Robot Tax - Now

[mmm....shiney!]

Ahhhh so sweet of you to think of me!
Thanks for the offer but I'd just get the same robotic answers :lol:
Funny though you remind me of an old joke..
Why was the robot angry?? Because someone kept pushing his buttons

Curious, you thanked a post of Big A.D.'s which arrived at an erroneous conclusion regarding the function of "profit". Don't you want to defend yourself and your obviously own erroneous belief?

What are you? "the thanked a post" policeman now? You seem to think your the SS policeman as you comment on every thread and according to you everyone is wrong but your always right :lol: :lol:
Now just for the record and you can quote me any time you like....I'll say thanks to whatever I choose and certainly don't need to defend myself to you or your sidekick who thanks every post you make and vice versa
Have you not grasped the FACT that most people on here are sick of the same boring repetitive agenda that you post, if you value the debate so much as you say then why do you constantly and I mean constantly change the theme of every thread which then die off because of your intervention, discuss the title FFS not your agenda!
So when I said you just get the same robotic answers from you the point gets proven every time you post a reply. :lol:
Anyway credit where credit is due, your no where near as intelligent as you seem to think however your no dummy either but you sure act like one a lot of the time :/

What are you? The "Everyone's Sick of You shiney!" Policeman now? :lol:

You're avoiding the question. Why do you thank a post that has made an erroneous assumption about profit? What is your understanding of the function of profit?

 

[Big A.D.]

"What does the owner of the robot factory making 10,000 shoes a day do with the shoes?"

We're already able to make shoes, guitars, guns and prosthetic limbs using a single 3D printer.

Why on earth would a factory owner limit themselves to only making shoes?

 

[mmm....shiney!]

Why on earth would a factory owner limit themselves to only making shoes?

Competitive advantage?

Division of labour?

 

[bordsilver]

"What does the owner of the robot factory making 10,000 shoes a day do with the shoes?"

We're already able to make shoes, guitars, guns and prosthetic limbs using a single 3D printer.

Why on earth would a factory owner limit themselves to only making shoes?

That's the subsequent question that reinforces my point.

 

[JulieW]

Hawking said that the economic gap between the rich and the poor will continue to grow as more jobs are automated by machines, and the owners of said machines hoard them to create more wealth for themselves.

The insatiable thirst for capitalist accumulation bestowed upon humans by years of lies and terrible economic policy has affected technology in such a way that one of its major goals has become to replace human jobs.

If we do not take this warning seriously, we may face unfathomable corporate domination. If we let the same people who buy and sell our political system and resources maintain control of automated technology, then we'll be heading towards a very harsh reality.

Hawking's note from the discussion on Reddit:

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/co...ma_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv

Professor Hawking is absolutely right. The problem is not automation itself, but the system under which is being developed. The obsolete Capitalism is being used - by the elites who have the economic power - as an intermediate tool to the new Dark Ages of modern Feudalism through which they will take total control of everything. Under such a Dystopian scenery, technology will be used to secure the dominance of the few, instead of improving the lives of billions.

The worse of all, is that Western societies have been 'compromised' with a culture according to which we can't have a better society out of Capitalism. It is a culture expressed by the myth of Thatcherian 'There Is No Alternative', or, Fukuyama's 'End of History'. This culture has been planted deeply in the Western thought especially in the last one hundred years, and became a building block of the Western neo-rationalism.

This culture has generated the destructive neoliberalism, which the elites are using as intermediate stage, destroying everything that the majority has conquered against them, over the past decades. The elites are breaking the social contract with the majority, exactly because they don't need human labor anymore. Societies are still living inside the 'Matrix' of this culture. They appear to be unable to liberate themselves, break the chains and fight for their lives.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.nl/2015/10/stephen-hawking-confirms-problem-is.html

 

[mmm....shiney!]

Hawking is wrong.

Income inequality is not a symptom of an obsolete capitalist system. he does humanity a disservice when he opines about things he is ignorant about as he has such an influence and is highly respected.

I'm under the pump at the moment, when I get home I'll post a link explaining why income inequality is a non-issue.

 

[gingham69]

Curious, you thanked a post of Big A.D.'s which arrived at an erroneous conclusion regarding the function of "profit". Don't you want to defend yourself and your obviously own erroneous belief?

