Posted on 03/22/2015 9:12:40 AM PDT by artichokegrower
It’s now possible to sell a new product to hundreds of millions of people without needing many, if any, workers to produce or distribute it.
At its prime in 1988, Eastman Kodak, the iconic American photography company, had more than 145,000 employees. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy.
The same year Kodak went under, Instagram, the world’s newest photo company, had 13 employees serving 30 million customers.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I quick search on the Internet tells me Robert Reich has a net work of $4 million.
Alas Babylon!’s net worth is underwater, at about -$250,000 (mortgage).
Therefore, I am all in favor of redistributing Robert Reich’s wealth to Alas Babylon!
Fork it over, Shorty!
Government regulations do not cause loss of jobs to automation, though they may either slow or accelerate it.
Think about it this way. You own a taxi company. What does it cost you in salary and benefits to keep a taxi operating 24/7? $200,000/year? $300,000/year? I don’t really know.
Imagine you have an option with your next purchase of a new taxi to have it be self-operating. Cost: $100,000 additional, though that will go down over time.
The computer system will last three years and will require perhaps $25,000/year maintenance (probably very much on the high side).
Total cost for human drivers (using $250,000/year) = $750,000 over the three years.
Total cost for the computer-driven vehicle: $175,000 for the same three years.
That kind of financial incentive has nothing to do with government policy and everything to do with the workings of the free market.
Let’s assume I have a moral or ideological aversion to using computer-driven taxis. My competition doesn’t. I will shortly be out of business, since my overhead is a multiple of their’s. I follow their lead, or I go away.
Any charter member of the Clinton Crime Family with a net worth in the single digit millions must have a gambling or drug problem, LOL.
Just thought of an example Reich could have used but didn’t.
50 years ago the world’s largest and most valuable company was GM. I don’t know how many people they employed, directly and indirectly, around the world, but it was doubtless tens if not hundreds of thousands.
Today the world’s most valuable company is Apple. Much more valuable than GM ever was.
Apple employees thousands, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands. Those who work directly for Apple do very well indeed, those who work for their contractors much less so.
The point is simply in the ratio between number of employees and creation of wealth.
Think about how many used to be engaged in agriculture in the 1800s compared to now, and know just how much more food is produced today compared to back then.
Government regulations do not cause loss of jobs to automation, though they may either slow or accelerate it.
They raise the stakes.
Men will always find ways to overcome government imposed hurdles, but it certainly reduces the number of potential attempts.
Granted, some of those hurdles have led to great advances, but those advances would have likely occur either way.
Absolutely!
On an real basis, the price of food has gone down tremendously. Even when most of what we eat is prepared and therefore much more expensive than it need be, we spend a much smaller proportion of income on food than ever before.
Maybe my worries are simply modern Ludditism. We’ll figure out new and better ways for people to provide value and feel needed. As we have for the last 200 years. I certainly hope so!
But I’m really, really skeptical. Past performance does not necessarily predict future performance. And computers and robots are not just expansions on the machines of the 19th and 20th. They are at least to some extent replacements for our minds, the factor that is otherwise unique to humans.
I’ve been saying for a long time it will become a huge problem. Idle hands are the Devil’s Playground. There used to be plenty of jobs for those who were not all that intelligent, and those are drying up, then what? I don’t have any answers frankly. But one thing I do know is that any attempts by government to try to fix it, will only make things worse.
Think about how many used to be engaged in agriculture in the 1800s compared to now, and know just how much more food is produced today compared to back then.
Is necessity still the mother of invention?
I agree.
My point is simply that some conservatives seem to think that if government got out of the economy, all would be well.
But IMO the free market is heading in a direction that will be very much to the detriment of most people.
The market is not God. It has no morality or heart. It is simply a messy way of figuring out the most efficient ways of doing certain things.
If the most efficient way of running a business is to replace people with computer and robots with no real concern about what they will do henceforth, than that is what will be done. Any individual business, in fact, has no choice other than to do so, since if it doesn’t competitors will destroy it.
For some centuries the market has in general worked for the benefit of mankind. There is no guarantee that it will always do so. And I, obviously, think we’re heading into a period where it definitely won’t.
Redistribution by the government is just a forced taking. It is using MIGHT to make a right. I am totally against such manifestations of raw power, because governments are made up of people who very often—if not usually—have a lust power and fortune hiding behind the desire to do good. So I would suspect that it is power over me and lust for my fortune they are after—not a real desire to help the less fortunate. And frankly, where ever redistribution by the government is tried, the less fortunate are not helped. It is the “helpers” who benefit, not the poor.
