Robots in Our Future

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And as machines expand their domain, basic wages could easily fall so low that families cannot support themselves without public assistance.
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It's not like this is a future problem. One of the fundamental problems of sub-Saharan Africa is that most of their population cannot produce enough of value to the economic world in a day to cover the cost of staying alive for a day.

The way Kevin frames the problem above is not quite helpful --- a better framing is, as I have put it --- can the value of what a person produces in a day cover what it costs to keep them alive?

Obviously there are a bunch of ways to deal with this.

Possibility one is (in the West) to let what it costs to keep them alive for a day drop precipitously, to Africa levels. There's a fair bit of way to go down that path if we wish to (certainly the GOP seems to feel that's a fine direction).

Of course, as with everything, it helps to know more about the world than economics. The fact that a hungry stupid man cannot do anything productive doesn't mean that he can't do plenty unproductive. At some point it makes more sense to buy people off than to pay the costs involved in dealing with their crime, their contagious diseases, their random sabotage of the economic system. But the same GOP people that want to immiserate the poor don't believe in applying Coase to this sort of situation (cf their attitude to more sensible health care), so Brazil it is, if they stay in power, followed by Nigeria, followed by what? The French Revolution?

Possibility two is to admit up front that economics is not the way we (society) wish to use to frame the question --- everyone has a right to a minimal standard of life, blah, blah. In other words, we take from the people who are producing more value than is needed to stay alive, and give to the poor. Who knows, maybe one day that will fly in the US.
BUT BUT BUT, and this is the point the left are unwilling to admit ---- what does this do about "the right to children"? If we have you as a useless drain on society, well, short of gassing you or letting you starve, there's not much we can do about that. But why do we, the rest of society, have to support your "right" to as many kids as you wish?
Right now this is a problem leftists everywhere in the world (except China) have been happy to avoid, to pretend does not exist. A variety of factors, from peak oil to climate change to overfishing mean those days are coming to an end.
And make no doubt about it --- no choice in this matter is a choice. At the most obvious level, for example, a choice to subsidize US kids is a choice to let African kids die --- resources are fungible, and more (oil, food, whatever) for America means less for Africa. We can (and will) go down that path for a while, but there's a limit to how much you can get out that. At which point...?

We've been 'worrying' about machines taking over jobs for over a hundred years. When jobs get automated, the jobs that remain become more pleasant. I think anyone would agree driving a backhoe is a better job than moving the same amount of dirt with a shovel.

Also? reduced workweek. Six days workweeks were the norm until fairly recently - the only reason it wasn't a seven-day workweek was at the insistence of whatever religion was practiced in the region (one of the few actual benefits conferred by religion).

If machines are doing a lot of the work at little ongoing cost, simply keep employee pay the same for fewer hours. An increase in leisure time is a sign of advancing civilzation - when we get to a twenty hour workweek, I'll admit there's some advantage to living in a high-tech world.

is Robbie, from the movie "Forbidden Planet". He was fantastic. Give him a bottle of booze and ask for more and in no time you'll have cases. Ahh, the good old days.

I think one big problem is not found at the bottom of the ladder but at the top. What do we seem to value the most, in terms of how well they are paid? People who move money around - bankers, brokers, traders. And honestly (I know the Econ 101 definition of how these people allocate capital most effectively, etc.) I think largely that these people create nothing. Another movie, Wall Street, has Gordon Gekko saying, "I make nothing. I create nothing. I own!"

We have changed from a society that values creation to a society that values ownership. And the displacement of workers (it is most definitely not just the low-education end of the spectrum) I think follows. Conversely, if we value education, inquiry, and idea generation, then I think job creation will follow up and down the line.

I liked MaynardHandley's post, especially the final paragraphs. The reason unemployment didn't skyrocket when some workers were displaced by machines during the industrial revolution, was the economic expansion Kevin mentioned.

Unfortunately, the economy cannot continue grow exponentially here or anywhere else (it hasn't in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the sad results), so the exponentially increasing population will not be accommodated by exponentially an growing labor market, as in the past. There are limits to growth, a la the Club of Rome.

Peak oil, peak uranium and the resulting power down don't bode well for energy intensive workers, human or mechanical.

Also, kudos to Greg in Fl on a good catch: Robby the Robot. I checked IMDB and he has his own filmography (16!). Forbidden Planet, noted as the source of the promo photo, was a great sci-fi flick.

Robby from "The Forbidden Planet" is very appropriate. In the movie an ancient race named the Krell created a huge machine which allowed them to create anything just by thinking about it, putting them all out of work. Unfortunately shortly after becoming unemployed, they were all wiped out by monsters created by their own ids.