Big question of this thread: At what point do we people stop working, and let machines make the pie to which all of humanity should get a piece of? Is that even a possible reality?
So most people who know me in Cong, know that I am solidly "right" in economic views-- in other words, I believe that capitalism, free trade, market forces, private sector, and competition are better at efficiently utilizing resources (than government) to realize greater economic value, which enriches society.
(Though I also only believe that's possible with a healthy bit of oversight/regulation, probably beyond a degree acceptable by avid lobbyists of corporate America)
That said a lot of the opinions stated here are going to be quite contrary to that core premise-- things I have been mullying around by myself for a while.
Main topic of this thread: Increasingly with the developments of technology, humans have been able to replace human work with machine work in many business processes, resulting in cut cost and "greater efficiency" of businesses. Greater efficiancy means greater profits, a wealthier economy, but at the cost of jobs.
Of course, this is nothing new-- it's a battle already fought and lost by human workers in manufacturing. Right now though, we're in a technological boom, and the next generation of robotics and AI will be stepping in to cut further still into the blue-collar job base. Machines that reduce, if not completely run call centers; robots that clean floors; cars that drive themselves (wonder how long Uber will be using drivers?); droids that deliver packages/mail, etc.
Greater efficiency leads to greater wealth in the economy-- we should all be richer, but will we be?
First question of exploration: Are machines actually more efficient? What does it mean to be efficient?
In the traditional animal sense, efficiency comes down to currency of calories. In order for a species to be successful, the sum of its activities must cost less calories than what's consumed. With the amount it spends, it has to collect as much or more nutrition.
Traditionally you have 3 categories of activities for calorie spending:
-Food Collection/Processing (hunting, eating, digesting)
-Self-defense
-Reproduction
*Waste Elimination (usually only a cost for ecosystem-building animals such as Humans, Prairie Dogs and Ants)
Do you spend less on the above activities than what you consume? Do machines? Ah-hah, there it becomes less certain.
The human brain (one of the most energy-hungry human organs) has remarkably low energy consumption from a computing standpoint. Compare it to computing systems that use AI, and the computers use over 10k times the amount of electricity. Beyond computers, machines can do things with exactness, precision, and power that human muscles can't, but often organic tissues win when it comes to work per energy consumption.
What really makes machines more "efficient" in terms of input/output of energy, is that their input is largely written off-- gas is under-priced. What are you talking about Chou? Gas is really expensive, and is going to get even moreso.
Eh, no-- from a traditional biology model of input/output of energy, fossil fuels are under-priced to the point of being practically free; or do you think the price at the gas pump reflects the actual cost of photosynthesis, raising up giant organisms or quantities of organisms, having them die, and waiting millions of years for it to turn into burnable fuel? When you pay for Gas, it might as well say "Free, except for shipping and handling".
Human reliance on fossil fuel is akin to predators after a big die-off. Angry scientist introduces a giant plague that sweeps across Europe killing off wild rabbits. The Ibarian lynx becomes extremely efficient at tapping the new resource of dead rabbits-- until you know, there are no more dead rabbits. Did the Lynx actually become more efficient? Well no, and now they're practically extinct. I know this isn't exactly equivalent (since we've been burning fossil fuels for generations now), but I can't help but draw this comparison:
"The Chinese Solar Industry is very profitable" <--Sure it is, as long as the Chinese government is grossly subsidizing its costs.
"Machines are more efficient than manual laborers" <--Sure they are, as long as Nature is subsidizing their energy costs with a non-renewable energy supply.
But I'm no engineer-- if someone else has a more informed opinion on the efficiency of humans v. machines (for tasks humans can do) in terms of energy costs, I'd love to hear it!
That's one topic, here's another: Let's assume that the energy source isn't a point of debate; that technology progresses to the point where renewable energy sources become perfectly or near-perfectly harness-able before we run out of fossil fuels, such that humans can effectively "write off the cost of non-food energy" for eternity. Great! Then machines do effectively become more efficient than humans at basically everything machines are capable of.
So when would we all get to sit around and do nothing, and be perfectly fine with it?
How are consumable resources going to be allocated?
When do people no longer have to be competitive?
This question becomes serious, because pretty soon I imagine it won't be possible for people to be competitive. It seems to me that if we are not there already, in our lives, we will be at the point where no matter how much you invest into people and education, society won't have a need for most of the people in it.
We are in an era where there is a large supply of people who want to work-- with the will and dedication to contribute to society, while currently lacking a job. And, at the same time we have a huge demand for skilled labor-- hottest of all in Data Scientists, people who can make sense of all the information coming out of our mobile/social and devices, but the market's got an insatiable demand for programmers, mathematicians, engineers, and creative thinkers/leaders capable of discovering new innovations for how to apply current and future technologies.
^Honestly though, I'm not confident that even if you had an incredible education system with full opportunity to everyone to get training in anything, that you could raise anyone and everyone to be a data scientist, engineer, innovator, or leader, such that everyone in society (or the majority of society) could have a contributing and meaningful role. We still have a huge demand for menial labor as well, but those roles continue to be less and less liveable; not positions you can deem acceptable for the bulk of lower-middle class society. (unless you know, society decides to attribute such work with greater social standing, and the market decides it's valuable enough to pay a liveable wage)
Is this a real problem?
Is there an answer?
Is there a point where a social state makes more sense, because there won't be roles in society for people to live on.
The theory of economics is contingent on the presence of unlimited desires working on limited resources-- but what happens if and when resources (the outputs of the economy) exceed the value of the desires (specifically the basic needs of human life at a high living standard) in society?
