This can´t be so simple: If you make profits, somewhere, someone is becoming poorer.

Why does comparative advantage inform us? Destroying the notion of a zero sum game, it informs us of a key gain from specialisation. And wages in devloping country? They increase because of it!

 

People will have to learn to do work that can't be done by robots.

But, as the level of automation increases, the cost to automate goes down, and the flexibility of the equipment goes up (making a wide range of products). Taken to the extreme, we will all own Star Trek style replicators that can make what we want, for the cost of power, the design, and simple raw materials. Almost no cost, therefore very little "work" needs to be done to sustain the economy.

The amount of work a person does in their lifetime has been going down. Historically, "child labor" was the norm, and retirement wasn't. You wanted to eat, you worked in the field, hunting, fishing from early youth to within weeks of death. Now, we produce for maybe 45 years out of 80. And those years consist of 48 weeks a year (holidays and vacation), 5 days a week.

It is this increase in productivity that has allowed huge expansions in social programs, growing both government employment (non-productive) and those on the dole.

We will continue to grow technically, until the "work" (play) people do is predominately creative, which is something we are all good at, providing public school hasn't killed it....

 

I know of whole families that have been on the dole for their entire life....trust me, they are not using that time to create the next "War and Peace" or "Mona Lisa"...they spend all their time watching TV, eating themselves into wheelchairs, having sex (and more babies), drinking and doing drugs.

human nature won't change. there will always be people that would rather be lazy and unproductive. The more people who are freed from the necessity of earning a living, the more we will have of these kinds of people. I would bet the majority of humans, if they didn't HAVE to work, wouldn't.

 

Labor will never be automated under capitalism, the capitalists won't allow it.

Wages have been essentially stagnant since 1970 while productivity has risen 154%, guess who reaped the benefits? Not the workers, that's for sure.

 

Weird argument from someone of your type. I'd think you'd be saying that's how "we" create the reserve army of the unemployed.

 

The interesting aspect is the distinction between wages and productivity growth. A standard application of efficiency wages would suggest firms have to keep wages high in order to ensure productivityis harmed (I.e. Its the profit motive itself that leads to involuntary unemployment being the norm). We can't have that here. I'd go with institutionalism and the use of hierarchy in order to inflame underpayment

 

Correction: Labor will never be fully automated under capitalism, the capitalists won't allow it.

 

Of course we can't have full automation because of the demands on the skills set, particularly in production early on in the product life cycle

 

What does history show? Fuedalism, in its many versions, existed where there was wealth, tribalism, in its many versions, where there wasn't much wealth. Can you show me where this wasn't true?

What change gave us a middle class?

Can you show me any historical example of this that lasted more than one generation (under a benevolent dictator)?

Did power corrupt in the "socialisms" know as the Soviet Union, in communist China?

Aren't the monied interests getting government protection in the US? Is the media doing it's job in disclosing corruption? Is the Democratic party any less coopted than the Republican party?

 

"What does history show? Fuedalism, in its many versions, existed where there was wealth, tribalism, in its many versions, where there wasn't much wealth. Can you show me where this wasn't true?"
Don't know what your point is. What I believe it that the productive forces develop up to a point under a certain system, then the inherent contradictions in the system eventually rip it apart and society is reorganized by the victors - the productive forces develop and the process repeats, presumably until all major contradictions (ie class antagonisms) are solved. Revolutions abolished feudalism, I think the same will happen to capitalism.

"What change gave us a middle class?"
There's no such thing as a middle class. There's workers, there's bosses, and a few smaller anomalous classes. Difference in pay does not constitute a different class, the relation to the means of production does. For example a Capitalist is an owner of the means of production who hires workers and pays them wages, a worker is the guy working for the capitalist and peasants constituted a unique class because they did own a means of production -their land- but they didn't hire workers and only received the fruits of their own labor. "Middle class" is an abstraction invented by politicians to separate the working class psychologically into groups based on wages and thereby fracture class unity.

