[oneplane]

Why would there be nobody left to buy the products? And what does it have to do with replacing workers? I imagine that if they are producing something, they are doing so because of a demand. Once the demand is gone, they most likely will stop producing.

[metaphorm]

demand for consumer products is driven by consumer confidence, i.e. by surplus in worker wages after cost of living is accounted for.

if the workers are having trouble getting a decent wage, where does that surplus come from? what happens to consumer confidence, and aggregate demand if people are losing their jobs?

[CaptSpify]

If we can figure out a decent economic system, then there won't be problems giving people a decent wage. Sure, if we keep doing things the way we are now then nobody will get a decent wage, but that's a very fixable problem.

[Bombthecat]

It is not a fixable thing.

You don't fix thousands of years of human evolution overnight. Or one generation.

It will take several thousand years to fix that.

[CaptSpify]

Are you actually arguing that it will take several thousands of years to change our economic model? I find this argument hard to take seriously

[Bombthecat]

My guess is five to six thousand years before humans move away from the "winner takes it all" scheme ( or alpha behaviour)

In twenty years we pretty much will know who is right.

I'd rather buy shares of companies then hoping for a sudden change in human behaviour.

[CaptSpify]

We can change human behavior. We do it all the time. We just need to incentive it differently like we do with other systems. In 20 years we won't know "who is right", we'll just know that we went with system X instead of system Y.

[vorotato]

Funny because there have been societies which have not been that way in the past. Also there's pretty much 0 evidence that that's a component of evolutionary psychology vs just the social norms in our given society.

[FLUX-YOU]

>if the workers are having trouble getting a decent wage, where does that surplus come from? what happens to consumer confidence, and aggregate demand if people are losing their jobs?

Probably not a lot. Automation headlines are probably going to take a back seat to Trump administration headlines for a good long while. Just from feeling, it seems to be happening fast enough to be a real concern, but not fast enough to cause panic, draw attention, and quick action.

[paulryanrogers]

My guess is that if robots put enough people out of work then the ability to pay will impact the demand