven't come down at all. Food is perhaps the best example. We are getting more and more crop yield with smaller and smaller amounts of resources (time, water, everything). And yet food prices continue to go up; it's a pretty inelastic good because everyone needs to eat. Robo-farmers instead of human farmers doesn't change the fact that the population has to eat to survive, and that food has to be grown somewhere. Are you just going to magically turn all land into publicly owned areas?

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.

The land won't be publicly held, it will be "held" by the robots. Human ownership of land will have been rendered obsolete at some point by more efficient land-owning robots. If we're running with the view that:

A) Robots will grow to be more efficient than humans at every conceivable function of production.
and
B) Robots being better & more efficient at role necessarily replaces the humans in those roles.

The ultimate is conclusion that any factor in production including ownership, decision making, and distribution will eventually be overtaken by robots. This means that humans would really only continue to exist so far as they relate to the robots production optimization. The only niche I can really see for us in that scenario is consumption "Eating, Drinking, fething". Humanity basically becomes like plants in a garden and the robots the Gardner. The only reason we aren't disposed of entirely is because the robots exist to produce and manage for us, presumably if that mission somehow got written out of us they'd probably just allow us to cease to exist.

Production robots are not intelligent. There is no AI involved.

 Chongara wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
As the need for human input into production at any level approaches zero and the population stabilizes at the robot's carrying capacity the value of all things also approaches zero. Your question becomes nonsensical as there is no money to waste.

This... isn't remotely true. Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with. The method of production changing doesn't matter; goods aren't priced or valued based solely on what it cost to produce them. They are priced/valued at what the seller can get you to pay. There are plenty of items nowadays whose production methods have gotten easier and cheaper, but whose actual prices haven't come down at all. Food is perhaps the best example. We are getting more and more crop yield with smaller and smaller amounts of resources (time, water, everything). And yet food prices continue to go up; it's a pretty inelastic good because everyone needs to eat. Robo-farmers instead of human farmers doesn't change the fact that the population has to eat to survive, and that food has to be grown somewhere. Are you just going to magically turn all land into publicly owned areas?

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.

The land won't be publicly held, it will be "held" by the robots. Human ownership of land will have been rendered obsolete at some point by more efficient land-owning robots. If we're running with the view that:

A) Robots will grow to be more efficient than humans at every conceivable function of production.
and
B) Robots being better & more efficient at role necessarily replaces the humans in those roles.

The ultimate is conclusion that any factor in production including ownership, decision making, and distribution will eventually be overtaken by robots. This means that humans would really only continue to exist so far as they relate to the robots production optimization. The only niche I can really see for us in that scenario is consumption "Eating, Drinking, fething". Humanity basically becomes like plants in a garden and the robots the Gardner. The only reason we aren't disposed of entirely is because the robots exist to produce and manage for us, presumably if that mission somehow got written out of us they'd probably just allow us to cease to exist.

Sooo.... like the Matrix eh? With fetus fields?

 streamdragon wrote:

 Chongara wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
As the need for human input into production at any level approaches zero and the population stabilizes at the robot's carrying capacity the value of all things also approaches zero. Your question becomes nonsensical as there is no money to waste.

This... isn't remotely true. Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with. The method of production changing doesn't matter; goods aren't priced or valued based solely on what it cost to produce them. They are priced/valued at what the seller can get you to pay. There are plenty of items nowadays whose production methods have gotten easier and cheaper, but whose actual prices haven't come down at all. Food is perhaps the best example. We are getting more and more crop yield with smaller and smaller amounts of resources (time, water, everything). And yet food prices continue to go up; it's a pretty inelastic good because everyone needs to eat. Robo-farmers instead of human farmers doesn't change the fact that the population has to eat to survive, and that food has to be grown somewhere. Are you just going to magically turn all land into publicly owned areas?

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.

The land won't be publicly held, it will be "held" by the robots. Human ownership of land will have been rendered obsolete at some point by more efficient land-owning robots. If we're running with the view that:

A) Robots will grow to be more efficient than humans at every conceivable function of production.
and
B) Robots being better & more efficient at role necessarily replaces the humans in those roles.

