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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 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]