If we are not there already, will we/when will we get there? And when we get there, what do we do?
So most people who know me in Cong, know that I am solidly "right" in economic views-- in other words, I believe that capitalism, free trade, market forces, private sector, and competition are better at efficiently utilizing resources (than government) to realize greater economic value, which enriches society.
(Though I also only believe that's possible with a healthy bit of oversight/regulation, probably beyond a degree acceptable by avid lobbyists of corporate America)
That said a lot of the opinions stated here are going to be quite contrary to that core premise-- things I have been mullying around by myself for a while.
Main topic of this thread: Increasingly with the developments of technology, humans have been able to replace human work with machine work in many business processes, resulting in cut cost and "greater efficiency" of businesses. Greater efficiancy means greater profits, a wealthier economy, but at the cost of jobs.
Of course, this is nothing new-- it's a battle already fought and lost by human workers in manufacturing. Right now though, we're in a technological boom, and the next generation of robotics and AI will be stepping in to cut further still into the blue-collar job base. Machines that reduce, if not completely run call centers; robots that clean floors; cars that drive themselves (wonder how long Uber will be using drivers?); droids that deliver packages/mail, etc.
Greater efficiency leads to greater wealth in the economy-- we should all be richer, but will we be?
First question of exploration: Are machines actually more efficient? What does it mean to be efficient?
In the traditional animal sense, efficiency comes down to currency of calories. In order for a species to be successful, the sum of its activities must cost less calories than what's consumed. With the amount it spends, it has to collect as much or more nutrition.
Traditionally you have 3 categories of activities for calorie spending:
-Food Collection/Processing (hunting, eating, digesting)
-Self-defense
-Reproduction
*Waste Elimination (usually only a cost for ecosystem-building animals such as Humans, Prairie Dogs and Ants)
Do you spend less on the above activities than what you consume? Do machines? Ah-hah, there it becomes less certain.
The human brain (one of the most energy-hungry human organs) has remarkably low energy consumption from a computing standpoint. Compare it to computing systems that use AI, and the computers use over 10k times the amount of electricity. Beyond computers, machines can do things with exactness, precision, and power that human muscles can't, but often organic tissues win when it comes to work per energy consumption.
What really makes machines more "efficient" in terms of input/output of energy, is that their input is largely written off-- gas is under-priced. What are you talking about Chou? Gas is really expensive, and is going to get even moreso.
Eh, no-- from a traditional biology model of input/output of energy, fossil fuels are under-priced to the point of being practically free; or do you think the price at the gas pump reflects the actual cost of photosynthesis, raising up giant organisms or quantities of organisms, having them die, and waiting millions of years for it to turn into burnable fuel? When you pay for Gas, it might as well say "Free, except for shipping and handling".
Human reliance on fossil fuel is akin to predators after a big die-off. Angry scientist introduces a giant plague that sweeps across Europe killing off wild rabbits. The Ibarian lynx becomes extremely efficient at tapping the new resource of dead rabbits-- until you know, there are no more dead rabbits. Did the Lynx actually become more efficient? Well no, and now they're practically extinct. I know this isn't exactly equivalent (since we've been burning fossil fuels for generations now), but I can't help but draw this comparison:
"The Chinese Solar Industry is very profitable" <--Sure it is, as long as the Chinese government is grossly subsidizing its costs.
"Machines are more efficient than manual laborers" <--Sure they are, as long as Nature is subsidizing their energy costs with a non-renewable energy supply.
But I'm no engineer-- if someone else has a more informed opinion on the efficiency of humans v. machines (for tasks humans can do) in terms of energy costs, I'd love to hear it!
That's one topic, here's another: Let's assume that the energy source isn't a point of debate; that technology progresses to the point where renewable energy sources become perfectly or near-perfectly harness-able before we run out of fossil fuels, such that humans can effectively "write off the cost of non-food energy" for eternity. Great! Then machines do effectively become more efficient than humans at basically everything machines are capable of.
So when would we all get to sit around and do nothing, and be perfectly fine with it?
How are consumable resources going to be allocated?
When do people no longer have to be competitive?
This question becomes serious, because pretty soon I imagine it won't be possible for people to be competitive. It seems to me that if we are not there already, in our lives, we will be at the point where no matter how much you invest into people and education, society won't have a need for most of the people in it.
We are in an era where there is a large supply of people who want to work-- with the will and dedication to contribute to society, while currently lacking a job. And, at the same time we have a huge demand for skilled labor-- hottest of all in Data Scientists, people who can make sense of all the information coming out of our mobile/social and devices, but the market's got an insatiable demand for programmers, mathematicians, engineers, and creative thinkers/leaders capable of discovering new innovations for how to apply current and future technologies.
^Honestly though, I'm not confident that even if you had an incredible education system with full opportunity to everyone to get training in anything, that you could raise anyone and everyone to be a data scientist, engineer, innovator, or leader, such that everyone in society (or the majority of society) could have a contributing and meaningful role. We still have a huge demand for menial labor as well, but those roles continue to be less and less liveable; not positions you can deem acceptable for the bulk of lower-middle class society. (unless you know, society decides to attribute such work with greater social standing, and the market decides it's valuable enough to pay a liveable wage)
Is this a real problem?
Is there an answer?
Is there a point where a social state makes more sense, because there won't be roles in society for people to live on.
The theory of economics is contingent on the presence of unlimited desires working on limited resources-- but what happens if and when resources (the outputs of the economy) exceed the value of the desires (specifically the basic needs of human life at a high living standard) in society?
If we are not there already, will we/when will we get there? And when we get there, what do we do?
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