Disagree. Automation does a great job reducing the number of workers needed. Sure people can create BS busywork, but that is different from technology creating new jobs (it does, but I'm not convinced it's doing so at a point, where it's keeping up with or outpacing automation's ability to reduce jobs). That said, I think we both can probably agree that technological changes have made it harder for individuals to gain entry level employment, since we already see that most companies are loath to pay for training, yet still expect people get the training by some other means.
Unemployment and shit wages being political, distributive problems, is exactly why automation is becoming a problem not that it's really started getting to a point where it can maximize the productivity of a single employee and eliminate the number of workers needed. The wealthy elite that currently have a disproportionate amount of influence, aren't buying up viable forms of automation for their business because they think it's shitty to force people to work jobs that makes them miserable. They invest in viable automation because they feel it allows them to increase their profits, by hiring less people.
Disagree. Automation does a great job reducing the number of workers needed. Sure people can create BS busywork, but that is different from technology creating new jobs (it does, but I'm not convinced it's doing so at a point, where it's keeping up with or outpacing automation's ability to reduce jobs). That said, I think we both can probably agree that technological changes have made it harder for individuals to gain entry level employment, since we already see that most companies are loath to pay for training, yet still expect people get the training by some other means.
Disagree based on what? Your gut feeling? We've already established that global employment is high. It wouldn't be high without the communications and transportation technologies that enable globalization.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Oh, so if you're making a chair, the corporation running the forestry operation gets taxed a bit on the lumber, and then the sawmill gets a small amount of tax per board, and then the furniture factory gets taxed on the furniture, and then it all gets passed on to the consumer instead of a sales tax. That sounds...different. How do you stop companies from just importing parts and doing the assembly in one step? Do you add the tax on imports? We'd have to get rid of our free trade for that.
VAT is added on imports, yeah. That doesn't really get rid of free trade. It isn't a tariff. Tariffs put an extra tax burden on imports that aren't present on domestic goods; a VAT just taxes both equally.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Oh, so if you're making a chair, the corporation running the forestry operation gets taxed a bit on the lumber, and then the sawmill gets a small amount of tax per board, and then the furniture factory gets taxed on the furniture, and then it all gets passed on to the consumer instead of a sales tax. That sounds...different. How do you stop companies from just importing parts and doing the assembly in one step? Do you add the tax on imports? We'd have to get rid of our free trade for that.
VAT is added on imports, yeah. That doesn't really get rid of free trade. It isn't a tariff. Tariffs put an extra tax burden on imports that aren't present on domestic goods; a VAT just taxes both equally.
Oh, so if you're making a chair, the corporation running the forestry operation gets taxed a bit on the lumber, and then the sawmill gets a small amount of tax per board, and then the furniture factory gets taxed on the furniture, and then it all gets passed on to the consumer instead of a sales tax. That sounds...different. How do you stop companies from just importing parts and doing the assembly in one step? Do you add the tax on imports? We'd have to get rid of our free trade for that.
VAT is added on imports, yeah. That doesn't really get rid of free trade. It isn't a tariff. Tariffs put an extra tax burden on imports that aren't present on domestic goods; a VAT just taxes both equally.
It's still regressive taxation, though.
Oh, no argument there.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Oh, so if you're making a chair, the corporation running the forestry operation gets taxed a bit on the lumber, and then the sawmill gets a small amount of tax per board, and then the furniture factory gets taxed on the furniture, and then it all gets passed on to the consumer instead of a sales tax. That sounds...different. How do you stop companies from just importing parts and doing the assembly in one step? Do you add the tax on imports? We'd have to get rid of our free trade for that.
VAT gets slapped on imports, yeah. Otherwise imports would beat domestic goods in price, always, as regardless of competitiveness they'd still be more expensive by the amount of the tax.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
In the sense that it's a sales tax, and those always hit the poor harder than the well-off?
Yes, since that is the definition of regressive in the context of taxation (as opposed to progressive taxation, which strives for equal impact to individuals.)
And that's the problem with the VAT - you're starting from a bad model. The nicest thing that can be said is that countries that use the VAT then plow the income into progressive policies - which is more than a bit problematic.
Disagree. Automation does a great job reducing the number of workers needed. Sure people can create BS busywork, but that is different from technology creating new jobs (it does, but I'm not convinced it's doing so at a point, where it's keeping up with or outpacing automation's ability to reduce jobs). That said, I think we both can probably agree that technological changes have made it harder for individuals to gain entry level employment, since we already see that most companies are loath to pay for training, yet still expect people get the training by some other means.
