[api]

It's not here yet, but automation able to fully replace human beings for a huge number of jobs will eventually come. At that point a universal basic income will be the only option other than walling off the majority of humanity in ghettoes. Totalitarian "poverty state" or post-scarcity socialism, take your pick.

I say this as a somewhat-former libertarian, and partly out of libertarian sentiment. The totalitarian state that would have to be put in place to enforce widespread poverty in a post-employment era would be significantly less libertarian than the alternative. I imagine something that looks like a cyberpunk noir horror film with drones and scanners and gates everywhere. Since humans do possess empathy, the (few) rich would have to be surveilled and policed as much as the poor; your wealth would be absolutely conditional upon your support of the system. Ultimately the situation is unsustainable and would collapse and probably lead to something even more totalitarian.

[athenot]

Or perhaps we will witness a return to living off of the land but with technologies to assist us. We have self-driving tractors and automated industrialized agriculture, but how about a personal yard robot that can till the vegetable garden, selectively removing weed but leaving the plants undisturbed.

Many suburban yards are large enough to grow plenty of food, and the food you grow yourself can vastly outperform anything you buy in terms of taste because you no longer have to be restricted to eating varieties that travel well.

But back in terms of wealth, owning land still remains important as it makes the above possible.

[melling]

Fortunately, the future is arriving slowly because so much time is wasted having silly debates on the Internet.

No need to worry about it in our lifetime.

[dasil003]

How old are you? The social unrest is going to come way before people are walled off in ghettoes. If, like me, you are a programmer earning 6 figures, you may not feel rich,but you are certainly perceived that way by the increasing number who are struggling.

[melling]

Are these the same people who ignored all the warnings?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O_TjBNjc9Bo

Bought cheap stuff from Walmart so middle class manufacturing jobs were sent overseas? Refused to get a STEM education so we're required to import 100,000 engineers ever year? Didn't develop a better immigration plan so now we have 11 million undocumented people, many who will work for far less because life is better here. That'll keep wages down.

[api]

... because in the wake of an extremely noisy and well publicized dot.com / tech market crash, everyone would be completely reasonable to choose an expensive STEM degree.

Professionals are routinely wrong about predicting economic trends. Random teenage kids from average high schools should not be expected to be better than, say, the Fed chairman in this regard.

[burntsushi]

> Professionals are routinely wrong about predicting economic trends.

But you're not, right?

There isn't an ounce of uncertainty in any of your comments despite the fact that you make several outlandish claims about the future.

[api]

I believe in having definite but mutable opinions. I'll change my mind if someone can present a compelling argument with evidence, but so far I haven't seen one (here or elsewhere).

"It's always turned out that way in the past" is a poor argument IMO.

[dasil003]

Blaming the individual for emergent economic phenomena with a finger-wag and an I-told-you-so will do little to keep the pitchforks away from your door.

[melling]

The idea is for people to learn from past mistakes. I've identified some of them. We should take a deep dive to understand what we've done wrong and what can be done to fix the problems.

[monort]

It seems that you do not account for falling prices due to automation. And the cost of automated machines will fall too.

[api]

That will happen for automation and manufactured goods, but not for assets and anything else leveraged. If anything the in-deflation we are seeing today will be amplified as central banks will be forced to keep money cheap to avoid total deflationary collapse. Picture a $5 million starter home that costs <$1000 to completely furnish.

This is what a post-scarcity society in denial looks like.

The reason cities like SF and NYC and London already look like this is because they are the vanguard of the future. If present trends continue a house in rural Kentucky will be as unaffordable relative to average wages as one in SOMA. All that cheap money has to go somewhere, so if labor is deflating it must go into assets.

In-deflation is "deflation of labor and the products of labor, and inflation in assets, consumable resources, and essential services like health care and education." It's been the condition in the USA and to some extent Europe since 2008. It's today's equivalent of stagflation in the 70s, something else economists did not think (at the time) was possible and did not understand. Some are starting to get it, which is why you see some starting to talk about inflation in areas like housing separate from inflation in the rest of the economy. In-deflation is not visible in traditional aggregate inflation indices because deflating manufactured goods and labor are grouped with inflating assets and essential goods/services and the two cancel.

[Wildgoose]

I agree - I've been saying for years that we are getting "Inflation Needs, Deflation Wants". Necessities get more expensive, whereas niceties (from discretionary spending) have their prices squeezed.

[redneck_]

Can you recommend any further reading for in-deflation?

[api]

It's largely a concept I've encountered online, with varying degrees of precision in discussions. There will be books about it in 20 years once the academics notice, sort of like stagflation (which was "impossible"). It really strikes me as an exact description of today's economic reality -- stagnant wages, deflation in manufactured goods and anything tech, and crazy inflation in areas like housing, rent, health care, and tuition.

So far this has been driven mostly by outsourcing, not automation. When automation really kicks in with good AI, it's game over. There will be universal basic income or blood in the streets.

[redneck_]

it's such a new idea google can't even find it

[api]

https://www.google.com/#q=%22indeflation%22

[digi_owl]

When the customer has zero, or at least zero in any sane sense, the price will always be too high.

The basic dichotomy of industrialization is that the workers of one factory is the customers of another.