In a world where virtually any physical labor except highly specialized

>>51458012
drugs and tv

Everybody is genetically engineered super geniuses with a built in compulsion to be problem solvers.

>>51458012
Read some Judge Dredd. Part of the reason they have so much trouble managing the population is because so many people are unemployed/unemployable due to automation.

>>51458012

What they want. Like...Okay they did experiments in towns with Basic Income, and what happened was not everyone stopped working. People like doing stuff.

There would probably be some stagnation in the sciences, but some people are naturally curious. People don't become scientists because of the money, they do it because they love it.

Not everyone who is smart enough/with the aptitude will go into those jobs, so people with the passion but less talent will face less competition.

People will do their hobbies, hang with friends, find something fufilling to do. And fuck, do drugs, watch TV, read, play games

>>51458078
Same Anon:

All this assumes that shit ain't fiercely capitalistic. Like, Most people don't have a job because robots do everything, yet they charge as if people still are even though no one has money, rather than lowering the prices.

If that happens then you get Judge Dredd shit like >>51458075 mentioned.

Nothing. They are either living on welfare (in a pussified government like the USA) or they are cut out and put down.

We are rapidly approaching this situation in the modern world. Soon, 90% of people are going to be useless. And because the government is unable to admit that 90% of people have no value to society (which is already true, we just have enough low-skill jobs left to justify this) they will be paid for by the high-and-mighty until the money literally runs out at the economy collapses in a way that will make the Great Depression look like an everyday stockmarket dip.

Soon, eugenics is going to make a comeback. When it does, there will be no place in society for the single mother with three different kids from five different dads. They will be cut out like a canker sore.

>>51458012
Art. Music. Impromptu street theater. Performance pieces that kind of blend it all together.

For the people who aren't creative enough for that, there's always bitching about shit online. Sites haven't quite hit on the business model where everyone who participates in a site (thus contributing value to it) gets a tiny cut of the revenue, but it's just around the corner.

>>51458012
There's always demand for baby making, so that's what they do.

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>>51458012
Welfare

Domestic servitude/prostitution or other jobs rich people want done by humans for status reasons

Soldiers if robots can't do that

Extinction

Participating in endless advertising studies and product focus groups.

>>51458012
This actually hits on what is likely to become the great question of our era.

I fear that the simplest answer may be, "die."

>>51458012
Die, make war and make more mans

>>51458181
>>51458525
Apparently robots have already taken over the job of posting on image boards. How can you seriously be so inhuman and uncreative that you imagine that the only societal good is menial labour, and that somehow a class of rich people transcend this?

>>51458012
Basic income conditioned on voluntary sterilization. The displaced working class will persist for one last generation in relative comfort and then die, leaving none to follow them.

The world's population will reduce to roughly 500,000,000 like the Georgia Guidestones call for, and persist forever as a comfy automated utopia.

>>51458682
Some people would accept voluntary sterilization, but most will insist on having at least one or two kids each. That would never happen peacefully.

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>>51458694
If they have kids they don't get public assistance, leaving them to fend for themselves. If they're still able to support their children, no problem since the state isn't paying for it.

>>51458742
No way that would fly politically. Doing that guarantees a generation of poor and uneducated children who grow up in broken homes. That also means more crime.

There's no good solution to this problem, by the way.

>>51458681
I imagine people like him are a mix of r/atheism, pol and "why don't dumb bitches like nice guys like me?".

>>51458760
>Doing that guarantees a generation of poor and uneducated children who grow up in broken homes.

And that they would be the last generation to do so. Broken homes are a feature of the left side of the bell curve, found among people who lack conscientiousness and solid time preference. One generation of modest strife (which productive citizens won't even have to deal with if these robots are really as good as OP claims) is worth it to deal with an enormous social problem like this.

>>51458682
>America's population will reduce to roughly 500,000, and persist for 25 years until someone from the outside invades with a horde of manpower and technological innovation
Sorry that I needed to fix that for you. Most governments won't sterilise their own population because they like having more voters and they will invade because you've fucked yourself over.

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut

>>51458012
Four options:

1) Societal collapse. This is always a possibility whenever humanity encounters a state-change to civilisation. This time it might be permanent, since our weapons are big enough and there's very little of society outside of the "global village" that makes us all dependent on everything holding together. Obsolescence of non-mechanical work might be a decent part of the Great Filter.

