So what do we do when when nobody has a job?

[Sir Og]

I am not very convinced about the low skilled jobs of the future.
I think there are limits to human consumption. We only can eat so much food and only have so much hours to consume some forms of entertainment.
People may want to consume more quality stuff but there is a very steep increase in cost for very little additional benefit after the mass produced average stuff. You can't consume that kind of quality stuff on low skilled jobs.

Maybe healthcare is fairly limitless but is not exactly a low skilled field. Maybe all low skilled people of the future will end up massaging KH and pchang in their luxurious retirement home.

[Ben Kenobi]

am not very convinced about the low skilled jobs of the future.

If this was 1900, you'd be wondering where all the farm workers would go.

I think there are limits to human consumption.

Right, because you believe in overpopulation. I see.

So why is it then that I can walk into any store today and buy a laptop that's half the cost of a computer back then, more powerful by far than what I owned back in 2005? That's not even ten years ago.

We only can eat so much food and only have so much hours to consume some forms of entertainment.

We have mountains of food that go to waste because there's not enough people to eat the food.

People may want to consume more quality stuff but there is a very steep increase in cost for very little additional benefit after the mass produced average stuff. You can't consume that kind of quality stuff on low skilled jobs.

That's because folks like you do everything they can to prevent the market from working. Again - there are mountains of food that are not eaten and thrown in the trash every day.

Maybe all low skilled people of the future will end up massaging KH and pchang in their luxurious retirement home.

Ask someone in 1900 if they would envisage 'fast food'.

[Serb]

Watch the video, and we'll discuss!

Communism has an answer to this question, aside Capitalism, whose the only answer is to exterminate those "useless" people.

[The Mad Monk]

This goes beyond Capitalism or Communism, but for the sake of argument, what happens to the rule of the Proletariat when there is no Proletariat left?

[Serb]

Proletariat evolves into сognitoriat and goes further.

[Ben Kenobi]

Communism has an answer to this question

Well, I can see why Communism doesn't have an overpopulation problem. Nobody wants to stay.

[The Mad Monk]

And those who do...Stalin, Mao, the Kim family, Pol Pot.

[Dr Strangelove]

The unemployed have a lot more votes than the Owners however.

There is bound to be more distribution of incomes if it becomes obvious that only small fraction of the people are needed for production of all necessary goods and services.

If the Owners decide that they don't want to make all those goods and services if they have to pay such high taxes then there will be more jobs for the unemployed so problem is fixed either way.

I'm mostly talking about the US here. Just look at what an excellent public health care system the people have been given by the party which claims to care the most about the people. The Affordable Health Care Act is a gift to insurance companies, not the people. No rate hikes prior to enactment? Mandatory acceptance of people with pre-existing conditions? HA! The insurance companies have been taking the regulatory codes of the AHCA and using them as toilet paper and no one is stopping them. In the US the "people's party" is as much beholden to Wall Street as its conservative opponent. You seem to forget that the news providers here are "public" corporations whose loyalty is to their shareholders, i.e., the people most likely to someday own those robots, and not to the actual public.

A law redistributing the weath will only happen if someone proposes it, and it gets through committee and it comes up for a vote and it passes and it gets sent to the other chamber of legislation and it gets through their committee and it comes to a vote and it passes and it gets to the President and he signs it and it survives the inevitable legal cahllenges in the courts.

[Dr Strangelove]

Well, I can see why Communism doesn't have an overpopulation problem. Nobody wants to stay.

Uh, under communist rule the population of China exploded from 400 million (1945) to 1.3 billion( 2010). The Soviet Union grew from 110 million (1920) to 320 million (1990). In the same time period the US grew from 100 million (1910) to 280 million (1990) and Europe barely grew at all.

[The Mad Monk]

Proletariat evolves into сognitoriat and goes further.

That word does not exist, according to google. If you mean white collar workers, they're going faster than the blue collars workers, as software does more and more of their jobs. If you mean the professions, very much the same thing, only slower. If you mean the creatives, as the video says, a poetry based economy isn't going to work.

[Serb]

The word does exist, perhaps not in English though.

