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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: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @03:31PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 08 2015, @03:31PM (#193687)

    but the Germans were using this process during Word War II

    I'll give you the terms to google / wiki:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergius_process [wikipedia.org]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process [ ‭wikipedia.org (Warning: Unicode in URL)⁩ ]

    Both more or less from a very high level are "extreme cracking" like you'd do in an oil refinery except instead of pumping in the heaviest of crude oil (like asphalt) its literally shoveling in coal as the carbon source. FT can also eat the lighter crude hydrocarbons as a source of C.

    "warm moist air" and some coal, yeah. And some energy.

    There is another problem. At $75 oil we can stably run an economy and provide all the catalysts and raw materials and plant workers you'd need. Of course you'd lose money on every barrel, but you could physically build and operate the plant in that financial environment. At $200 oil you'd finally run a paper profit, but can you permanently run an economy over $200 oil while providing catalysts raw materials and trained plant workers? I think not.

    The environment extends to financial markets and the economy. Yes at permanent $2000 oil I could justify a nice solar array, but its going to be hard to design, install, and operate a solar array when $2000 oil means the rest of the world is entirely cannibal looters. Other than that whole "rest of the world collapsing" thing, $2000 oil would be awesome for solar. (Note the $2000 is made up but the general idea stands)

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  • (Score: 1) by WillAdams on Monday June 08 2015, @04:31PM

    by WillAdams (1424) on Monday June 08 2015, @04:31PM (#193713)

    Thanks.

    I'd thought the number was optimistic and involved some hand-waving.