How would robots effect a free economy.

[terk]

Since technology is infiltrating every aspect of our lives. When it comes to the stage where robots and automated machines will control all the production lines and any work force required in most occupations, including agriculture, labor and any service providing job (such as cashiers). Humans hopefully won't have to work as much , if at all. What would happen to most people.

I mean how would wealth be distributed, if you can have only a few people monitoring and fixing machines that can produce enough products to supply the masses, would the free market eradicate the unskilled untrained low IQ worker, since machines would be able to do any low skill job faster and more efficient than a human. 

 

I know this is a far fetched 'sci-fi' scenario, but technology is heading in that direction, and I personally am with automating and creating a product at the lowest cost and as efficiently possible.

[dsayers]

When the world became more dependent on computers and the internet, there was a big boon for IT. So it was less of an eradication of jobs as much as it was a shift in jobs. Also, email has been a thing for a couple decades now and people still send snail mail. So even if something becomes the standard, it won't necessarily fully displace that which it replaces. Plus as time goes on (particularly if peaceful parenting and the free market become the norm), IQ rises on average anyways.

 

So I don't know what the world will look like, but I know that humans adapt

[Kevin Beal]

Actually automation creates more jobs, not fewer. I know that sounds weird, but it's true. The number of specialized people who are needed to create these robots is not insignificant, but obviously, it has to be cheaper than without the robot or else why would anyone create them. The first reason is the excess wealth created by replacing human labor is used to hire more people to do other things that haven't or can't be automated. The second reason is that the cost of the goods being produced through automation go down and those savings are passed onto the consumer, who now has more wealth to either spend on other goods / services or even hire more people themselves. If they spend it on other goods / services, then the people selling it respond to increased consumer demand by hiring more people.

 

It's one of the economic fallacies Henry Hazlitt talks about in Economics in One Lesson.

 

Also, it's mistaken to believe that machines can replace any low IQ job and do it better. There are many tasks that machines epicly fail at that take almost no effort on the part of humans. Amazon's Mechanical Turk program exists because certain things cannot easily be automated. Of course, if you create a machine with true strong artificial intelligence, then it could potentially replace any human job, but then we're talking about a whole different class of machine that we don't even know can exist.

 

But if most people didn't have to work, I bet one effect would be that people focus to an even greater degree on their appearances, kinda like the birds of paradise who have no real predators, so they evolved more and more elaborate ways of wooing their mates until they are just like this kaleidoscopic technicolor dreamcoat bird whose skills all revolve around finding mates and not being productive in other ways.

 

Families would benefit from having two stay at home parents, though. But a certain amount of stress is actually good for you, so maybe people would just get lazy..?

[Alan C.]

Time is a scarce commodity, and labor-saving devices accord us with opportunities to spend time on things other than tedious, repetitive tasks. They also increase safety and conserve resources.

 

As far as what to do with low IQ, unskilled workers, there is nothing to do. People have to take responsibility for themselves at some point.

[VolT]

I am no expert in free markets or robotics but I think I can contribute a few factors that are valid consideration

 

1) Robots are not free.

-- They have a high initial cost and since they have moving parts, they also have depreciation and maintenance.

-- Upgrading a robot can be expensive. 

-- Payment for robot support(tracking performance data to ensure maintenance before a malfunction).

2) Current cost of human workers are higher than it would be in a free market.

-- Licensing, unions, taxation, social security, lord forbid something happens to you at work, you know all the government "goody" bag stuff.

3) Cost and value produced of a given task.

 

I have the assumption that if we were to flip a switch and become a free market right now, humans will probably get jobs back that robots are doing.

What supports this assumption is:

1) Look at Chinese manufacturing, we are always hearing about unsafe worker environments for humans(Therefore humans are manufacturing and not robots). I am sure some of these processes can be automated, but they are not.

2) McDonalds started to fight back(by stepping up the auto cashier deployment) when the cost of their cashiers hit 15$ an hour.

 

My second assumption is that robots would first make their way into dangerous work in a free market (work which has high cost of hiring a human due to increase in health and safety, insurances).

