

Economics in One Lesson: "The Curse of Machinery" - lionhearted
http://jim.com/econ/chap07p1.html

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padmanabhan01
"While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor
Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels
instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used
instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high
in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building
equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic

Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more
jobs?” Friedman inquired."

\-- Milton Friedman

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ryandvm
I'm not sure how the rest of it will pan out, but we are right on the cusp of
a pretty significant job takeover by robots. Truck drivers.

Consider that we already have vehicles (in prototype) that can outperform a
human behind the wheel. Hell, Stanford is sending an Audi TT up Pike's Peak at
100+ mph (<http://bit.ly/9akGU1>).

And consider that truck drivers are basically meat-based robots anyway
inasmuch as they are all practically interchangeable.

Once the first trucking company gets the idea to start replacing drivers,
that's going to put them at such an insane competitive advantage that the rest
of the industry will have no choice but to follow suit. No downtime, no
accidents, far cheaper, no irresponsible behavior.

Once the process is started, the entire delivery driver industry is going to
be obsoleted within 12 years.

 _That_ will be the first time a massive number of people perk up their
eyebrows and start wondering if their job is far behind...

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tcskeptic
This assumes the Teamsters have no power, which they do. The power of the
Longshoremen to prevent substantial automation (compared to other major ports)
in the Port of Los Angeles and the resulting productivity deficit vs the Port
of Rotterdam for example appears to be realtively durable.

~~~
philk
Once the entire logistical chain is fully automated the teamsters will have
much less power. After all, if you don't need workers it doesn't matter if
they strike.

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jfoutz
A strike seems like the perfect time to introduce automation.

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kungfooey
The only thing you're not including in this equation is votes. Union leaders
simply need to convince lawmakers that it's in their best interests to pass
favorable legislation limiting the adoption of new technologies. It's
certainly been done before.

~~~
philk
This is where America's organization as a collection of states is helpful. At
least one or two states will be willing to let automation take over once it's
developed, and it's effectiveness there can become leverage to spread it to
other states.

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pmichaud
This goes through historical examples of when machinery that automated jobs
did not actually, over the long term, create job loss.

His position is that that will be the case forever... but he doesn't actually
prove it.

I think his assumption is that since it's happened with steam engines and
industrial looms, it'll happen again with robots and the internet?

~~~
kiba
Well, who will the create robots that maintain the robots?

AIs? Cyborgs?

Now, robots can create all that stuff and maintain it all. Who will it sell it
to?

Even if robots can create all the stuff and then sell it, who is responsible
for the entrepreneural function?

AIs? Cyborgs?

If robots take over every single jobs in the world? What will really happen?

Moreover, who will own these robots? Maybe robots become cheap enough that
everyone own bots?

If we become machines, than what are robots?

Robots and machinery aren't free lunch! The automation thread is just getting
started, and we have not figured out how to automate entrepreneurship yet! And
even if we do, we might already become machines!

~~~
sophacles
Note: parent edited while i was replying. This is in response to the first 2
lines. (who will maintain the robots)

Well, first it can probably be assumed that there will be a few standard robot
types. These will be cheaper to replace than to repair. One of the standard
robots will be a replacer robot which can swap out all the standard robot
types (including other replacer robots).

I presume that the few standard type robots can themselves be assembled by
robots. Then it is simply a matter of having two (or more) robotic factories
with the necessary stuff to create a robotic factory. Should one factory fail,
a robotic robot will become the number 1 manufacturing priority.

Now since the robotic robot factories would become ideal targets for sabatuers
and terrorists and the like, a better step would be for each robot to know how
to create a robotic robot facotory built in. Then even if both robotic robot
factories fail, they can team up with the nearest robots to create a new
robotic robot factory.

~~~
gills
Robot of the future == the ghost of java programs past? :p

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_delirium
FWIW, here's a 1983 National Academy of Engineering report on the topic:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=hS0rAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1](http://books.google.com/books?id=hS0rAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1)

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sophacles
So, number of jobs is the only variable that matters? Compare the lifestyles
of the 7900 old-style weavers to those of the textile factory workers. Who
lived longer on average? Who ate better? Who had time for family? Strictly in
terms of money: what was the wage of a spinner and what was the wage of a
textile worker?

I'm not saying that machines are bad, I'm saying this argument leaves out an
awful lot of info -- unless you take on faith that more jobs == better.

