From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Thu Jul 24 2003 - 14:42:23 MDT
Samantha wrote:
> On Thursday 24 July 2003 11:40, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>> Alfio wrote:
>
>>>
>>> American society has no way to deal with a situation where half of
>>> the workers are unemployed. During the Great Depression at its very
>>> worst, 25% of the population was unemployed. The robotic future will
>>> be twice as bad, and it will be permanent."
>>
>> ### You might want to apply Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage,
>> and also briefly think about the price of robots in relation to the
>> average income of the unemployed. If you add these two simple
>> considerations, you could conclude that there is no need to "deal"
>> with any situation here, and especially not deal as in the New Deal,
>> which resulted in losses to the economy which continue to this day.
>> The robotic future will be many times better than you imagine, as
>> long as you don't spoil it by "making jobs".
>>
>
>
> Precisely how do you envision those without jobs making it in such a
> scenario?
>
### They go to the store, buy a robot, and ask it to work on their behalf.
In other words, they invest their capital, instead of their labor. Since the
return on their capital is higher than the return on their labor (obvious -
they can't sell their labor because it's too expensive compared to the labor
of a robot), they end up being richer than before, in absolute material
terms, at least as a first-order effect.
Where they get the capital to invest is a different issue altogether.
Rafal
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