There’s a review of Eric Drexler’s new book
I don’t agree with this (I assume that it’s his own opinion, not Eric’s):
APM will also make space colonization imperative, but for different reasons than for Eric Drexler’s original quest to find a solution to the impending global crisis posed by The Limits to Growth. What will the millions of people now involved in mining, manufacturing, distribution, retailing, transportation, and other services do if much less of these services will be required and most of them could be performed by robots? How will people earn a living if they can buy a desktop factory—something like a super 3D printer—and can produce most of what they need at home and no longer need to shop at Wal-Mart or Amazon? If people aren’t working and earning a good income they will no longer be able to buy stuff. Henry Ford recognized the problem and chose to pay his people well so that they could afford to buy his cars. By choosing to industrialize the Moon and colonize space, thousands and ultimately millions can be put to work earning a good income.
I think that this technology will enable space settlement, but I don’t see how in itself space settlement creates jobs, particularly for those who are becoming unemployable because they’re on the wrong side of the bell curve. That’s a big problem coming down the pike, and space isn’t a solution to it.
He seems to think that robots doing all the scut-work is a bad thing?
Time for Robert Anton Wilson’s solution to this – once things get to the point where automation handles pretty much all production labor of the non-artistic sort, you simply pay people not to work, using that improved productivity to pay for it.
(It’s not libertarian, as such, but it solves the problem of “keeping the permanently unemployable – because nobody needs to work to produce a cornucopia of goods – from rioting or simply starving to death” – and in such a world of automated plenty the negatives of a non-libertarian solution like that are also minimized.
The “problem” [difficulty, but one it’s great to have, along the lines of “where am I going to store all my incredible wealth?”] of what boils down to a post-scarcity world – which is what the “robots doing all the scut work” ends up approximating – requires new economic assumptions.)
Time for Robert Anton Wilson’s solution to this – once things get to the point where automation handles pretty much all production labor of the non-artistic sort, you simply pay people not to work, using that improved productivity to pay for it.
That’s largely what we have now with an ever-expanding “safety net” where millions of people never work but get paid by those who still work. In effect, those who work are slaves to those who don’t. This isn’t a good thing.
Good article on this from last weekend.
Paul Krugman’s solution, a stronger safety net, is equally unsatisfying. I’m not arguing for or against a safety net here; I’m just pointing out that it won’t do as an actual substitute for the majority of the population having jobs.
For starters, it is politically difficult to imagine a really large class of people who simply permanently live off the state. The safety net is rooted in human instincts about reciprocal exchange. Of course, it isn’t all that reciprocal–the majority of people who are net taxpayers are extremely unlikely to collect much in the way of food stamps, TANF, or even unemployment insurance. Nonetheless, the moral arguments are founded in the premise that these benefits are for emergencies, and anyone can have an emergency. They will lose political support if you have one group of people paying taxes, and a different group of people who can expect to live their entire life on the dole.
Such an arrangement would also be socially toxic. Being out of work is astonishingly bad for your state of mind, your social relations, and even basic skills like math and reading. Various theorists have imagined unleashing a wave of creativity as people invest their time in non-market production, but it seems to me that these people are inferring far too much from their circle of acquaintance. Given that these people are mostly public intellectuals of some sort, that circle is filled with strongly self-motivated people with ferocious work ethics and fierce competitive instincts. This does not describe most of the population, who after all have more leisure time than they used to, but fewer hobbies or socially oriented activities. Most of the extra time will be filled by watching television or fiddling around on the internet.
On any given day, this is undoubtedly preferable to a union job at a midcentury factory. But over a lifetime, it won’t work. It won’t work for the people on the dole, and it won’t work for society. Perhaps a stronger safety net is better than nothing. But it is not enough.
There’s no such thing as a ‘post scarcity world’. Doesn’t exist, can’t exist, never will exist. No matter how many resources you can imagine, I can imagine a use for more.
And the productive people are not going to sit back and hand over those resources to people who’ll waste them when they have much better uses themselves.
“Henry Ford recognized the problem and chose to pay his people well so that they could afford to buy his cars.”
Not this liberal trope again. It didn’t make any sense when my fourth-grade teacher indoctrinated her class with it, and it doesn’t make any sense now.
Even a fourth grader could figure out that the only way Henry Ford would break even on such a scheme would be if every Ford employee spent every extra dollar he earned on Ford vehicles. Then Ford would break even on cash flow, but he’d still lose the cost of producing the employee cars. It would worse if any of the employees spent his money on anything other than Ford vehicles. Such a scheme is a guaranteed money loser.