2) Star Trek optimism. A level-1 Post Scarcity civilisation. Humanity comes through the transition without destroying itself, and with a respect for each other. Value of a human is divorced from ability to work, since compared to a machine a human is pretty bad at working. Everyone gets enough to eat, shelter, and opportunity to advance by reasonable access to the robotic tech. People often forget that in Star Trek, just before Cochrane makes first contact with the Vulcans, Earth had gone through a devastating world war, involving several nuclear detonations and bio-weapons. Transition is painful, and to reach this Good End by necessity involves the breaking of the power of the slave owners.

3) Cyberpunk nightmare. Judge Dred or Shadowrun. Humanity comes through the transition intact, but those who held power before still do so. They own the robots, and the machines that repair the robots, and the police, and the army, and you as well. Power is the ability to tell other humans what to do, and the lust for it lasts longer than the need to have a human do anything. Society is now a trap, to get you to waste your life without rebelling against those who own you. Whether they use chains or bread+circuses, 1984 or Brave New World, to control you will be down to which is more efficient.

4) Something somewhere between 2 and 3. There's always a middle ground, though in this case I personally am at a loss to describe what it would look like.

>>51458181
How can you have three kids from five dads?

>>51458909
It's a question that the welfare office is asking when they see that the three kids are on 5 different benefit claims.

>>51458012
We all end up with a new currency(ies) not based on property, and intangibles that can be traded for with that new currency(ies). I anticipate something based on clicks, likes, and reblogs, which can be exchanged for more recognition.

The concept of formal honors have sort of fallen by the wayside, but we'll bring them back when every material good is equally available to every person. People like to distinguish themselves.

>>51458012
You rework the societal structure completely, you fucking moron. Aka it's no longer capitalism, or it will fucking crash spectacularly.

>>51458060
>Everyone is genetically engineered to be Autists with Rain Man powers.

Well, that got dystopic quick.

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>>51458012

Stop everyone else from having too much fun, that's right, those who can't Police

>>51458012
Live of the fruits of robotic labour?

>>51458012
Shit like welfare and minimal wages will disappear, making robots more expensive than wageslaves.

>>51458681
>and that somehow a class of rich people transcend this?

Because they actually have talent and skill.

>>51458769
None of that is true. And "why don't dumb bitches like nice guys like me?" is literally contrary to my argument. "Nice" doesn't mean anything. Everyone is "nice."

>>51458012
Create entertainment.

>>51458181
>t. Stormfag

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>>51458909

Chimeric Hybridisation - same thing that produces tortoise-shell cats, basically two sperm impregnate the egg at once and the double penetration produces a weird hybrid who expresses bits of genes from both sperm in different parts of their body leading to heterochromia

>>51459302
and how do you expect people to live if the current us minimum wage isn't even livable in huge parts of the country? work 12 hours a day 6 days a week i suppose? fucking moron

>>51459527
>>51459247

You could mix these two - have the media also be the police system, with plainclothesed officers doing wacky improv street comedy while they go about their rounds, looking for people too busy or not bored enough to be delighted by their bullshit and calling the big floppy shoes of hte uniformed division to arrest them for having too much fun.

and then have the riot mimes called out if there's any major uprisings or destruction against the robots

>>51458807
>And that they would be the last generation to do so.
wrong, see africa.

>>51459495
>Everyone is "nice."

So, what, you're trying to be different?

>>51459790
Why do you even think anyone care if you have to live in a hovel and eat only rice ? Robots will never be cheaper than outsourcing shit to China anyway.

>>51458012
die of starvation

>>51460019
>Robots will never be cheaper than outsourcing shit to China anyway.
surprise surprise, even china is automising

>>51460271
Of course, because automation isn't useful to cut costs, it is to improve quality and reliability of production.

>>51458012
I'm studying software engineering, so I'm gonna be alright when robots take over, r-r-right?

>>51458131
Why would they charge high prices if someone else can use a robot to do it for less (and charge less)?

This is the critical flaw in luddite thinking. It used to be that almost everyone was "employed" in agriculture, because it simply took the majority of humanity's hard labor to grow enough food for them all to eat. Since agriculture became mechanized what once took almost the entire human population to do now takes a tiny fraction, and lo and behold: Food is so cheap that obesity is a problem of the poor. When robots took over making clothes people largely stopped patching clothes because even for the poorest people new adequate clothing was cost effective.