Now in a world where things can be had for practically no effort, then those less fortunate get their share of these things too. It is often pointed out that our American poor have things a king of centuries ago would have paid a hefty ransom for. Flat screen TVs, cell phones, computers, free food, housing assistance, etc. Right now getting those things to the poor involves taking them from others...
But, what if they can be produced for nothing by machines? Food synthesized from garbage, for example. Homes printed by 3D printers. Electricity provided by fusion. Why would someone need to work a JOB? Why not, and even stupid people, become like the Eloi of H. G. Wells The Time Machine?
Human rights as defined in the Declaration of Independence set three things: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Really, that’s all a government should ensure.
The focus of human aspiration will switch to the pursuit of the “knowledge of G‑d.” Our hearts will evolve to follow our brains. People will become less materialistic and more spiritual.
This concept was visited to a certain extent in the 1950s Sci-Fi movie Forbidden Planet. Where society had finally created a machine that could produce anything in any quantity that was controlled by each beings brain. “Creation by mere thought”. In the story however all beings from this planet were super intelligent. There is no mention of lesser intellect. Check it out if you have never seen the movie. It does drive home the point that in reality nothing in our universe is scarce.
Interesting.
O ye, of little faith.
While I share many of your concerns and have no doubt of the messy nature of free markets, there is no other viable solution.
It’s either “Top Down” or “Bottom up”.
Top down restricts the individual to the benefit of what has been established. Bottom up, allows for substantially more choices.
Now, if we think people are too stupid to make their own decisions in their lives when you consider how utterly ignorant our culture has become?, well I digress.
Messy. Yes.
Pretty much my point. Though there still has to be some kind of a mechanism by which people initially acquire the equipment you mention.
This is, BTW, pretty much the world of Star Trek. They have more or less gotten beyond the need for money. Which makes sense, when you think about it. Money is a medium of exchange. What do you need a medium of exchange for if everybody already has everything?
The Eloi weren't entirely a positive role model, you know. :)
More importantly, we've been running experiments for 50 years now on taking large numbers of people, removing them from productive economic activity but maintaining them at what is by historical standards quite a comfortable standard of living. Indian reservations, British slums, American ghettoes, etc.
Do conditions in these areas seem very Eloi-like to you? Or are they harsh, brutal and cruel? Do the inhabitants devote their lives to creating beauty and music, for which the indisputably have the necessary leisure? Or to crime and predation, mostly on each other?
BTW, the girls in England victimized by Muslim gangs come from exactly this background, in which quite possibly nobody in the family has held a job, except perhaps briefly, in two generations.
IOW, freedom from a JOB does not appear to be an unmixed blessing.
Recently saw a Quebecois movie, Seducing Doctor Lewis, about a tiny fishing village that couldn't fish anymore. They were all getting what was basically welfare, so they were okay economically. But they wanted JOBS. To get a factory they had to recruit a doctor. The story is about their deception of him.
Does a surprisingly good job of demonstrating why a welfare check is no replacement for a JOB.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366532/
The real problem is government regulations that kill entrepreneurialism, hiring and risk taking. You could have the dawn of a million businesses if it weren’t bloody hell to get started.
The market is a way of efficiently allocating scarce resources.
What happens to it when resources are no longer scarce?
I’m a huge fan of the free market, I just am unsure that it will continue to be a friend of mankind. Although I’m pretty sure it will be, for at least the near future, better than the statist alternative.
I just worry that the free market will kill itself and leave us with nothing but the statist alternative.
Right. I notice that in the world of Star Trek everybody in the Federation appears to be of above-average intelligence.
You do realize this is all at root a question of what the purpose of human life is? When material needs are provided with little or no effort, it leaves humans face to face with that question. History seems to indicate most do a lousy job of answering it.
IMHO, it comes down to this.
You either have “Faith” in your fellow man, or you put your Faith in Government.
Liberals put their faith in Government.
Conservatives, in their fellow man.
Liberals don’t trust people because they don’t trust themselves. They NEED authority.
Conservatives, on the other hand, have a foundation for determining “right from wrong”.
Conservatives have confidence.
Liberals embrace uncertainty.
I think your last sentence is backwards.
Liberals are terrified by uncertainty. That is why they want to government to plan the future for us, to remove as much uncertainty as possible.
Ignoring that it’s simply not possible for the government or any other group to do so.
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