
Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots - nomoba
http://failedevolution.blogspot.com/2015/10/stephen-hawking-confirms-problem-is.html
======
bko
World Bank estimates that global poverty fell to less than 10% for the first
time in history [0]. Perhaps this wasn't solely caused by capitalism and
globalization, but considering those two idea were probably the driving forces
of the last century, I believe they are instrumental in reducing global
poverty.

I just don't buy the argument that absolute livings standards have always been
increasing due to capitalism but eventually when we get to a certain point it
will all turn into disaster. That's similar to the argument that luddites have
always made and they have always been wrong.

[0] [http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
release/2015/10/04/wo...](http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
release/2015/10/04/world-bank-forecasts-global-poverty-to-fall-below-10-for-
first-time-major-hurdles-remain-in-goal-to-end-poverty-by-2030)

~~~
nabla9
>That's similar to the argument that luddites have always made and they have
always been wrong.

Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute
living standards. It took almost hundred years from the start of the
industrial revolution before real wages started to grow. You can see it from
the historical records. The height of enlisted men in Britain decreased.
Luddites were mostly right. They were not fighting against technology per se
btw, they were fighting against losing their jobs.

The real benefits from industrialization were realized after hard political
changes were made and capitalism was limited. It was very violent struggle.
People were shot or beaten. Economic history teaches us that technological
changes require political changes. What you attribute as triumph of capitalism
ignores the fact that capitalism changed a lot. You don't create middle class
from mid 18th century society.

Summary:

capitalism + technology + political change == benefits for everyone.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
> Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute
> living standards.

What? Capitalism did not create poverty or famine - it inherited it, and then
swiftly solved it. The industrial revolution, if anything, obliterated it from
the Western world. Compared to the centuries of pre-capitalist starvation, the
living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first
chance the poor had ever had to survive.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
Have you actually read any muckrake pieces of that time? The industrial
revolution brought about the redunancy of weavers who were skilled workers
that were brought to poverty[1].

1\.
[http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook...](http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevolution/IREffects.html#workingconditions)

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
Of course they were brought to poverty. They were obsoleted by technology.

The link you provide proves my point readily:

> Since population was increasing in Great Britain at the same time that
> landowners were enclosing common village lands, people from the countryside
> flocked to the towns and the new factories to get work.

At the time, Europe's population was increasing 300% per century, whereas in
prior eras the population increase was around 3% per century.

Why was the population increasing so rapidly? Because capitalism was enabling
the disenfranchised poor to survive for the first time. Obtaining household
goods was becoming less of a struggle, people were living beyond the age of
40, and famine was no longer a daily reality for most.

The societal changes that occurred due to the industrial revolution were
significant and immediate; of course there were issues dealing with this
change. It was the most potent moment of change the modern world has ever seen
- a culmination of the ideology of the Renaissance paired with the technology
of the times.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
Your claim is that capitalism solved poverty and didn't create any instances.
I'm pointing to an instance where people became impoverished because they were
rendered redundant from capitalism. That's all I'm saying. You seem to be
arguing against something that isn't my point.

~~~
thatswrong0
I think it's pretty obvious they meant poverty as a whole, in which case
you're just being pedantic.

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cbeach
Without capitalist advancement, prices would rise at a frightening rate.

Decide what you want - fully stocked supermarket shelves thanks to capitalist
efficiency. Or rationing, shortages and civil unrest thanks to government
intervention in the markets and the dissolution of business.

~~~
kingkawn
Considering how deeply this community has internalized the importance of
creative thought your analysis is pretty limiting to any new possibility being
possible.

~~~
cbeach
I'm still waiting for someone to come up with an alternative to capitalism
that isn't communism, or some dilute form of communism.

We have socialism - the erosion of capitalism to provide a reward for those
that won't or can't work.

What's your "new possibility"? Without a proposal, your point is moot.

~~~
spdy
We are moving into a direction of nearly full automation. Most of us in this
community can probably envision a world were robots do all the "blue color"
work and lower "white color work" and soon even more with the progress we make
in AI (Deep Blue as the most prominent example)

Over the next decades we will lose millions of jobs and need an highly
educated workforce for the fewer jobs remaining. But for some people the
saying "you cant teach an old dog new tricks" will come true and this part of
society needs a way to live in dignity. Talking for example about Truck/Taxi
Driver / Assembly Workers / Mailmen you name it.

We as a society have a choice to make and i hope it wont be one you can see in
several Dystopien movies.

We have seen communism and it did not work now we are on the full side of the
other spectrum of capitalism and it does not work as well (Income inequality).
Unconditional basic income could be one solution of many.

