[PicardianSocialist]

(Original post by Oswy)
You can't just reply with some vague reference to 'new sectors' as all sectors, new and old, are always looking to replace human labour with machines and autromation when it becomes cost effective and the trend is one-directional.

It's only one directional in the sense that we are not replacing machines with people, but it's not in the sense that we are creating human jobs as fast as we replace them with machines. There's no way of knowing for sure where the new jobs will be created, ultimately that's up to consumer preferences, but we can know for sure that, as long as wages are allowed to adjust, the labour market will clear.

[Ham22]

They're not there with self-service checkouts yet are they. They need to employ staff to man them because many people end up ****ing them up.

[Swanbow]

I for one welcome our new robot overlords, may they long reign over us.

[Oswy]

(Original post by PicardianSocialist)
It's only one directional in the sense that we are not replacing machines with people, but it's not in the sense that we are creating human jobs as fast as we replace them with machines. There's no way of knowing for sure where the new jobs will be created, ultimately that's up to consumer preferences, but we can know for sure that, as long as wages are allowed to adjust, the labour market will clear.

It's one directional in that there was in the distant past only human labour production and through technological advance, which has accelerated through the industrial revolution, an ever increasing percentage of production has been machine-labour and which correspondingly means an ever decreasing percentage of production by human labour, per unit. I accept that provided there were no practical limits to the expansion of such production this needn't necessarily mean underemployment or unemployment (though it would mean that machines would still replace specific jobs humans had done which machines can do quicker or with greater skill). However, there are practcal limitations to the expansion of production, not least because there are resource limitations but perhaps most obviously because there are consumption limitations. There's only so many pairs of shoes we can expect people to buy and although capitalism has successfully inculcated consumer ideology to the effect that many wealthy people think they need dozens, if not hundreds, of pairs of shoes, there will be a physical limit, it might be a few thousand pairs of shoes, or a few tens of thousands, who knows, but there will be a limit.

[Oswy]

(Original post by Ham22)
They're not there with self-service checkouts yet are they. They need to employ staff to man them because many people end up ****ing them up.

That's true but the long-term intention is clearly there - even before the technology is perfected they are introducing these machines to replace human labour because of the savings/profits to be gained. And when they are perfected we'll presumably just come to expect fewer job opportunities than before among those businesses. Next for future automation in supermarkets and similar retail outlets will probably be shelf-stacking and stock replacement jobs and I have little doubt these things are being thought about right now, even if they pose as yet unresolved technological problems.

A few seconds searching and I found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN62BCVFEe4

[Ham22]

Businesses are going to shoot themselves in the foot. More unemployment= less money spent on goods and services.
I can't wait for the apocalypse.

[Petro_99]

I`m sure I`ve seen this film

[RyanT]

It would make more sense to stop creating new humans and to assimilate existing humans into cyborgs or wait for them to die.

Humans will of served their use by the time robots reach this level of advancement. It is nonsensical to have the planets resources fueling the idle fantasies and desires of a biotic species whose emotions and desires are dictated to it by its evolutionary heritage.

When humans have become irrelevant to the production and scientific process they should be left behind.

[TheHansa]

(Original post by Oswy)
But without a job (because they've been replaced by a machine in some way or other) an individual will have no income to buy such shares.

The flip side of all this is that as greater and greater numbers of people lose work-based income so a greater and greater number of people will be unable to actually buy the products and services increasingly generated by machines. It seems to follow that the pool of substantive workers/consumers will shrink with an ever greater population of people on the 'outside' of the system.

I also tend to think that underemployment will show itself to be as much of the product of automation as unemployment, at least initially, as the movement away from human labour is in many cases gradual. It's already the case that many sectors only offer part-time and/or fixed-term contracts no doubt in part because the levels of automation introduced have so reduced reliance on human labour per unit of production.

I meant either there should be some form of collaboration with the former workers and the boss or that the government should begin a project to start to nationalise factories which run using robots and share the profit among the public or spend it on more services.

[TheHansa]

(Original post by Ham22)
Businesses are going to shoot themselves in the foot. More unemployment= less money spent on goods and services.
I can't wait for the apocalypse.

I'm afraid this won't save the worker. If the obselete part of the population has no money to buy things it wont matter to private capitalists, because they're still making goods using these robots,which they could trade amongst themselves. The workers get money for being useful, they want money to buy what the factories produce, the factories sell to them because if they didn't, the workers would stop attempting to make money, but if they're no longer useful there is no point in seeing them as consumers, they've gone outside capitalism. The solution is that the state needs to take control of some of the factories and issue people an allowance as if they're the shareholders so humans can meet their needs.

[Observatory]

In effect this has already happened. In 1800, the vast majority of people were farm labourers. Today, hardly anyone is a farm labourer, yet we don't have >50% unemployment. The standard of living will rise, maintaining a 2012 standard of living will require fewer and fewer hours, but people will re-adjust their expectations to a higher standard of living and keep working at a roughly similar rate. Partially because there will be cool new things that money can buy that don't exist now, and partially because work gives people something constructive to do with their time.

People on this thread talking about robots replacing the workforce and making everyone unemployed might as well throw their shoes into the spinning jennies and demand tractors be replaced by men with hoes, because apparently we were all put out of work centuries ago.

[Aspiringlawstudent]

No.

There's no point keeping around dead weight - let people who can't compete die out.

It's natural selection in action.

[Dmon1Unlimited]

(Original post by Snagprophet)
I'm imagining this being the way to utopia because you don't have to work any more.

Watch I robot

[Oswy]

(Original post by TheHansa)
I meant either there should be some form of collaboration with the former workers and the boss or that the government should begin a project to start to nationalise factories which run using robots and share the profit among the public or spend it on more services.