Disagree based on what? Your gut feeling? We've already established that global employment is high. It wouldn't be high without the communications and transportation technologies that enable globalization.
World bank data says global labor participation rates have declined from a peak in 2005. In any case, WTF does a measure that groups completely undeveloped countries with the fully developed have to do with automation replacing jobs? Of course robots aren't going to replace workers being paid $1.50 a day. If you actually want to know what the effects of automation are on employment, you look at labor participation and wages in countries where automation is cost effective. There's no doubt what the story is there.
Amiibos are already pretty fucking hard to get hold of. Guess they're gonna be kinda impossible to get hold of now. :I
This comes back to a point that needs to be made in the automation thread - those self driving Freightliners are going to be manned for a number of reasons, the biggest being that an unmanned autonomous freight truck is going to be seen by a sizable population as nothing more than an 18 wheeled loot piñata.
Amiibos are already pretty fucking hard to get hold of. Guess they're gonna be kinda impossible to get hold of now. :I
This comes back to a point that needs to be made in the automation thread - those self driving Freightliners are going to be manned for a number of reasons, the biggest being that an unmanned autonomous freight truck is going to be seen by a sizable population as nothing more than an 18 wheeled loot piñata.
I don't think the presence of one or two human drivers is what is preventing the "18 wheeled loot piñata" from occurring currently.
Amiibos are already pretty fucking hard to get hold of. Guess they're gonna be kinda impossible to get hold of now. :I
This comes back to a point that needs to be made in the automation thread - those self driving Freightliners are going to be manned for a number of reasons, the biggest being that an unmanned autonomous freight truck is going to be seen by a sizable population as nothing more than an 18 wheeled loot piñata.
I don't think the presence of one or two human drivers is what is preventing the "18 wheeled loot piñata" from occurring currently.
See also: guards in armored vans aren't actually there to protect the money.
Amiibos are already pretty fucking hard to get hold of. Guess they're gonna be kinda impossible to get hold of now. :I
This comes back to a point that needs to be made in the automation thread - those self driving Freightliners are going to be manned for a number of reasons, the biggest being that an unmanned autonomous freight truck is going to be seen by a sizable population as nothing more than an 18 wheeled loot piñata.
Probably not. The US isn't some Mad Max hellscape where people drive directly up to moving robot freighters and cut the locks of the back at 65 mph to get at the sweet loot, and importantly, most freighters don't have anything worth stealing.
Disagree. Automation does a great job reducing the number of workers needed. Sure people can create BS busywork, but that is different from technology creating new jobs (it does, but I'm not convinced it's doing so at a point, where it's keeping up with or outpacing automation's ability to reduce jobs). That said, I think we both can probably agree that technological changes have made it harder for individuals to gain entry level employment, since we already see that most companies are loath to pay for training, yet still expect people get the training by some other means.
Disagree based on what? Your gut feeling? We've already established that global employment is high. It wouldn't be high without the communications and transportation technologies that enable globalization.
World bank data says global labor participation rates have declined from a peak in 2005. In any case, WTF does a measure that groups completely undeveloped countries with the fully developed have to do with automation replacing jobs? Of course robots aren't going to replace workers being paid $1.50 a day. If you actually want to know what the effects of automation are on employment, you look at labor participation and wages in countries where automation is cost effective. There's no doubt what the story is there.
And yet you're not citing anything. If there was no doubt there should be clear demonstration that automation reduces the number of jobs.
First world labor utilization is not on some long term down slope. To the extent that it is (marginally) down in the United States in the short term, demographics explain a vast majority of the difference, bolstered by increased disability claims and longer periods of education (so 18-25 labor participation is down) explain more than the entire drop. Increased automation allows this to be offset in large part by increased labor participation in 50+ age groups, since fewer jobs require manual labor.
And over the history of automation, where manufacturing has been exported to cheaper countries, participation is well up.
Similarly, there is no clear downward trend across Europe or Canada. If automation was the cause we should see it across the board in developed nations.
Automation reducing jobs is not reflected in actual facts or history of economics. Industrialization is "automation". It had a bit of an impact on world economics. And there were certain groups that said it was going to do away with all the jobs. They were so wrong that the most famous group's name now means anyone who foolishly opposes technology, especially industrialization and automation that performs tasks more efficiently. This Luddite position is not well respected in actual economic thought.
Fair trade vs Free Trade is a reasonable argument in regard to whether it actually helps or hurts. Whether automation and industrialization increases or decreases the number of jobs is not generally an open question.
