General / Off-Topic Future of work - rise of robots

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OnePercent

OnePercent
Automation will only work if we're a post scarcity civilization, because then we can subsidize the production and wealth created by robots to create a universal income in one form or another. If you try to force automation now, you'll just end up with huge unemployment and a collapse of the welfare system.
 

beelbeebub

beelbeebub
%OnePercent% said:
Automation will only work if we're a post scarcity civilization, because then we can subsidize the production and wealth created by robots to create a universal income in one form or another. If you try to force automation now, you'll just end up with huge unemployment and a collapse of the welfare system.
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Eh? Isn't that chicken and egg?

How can we be in a post scarcity society before we embrace automation?

I agree that any transition to automation needs to be carefully handled to avoid the employment collapse you mention.

If we set up.a system to provide a UBI funded from the taxation of productive labour then it would collapse as automation destroyed the tax base.

We need to come up with ways of extracting the wealth produced by automation and distributing it that isn't based on people being paid for a unit of labour.
 

ZeroAi

ZeroAi
%OnePercent% said:
Automation will only work if we're a post scarcity civilization, because then we can subsidize the production and wealth created by robots to create a universal income in one form or another. If you try to force automation now, you'll just end up with huge unemployment and a collapse of the welfare system.
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So I've work in the Industrial Automation field since 1990, and I'm now a full time automation instructor.

That said, I can tell you almost every product today is made with some automation. And most utilities are automated to some degree too (power, water, etc.)

It's simple really - those cheap personal computers that came out in the 70's and 80's? Yeah, well they aren't the only cheap electronic computers that came out.

Back in the very late 1960's industry was looking at replacing hard-wired control panels with something "programmable" and programmable controller was developed and now is used to automate manufacturing world wide.

Oh, and today they start under $100.

So are we on the verge of seeing automation (automated machines, not androids or robots) replacing all humans in manufacturing?

In my opinion, not in the near future.

While some very boring jobs are super easy and cheap to automate (i.e. press a button, wait ten seconds, press a button, etc,) others are quite expensive to automate, and honestly much cheaper to have people continue to do.

That said, I can see it's possible that fifty years in the future most new manufacturing plants will be over 95 percent automated (as technology advances.)

But I don't think that's a bad thing. While manufacturing jobs will be reduced, services jobs will increase imo.

Oh, and who knows how industrial 3d printers will change manufacturing? That is going to be very disruptive tech if realized on a wide scale.

Peace out!
 
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Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
%OnePercent% said:
Automation will only work if we're a post scarcity civilization, because then we can subsidize the production and wealth created by robots to create a universal income in one form or another. If you try to force automation now, you'll just end up with huge unemployment and a collapse of the welfare system.
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Problem is that is natural process on itself, and basically Capitalism endgame.

Actually one beardy guy named Marx wrote about it. He wrote lot of utter nonsense and is more of product of his time than insightful guy, but he got right context of how raise of complexity results of less need of collecting capital to survive.
 
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