What are you? "the thanked a post" policeman now? You seem to think your the SS policeman as you comment on every thread and according to you everyone is wrong but your always right :lol: :lol:
Now just for the record and you can quote me any time you like....I'll say thanks to whatever I choose and certainly don't need to defend myself to you or your sidekick who thanks every post you make and vice versa
Have you not grasped the FACT that most people on here are sick of the same boring repetitive agenda that you post, if you value the debate so much as you say then why do you constantly and I mean constantly change the theme of every thread which then die off because of your intervention, discuss the title FFS not your agenda!
So when I said you just get the same robotic answers from you the point gets proven every time you post a reply. :lol:
Anyway credit where credit is due, your no where near as intelligent as you seem to think however your no dummy either but you sure act like one a lot of the time :/

What are you? The "Everyone's Sick of You shiney!" Policeman now? :lol:

You're avoiding the question. Why do you thank a post that has made an erroneous assumption about profit? What is your understanding of the function of profit?

I've heard I all now...You are the biggest hypocrite on hear as you avoid most questions put to you and deflect back to your boring agenda so no point responding to your questions unless you practice what you PREACH and boy do you do a lot of preaching!
Hawking is wrong hahaha everyone is wrong according to you or are you not reading all the posts as usual just snippets eh snippet man! :lol:

 

[mmm....shiney!]

Regarding the link to Hawking:

Firstly, income inequality would be a problem if wealth was static, if it was a "fixed pie" - but it's not. 1 Wealth increases. Our level of prosperity (and I'll use the terms prosperity and wealth interchangeably, mainly because "wealth": is easier to type ) is now the highest it has ever been on a global scale. 2 We are now wealthier than at any point in the whole of human history. This means that we are now able to meet more of our needs and desires than ever before. Wealth is not the amount of money we have, it is our ability to satisfy our needs. Donald Trump may be richer than me, but as a whole, he and I are able to satisfy just as many needs as each other, he can do it with a bit more class than I can, but I also have running water in my house, as he does, I have electricity, as he does, I can take holidays, travel in a car etc etc. He just gets to do it in more style than me. There's every chance I'll live as long as Trump because I am able to satisfy most of my needs in a similar manner to him. He and I are similarly prosperous, in fact, this is true for the vast majority of nations in the world, we are living longer and healthier lives, we are better off now than at any point in human history. 3

Secondly, income inequality is a reflection of this increasing prosperity. Rather than being a symptom of a corrupt capitalist system in Western nations, income inequality has arisen as a direct result of a growing capacity to improve productivity and drive consumer capacity. Increasing consumer capacity to satisfy demand has resulted in those entrepreneurs who are best able to satisfy that demand reaping the benefits of higher profits. But that hasn't come at the expense of individuals or families, as it would if the wealth pie was fixed. 4 As Chelsea Follett also points out:

Humanity, as this chart shows, produced more economic output over the last two centuries than in all of the previous centuries combined. And this explosion of wealth-creation led to a massive decrease in the rate of poverty. In 1820, more than 90 per cent of the world population lived on less than $2 a day and more than 80 per cent lived on less than $1 a day (adjusted for inflation and differences in purchasing power). By 2015, less than 10 per cent of people lived on less than $1.90 a day, the World Bank's current official definition of extreme poverty.

Not only has the percentage of people living in poverty declined, but the number of people in poverty has fallen as well despite massive population growth. There are also more people alive who are not in penury than there have ever been. From 1820 to 2015, the number of people in extreme poverty fell from over a billion to 700 million, while the number of people better off than that rose from a mere 60 million to 6.6 billion. (Extreme poverty is again defined here as living on $1.90 a day, adjusted for inflation and differences in purchasing power.)