If there is "no doubt what the story is there" then its that the fundamental argument is baseless.
Extremely few people who actually study economics believe automation is eliminating jobs and that we just don't have enough to do in modern society to employ people. The idea that work is unnecessary and disconnected from production and prosperity is frankly so shortsighted as to not being worth engaging in, before we get into whether or not work has benefits beyond what the work actually does.
Amiibos are already pretty fucking hard to get hold of. Guess they're gonna be kinda impossible to get hold of now. :I
This comes back to a point that needs to be made in the automation thread - those self driving Freightliners are going to be manned for a number of reasons, the biggest being that an unmanned autonomous freight truck is going to be seen by a sizable population as nothing more than an 18 wheeled loot piñata.
Probably not. The US isn't some Mad Max hellscape where people drive directly up to moving robot freighters and cut the locks of the back at 65 mph to get at the sweet loot, and importantly, most freighters don't have anything worth stealing.
The actual challenge might be what if someone figures out how to hack the guidance system and just has it drive itself to an abandoned lot somewhere.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Automation reducing jobs is not reflected in actual facts or history of economics. Industrialization is "automation". It had a bit of an impact on world economics. And there were certain groups that said it was going to do away with all the jobs. They were so wrong that the most famous group's name now means anyone who foolishly opposes technology, especially industrialization and automation that performs tasks more efficiently. This Luddite position is not well respected in actual economic thought.
It would be nice if, after several centuries of misinformation, we could actually stop misrepresenting the Luddite movement.
Amiibos are already pretty fucking hard to get hold of. Guess they're gonna be kinda impossible to get hold of now. :I
This comes back to a point that needs to be made in the automation thread - those self driving Freightliners are going to be manned for a number of reasons, the biggest being that an unmanned autonomous freight truck is going to be seen by a sizable population as nothing more than an 18 wheeled loot piñata.
If you're looking to prove unmanned trucks as being easy targets for theft, a normally manned truck being stolen probably isn't the best example.
Also most of the instances of theft I'm randomly pulling up show people stealing from or stealing the trucks while they're parked and not moving for a few hours. There isn't some Fast and the Furious crime ring hijacking freight mid shipment.
Oh, so if you're making a chair, the corporation running the forestry operation gets taxed a bit on the lumber, and then the sawmill gets a small amount of tax per board, and then the furniture factory gets taxed on the furniture, and then it all gets passed on to the consumer instead of a sales tax. That sounds...different. How do you stop companies from just importing parts and doing the assembly in one step? Do you add the tax on imports? We'd have to get rid of our free trade for that.
VAT is added on imports, yeah. That doesn't really get rid of free trade. It isn't a tariff. Tariffs put an extra tax burden on imports that aren't present on domestic goods; a VAT just taxes both equally.
It's still regressive taxation, though.
The original point is that corporate income taxes get passed on as well, making a progressive tax into a regressive one. In my perfect world, the VAT rate would be set at a level that reflects the general cost of business taxation in the CPI, or be designed to make the same revenue from domestic taxpayers (adding in revenue from foreign companies and tax-dodgers).
Amiibos are already pretty fucking hard to get hold of. Guess they're gonna be kinda impossible to get hold of now. :I
This comes back to a point that needs to be made in the automation thread - those self driving Freightliners are going to be manned for a number of reasons, the biggest being that an unmanned autonomous freight truck is going to be seen by a sizable population as nothing more than an 18 wheeled loot piñata.
I don't think the presence of one or two human drivers is what is preventing the "18 wheeled loot piñata" from occurring currently.
See also: guards in armored vans aren't actually there to protect the money.
Disagree. Automation does a great job reducing the number of workers needed. Sure people can create BS busywork, but that is different from technology creating new jobs (it does, but I'm not convinced it's doing so at a point, where it's keeping up with or outpacing automation's ability to reduce jobs). That said, I think we both can probably agree that technological changes have made it harder for individuals to gain entry level employment, since we already see that most companies are loath to pay for training, yet still expect people get the training by some other means.
Disagree based on what? Your gut feeling? We've already established that global employment is high. It wouldn't be high without the communications and transportation technologies that enable globalization.
World bank data says global labor participation rates have declined from a peak in 2005. In any case, WTF does a measure that groups completely undeveloped countries with the fully developed have to do with automation replacing jobs? Of course robots aren't going to replace workers being paid $1.50 a day. If you actually want to know what the effects of automation are on employment, you look at labor participation and wages in countries where automation is cost effective. There's no doubt what the story is there.
