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sl4shd0rk writes:
"Bill Gates says everyone needs to prepare to be out of work in 20 years due to Robots/software taking over most jobs. In preparation for this, Gates recommends people 'should basically get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans' and reduce operating overhead for businesses by 'eliminating payroll and corporate income taxes while also not raising the minimum wage'. Bill Gates, you may recall, is the former CEO of Microsoft whose business acumen has brought the technology sector such things as Metro, Windows Phone and Xbox One.
BusinessInsider took a similar theme earlier this year."
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Bill Gates: Prepare to be Assimilated
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 2, Insightful) by cybro on Monday March 17 2014, @08:08PM
It might be what Bill wishes would happen.
But obviously that will not happen, unless true AI is invented.
(Score: 3, Funny) by xlefay on Monday March 17 2014, @08:12PM
Another attempt by Skynet to keep its existence secret..
(Score: 5, Funny) by clone141166 on Monday March 17 2014, @08:14PM
If Skynet is built on Windows 8, I think we're pretty safe.
(Score: 2) by xlefay on Monday March 17 2014, @08:15PM
You humans so gullible! errr, wait.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tftp on Monday March 17 2014, @08:19PM
You do not need true AI to have a few mechanics oversee a huge robotic factory. This is happening already, right now. BG may be right - there will be no need for workers in the fiture; and there will be not much need for workers tomorrow. Machines replace thousands of laborers. CNCs outperform human operators. Bulldozers and cranes remove lots of workforce from construction sites. Fruit picking robots reduce the need in seasonal labor. None of that is dependent on true AI. Sure, it would be handy; but it's not required. A single manufacturing line of sewing needles "eliminated" at least a million steelworkers, who'd be making one needle per hour. In the nearest future the only wanted workers would be higher level techs, and engineers. If you are a lathe or a mill operator you are no longer wanted, unless you do MasterCAM and SolidWorks. Anyone with lesser skills will be forever unemployable - or employable only in personal services, where robots are not a good fit yet.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @09:05PM
I think in 20yrs lots of humans will still be employed, but the majority of remaining human jobs will be working for the government. Don't under estimate government bureaucracy and inefficiency. Having worked for the government myself in the past, it is quite amazing how many people can be employed to just shuffle papers around and collect signatures. I can see a return of FDR style make-work programs.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @04:38AM
FDR put 15 million unemployed Americans to work when the Capitalists weren't hiring (and hadn't been hiring for years).
The Civil Works Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps built/rebuilt badly needed/dilapidated infrastructure.
(Remember the I-35 bridge that fell into the river in 2007? The engineer's guild has been giving USA's infrastructure failing grades for years and years.)
The insides of public buildings of that era also looked awesome after the gov't hired artists. [google.com]
A demoralized working class that had been clobbered with 33 percent unemployment also had their morale lifted when writers, actors, musicians, and artists hired by the gov't brought their art to remote communities.
The greatest inefficiency is having working class people unemployed and with no money to spend. [wikipedia.org] 66 percent of the economy is just ordinary people buying ordinary stuff; a few yachts and mansions don't affect the big picture very much.
FDR's only big mistake was that he kept Capitalism alive when it had failed yet again [wikipedia.org] as it does every 80 years or so.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:28AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:06AM
True, it is a comparatively good economic system. But to copy the style,
Capitalism - one of the worst government systems around, just beats out Monarchy/Dictatorship.
I miss Democracy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @06:11PM
One of the giant problems with Capitalism is that people defend it when they don't even understand what it is.[1]
As the AC you replied to noted, Capitalism is an *economic* system, NOT a governmental system.
Capitalism:
You go to your workplace and you are told by someone what you will produce, how you will produce it, and you have no say in what is done with the profits from the production process.
Capitalism is dictatorial; you leave Democracy at the door.
Marxism:
You go to your workplace and you and your coworkers decide what you will produce, you and your coworkers decide how you will produce it, and you and your coworkers decide what is done with the profits.
Marxism is very democratic.
Where it is tried, Marxism is very successful. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
Note also that that particular operation has been successful since 1956.
There's one region in northern Italy [wikimedia.org] where worker cooperatives are common. [google.com]
Here's an adjoining region [wikimedia.org] where they have lots of fruit, wine, and dairy cooperatives.
