He was in many respects. However, that offends delicate sensibilities here and so down goes da the vote.
168 karma · joined May 14, 2008
If I did the above, and someone made a stink, I'd hit 'em with "Are you denying my lived experience?" and then reaffirm the validity of my self identity (which is what matters) over what I actually am to observers (which is immaterial and doesn't matter).
Of course, the first part (and hardest) to the road to power, is getting people to collectively understand how truly strong they are as a single, coordinated unit. To paraphrase Lenin, democratic centralism is the hammer which smashes all barriers.
I get the arguments he makes from the perspective of the revolutionary Left. They are, however, not interesting or really acknowledging the role that robotics/computer vision/etc will play in the future. It's not really his fault though. Rather, I think many people are just ignorant of the profound impact that this kind of technology is going to have, simply because their direct exposure to it is so minimal.
As someone that has had experience in the rev. Left for some years and saw developments with robotics in research at a well-regarded school as a grad student, I feel like I have some perspective on this article. What I saw in school really made me change my mind and re-evaluate how the future will play out. Things are going to change and the genie, so to speak is out of the bottle and there's no putting it back in. But as pretty much all most socio-enviro-economic problems, the impediments we collectively face generally aren't technological as much as they are political, and that's where the activist focus needs to be. But I digress.
Mr. Phillips, doesn't seem to get that the technology isn't ready to displace humans from all work. The real threat (which is a threat until further notice) is that robotic technology is now "good enough" to do the kind of work that was just out of reach of automation in the past. It is not inconceivable to think robots will be able to perform the tasks of human garment workers soon. The gap between robots and semi-skilled labor are disappearing every year.
The idea for calling for a stronger labor movement as a solution is frankly laughable. It isn't going to happen any time soon and the economic conditions (what Marxists would colloquially refer to as "super-profitability") that created things like a labor aristocracy (another term) and social democracy no longer exist. How does one recreate a strong labor movement when the industries that were unionized are structurally hollowed out by no-pay robotic "labor" (which isn't labor in the Marxist sense either)? I'd love to hear a non hand wavy answer (seriously!).
UBI is actually a strong step on the road to the Marxist idea of communism (ironically enough) in that it does something special: it decouples the idea of compensation from labor, which is one of the long term goals of a society transforming from capitalism to a stateless, classless society. Lenin had a term for this too, which was "bourgeois right".
Anyway, my 2 cents.
I recently moved here, like many other people in tech. I didn't come for the draw of nature--which I love--but for a higher paying job and a chance to escape a poor, decaying, east coast city that increasingly felt like an urban hell. The whole undertaking was supposed to be a leg up, moving to that next level of adulthood (whatever that means in 2015). I am a well-paid, well-educated engineer in my early 30's. I am not a founder, nor do I intend to be, at least around these parts. California was a promised land, and I was glad to buy a one-way ticket there.
Now that I am here and a "resident," I faced with an ugly truth: the utter impossibility for me to ever buy any kind of property in the city, however modest or dilapidated, even if my salary somehow doubled overnight. The very thought of what it takes to "make it" here borders on the obscene. I'm lucky to pay $1,300 (which is cheap) for a one-bedroom in the city with 3 other people; outside, the prospects aren't much better.
The SF (and sadly the bay area in general) of now is a place where boomers made the rules. I can't help but feel impotent when thinking about the long-term political changes that will need to be effected in order to benefit newcomers and the working classes that are trying to make a home here. The old guard has such a stranglehold on the political machinations of this place and the chips are overwhelmingly stacked in their favor. I'm registered to vote--and I plan on it--but I know deep down, nothing will truly change until the Daniel Duane's of the city finally flush down the bowl and don't resurface. People like him had the great luck to be born during an era where places like this weren't fully exploited yet. I can't fault people like him for taking advantage of the opportunity to buy when housing was cheap and relatively plentiful. Anyone with aspirations to own a home and have a family would do the same without a second thought.
The NIMBYism and political blockading of the old guard is unconscionable. The housing crisis plaguing not only SF, but the peninsula as well, is directly related to their shortsighted, self-serving political ends. It's as if they--"they" in this case are my generational bogeyman--never even considered how their children would live. Short of inheriting a property, "tough shit" is the answer to the housing question.
My choices now are to stay, make some money, and take it back with me to somewhere cheaper, or hope for a simultaneous bubble-burst and earthquake which will depress home prices and maybe scare some alte kakas to leave.
