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[LordBucket]

Automated Teller Machines replace bank tellers. Self checkout machines replace grocery store cashiers. Industrial robots replace human assembly lines.
Need I go on?

Who makes those machines? Who makes sure they're working? Who goes out and fixes them when they don't?

Do you really believe that the amount of work required to build and maintain these robots and machines is equal to the amount of work that they do?

Seriously?

[Thecard]

Repairmen and engineers do not an economy make.

Well, duh. But someone's gotta do that. Who?


To clarify, I'm not saying people are more efficient or anything like that. I honestly have no idea where you're getting that from.
What I'm saying is, someone is going to have to work. There's going to be a small workforce, but there has to be a workforce.
You can't have that option C you're talking about without someone having to work. That's a bit harsher than everyone having to work, in my opinion.

[Eagle_eye]

1. Competition means innovation and efficiency. Waste? The fact you want to be BETTER than someone makes your product better.

2. Anyways, to regulate competition beyond preventing someone from going out and ruining your opponents life is just wrong in my opinion, it's your right to try and succeed.

3. My problems with communism have nothing to do with labour or automation, it's social. A lack of incentive again. Why would we ever strive for anything better? Then past that, how would the economy work? The bare minimum would be produced, if there are no gains, why would anyone overproduce?

4. Again you lapse back into a lack of movement, economic and social stagnation? Where would our advancement come from? We had might as well regress to the dark ages. If everything is done for us then we'll be little more than couch potatoes.

1: By definition, it means inefficiency. If you're competing with someone, it means you're collectively trying to supply more than is demanded. As for innovation, I could not care less about the sort of "innovation" that comes out of business competition. We don't need shinier phones and fancier handbags, we need actual improvements in technology, and those come from universities and the rare corporate pure research lab.

2: You know what I think is wrong? People starving. Capitalism is a system that permits that to happen. It doesn't matter if you think the individual components are acceptable: if it kills people, it needs to be destroyed. How you go about doing something doesn't matter, so long as the net effect is good.

3: If we don't need to strive for anything better, why should we? Communism is post-scarcity: if we no longer need to work to supply our needs, we shouldn't. Work is unpleasant. If you want to do it on your own time, go ahead, but there's nothing intrinsically good about it. The less work that has to be done, the better.

4:Everything being done for us is the goal that we're advancing towards. Advancement is good only when you're advancing towards a good goal, and utopia is a pretty damn good goal. In fact, it's literally impossible to advance past it, being you know, the ideal.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Repairmen and engineers do not an economy make.

Well, duh. But someone's gotta do that. Who?

People. People who are going to have to operate in a non-capitalist framework. Which is what this whole fucking thread has been about.

Then again, maybe the machines will take those positions as well.

[SalmonGod]

I think a basic income guarantee is the very least that needs to happen.  Enough to live on non-miserably.  It's a hell of a hard sell to most and a difficult transition, but it's also the only step I can imagine that the majority of people within our culture as it stands could actually comprehend in a unified enough matter to work around.

The problem with that is that a lot of people would simply not work though, if the government payed them enough to live 'not-miserably'.

@Descan: agreed, but only if there is something to figure out, at some point there isn't going to be anything to work towards. It's the science that happens out of necessity that brings about the greatest advancement.

EDIT: also may I state: Modern day 'Capitalism' is really Socialism with Capitalist tendencies.

I completely disagree.  The vast majority of my experience with myself and other human beings is that we crave work, but only work that's meaningful to us.  The myth that people are inherently lazy and will only work if there's either a big fucking carrot in front of them or a fire lit under their ass is a product of civilization being mostly based on forcing people to work primarily for the benefit of a handful of rulers rather than themselves or their communities.  Of fucking course people are going to be lazy under those circumstances.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

What is Utopia? An Agrarian Republic? That's not my Utopia.

Shinier phones and fancier handbags huh? What about better engines and taller buildings?

People will always starve. There will never be enough, the less constraints on our population the more it will go up. Utopia is impossible.

why shouldn't we strive for something better if we don't have to? Why do we do anything? Communism is not post-scarcity, how do you think you get to communsim? We have an abundance of everything and then boom: Communism? It requires work and a ridiculous amount of effort put in by the individuals on society's behalf. Even if everything is automated we have to make it so, and we'll have to break some eggs on the way there.

You can't reach the Ideal, it's an asymptote at best and ocean at worst. There will always be something wrong, or something you want, or etc.

EDIT

@SG:

I think a basic income guarantee is the very least that needs to happen.  Enough to live on non-miserably.  It's a hell of a hard sell to most and a difficult transition, but it's also the only step I can imagine that the majority of people within our culture as it stands could actually comprehend in a unified enough matter to work around.

The problem with that is that a lot of people would simply not work though, if the government payed them enough to live 'not-miserably'.

@Descan: agreed, but only if there is something to figure out, at some point there isn't going to be anything to work towards. It's the science that happens out of necessity that brings about the greatest advancement.

EDIT: also may I state: Modern day 'Capitalism' is really Socialism with Capitalist tendencies.