Now, here is what that brand of clueless defenders of Capitalism have missed:
The two systems are defined by who owns the means of production. (See also "Socialism", below.)
When the workers are also the owners, the owners don't export their own jobs.
Paris Hilton sitting on her ass waiting for a check to arrive is an example of Capitalism because she (and her ancestors) make/made money, not by doing labor, but by making money from money.
There's also a third system [googleusercontent.com] (VERY GOOD ARTICLE)[2](orig) [dissidentvoice.org] where the gov't (read: taxpayers) own the means of production; that is called Socialism.
Where democracy is working well (read: governmental transparency), Socialism also works great. [wikipedia.org]
(I have service from Edison and the capitalists suck by comparison.)
In a healthy economy, all 3 economic systems can exist concurrently.
[1] People often confuse Markets and Capitalism; if all the capitalists had died yesterday, markets would still exist without any capitalists.
[2] ...and none of the governments that have called themselves "communist" have been Marxist at all. As Mr. Johnston notes, those have been examples of State Capitalism; centrally planned economies, single-party governments, and top-down governance are antithetical to Marxism. Again, Marxism is very democratic.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:42PM
I don't really consider Mondragon to be Marxism. I think it's more a form of democratic capitalism (which is something that really hasn't been tried in the USA).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @04:40PM
Mondragon [is] more a form of democratic capitalism
The reason you think that that is Capitalism is because, again, you are one those who doesn't understand what Capitalism actually is (but will defend it anyway).
When SOMEONE ELSE owns the company and you are simply a disposable employee with no voice in the direction the company takes (e.g. whether your job will be exported), THAT is Capitalism.
Mondragon is nothing like that. Everyone there is an owner and everyone there makes money by his LABOR; there is no separate "investor" class involved (e.g. Paris Hilton sitting on her ass waiting for a check to arrive).
Note: I really hate it when I hear "Middle Class". That is bullshit; there are only 2 classes: workers who make their money from labor (The Proletariat) and capitalists who make their money from money (The Bourgeoisie).
.
hasn't been tried in the USA
You have a lot of opinions, but are seriously lacking on facts:
Because Der Bingle was already popular at the time, his little brother's name was the one used by the larger configuration of The Bobcats--but he was NOT "The Boss" [google.com] (indeed, he couldn't read music nor play an instrument, making him the least-able of the lot).
There were also other bands of that era that operated the same way (as democracies). That goes back about 90 years.
Here's one of my favorite recent stories about workers taking over a workplace [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [libcom.org] when a damned useless corporation tries to screw them.
When employee ownership in the USA comes up, Dunn-Edwards Paints springs immediately to mind.
For good measure, here's another 99 companies in the USA where the majority ownership is the employees. [nceo.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @07:25PM
No, I think you are actually the one who is misunderstanding what capitalism is. It's when the means of production are privately owned. It doesn't matter whether they're in the hands of one, or ten, or a thousand people. A privately held corporation that's wholly employee-owned is still capitalistic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @12:19AM
Employees == Capitalism
Worker-owned operation == Marxism
Your feeble Reactionary attempts to redefine words don't change the facts.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:31PM
Employees are a necessary but not sufficient condition for capitalism.
Worker-owned operation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Marxism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @11:46PM
You know absolutely nothing about the subject.
You're another of those "my opinions are as good as your facts" guys who conflate Capitalism with markets, profit, private ownership, and every other thing under the sun.
You don't even realize how ridiculous are.
You need to stop consuming lamestream media, particularly TeeVee and especially Fox so-called News. It fills your head with useless nonsense.
At some point you should try picking up a book and reading. Start with a dictionary and move on to a text on Comparative Economics.
Oh, and when you're in over your head, STOP DIGGING.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @09:59PM
I didn't say there were no employee-owned companies (or cooperatives) in the USA. What I mean is, it's not the norm. Corporations are the last refuge of kings and their courts. We like a hierarchical, dictatorial style of management and Big Business is clearly the dominant form of capitalism in the USA today.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 17 2014, @09:31PM
Lathe or mill operators could much more cheaply and readily be repurposed into maintenance mechanics, which unlike most engineers(and many drafters) actually have a lot of experience fixing shit. You know, actually replacing motors or servos or gears with their own two hands instead of clicking on drawings and breakpoints all day. Or, if the manufacturing plant went full-retard and hired a bunch of Mexicans, they would lose their ISO certification and credibility after one their aircraft parts breaks in midair and sinks that 777 airliner.