Globally, poverty is about a quarter of what it was in 1990. And the graph below from Johan Norberg's excellent book, Progress: 10 Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, illustrates how the decline of extreme poverty has raised living standards and brought about other tangible improvements. As poverty has lessened, so have child mortality, illiteracy, and even pollution in wealthy countries all are now less than half of what they were in 1990. Hunger has also become much rarer. 5

Thirdly, it is all too easy to conflate economic power and political power. The real challenge facing governments is not managing ways to maintain or encourage economic inequality, but to enhance political and economic freedom. To quote the Nobel laureate Angus Deaton:

Asking whether inequality is bad for economic growth is, Deaton says, a "simple-minded question". Yet inequality manifested in wealthy people or corporations buying control of government is a different matter. "That surely is a catastrophe. So I have come to think that it's the inequality that comes through rent-seeking [the use of wealth to influence politics for selfish gain] that is the crux of the matter." 6

And lastly, data compiled about income inequality is a snapshot in time. It suggests that there is no movement of people/individuals among the varying levels of income or economic fortune. The truth is different. The wealthiest individuals and families do not always remain the wealthiest, because of economic mobility ie the capacity for individuals to move from one band of economic fortune to another. Whether this is down because of failed business ventures or personal tragedies, or higher because they are better meeting the needs of consumers through innovation or productivity improvements. Just because someone possesses are fortune now, doesn't mean they will always possess a fortune. 7 and 8

Edit to add: If we let governments interfere in the free-markets, then Hawking may end up being correct. But it won't be because technology drives ever increasing income inequality, it'll be because governments will look after their mates. Hawking has got his concerns about a Laissez-faire system, and his faith in the State arse-about. He should be railing against Crony capitalism, not Capitalism.

 

[JulieW]

A comment on the above Hawking link.

It took the better part of the last 250-300 years since the conception of this thing we call capitalism to even begin to approach the level of human decency that we westerners take for granted as the norm. Most of the social improvements in fact date no further back than the end of World War 2 or the 1850's at the earliest. Before then we had at least a thousand years of mediaeval absolutism before things began to change with the coming of the industrial and scientific revolutions. If we judge the wait for the new neo-feudalism being imposed upon us to wither and die by past history we will be waiting a very long time indeed before the human race sees the proverbial light at the end of a very long tunnel.

with which I concur.

It amazes me, the casual disregard by unions and workers, looking for their next 3% annual pay rise, for the rights won with blood and suffering in the past.

 

[bordsilver]

When production becomes cheap, employment transitions and shifts toward creativity and service. The fact that we can have professions like actor, author and musician is because of labor saving devices. 200 years ago, professions like landscapers were unavailable to anyone who wasn't a landed noble and, if the technology somehow existed, would be the only ones with television and internet. Even things like professional physicists weren't much of a thing long ago, with few, very wealthy people capable of engaging in it.

Automation feeds on itself. We automate manual effort most of us hate doing, we free up more life enhancing functions and more energy for exploring the mysteries of the universe. When we stopped digging around in the dirt to keep ourselves from starving over the winter, we created factories. Now we're starting to free up our time from menial tasks of inserting Part A into Slot B 300 times a day in some factory and now we have people who are capable of gathering together and creating entire television shows on YouTube for us to enjoy.

Star Trek creates a rather interesting example of what we would likely end up doing if someone invented nearly limitless energy and figured out how to run E=MC^2 in reverse to create near limitless matter in a replicator. We'd end up busying ourselves with whatever made us happy instead of wasting our time in an office.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

It amazes me, the casual disregard by unions and workers, looking for their next 3% annual pay rise, for the rights won with blood and suffering in the past.

Value is subjective.

How do the rights won with blood and suffering of a Union picket line in the 30's or the 70's, demanding say a 40 hour week or sickness benefits translate to the needs of a worker in the 21stC with different objectives and values? If a modern worker wants to trade off sickness benefits for a pay rise, or penalty rates for greater employment security then an employment "contract" signed by a bunch of long retired or dead workers at a previous point in history should present no impediment to the modern worker.

 

[Big A.D.]

When production becomes cheap, employment transitions and shifts toward creativity and service. The fact that we can have professions like actor, author and musician is because of labor saving devices. 200 years ago, professions like landscapers were unavailable to anyone who wasn't a landed noble and, if the technology somehow existed, would be the only ones with television and internet. Even things like professional physicists weren't much of a thing long ago, with few, very wealthy people capable of engaging in it.

Automation feeds on itself. We automate manual effort most of us hate doing, we free up more life enhancing functions and more energy for exploring the mysteries of the universe. When we stopped digging around in the dirt to keep ourselves from starving over the winter, we created factories. Now we're starting to free up our time from menial tasks of inserting Part A into Slot B 300 times a day in some factory and now we have people who are capable of gathering together and creating entire television shows on YouTube for us to enjoy.

