Economics in One Lesson: "The Curse of Machinery"
jim.com
jim.com
Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired."
-- Milton Friedman
Consider that we already have vehicles (in prototype) that can outperform a human behind the wheel. Hell, Stanford is sending an Audi TT up Pike's Peak at 100+ mph (http://bit.ly/9akGU1).
And consider that truck drivers are basically meat-based robots anyway inasmuch as they are all practically interchangeable.
Once the first trucking company gets the idea to start replacing drivers, that's going to put them at such an insane competitive advantage that the rest of the industry will have no choice but to follow suit. No downtime, no accidents, far cheaper, no irresponsible behavior.
Once the process is started, the entire delivery driver industry is going to be obsoleted within 12 years.
That will be the first time a massive number of people perk up their eyebrows and start wondering if their job is far behind...
I wonder if a robo-shipping vessel would be next? With radar, anti-pirating water cannons and no accessible decks, galley, etc it would be a huge boon for shipping. Then again, I don't know how uneventful those journeys are.
Hopefully the govt can step up with some way of re-educating employees obsoleted industries into something that interests those citizens.
* The ships are larger and more expensive and hence the add on expense is smaller, comparatively
* There's less traffic around and the traffic that is around is likely to have on board beacons, etc
* The ships already have more sophisticated instrumentation than trucks (radar, etc)
If the ships were fully automated, and remote controlled, you could simply refuse to comply with the pirates and just keep sailing wherever you planned.
But yes, it was these points that led me to suggest robot ships.
Some companies started replacing the chargers with automatic fare collection equipment. But it turned out they weren't allowed to fire the chargers. So there's still a charger in each bus who will sell you the ticket so you can put it into the machine. Oh, you bought a ticket before boarding? Well, the charger still has a job to do: to ensure you do use the ticket (the driver can't do it because the gate is in the middle section of the bus).
After enough accidents, many municipalities and states would prohibit such trucks, that would render them useless.
The number of fatal accidents would have to go close to zero.
I think it's all a matter of degrees. If the "right" policy offends people's religious ideas, nationalism, instinctive irrationality's, or whatever else, this might have consequences that outweigh the benefits of this policy. People being irrational can do damage.
An obvious example is civil unrest which is often a good reason not to implement liberal/libertarian policies in many places.
It's only a good reason because there are other good reasons to implement those policies too. Civil unrest would not be a good reason to begin beheading petty criminals, no matter how scared people were of being pick-pocketed. I'll give it to you that it is a matter of degrees, but the amount of fear that would be required to outweigh even the smallest iota of real benefit would have to be enormous. If robot trucks saved just one life per year on average, it would be morally unacceptable to obstruct their implementation even if they induced the same amount of fear as all the fears of planes crashing and terrorist attacks.
There are lots of places where lives are lost because a certain narrative is something that the public can swallow. You could spend billions of virtually useless aviation security dollars to save many lives. How would the public react to 50 terrorism deaths, twice a decade?
And the robot truck companies would be insane not to protect themselves. They would be wise to take a page out of the commercial aircraft industry's playbook, and instrument the hell out of each vehicle. Continuous engine telemetry and redundant camera views of the immediate vicinity recorded on a 30-minute loop, frozen after a crash and a core dump of the "driver" appended to the record for crash reconstruction. It'll be a tough sell emotionally, that the robot truck was following the speed limit and stop lights, but we'll get there.
His position is that that will be the case forever... but he doesn't actually prove it.
I think his assumption is that since it's happened with steam engines and industrial looms, it'll happen again with robots and the internet?
AIs? Cyborgs?
Now, robots can create all that stuff and maintain it all. Who will it sell it to?
Even if robots can create all the stuff and then sell it, who is responsible for the entrepreneural function?
AIs? Cyborgs?
If robots take over every single jobs in the world? What will really happen?
Moreover, who will own these robots? Maybe robots become cheap enough that everyone own bots?
If we become machines, than what are robots?
Robots and machinery aren't free lunch! The automation thread is just getting started, and we have not figured out how to automate entrepreneurship yet! And even if we do, we might already become machines!
Well, first it can probably be assumed that there will be a few standard robot types. These will be cheaper to replace than to repair. One of the standard robots will be a replacer robot which can swap out all the standard robot types (including other replacer robots).
I presume that the few standard type robots can themselves be assembled by robots. Then it is simply a matter of having two (or more) robotic factories with the necessary stuff to create a robotic factory. Should one factory fail, a robotic robot will become the number 1 manufacturing priority.
Now since the robotic robot factories would become ideal targets for sabatuers and terrorists and the like, a better step would be for each robot to know how to create a robotic robot facotory built in. Then even if both robotic robot factories fail, they can team up with the nearest robots to create a new robotic robot factory.
Not really, he presents a general argument (though he uses a specific example). Basically:
Automation --> Efficiency --> More Income Somewhere --> More Jobs
You can argue that he is wrong, but he isn't relying solely on history to prove his point, he has a model in mind.
I'm not saying that machines are bad, I'm saying this argument leaves out an awful lot of info -- unless you take on faith that more jobs == better.
The fact remains unchanged that a bunch of people got the crap end of the automation stick. It is not unreasonable to think that maybe there was a better way to got about the automation that was both good for the people being displaced, and created a bunch of jobs? My previous questions were sort of aimed here, but when I wrote them I had not yet coherently formed this most recent question.
Yes. There is an assumption that employment is better then unemployment, indirectly. The point being challenged (automation causes unemployment) assumes that unemployment is bad and the counterargument goes on assuming that. It doesn't (as you suggest) assume that employment is the only possibly important thing in the world.
If you would like to make the case that employment is not good or that automation is bad for some reason not related to employment, go ahead. It is perfectly reasonable to write that article with the assumptions that it made.
Another thing the article mentions is a 4400% increase in the number of jobs. This is not population growth, (it is only 3 generations assuming child labor), so where did those people come from? Were they more skilled workers earning good wages replaced by automation? Were they unskilled workers whose previous jobs had been automated away (ditch diggers and the like)?
In one case you have a net loss in liquidity in the hands of people, this is the net equivelant of lost jobs. In the other case you have a potential gain in liquidity. Once again, not making a case for or agains the automation, just discussing if the employment is equivelant.
To use your analogy its not like me asking if we should continue with the rugby at all. It's more like me saying "Hey guys, I know that the mechanism is different, but can we also look at the fact that 100 more teams in the cup might dilute the quality of play?"
I find the argument very convincing that trade, from the perspective of one partner is exactly like technology. Found a way to produce grapes in a building cheaply; Found a way produce grapes in a shoe factory.
William Felkin, in his History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery Manufactures (1867), tells us (though the statement seems implausible) that the larger part of the 50,000 English stocking knitters and their families did not fully emerge from the hunger and misery entailed by the introduction of the machine for the next forty years.
If this is true it is a big deal. Suppose you invent a device that will double economic output while putting half the population out of work. There's no question the device needs to be put to use, but something needs to be done about all these displaced people as well. Much of the surplus in productivity borne of your invention will need to be used to help those people switch to other work, allow them to retire early, etc. In other words you will be taxed heavily, something which is very hard to do these days in the States. So the American worker seems especially vulnerable to displacement by automation, and you get this scapegoating of machinery. If you don't like it, next time you hear some jerk on the radio bleating about high taxes and socialism, think about where that money might be going, and vote accordingly.