I want to stay here, but it's really damn near impossible.
So let the Daniel Duane's lament about their California dream of the past. I only know about what we've been left by the legacy of his ilk, and it ain't good.
But you didn't address a single point that I brought up beforehand.
The original point, if I recall, was that mechanical labor will, at some point in the future be capable of performing the labor done by humans right now. The fact that machines have replaced human labor alone is not a new and certainly not revolutionary in its own right. The revolutionizing aspect of said robotic labor, is the fact that it will widely replace current human labor due to its innate level of sophistication. Think of it: robotic plumbers, teachers, mechanics, doctors, etc. The list goes on and on.
You said that it would make everyone wealthier. I rebutted, stating (quite historically I might add) only those that own the machines will benefit, at least for a time, as they are in fact, private property. Everyone made redundant by mechanized labor (of which there will be many) will need to find new employment. This is fine if a labor market exists to absorb the masses of the newly unemployed, as was the case in the mass exodus and subsequent conversion of the peasant farmer to the city factory worker. But one doesn't exist--at least, not yet.
You propose, as a solution and social necessity, that people will become artisans or instructors--people that produce their own goods or services for sale though some sort of market place. I pointed out how it is historically regressive and naive to think that such an arrangement can operate on the mass scale of manufacture that we currently have. People in this scenario are essentially relegated producing to "complementary" frivolities for society, rather than producing essential goods and services. Never mind that with such widespread mechanical labor, extremely cheap and abundant high-quality goods can be made in a factory.
> I am simply saying that machine made goods are complementary goods of hand made goods. When the complementary product of hand made goods' price becomes cheap/commodity the hand made goods demand grows
I am familiar the concept of complementary goods in neoclassical macroeconomics. Ice cream cones are a complementary good in relation to ice cream. The sale of ice cream and cones have a strong positive correlation. I understand that.
What we are talking about though are not complementary goods. Complementary good are just that--they complement other goods, to produce an amalgamated good that fulfills some need better than it's component parts.
> "machine made goods are complementary goods of hand made goods"
This is wrong. How does a hand-crafted spoon complement a factory manufactured bowl better (which is a subjective term anyway) than a factory manufactured spoon? The answer: it doesn't. I think what you are actually referring (vaguely) to is consumer preference. Only when mass manufactured goods are available cheaply and abundantly in the first place, do consumers begin to seek out the "quaintness" of handmade goods. This is how merchants of such goods differentiate their stock from that which came from a factory. As they may put it, the former was "made with care", while the latter, "rolled off of the assembly line", so to speak. Etsy and other markets like it are niche purveyors, merchants of that which is quaint. That is why they will continue to remain niche.
For whatever reason, that fact that something is hand-made seems to be synonymous with quality in your mind. Hand manufacture works for bowls and knit sweaters, but hardly scales for other, more complex goods. How, pray tell will the same system work for the manufacture of goods like cars, microprocessors, vaccines, etc? Will those kind of goods be sold through etsy.com? No. Never. There was a reason that interchangeable parts came into being--they could be manufactured on a mass scale with the kind of precision only a machine could produce.
The only way what you are describing above will work is if private property is abolished, e.g. the manufacturing segment of society--the factories--is owned and directed by the whole of society, not by the hands of a few capitalists. Those factories would, by definition, have to produce the essential goods necessary for society to function as a precondition. With such a basis then, the economy you describe would could function, as it only deals in secondary goods. As it stands now, the televisions, cars, furniture, etc, we all consume are produced not for human need, but rather for sale as commodities on the open market. The anarchy of production would have to be subjugated. But with such a scenario, why even have the secondary "handmade" market in the first place?
> "Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.
Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:
Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade."
(emphasis mine).
First, to think that we will all move back--and that's what it is, backward movement--toward a day where everyone will be some sort of subsistence producing, small-scale artisan is historically, socially, and technologically ridiculous. It's almost as if society would be moving toward the point where capitalism emerged from feudalism once again, where society would be stratified into a class of techno-elites, and everybody else.
Second, what makes you think that everyone is some sort of artist? What about the mechanic, scientist, or garbage man without "artistic" talent? What happens to them?
