[fizixer]

> If we continue to refuse (as many have since the 1970s) addressing the labor shortage problem with our established institutions, people like me will be forced to address it technologically ...

What would keep you from addressing it technologically even when it is addressed with your so-called established institutions?

- When tractors were widely available and cheap, did land-owners refuse to buy them, and kept hiring farm employees?

- Did they ask for established institutions to help them out, instead of buying a bunch of tractors, hiring a fraction of the previous number of employees for driving the tractors, and never having to look back?

- Are there farm owners out there who still long for the days established institutions solved their labor shortage problems so they don't have to buy tractors?

Have you seen CGPGrey's Humans Need Not Apply? (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

[emblem21]

> What would keep you from addressing it technologically even when it is addressed with your so-called established institutions?

A fantastic question. Socialist protectionism can absolutely drive the cost of human labor down well beyond competitive price points of even the most cheapest and sophisticated robotic labor. Cuba is a fantastic example of this. (Which I suspect will be the last place to embrace robotic labor) The Castro's have established strict price controls, which means doctors or janitors can get $6 a day while bread costs a few pennies. They have the material utopia... which sounds good, until you realize the Castro's offer their nation's labor at $20 an hour to Europe. With a 48 hour work week, the Castro's pocket $19.375 dollars PER WORKER PER HOUR while the worker takes home $0.625 per hour. They've established a familiar aristocracy under the name of actual, functional socialism. Never underestimate the power of political organization to drive human value to subslavery price points.

> When tractors were widely available and cheap, did land-owners refuse to buy them, and kept hiring farm employees?

> Did they ask for established institutions to help them out, instead of buying a bunch of tractors, hiring a fraction of the previous number of employees for driving the tractors, and never having to look back?

For tractors to be widely available and cheap, this implies a juxtaposition with a time in which pre-tractor farming was expensive. The industrial age ultimately rendered traditional slavery too expensive compared to the common laborer due to unique combination of clever agricultural engineering, the birth of modern financial capitalism, and robust land availability via new gains in military conquest. Be it a slave, an immigrant, or a vagabond, the final price points didn't significantly affect yield, thus, the real cost of slavery (maintenance, security, lobbying, administration, etc.) was exposed and was no longer competitive. America, a major cotton exporter, fought a bloody civil war to protect that exporter status against Egypt and India, so yes, institutional assistance to preserve the previously profitable model was absolutely involved in both the enrichment of successful labor practices and replacing it with something more GDP efficient.

This transition took place in a world where the first steam tractors in the 1870s weighed 30,000 pounds![1] The technical maintenance of these beasts was impossible for the average farmer. It wasn't until Ford and the gasoline revolution that tractors finally took off and were make cheap enough. By then, human organization was also in the midst of the electric light bulb, doubling human productivity, and the steel highrise, linearly scaling the productivity of a parcel of land. This massive surge of productive capacity, when paired with growth-oriented industrial capitalism, created a tremendous labor shortage. Peak tractor production didn't occur until 1951, well after America established itself as the world reserve currency. I'd be suspicious of using the tractor as a valid analog for artificial intelligence.

When productive capacity skyrocketed due to these three technological innovations, farm owners did hire more employees, as did the rest of the aggregate productive forces of society.

> Are there farm owners out there who still long for the days established institutions solved their labor shortage problems so they don't have to buy tractors?

I believe you call them “southerners” and they are solving their labor shortages with institutional mandates (via globalization and NAFTA) that allow immigrant labor to be cheaper than native labor.

> Have you seen CGPGrey's Humans Need Not Apply?

I have. I'm deeply familiar with Baxter and it's ability to augment FoxConn. Notice I said augment, not replace. It's response times are still too slow, and even if it got a CUDA-powered GPU neural network, China can always engage in protectionist legislation that render all technological advantages moot. CPGrey doesn't address the ability of the Cuba's and the China's of the world to socially absorb actual labor costs due of political paranoia. I recommend studying the tale of William Lee[2] to see just how far back the political fear of automation goes.

[1] https://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-tractors-in-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_(inventor)

[fizixer]

I'm sorry you had to do such a long write-up and yet you seem to have made utterly unconvincing arguments.

You make a nice mention of 'socialist protectionism'. Essentially what you described, looks like Cuba is a giant factory full of slaves instead of a country, and EU is its customer.

First of all, you had to pick the worst of the worst implementation of an economy (Cuba) to make your point. Does my question look like I was asking for a counter-example, no matter how horrible or remote? If that's the goal then I have an even better answer "Sadism would keep a farm owner from using technology to do farming". I hope it's clear that that's not the kind of answer I was looking for.

Not only that, I just checked 'Economy of Cuba' wikipedia page and it has to import 70-80% of its food. So your worst of the worst example is still not good enough to make manual-farming labor cost-effective.

Later, you use phrases like "unique combination of" and "clever" and what not. Really? Was the industrial revolution so unique and clever that something similar will never ever be repeated? Have you looked at the daily science and technology innovation news around yourself?

"response time are too slow" and even if not, back to "social protectionism".

Sorry I've completely lost you. I don't even know if you're saying whatever you're saying as a socialist or lassez-faire capitalist or what, so I could at least put your point of view in perspective. What I do know is that every passing day, my conviction keeps getting stronger that politicians and economists love to get lost in the word-soup of archaic ideas, and completely miss the mark that the technologists are making on the world one day after another.

[emblem21]

> Does my question look like I was asking for a counter-example, no matter how horrible or remote? If that's the goal then I have an even better answer "Sadism would keep a farm owner from using technology to do farming"

The point was to show the lengths of insanity humanity can endure just to protect itself from automation, thus, answering your questions. Cuban food importing is due to it's economic distribution to allowing populations to grow well beyond what that island can naturally sustain. If anything, that's actually a sign of it's economic effectiveness to bypass resource shortages.

> Was the industrial revolution so unique and clever that something similar will never ever be repeated?

Yes. The mathematical formulations that powered that revolution are now known by the whole of humanity. Barring an apocalyptic calamity, the discovery of statistics that allowed for mastery of nature through chemistry and atomic theory and mastery of mankind through economics will never be repeated because our entire system has been designed to maximize the gains from that mathematical discovery. The next mathematical revolution, which I suspect will be Bayesian inference, will reveal new things about nature and human behavior, and our economic engines will tilt to maximize those discoveries.

> "response time are too slow" and even if not, back to "social protectionism".

Again, all of your questions were trying to draw absurd conclusions that somehow, only through technological prowess can every single problem of AI be resolved. I'm here to remind you that William Lee, and Cuba, and China, and Venezuela, and political protectionism are real reoccurring things that can completely crush any "technology always wins because Silicon Valley" hope you have.

That protectionism is what "refusing to address the labor shortage problem with our established institutions" actually looks like.