In the future when robots take over more and more production those items will become so cheap that even the poor will buy them instead of doing it themselves (otherwise, they'd just do it themselves with human labor for less). I can't even envision what jobs those people will do but given automation's track record so far I think they'll be fine.

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>>51460325
wat

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>>51460325

>because automation isn't useful to cut costs

Wut.

>>51458012
>aren't smart enough to be a politician
Impossible.

>>51459495
>all rich have talent and skill that made them rich

LOL, heirs and money dynasties are still a thing, anon. Many rich people have very few practical skills, they're just rich from inheritance, or from the hard work of another.

>>51460465
>>51460440
I deal with robots daily and trust me robots are expensive as shit. The only good thing about automation is the increase in reliability.

>>51458181
>three different kids from five different dads
I presume you count among those 90%.

>>51459495
>actually have talent and skill
It takes an awful amount of skill to be born to the right people of the right social status & wealth.

>>51460536
They do have maintainence costs & shit. I remember having to get a repairman a few times.

>>51459709
The only actually valid and interesting thing said in this thread. Chickens can do this as well can't they? I think I've seen ones that are male on one side and female on the other.

>>51460759
Maintenance, starting cost, lack of flexibility, having to change the entire production line to make it fit, etc.

>>51458525
This, they will be servants and slaves to the rich

>>51459495
>Because they actually have talent and skill.
A lot of people, probably most, really, aren't wealthy because of particular talent or skill, but just due to luck. They inherited their money from their parents or grandparents who may have had a particular talent or skill for making money, or may have had just bee lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time (like a lot of people could start a similar business, but one person happens to be in a position where his business has a good opportunity to grow, allowing him to gain a big market share).

I should know. I'm don't consider myself to be particularly skilled (although I probably am smarter than average, all things considered; I wouldn't have been able to get a good master's degree in science otherwise, and then go to study for a master's degree in engineering and get average grades despite having no previous training in engineering), but I am from a wealthy family. And we're wealthy because of my grandfather, and even he I wouldn't describe as particularly brilliant or unusally skilled. Very hard-working, though. He was a sailor serving on ships owned by a big company, eventually got promoted to a first mate and later a captain of a ship, and saved up enough money to start his own logistics company and made a contract with a local steel factory to load their ships for them. He and my uncle and father did that for the next 40-ish years, untill the company went under due to the steel factory shutting down, and in doing so made decent amounts of money.
None of that would've been possible if everything was done by robots, though. No need for sailors or captains if every ship is piloted by robots.

>>51458181
Ok let's pretend that the 90% of the "useless" population dies off in your oh so perfect society. There's now no one to purchase the goods and services so roughly 90% of them will not be able to live and die in your system. So on and so forth until there is no one left.

They should die and free resources for the smart humans.

>>51458012
They chill in utopian comfort. Everyone pursues their interests at their leisure. Lots more art is created. Philosophy makes a come back as a societal activity.
Post scarcity is damn good. We'd probably find a way to colonise Mars with all the free time we have.

>>51458012
fuck around i guess, there's alot of economic concerns though, i mean with no physical labour then the working classes are forced into welfare, social mobility, or death.

>>51458012
Implying america isnt this already. So many service jobs and jobs that would be obsolete if companies automated. Just watch the news

>>51460522
those born into riches are literally insignificant compared to people who worked for their wealth. look at the forbes billionaires list.

>>51458181
>hurr fucking durr only de smart will survive de automation
Mate, if you're using robots to produce your products, and the poor don't have a job, how the fuck are you gonna make any fucking money? i mean you can't even sell to your fellow rich dudes because they're gonna have fuck all money, and try being the fuckwit who brings operation purge to 90% of the population, you might be morally bankrupt but how the fuck would you live knowing that you're the reason that 90% of the population have been let to fucking die?

>>51459495
>Because they actually have talent and skill.
Or inheritance, or blind fucking luck, a dude who wins the lottery is as much a millionairre as a dude who busted his balls for the better part of his life running a small business.

>>51461124
Rich people do not have any particular skill sets that would make their disproportionate wealth fair.
They don't even have any particular skill set that separates them from the losers who lost their wealth.
Stock market is literally gambling, and regular markets are scarcely any better.
Being rich is not attributable to hard work it's a fucking lottery.
There is no reason bill gates is a billionaire other than being born at the right place and the right time. More skilled computer engineers and businessmen don't have even a fraction of his wealth.

