[kijin]

Machines have been replacing jobs for over 200 years now, but I don't think there's been a huge increase in unemployment over that period. We've always managed to invent more meaningless and repetitious tasks for ourselves to do. One might say that most office jobs nowadays are like that, too. Factories replaced farms, cubicles replaced factories. But usually this happened over generations, so people had a chance to adapt.

If, at some point in the future, so many tasks get automated so quickly that there aren't enough jobs for the majority of this planet's featherless bipeds, we might finally get a chance to rethink the age-old rule that a person must work in order to survive. Work might become something that you only do because you like it, or because you want a higher income than whatever the default is. I only hope that outdated ideologies won't get in the way of such a paradigm shift.

[vijayr]

Factories replaced farms, cubicles replaced factories

At least on farms/agriculture, we get a chance to be outside with nature, and stay healthy/fit (even though it is much harder work). What have we got to show for modern day cubicles? :(

[kfcm]

>At least on farms/agriculture, we get a chance to be outside with nature, and stay healthy/fit (even though it is much harder work).

At one time (just 20 years ago), your statement would have been fairly accurate. People still walked beans to get weeds, baled square bales of hay and straw (on hot summer afternoons, with indoor barn temps reaching 110+), manhandled livestock, and had to do a lot more manually with equipment.

Those days are fading, though.

The present and future of crop farming are GMO crops (with spray resistance traits, or plants producing their own pesticides/herbicides) and (near future) UAV-style robotics for tractors and combines operated from the house (or corporate HQ).

Livestock farming does remain more hands-on. However, a lot of confinement ops are automated to ensure proper and timely weight gain and less stress. And before people start complaining about confinements, many of those are popping up due to regulatory requirements based upon head count.

Times they are a changin'.

[chii]

"we might finally get a chance to rethink the age-old rule that a person must work in order to survive."

i m a stern believer that people has to produce value. And until a person can produce value merely by living, people will have to work to survive. Value right now is measured by money, and money has a limited capability in measuring things that are very subjective (how do you measure the value a nice person brings to a community?).

But i dont believe there ever will be a day when a person can live without outputting an iota of value as measured by the standards of the day. At least, not until we have a source of free, and unlimitd energy.

[kijin]

Well, there are two different issues at hand:

1) Will there ever come a day when people can produce value merely by living? That really depends on what "value" is, and as you said, the standards of the day may differ from ours. Under some circumstances, merely being a consumer might be enough to contribute to some overall good. If energy becomes cheap enough, even a tiny benefit might be enough to offset a person's energy consumption.

2) Should we let a human being's survival be taken hostage to whether or not he or she produces what other people perceive as value, provided that there is leftover capacity to give them a free ride? This is more of a moral question, and your answer may vary according to your ideological commitments.

[chii]

1) I dont believe being a "consumer" can by itself have any value

2) The real question is, whether the left over capacity could be put to better use, instead of keeping alive those not pulling their weight (when they could've). Would science and tech be that much more advanced because there'd be money to put into research and development? Would infrastructure be better because money isn't "wasted" on people who otherwise make no contributions? Sure, morally, you gotta help those in need. But a line ought to be drawn - people who could otherwise have worked, shouldn't be given free handouts just because the enocomy of the country _could support them_.

[kijin]

Fair point, especially #1.

As for #2, the thing with social policies that they have long-term effects on a much larger scale. For example, one could plausibly argue that a robust "safety net" encourages people to take adventures, making it easier for kids from poor families to innovate even if they know that 90% of startups fail. This allows the society as a whole to benefit from the small number of startups that actually do succeed. Handouts, in that case, would be a sort of investment.

Also, this thread is about a hypothetical future society where there is a surplus of human labor due to automation. If you're going to pay people to carry out meaningless tasks that are not necessary in the first place, what's the difference between that and just giving them a handout?

Or so goes the argument. It's harder to prove that in reality. Also, if you care deeply about fairness between individuals, as in your other comment, I can understand why you might object to certain types of handouts.

[intended]

I'd have to say the answer to number 2 is no.

Also I would have to say that number 2 bakes in a position which imposes a morality and value system onto others, and singularly undervalues the complexity and edge cases(sets/groups/communities) present in the human condition.

Also its worth keeping in mind that social safety nets (i assume thats what you are referring to) may keep some people who don't pull their weight, but also keep alive people who would never had a chance to do so.

[sliverstorm]

This, of course, is where the buck always stops. You find yourself at the divide between people who believe all humans deserve to be fed and sheltered by right of existing, and those who believe they need to feed themselves.

[hythloday]

1) I dont believe being a "consumer" can by itself have any value

How can you have a capitalist economy without consumers to signal prices? I think I just don't understand your point here. Consumers obviously create value to my mind, because the knowledge of what they're willing to consume is itself valuable. How do you understand differently?