And yet you're not citing anything. If there was no doubt there should be clear demonstration that automation reduces the number of jobs.
First world labor utilization is not on some long term down slope. To the extent that it is (marginally) down in the United States in the short term, demographics explain a vast majority of the difference, bolstered by increased disability claims and longer periods of education (so 18-25 labor participation is down) explain more than the entire drop. Increased automation allows this to be offset in large part by increased labor participation in 50+ age groups, since fewer jobs require manual labor.
And over the history of automation, where manufacturing has been exported to cheaper countries, participation is well up.
Similarly, there is no clear downward trend across Europe or Canada. If automation was the cause we should see it across the board in developed nations.
Automation reducing jobs is not reflected in actual facts or history of economics. Industrialization is "automation". It had a bit of an impact on world economics. And there were certain groups that said it was going to do away with all the jobs. They were so wrong that the most famous group's name now means anyone who foolishly opposes technology, especially industrialization and automation that performs tasks more efficiently. This Luddite position is not well respected in actual economic thought.
Fair trade vs Free Trade is a reasonable argument in regard to whether it actually helps or hurts. Whether automation and industrialization increases or decreases the number of jobs is not generally an open question.
If there is "no doubt what the story is there" then its that the fundamental argument is baseless.
Extremely few people who actually study economics believe automation is eliminating jobs and that we just don't have enough to do in modern society to employ people. The idea that work is unnecessary and disconnected from production and prosperity is frankly so shortsighted as to not being worth engaging in, before we get into whether or not work has benefits beyond what the work actually does.
That doesn't track if the type of job has changed though.
Labor participation seems to be a rather poor way reflect the worsening situation for workers. Worker surplus benefits the employer in negotiations, allowing them to compensate workers low enough that automation remains more expensive. The federal minimum wage in the US is disgustingly low, and major employers such as Walmart are periodically caught getting free labor from their employees. Participation is also going to go up when spouses and children must seek work because the single-income family is becoming mythical. Underemployment is also a thing, and I wonder how these graphs track people with three jobs. There's also the factor of required education to participate in the labor pool - a million people with jobs and a million people with jobs and a lifetime of debt are very different things.
That said, it's not that automation is bad in any way shape or form. It's that our social systems are built around cooperation by necessity more than out of concern for human welfare, and automation decreases the necessity of human workers.
Yeah if we had similar income distribution to fifty years ago cashiers would be making about 20 bucks an hour. Something that would make things like self check out all the more enticing to store owners.
Disagree. Automation does a great job reducing the number of workers needed. Sure people can create BS busywork, but that is different from technology creating new jobs (it does, but I'm not convinced it's doing so at a point, where it's keeping up with or outpacing automation's ability to reduce jobs). That said, I think we both can probably agree that technological changes have made it harder for individuals to gain entry level employment, since we already see that most companies are loath to pay for training, yet still expect people get the training by some other means.
Disagree based on what? Your gut feeling? We've already established that global employment is high. It wouldn't be high without the communications and transportation technologies that enable globalization.
World bank data says global labor participation rates have declined from a peak in 2005. In any case, WTF does a measure that groups completely undeveloped countries with the fully developed have to do with automation replacing jobs? Of course robots aren't going to replace workers being paid $1.50 a day. If you actually want to know what the effects of automation are on employment, you look at labor participation and wages in countries where automation is cost effective. There's no doubt what the story is there.
And yet you're not citing anything. If there was no doubt there should be clear demonstration that automation reduces the number of jobs.
First world labor utilization is not on some long term down slope. To the extent that it is (marginally) down in the United States in the short term, demographics explain a vast majority of the difference, bolstered by increased disability claims and longer periods of education (so 18-25 labor participation is down) explain more than the entire drop. Increased automation allows this to be offset in large part by increased labor participation in 50+ age groups, since fewer jobs require manual labor.
And over the history of automation, where manufacturing has been exported to cheaper countries, participation is well up.
Similarly, there is no clear downward trend across Europe or Canada. If automation was the cause we should see it across the board in developed nations.
The bolded is flatly false. Japan and Canada both have downward trends. Europe does not, but Europe's utilization is so far below everyone else's that it's difficult to draw conclusions.
Automation reducing jobs is not reflected in actual facts or history of economics. Industrialization is "automation". It had a bit of an impact on world economics. And there were certain groups that said it was going to do away with all the jobs. They were so wrong that the most famous group's name now means anyone who foolishly opposes technology, especially industrialization and automation that performs tasks more efficiently. This Luddite position is not well respected in actual economic thought.
