http://www.boingboing.net/images/_~hpm_talks_revo.slides_power.aug.curve_power.aug.jpg
In case you haven't heard, the software giant Google has debuted a new fully automated, driver-less car. Not only are the prototypes fully functional, they have also already logged a combined 140,000 miles of unassisted driving on U.S. roads. Google itself estimates that the system may be ready for full-scale production in eight years, before the decade is even out.
An eight-year period may seem overly optimistic, but it actually makes a lot of sense in context of computer systems. An observed phenomenon known as 'Moore's Law' states that the processing power of a standard desktop computer roughly doubles every two years, for the same cost. If Moore's law remains constant, then by 2020, the standard desktop should have the processing power of somewhere between the mind of a monkey and of a human - in other words, more than enough power to navigate traffic with the right software.
What does this mean for the economy? On the one hand, it will mean more efficient roads, lower costs of transportation, and cheaper costs of goods. On the other hand, there are an estimated 3.5 million truck drivers currently employed in the U.S., and this field is one of few which offers prospects of a middle-class income without a college degree. On top of this, consider the hundreds of thousands of bus, taxi and limousine drivers - and that similar technology will likely be simultaneously be rolled out for shipping, rail, forklift, crane operations, etc (indeed, to small degrees it already has).
You might remember how a few years ago, a GPS unit or a smart-phone were extravagant luxuries, but now are so common as to be unremarkable. There is no reason to believe that driver-less car technology will not be adopted with similar speed. Unlike smart phones, however, automated driving will cause massive and simultaneous layoffs.
If this were only happening in the transportation sector, I would not argue that it constitutes a paradigm shift in economics. This trend is however driven by computing speed, which is applicable to the great majority of fields and sectors. In other words, job destruction is and will be happening more rapidly than job creation in the majority of economic fields. The Google Car is a case in point - reportedly, only 15 engineers are responsible for the creation of its working prototypes, while it may someday soon make 15 million or more jobs obsolete around the world.
In the twentieth century, increased production by capitalists required increased labor forces, and increased payrolls, which created an automatic feed-back loop where more production led to more economic demand, and so on. Computer technology, and to a lesser degree other advances, are breaking this feedback loop.
This is presenting us with an entirely new economic paradigm, where production of goods is only loosely linked to human labor, and it is presenting us with two divergent paths as a species.
The first path is where 20th century economic paradigms remain in place long after their practical obsolescence, and consumption of goods remains rigidly connected to production or ownership. In this world, there are fewer and fewer decent jobs available except to a technocratic elite, and corporate cyborg-like entities compete with one another to enrich a shrinking ownership class to the exclusion of the growing underclass. If you look, you can see evidence of this taking place all around you.
In the second path, productivity gains are partially socialized while markets remain free - in other words, a portion of the increased productivity made possible by the new technologies is redistributed into a guaranteed national income, or welfare which is available to all, permanently, regardless of ability or even desire to find employment. In this world, work becomes wholly a choice, as subsistence is possible and even guaranteed regardless, but markets remain free and wealth accumulation is otherwise uninhibited, except through nominal (and possibly decreasing) tax rates. A musician for example could choose to charge at his concerts and become wealthier (or afford better equipment), or play for free and subsist happily on his guaranteed income. A capitalist could accumulate major holdings of industry, become world famous, accumulate toys and properties, be a player in the advancements in the latest fields, and he could also rest assured knowing that even if all his investments go bankrupt tomorrow, he can still live a full and comfortable life without the charity of others.
In any case, it is doubtful that millions of truck drivers unemployed en masse will take it lying down, or be content with a few months of unemployment checks and little prospects beyond that. Which direction society takes is likely to depend heavily on politics. Democratic nations (in the sense of nations which implement the desires of the majority as polivy, as distinguished from nations with mere formalities like elections) will tend toward the second path, while nations where money decides policy will tend towards the first, and the morass of third-worldism.
In neither case will there be top down, Soviet style control of the economy - in both cases markets will be free, on the one hand free to command humans, and on the other hand free to serve humanity. But one thing which is clear is that 20th Century paradigms will not work for understanding 21st Century economic crises, and these crises will not be resolved until the economically-minded stop looking towards long-dead theorists of long dead economic systems, and start looking at the object in front of their face they are typing into.
Your fears are ancient and have never held true.
Rav, seriously. I will debate you on any topic any time. You are wasting the energy of people who actually respond to you, because you don't put any thought or effort into your original posts, or your responses. If you have the ego to use mises.org forums as your personal twitter, you should be able to muster the hubris to participate in a serious debate, where you can't run away, and will be judged by an impartial community. I'm waiting.