Star Trek creates a rather interesting example of what we would likely end up doing if someone invented nearly limitless energy and figured out how to run E=MC^2 in reverse to create near limitless matter in a replicator. We'd end up busying ourselves with whatever made us happy instead of wasting our time in an office.

The society depicted in Star Trek is blatantly socialist, bordering on communist. The government controls production, distribution and just about every other aspect of the economy.

So what comes first; the unlimited energy and space-time bending technology, or people being freed from life's minutiae of boring and largely pointless jobs so they can devote their time to developing the unlimited energy and space-time bending technology?

And to say we'd likely end up living in a Star Trek kind of world is a ridiculous assumption. We're still having trouble deciding whether we should stop smothering our planet in polluting gasses, so we've got a long way to go before we get to relatively complicated concepts like being able to have cool stuff made by a replicator.

 

[Stoic Phoenix]

It amazes me, the casual disregard by unions and workers, looking for their next 3% annual pay rise, for the rights won with blood and suffering in the past.

What amazes me is that people still sign up to be part of a union.
Most of the union delegates I have had dealings with are more interested in where they will get their next free meal from than the workers they are supposedly meant to represent.
In the last decade or so in this country all they do is provide false hope all whilst funneling money away from the saps whom think the unions actually give a toss about anything other than collecting dues and spending them frivolously.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

^ Unions need to be more consumer responsive.

 

[Big A.D.]

And lastly, data compiled about income inequality is a snapshot in time. It suggests that there is no movement of people/individuals among the varying levels of income or economic fortune. The truth is different. The wealthiest individuals and families do not always remain the wealthiest, because of economic mobility ie the capacity for individuals to move from one band of economic fortune to another. Whether this is down because of failed business ventures or personal tragedies, or higher because they are better meeting the needs of consumers through innovation or productivity improvements. Just because someone possesses are fortune now, doesn't mean they will always possess a fortune. 7 and 8

Inter-generational economic mobility is measurably lower in the U.S. and U.K. (where things are more capitalist) than it is in Nordic countries (where things are more socialist).

It's not just a "snapshot in time", it's an area that's been studied for decades.

 

[Big A.D.]

^ Unions need to be more consumer responsive.

If we followed your main line of argument, unions should be advocating for their members' by getting them to accept lower pay and fewer conditions on the basis that they're more employable to entrepreneurs who prefer to spend their capital on cheap labour rather than expensive labour.

Kinda like with the proposed cuts to award wages. We'll have more jobs! Sure, they'll be shittier jobs and fewer people will be able to earn enough from them to survive, but there will be more jobs.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

And lastly, data compiled about income inequality is a snapshot in time. It suggests that there is no movement of people/individuals among the varying levels of income or economic fortune. The truth is different. The wealthiest individuals and families do not always remain the wealthiest, because of economic mobility ie the capacity for individuals to move from one band of economic fortune to another. Whether this is down because of failed business ventures or personal tragedies, or higher because they are better meeting the needs of consumers through innovation or productivity improvements. Just because someone possesses are fortune now, doesn't mean they will always possess a fortune. 7 and 8

Inter-generational economic mobility is measurably lower in the U.S. and U.K. (where things are more capitalist) than it is in Nordic countries (where things are more socialist).

It's not just a "snapshot in time", it's an area that's been studied for decades.

The data collected is a snapshot in time eg if Oxfam says in 2007 that 1% of the world's population own 99% of the world's resources and then in 2017 says the same thing - it's not the same 1%. The data is a snapshot of the distribution of wealth at the time it was collected and collated, being in the top 1% of the wealthiest in 1997 doesn't mean you'll be there 10 years later as Oxfam always like to insinuate.

Kinda like with the proposed cuts to award wages. We'll have more jobs! Sure, they'll be shittier jobs and fewer people will be able to earn enough from them to survive, but there will be more jobs.

Better to have them at the mercy of the government on unemployment benefits and other welfare handouts rather than earning money and working toward greater financial independence hey Big A.D.?

 

[Big A.D.]

Inter-generational economic mobility is measurably lower in the U.S. and U.K. (where things are more capitalist) than it is in Nordic countries (where things are more socialist).

