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posted by cmn32480 on Monday June 08 2015, @10:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-many-robots-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-lightbulb dept.

Digital technology has been a fantastic creator of economic wealth, particularly in the twenty years since the Internet and World Wide Web were unveiled to the masses. And with non-trivial applications of artificial intelligence (such as Apple's Siri) finally reaching the mainstream consumer market, one is tempted to agree with pundits asserting that the Second Machine Age is just getting underway.

But Yale ethicist Wendell Wallach argues that growth in wealth has been accompanied by an equally dramatic rise in income inequality; for example, stock ownership is now concentrated in the hands of a relative few (though greater than 1 percent). The increase in GDP has not led to an increase in wages, nor in median inflation-adjusted income. Furthermore, Wallach says technology is a leading cause of this shift, as it displaces workers in occupation after occupation more quickly than new career opportunities arise.

This piece led to the latest iteration of the 'will robots take all of our jobs' debate, this time on Business Insider, with Jim Edwards arguing that the jobs lost tended to be of the mindless and repetitive variety, while the increase in productive capacity has led to the creation of many new positions. This repeated earlier cycles of the industrial revolution and will be accelerated in the decades ahead. Edwards illustrated his point with a chart of UK unemployment with a trend line (note: drawn by Edwards) in a pronounced downward direction over the past 30 years. John Tamny made a similar point in Forbes last month.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @02:27PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 08 2015, @02:27PM (#193655)

    The problem is trajectory. Its not that a KWh will cost $1. The problem will be it takes 20 yrs to build a plant under BAU and even in some dictatorial FDR style TVA it would probably be over 5 years for some of the industrial fabrication. Its a big project...

    So electricity starts increasing and civilization breaks down completely at $0.50 and ... well that was boring. Also please no stories about 0.0001% of the tourist economy or startup economy or 3rd world economy surviving under BAU at $2/KWh, because I'm talking about macro the whole economy.

    So electricity starts increasing and we FINALLY decide to make a plant at $1/KWh and 4 years later with one year left how will civilization function when the price continues increasing and hits $20/KHw equivalent other than something neofeudalistic like a really big concentration camp of plant construction workers surrounded by slave operated farms?

    Or the TLDR is nuke construction would be a good response to collapse if it didn't take maybe 20 times longer to build than a collapse takes to happen. Its the "simcity" confusion that you can just click the map and you get a plant instantly, right?

    Its a subset of the rising sea level argument that after sea levels rise about 5m or so we'll likely get near universal cooperation, but its going to be a bit late to get started at that point.

    I have seen something similar with old people, ancestors. Got cancer, well, now at 85 its time to start eating organic (wtf?). Got heart disease at 75, well might be time to start exercising. Lung cancer at 80, well time to stop smoking. No fools, the time to start that stuff was like half a century ago, you're just wasting your very limited time now. Perhaps the dumbest thing to do when electricity hits $1/KWh would be to start a 20 year plant project; you know every gram of resources, drop of sweat, and penny of money will be wasted compared to using it to roll out blacksmith shops or otherwise getting used to not having electricity.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:39PM (#194172)

    The countries heavily investing in renewables research and infrastructure will survive the collapse of the fossil fuel markets. The US needs to get its head out of its ass and get over its selfish "Not my problem" mentality and golden parachute productions and start workings towards easing, surviving, or even growing during the obvious and fast-approaching crisis. As a bonus, if AGW really is a problem, the establishment of renewable energy sources mostly solves that too, without even needing to acknowledge that its real.