Third, $32 million is an incredibly small number compared to the billions even one company makes. What makes you think something like etsy.com would scale? Even if it were to scale out it's operations to the point where it could generate billions, do you really think etsy.com or its brokered artisans would produce item in a one-at-a-time, handmade fashion. Most likely, a new form cottage industry would emerge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottage_industry#Cottage_indust...). But that couldn't even work, as historically speaking, cottage production was destroyed by socialized production, e.g. factory work.
What about those untold millions not in IT or the sub-110 IQ "morons"? You know, the people that generally make society function? What about them? Do you think they are just going to sit idle? Or will they all be making pottery? Why should I even buy a pot made by human hands? Please.
> "This will create wealth. Wealth will mean that art, health and relaxation will be in high demand."
Yes, I agree to an extent. But I must ask, wealth for who? Certainty not for the people no longer employed in the jobs that were "automated away". Other labor markets must exist to absorb those that became unemployed as the result of automation.
> Now 2% of people work on farms, does that mean we have 88% unemployment?
%2 of the population is capable of producing the the labor of 88% (or any number > %2) because of the introduction of technological and methodological advances in farming. Roughly from the middle of the 19th century to the present, the production of food fundamentally changed in character from relatively small-scale primitive production (think horse-drawn plough and peasant or slave labor) to large-scale, technological production (mechanical threshers, high-yield genetically modified seeds, effective pesticides, etc). Agriculture became much like any other industry, and as such, was revolutionized. It was inevitable.
I think as someone else on this thread already pointed out, the other 88%, for the most part, had no other choice than relocate to the population centers seeking work. Many found it as unskilled factory labor. The pay was universally poor, and only through the gains made by widespread unionization of both trade (American Federation of Labor) and unskilled or semi-skilled workers (Congress of Industrial Organizations), were workers able to achieve a livable wage.
> "The more we have robots automate the more wealth we will have, the more wealth we have the the greater the number musicians, artists and yoga instructors we will have"
So basically we will have a society where current industrialists will own the overwhelming majority of robotic labor (property), whereas the rest of use will be "employed" as small scale artisans?
> Creating wealth doesn't destroy jobs long term, "A rising tide raises all boats", however short term many people will be displaced and have no jobs during the transition. (Short term could be many years).
As I said, only if other labor markets exists to absorb the newly unemployed. Whether such markets already exist or are created, is up for society to determine. It may take years for new markets to form, leading high unemployment for quite a while. Historically speaking, when power looms and other such mechanical devices were introduced into factory production, new labor markets did manifest to absorb some of the unemployed in the from of engineers and repairmen. Of course the introduction of machines was not without struggle (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Riots as an example).
Besides, historically speaking monopolies have existed in lieu of strong government regulation or involvement. Look at Germany in the late 19th-early 20th century, e.g. the Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate or Bayer.
My question is this: if officials at all levels of government are working in collusion with big-business, e.g. former finance executives making key decisions about fiscal policy and spending, who does the actual breaking? Those people will never be voted out, as those positions are usually filled by appointments. The irony is the government, as it stands, is the only entity capable of enforcing the "fair-play" necessary for a free market to function. Yet, if I recall, the government is the bane of free markets in the first place.
> "The real world is complicated, and all-or-nothing thinking is irrationally and unforgivably lazy."
Yes, some idea require a certain nuanced approach to fully comprehend, others however, do not. This is not one of them. I guess you can throw up you up your hand and cry "I can't decide, these waters are too ethically difficult to navigate, argh!" and forever cop out. It's easier.
> "It's quite possible for the Native Americans to have been savages, and the Europeans to have been savages (with better weapons), and for one group of awful people to have murdered another group of awful people."
Conquistadors, went to the Americas and slaughtered millions. Regardless of your assertion that both could be "savages", one group initiated and subsequently conducted systematic violence against another group over several decades. You're honestly saying you can't judge that as "bad"? What if you were among one of those indigenous groups that were killed? I know I would not appreciate it...
But of course we can't make concrete judgments about that.
The practice of rape, pillage and plunder is without a doubt a bad thing.
Not everyone wants to be a traitor to his own people, or as it will most likely turn out for humanity in your scenario, a brutalized, ghettoized, subservient class.
Apparently nothing.
> "Why is the Palestinian problem not solved?"
Because the U.S. continues to supply arms and funding to Israel.
> "Why did we export manufacturing to cheaper labor"
I think you answered your own question here: because it's cheaper.