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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.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Monday June 08 2015, @02:43PM
You can't make money, and in long term, jobs, with trade as the backbone of a civilization.
Are you crazy? If I were to point to the defining characteristic of a civilization, it would be existence of a prevalent trade network and corresponding infrastructure.
You'd be wealthier in an abstract potential sense if you didn't trade; I agree you'll be physically more comfortable if you trade but its a delusion to think burning bunker C in container ships somehow increases the wealth of the world rather than lowering it overall and concentrating it in the correct hands, even if cheap junk from walmart increases overall happiness, for awhile anyway.
I think a big part of the problem is that you simply aren't perceiving the world as it is. Here's a chart [voxeu.org] I like to trot out in these discussions (see figure 1). It's a graph of the percentage increase in income, adjusted for inflation, of people in 1988 versus a corresponding group in 2008. The three remarkable features which I wish to draw your attention to are the following: 1) the wealthiest 1% have among the highest increase in wealth of any group, the group from about 80-95% have the weakest income growth of the entire world. That's the developed world losing ground. And two thirds of the world's population see more than a 30% growth in income over those two decades (with the median growing at 60% over this time frame!). In other words, that's global trade bettering most of the world's population with most of the lost ground due to the relatively uncompetitive developed world.
One can speak of the supposedly "less than zero sum" nature of trade, but that is just an absurd delusion. The fundamental fact of trade is that it is entered into willingly. That means mutual benefit. And as we see in my example, most of humanity benefits from global trade.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @03:17PM
The fundamental fact of trade is that it is entered into willingly
What is mercantilism, imperialism, slave labor sweatshops, "work will set you free". Thats what real trade looks like.
Its very much like the statement that communism will work in a perfect world. Which we don't have. So it doesn't work. But it sure would work great in its artificial unrealistic framework. Likewise its possible to build a framework of world trade that in an imaginary perfect world benefits all of humanity. Of course it doesn't work. But if it did work, I agree it would be totally awesome. Well, time to try something new, surely it can't fail as much as something already failing.
If I were to point to the defining characteristic of a civilization, it would be existence of a prevalent trade network
I'm not arguing presence but cause and effect relationship. I apologize in advance if I get this wrong, but I think you're pushing that its a cause of civilization. All I'm saying is its an effect.
Think of the trade in lady gaga audio cds. It doesn't make the world rich. In fact it makes the world, net, microscopically poorer. However, a rich civilization can afford it occasionally as an extra luxury. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying some extra luxury (although if you choose a lady gaga audio cd I reserve the right to WTF the specific selection). The only problem I have with trade in that CD, is assuming its a cause or source of wealth. Its actually a microscopic worsening of the overall world net situation of resources and wealth, as a luxury expenditure it is an "affordable" effect of wealth. Just don't use it as an economic policy that you can simply lady gaga the entire planet into wealth. At most you can make her and her distributors wealthy at the cost of everyone else, at best case, while simultaneously permanently using up the limited world resources of material and energy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 08 2015, @03:51PM
What is mercantilism, imperialism, slave labor sweatshops, "work will set you free". Thats what real trade looks like.
No, a lot of that isn't trade. Being enslaved to another is not trade. And a number of the other categories you merely fail to recognize as beneficial trade. For example, sweatshops are portrayed as bad, but what else was that worker going to do? Starve? End result was a better life for the worker and those he or she care about. And that's what trade is about - better opportunities than if the trade didn't exist.
I'm not arguing presence but cause and effect relationship. I apologize in advance if I get this wrong, but I think you're pushing that its a cause of civilization. All I'm saying is its an effect.
I argued neither. Establishing trading routes, for example, has historically been a common pathway to civilization. And civilizations invariably found ways to strengthen trade and themselves.
Think of the trade in lady gaga audio cds. It doesn't make the world rich.
Why should that expectation exist? Now, if you were to make the far more reasonable claim that trade in Lady Gaga CDs makes us a little bit wealthier, then I would agree with that.
while simultaneously permanently using up the limited world resources of material and energy.