"Can you show me any historical example of this that lasted more than one generation (under a benevolent dictator)?"
Socialism/communism can not exist in a sea of capitalism, the concept of socialism in one country is a Stalinist/Maoist aberration. Communism/socialism is a stateless, classless society and obviously you can't lay down your arms when you need a state to protect against a powerful external capitalist threat. As long as capitalism exists in the major world powers, a country where the working class has taken political power (a dictatorship of the proletariat) can not progress realistically to pure communism.
Socialism can't exist with a dictator because by definition in socialism the workers have full control of politics and the economy.

"Did power corrupt in the "socialisms" know as the Soviet Union, in communist China?"
The Soviet Union degenerated because of the opportunists empowered by its economic situation in an extremely volatile period, you could say that power corrupted but it's a moot point because the system was more democratic than liberal capitalist democracies and had much better organization of power. The Soviet Union was never socialist by the way, it was a dictatorship of the proletariat.

China had a peasant revolution organized by a peasant "communist" party so it's a moot point. A country must first have workers to have a worker's revolution, that's just basic Marxism Also interesting is that Mao never even read Marx's Das Capital - He was definitely an Utopian communist if we can call him a communist at all - he certainly wasn't a Marxist.

"Aren't the monied interests getting government protection in the US? Is the media doing it's job in disclosing corruption? Is the Democratic party any less coopted than the Republican party?"
1) Yes.
2) Not really.
3) probably not.

What's your point?

 

?!? If that were the case there would be no automation. Yet automation has replaced most manufacturing in the US, and is doing the same to China.

What exactly do you think capitalists get from labor?

They have? Wages have gone up in dollars as well as what those dollars will buy.

Using the poor as a data point, what is the percentage change in those that air conditioning, a car, at TV, a cell phone, now, compared to 1970?

 

If all workers are replaced by robots they will get unemployed , unemployed people don't have money to buy things capitalists are producing so there is no demand, no demand = bye bye capitalism.

 

This was the point I was trying to make (thanks mutmekep! )

 

Its a weak point on two counts. First, total replacement is not a possibility (despite what the geeks may think after watching too much discovery channel). Second, even if it was available we'd just see deindustrialisation (with employment naturally shifting from manufacturing to the service sector)

 

I don't mean literally completely automated, I mean factories running with very few workers and needing extremely minimal oversight. This would directly affect countries with a large manufacturing sector. My point is that much further automation is possible but will be deliberately halted (and possibly has been already) through collusion between the "big players" in manufacturing because it would significantly reduce demand.

You know how the car companies were eager to introduce seat-belts even though they knew it would significantly reduce sales because people would realize that cars were actually dangerous and take notice of the staggering number of deaths by car crashes? Actually they weren't that eager, one of the big companies did start to introduce seatbelts but then stopped when their main competitor had a conversation with them and they agreed not to introduce seatbelts. It took a massive public awareness campaign to force the introduction of seatbelts, but this time I don't think we stand a chance when we're trying to fight the entire manufacturing industry.

 

I am very interested to see what kind of services can be sold to those unable to buy before service sector starts hiring

 

Economic history shows the folly of your argument. Its very difficult to find mature economies that haven't experienced some form of 'positive deindustrialisation'. Thus, as productivity increases (with practical automation, rather than the make-believe world you fellows are trying to portray), there are also income increass and a natural shift of employment from manufacturing to services.

 

Positive de-industrialisation you mean moving the production units abroad while doing the paperwork at home , it remains to be seen if this works under the new conditions.
I live in Greece , 85% of the economy is "services" and 1/3 of the work force unemployed , most production units are moved to nearby Balkan countries , i will wait to see productivity increase

 

No, positive deindustrialisation refers directly to a shift in employment created by productivity gain. By definition, it destroys your argument.

Here, you're merely referring to an additional means of acquiring specialisation according to comparative advantage.