It's not just a "snapshot in time", it's an area that's been studied for decades.

The data collected is a snapshot in time eg if Oxfam says in 2007 that 1% of the world's population own 99% of the world's resources and then in 2017 says the same thing - it's not the same 1%. The data is a snapshot of the distribution of wealth at the time it was collected and collated, being in the top 1% of the wealthiest in 1997 doesn't mean you'll be there 10 years later as Oxfam always like to insinuate.

Yes, I'm aware of that (and presumably Oxfam is too) but I'm not talking about cross-sectional studies.

We have longitudinal studies on inter-generational economic mobility as well, and they show that in more capitalist counties, the best predictor of whether you'll move up in the world (in relative terms) is whether your parents were rich or not. That is, you're move likely to achieve the "American Dream" of financial success through hard work in Sweden than you are in America.

And yes, in absolute terms, most people are better off than their parents were (for which you could also read "wealthier" if you were inclined to push the English language to it's limits), but when you factor in regional differences like approaches to government and social norms you do have to question why it's easier to improve your economic status in "socialist" countries where there is a greater focus on the collective good than it is is "capitalist" counties where the greater focus in on the individual good.

It would appear, based on the data, that "everyone figures it out for themselves" isn't necessarily the best system for allowing any given individual to actually do well for themselves.

And, in the more capitalist-leaning countries, that presents a problem when large numbers of people aren't necessary for an improvement in the quality of living standards.

Kinda like with the proposed cuts to award wages. We'll have more jobs! Sure, they'll be shittier jobs and fewer people will be able to earn enough from them to survive, but there will be more jobs.

Better to have them at the mercy of the government on unemployment benefits and other welfare handouts rather than earning money and working toward greater financial independence hey Big A.D.?

It's not a binary choice.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

Inter-generational economic mobility is measurably lower in the U.S. and U.K. (where things are more capitalist) than it is in Nordic countries (where things are more socialist).

It's not just a "snapshot in time", it's an area that's been studied for decades.

The data collected is a snapshot in time eg if Oxfam says in 2007 that 1% of the world's population own 99% of the world's resources and then in 2017 says the same thing - it's not the same 1%. The data is a snapshot of the distribution of wealth at the time it was collected and collated, being in the top 1% of the wealthiest in 1997 doesn't mean you'll be there 10 years later as Oxfam always like to insinuate.

Yes, I'm aware of that (and presumably Oxfam is too) but I'm not talking about cross-sectional studies.

Well I was.

And yes, in absolute terms, most people are better off than their parents were (for which you could also read "wealthier" if you were inclined to push the English language to it's limits), but when you factor in regional differences like approaches to government and social norms you do have to question why it's easier to improve your economic status in "socialist" countries where there is a greater focus on the collective good than it is is "capitalist" counties where the greater focus in on the individual good.

So what polices do these scandinavian countries have and implement that you attribute to encouraging inter-generational economic mobility more successfully than other Western style economies?

It's not a binary choice.

It is for employers.

 

[Big A.D.]

Yes, I'm aware of that (and presumably Oxfam is too) but I'm not talking about cross-sectional studies.

Well I was.

Well, there's more to it than that.

And yes, in absolute terms, most people are better off than their parents were (for which you could also read "wealthier" if you were inclined to push the English language to it's limits), but when you factor in regional differences like approaches to government and social norms you do have to question why it's easier to improve your economic status in "socialist" countries where there is a greater focus on the collective good than it is is "capitalist" counties where the greater focus in on the individual good.

So what polices do these scandinavian countries have and implement that you attribute to encouraging inter-generational economic mobility more successfully than other Western style economies?

Put simply, they use a capitalist economic order because it largely serves their social values well and, where it doesn't, they don't mind intervening and using other methods that produce the outcomes they want.

And on plenty of objective measures - Gini co-efficient, GDP per capita, Human Development Index, general "are you happy with your life?" surveys - they do pretty well out of it.

Having well defined social values is going to be more important than faith in any given economic theory, even if that school of economic thought sort of gets around to addressing the social values...in a round-about sort of way, providing you ignore a few things and don't pay much attention to some others.

It's not a binary choice.

It is for employers.

Speaking as an employer, the employer's interests aren't the most important factor in maintaining a well-functioning society.