>>51458012
They breed. Reproduction rates are inversely proportional to education level, so you need a caste of less educated people to keep your population from shrinking. Intelligence is fluid and has a lot to do with nurture, so you wouldn't be creating an "Idiocracy" scenario.

>>51458681
This is the best post I have ever read on /tg/. Thank you, anon.

>>51458181
Calm down Pinochet

Brave New World happens, only replace the worker drone humans with robots. We'll be genetically engineered into specific classes of human - always exactly smart enough to do what we're born to do, and not a smidge more. Slightly-below-current-average humans will be bred to do cubicle work. Low-to-mid geniuses will be bred as scientists and Idea Men. Rain Men intentionally afflicted with ASD will be bred for highly complicated, highly specific admin, and limited revolutionary concepts.

People always say Huxley got it right because of the rule-by-entertainment aspects of his work, but desu if we really do get robots working well at all, it's this bit that seems the most likely.

>>51459114
It can still work, automation and improving ai will eventually reach the point where owning your own super smart manufacturing robot will be cheap, in that world even the average person can easily start a business and produce things. That would actually be a step closer to a really great form of capitalism, what with the falling entry costs.

>>51461310
>Slightly-below-current-average humans will be bred to do cubicle work. Low-to-mid geniuses will be bred as scientists and Idea Men. Rain Men intentionally afflicted with ASD will be bred for highly complicated, highly specific admin, and limited revolutionary concepts.
See, your mistake is in thinking that robots can't do all of that as well.

Unfortunately, there are only 3 outcomes:
>We make AGI before genetic engineering is good enough to make superintelligent humans, which swiftly improves into ASI completely obsoleting the need for superhumans
Or
>We genetically engineer superhumans, who will still create the AGI that swiftly improves into ASI and obseletes the need for superhumans
Or
>Humans say fuck that, someone eventually secretly makes AGI anyways, etc, etc.

>>51458012
Look about slavery in Rome. It's the same situation except this time there's no solution.

>>51461064
What happens when we build AI capable of constructing art and philosophy, with the added benefit of a statistics database of what platitudes and melodies will best appeal to the target demographic? What if they're so good at it that there's no need for people to do it? What if they're so good at EVERYTHING that there's no need for people? We all just sit around and have literally everything done for us, even entertainment?

As someone who spent a year living the NEET lifestyle, I don't find that particularly appealing.

>>51458012
The same they do now

>>51460399
>Why would they charge high prices if someone else can use a robot to do it for less (and charge less)?
Why would people employing robots lower prices if people are already willing to pay more?

>>51461424
In that kind of situation, people either start doing pointless busywork for its own sake (I could just buy a perfectly good one, but I'll make my own in a workshop because I've got nothing better to do) or start shutting down robots in order to create artificially meaningful work to avoid both societal collapse and changing the system too much.

>>51460399
Upward price spirals happen too. Why charge lower prices if none of your "competitors" are? Why not inch it up a bit and see if they match you? Why not watch them increase it and join them in the slightly more expensive bracket? There doesn't even need to be direct collusion, this happens all the time.

>>51458012
They're welfare leeches and/or radical luddites.

>>51458681
>that you imagine that the only societal good is menial labour,
There are plenty of low-class people who can't be bothered to provide anything else.

>>51461463
Because they literally woundn't enough money to pay for it.
>>51461492
It generally happens when we are talking about goods with fairly limited productions bottlenecks, plus, in scenario where most people have no real money source and production is dirt cheap, someone that sells cheap will make a shitload of money.

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>>51458682
>Georgia Guidestones
Thanks for that, Anon.

>>51461592
>woundn't enough
woundn't have enough

>>51458012
This is how you get Morlocks.

>>51461424
At that point we're no longer in control, and our new robot overlords don't expect us to be. They don't expect anything of us save just being there and looking pretty for them.

Hahaha. If only it were so easy. Then no one would have to worry about failing harder and harder the harder they tried. No one would have to worry that they were born an accident. No one would have to shoulder expectations they can't meet by some mishap of birth or injury. No one would be expected to be strong in a universe where strength doesn't really matter, where courage and honor and will don't really matter - only Time does. All-devouring, all-consuming Time.

Once and for all, they could just... be.

Why fight your fate, mortal?

>>51458181
Oh boy, a real life social darwinist

>>51459495
Except it's vastly more difficult to become rich than it is to be born rich, regardless of talent or skill. Modern society is effectively designed to crush dreams so that the status quo can be preserved.

