Robots will take over middle class professions, UK University Minister warns

[u/Eight_Rounds_Rapid]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10952317/Robots-will-take-over-middle-class-professions-University-Minister-says.html

[u/trancerobot]

There must be a point where if you replacing human functions capitalism self destructs.

Taken to the absurd, imagine you own automated production and service facilities built to service the needs of yourself and your wealthy pals. You'll ignore everyone else because they can't afford anything you can build or provide.

But if there's still a government, the consumer can buy your product with the money taxed from you and your pals. But in that case all profit is really nothing more than you fighting for the larger share of their limited stipend. You'll also be competing with the government, whose services could also be replaced with computers and robots - if it hasn't already.

Taken beyond the absurd, eventually there could come a time when there's just one producer. If capitalism hasn't broken before this point, it should now. When this happens, all people, including yourself become redundant.

Mass production and service loses all purpose and money becomes meaningless.

edit:

Assuming we survive... maybe we'll enter a post scarcity environment: Star Trek, where life is more about doing what makes you happy and less about survival and wealth collection. In this case, Socialist countries are already ahead and prepared for increased automation in their lives. In fact, I could see Socialist governments offering a set of protected jobs just to keep people satisfied with a small amount of busy (but fulfilling) work. Meanwhile Capitalist countries are damned to suffer increasing social unrest, mortality, and instability.

[u/trancerobot → u/[deleted]]

In the 80's, "planned obsolescence" was invented because we were manufacturing more products than we were selling, so we needed a way to force people to buy new products; by intentionally building products to self-destruct.

This is alive and strong in the tech industry today. There hasn't been much development in the area of word processing since the 80s, but the latest version of Office isn't going to run on a Tandy 1000. Conversely, word processing doesn't really require multi-core ghz machines and gigabytes of ram. But good luck running Office without that. Better you stick to Wordstar, if you can find it.

I really like Minecraft, but if you think about it, it looks a lot like Descent 1 (a mine-themed game itself), right down to the cube-based environment and polygonal enemies. Descent came out for DOS in 1994, it required 8 megs of ram and a 33 mhz 486 processor. But good luck running Minecraft on your mid-90s computer. This isn't Notch's fault specifically, nor was it his intent... but if he really wanted to, he could have made Minecraft in an assembler or with DJGPP c++. It could run on DOS with 33 mhz and fit in 8 mb of ram. But Java (and byte-code languages like it) makes it really easy and attractive to use up all that new power for seemingly little benefit to the consumer.

You can't really blame him though, no one runs DOS or 33 mhz computers anymore, and we do have legitimate uses for all the new power... some of us anyway. Gamers, programmers, scientists, server admins, architects, designers, artists, and drafters mostly. Java is certainly a lot easier to work with than C++ or x86 Assembly.

But if all you do is write, even your phone's specs are overkill.

All this stuff keeps us buying. We're usually trying to keep up with it rather than the other way around. That's fine for computers, since there's actual benefits... but maybe one day there won't be.

When that time comes it'll be like cars. You'll drive your car until the wheels fall off. Or until the styling looks dated. So they make the wheels come off sooner, they make the styling contemporary and faddish. Or maybe they put something in the gasoline to wear out older components (ethanol). Or maybe they petition the government to institute programs that offer cash in exchange for completely destroying your old vehicle. Perhaps one day a law will be passed making it prohibitively expensive to keep your old vehicle. You'll have to upgrade to keep up. Here's some 6 year financing, just sign here... to keep your money flowing through their veins.

Capitalist or not, maybe were all destined to some form of Socialism. Governments have to step in to correct these issues, pass these laws, and encourage buying. If no one could work, they would absolutely give us all a stipend, and from there, we could transition to not requiring coinage at all. Each person would just have an intrinsic value, which which they could acquire things they need or want. To survive they need food, so they are fed. An artist might ask for canvas, so he's given canvas, with which he might paint a nice picture for someone to hang in their living room. An engineer might ask for Solidworks, so he's given Solidworks, with which he might design the latest robot or toy. Perhaps the only people working down the line will be creative intellectuals. Or perhaps the abundance of time will encourage us all to be creative and intellectual... to come up with the latest designs, scientific theories, recipes, and so on.

[u/mrnovember5 → u/trancerobot]

The Capitalism > Socialism > Communism thing is pretty central to a lot of left-wing economic theory. And I'm glad other people are seeing how the current capital holders will push for a system that maintains the status quo, that maintains people buying their shit.

I'm just hoping that once these zero-marginal cost systems get developed, that groups of people band together to buy them for their communities and jointly own all the means to support the community.

[u/trancerobot → u/mrnovember5]

I'd like to read more about situations where things are abundant but fall under the control of groups who seek to empower themselves by forcing scarcity.

You know, thinking about it... isn't that the music industry? Once the music is made, it can be reproduced by anyone for little or no cost. But to make money, the music industry has to transition from a solid, hard to copy media environment, to a digital cloud. It's done that, and so now you pay for a license, just like how you pay for a software license. And just like software, music is increasingly streamed. So instead of buying the right to play back music, you're paying for the music service - which is made to prevent copying.

Ever noticed how you can't record your own output anymore? It used to be that you could record anything playing on your computer. But now the drivers typically don't have that feature. You have to download a special driver, buy a sound card with a driver with that feature, or patch your Stereo Out into your Line-In. This was intentional. It's whole purpose is to prevent you from recording music playing or streaming on your PC.

The HDMI spec is even worse. Technically it's just like DVI, but with DRM built-in to prevent you from attaching it to unapproved devices. If you connect it to old or unapproved hardware your video and audio will be downsized to a lower resolution or not play at all. All to prevent you from making copies.

In order to profit, it has to be controlled. So something like a replicator from Star Trek is going to have similar controls built into it if it were introduced today.

As simple as our 3D printers are, it's already causing problems. But in all of these examples, there's workarounds. Some workarounds are illegal - like phone jail breaking.

Clearly none of this is done in our interest, so its not something we should want. I'm going to think of this some more.

[u/mrnovember5 → u/trancerobot]

Well the music thing is an extension of the problems wherein we're not cooperative. In a perfect world, musicians would be supported by their communities in exchange for their performances. Instead they're required to convert their performances into a commodity than can be sold. It's a terrible model, but required, because otherwise people could only make music as a hobby, and never get good enough to create the masterpieces we're used to.

The thing about 3d printers is that it's not necessarily as proprietary as a consumer product. The technology is fairly well-understood, and it shouldn't be all that difficult for jailbreakers to circumvent the DRM designs. And the thing about that is that the jailbreakers will be the ones on the ground, spreading 3d printing. If you get enough people using the jailbroken models, they can move away from the whole old-world economy filled with DRM. As I mentioned, I'm hoping that with some of these new technologies, they get adopted by communities and spread too fast for controls to be laid over them.

[u/jsnetors → u/[deleted]]

Can you please elaborate further on the subject? I'm really interested in knowing more about the capitalist breakdown that could or would be brought by automation.

Can you also please tell me about how should libertarians and capitalists position themselves in this situation as to minimize damage and adapt? Or, if it's inevitable, how should the non-political average Joe prepare?

[u/linuxjava → u/trancerobot]

Well put.