Which less us note, both are vast in extent and would be used up anyway.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday June 08 2015, @04:19PM
Lots of those who are currently employed in sweatshops were from families that were until recently farmers. The same globalization that brought in the factories also brought in gobs of super-cheap food from faraway places. So what ended up happening was that the farmers' formerly successful businesses became insolvent. That in turn left the families with no viable alternative but to send their 12-year-old daughters to work in sweatshops to then buy that super-cheap imported food.
That wasn't an inevitability, that was the result of public policy enshrined under the term "free trade".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Touché) by rondon on Monday June 08 2015, @06:44PM
And, nobody wants to chime in with, "Thexalon's broad assertion is wrong because I can redirect the conversation into the tiny point I want to make!!!!11"
Thank you, Thexalon, for proving that the people arguing minutia against VLM's broad assertions can't even do that correctly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2015, @04:23AM
"Thexalon's broad assertion is wrong because I can redirect the conversation into the tiny point I want to make!!!!11"
It's wrong because it's just wrong. There wasn't a sea of "successful" farms getting put out of work by evil developed world agriculture. It was a sea of farmers who barely could grow enough food and had nothing better to do with their labor. Now, they can work with well paying multinational corporations and their supply chains (the euphemistically named "sweat shops") and have far better futures (and food security BTW) than they would have had otherwise. The same thing happen in the US over the 20th Century as it transitioned from a relatively unproductive agrarian society to the largest industrial society in the world.
No one can really dispute my broad assertion, that the world has been getting better for a long time and continues to do so. You ignore powerful evidence to the contrary.
Thank you, Thexalon, for proving that the people arguing minutia against VLM's broad assertions can't even do that correctly.
VLM has yet to provide any evidence for his assertions. The world, trade, and various other concepts which he or she bring up, simply don't work the way the "broad assertions" assert they do. Trade is a huge positive sum activity. People are getting wealthier and living longer. Income inequality is getting better. It's just not getting better as fast in the sliver that is the developed world.
Further, my supposed "minutia" includes the observation that two thirds of the world did a lot better over the past twenty years and that trade is usually beneficial to all parties involved - which should be common economics 101 knowledge.
Finally, what's supposed to be the end game here. If trade is supposed to be bad, then what's going to replace it? How much of our societies are we going to deface and how many people will have to die just because a few people got this idiotic notion that trade was bad or employing people was bad?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:45AM
Lots of those who are currently employed in sweatshops were from families that were until recently farmers. The same globalization that brought in the factories also brought in gobs of super-cheap food from faraway places. So what ended up happening was that the farmers' formerly successful businesses became insolvent. That in turn left the families with no viable alternative but to send their 12-year-old daughters to work in sweatshops to then buy that super-cheap imported food.
I call bullshit. The farmer with the successful business isn't the one who has to send their 12 year old daughter to a sweatshop. It's farmers who were barely surviving. And when will you address that most people, at least two thirds of humanity are far better off just in the last twenty years?
(Score: 2) by rondon on Tuesday June 09 2015, @12:18PM
Distorting local economies with free goods can and does have a negative impact to the sector that used to produce that good. For example, we continually cry foul when the Chinese dump goods below cost in the United States in order to run their competitors out of business. Unfortunately, the US has been at that game far longer than the Chinese.
Just because trade can be positive, and likely has been an overall net positive, doesn't mean that it can't be used for evil. In fact, I'm leaning (heavily) towards the conclusion that all new trade agreements are aimed at making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2015, @09:32PM
Recall that I posted in the first place in response to:
You can't make money, and in long term, jobs, with trade as the backbone of a civilization.
I think that particular quote is profoundly ignorant of history, economics, and how civilization operates. Just because we can point out places where trade, or group activities like "trade agreements" can harm others, doesn't mean that trade somehow this time isn't a fundamental, core part of civilization or something that usually works to our advantage.
It seems to me like talking about how useful hammers are and all the wonderful things you can make with one, and then someone says that "but you can whack people over the head with one too". It's as if the presence of a drawback is supposed to counter all the good things one can do with a hammer.