We already had this discussion in the previous thread on this subject, and I don't really feel up to repeating the whole thing. The condensed version is: the history of economics is the history of respected economists repeatedly being proven spectacularly wrong in the predictions they make from history. Arguing that the labor conditions prevailing for 2.5 centuries of human history will continue indefinitely is as ridiculous as Malthus's predictions. More, because Malthus had no way of knowing about the Green Revolution but we certainly do know about automation.
Fair trade vs Free Trade is a reasonable argument in regard to whether it actually helps or hurts. Whether automation and industrialization increases or decreases the number of jobs is not generally an open question.
If there is "no doubt what the story is there" then its that the fundamental argument is baseless.
Extremely few people who actually study economics believe automation is eliminating jobs and that we just don't have enough to do in modern society to employ people. The idea that work is unnecessary and disconnected from production and prosperity is frankly so shortsighted as to not being worth engaging in, before we get into whether or not work has benefits beyond what the work actually does.
With this approach, when given the relevant coordinates for the beginning and end of the task, the PR2 could master a typical assignment in about 10 minutes. When the robot is not given the location for the objects in the scene and needs to learn vision and control together, the learning process takes about three hours.
Every time the issue of self-driving trucks/cars comes up, I wonder about the snow issue. Self-driving vehicles work great in the dry, sunny Southwest. The vast majority of the country experiences weather that AI can't handle for anywhere from 4 to 6 months out of the year. Humans are still going to need to do a lot of the driving in winter, which means the support systems for humans will still need to be there, including mandatory driving time limits and rest periods. The rippling delays (and staffing needs) caused by that would mean, among other things, that shipping to most of the country would be both slower and more costly during the holidays, when volume is highest.
Yeah, in my experience, automated driving controls are going to perform better in adverse weather conditions. Plus it's one less human making terrible decisions and getting injured/dying in the 40-vehicle pile up.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Snow hides features of the road that self-driving vehicles' cameras need to see, and also has a tendency to continuously set off proximity sensor systems (radar, LIDAR, ultrasound, whatever).
Yeah weather is going to be a pretty major problem for any of that tech. Keep in mind the primary development environment is California in a major drought. Especially where you have a road that has by convention shrunk lanes during the winter and all you have to go by are a pair of tire tracks
Snow hides features of the road that self-driving vehicles' cameras need to see, and also has a tendency to continuously set off proximity sensor systems (radar, LIDAR, ultrasound, whatever).
The same concerns had to be addressed with manned vehicles. They would just start where it's easier and have contigencies for bad weather, such as seasonal drivers, while the technology improved.
Similarly, there is no clear downward trend across Europe or Canada. If automation was the cause we should see it across the board in developed nations.
The bolded is flatly false. Japan and Canada both have downward trends. Europe does not, but Europe's utilization is so far below everyone else's that it's difficult to draw conclusions.
You're still making claims that are untrue and not basing it on anything. Cite.
Automation reducing jobs is not reflected in actual facts or history of economics. Industrialization is "automation". It had a bit of an impact on world economics. And there were certain groups that said it was going to do away with all the jobs. They were so wrong that the most famous group's name now means anyone who foolishly opposes technology, especially industrialization and automation that performs tasks more efficiently. This Luddite position is not well respected in actual economic thought.
We already had this discussion in the previous thread on this subject, and I don't really feel up to repeating the whole thing. The condensed version is: the history of economics is the history of respected economists repeatedly being proven spectacularly wrong in the predictions they make from history. Arguing that the labor conditions prevailing for 2.5 centuries of human history will continue indefinitely is as ridiculous as Malthus's predictions. More, because Malthus had no way of knowing about the Green Revolution but we certainly do know about automation.
Fair trade vs Free Trade is a reasonable argument in regard to whether it actually helps or hurts. Whether automation and industrialization increases or decreases the number of jobs is not generally an open question.
If there is "no doubt what the story is there" then its that the fundamental argument is baseless.
Extremely few people who actually study economics believe automation is eliminating jobs and that we just don't have enough to do in modern society to employ people. The idea that work is unnecessary and disconnected from production and prosperity is frankly so shortsighted as to not being worth engaging in, before we get into whether or not work has benefits beyond what the work actually does.
Saying "People have been wrong in the past" doesn't suggest you are correct in your assertions. Indeed saying citing Malthus while claiming the inevitable destruction of jobs suggests a supreme lack of self-awareness.