[steamer25]

Speaking in purely economic terms (i.e., inherent human value aside), a consumer is only valuable for what they have to offer in trade. If you're a producer but I don't have anything you could want (you already have it or the tech to create it effortlessly), the price signal I'm sending as a consumer is $0.00 for anything you'd sell.

[hythloday]

effortlessly

Science fiction aside, even if you can produce everything 10-100x more efficiently than me, it is still worth us trading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_Advantage

[onemoreact]

1) Broadcast TV and Gmail muddle the issue, if you have resources to trade your attention has value. At the most basic level Voting has value so in a democratic society people do have inherent value.

[rsheridan6]

>But i dont believe there ever will be a day when a person can live without outputting an iota of value as measured by the standards of the day.

Millions of people are already doing just that, and have been for decades, with the assistance of various government programs.

[marshallp]

Children, old people, disabled people, unemployed people, many politicians, many lawyers, criminals, spammers, many landowners, trust fundies, members of royal families, many librarians, many teachers, many policeman etc. etc. We already have people who don't actually provide value to society. In Germany, about 60 per cent of people derive most of their income from government handouts. The trend will only increase and is actually a good thing (200 years ago, almost everyone had to produce value to survive - where would most people choose, today or 200 years ago).

[Roritharr]

I think you are right. Over a certain period our society will Star Trek-like be able to provide for everyone without them doing any actual work. The biggest problem is the shifting time until then. How do you treat the 70% of people that won't find jobs because there ARE none that aren't done better by a robot or an algorithm. What is fair compared to those who are still required to work? Should (mostly creative people i guess) they be compensated as they would today?

Is there a point where we can safely assume that everyone that has work is glad about it to a point where they won't need more than what the government provides for free?

People talk here about people pulling their weight, but from all of my customers the only people won't be so easily replaced are the creative designers, songwriters, etc.

The rest, law firms, translation specialists, server admins, myself(web developer)... are in jobs that i imagine to have atleast digital competition if not completly replaced in the next 100 years.

So what do we do when suddenly the majority is out of work? There will be a point when creating major patentlawsuits won't keep lawyers busy anymore, where feeding everyone won't keep farmers and production workers busy...

What does pulling your own weight mean, if all the necessary jobs for keeping society running are gone or done by robots? Not everyone can be a waiter for people that are into restaurants with human waiters. Not everyone can be a cutting edge scientist.

My best prediction is that we'll become a very inward faced society, taking care of each others emotional needs will be our main task in such a future. To say it simple, you'll finally visit your parents more often as you've promised.

[chii]

only a small handful from the list you gave is actually none-contributing.

The 60% of the people that derive income from gov't handouts are leeching off those who do actually work - tell me how that is fair? Disabled people/old people are dependants, but they not a majority, and as for children, they _will_ create value when they grow up. I m talking about abled bodied people who choose to get a gov't handout instead of doing work to sustain their own life. The world would be better off if those people weren't given handouts.

[Duff]

Definitions matter. The definition of "disabled" from a point of view of someone on the dole probably isn't what you envision.

[marshallp]

There is certain fallacy in that. I've never met a person who has ever thought he would like to mooch off welfare or what have you forever, or even a short amount of time. There are barriers that are difficult to see for many middle class people to see. The choice between welfare and work for many people is not between a welfare and a cubicle writing java code, but between welfare and humiliating treatment or backbreaking work in a restaurant/factory.

Society has sent men to the moon, photographed galaxies billions of light years away, put millions of transistors inside a square inch of sand = we ought to be able to provide better opportunities for the unfortunate.

[dkersten]

I've never met a person who has ever thought he would like to mooch off welfare or what have you forever, or even a short amount of time.

I have. I currently live in a town where, due to the recession, a large percentage of people are living on social welfare. The thing is that a shockingly large number of them (that I know personally) have no ambition to do anything else. Some of these have been on welfare for five years already. I mean, why work when the government will just give you money, right? Another shockingly large number of young couples are having children because they see the extra child benefit money - someone that I know personally who already has two children under the age of four and wants a third one recently said how much easier their life would be with the social welfare benefits of a third child... I'm not sure if they ever considered that 1) children get significantly more expensive as they get older and 2) how unfair it is to the children to bring them into a low income family. But thats besides the point: my main point is that I do, unfortunately, know people who are happy to get handouts and have no ambitions to change any time soon.

[sliverstorm]

we ought to be able to provide better opportunities for the unfortunate

The trade-off of course being that the more growth we experience, the better quality-of-life gets for everybody in the future. On the one hand, everything is way better for most everybody than it was 200 years ago- on the other hand, like that did a whole lot of good for the dirt-poor of 200 years ago.

[nazgulnarsil]

why so much sympathy for the first world poor? because they are visible? I find sympathy for "poor" people living in fantastic conditions morally repugnant. humanity has serious problems to tackle.

[marshallp]

Feeling sympathy for first world poor doesn't mean you can't also feel sympathy for the third world poor.

[tkahn6]

I think the main difference is that computers are a lot cheaper than they were 200 years ago.