>>51461424
If we make an AI which is a better human than a human could ever be without investing ridiculous and inefficient amounts of time and money in genetic manipulation, I fully expect the human race to accept it's fate and die out peacefully, replaced by AI ubermensch.

Organic life is overrated anyway.

>>51461976
Americans are obsessed with ayn Rand
A dumb Slav bitch who was reacting against the communist revolution in Russia
Sure it was a shit thing but considering Russia under the elites was at the level of using chain mail cavalry against machine guns under the tsars and got raped by the Japanese who were using knock off brit/yank tactics she was demented
Love how the social conservatives who love spouting her crap ignore her personal immorality and how she leached off welfare herself

>>51462380
>ignore her personal immorality and how she leached off welfare herself
No, see, when a black guy lives only due to welfare, he's a worthless parasite fit only to be gassed. When I do the same thing, I'm heroically exploiting a broken system for my own benefit and am thus a role model to look up to. I trust you can tell how the two situations are completely unalike in every detail.

>>51462380
She was on Social Security and Medicare till the day she died.
It's quite funny, really.

>>51458012

Post on 4chan.

>>51458012
Maybe social values would evolve to the point where you'd have a strong focus on being sociable, involving yourself in your community (through art, charity work, communal activities, etc...) and doing things for the sake of it. It'd still be considered mentally unwell and shameful to not want to do anything at all by staying a lazy shut-in, only instead of "go outside, meet people, get a job", the injunction would forgo the "get a job" part, in favor of "take up new hobbies, do things for others".

Basically, a terrifying dystopia for the average /r9k/ anon.

>>51461424
Basically we end with something like Max Martin, but equipped with the unfathomable calculating precision of an unfeeling machine.

>>51461463
>The market rate for widgets is $20
>Make the widget normally with human labor for $10, sell for $20, make $10 profit
>Make the widget with automation for $5, sell it for $15, make $10 profit and undercut all your competitors
Gee, which should I choose?

>>51458012
Either they explore arts, hobbies, personal interests or a simple life of leisure.

Alternatively we don't make a smooth transition to an automated workforce so only those who own the robots are able to make money and build up their doomsday bunkers while they let the world economy crash and average people are transformed into rioting hoards and roving gangs in some sort of dystopian post-apocalyptic world.

>>51458012
Humanity goes full roman empire. Here's your bread, here's your circus, find a way to make yourself useful to your other humans or entertain them, now shut up.

>>51458012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

>>51458897
>1984
We're already headed there.
"Alternative facts"

>>51463344

Did you come here from facebook?
Are you old enough to remember how the Iraq War was launched on lies, and how the media went along with it?
Do you remember that you are being spied on all the time?
Are you people this dumb?

>>51461135
>you might be morally bankrupt but how the fuck would you live knowing that you're the reason that 90% of the population have been let to fucking die?
Are you even seriously asking?
It probably wouldn't bother them at all, they'd just smother their conscience in self-delusion and justifications that the lesser people deserved it for not being able to stop it.

They also always work on the assumption that they would be one of the superior beings who are saved and rule the new world despite most of them being lower-middle class basement dwellers shitposting on the ass-end of the internet who the actual elites couldn't give a shit about.

>>51463245
You forgot
>Make the widget with automation for $5, sell it for $20, make $15 profit
That's the actual likely path unless an undercutter could somehow make a widget that is much more convenient.
And even then, the Walmarts of the world would make it more convenient and *also* sell it for the normal price, but convince everyone that they're cheaper through marketing and convenience, like they currently do for many of their products.

>>51461424
At that point it'd be a surprise if the people haven't become so advanced and altered that the entire situation they find themselves in is almost unrecognisable, making any conjecture completely pointless.

>>51463424
Conservatives are now 2-for-2 on the 1984 chart.

>>51462380
>Love how the social conservatives who love spouting her crap ignore her personal immorality
It's not bad when people we like do it, forgive and forget, stop harping on the past :^)

>and how she leached off welfare herself
It's just common sense to take every possible advantage rather than just leaving money on the table, if you have a problem with it then change the system :^)

>>51463245
Most large businesses (The ones that can afford widescale robotic labor) focus on short term profits to appease shareholders. If they reduce their overhead, they increase their profit margins without changing the end price or their market share in any significant way.

>>51461148
only one person can win a lottery, my friend. one in a million. most of them worked for it. kill yourself communist

>>51460700
I wish I did, then I would get government benefits!!