The one thing I see with this is that there is still more capital needed for this computing, as it is invested in the production of the chips. Example is the RAm currently in computers does have a better recplacement- MRAM, but there has not been the investment in new plants to create it.
There is still the truth, but it is in a different part.
"Rome will never fall!"
That's a serious logical fallacy you're sporting there.
Not the best analogy. Your fear of economy-destroying unemployment due to technological advances has not held true.
Again with the "people said similar things in the past" fallacy.
This is just out today!
Forget the recession, immigration and the mortgage industry collapse - when it comes to loss of American jobs, robots are to blame.
That's the conclusion of economists who have studied labor statistics and increasing job polarization, a growing disparity in pay among low- and high-skilled jobs. A handful of studies from the spring and summer have picked up steam in recent weeks, and they raise some interesting questions about the economy in the days leading up to Election Day.
Manufacturing is still strong in this country - it's just that robots, not humans, are the ones manning the factories. If automation is the future of manufacturing, medicine and other fields, less-educated Americans could be left in the dust.
http://gizmodo.com/5665523/robots-are-stealing-american-jobs-according-to-mit-economist
and the full article the above article is reporting on:
http://www.good.is/post/automation-insurance-robots-are-replacing-middle-class-jobs/
What's your definition of "economy" or "destroyed." I'm not saying the world's going to end - I am saying that a lot of preventable suffering will probably happen by sticking with 20th century economics. Many predictions about preventable economic suffering have in fact proven true - it doesn't take the economy being "destroyed" for that to happen. But these forces certainly have been "economy destroying" for every individual who is unemployed because of these factors and who can't find comparable new work. Also, we've had wage stagnation for 30+ years in the U.S. and rising working hours, despite rising productivity, that's certainly been "economy destroying" relative to the prosperity we could have had.
Many predictions about preventable economic suffering have in fact proven true - it doesn't take the economy being "destroyed" for that to happen.
But these forces certainly have been "economy destroying" for every individual who is unemployed because of these factors and who can't find comparable new work.
Also, we've had wage stagnation for 30+ years in the U.S. and rising working hours, despite rising productivity, that's certainly been "economy destroying" relative to the prosperity we could have had.
Regardless of what terms I use, the issue here is whether rises in new technology leads to unemployment on a mass scale, such that the economy will suffer. This is such an elementary issue that is brought up time and time again, yet has been refuted for decades. It would benefit you to read chapter seven of Henry Hazlitt's Economic in One Lesson, called "The Curse of Machinery."
Why don't you take up Sieben's debate offer on this topic?
I'd be happy to debate, but I probably couldn't post more than once a day. What's the debate on exactly?
Here's an article just out today!
That's the conclusion of economists who have studied labor statistics and increasing job polarization, a growing disparity in pay among low- and high-skilled jobs...
and here's the link to the full article:
Last April, the MIT economist David Autor published a report that looked at the shifting employment landscape in America. He came to this scary conclusion: Our workforce is splitting in two. The number of high-skill, high-income jobs (think lawyers or research scientists or managers) is growing. So is the number of low-skill, low-income jobs (think food preparation or security guards). Those jobs in the middle? They’re disappearing. Autor calls it “the polarization of job opportunities.”
These days, all of us, from President Obama on down, are thinking about jobs. The unemployment rate is hovering around 10 percent, we’ve watched the ground disappear from under Detroit and Wall Street, and there’s a pervading sense that other industries might be next.
It’s not that the issue isn’t getting attention. The Princeton economist Paul Krugman is out there telling Congress to spend more money to create jobs. The former secretary of labor Robert Reich is arguing for tax breaks for the bottom brackets so people can buy stuff again. Here’s the thing, though: The erosion of the middle class is a phenomenon that’s bigger than the Great Recession. Middle-range jobs have been getting scarcer since the late 1970s, and wages for the ones that are still around have remained stagnant. ...
Pretty cool, I didn't know robots could fold laundry. Maybe MIT economists have been reading my posts?
They tuk urr jobz!!!
@ravochol: http://blog.mises.org/14259/luddites-at-mit/
key quote:
Today, a Japanese company called Fanuc, Ltd., has industrial robots making other industrial robots in a “lights out” factory. (That’s the somewhat unsettling term for a fully automated production facility where you don’t need lights because you don’t need humans.) That’s where we’re headed.
zomg!!! that's like an elevator without an elevator operator!!!
The more tools we develop, the more things we'll be able to do (with it). Human work can always add value; we simply come up with new things to provide (typists become software developers, etc). Unless the tools are smarter than the humans. Then we can hang back and enjoy all the labor our robots are doing for us.
that's like an elevator without an elevator operator!!!
Or like getting from New York to Chicago without 6 runners carrying you for a month. If we outlawed airplanes, there'd be practically no unemployment.
Z.