I really have doubts of them entering into anything else(in a free market). I think interacting with a human can bring happiness and joy, which is value to a customer. You could argue well what about some AI that we manufactured that can also bring you joy and happiness. Well that AI would have serious costs behind it for a business to own for that purpose, where as a human is at that job because he is trying to fulfill his own goals. Its as if we bring value to each other by fulfilling our own goals.

 

-- edit -- My second assumption doesn't hold for manufacturing. So maybe robots will find their way into manufacturing rather easily too. I think it is valuable to think about each job within its own context.

[AccuTron]

Misc:

 

I don't think this is far-fetched sci-fi.  Feels closer and closer.

 

IT jobs flourished in part because computers were still evolving, and thoroughly pre-broken by MicroSoft's Windows OS.  More stable platforms reduce very much of that last problem.  I suspect things in general are more plug-and-play, requiring fewer workers over time.

 

Snail mail still exists, but nowhere as much, and the print industry is all about longtime magazines which first thin, then disappear.

 

Clearly, automation has provided us with previously unattainable goods.  But are we moving through a phase, where the automation becomes so extensive that the total number of workers just has to decrease over time?  In an increasing population.

 

I avoid the self checkouts at Safeway, because when I use my own bags, it locks up.  Maybe I just need to place them down first on the tray area, but overall, I don't like stuff that f--'s with me.  I'll take the live person checkout.

 

If we went the way of birds of paradise on looks, I'm not sure how that is different from now.  Talking about effort, as opposed to results.  But more employees would be in the service industries of hair, skin, nails, etc. And gyms.  Maybe it would go full circle, and we'd have pedal-powered options in our Prius, so we could get exercise while we drive.  The car would be steering itself anyway.

 

And of course, wealth was mentioned.  How the heck does anyone get paid, if no jobs?  We're back to Monopoly money.

 

Those Chinese Foxx workers:  are they still using humans because the products keep changing so much?  At this point, mucking with automation every time someone changed a case design would be a pain.  Humans easily adapt.  But will the machines become more adaptable?

[Tyr]

Here's the argument fleshed out when robotics/automation is taken to the level of AI.

 

[Des]

Since technology is infiltrating every aspect of our lives. When it comes to the stage where robots and automated machines will control all the production lines and any work force required in most occupations, including agriculture, labor and any service providing job (such as cashiers). Humans hopefully won't have to work as much , if at all. What would happen to most people.

I mean how would wealth be distributed, if you can have only a few people monitoring and fixing machines that can produce enough products to supply the masses, would the free market eradicate the unskilled untrained low IQ worker, since machines would be able to do any low skill job faster and more efficient than a human. 

 

I know this is a far fetched 'sci-fi' scenario, but technology is heading in that direction, and I personally am with automating and creating a product at the lowest cost and as efficiently possible.

I am sure this scenario is not far-fetched at all, and I have given some thought to the changing of scarcity in the future.

 

Replicating systems of robots will eventually become the norm, so that robots are built and maintained by other robots. Due to the very small size of the nanotech robots, these will almost certainly outnumber the larger robots and machines (machines of the type where you could look at one machine without a microscope and understand it's workings).

 

Uncluttered / attractively laid-out spaces become scarce, and attention from other people remains relatively scarce. Perhaps "paying [with] attention" will be the basis of the currency of the future.

 

For example, suppose you create a large park, keep it free of the clutter that others could easily and cheaply put there. You pay for the defence of the park. Perhaps I would offer you one hour of my attention-time in exchange for permission to spend 50 hours relaxing in your park. Perhaps you are wealthy, don't need me to use that attention time on you, so you donate it to a friend, and I sit and listen to your friend, participate in a conversation which I might not choose for my own pleasure, as a way to pay for use of your park.

 

Another example: perhaps I have thousands of attention-hours owed to me, and I use that to buy into a neighbourhood in which all landowners have agreed to build dwellings and transport routes below ground level, and keep the surface uncluttered to a specified standard, conforming with a theme, with competent arbiters of conformance to thematics and reduction of clutter. I have used attention-currency to buy a home where, above ground, I see water-features, benches, pedestrians and cyclists. No buildings, no motor vehicles, only what I care to see. The seller of the home I bought, can now get thousands of hours of attention from whoever previously owed those to me.

 

To sum up: uncluttered spaces potentially become scarce (because making stuff becomes cheap), the attention of [other] people remains at current level of scarcity.