Yes, as a socialist I think we should nationalise pretty much all need-based production and not wait for a robot crisis to force the hand of the capitalists and their governments to avoid revolutionary overthrow by the impoverished and alienated.

[Oswy]

(Original post by Observatory)
In effect this has already happened. In 1800, the vast majority of people were farm labourers. Today, hardly anyone is a farm labourer, yet we don't have >50% unemployment. The standard of living will rise, maintaining a 2012 standard of living will require fewer and fewer hours, but people will re-adjust their expectations to a higher standard of living and keep working at a roughly similar rate. Partially because there will be cool new things that money can buy that don't exist now, and partially because work gives people something constructive to do with their time.

People on this thread talking about robots replacing the workforce and making everyone unemployed might as well throw their shoes into the spinning jennies and demand tractors be replaced by men with hoes, because apparently we were all put out of work centuries ago.

Your points fails when considered in the context of globalisation and international trade which temporarily counters the tendency fo technology to reduce actual human labour needs in a closed system even while it cannot be denied that technological advance in production reduces human-labour need per unit of output. The world is a big place and capitalism's advance (along with the advance of technological production) is happening at different rates in different parts of the globe - this particular game of musical chairs has yet to play itself out and may take decades or even centuries to do so. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that in many parts of the world their part in the global capitalist system is generating and maintaining much higher levels of unemployment than we're seeing in the centre.

Do you deny we live in the age of capitalism?

Do you deny that there is a global surplus of human labour under capitalism?

[Observatory]

(Original post by Oswy)
Your points fails when considered in the context of globalisation and international trade which temporarily counters the tendency fo technology to reduce actual human labour needs in a closed system even while it cannot be denied that technological advance in production reduces human-labour need per unit of output.

Right - that's the whole point. But your problem is in assuming that the amount of labour will collapse rather than the quantity of output will explode.

In reality, a bit of both has happened, with working hours dropping from 60-100 range to 30-50 range, and real incomes for all employees increasing multiple times since 1800.

The growth in international trade and spread of market institutions to more countries has done the same thing. At one time, Chinese peasants did back-breaking labour for subsistence food supply from their small-holdings; today increasing numbers have factory jobs that pay well above the average in China. And the total world GDP, which is a measure of total output, has exploded, mostly due to increases in places like China.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that in many parts of the world their part in the global capitalist system is generating and maintaining much higher levels of unemployment than we're seeing in the centre.

I don't know what is meant by this; the whole world does not operate with a free market economy. The places that most closely approximate it (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, HK etc.) all have low unemployment by global standards.

Employment is nothing to do with productivity; it's an allocation problem. The highest unemployment is in the places with the lowest labour productivity, which is the opposite of what you predict. Even that isn't causal, though, rather both problems are caused by bad institutions.

Do you deny we live in the age of capitalism?

Not necessarily, but the term is vague.

Do you deny that there is a global surplus of human labour under capitalism?

Yes.

[Converse Rocker]

(Original post by prog2djent)
Lol, you have just described the venus Project/zeitgeist movement, robots somehow take care of everthing and we all live like kings with no jobs, no money, no authority, no state (apart from a central robot automaton state, like in the matrix) and everyone is born equal, with equal opportunity.

Just out of curiosity, what opportunities would anyone have in a world where noboby works?

[Pindar]

Instead of "communism" how about a resource-based economy?

[prog2djent]

(Original post by Converse Rocker)
Just out of curiosity, what opportunities would anyone have in a world where noboby works?

I'm not arguing for the Venus Project, I think it is nuts by the way.

Well I suppose that an opportunity doesn't just mean job or employment standing, but opportunities in doing what you want? I suppose.

[rockerdc]

(Original post by PicardianSocialist)
Technological progress does not create unemployment. It destroys certain jobs in certain sectors, but creates new ones in other, more productive sectors.

For example, let's say I'm a capitalist. I own a factory, but for sake of simplicity say wages are my only cost and I have no fixed costs. I employ 10 people at £10 each to make 10 widgets, which I sell for £12 each, so I make a profit of £20. Then, a man comes to me and says that he will loan me his work-O-matic android for £10, and that will do the job of my entire workforce. I accept the man's offer and fire my entire workforce (the robot is so great that it doesn't need maintenance workers) and replace it with the android. My costs are now £10, my revenue is still £120, so I make £110 pounds profit.

If we stop the story here, it would appear that I have created unemployment, but it doesn't. I have a choice of what to do now, I could either: enjoy my profits, and hire a full cleaning staff for my house; or I could increase production and cut prices closer to cost. If I do the former, then I will have created the jobs for a cleaning staff, if I do the latter, then the profits have been passed onto consumers, who can buy things they want with the savings which will increase employment in those sectors.

If technological progress really did destroy jobs without creating any, then we would all be unemployed by now.

But you forget the one most important factor. Money. What do you do when there are no more wage earners from your example? Without wages you cannot buy anything. If you can't buy anything, then how do you get food, clothing, shelter, and the like? You argument is temporal and it does very little to resolve the problem of exponential technological growth. Capitalism will destroy itself because owners will always find the cheapest means of labor. Robotics and machinery will destroy scarcity. Don't forget nano technology. It IS a long way off, but either humankind will destroy itself and use technology for a few megalomaniac owners of capital, or technology will allow "communism" to thrive in a cooperative non-monetized system. I'll take the later, but do not think for a minute that capitalism is an absolute or that it is strict part of natural order. Without plugging money into equation, it is really just cheerleading humankind's outdated addiction to money and power. We can do better.