From the link that supposedly bolsters that its reasonable to posit that automation will cause some kind of massive job reduction - which even it was true wouldn't suggest its likely -
Key themes: reasons to be hopeful
Advances in technology may displace certain types of work, but historically they have been a net creator of jobs.
We will adapt to these changes by inventing entirely new types of work, and by taking advantage of uniquely human capabilities.
But the article admits this survey isn't representative. Let's look at who they cite for each side
Automation won't decrease the number of jobs
Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google, Turing Award Winner, PhD
Jonathan Grudin, principal researcher for Microsoft, PhD
Michael Kende, the economist for a major Internet-oriented nonprofit organization (the Internet Society, former FCC big wig, MIT Phd)
Fred Baker, Internet pioneer, longtime leader in the IETF and Cisco Systems Fellow PhD
Ben Shneiderman, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, PhD
Amy Webb, CEO of strategy firm Webbmedia Group, Visiting Fellow at Harvard, Professor at Columbia
John Markoff, senior writer for the Science section of the New York Times, famous for covering hackers from Morris to Mitnick, Pulitzer Prize winner
Marjory Blumenthal, Executive Director of PCAST, Office of Science and Technology Policy, The White House, former Associate Provost at Georgetown University
David Hughes, an early Internet researcher in the DoD, and activist for rural connectivity
Pamela Rutledge, PhD and director of the Media Psychology Research Center
Michael Glassman, associate Professor tOSU, PhD
David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory PhD
Jari Arkko, Internet expert for Ericsson and chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (Licentiate degree, which is between a Masters and a PhD)
Christopher Wilkinson, Masters, former Visiting Fellow at Harvard and EU big wig
(Then some that say they won't because of legal restrictions that I'll leave out)
Intellectual heavyweights for the most part. Professors and famous intellectuals and the like, most in relevant fields. Now the opposite
Jerry Michalski, A consultant that advises companies on how to deal with the changes coming. A MBA
Mike Roberts, a former ICANN member. A MBA
Robert Cannon, Internet law and policy expert, JD
Tom Standage, journalist and author for the Economist, BS
Mark Nall, former Project manager at NASA, MS
Justin Reich, Visiting Fellow at Harvard for Education EdD
Stowe Boyd, MS
Nilofer Merchant MBA
Alex Howard editor Huffington Post
MBAs < PhDs. Consultants < Economists.
You are making the assertion that automation is going to lead to a elimination of jobs. This is an incredibly controversial and unsupported statement even by this link where "experts" is defined loosely and everyone gets a vote. If you believe the fundamental structure of Western economics is going to be overturned, how bout we get something more than "Oh we already decided this before."
Snow hides features of the road that self-driving vehicles' cameras need to see, and also has a tendency to continuously set off proximity sensor systems (radar, LIDAR, ultrasound, whatever).
This stuff is incredibly hard. Tech writers who are vaguely near it think its going to happen any time now. Readers are big more skeptical. People actually trying to do this stuff are like "This isn't the next facebook app jesus."
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Also, I wouldn't expect to see fully unmanned vehicles on the road for, like 10 years. Any autonomous vehicle is going to require a licensed operator until than. The first place I would expect to start seeing fully unmanned operation is in long haul trucking. By design, long haul truck routes are as simple and easy to navigate as possible. Often times times, hubs have their own dedicated interstate highway exits. It's going to be interesting to see how that industry is affected. A large number of truckers own their own rigs. I wonder if truckers will start "renting out" their self driving rigs instead of hauling the cargo themselves.
Snow hides features of the road that self-driving vehicles' cameras need to see, and also has a tendency to continuously set off proximity sensor systems (radar, LIDAR, ultrasound, whatever).
According to your first article the expected time line for solving the issue is 2-5 years. Not exactly a far off future.
The expected timeline for these things is always 5 years if we think we can do it, 10 if it's theoretically possible and 20 if it's AI. I would say 5 years to a prototype that mostly works, in non-severe weather conditions
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Disagree. Automation does a great job reducing the number of workers needed. Sure people can create BS busywork, but that is different from technology creating new jobs (it does, but I'm not convinced it's doing so at a point, where it's keeping up with or outpacing automation's ability to reduce jobs). That said, I think we both can probably agree that technological changes have made it harder for individuals to gain entry level employment, since we already see that most companies are loath to pay for training, yet still expect people get the training by some other means.