~~~
netcan
The "argument" is about jobs. You may want to talk about something else, but
that is not what the article is about. It is an answer to the claim that
automation created unemployment, not that automation is better.

~~~
sophacles
The article pretty obviously is written under the assumption that more jobs is
better. I am challenging that assumption. I am not suggesting that the article
does not show how more jobs are created.

The fact remains unchanged that a bunch of people got the crap end of the
automation stick. It is not unreasonable to think that maybe there was a
better way to got about the automation that was both good for the people being
displaced, and created a bunch of jobs? My previous questions were sort of
aimed here, but when I wrote them I had not yet coherently formed this most
recent question.

~~~
netcan
This is like when someone calls in to call in radio show about how the new way
of qualifying for the rugby world cup asking "should we really be encouraging
our kids to play such a violent game?" OK. Good Question. We can talk about
that next week. Today we're talking about qualifying matches. Most people who
listen to this show like rugby, so we probably will keep relying on the
assumption that rugby is fun and we should keep doing it.

Yes. There is an assumption that employment is better then unemployment,
indirectly. The point being challenged (automation causes unemployment)
assumes that unemployment is bad and the counterargument goes on assuming
that. It doesn't (as you suggest) assume that employment is the only possibly
important thing in the world.

If you would like to make the case that employment is not good or that
automation is bad for some reason not related to employment, go ahead. It is
perfectly reasonable to write that article with the assumptions that it made.

~~~
sophacles
If you read carefully, the more jobs situation was 40 years later. This means
that at least for some time, unemployment was higher as a result of the
automation. The thing to remember is that you can't mothball workers, you cant
say "hey dont eat or live untill the job creation curve from this new tech
catches back up, you'll be in demand again". So while the net effect of
automation is more jobs, it still doesn't make the immediate (within a workers
lifetime) impact necessarily better.

Another thing the article mentions is a 4400% increase in the number of jobs.
This is not population growth, (it is only 3 generations assuming child
labor), so where did those people come from? Were they more skilled workers
earning good wages replaced by automation? Were they unskilled workers whose
previous jobs had been automated away (ditch diggers and the like)?

In one case you have a net loss in liquidity in the hands of people, this is
the net equivelant of lost jobs. In the other case you have a potential gain
in liquidity. Once again, not making a case for or agains the automation, just
discussing if the employment is equivelant.

To use your analogy its not like me asking if we should continue with the
rugby at all. It's more like me saying "Hey guys, I know that the mechanism is
different, but can we also look at the fact that 100 more teams in the cup
might dilute the quality of play?"

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cageface
I think it may be more interesting in many ways to consider not only the
_amount_ of work that machines might create or destroy but the _nature_ of
that work. John Ruskin had some very interesting things to say about this in
the early industrial era: [http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2008/02/ruskin-
work-and-na...](http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2008/02/ruskin-work-and-
nature-of-gothic.html)

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netcan
There is an even more common _fallacy_ that is even harder, probably
impossible to kill: trade create unemployment.

I find the argument very convincing that trade, from the perspective of one
partner is exactly like technology. Found a way to produce grapes in a
building cheaply; Found a way produce grapes in a shoe factory.

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bluedanieru
Higher average productivity is great, but the problem America has at the
moment is an ever-widening gap in income, and very little political will to do
anything about it. An important passage in the article:

 _William Felkin, in his History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery Manufactures
(1867), tells us (though the statement seems implausible) that the larger part
of the 50,000 English stocking knitters and their families did not fully
emerge from the hunger and misery entailed by the introduction of the machine
for the next forty years._

If this is true it is a big deal. Suppose you invent a device that will double
economic output while putting half the population out of work. There's no
question the device needs to be put to use, but something needs to be done
about all these displaced people as well. Much of the surplus in productivity
borne of your invention will need to be used to help those people switch to
other work, allow them to retire early, etc. In other words you will be taxed
heavily, something which is very hard to do these days in the States. So the
American worker seems especially vulnerable to displacement by automation, and
you get this scapegoating of machinery. If you don't like it, next time you
hear some jerk on the radio bleating about high taxes and socialism, think
about where that money might be going, and vote accordingly.

