
Bill Gross: What to Do After the Robots Take Our Jobs - T-A
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/05/04/bill-gross-what-to-do-after-the-robots-take-our-jobs/
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PhilWright
I am sceptical that robots will lead to mass unemployment.

We have heard this luddite fear repeatedly since the start of the industrial
revolution. There used to be 90% of people employed in agriculture but today
we are down to something like 10% in the UK. Do we now have 80% unemployment?

A hundred years ago the UK had mass employment in heavy industries such as
ship building. They have long gone and the UK is now a services based economy.
Do we now have 80% unemployment?

There is no limit, so far, to human wants and needs and so releasing people
from some industries will allow them to move to others or create entirely new
ones.

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therockhead
I used to think that way until I watched C.G.P Grey short video on the topic
"Humans need not apply"
[https://youtu.be/9BMcks55vfE](https://youtu.be/9BMcks55vfE)

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slededit
I think you linked to an incorrect youtube video, though those GeoOrbital
wheels look cool (and heavy!).

Actual link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

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therockhead
Whoops - thanks for the correction.

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CM30
I'm skeptical about the robots leading to mass unemployment thing too, but for
some different reasons. It kind of assumes that:

1\. There won't be room for people to operate freelance or outside of a
structured business. Which given its commonality in the web design and
marketing industries, seems unlikely.

2\. That pretty much every business, without exception will decide to replace
human staff with robots. I suspect this is more likely among large
corporations than mom and pop groups that actually know their employees and
don't see everything in pure statistics terms.

3\. That some groups won't deliberately avoid replacing its staff for
reputational reasons. There's a market for organic food, a market for free
range food, a market for fair trade food and a market for no GM food, so there
could just as easily be a market for products made by humans only.

4\. That people will always pick the cheapest and technically 'best' option
from the largest companies and hence the companies using them will somehow
conquer the market. But McDonalds and fast food chains didn't kill the
restaurant business.

And that's before you get into the issues with the version of basic income
posited by this article. The 10,000 dollars example is completely inadequate
to live on in a lot of the country (especially the large cities), so there's
the question of what to do about the insane house prices and such.

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jensen123
I wonder if Universal Basic Income would also solve the copyright problem? You
know, in the old analog world (with printing presses etc.), copyright worked
pretty well, but in a digital world, it has many problems.

Personally, I'm not terribly keen on living in a world where every single book
I read (and how much time I spend on each page, where I stop reading etc.),
every single song I listen to, every single movie I watch, every single
computer game I play (and how long I play etc.) are stored forever in some
central database.

However, with Universal Basic Income, people would be able to write books,
create art etc. and simply release it for free.

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arcanus
I found it interesting (and surprising!) that Bill Gross endorses a UBI in
this essay.

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shiftoutbox
Party like its 1999!