Unemployment and shit wages being political, distributive problems, is exactly why automation is becoming a problem not that it's really started getting to a point where it can maximize the productivity of a single employee and eliminate the number of workers needed. The wealthy elite that currently have a disproportionate amount of influence, aren't buying up viable forms of automation for their business because they think it's shitty to force people to work jobs that makes them miserable. They invest in viable automation because they feel it allows them to increase their profits, by hiring less people.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Disagree based on what? Your gut feeling? We've already established that global employment is high. It wouldn't be high without the communications and transportation technologies that enable globalization.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
VAT is added on imports, yeah. That doesn't really get rid of free trade. It isn't a tariff. Tariffs put an extra tax burden on imports that aren't present on domestic goods; a VAT just taxes both equally.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It's still regressive taxation, though.
Oh, no argument there.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
VAT gets slapped on imports, yeah. Otherwise imports would beat domestic goods in price, always, as regardless of competitiveness they'd still be more expensive by the amount of the tax.
In the sense that it's a sales tax, and those always hit the poor harder than the well-off?
Yes, since that is the definition of regressive in the context of taxation (as opposed to progressive taxation, which strives for equal impact to individuals.)
And that's the problem with the VAT - you're starting from a bad model. The nicest thing that can be said is that countries that use the VAT then plow the income into progressive policies - which is more than a bit problematic.
World bank data says global labor participation rates have declined from a peak in 2005. In any case, WTF does a measure that groups completely undeveloped countries with the fully developed have to do with automation replacing jobs? Of course robots aren't going to replace workers being paid $1.50 a day. If you actually want to know what the effects of automation are on employment, you look at labor participation and wages in countries where automation is cost effective. There's no doubt what the story is there.
I don't think the presence of one or two human drivers is what is preventing the "18 wheeled loot piñata" from occurring currently.
See also: guards in armored vans aren't actually there to protect the money.
Probably not. The US isn't some Mad Max hellscape where people drive directly up to moving robot freighters and cut the locks of the back at 65 mph to get at the sweet loot, and importantly, most freighters don't have anything worth stealing.
And yet you're not citing anything. If there was no doubt there should be clear demonstration that automation reduces the number of jobs.
First world labor utilization is not on some long term down slope. To the extent that it is (marginally) down in the United States in the short term, demographics explain a vast majority of the difference, bolstered by increased disability claims and longer periods of education (so 18-25 labor participation is down) explain more than the entire drop. Increased automation allows this to be offset in large part by increased labor participation in 50+ age groups, since fewer jobs require manual labor.
And over the history of automation, where manufacturing has been exported to cheaper countries, participation is well up.
Similarly, there is no clear downward trend across Europe or Canada. If automation was the cause we should see it across the board in developed nations.
Automation reducing jobs is not reflected in actual facts or history of economics. Industrialization is "automation". It had a bit of an impact on world economics. And there were certain groups that said it was going to do away with all the jobs. They were so wrong that the most famous group's name now means anyone who foolishly opposes technology, especially industrialization and automation that performs tasks more efficiently. This Luddite position is not well respected in actual economic thought.
Fair trade vs Free Trade is a reasonable argument in regard to whether it actually helps or hurts. Whether automation and industrialization increases or decreases the number of jobs is not generally an open question.
If there is "no doubt what the story is there" then its that the fundamental argument is baseless.
Extremely few people who actually study economics believe automation is eliminating jobs and that we just don't have enough to do in modern society to employ people. The idea that work is unnecessary and disconnected from production and prosperity is frankly so shortsighted as to not being worth engaging in, before we get into whether or not work has benefits beyond what the work actually does.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The actual challenge might be what if someone figures out how to hack the guidance system and just has it drive itself to an abandoned lot somewhere.
It would be nice if, after several centuries of misinformation, we could actually stop misrepresenting the Luddite movement.
If you're looking to prove unmanned trucks as being easy targets for theft, a normally manned truck being stolen probably isn't the best example.
Also most of the instances of theft I'm randomly pulling up show people stealing from or stealing the trucks while they're parked and not moving for a few hours. There isn't some Fast and the Furious crime ring hijacking freight mid shipment.
The original point is that corporate income taxes get passed on as well, making a progressive tax into a regressive one. In my perfect world, the VAT rate would be set at a level that reflects the general cost of business taxation in the CPI, or be designed to make the same revenue from domestic taxpayers (adding in revenue from foreign companies and tax-dodgers).
????
That doesn't track if the type of job has changed though.
That said, it's not that automation is bad in any way shape or form. It's that our social systems are built around cooperation by necessity more than out of concern for human welfare, and automation decreases the necessity of human workers.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.ZS/countries/XD?display=graph
The bolded is flatly false. Japan and Canada both have downward trends. Europe does not, but Europe's utilization is so far below everyone else's that it's difficult to draw conclusions.
