Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people make a false analogy when it comes to automata. Many look back to the Industrial Revolution and pull parallels from there. But there is a major problem, the workers aren't human.

When you make driverless trucks what do you do with the truck drivers? The humans. Sure, you'll have more trucks because they are cheaper and more efficient now, but what does that human do? They could load docks, but there aren't enough of a demand for that, and it too will be automated soon. A McDonalds won't need to hire more when you have automated registers and cooks. Maybe a few people to check on things and be there when something breaks, but not nearly the number you have now. So yes, you can increase the number of workers, but that doesn't mean you are increasing the number of jobs. And sure, you could have more repair workers and programmers, but we are already seeing that retraining workers isn't working. And this is still a temporary fix (not saying we shouldn't do it).

My real worry is the big question: "How do you transition into post scarcity society?" That is really the future we are headed for, and I can't wait. But that transition is difficult. Currently we value social worth on the net wealth of a person. How do we transition from that when jobs become obsolete? I'm just talking about when 10% of jobs are automated and we haven't filled the gap. That's huge.

As the article mentions, the pie needs to be better distributed. The pie will not shrink. McDonalds will be selling the same amount of burgers if not more, but the profits will have to be distributed to people who can not find work.

Who will buy the burgers? This point seems so obvious, it's almost an axiom -

  if (unemployment >= 0.5) {
    sales = sales * 0.5;
  }

People point to previous paradigm shifts and "mass unemployment didn't happen then". But what if this time is different?

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Is it better to be the CEO of McDonalds in a post-scarcity world with UBI (paying high marginal tax rates), or the head warlord in your own personal Mogadishu?

And you captured a key point in my argument. "What IF this time is different?" That's the concern. It is naive to think that possibility doesn't exist. And if that possibility exists we should investigate and prepare for that possible future. That future doesn't happen, wasted some time preparing (but learned some stuff along the way). But if that future happens you smooth the transition.

Well what I'm saying is with the IR the pie grew. There were more jobs. Or think of the cotton gin. Intention was to reduce slave labor but it brought more because price went down and demand went up. The different here is that instead you are replacing workers with automata. So if a machine can do half the amount of a human, but is a third the price, and demand increases you buy more machines, not more humans. That's the key difference. You buy more machines, not humans to meet demand increases.

Obviously this is not going to be a universal thing and some sectors will be hit harder than others. But are we projecting 5 years or 50. It would be naive to think that there couldn't be a 10% unemployment in 50 years because of this stuff (not saying that it will happen, but that you have to consider that there's a nontrivial possibility). So you have to take the question seriously. IF that is where things are going, how do you transition smoothly?

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