The fundamental difference between Capitalism and Communism is that Capitalism intends to make people wealthier and considers that human nature is unchangeable, while Communism intends to make people BETTER, not wealthier, and doesn't believe that human nature is unchangeable. The whole point and supreme goal of Communism is to make humans better, to reveal a hidden talent and creativity every human being has inside him, to open it and bring it on the new level, to bring a human being closer to God in terms of creativity, if you like. Capitalism and society of consumption cultivates only certain talents in human being, a talents, which could make that human being to become richer. Wealth is a supreme goal for Capitalism, but it is not the case with Communism.

That's why "invasion of robots" wouldn't have been a problem for a true Communist society (but such thing doesn't exist or ever existed)


BTW, I've seen this video about two weeks ago, actually. Robotization and cybernization and AI (I'm sorry, if such words do not exist in English) will surely hasten the world falling into abyss. When human civilization creates more and more advanced tools and the capabilities and possible threat those tools posses growth exponentially, while at the same time humans do not evolve and remain at the same level as they were a hundred or 200 years ago, the end is inevitable. Sooner or later that will end up in an Armageddon.
Just extrapolate things a bit further in time. A hundred years from now, probably, any nerd would be able to construct a nuke in his cellar, just like any nerd now can learn from the Internet how to make C4. What is then?
CABOOM.

And the tools of destruction humanity will have in future will be way more devastating than the tools we have now. If you extrapolate things at infinity, sooner or later even a child would be able to destroy the World with just a movement of his finger, if he likes. And the only way to stop that is to change the human as a being, to make it impossible for him to do so (Armageddon) regardless of what, to evolve human beings to the new level.

[Sir Og]

I'm mostly talking about the US here. Just look at what an excellent public health care system the people have been given by the party which claims to care the most about the people. The Affordable Health Care Act is a gift to insurance companies, not the people. No rate hikes prior to enactment? Mandatory acceptance of people with pre-existing conditions? HA! The insurance companies have been taking the regulatory codes of the AHCA and using them as toilet paper and no one is stopping them. In the US the "people's party" is as much beholden to Wall Street as its conservative opponent. You seem to forget that the news providers here are "public" corporations whose loyalty is to their shareholders, i.e., the people most likely to someday own those robots, and not to the actual public.

A law redistributing the wealth will only happen if someone proposes it, and it gets through committee and it comes up for a vote and it passes and it gets sent to the other chamber of legislation and it gets through their committee and it comes to a vote and it passes and it gets to the President and he signs it and it survives the inevitable legal challenges in the courts.

Every few years all Americans have a chance to chose who gets to make laws. You have an option to choose other people but so far Americans seem to be happy with the status quo.

When the rest of the US starts thinking like you, you can easily elect a party that will change you ridiculous tax system, your health care system etc.

I think a combination of NGDP Targeting by the central bank + progressive taxation of wages (income from AIs should count as wages not as investment income) + a Guaranteed Income will take care of the transitional period between today and the moment when the robots take over everything.
A system like that would guarantee that there is enough demand in the economy to keep everybody who wants to work employed while generating enough revenue to subsidize low productivity/unemployed workers.

Having said all that I think that it is unlikely that something like that will happen. More probably people will do something stupid. Just look at what happens in Europe in the last 6 years. It really crushes ones faith in humanity.

[pchang]

KH makes "robots" that know how to trade in our electronic markets (I'm sure his programs are not limited to just stocks and options). That whole system is an interesting experiment in Darwinian AI (I think that kind of competition leads to AIs going down rat holes to non-optimal end results).

I invented an algorithm to automatically create Rete networks given a set of starting points and desired goals. Think of it as an AI that can figure out how to do things on its own. I am now engaged in making it possible for lots of little computer apps (robots) behave seamlessly as one really big and capable app. I also am part of building the systems that allow for millions of computer apps (robots) to create their own networks, register themselves, and communicate seamlessly with each other.

Perhaps this is why neither one of us is particularly worried about the robots taking over.

[Ben Kenobi]

Uh, under communist rule the population of China exploded from 400 million (1945) to 1.3 billion( 2010). The Soviet Union grew from 110 million (1920) to 320 million (1990). In the same time period the US grew from 100 million (1910) to 280 million (1990) and Europe barely grew at all.

You and I both know the one child policy will prove me correct on this with China, and look at Russia now.

[Dr Strangelove]

China is trying to solve its overpopulation problem. Russia isn't Communist since 1992.