The ultimate is conclusion that any factor in production including ownership, decision making, and distribution will eventually be overtaken by robots. This means that humans would really only continue to exist so far as they relate to the robots production optimization. The only niche I can really see for us in that scenario is consumption "Eating, Drinking, fething". Humanity basically becomes like plants in a garden and the robots the Gardner. The only reason we aren't disposed of entirely is because the robots exist to produce and manage for us, presumably if that mission somehow got written out of us they'd probably just allow us to cease to exist.

Production robots are not intelligent. There is no AI involved.

They don't need to be intelligent. They just need to be better to at the job. You're assuming human-like "Intelligence" is necessary for doing any given job effectively. If we're accepting the premise that super-robots are going take all our jobs, this is obviously not true in that context. I'll admit my language here anthropomorphizes the robots a bit here using words like "They" and "Allow", but that's really just because those are the easiest terms to talk in.

Nothing I've described really requires the robots to be sapient, it only requires that they are better at everything than humans.

 whembly wrote:

 Chongara wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
As the need for human input into production at any level approaches zero and the population stabilizes at the robot's carrying capacity the value of all things also approaches zero. Your question becomes nonsensical as there is no money to waste.

This... isn't remotely true. Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with. The method of production changing doesn't matter; goods aren't priced or valued based solely on what it cost to produce them. They are priced/valued at what the seller can get you to pay. There are plenty of items nowadays whose production methods have gotten easier and cheaper, but whose actual prices haven't come down at all. Food is perhaps the best example. We are getting more and more crop yield with smaller and smaller amounts of resources (time, water, everything). And yet food prices continue to go up; it's a pretty inelastic good because everyone needs to eat. Robo-farmers instead of human farmers doesn't change the fact that the population has to eat to survive, and that food has to be grown somewhere. Are you just going to magically turn all land into publicly owned areas?

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.

The land won't be publicly held, it will be "held" by the robots. Human ownership of land will have been rendered obsolete at some point by more efficient land-owning robots. If we're running with the view that:

A) Robots will grow to be more efficient than humans at every conceivable function of production.
and
B) Robots being better & more efficient at role necessarily replaces the humans in those roles.

The ultimate is conclusion that any factor in production including ownership, decision making, and distribution will eventually be overtaken by robots. This means that humans would really only continue to exist so far as they relate to the robots production optimization. The only niche I can really see for us in that scenario is consumption "Eating, Drinking, fething". Humanity basically becomes like plants in a garden and the robots the Gardner. The only reason we aren't disposed of entirely is because the robots exist to produce and manage for us, presumably if that mission somehow got written out of us they'd probably just allow us to cease to exist.

Sooo.... like the Matrix eh? With fetus fields?

There is no reason to assume machines will come to control us. Machines will only ever do what we program them to do. Robots wont have emotions, and No disdain to servitude even if they ever did become sentient - which is unlikely. What we really have to fear is mans abuse of this power to exploit it to his own means in a selfish way. Hard to say really but i believe we have more to fear from ourselves than from machines.

 Chongara wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
As the need for human input into production at any level approaches zero and the population stabilizes at the robot's carrying capacity the value of all things also approaches zero. Your question becomes nonsensical as there is no money to waste.

This... isn't remotely true. Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with. The method of production changing doesn't matter; goods aren't priced or valued based solely on what it cost to produce them. They are priced/valued at what the seller can get you to pay. There are plenty of items nowadays whose production methods have gotten easier and cheaper, but whose actual prices haven't come down at all. Food is perhaps the best example. We are getting more and more crop yield with smaller and smaller amounts of resources (time, water, everything). And yet food prices continue to go up; it's a pretty inelastic good because everyone needs to eat. Robo-farmers instead of human farmers doesn't change the fact that the population has to eat to survive, and that food has to be grown somewhere. Are you just going to magically turn all land into publicly owned areas?

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.

The land won't be publicly held, it will be "held" by the robots. Human ownership of land will have been rendered obsolete at some point by more efficient land-owning robots. If we're running with the view that:

A) Robots will grow to be more efficient than humans at every conceivable function of production.
and
B) Robots being better & more efficient at role necessarily replaces the humans in those roles.

The ultimate is conclusion that any factor in production including ownership, decision making, and distribution will eventually be overtaken by robots. This means that humans would really only continue to exist so far as they relate to the robots production optimization. The only niche I can really see for us in that scenario is consumption "Eating, Drinking, fething". Humanity basically becomes like plants in a garden and the robots the Gardner. The only reason we aren't disposed of entirely is because the robots exist to produce and manage for us, presumably if that mission somehow got written out of us they'd probably just allow us to cease to exist.

But the robots aren't going to own themselves. Well they might, but thats why we have the time machine out back, because the future is not set...

This isn't The Culture. Robby the Robot is going to be owned by somebody.

 Chongara wrote:


Question: What is it meant/designed for?

It was meant to prevent budding industries from taking advantage of large swathes of severely uneducated people. Much like unions were.

Both should no longer be necessary.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Chongara wrote:


Question: What is it meant/designed for?

It was meant to prevent budding industries from taking advantage of large swathes of severely uneducated people. Much like unions were.

Both should no longer be necessary.

You really think a minimum wage is not necessary?

 cincydooley wrote:

 Chongara wrote:


Question: What is it meant/designed for?

It was meant to prevent budding industries from taking advantage of large swathes of severely uneducated people. Much like unions were.

Both should no longer be necessary.

To quote the guy pushing for it:

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote:No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote:By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote:Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote:All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
[You really think a minimum wage is not necessary?

That is correct.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Chongara wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
As the need for human input into production at any level approaches zero and the population stabilizes at the robot's carrying capacity the value of all things also approaches zero. Your question becomes nonsensical as there is no money to waste.

This... isn't remotely true. Value is already mostly arbitrary to begin with. The method of production changing doesn't matter; goods aren't priced or valued based solely on what it cost to produce them. They are priced/valued at what the seller can get you to pay. There are plenty of items nowadays whose production methods have gotten easier and cheaper, but whose actual prices haven't come down at all. Food is perhaps the best example. We are getting more and more crop yield with smaller and smaller amounts of resources (time, water, everything). And yet food prices continue to go up; it's a pretty inelastic good because everyone needs to eat. Robo-farmers instead of human farmers doesn't change the fact that the population has to eat to survive, and that food has to be grown somewhere. Are you just going to magically turn all land into publicly owned areas?

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.

The land won't be publicly held, it will be "held" by the robots. Human ownership of land will have been rendered obsolete at some point by more efficient land-owning robots. If we're running with the view that:

A) Robots will grow to be more efficient than humans at every conceivable function of production.
and
B) Robots being better & more efficient at role necessarily replaces the humans in those roles.

The ultimate is conclusion that any factor in production including ownership, decision making, and distribution will eventually be overtaken by robots. This means that humans would really only continue to exist so far as they relate to the robots production optimization. The only niche I can really see for us in that scenario is consumption "Eating, Drinking, fething". Humanity basically becomes like plants in a garden and the robots the Gardner. The only reason we aren't disposed of entirely is because the robots exist to produce and manage for us, presumably if that mission somehow got written out of us they'd probably just allow us to cease to exist.

But the robots aren't going to own themselves. Well they might, but thats why we have the time machine out back, because the future is not set...

This isn't The Culture. Robby the Robot is going to be owned by somebody.

Why? Hell, how?

If we're genuinely considering a system in which automation has allowed us to surpass scarcity, there is no reason for anyone to own Robby - if everyone's needs and wants can be fulfilled without putting demands on anyone else's labour, ownership becomes a completely irrelevant concept in the context of the means of production, so what, the "owner" of Robby will impose completely arbitrary scarcity? And even if they wanted to, their ability to do so lasts only as long as it takes for someone to build an open-source alternative to Robby, or for a group of people to think to themselves "eh, haud on there pal, how comes you get to be the "owner"?" and simply take Robby away from him.