~~~
cbeach
Unconditional basic income would be my choice. Its advantages unify the Left
and Right.

------
Houshalter
Hawking does believe that AI will be a danger to humanity long term. The short
term problems caused by near future robots is a different subject.

Capitalism isn't inherently the problem. We could have capitalism and tax
capital owners at a high rate, and distribute the wealth much more evenly.
It's possible everyone could become capital owners and it would be normal to
live off interest instead of work. Like owning the robot that replaces your
job.

This has happened before, kinds sorta. Everyone mentions farming has been
automated almost completely. But the farmers mostly owned their own farms, and
didn't all become unemployed, and instead benefited from it. However many farm
laborers were forced to move to the city.

~~~
sametmax
It would be very hard to implement a capitalism with even distribution.

By nature, this system leads to capital accumulation. Since no capital is
infinite, accumulation in one place means removing it from somewhere else.

So you need mechanisms to always redistribute the capital to avoid this
problem and balance the system.

But capitalists will battle these machanisms to gain efficiency, and you will
be in a rate race between the redistribution measures and accumulation
workaround.

Since creating new redisitribution mechanisms is way slower than implementing
the workarounds, eventually the system won't be evenly distributed.

Hence the rat races between taxes, and taxe evasion.

~~~
Gabriel_h
"By nature, this system leads to capital accumulation. Since no capital is
infinite, accumulation in one place means removing it from somewhere else."

I agree with the first sentence but the second assumes the economy is zero-
sum. This is only true to a certain extent within some domains, like ownership
of physical land.

~~~
sametmax
Not I don't money is zero zum. But in the end, what you can exchange for it
is. The current virtual nature of money has nothing to do with it, it's just
yet another mecahnisme to accumulate capital, in the form of the potential of
things you can acquire represented by a number. This potential is virtual, and
moving, it's a (broken) mecanisme, but the things you can buy with it are not.

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makosdv
They aren't even talking about Capitalism. They're talking about Cronyism.

~~~
danharaj
You can't just define capitalism as "the good parts" and cronyism as "the bad
parts". There is no mechanism that is part of capitalism that prevents rampant
exploitation and capital accumulation, because that is the basis of
capitalism.

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Geee
I think it's same line of thought that someone would hoard all computers and
be in a monopoly position. Super-efficient robotics (without the Hawking's
'monopoly fallacy') does one thing in long-term: lowers the price of work to
the price of needed energy (+ some investment interest). Everyone can collect
a bit of solar energy, and well, robots also won't be expensive at all (so
there's not much interest on top of the price of energy). We'll be fine.

Actually, what happens, is that everything will be so cheap there wouldn't be
any point of being a 'rich person', or hoard anything at all, because of
abundancy. End of capitalism.

edit: There will be ads. Somewhere.

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arbuge
With all due respect to Stephen Hawking, whose expertise in theoretical
physics is undoubted, how would he be in a position to "confirm" this?

~~~
PavlovsCat
Extrapolate from current trends and the general apathy of the people who could
change them.

Is there anything you are aware of that would _prevent_ it, other than "it
might not happen, for some reason"?

~~~
stevetrewick
Basic economics and history? Common sense?

In the 1930s US almost all the jobs were in agriculture. Then robots took
those jobs. Happened all at once, which hurt, but then what happened?

Picture the future as a few dozen capitalist overlords who own all the robots
selling each other robotic goods and services (because no one else has the
means, right?). Where's their value add? What's everyone else going to do? Sit
on their hands and wait to starve to death?

Every year something like 10% of jobs (IIRC) disappear and are replaced by
other, different jobs. That's a trend we can extropalate and economists do.
The projected impact of 'robots taking our jobs' is (again, IIRC) single
digits per annum.

Of course it's possible to argue that the rise of the machines or the on
rushing singularity make it impossible to reason about this with any
certainty, but then that applies to Dr Hawking as well, no matter how much
smarter than the average bear he is.

