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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: 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.