I don't follow the argumentation that the Luddite Fallacy was wrong and is becoming true - I would say it was always true but the effect was just overcompensated by other effects now declining in importance.
Further I think the negative tone is not justified; I think a world without labor is a desirable world. That's also why I think all statements along the line »we have to create more jobs (in the sense of more work)« are ridiculous - why on earth would we desire to have more work to do?
The final state - a world without labor where everything is produced by machines - poses no direct problems; all goods are free and everybody is free to do what ever he desires. (There will probably be some indirect problems when billions of people are on holiday everyday, resource constraints, one must probably ensure that no one starts to hoard all kinds of goods reducing the supply for others and surly a thousand things I don't think about but this is probably all manageable.)
The real challenge is the change from status quo. The first jobs ceasing to exist or beginning to be unprofitable are naturally the ones comprising of mostly unskilled work and than expanding towards higher and higher required skills. This in turn split the society in two groups - one group still working and one group no longer working or doing unprofitable work. This on its own is not a problem but it is a major problem in connection with the way our society currently works.
The economy does not only produce goods to satisfy the demand of the population but although permits laborers to consume these goods by paying them. Consequently we have to either find a way to detangle these both responsibilities of the economy or ensure that all people are able to do a fair share of the remaining work (this is more jobs in the sense of splitting work fairly). The later option is probably the one that is harder to implement because the remaining work will require higher and higher skills and therefore more and more people will not able to do any of this work successfully.
Making all goods very inexpensive (necessities for pennies/day) solves the problems of "free".
Of course it's also a very dangerous idea, because it's so similar to the present system that it invites one to change it. Here's a small exercise:
1. Choose a product (potatos, t-shirts, rockets, diamonds, *anything*).
2. Imagine you pay modern prices for it, but made in a totally automated
factory.
3. Using your knowledge of business, ask yourself: When that money
eventually reaches a person, who is it? Who ultimately gets your
consumer dollar? The person who installed the solar panels?
Mined the ore? Ponied up the capital? Built the building? Ran the
company?
4. You haven't fully thought out the implications of the AI economy. Automate
that person's job and repeat.
Every iteration of this loop is a business opportunity.
Contrast this with the "free" economy (à la Roddenberry's 'Star Trek'), which is non-threatening because there's no clear plan of action from here to there.
I am unable to follow your argumentation - if an economy is fully automated, there is no money - at least not in the way we currently understand it. No human is working and gets paid so there is no money to spend on goods.
There will still be some limited resources and things will remain having a value that could be equated with an currency, but this will be different from our current money. For example it could be the case that we are only able to mine 10 grams of diamond for everybody. Whoever desires to have more diamonds is free to exchange them with others not caring about their share of diamonds probably involving some currency.
I still have the feeling that I am missing your point; maybe you could elaborate it a bit more.
> if an economy is fully automated, there is no money - at least not in the way we currently understand it. No human is working and gets paid so there is no money to spend on goods.
Not true. Labor is one way to earn money. But not the only way.
People also earn money from capital investments, and spend money on capital investments. The robotic car factory still pays the robotic smelter who pays the robotic miner. None of their prices are quite zero, because there are real capital costs in building and maintaining their own infrastructure.
Why else would anyone build an automated economy in the first place, if not in pursuit of capital returns? The first person to build a fully automatic widget factory gets to sell widgets at the prevailing price, but with much lower costs, giving him fat profit margins. As his competitors also automate, the prices eventually fall and his margin goes away.
We can expect to see this cycle repeat many, many times. It has already been happening for a long time. "Fully automated" is just one end of a long continuum we've already been travelling.
Why would you pay robots? And there are no infrastructure costs because robots will build and maintain the infrastructure. Capital investment becomes useless - all goods are free, money has no value, so why would you want to make money?
It may be questionable if we ever reach full automation but in this hypothetical scenario money as we know it will be worthless.
Even with full automation, you still have the problem of coordinating the economy as a whole, in a way that can't be gamed or controlled by any one person.
And you'll need a way to rationally allocate resources that takes into account new innovation, when people disagree.
For both these reasons, you'll still want market pricing. Even if all basic consumer goods become non-scarce (and therefore free), there will always be some upper bound at which goods are still scarce.
Another way to say this is that prices will get very, very low, but not zero. If energy costs zero, then anyone who wants can launch a mission to Alpha Centauri. But if energy costs the average person $0.10/year, it's practically free, while still being rationally allocated among really big users.
There will always be things that are so ambitious they have a price. Star Trek's moneyless economy is fundamentally contradictory: in a truly scarcity-free world, anybody who wanted could own their own Enterprise-class starship.
(How does an unemployable human come up with even $0.10/year for their energy, etc? They, or their government, or a charity, just need to own a little bit of the robotic factories paying dividends.)
Of course you are correct. But you still pay the company that owns the robots. (Unless you're suggesting that there will be robots with no owner? I don't have to point out the problems with that, do I?)
The relevant question is, "what expenses does a company that runs a robotic factory have?"
This was Step 3 of my exercise. I offer it as a tool someone might use to answer their own questions.
Unless you're suggesting that there will be robots with no owner? I don't have to point out the problems with that, do I?
That's actually what I had in mind - we build some robots doing all the work, maintaining themselves and what not. They would happily continue building iPhones even after the last human died. And they are owned - if you want to call it that - communistically by all humans. From time to time everybody can vote if he prefers to have more iPhones or more Android phones, vanilla ice cream or strawberry to actually produce the desired goods and that's it.
You are hinting at some problems with that scenario but I am unable to see them - would you mind to elaborate on this?
> From time to time everybody can vote if he prefers to have more iPhones or more Android phones, vanilla ice cream or strawberry to actually produce the desired goods and that's it.
This is the crux of the problem: it's not just final consumer goods that need to be chosen, but every intermediate good up and down the value chain. And each of those choices is subject to differences of opinion, rapidly changing inputs, and shifting technologies.
And even at the consumer-goods level, the complexity of the voting would be astounding. It's not going to be a question of simple two-way elections -- you really need to measure a gigantic matrix of relative preferences for each person, and nobody has enough information about relative inputs costs to even accurately fill out their own matrix.
This is precisely why market pricing is so useful, and why it is unlikely to ever disappear entirely.
Further I think the negative tone is not justified; I think a world without labor is a desirable world. That's also why I think all statements along the line »we have to create more jobs (in the sense of more work)« are ridiculous - why on earth would we desire to have more work to do?
The final state - a world without labor where everything is produced by machines - poses no direct problems; all goods are free and everybody is free to do what ever he desires. (There will probably be some indirect problems when billions of people are on holiday everyday, resource constraints, one must probably ensure that no one starts to hoard all kinds of goods reducing the supply for others and surly a thousand things I don't think about but this is probably all manageable.)
The real challenge is the change from status quo. The first jobs ceasing to exist or beginning to be unprofitable are naturally the ones comprising of mostly unskilled work and than expanding towards higher and higher required skills. This in turn split the society in two groups - one group still working and one group no longer working or doing unprofitable work. This on its own is not a problem but it is a major problem in connection with the way our society currently works.
The economy does not only produce goods to satisfy the demand of the population but although permits laborers to consume these goods by paying them. Consequently we have to either find a way to detangle these both responsibilities of the economy or ensure that all people are able to do a fair share of the remaining work (this is more jobs in the sense of splitting work fairly). The later option is probably the one that is harder to implement because the remaining work will require higher and higher skills and therefore more and more people will not able to do any of this work successfully.