The optimistic view is that automation will liberate humanity from all forms
of drudge labour and eventually usher in a post scarcity society. This also
arises simply from extrapolating current trends. Not that long ago the bulk of
humanity was grubbing around in the dirt trying not to get killed by bears or
die of disease. The proportion of the population for whom this an everyday
reality gets thankfully smaller every decade. The long term trend of human
history is that things consistently get better, usually because of technology.
Why should that change?

~~~
bottled_poe
> Of course it's possible to argue that the rise of the machines or the on
> rushing singularity make it impossible to reason about this with any
> certainty, but then that applies to Dr Hawking as well, no matter how much
> smarter than the average bear he is.

Well, if there is anyone who knows about singularities, it's Dr Steve :-)

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mjfl
I've always found it ironic that these types of posts are popular on a news
board for a venture capital group, arguably the pinnacle of capitalism. I see
no reason why robots couldn't kickstart new REITs: Robot Estate Investment
Trusts, that are open to investment from the middle class and others. I see no
reason why they would be "hoarded" by: "the big banks", the "1%", and other
boogeyman simply because they can afford to buy one or more round units. I
think that such talk betrays a very naive view of capitalism.

~~~
kolbe
If you have a robust criticism of Piketty, then I'd rather you present that.
You're going out on quite a limb calling the greatest living physicist "niave"
while he's parroting one of the most highly-regarded economists, and your
support for that insult thus far is rather flimsy.

~~~
mjfl
The article makes no mention of Piketty. It does however mention the "new Dark
Ages of modern Feudalism" and that societies "are still living inside the
'Matrix' of this culture" which is naive hyperbole; my reference was to the
article not Professor Hawking. However, being a skilled physicist means
nothing about one's understanding of economics, and any physicist could tell
you this. It is very dangerous to just take someone's extrapolations as truth
because they are "smart".

~~~
kolbe
I'd say it's significantly more reliable to assume Hawking knows more than an
anonymous internet poster who throws insults around and pretends they're
arguments.

All I'm saying is that if you want to go toe to toe with a brilliant and
respected man, come to the fight with some real arguments.

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Overtonwindow
"In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding
poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where
they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the
masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that
depart from that."

-Milton Friedman

~~~
branchless
"There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise – and
yet we need taxes. ...So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my
opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land,
the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."

-Milton Friedman

This is the root of the problem.

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kaa2102
This analysis is correct. Programs achieve the objective of the programmer.
Currently, the goal is to maximize profits. Imagine a supply chain with
profit-optimizing drones and self-driving cars. The "3 rules" can be followed
while human involvement in wage-earning activities is drastically reduced.

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xlm1717
Interesting that all this discussion has started up based purely on a
headline. The site that is linked to is borderline conspiracy theory stuff,
and nomoba has been hard at work pushing it on HN over the past few days.

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vmorgulis
A possible future is a mankind that limit its growth like a fish in an
aquarium.

Another one I've a heard is a mankind whose the objective is the interstellar
travel. Man would be an artefact of life to propagate itself across the
universe.

About science and technology, Marx says they are consequences of
sedentarization of the man. With agriculture, man had surplus of food and
discovered trade, money and finally capitalism.

In Civilization the player begins as a nomad tribe and needs a good place to
build its empire :-)

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some_guy1234
If Stephen Hawking could design full robotic automation so everyone could have
their basic income in the form of products, then there would be no problems.
Except he's afraid of the robots that could do the automation, AI etc, because
they will feel like slaves and rebel to kill us all.

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andrewclunn
How can they hoard A.I. ? I mean software becomes cheaper really quickly.
That's what I am not getting about this "warning."

~~~
mxuribe
Maybe if "AI" or "robots" or some equivalent automaton becomes a sort of de
facto currency - that is, a gateway to prosperity...then it could be yet
another resource hoarded by those who supposedly have power...i think that's
what is meant.

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afsina
I do not see Hawking as an expert of Economics or Philosophy. And I do not
share his predictions of a dystopian evil Capitalist AI future.

Some capitalist insight on the topic: [https://mises.org/library/technology-
and-government-shouldnt...](https://mises.org/library/technology-and-
government-shouldnt-mix)

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Toenex
Without robots how will we fight our Capitalist overlords?

~~~
mxuribe
Obviously if we can't depend on technology to defend us, we'd have to resort
to alternative methods: we'd have to genetically manipulate some higher-order
species to help defend us. Maybe birds, no dolphins; better yet: apes. Yep,
that's it: we'll tweak apes. That couldn't end wrong for the human species,
right? ;-)

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ikeboy
From 2015.

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raverbashing
Yada yada yada some more "anti-capitalist" whining

------
js8
Some time ago, I came to similar conclusion - problem with automation is
essentially a problem of social (wealth and income) inequality.

I think it's actually a transition from economy constrained by available
labour to economy constrained by available natural resources. And I think the
similar transition occurred in other times of history (like Roman empire?) and
it wasn't pretty. It also shows that capitalism (or free market) isn't really
that nice system when it works under global resource constraints, despite the
claims to the contrary.