No, the real reason Ford paid so much over the prevailing hourly wage was that his assembly line was grueling, dehumanizing work, and the average employee quit after just a few weeks (I think it was three weeks) when Ford paid the prevailing hourly wage. This slowed down the assembly line and led to quality problems. By dramatically increasing the hourly wage, Ford was able to keep his average employee for months instead (I think it was eight months post-increase). This sped up the line and reduced quality problems to such an extent that it was cheaper than paying the prevailing hourly wage.
That’s why Ford did it — to make more money — not some socialist feel-good scheme.
Oh, about the gist of the post…
This line of reasoning may have been excusable two hundred years ago during the early days of the industrial revolution. After all, an agrarian civilization with 95% of all labor being in agriculture was all that was ever known to history. But having the recent historical record show a mass transition from agricultural labor to industrial labor during the industrial revolution, it should be obvious that a similar transition from industrial labor to informational labor will occur during the information revolution.
Just because during the agrarian civilization most people could only afford food, clothing, shelter, and little else didn’t mean they didn’t want industrial goods once they became available and affordable, so too the fact that most people in the industrial civilization spend most of their income on industrial goods doesn’t mean they won’t want large quantities of informational goods once they become available and affordable.
The only way productivity improvements lead to large-scale unemployment is if no one ever wants more.
OK, there’s a second way — if government steps in and makes the transition difficult or impossible. Articles like this* make such government action more likely, not less, so it must be countered.
* directed at the original author, not our host.
Rand,
As actual production and manufacturing work begins in Earth orbit, there will rapidly develop a labor market for teleoperators of all sorts to staff those operations (presumably on a 24/7 basis, so perhaps 6 to 8 times as many workers could be accommodated – with the added expense needing to be factored into the final price of developed goods or operations costs). This will require training programs, which will have the effect of moving the Bell Curve apex leftward.
The Bell Curve is a floating point of measure, not a fixed barrier that confines us.
With probably a lot of what Sigivald noted above along with general acceptance of the concept that owning an APM device personally may well become the default standard definition of “worker”.
Power, pharmaceuticals, and chip fab are still the only actual products I’ve thought even vaguely doable thus far.
Then there’s research, exploration, and tourism where the ‘returned product’ isn’t tangible.
Power still seems like the easiest nut to crack. But beams still have issues, photocells still not my favorite approach, heat engines require thinking bigger, no space elevator, and no ‘fuel’ currently makes sense to send back.
Left off the other are I intended to include:
So one other is: Supplies for everyone else aka the only known way to get rich in a gold rush. 😀
What I see is a profound misunderstanding of dynamics and motivation.
The reason people are unemployed is not because there are no jobs. The reason people are unemployed is because they can survive being unemployed. Take away that which allows them to survive unemployed and suddenly you will see everyone (with rare exception) working. This has nothing to do with the availability of technology. All that does is change what jobs.
If unemployment worked the way most people seem to think it does we’d have large cyclical mass die offs on a regular basis.
Michael Kent’s is a perfect example (and thank you for providing it) of how the correct answer is hidden behind what everybody knows.
I agree. There are always things people will pay others to do, it’s just a question of whether they’re willing to pay an amount those others are willing to work for. And if those people can produce most things they want at home with a 3D printer, they need to earn far less to pay for the resources required to do so.
The real problem is the socialist underclass who are unable to do anything useful after a life on welfare. One of the old solutions was to hire them as servants, but no-one in their right mind would want a violent and lazy thug living in their house.
That’s for sure.
The life dynamic never seems to be considered. You start out a naked baby. You get your first job. You gain experience and skills to get better jobs. You have a certain productive life. You retire. You die.
Go to a Chilean Social Security model and what happens?
Although I very much take your point (I’ve read Adam Smith and understand how creative destruction works), I don’t think you appreciate the full extent of the problem.
Informational labor is different than agricultural or industrial labor in a number of ways. The key differences are that it only needs to be done once, and it wants to be free.
Consider the MP3. Once Nirvana has recorded Smells Like Teen Spirit, they never have to do it again and the marginal cost of production is zero. What musicians are finding is that it’s really hard to make a living this way.
Or consider Microsoft. They used to be the most powerful company in the world. But then Linux came along and MSFT had to keep their prices low enough to not drive users away, but they’ve lost anyway to *NIX-based OS X and Android. They’re a zombie at this point, feeding off the enterprise market, but even there victims are moving to iPads not Surfaces. Software wants to be free, so Apple and Google give it away for free and sell other stuff instead.