 

Much of what you buy today is made by "robots", because people aren't very good a mind numbing repetitive tasks. Even China has a lot of automation, and will add much more.

What automation can't do is creativity, something people are pretty good at (better without public education), and most find it rewarding. Without creativity, what would the automation produce?

The nice thing is it is very difficult to have a creativity sweat shop, so the bosses of old get replaced with "the coach", someone that can inspire the creative.

We can go back to the glory days of the 50's, where unionized manufacturing paid well (and women didn't work, and minorities only did low paying menial tasks). Productivity was so low we didn't mind paying a lot for the few things that were available. Quality was crap - but then we didn't know better (thank the Japanese for listening to Demming, US businesses didn't).

 

Eliminate automation and we'll have the army of under-employed, or the over educated (anything past 6th grade).

 

well if there was no profit motive why bother?

why hire 1000s?

why work 80 hours?

why produce?

why not just be a democrat/fascist/commy/socialist and say hey im here so why dont i get equal?

production doesn't happen

yes socialism gave up as a productive strategy, capitalism won

now the idea is jsut leech offa capitalism with 0 production welfare jobs

 

Lots of arguments here... but i'll give you my take on it:

When you engage in trade, You deal with 3 values of an item. The person who sells you the item takes into account what it cost them to acquire the product to sell to you. If it's a raw material, it's the base value of their product, If it's a compound item resulting of production from other materials, like a car, it's the value of the pieces and the effort spent assembling it. this is the Intrinsic (1) value of the Item. Another variable is the market value for the product they produce. For example, a car of similar quality is being sold by a competitor. The difference between the value the competitor is selling it for, and the Intrinsic value would be the Extrinsic (2) value. This is an outside influence based on free market value representing the profit that can be made by the seller. The simplest logic would be that because of extrinsic forces, the end user gets screwed in the deal, but that's not really the case. In our example of a car, while the end user pays more than what the base value of the car should be, they are only worse off of it at the point of sale. Anything that the end user does with the car that has more meaning to them than the money they lost in the exchange is Expressed (3) value. For our example, if the end user can now accomplish more in their day, They gain value from the use of the car -- be it accomplishing more and make more money over time in return than the loss from the point of sale, or a sentimental value they have on the car by the luxury it provides them. This is a variable value distinct to an individual end user. And this value cannot be transferred.

So to break it down more simply. Intrinsic value is the Principal. The Extrinsic value is the Markup. and the Expressed Value is how useful or treasured something is to the consumer.

Also, I see you sorted out on resources, so i'll keep this part short. There are finite resources for any point in time, but near unlimited resources over a period of time. a few quick examples: Crops. While there are a finite number crops available to pick during a harvest, when expanded over time, the number becomes variable on how much time you are willing to allocate. Second example: natural resources (oil, coal, etc.). For a long time, there have been doomsday predictions of running out of fuels, with timetables expiring without the end of the world over and over. This is because of technology. Resources that weren't available at one time, due to technological limitations, have become available due to technological advances. So while only so much of a resource can be gotten to at any point in time, as time elapses, ways to get to those resources may become available.

 

profit is good

what most communists don't understand is that production makes the pie bigger

millions of janitors don't produce power grids and nuceal reactors or jet airlines

just as millions of unon idiots or teachers or firemen or police

there are all overpaid crony jobs

the free market would cure all thsi by making sure only producers got paid and rest have to beg for private charity or produce but the rapid capital buildup and factory creation would mean even dummies would quickly become massivly productive

mass produced housing and medical facilities would spread rapidly as private electric trains powered by nuclear generated electricity networked the usa

we would not be held back by mob liek idiots any longer and even the dummies could produce since tools build up as capital does

lack of taxing investing means most of population would invest extra capital to provide even more and more venture capital

hiring n firing would be simple and lawyer free and lawyers would rapidly be replaced by software

 

It's obvious that your overpaid crony teacher did not teach you English.