That is about it. Don't forget in the US if you have enough people in one area, it can have its own congressional district. It is better for the politicians to have a large masses of loyal wage monkeis who will vote for them. If you have to keep the plebs in thier pen with some transfer payments then so be it. It is just about the money and the votes. Akuma
You're still not seeing the qualitative difference in displacement of manufacturing techniques and products and the displacement of actual human brainpower. Yes, the Terminator scenario is one way that could play out. As far as "why work?", there are studies that show humans work beyond what they need to precisely because there is some psychological gains from working over and above the monetary gains. It's not simply an exchange of labor for goods/services. I agree that part of the problem in a true post-scarcity world would be political. Look at something like IBM's Watson, which is probably the most advanced AI out there at the moment. IBM owns it. IBM will probably own the next generation of most advanced AI as well. At some point then, logically, one would assume that IBM would be the company to develop the AI advanced enough to perform the function of complete displacement of even "knowledge workers". Would that basically mean that IBM would dictate who partakes of the post-scarcity abundance and who doesn't? Certainly, if they don't believe they will, at least to a great degree, they should stop working on the successor to Watson now, since it will basically be a waste of capital. Yet, if they don't work on the successor to Watson, Google will, so the very nature of competition will eventually lead to a company with a strong claim to have complete ownership of the IP that leads to AI capable of displacing even the "high-level" jobs. What sort of political impasse would that lead to? What if the company that builds it also builds in a mechanism whereby the AI "commits suicide" if someone tries to take control of it via political methods? In my own case, I have worked in corporate strategy for a long time. Basically, I have been paid to think on behalf of my employers. They hire me to do this because I have the right credentials, the right IQ, the right type of work ethic, etc. But, at the end of the day, my job is basically to analyze data and develop recommendations based on that data. The fact is that at this point, no computer could do what I do. But, the day is coming when one will be able to and then even my type of work, which is at the apex of the corporate pyramid, will be displaced. If the world cannot find employment for someone with my resume, then that is a very different world from what currently exists. Anyway, back to my point, it's not that I don't understand how wealth is created, it's that you don't understand the nature of the potential disruption that could result from an intelligence hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times greater than any human intelligence which has ever existed.
No, you don't understand how wealth is created, otherwise you wouldn't have said automation creates "demand destruction". That's ass backwards, friend. Now you wanna talk about AI. Fine, I already addressed that. I suggest you scroll up and read my post again. Humans don't work for works sake. We work to exchange our labor for goods and services we need/want to sustain and enhance our lives. If humans invent AI, then theoretically, the machines could perform all necessary work for us. On a practical level, that means any human could walk into a grocery store, fill a cart to the brim, and pay 5 cents for it. Or walk into a car dealership, and pay 20 cents for a vehicle. Silly stuff, like that. Money would cease to have meaning because goods and services would no longer be scarce, but limitless. Of course, that utopia would never manifest, but since this debate is squarely in the realm of theory, who cares
Well, what I read you kept saying that humans would just migrate to other industries they would create, like they have in the past. You made the analogy to the people freed up from the horse and buggy industry by the auto industry. I see the problem, though. You think that because the cost of production is zero, the cost to the consumer will be zero. Yeah, right. What's the marginal cost of production of another copy of MS Office? What's the retail price? Price is based on value, not production cost. That being the case, if there are virtually no humans who can create value to exchange for goods and services, regardless of whether those goods and services can be produced for zero cost, they won't be distributed to those who cannot create value to exchange for them. If there is no labor to be done, most people won't be able to create value. Even if my cost of production is zero, I can still view the existence of humans who cannot create value as a negative externality (they take up space and are generally unpleasant to be around), so I would choose not to provide them with the "free" goods and services I can produce at no cost.
I think you mean when Karl Benz invented the modern car, Meucci the telephone, Tesla electricity, but I do agree about HP being the author of the PC.
Will you children stop whining about "automated thinkers" and get back to the politics forum? This is a good thread in the ECONOMICS forum.
Since automation is the main driver of the decrease in the need for human labor, especially in manufacturing, I think it's most relevant to this topic of elevated unemployment.