" ¡Ay, Jefe, I thought SI was yes do eet, not "S.I." uneets! I used eenches! ¡Ay!"
¡Ay, Chingada!
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday March 18 2014, @01:55AM
Lathe or mill operators could much more cheaply and readily be repurposed into maintenance mechanics
Yes, but how many of them are needed?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday March 18 2014, @07:27AM
And the corollary, once practically no one has a job, who's going to buy anything?
No point in making commuter cars if there's no commuters.
Finally this is all monday morning quarterbacking. I've been driving the same commute road for a decade, thankfully with a variety of flex time options. Got stuck in "rush" hour last night, unusually, which a decade ago would have meant an hour plus extra for construction and/or accidents. Home in 35 minutes. Comically they're rebuilding roads and interchanges to assume 25% job growth, LOL. Probably lifetime peak 9-5 cubie dweller white collar employment was back in '07. We're going to have a great, empty, interstate system here.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Monday March 17 2014, @08:28PM
It'll never happen. Those scum sucking wastes of human skin (corporate execs) can't sit on top of an empire made of 99% AI, 1% parasite.
If you don't pay the plebes they can't in turn give the money back for the shiny.
What do you have with starving plebes bereft of their shiny? Dead execs and 1%'ers after their visit to the guillotine.
If there is one thing abundantly clear about life in Rome (we are in the final days of it), is that you don't fuck with the people past a certain point, and by Zeus' thundering testicles, don't screw with Panem et Circes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tftp on Monday March 17 2014, @09:12PM
If you don't pay the plebes they can't in turn give the money back for the shiny.
Yes, this is a very good question... and I haven't seen the answer to that in any discussion that debates how to transition from the modern capitalism to the society of the future (essentially, communism) where stuff is made by robots and is free, and where money is not used anymore.
One thing is certain, though. If there is a way to run fully robotic factories, they will be made and they will be ran. This is necessary because (a) it is cheaper in the short term, and (b) it is necessary to manufacture things that humans cannot assemble. (Think of IC dies, for example.)
Businessmen who go for this will depend on "someone else" who will be employing "someone else" who would be paid salary to buy their products. As more and more businesses convert to robotic labor, fewer and fewer workers will be employed.
However before the manufacturers start noticing that there are too few buyers for their wares, one more thing happens. Workers get hungry. This happens usually way before those workers need another TV or another smartphone. But as the workers do not work, they don't have money to buy food.
Then the government steps in. It imposes new taxes onto owners of robotic factories, and uses these monies to feed the workers. As a side effect, those workers are now able to buy the output of those factories.
In the end, the owner of the robotic plant ends up earning just a bit more than the "freeloaders." This essentially completes the transition. Robots make products, people consume those products, and nobody is really working (except those few owners, but they get paid somewhat more for this work.) As most of the robotic plant is now taxed, the ownership becomes nominal, and it can be easily sold or bought because all you sell is just a job of a manager of that plant.
I cannot say much about disappearance of money, though. Humans are great inventors in the hoarding department. Money will remain around to prevent that hoarding. Also, money will be necessary to reward (with larger consumption) those who want to work. There will be always jobs for humans - such as in the government, which will be responsible for setting prices for the factory's output and for determining the allowance that is paid to every human regardless of his employment status. Welcome to USSR!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by monster on Tuesday March 18 2014, @04:59AM
You forget one grim possibility:
As taxes over the robotic factories increase, the owners start outsourcing production to third world countries where a military elite keeps the population on check, giving them some money in exchange of less taxes. As the robotic factories leave for greener pastures, first world countries find that they no longer can tax them and must either increase indirect taxes (like VAT), put tariffs in place (anathema!) or decrease government aid (austerity FTW!) and let those "freeloaders" starve and die, or at least live harshly in poverty.