I completely disagree.  The vast majority of my experience with myself and other human beings is that we crave work, but only work that's meaningful to us.  The myth that people are inherently lazy and will only work if there's either a big fucking carrot in front of them or a fire lit under their ass is a product of civilization being mostly based on forcing people to work primarily for the benefit of a handful of rulers rather than themselves or their communities.  Of fucking course people are going to be lazy under those circumstances.

We crave work, but what kind of work? Will it be useful? How will it contribute?

[Max White]

Automated Teller Machines replace bank tellers. Self checkout machines replace grocery store cashiers. Industrial robots replace human assembly lines.

Need I go on?

Here is why it is good that we make people redundant with technology such as these robots.
People get paid wages, robots don't. You can argue that robots have a high flag fee, but clearly they pay for themselves or companies wouldn't use them. By using these robots a company hires less employees (So people are out of work) but the work still gets done (So services remain) and at a lower cost (Resulting in lower cost of living)
Because people who aren't made redundant enjoy a lower cost of living they have a lot more money left over at the end of the week to spend on other things. Things like recreation or bigger houses or nicer clothing. Better and more fun stuff. So suddenly there is a demand for these things, a demand that gets filled by people, making up for the loss of employment to the robots.

Think about how many hours people used to work pre-industrial revolution just to have a place to live and something to eat, and look at life these days. Automation has caused a boom in wealth that we channeled into all sorts of new industries. You only have to look at the number of insanely successful musical composes today, compared to a few hundred years ago, and it becomes clear that while technology makes people redundant at the lower end, it creates a lot more positions at the top end, positions that society slowly drifts into. We call this drift 'progress'.

[Tack]

I think that's the point overall. Building the robots can be done on a factory line, however fixing them will be the only necessary job tasked to humans. And who knows where the humble repairman will be at that point.

And this dream seems to be a possible future for us. A massive class segregation between those who develop new technology and are provided with everything they could possibly need or want, and those who provide everything.
And it's possible. In medieval times a farmer could make enough food to feed his family and a little more on top of that. Taxes were so that the nobles could take that little more off the top in order for the government and soldiery to survive - Luckily enough they had enough farmers for it to work. In comes the agricultural revolution, and then the industrial age, and now a single farmer provides enough for a thousand. Of course the grain farmer makes a pittance from his grain and sells it to the millers who make a pittance making flour and sell it to the bakers, and so continues capitalism.
However, if more and more of the system is automated the pipe dream of one man being able to provide every possible need for an entire city, just because he is the repairman of the robots that keep it all flowing - is a possibility.

However,
The Romans had a massive booming economy, with a huge surplus in money and everyone middle-class and above lived in luxury. However, everyone servant-class and below lived in poverty.
And it was run almost entirely on slave labor.
Slave labor being inhumane, it was removed, and with the beginning of the technology age robotics began to replace it. So this free work is boosting the economy, furthering the goals of humanity and may result in a lot of poverty. When the world is segregated into nothing but the many scientists and the few repairmen, where will the rest go? Remember, the uneducated and socio-economically challenged people (Read: The lower class) are usually the first to get pregnant and have children. Large families are sometimes the best way they can feel a sense of achievement about their life. So where do all these people work? If they aren't intelligent enough to be a scientist and aren't lucky enough to be a repairman, and every other job is automated, where do they go?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

People will always starve.

Just like they'll always get smallpox?

There will never be enough, the less constraints on our population the more it will go up.

That's not what we've learned from history at all. Once the death rate crashes, the birth rate crashes to fit shortly thereafter. If your postulation was correct, population growth would be centered in the developed world, but the exact opposite is true.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Human population growth as a whole is exponential, eventually there'll be too many humans on earth to be fed by humans on earth.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

No it isn't. It by definition is not exponential. Exponential growth is when the rate of growth continuously rises. We are experiencing exponential shrinkage. The rate of human population growth has been continuously falling for decades, and will not stop par the sudden deaths of a large percentage of humanity.

[Thecard]

Human population growth as a whole is exponential, eventually there'll be too many humans on earth to be fed by humans on earth.

If you factor in technological improvements, that is not a sure statement.

No it isn't. It by definition is not exponential. Exponential growth is when the rate of growth continuously rises. We are experiencing exponential shrinkage. The rate of human population growth has been continuously falling for decades, and will not stop par the sudden deaths of a large percentage of humanity.

Cite, please?

Also, I hate to be an ass, but exponential decay is still technically "exponential"...
(Sorry, that's just my inner smartass. I couldn't help it, it's a thing...)

[Max White]

Human population growth as a whole is exponential, eventually there'll be too many humans on earth to be fed by humans on earth.

Questions:
1. Why not dedicate more humans to producing food if we have so many humans?
2. Does it have to be humans? Can we automate this process to provide the required amount of food?
3. Does it have to be earth?
4. Do humans have to be fed food? Is there no possible way to produce a more renewable, more easily obtained substitute ?
5. Is growth always exponential? Will is ever stop? Will we run out of food before it stops?

There is a lot to consider with that single statement Urist.

[Hiiri]

Human population growth as a whole is exponential, eventually there'll be too many humans on earth to be fed by humans on earth.

Uneducated parts of the world tend to fuck until they starve, then they'll fuck some more. Throw some education and condoms their way, voilá, problem solved!

[LordBucket]

The rate of human population growth has been continuously falling for decades

Cite, please?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth