What are you a luddite? Sure things will need to change as all jobs are automated and we move to a purely research oriented society, but that will happen slowly. If you watch shows like How It's Made you'll notice most everything is automated already, but you need someone to maintain the machines until they can fix themselves. At that point people will need to make better ones until they can also do that role. Then they kill us. Simple economics.

I was following you and largely agreeing with you until you said "Then they kill us." That's where you lost me.

First of all I don't think job creation will ever be purely research oriented.

Secondly, I debunked the hypothetical solution of decreasing the population, or "then they kill us" as you put it, in my OP. It doesn't solve the problem at all. Its not only very unlikely because it contradicts the long standing trend of increasing population, but it doesn't actually solve the problem because unemployment in an automated maximum economy society is proportional to population.

Gainful employment is the only possible solution, and if established buisnesses don't provide enough of it for the masses, then the masses will create it for themselves, probably in the form of new buisnesses that offer something those with money want to pay for and cannot get for a cheaper price. Given that buisnesses tend to employ as few people as possible and given governments don't seem strong enough anymore to put socialist pressure on big buisnesses, I predict enough small workforce buisnesses will arise to gainfully employ enough of the population.

What are you a luddite? Sure things will need to change as all jobs are automated and we move to a purely research oriented society, but that will happen slowly. If you watch shows like How It's Made you'll notice most everything is automated already, but you need someone to maintain the machines until they can fix themselves. At that point people will need to make better ones until they can also do that role. Then they kill us. Simple economics.

I was following you and largely agreeing with you until you said "Then they kill us." That's where you lost me.

First of all I don't think job creation will ever be purely research oriented.

Secondly, I debunked the hypothetical solution of decreasing the population, or "then they kill us" as you put it, in my OP. It doesn't solve the problem at all. Its not only very unlikely because it contradicts the long standing trend of increasing population, but it doesn't actually solve the problem because unemployment in an automated maximum economy society is proportional to population.

Gainful employment is the only possible solution, and if established buisnesses don't provide enough of it for the masses, then the masses will create it for themselves, probably in the form of new buisnesses that offer something those with money want to pay for and cannot get for a cheaper price. Given that buisnesses tend to employ as few people as possible and given governments don't seem strong enough anymore to put socialist pressure on big buisnesses, I predict enough small workforce buisnesses will arise to gainfully employ enough of the population.

[quote name='Sirisian' timestamp='1303856566' post='4803255']What are you a luddite? Sure things will need to change as all jobs are automated and we move to a purely research oriented society, but that will happen slowly. If you watch shows like How It's Made you'll notice most everything is automated already, but you need someone to maintain the machines until they can fix themselves. At that point people will need to make better ones until they can also do that role. Then they kill us. Simple economics.

I was following you and largely agreeing with you until you said "Then they kill us." That's where you lost me.
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"they" = robots If we can provide no service we are a drain on their resources to create things. It's inevitable though so it's not really anything we need to worry about. I gave a persuasive speech jokingly on the topic and some people took it serious.

That's true to some extent, but I don't think education alone is the key to a stronger economy and a superior quality of life. Take Cuba for an instance of a nation that is highly educated but notoriously impoverished.

they are also notoriously blockaded by the country with the largest economy and military in the world. Cuba is hardly a good example.

Or female "escorts", thieves and drug sellers as an example of not necessarily educated people having access to comfort.
To have a superior quality of life in relation to comfort you *only* need money (any jackass can have money). And if people has money, the economy gets stronger.
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Dude. The statistics don't lie. High school dropouts have consistently 3 times the unemployment rate of college graduates and make almost half the salary. Non-college graduates have almost twice the unemployment rate and make about 75% of the salary of college graduates.

Third person anecdotal evidence is so far past outliers, and from what you quoted of me.

edit: there are obviously outliers. There are absolute idiots who are millionaires and homeless geniuses. You cannot design a system to best suit outliers because it will fail for the majority of people. To use outliers for anecdotal evidence doesn't change the fact that a better education translates to a stronger economy and a superior quality of life.
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edit: never in my life did I think I'd have to argue for increasing quality of education...

"they" = robots If we can provide no service we are a drain on their resources to create things. It's inevitable though so it's not really anything we need to worry about. I gave a persuasive speech jokingly on the topic and some people took it serious.

I can see the funny side, being a massive fan of the terminator films But I think that line of thought is more along the lines of science fiction than following an already apparent trend to its conclusion.

Don't worry. GLaDOS is on the problem as we speak.

Or female "escorts", thieves and drug sellers as an example of not necessarily educated people having access to comfort.
To have a superior quality of life in relation to comfort you *only* need money (any jackass can have money). And if people has money, the economy gets stronger.

Dude. The statistics don't lie. High school dropouts have consistently 3 times the unemployment rate of college graduates and make almost half the salary. Non-college graduates have almost twice the unemployment rate and make about 75% of the salary of college graduates.[/quote]

Nobody is arguing that having a diploma doesn't help you getting a job in a developed economy. But education alone is not enough. It doesn't create moral values or vision, it just enrich their scope.

It seems to me that because of machines and computers there is a ongoing trend towards automation in work. Some obvious examples are in farming, industry, and of course IT where the whole idea is automation. The direct consequence of the automation trend is that for a given ammount of work less work needs to be done by human workers.

...

Let us now consider a test case, where we have X organizations performing all the work being done in terms of food supply, industry supply, and IT supply. Let us assume all these organizations have a high degree of automation and a high degree of economic efficiency. Given that we also have a high world population this leads to a high unemployment rate. Perhaps this is even a contributing factor in the high unemployment rates we see today in the world.

We certainly need much less human labour today to achieve a real standard of living in the Western world equivalent to what people had 200 years ago. The good news is that this can be exploited to achieve a higher real standard of living, by putting the "freed up labour" to uses that could not even be imagined 200 years ago.

Still there is the current problem of high unemployment as you say.

Creation of work is a viable solution and fits current trends. When organizations are mega rich due to economy maximisation they expand thus creating work, work that doesn't really need to be done (because agriculture and industry is already covered) but that people want to pay for. But automation and maximisation of economy means they will have as small workforces as possible and so again we end up with high unemployment. The surplus of workers set up their own buisnesses thus creating work, again work that doesn't really need to be done (because agriculture and industry is already covered) but that people want to pay for. What we end up with is lots and lots of buisnesses, all of them with as small as possible workforces, all of them doing things people want to pay for. This solution is viable and fits the current trend, thus we adopt it as our solution to the problem.
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This is supply side thinking that causes you to miss the larger macro-economic picture.

When productivity (amount of stuff produced per human labour) increases at a company due to automatisation or other developments, they have two choices. Either they fire some of their workers that have now become unnecessary, or they increase the amount of stuff they produce.

Increasing the amount of stuff they produce only makes sense when there is effective demand for it, where effective demand means that there are people that both desire the stuff, and have enough money to afford paying for it. In a macro-economic environment where the general population does not have a lot of money and therefore effective demand is low, the rational choice for companies is to fire the workers that have become unnecessary for their production.

Your proposed solution is that those who were fired now start their own businesses, thus creating work. But what work should they be doing? The problem[1] with your proposal is that those workers were fired because effective demand was low - but starting a new business only makes sense when there is effective demand for it. Why should there be a demand for this new business (which is ostensibly higher on the ladder of unnecessary but nice-to-have things) when there wasn't even sufficient demand for the old business?

So we end up in a situation where in principle, we could use the increased productivity to generate new things that are not strictly necessary, but improve our lives, and people would want that - but still there is no effective demand for it because there is not enough money in the hands of the general population to turn a desire into effective demand. In the end, everybody loses, because the output of the society falls short of its potential.

Even worse, when only the top end of town have sufficient money to turn their desires into effective demand, then economy of scale cannot do its magic, and technological advances slow down.

In the current state of things, the problems really need to be fixed from the demand side. Give people enough money that they can turn their unfulfilled desires into effective demand, and this demand will provide the money to pay for new jobs. It's really quite simple.

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[1] I am making general macro-economic statements here. Of course, there is the occasional new job creation happening even in a recessed economy that lacks effective demand. However, it is simply insufficient to generate enough jobs to make a dent in unemployment. There are also other, micro-economic problems with your proposed solution. In particular, the people who are fired as a result of productivity increases are usually not the kind of people who make successful entrepreneurs - it may be harsh to say that, but it tends to be true. So relying on them to do the job creation is unwise.

Artificially evening out the distribution of work and wealth (EDIT: a la socialism?) may or may not be a viable solution but it is unexpected given the current strong trend towards the organic opposite. Thus we discard this hypothetical solution, however we note that ultimately evening out the distribution of work and wealth is the only solution but also note that it will have to occur organically.

I don't really understand your objections here. Left unchecked, pretty much any kind of system has a tendency to become more unequal over time. That is in the nature of the power that comes with having money, which makes it easier to get even more money.

On the other hand, it should be clear that having a stable wealth distribution over time is something desirable. So some regulation that stabilizes the wealth distribution and counteracts the forces that cause increasing inequality is simply necessary and common sense. The only question is what a desirable level of inequality is, and when you look at it that way, pretty much everybody (across the political spectrum) wants a more equal distribution than what we have today in almost all countries.

Oh, and just to clarify: What I mean by a stable wealth distribution is obviously the aggregates. The composition of the top X% of wealth owners should of course not be stable, but the percentage of total wealth owned by the top X% should be. There must be the possibility of the poor person becoming a billionaire - though I would add that this is really only a credible story when there is an equal possibility of a billionaire becoming poor...

On the other hand, it should be clear that having a stable wealth distribution over time is something desirable. So some regulation that stabilizes the wealth distribution and counteracts the forces that cause increasing inequality is simply necessary and common sense. The only question is what a desirable level of inequality is, and when you look at it that way, pretty much everybody (across the political spectrum) wants a more equal distribution than what we have today in almost all countries.

But how do you do that fairly? In the US at least, the richest people have the most wealth, but they also pay a lot more taxes. Not necessarily as a percent of income, but they pay a greater percent of the taxes than the percent of the wealth they hold. How would you propose making the distribution more equal?

Risking sounding like a broken record, our distribution of quality education is far more disturbing than our distribution of wealth. Near 15% of americans haven't graduated from high school. Near 50% of americans never graduated from college (2 year or 4 year). Only 29% have bachelors degrees or higher. 7% have masters degrees, and 2% have doctoral degrees. When viewed with that in mind the wealth distribution isn't nearly as negative.