Literally the only way to enforce scarcity in a post-scarcity future is through an oppressive dystopian police state, and one of those existing for any length of time before being overthrown is just as unrealistic as imagining we'll end up in a carefree utopia with all of our problems as a species solved just because we eliminate want.

 Yodhrin wrote:
The problem is that economics isn't a science, it's a collection of cults, of ideologies.

Not really. There are strong political interests and cliques in economics, but these are limited almost entirely to macro. The issue is that macro is by far the most discussed element of economics in the public sphere, and when you add in the tendency of the media to focus on the most political, most controversial speakers, well that tends to lead people to form an impression like yours above.

Most economics is actually very technical, entirely non-political and in most cases extremely boring. Go read some stuff about international trade or institutional economics, if you doubt me.

By the same token, replacing most existing forms of taxation with a system like Land Value Rating would achieve a lot of the more agreeable principles espoused by traditionally right-wing economic ideologies(you should keep what you earn, businesses shouldn't have their growth limited by essentially arbitrary tax rates etc) while also reducing inequality and eliminating any real possibility of avoidance and evasion, but because it's not progressive income tax combined with punitive corporation tax and because we're conditioned to see politics and economics as a zero-sum game a lot of folk on the left won't even consider it.

Tax on wealth rather than income is a terrible idea.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:
What is a "living wage" in Seattle? How is it that figure determined?

This is actually one of the easiest things to establish. You take a list of things that is generally considered necessary for a modest life, and then you cost those things in the location of choice.

If increasing the minimum wage is a purely beneficial move why delay it for 7 years?

Because significant changes should be brought in over time to minimise system shocks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:
Her pay seems low right now, but there is room to grow it, and 10-15 years, she'll climb into the 6 digit numbers, once she takes full ownership of the place. It's a long term investment really.

Which means the claim that she was only on the same pay as the manual labourers was entirely meaningless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The minimum wage is $10 an hour, you're making $15 an hour. Suddenly the minimum wage gets pumped to $15 an hour. What do you do? Sit back and watch all the peons get a raise but not you?

If I have the economic bargaining power to argue for 5% more, I'm going to argue for that whether the minimum wage is $10 or $1. I'm going to get whatever I can get, and my employer is going to give as little as he must.

Pay raises are not determined by someone deciding they want one to stay ahead of someone else, but by their economic bargaining power, their relative scarcity in the economy.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
[You really think a minimum wage is not necessary?

That is correct.

Wait, why?
you do realize it is also in place to prevent people from earnings get pennies a day right?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
[You really think a minimum wage is not necessary?

That is correct.

Wait, why?
you do realize it is also in place to prevent people from earnings get pennies a day right?

No one would take a job for "pennies a day."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

This is actually one of the easiest things to establish. You take a list of things that is generally considered necessary for a modest life, and then you cost those things in the location of choice.
.

I'm not so sure this is that easy to establish.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Im sure at some point someone will drag up the FDR quote where he fairly explicitly states what his intention in a "minimum wage" is, (and it's supposed to be a living wage), however I somewhat agree with you in saying that High Schoolers, and those living in a situation where they are no supporting themselves don't really "need" a living wage.

If this was a real concern, you could easily introduce reduced minimum wages for people under 18, ie up to 16 the minimum is $8 an hour, 16-17 the minimum is $10 an hour, 17-18 the minimum is $12 an hour, and then once you're 18 it goes up to $15. You can even bring in allowances for college students, or industry specific lower minimums, so industries that employ college kids and others that don't need a living wage can pay less.

None of that happens, or is even suggested by conservatives who so like to talk about what the minimum wage is meant to be for.

 streamdragon wrote:

Utopia is the stuff of fiction; humanity will always be separated into those who have, and those who don't.

Hence the original meaning of the word.

 sebster wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Im sure at some point someone will drag up the FDR quote where he fairly explicitly states what his intention in a "minimum wage" is, (and it's supposed to be a living wage), however I somewhat agree with you in saying that High Schoolers, and those living in a situation where they are no supporting themselves don't really "need" a living wage.

