RE: Robots r Us

From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Mon Sep 01 2003 - 00:37:52 MDT

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    ---> Damien Broderick

    > Roughly simultaneously, Reason cried out in pain:
    >
    > > Narry a mention of the job creation in new industries, just the same old
    > > zero-sum protectionist nonsense based on the assumption that people are
    owed
    > > security and a livelihood with no effort on their part, funded by the
    > > wealthy via forced redistribution of wealth. Even the anti-capitalist,
    > > anti-free-market arguments in this thing are tired and by the numbers,
    pushing the
    > > effects of government intervention (no5t labeled as such, of course) in
    > > trade and markets as reasons for more government intervention. It's sad,
    sad,
    > > sad. And stupid. Massively, massively stupid.
    >
    > < coff >
    >
    > I'd demur on that `massively, massively stupid', obviously.
    > Reason, I think you're jumping the gun. Brain's case is precisely that
    there *can't* be
    > much in the way of `job creation in new industries' for the robotically
    > downsized (unless I'm reading that in). I found his suggestions most
    > laughable when he tried to give his prescription a
    > `turbo-capitalist' spin:
    > selling advertising space on the rear of greenbacks, under public bridges,
    > on the Washington Memorial. Pure '50s Pohl&Kornbluth parody. But if his
    > remedies are incomplete, that's where people like us need to step in with
    > some imagination.

    I'm prepared to go out on a limb and say that automation (basically
    increased efficiency, the same work done by fewer people) will never result
    in a state in which there *can't* be job creation in new industries or in
    old industries invigorated by said automation.

    I don't see any difference between the coming automation and the process of
    automation that's been happening since the industrial revolution got
    underway. A failure to imagine new industries and whole new areas of
    productive human labor open to people displaced by robots (indeed, *enabled*
    by the use of those robots) doesn't mean those things don't exist. Just like
    the same failure to figure out what all those farm laborers in 1900 would be
    doing as they were replaced by farm automation, and all those household
    domestics would be doing as they were replaced by household
    automation...things seem to be just fine as a result of those enormous gains
    in automation (making 99% or so of those previous workers redundant), and
    we're all better off for it. If you asked the man on the street in 1900 what
    the millions of farm workers would be doing with themselves, I doubt you'd
    have got a good answer.

    Reason
    http://www.exratio.com/



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