We already had this discussion in the previous thread on this subject, and I don't really feel up to repeating the whole thing. The condensed version is: the history of economics is the history of respected economists repeatedly being proven spectacularly wrong in the predictions they make from history. Arguing that the labor conditions prevailing for 2.5 centuries of human history will continue indefinitely is as ridiculous as Malthus's predictions. More, because Malthus had no way of knowing about the Green Revolution but we certainly do know about automation.
This is ironic. Economists overwhelmingly supported free trade for decades. Disagreeing was heresy.
Yeah, that may once have been true.
its snow problem
Snow hides features of the road that self-driving vehicles' cameras need to see, and also has a tendency to continuously set off proximity sensor systems (radar, LIDAR, ultrasound, whatever).
Google Says Snow More of Self-Driving Car Snag Than NHTSA
This Is How Bad Self-Driving Cars Suck In The Rain
The cold, hard truth about autonomous vehicles and weather
According to your first article the expected time line for solving the issue is 2-5 years. Not exactly a far off future.
Here's a link to Canadian labor participation. From 1976 to now, the highest ever is 67.7% the low is 61.4%. It is currently 65.8%
Here's the Japan, Canada and the EU, labor participation rate age 15+ from the World Bank. Spot this automation labor participation free fall.
Saying "People have been wrong in the past" doesn't suggest you are correct in your assertions. Indeed saying citing Malthus while claiming the inevitable destruction of jobs suggests a supreme lack of self-awareness.
From the link that supposedly bolsters that its reasonable to posit that automation will cause some kind of massive job reduction - which even it was true wouldn't suggest its likely -
But the article admits this survey isn't representative. Let's look at who they cite for each side
Automation won't decrease the number of jobs
Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google, Turing Award Winner, PhD
Jonathan Grudin, principal researcher for Microsoft, PhD
Michael Kende, the economist for a major Internet-oriented nonprofit organization (the Internet Society, former FCC big wig, MIT Phd)
Fred Baker, Internet pioneer, longtime leader in the IETF and Cisco Systems Fellow PhD
Ben Shneiderman, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, PhD
Amy Webb, CEO of strategy firm Webbmedia Group, Visiting Fellow at Harvard, Professor at Columbia
John Markoff, senior writer for the Science section of the New York Times, famous for covering hackers from Morris to Mitnick, Pulitzer Prize winner
Marjory Blumenthal, Executive Director of PCAST, Office of Science and Technology Policy, The White House, former Associate Provost at Georgetown University
David Hughes, an early Internet researcher in the DoD, and activist for rural connectivity
Pamela Rutledge, PhD and director of the Media Psychology Research Center
Michael Glassman, associate Professor tOSU, PhD
David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory PhD
Jari Arkko, Internet expert for Ericsson and chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (Licentiate degree, which is between a Masters and a PhD)
Christopher Wilkinson, Masters, former Visiting Fellow at Harvard and EU big wig
(Then some that say they won't because of legal restrictions that I'll leave out)
Intellectual heavyweights for the most part. Professors and famous intellectuals and the like, most in relevant fields. Now the opposite
Jerry Michalski, A consultant that advises companies on how to deal with the changes coming. A MBA
Mike Roberts, a former ICANN member. A MBA
Robert Cannon, Internet law and policy expert, JD
Tom Standage, journalist and author for the Economist, BS
Mark Nall, former Project manager at NASA, MS
Justin Reich, Visiting Fellow at Harvard for Education EdD
Stowe Boyd, MS
Nilofer Merchant MBA
Alex Howard editor Huffington Post
MBAs < PhDs. Consultants < Economists.
You are making the assertion that automation is going to lead to a elimination of jobs. This is an incredibly controversial and unsupported statement even by this link where "experts" is defined loosely and everyone gets a vote. If you believe the fundamental structure of Western economics is going to be overturned, how bout we get something more than "Oh we already decided this before."
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
This stuff is incredibly hard. Tech writers who are vaguely near it think its going to happen any time now. Readers are big more skeptical. People actually trying to do this stuff are like "This isn't the next facebook app jesus."
Its extremely hard stuff
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The expected timeline for these things is always 5 years if we think we can do it, 10 if it's theoretically possible and 20 if it's AI. I would say 5 years to a prototype that mostly works, in non-severe weather conditions
I know large segments of the public will likely freak out any time one has any sort of accident but nuts to them. They're awful drivers anyway.
Yeah, the bar for "better than a human driver" is pretty low when you look at the stats.