So what happens when more industries move to this model? Why buy the latest Cadillac when the free open source 3D printed car made by retired automotive engineers in their free time is 90% as good and costs only materials? Or why get your 3D car plans from Ford for $$$ when you can get it from Google for free as long as you promise to use Google Maps when driving around town?
Why hire an accountant when the AI in your tax software can read all your financial transactions for the year and compute your maximum possible deduction in 20 seconds? Or why even do that, when the IRS AI can do it and just hand you an itemized bill? (Privacy issues aside)
Basically the issue is that even computer programmers and designers aren’t needed more than once in the informational economy. The few people who can consistently invent better mousetraps will make a good living, but everyone else will be in their weird limbo where they have access to all the world’s information and 3D printers, but no job to even pay rent with.
The few people who own capital projects that cannot be outsourced will remain immensely wealthy. Like Google. Their main asset is their Search and Advertising Engine. There’s only one in the entire world, and no one can reproduce it. It will print money for decades. But even Apple is vulnerable to Android and OEM hardware.
Nothing lasts forever. Things change. But people will always want the labor of others. No machine can completely replace that.
Nirvana isn’t entitled to money for nothing (that presumed marginal cost) forever. They can still earn from a live concert. They can still let their money earn for when they can’t do live concerts.
Microsoft will not be able to hold their monopoly together forever? I weep for them.
If some engineer can make a Cadillac better than an established firm? That’s great news. Welcome to the land of the free. Is that engineer going to produce 1000 of them in his garage? Not unless he becomes another big company competing with the original.
Why hire an accountant? Trust.
Designers aren’t needed more than once in the informational economy. They never have been in any economy. Or we could say, they’ve always been part of the information economy since the invention of the wheel.
Computer programmers? The way the industry is screwed up they will need programmers forever with the need always growing. The only possibility of this changing is if the industry matures which it shows no sign of doing… ever.
That last paragraph is all about the lawyers. Now there’s a group that could use a downsizing.
Software wants to be free, so Apple and Google give it away for free and sell other stuff instead.
Some programmers choose to give away their work for free. In a way, they’re like professional construction workers who donate some of their labor for Habitat for Humanity. Most programmers have to work for a living like everyone else and don’t appreciate their work being stolen by those who believe “software wants to be free.”
Apple includes the price of their software in the products they sell. Apple spends a lot of money developing that software (good geeks don’t come cheap) and didn’t become the international powerhouse it is by giving away their stuff for free. You pay a premium for Apple products in exchange for good design and software updates.
Google follows a different business model. When the service is free, you are their product. Google gives away some neat stuff but mines a lot of personal information on people and sells that to advertisers.
Larry, are you trying to tell us that the laws of economics can not be violated?
Why that’s heresy. Our elected representatives won’t stand for such talk.
We’re still have more than a third of the world’s labor force working in agriculture https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
As everything except human labor gets cheap, people will be able to buy service from others and specialize with all of the excess. A day’s labor worked will get you, on average, a day of others’ labor, but of course there will be some who are in huge demand and others who choose to not be in the labor force at all who will still get a tiny bit of attention. If some service industries hollow out, others will employ everyone else and we’ll invent new kinds of services. Bear of a transition though.
Despite what you hear in the media or coming out of theorists and armchair commentators like Eric Drexler, the “molecular manufacturing” brand of nanotechnology isn’t happening. The most actual work that has been done towards molecular manufacturing is the development of multiprobe atomic force microscopes, which have taken 30 years to become a useful product for bioimaging. They’re still inadequate for bootstrapping molecular manufacturing. There’s also been some tooling around with DNA folding for self-assembly of nanoscale parts, but so far no-one has a clue how this is useful.
Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle continue to do interesting theoretical work but there’s precious little funding available even for that.
The idea that some day we’re all going to have desktop nanofactories which can make anything we can design is a fantasy with no basis in reality. It’s on par with sensationalized views of artificial intelligence.
Not sure why the 3D printer would cost so many manufacturing jobs on Earth but then manufacturing in space would be done with humans.
Sure, there are other jobs people could do in space but there are other jobs they could do on Earth too.
And if there are jobs to be done in space, why would you hire people who can’t get jobs on Earth when you could hire the people who do have jobs on Earth and the skills you’re looking for?
Or as Thomas Sowell might say, thinking of people in classes ignores dynamic growth:
People should grow in skills for better jobs while saving for when they leave their productive years.
the impending global crisis posed by The Limits to Growth.
I can’ t imagine anyone using The Limits to Growth as an argument for anything other than the perils of computer modeling. (quick synopsis: we are doomed and there is nothing you can do about it)