Comment by TomMckenny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TomMckenny | Hacker News Reader

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Absolutely. Automation will increase net wealth.

But I do not believe everyone will quickly find an even better job when a factory closes because 1) popular perception aside, that is not what happened in the industrial revolution and 2) it is not what happened with globalization 3) it is suspiciously pleasant and easy belief for those who are least likely to be hurt. It's also a bit magical thinking.

And if wage depression from globalization has caused damaging ethnic and nationalist backlashes, it's not hard to imagine the multiplying effect that will come with reckless displacement due to automation.

Because people who have a continuing or sudden drop in quality of life due to events beyond their control are not going to blame themselves forever and are not going to be convinced by a rising GDP graph that leaves them further behind.

Great would be a society that everyone feels vested in and an economy that everyone can participate in. But it's hard to imagine any such plan being invented let alone honestly implemented in the foreseeable future. Are thousands of 50 year old factory workers going to get hired as a web designers? Are they going to work as Walmart greeters thinking "sure I lost my house but national wealth is up so I don't mind". So at the very least there needs to be more adequate social safety nets.

There's probably a way to allow everyone to participate by capping individual participation.

It wouldn't be easy to implement, or popular, and frankly I don't have any idea how it could happen, but it's the only approach I can think of to address the underlying labor supply/demand issues without partitioning society into haves / have-nots, productive / not-productive, Elysium / peasants, etc.

Capping individual participation does not make new low skill jobs. When you cut all low-skill jobs you are always going to increase the number of people below the cut as not everyone is going to successfully re-train into a job that won't soon be automated. Making new high-skill jobs does not help them.

I don't see a convincing solution other than UBI. Sure, it's untested, and the transition is going to be rough. But capitalism isn't going to stop automating jobs. The jobs are going away and I think the easiest way to prevent the negative effects of having a big chunk of unemployed young men of fighting age. When given a choice between extreme poverty and fighting to overthrow your government, the choice is obvious (Syria for example). When given a choice between a comfortable lifestyle (if you budget well) and fighting to overthrow your government, the choice is obvious.

Part of the reason poverty sucks (in a developed country) is that you have to work long hours for barely enough money and then cook and clean and take care of your kids / elders. If you don't have to work, the effective poverty line drops significantly.

Our society already has the wealth distribution issue, and seems to be moving forward without crumbling. If we can drop 40% of jobs without decreasing overall productivity, I don't see why we have to make something up for the unemployable to do.

You won't have universal anything, and especially not income, without equality. The reason that welfare states have low income inequality is because that is a requirement for redistribution. The gains from further automation will likely disproportionally benefit a very small part of the population, but it will be the majority of the population that would be expected to compensate for people losing their jobs. Something that most likely won't be sustainable and even more likely will be impossible to implement.

Also I don't think the West has been progressing much in the last 20 years, especially not compared to Asia. Many parts of Europe and the US is deteriorating, even the wealthier parts, both relativity and absolutely.

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