Never understimate the willpower to avoid taxes.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tftp on Tuesday March 18 2014, @06:01AM
As taxes over the robotic factories increase, the owners start outsourcing production to third world countries where a military elite keeps the population on check, giving them some money in exchange of less taxes
Robotic factories do not depend on cities and population to operate. In fact, they do better away from people. This means that they can be constructed (by robots, ultimately) in a place without significant population. On the sea floor (for complete independence,) or on islands, or in Antarctica. Your proposed 3rd world locations are also usable; the corrupt rulers will simply lease the land on favorable (to them personally) conditions.
But in the end a capitalist economy needs the buyers just as much as the sellers. If I own a plant that can make anything, what do I do with it as a capitalist if nobody else can afford my products? Sure, I can give the products away, but outside of philantropy what reasons would I have to risk my capital to build such a plant? I want some return on that investment.
Furthermore, with robots doing all the work and thus making most of human effort pointless, what kind of money do I want? Gold? No, my robots will mine as much as I need. Only something that cannot be made by robots would be valuable to me as such an owner. Fresh human organs and blood to let me live forever? A harem for 100,000 occupants? Gladiators fighting to death to entertain me? I don't know. But once you have automated factories, this is the kind of stuff you may want for your products.
At the same time, what will the people back at the USA, for example, do? As they are unable to buy my products, and as I employ none of them, their best option is... to ignore my factories. Sure, you can sell your unused kidney and buy my 4D holovision set. But you can also show me the finger and open your own business, one that does not ask for a blood sacrifice. It will produce crude products, compared to the finesse of mine, but those products will be affordable to people because it will create local employment.
This scenario can be tested against a hypothesis: Outsiders show up in a large ship and park it on the Earth orbit. They have anything you can think of, and plenty that you can't. They want newborn humans for food. What will happen? How many trades will be made? If they don't ask for newborns, what else they can possibly ask for that they cannot get on any other planet?
Does this mean that communism (as in unlimited supply of anything) is impossible? Maybe not; but you will need to make a sudden jump between capitalism and communism. The government would have to stop political bickering and instead focus on things that matter. For example, it may build robotic factories, or nationalize existing ones. Then the capitalists will just fade away. But then you still need to deal with the problem of idle hands of your population. Humans cannot sit idly; the idea that they are useless will destroy their minds. Crime rate will shoot through the roof, as people will be free to seek entertainment in whatever sick way they can imagine.
The reason for the crime will be very simple. What is the most valuable thing that you cannot get for free from a robot factory? You can't get power over other humans. And that is one of most powerful lures in the history of this world. Crime will be driven by the feeling of power over others. It's already like that - those "knock-out games" are not done for profit, they are done purely for sadistic pleasure over the pain of others. As crime escalates, unconstrained by such trivial things like need to work for food, it first explodes into clans controlling larger and larger areas; and then, possibly, someone will try for the throne of the Emperor of Earth. Robots are not that smart, and they don't always know what those chunks of Plutonium or Uranium are for. Humans do. This will not end well, that much I am sure about.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday March 18 2014, @07:30AM
"If I own a plant that can make anything, what do I do with it as a capitalist if nobody else can afford my products?"
Manufacture weapons, and a reason to use them, obviously. Its certainly been implemented before.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:32AM
Exactly. Manufacture power over others, probably by means of a robot army.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by emg on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:08PM
"If I own a plant that can make anything, what do I do with it as a capitalist if nobody else can afford my products?"
Make whatever you want for your own use. If you can make anything, and have the resources to do so, why would you care about selling it?
There's this weird idea on the left that people who own factories build them just because factories, and not because there's a viable use for them. Probably because socialism is an industrial-era philosophy that has no concept of a world without traditional industry. They just can't accept that they're dinosaurs on the verge of extinction.
(Score: 1) by monster on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:22PM
I agree with you that once we achieve autosufficient robotic factories, human support is no longer needed. What I was pointing to is that the basic premise of "taxing the factories" is flawed if they can flee to other places where they would pay peanuts or not at all. That alone means it's "game over" for capitalism as we know it: Factory owners need customers willing to buy and capable of paying, but if there is not enough cash flow from the factories to those potential customers the whole scheme falls apart: A few (the owners of the factories) get all kind of luxuries while the rest of the population gets to fight over the spoils. That would be a huge blow to civilization as we know it.
