|
|
Post by tenbsmith on Oct 20, 2016 7:35:47 GMT -5
That's the title of an article linked below. Anyone--developers, writers--looking for realistic causes of a dystopian future should consider this... Imagine a future where the vast majority of the populace are unemployed, disenfranchised and angry. Automation in factories, the service sector and other areas is leading to 'an abundance of labor' that depresses wages and causes social difficulties. Left unchecked, this will worsen as robots become more capable. --"Eventually, we're going to have to change the ways we do things so that people are working less and are also still able to buy the things they need..." --"The other tricky thing is you need to find a way to pay for everything, which means that you have to tax somebody or create common ownership." The title over extends the concept a bit, one can't directly link brexit or trump's rise to workplace automation, though I believe it plays a role. Otherwise this is a solid and interesting read. An issue we need to start thinking about as a society. in.pcmag.com/robotics-automation/108438/opinion/how-robots-caused-brexit-and-the-rise-of-donald-trump |
|
|
|
Post by grävling on Oct 20, 2016 10:23:41 GMT -5
Part of the problem is that wealth, which is still being created, isn't being _taxed_ as it used to. I recently went to a big Volvo car factory. These days the people in the design section outnumber the people who assemble the cars, and about 10 to 1, too. So we are still making lots of cars (wealth) but it is no longer immediately being redistributed among a large number of workers. The robots don't demand a wage.
This is a bad problem when your entire tax base is founded on the idea that we tax _labour_. We've had such upheavals in the past.
600 years ago, _employment_ was very rare. Farming was the chief occupation of most of humankind, but it wasn't a salaried job.
If the state (or anybody else) wanted to raise money for wars, orphanages, or what have you ... what we call the public sector these days... it taxed land. Land owners had to pay a certain amount of money or crops or whatever into the public coffers, usually dependent on how much land there was, and how productively it was used. Given that most of the wealth of the states at that time was tied up in food and land, taxing land as a proxy for taxing wealth creation worked. Most wealth creation was happening when seeds turned into crops, after all.
With the rise of trade, and the middle class in general, you ended up with a lot of people who weren't taxable any more, because they weren't landowners. You add to this mix, at least in England, the notion that raising sheep for wool is a more productive use of land than housing a peasantry to raise crops, and you end up with the same problem as above. Here we have all these peasants, and no need for a peasantry ...
What we got was a substitution of 'labourer' and in particular 'factory worker' for the peasantry. And eventually, the idea that
labour was the thing to tax, not land. And for a long time, labour as a proxy for wealth worked. Most of the wealth was in manufacturing, which was done by labour, and the more wealth you made the more labour you needed.
I think that energy is the thing to tax now, the energy that goes into the manufacture of a good as a proxy for the wealth.
|
|
|
|
Post by tenbsmith on Oct 20, 2016 12:23:52 GMT -5
Great post Gravling! I really like the tie-in to the history of taxation. I agree that we are going to come up with a new approach to taxation long term and taxing energy is a good idea; though there might be other things to tax as well.
That only deals with one half of the equation though. What do we do with all our unemployed workers? Star Trek economy? I wonder if we might actually legislate certain regressive measures. Like, the Chesepeake Bay can only be fished using sailboats and no powered machinery. This would employ more fisherman and protect the bay from certain type of pollution.
|
|
|
|
Post by grävling on Oct 20, 2016 15:08:57 GMT -5
Have you read the Culture novels by Iain Banks? What do we need 'employment' for? Call it wage-slavery and then insist that slavery is wrong. How many potential Trese Brothers do we have out there, people who would be pleased as anything to make games and share them with us, but cannot now, because they cannot take the risk that it will not make enough money to do things like pay for rent and groceries. Once we get rid of the Protestant Work Ethic, and the idea that 'working on what is most profitable' == 'working that is the most good' (guaranteed by god), we can move to 'well the robots are making pretty much all of the wealth anyway, so why should the people who have the most robots get the most wealth?'
Gräv
|
|
|
|
Post by grävling on Oct 20, 2016 15:10:45 GMT -5
ps tenbsmith: you live in the UK, correct?
|
|
|
|
Post by tenbsmith on Oct 20, 2016 16:50:55 GMT -5
I was born and live in the USA, USA USA U... get the picture.
I agree with the idea that once robots are making all the wealth, it doesn't make sense for the person with the most robots to get the most wealth. This implies radical changes in the way things are currently organized, which is similar to the feudal system. Laborers are beholden to those with property/capital, similar to how surfs were beholden to their lords, though not quite as bad. I think the radical transformation away from this sort of system is likely to be turbulent.
I've never thought of the protestant work ethic implying that the most profitable work is somehow the most blessed. I always thought of it more as the idea that hard work and frugality were good/blessed. I agree with that later idea.
When robots are making everything, people will need something productive to do with their lives. I think the a large part of life satisfaction comes from making a contribution.
I haven't read the culture series. I've sent a sample of The Player of Games to my kindle.
|
|
|
|
Post by grävling on Oct 21, 2016 0:27:58 GMT -5
At least in the USA, there is a pretty strong notion that some people _deserve_ to be wealthier than others. Hard work is not enough, or we could all get rich by spending a lot more time at the gym. There is a whole lot of value in the idea that, through your own hard work and the Grace of God, you can go from rags to riches. A society where everybody believes this, and where the 'Grace of God' part is believed to be Fair (after all, it's from God, so Fair from definition) can create a huge amount of wealth. So even when it is untrue, its a useful falsehood to believe.
It is sort of like the Divine Right (to rule) of Kings. God has ordained that so-and-so should be the king, by making him the first born son of the old king. After all, if God had wanted somebody else as king, he would have arranged for somebody else to be born in
that position. This was another useful fiction to believe. Despite the evidence where total turnips ended up as king, believing in this saved you from the hell of having a destructive civil war every time the king died. There is a whole lot to be said for an orderly succession, witnesss what happened to kingdoms that didn't have this ...
Eventually, not enough people could stomach the idea that kings deserved their kingship. There was hunger in the air for more representative and democratic government, and we get constitutional monarchies, where kings rule not by Divine Right, but by Parliamentary Right.
Right now, a whole lot of people cannot stomach the idea that hard work and frugality is the path to success. It's not working out for them. Indeed, the people with the most money, seem to have made it through stock market manipulation, fraud, and other sorts of legal, barely legal and quasi-legal financial trickery. No hard work or frugality in sight over there ... So either this is the Will of God, and it is morally wrong of me to object to the chicanery ... or God isn't out there, guaranteeing the outcomes of the markets, and thus people like you and me have to step in and say, right, this is quite far removed from being _fair_ and from being _good_ so let us hack society and try to make things better for more people.
|
|
|
|
Post by CdrPlatypus on Oct 21, 2016 18:55:19 GMT -5
I am loving the depth of this thread. On lunch now or in would contribute, but this hear is the level of discussion we need be having here in the USA. Instead of the current garbage being served up.
|
|
|
|
Post by filthyluca on Oct 22, 2016 12:55:42 GMT -5
Yep, single greatest issue isn't actually the issues it's our inability to have a constructive conversation about said issues.
|
|
|
|
Post by wascalwywabbit on Oct 22, 2016 18:46:24 GMT -5
Yep, single greatest issue isn't actually the issues it's our inability to have a constructive conversation about said issues. But but but the top 4 candidates... He's orange, She's sick, and He's a pot head and She's a neophyte... If you think that's an adhominum attack, you should see my fist! :-p American politics in a nutshell. Seriously though... Food and water security are even more crucial than job security. Dehydrated starved people can't work even if there are jobs, if it gets too bad they won't survive to come up with a solution. Better to a have solution before that, if people can eat and hydrate then jobs can be figured out. I think art, gardening and the maker movement will continue in particular, along with computer assisted science, medicine, engineering and education. |
|
|
|
Post by Fourth Horseman on Nov 1, 2016 15:54:41 GMT -5
Little about myself, I am third generation United Auto Worker and I work for FCA (Chrysler). Let me throw a few things into the mix just as food for thought.
It's no secret that the US economy is based on the free market system. We call it capitalism. That created an elite class. I'm referring to your CEOs, Board members, share and stockholders (there is a slight difference). Captialism is an of itself authoritarian in nature. One CEO and many workers; picture a pyramid with the workers at the bottom. When my grandfather worked the lines one plant required thousands more workers than it does now. As mentioned above, automation advances have allowed the corporations to produce more, at a faster rate, with less labor... all while raising prices to as much as the market will bear. That is how a business works, keep your costs low and sell the product and/or service for a high as you can.
There is a conspiracy theory that Walter Reuther's, the UAW President that achieved recognition of the UAW in the 30s/40s with the sit down strikes, plane was sabotaged by capitalist elite he worked against. Why? He was tinkering with the idea of worker ownership of the auto companies. Sure as snow in winter, the Ford family was not giving up their majority stake to a bunch of line rats lol. Worker ownership is a type of collective ownership, also referred to as socialism. Please keep in mind communism is only an authoritarian (state owned business) type of socialism. Worker owned business are not going to send their jobs to China or Mexico, they are also less apt to allow automation to happen because of the idea of everyone needs a job.
Politics does play in with the US treating corporations as citizens with things like Citizens United. That allows them to contribute any amount to the poltical cadidates they see fit to do what they want, which is lower taxes, tax havens, tax subsidies, etc.. The common citizen, even the declining middle class, cannot compete with the pocketbooks of the corporations. That leads to the US government being ruled by the elite, although this time of it being the King of England, it is the corporate elite.
"We the people" will not break from this trend until until WE hit the corporations where it matters most... in the pocketbook. Both of our major parties have corporate money backing them.
What had to change? We do. All of us. Hopefully, sooner rather than later.
If you have read this far, I hopefully did not offend any particular political belief. I am not one to bite my tongue, but also not one to pick a fight with other views.
|
|
|
|
Post by filthyluca on Nov 1, 2016 23:45:06 GMT -5
Don't see how someone could be offended by this anymore than they could be offended by gravity. Pretend the forces that shape our world aren't there if you like but they will still be exerting their influence.
|
|
|
|
Post by wascalwywabbit on Nov 2, 2016 0:58:38 GMT -5
Rapacious greed: putting the suc(k) in success since the dawn of time.
Don't buy their products or politics, then everyone wins.
|
|
|
|
Post by resistor on Nov 3, 2016 4:22:06 GMT -5
At least in the USA, there is a pretty strong notion that some people _deserve_ to be wealthier than others. Hard work is not enough, or we could all get rich by spending a lot more time at the gym. There is a whole lot of value in the idea that, through your own hard work and the Grace of God, you can go from rags to riches. A society where everybody believes this, and where the 'Grace of God' part is believed to be Fair (after all, it's from God, so Fair from definition) can create a huge amount of wealth. So even when it is untrue, its a useful falsehood to believe... ...Indeed, the people with the most money, seem to have made it through stock market manipulation, fraud, and other sorts of legal, barely legal and quasi-legal financial trickery. No hard work or frugality in sight over there ... So either this is the Will of God, and it is morally wrong of me to object to the chicanery ... or God isn't out there, guaranteeing the outcomes of the markets, and thus people like you and me have to step in and say, right, this is quite far removed from being _fair_ and from being _good_ so let us hack society and try to make things better for more people. I have to disagree with grävling here that this is a common American or Christian perspective on wealth. I happen to be a christian from the USA and I don't recall anyone ever saying rich people necessarily have their wealth because they were favored by God. Besides, the idea is theologically incorrect. Consider what Jesus said in John chapter 9 about a certain blind man, who he later restored sight to, when he was asked by his disciples "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?". Jesus told them that it was neither because of his parents' sin nor his that he was born blind, but so the glory of God can be revealed through the restoring of his sight. The implication here is that circumstances of earthly fortune can have nothing to do with whether or not it was "fairly earned". Furthermore, Matthew 6 19-21 says that christians shouldn't seek earthly wealth, but instead lay up for themselves treasures in heaven. TL;DR: The Bible doesn't say rich people necessarily have their wealth because they deserve it. |
|
|
|
Post by grävling on Nov 3, 2016 7:19:58 GMT -5
At least in the USA, there is a pretty strong notion that some people _deserve_ to be wealthier than others. Hard work is not enough, or we could all get rich by spending a lot more time at the gym. There is a whole lot of value in the idea that, through your own hard work and the Grace of God, you can go from rags to riches. A society where everybody believes this, and where the 'Grace of God' part is believed to be Fair (after all, it's from God, so Fair from definition) can create a huge amount of wealth. So even when it is untrue, its a useful falsehood to believe... ...Indeed, the people with the most money, seem to have made it through stock market manipulation, fraud, and other sorts of legal, barely legal and quasi-legal financial trickery. No hard work or frugality in sight over there ... So either this is the Will of God, and it is morally wrong of me to object to the chicanery ... or God isn't out there, guaranteeing the outcomes of the markets, and thus people like you and me have to step in and say, right, this is quite far removed from being _fair_ and from being _good_ so let us hack society and try to make things better for more people. I have to disagree with grävling here that this is a common American or Christian perspective on wealth. I happen to be a christian from the USA and I don't recall anyone ever saying rich people necessarily have their wealth because they were favored by God. Besides, the idea is theologically incorrect. Consider what Jesus said in John chapter 9 about a certain blind man, who he later restored sight to, when he was asked by his disciples "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?". Jesus told them that it was neither because of his parents' sin nor his that he was born blind, but so the glory of God can be revealed through the restoring of his sight. The implication here is that circumstances of earthly fortune can have nothing to do with whether or not it was "fairly earned". Furthermore, Matthew 6 19-21 says that christians shouldn't seek earthly wealth, but instead lay up for themselves treasures in heaven. TL;DR: The Bible doesn't say rich people necessarily have their wealth because they deserve it. Ah, I didn't say that the belief was that everybody who was wealthy deserved their wealth, you understand. But you might find reading Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism illuminating. The wikipedia article is a pretty good introduction. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_CapitalismGrävling |
|
