> Suppose that they can. Then all of those things will be near-free because they can be mass produced with no labor cost
I take issue with this statement. The people who have the robots will be able to set whatever price they like. They could make things super cheap but that is not the inclination of the person in power.
As we've seen in so many "collusion" cases - some deliberately negotiated but many simply naturally settled into - the price of things is determined by "what the market will bear", which I see more cynically as "what the market can extract".
> The people who have the robots will be able to set whatever price they like.
If no one has a monopoly on robots, they will not, because customers will take the lowest price and all of the competing suppliers with robots won't want to lose market share.
If someone has a monopoly on robots, that is very bad, because then they can charge up to the cost of doing the work another way. But the other way is by having humans do it, which is the status quo. So they can't make it worse than the status quo or people would just go back to doing it that way -- the point of buying things made by robots was supposed to be that it would cost less, so why would you do it if it didn't?
> As we've seen in so many "collusion" cases - some deliberately negotiated but many simply naturally settled into - the price of things is determined by "what the market will bear", which I see more cynically as "what the market can extract".
Collusion is caused by market concentration. When an industry has only two or three companies, it's easy for them to collude with each other. When there are dozens or thousands, it isn't. So the most important thing in the world is to make sure there are at least dozens of companies in every industry.
The other major problem of the same nature is regulatory capture. This is the method used by landlords. They don't have a secret chamber where they agree to fix prices in dark of night, they just control the zoning board and prevent new housing from being built.
These things have nothing to do with automation. If you have market concentration and regulatory capture, they must be annihilated regardless of any robots or people will end up screwed and poor.
Thanks for your insightful comment: "If you have market concentration and regulatory capture, they must be annihilated regardless of any robots or people will end up screwed and poor."
I take issue with this statement. The people who have the robots will be able to set whatever price they like. They could make things super cheap but that is not the inclination of the person in power.
As we've seen in so many "collusion" cases - some deliberately negotiated but many simply naturally settled into - the price of things is determined by "what the market will bear", which I see more cynically as "what the market can extract".