If you instead get into some kind of communism with nationalized factories, you still can get a functioning society with current ideas like universal basic income (so noone starves) and commerce of other items (arts, science, cooperation, you-name-it). But with that name, good luck convincing people that it is an option.
(Score: 2, Informative) by SuggestiveLanguage on Tuesday March 18 2014, @01:00PM
Obligatory link to Marshall Brain's Manna [marshallbrain.com]
(Score: 1) by emg on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:59AM
"I haven't seen the answer to that in any discussion that debates how to transition from the modern capitalism to the society of the future (essentially, communism) where stuff is made by robots and is free, and where money is not used anymore."
Probably because that idea is so stupid that only the few remaining believers in the Labour Theory Of Value take it at all seriously.
The future will not be 'free stuff made by robots, yay!' because resources are not free, and Joe Gates with a billion robots will be able to make use of far more resources than Joe Loser who has none.
Oh, and anyone who thinks that taking taxes from factory owners to give to people to buy the products of those factories makes any kind of sense is economically illiterate.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday March 17 2014, @10:10PM
Who said they need money, or the working class?
If they auto-manufacture a shitload of drones first, then it'll be the 99% after the visit to the guillotine and the 1% enjoying a life in abundance.
(Score: 2, Funny) by dyingtolive on Tuesday March 18 2014, @01:05AM
You'll always need people to repair the drones, and to build new ones. You're suggesting they're acting so shortsighted they'd do stuff like tank a company in terms of making next quarter's metr...
Shit.
(Score: 1) by Nikker on Tuesday March 18 2014, @04:41AM
Exactly this. We imagine every labor job (skilled and unskilled) assumed by mechanical process. The richest in the land have more dollar bills than they ever thought possible. They realize this is just because they are the only ones with dollar bills. They pay their servants in dollar bills but the 99% of people out there no longer have such bills. So now they should be asking themselves, how about if everyone just adopts a new form of currency or just solely relies on barter? Mr BG is just so far off the mark on this one it just can't happen. The paper money they will hold will become worthless since it is only as good as it sustains the people you wish to control.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by naubol on Monday March 17 2014, @10:14PM
To be pedantic, "circenses", but I take your point. However, unlike the grain dole for the capite censi, if we can automate everything via robotics, we might not even need executives. We certainly won't have to go to war constantly, enslave millions of people to farm our provinces and latifundia, and become utterly broke when not enough people are involved in the production of value. Sufficiently advanced automation is a force multiplier and may some day be self-sustaining, so the model of Roman degeneracy may not apply.
Hopefully, we use this power to create the greatest welfare state ever devised and become a creative economy, something akin to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria [wikipedia.org] but with hopefully far more touchy feely.
I see it as more likely to go the other way, that robot armies will be in the hands of a few who will then proceed to do what most humans with unlimited power would do: eugenics. I don't fear an AI that hasn't evolved a prime directive to keep itself alive and to reproduce, I fear the person who gets his hands on the singularity.
And now, I'm really hoping that isn't Bill Gates.
In the interim, we are already experiencing the dichotomy of needing less people than ever to generate insane amounts of food and yet still we have starving people and bicker over providing them sustenance. Locke, with his theory of property, would probably say we are being immoral and no longer have a right to have property when we control it in such a way as to prevent men from having reasonable access to the means of survival. Who can blame them if they should become criminal in our system of law and order? I hope that the majority of us are not turned into criminals by this process, but I think it the more likely scenario.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:32AM
but I don't want to be killed by a robot just because I can't speak the solarian dialect perrrfectly....
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday March 17 2014, @10:42PM
I don't think this is flamebait. It's an extrapolation from semi-recent history, in particular, France (note the guillotine reference) where the balance of wealth became so lopsided, people started chopping heads.
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach."e arn_very_much_from_the_lessons/168709.html [thinkexist.com]
Aldous Huxley: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/that_men_do_not_l
Other variations: http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/quotations/ lessons_of_history.html [age-of-the-sage.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:31AM
FTFY.