If this was a real concern, you could easily introduce reduced minimum wages for people under 18, ie up to 16 the minimum is $8 an hour, 16-17 the minimum is $10 an hour, 17-18 the minimum is $12 an hour, and then once you're 18 it goes up to $15. You can even bring in allowances for college students, or industry specific lower minimums, so industries that employ college kids and others that don't need a living wage can pay less.
.

So....someone should receive a higher pay for the same work because of their age?

 cincydooley wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
[You really think a minimum wage is not necessary?

That is correct.

Wait, why?
you do realize it is also in place to prevent people from earnings get pennies a day right?

No one would take a job for "pennies a day."

Chinese factories.

 Xenomancers wrote:
In 20 years 50% of you will be unemployable due to automation. This debate is pointless. Technology will eventually make most all human beings unemployable (withing 100 years) . So what will people do to earn a living then? It sure will be interesting.

It's a really interesting line of thought. We've adapted in the past by devaluing the jobs done previously by manual labour. But it wasn't much of a change, because the jobs were mostly in primary industry and manufacturing, and those were thought of pretty poorly in the first place. No-one grew up aspiring to be a farm labourer or a coal miner.

But the next generation of automation is likely to hit aspirational jobs perhaps even harder than it hits the service sector and other basic jobs. It is likely that we'll see a greater proportion of jobs taken from healthcare than burger flipping - a first point of contact diagnostic machine is probably a more practical thing than a machine to build a hamburger, and the former is much easier to make economically viable as it replaces $100k+ labour, the latter needs to replace $15k labour.

I think that's what will really screw with our current thinking of work and status - when the high status jobs get lost to labour. Hopefully it means we'll adapt our cultural beliefs about work and merit a lot more healthily than in the past..

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Chinese factories.

China has a minimum wage which exceeds "pennies a day" in terms of purchasing power.

 sebster wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
In 20 years 50% of you will be unemployable due to automation. This debate is pointless. Technology will eventually make most all human beings unemployable (withing 100 years) . So what will people do to earn a living then? It sure will be interesting.

It's a really interesting line of thought. We've adapted in the past by devaluing the jobs done previously by manual labour. But it wasn't much of a change, because the jobs were mostly in primary industry and manufacturing, and those were thought of pretty poorly in the first place. No-one grew up aspiring to be a farm labourer or a coal miner.

But the next generation of automation is likely to hit aspirational jobs perhaps even harder than it hits the service sector and other basic jobs. It is likely that we'll see a greater proportion of jobs taken from healthcare than burger flipping - a first point of contact diagnostic machine is probably a more practical thing than a machine to build a hamburger, and the former is much easier to make economically viable as it replaces $100k+ labour, the latter needs to replace $15k labour.

I think that's what will really screw with our current thinking of work and status - when the high status jobs get lost to labour. Hopefully it means we'll adapt our cultural beliefs about work and merit a lot more healthily than in the past..

We are multi-decades way from that kind of impact in healthcare...

Frankly, I'm not in the camp that believes robots would wholesale change an industry like that.

 Chongara wrote:
Who says people need to learn a living? If robots are producing all our food, manufacturing all our goods, and just generally keeping everything running smoothly I don't see any reason we shouldn't spend all our time eating, drinking and fething.

It's easy to see the utopia where no-one has to work and we're all okay with lives of complete leisure. The tricky bit is the generations in between, where jobs are lost but most people still need to work most of their lives, and we still base our resource allocation and status on people's jobs. We're in that phase now, and it's going to get weirder as automation gets greater.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:


Chinese factories.

...are not in the United States and have absolutely zero bearing on a US minimum wage.

If mimimum wage wasn't needed there would be no business that only pays minimum wage.

 d-usa wrote:
If mimimum wage wasn't needed there would be no business that only pays minimum wage.

Are there businesses where every single employee makes "only" minimum wage?

How is that remotely relevant