

In the Future, When Robots do All Our Work, What of Capitalism? - MattRogish
http://www.imponderablethings.com/2013/04/in-future-when-robots-do-all-our-work.html

======
drostie
About 10 years ago I read a ton of Karl Marx, and the biggest thing which
struck me was that the vocabulary to describe what he was talking about was
not invented until modern times -- he talks of the "mechanisation of the means
of production," which we can distil down to "robots."

In this view, Marx's critique is actually pretty simple. In your first
economics class a good teacher probably dismantled any idea in your head that
value is objective -- it's based on fiat and caprice; "everything is worth
what its purchaser will pay for it," and "banks in this sense really create
money," and so on. If it was a really good teacher you should some days like
awake at night wondering _no, really, why the hell does the economic system
work?!_ or so.

Marx isn't satisfied with the economist's sort of relativism; he wants to "get
to the heart of the matter". Marx wants to anchor value in, first, _usage_ \--
food has value because it nourishes you. But he also settles on the _work_
that went into the object, which is an objective fact of history (which leads
to long German sentences where it almost sounds like labour is a substance
inside the object).

Marx wants to distinguish _artistic_ work (which we do purely for its own
sake) from _drudge_ work which we do to "make a living". He takes those words
literally; he views drudge work as a form of slavery -- perhaps _wage slavery_
, but slavery nonetheless. He reasons that the whole system only works due to
this generalized slavery. He thus reinterprets history as a set of slave
revolts, where things get better only because people reclaim rights from their
ruling classes. (This also drives his criticism of religion, which is
basically "religion makes you feel good which is admirable in a sense, but
also troubling -- because it makes you less likely to revolt against the real
causes of your pain.")

Today, he says, people are able to produce more because they have robots at
their disposal, so a few farmers can feed many people. In some respects robots
also alienate you more, working with them feels more like drudge-work, less
like art. But he envisions a day when robots will take over all of the drudge;
you will just design an object and some 3D printer will take care of actually
producing that object for you.

In this system, he says, the classical ideas of money and exchange and capital
itself no longer fundamentally make sense; robot slaves will take care of all
of your mundane needs (think of Maslow's hierarchy here), which means that
when you wake up you won't need to worry about where you will live or what you
will eat. Robot slaves do the drudge work, humans are left to be artistic
beings. We don't need money -- a medium of exchange -- precisely because the
robot slaves will take care of the actual nuts-and-bolts of exchanging, so
that we are simply sharing.

This also opens the way for new criticisms of Marx like "what if we all just
vegetate in front of TVs and the Internet and society at this point
stagnates?" and so forth. It also explains why the Marxists want to say that
the Soviet Union wasn't communism: the gulags were human slaves, not robot
slaves.

I'm not saying Marx is right, I'm just saying that we're finally reaching the
point where the pop culture is beginning to engage with _his issues_. His
solutions are going to be naturally limited because he was writing 200 years
before robots could be an everyday thing, and even today it's not clear that
robots can someday solve all of our problems; good pattern recognition is
still a huge obstacle for example.

~~~
mehdim
Some theories bring something new to karl marx theory, as neomarxism and robot
alienation.

Marx thought that because machines (or robots) can produce lot more than
humans and more effciently, a capitalist would replace little by little all
humans workers by robots, with the benefits generated by the gain of
productivity, for making more money and win the price competition... So the
final society will have production only made by robots. It was partially true
because he made the theory that these machines, well designed, cost less than
hires hundreds humans with social rights, but he didn't expect that instead of
replacing human by machines, we have found cheaper human work in China, or
India for example, which is less efficient but cheaper at a large scale, when
machines were too expaensive to invent or to maintain. New slave humans have
replaced old slave humans protected now by social rights, and investments have
been made to delocalisation not robotisation.

Neo-marxists believe that the society is not as Marx describe it as always a
fight against classes, oppressed or exploited people against oppressor or
exploitant people, but is divided in 3 strates. The INNOVATORS, the REPETITORS
and the PARASITES.

Innovators are people which make the world move forward by their everyday
work. Researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists...

Repetitors are people which will not make the world move forward and change by
their everyday work. These people are honorable, because they make repetitive
stuff everyday to make the society run. It is your bus driver, your cloth
seller, the nurse, the waiter at your restaurant etc...

So the innovators work depends exclusively of repetitors work. If nos buses,
no farmers, the society falls down (see the Maslow pyramid of needs) and all
the philosophers will come back to farm for eating. A funny question is : at
which level of productity does we enable the apperance of a philosopher? It
will be only when we'll have enough productivity to give resources to
innovators just to innovate. Even be an entrepreneur ! If the repetitors were
not there, you will not try to make your company. Think to all these
repetitors thaht enable you to run your compaany, have employees coming at
work, eating etc...

And parasites are people which slows the change, defined often by the cut of
money they take of investment that make the workd change (Banks, even
investors asking for dividends)

So they think that repetitors need to be and will be replaced by robots.
Making repetitive things has no interest for humans, right? Humans are not
work or energy like in Matrix...

Humans has to stay innovators, making the world move forward, exploiting
always with more productivity the resources the earth provide and always try
to better understand our world, with science, with art, with code.

Loking forward to see the robots coming in our everyday's life, enabling us to
be really humans.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Repetitive work is behind every zen state. Idleness sometimes is inspiring,
but sometimes its just...idleness.

I've never thought more than when plowing a field (takes days to finish 300
acres) or herding cattle for miles between pasture, or mowing the lawn with
ear plugs, or driving to visit my sister (8 hours on the interstate).

So, take away 'repetitive' work and we take away many opportunities for
thinking. What then?

I guess there's viewing porn for hours, or watching the real innovators show
us their art, or ...

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Or engaging in repetitive "work" to Zen-up as a hobby.

------
coldtea
Large masses living in slums -- people that now are "middle class" and "upper
middle class" included. The rich live in isolated communities, heavily
guarded.

------
qompiler
Don't kid yourself, we don't even have robots that make USB cables. That stuff
is still made by hand in China.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Only until a robot is cheap enough.

------
IvyMike
The novelette "Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future" (from the HowStufWorks
guy) is always what I think back to.

<http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm>

In the end, I'd like to live in Iain Banks' Culture, but I'm too cynical to
believe that could ever happen.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
You know, you could have linked _Player Piano_ or something. Sorry, I just
can't stand the "golly gee whiz!" tone and awful characterization of _Manna_.

(Yes, I'm a stickler for good writing in my dystopian scifi.)

The Culture always sounded nice except for their attitude towards anything
that smells of religion.

~~~
IvyMike
I don't believe I could have linked to a live and legal copy of Player Piano.

I like Manna for the price, and still feel it is pretty relevant to the topic
at hand.

(And this seems like a kinda snarky downvote.)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
The basic problem with _Manna_ is that it's _still_ a totalitarian
technocracy. Literally totalitarian: you're normally supposed to be frightened
of the government tapping into your central nervous system, you know?