>>51460869
original person you replied to here, yes, that's basically what will happen

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>>51462078
>>51462078
>>51461256
>>51461180
>>51461148
>>51460836
>>51460734
>>51460522
>>51462078
> I'm not good enough to make a lot of money, therefore most people who are rich got lucky, because otherwise i would have to face the fact that I am not as talented or special as I think

Millenials, everyone.

>>51463613
>what do you mean, companies can turn down those who apply for work?
>what do you mean, lotteries are random?
>what do you mean, the majority of startup businesses fail or get bought out?
>what do you mean, entire perfectly productive departments often get cut just to cut costs?
>what do you mean, I shouldn't act smug toward my fellow societal outcasts and pretend to be a rich older guy with actual skill who wouldn't be posting on this site if any of that were true?

My thought: the things that require an appreciation of aesthetic, rhetoric, or the ability to read people. Art, game design, marketing, law, cooking. Services, basically. Retail work, restaurant work, etc. As well, the medical field and the sciences are going no where fast, since in OP's scenario, robots can't do delicate work like surgeries, archeology, or a great deal of repair work.

tl;dr, the same thing that's been happening: more people moving from agriculture and production into services.

>>51461424
>So good people don't need to do it
Most music, art, etc., isn't made because people want to do it to make money, it's done to express something in themselves. People are people, and people not having to work Production and labor because robots do it all isn't gonna change that.

>>51458181
The real question is, who the fuck cus out a canker sore?

>>51458012
Their life force is harvested to power the machines.

>>51463613
But of course you're a wise old billionaire baby-boomer shitposting on a korean fingerpainting board.
wew kid

>>51461135
Why do you need money. You just use your robots to make the shit you want

>>51464245
Having the ability to make whatever you want and having the actual raw materials for it are two very different matters.

Right now, my friends, well known professional contacts, and I could probably make, say, a prop plane. We collectively represent a very wide range of technical blue collar professions and a lot of us have crafting hobbies and enough experience to make up the rest. But even discounting labor costs and time entirely, we'd have to actually get the materials for it first, and those aren't cheap.

>>51463742
What about when robots can do those things too? No matter what we do, some moron will keep developing more AI

>>51464458
Eventually you get to a point where there isn't any difference between human and AI.

>>51464482
And the AI get better. Unless we go full Butlerian Jihad

>>51464492
At that point we are the AI.

>>51463850
Music, movies, art - all information, in their base forms. We're already more or less at the point in animating technology that we could make a fully CGI movie that looks as good as real life, and our robotic voice imitation will eventually become as good as the real thing - at that point, what need do we have for actors? We already have completely artificial pop stars - Hatsune Miku was on the Dave Letterman show.

You'll say we still need the writers, but a script is still just a collection of words. An AI could learn how to build a script (or poem, or book, or song) that people like without understanding why they like it. Marketing executives do it all the time. We humans may have a creative spark not seen elsewhere in nature, but thinking that it's not replicable by a sufficiently advanced machine is foolish.

>but people will still want to do it just to do it
Fair enough, but if what they're doing isn't going to make a corporation money they're not going to make it big. I'm sure we'll have a thriving human art scene, but it won't be mainstream.

>>51458012
get exploited for profit by elites, just like in real life. just because the work CAN be done by robots doesn't mean it's in the elites' best interest that it is. in fact, it isn't.

>>51464552
If there's no middle and lower classes there won't be any corporations.

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>>51464564
Orwell wasn't right about everything, you know.

>>51463897
Normal people.

>>51464196
Nah but I don't blame others for my lack of success. That's what you are doing.

>>51463728
Yep, that's capitalism for you. Maybe you should have been better at your job, or run your business more intelligently. Also, lotteries are a tiny minority of rich people, you stupid faggot. Stop making excuses for your lack of success. You want to be rich? Keep trying, you probably won't make it, but that doesn't give you a right to whinge about those who are. They deserve every cent of their money, and you don't get to say shit about it.

>>51464652
I just wait for them to heal, why the hell would you cut them out, that'd just make it worse.

>>51460399
> I can't even envision what jobs those people will do but given automation's track record so far I think they'll be fine.
>things worked out fine in the past
>therefore they'll work out fine forever

You know there were many centuries advancement in weapons technology that took place before the nuclear bomb was created, just because it turned out fine before doesn't mean it'll always turn out fine. Humans are getting hit with different strains of influenza every year and it's generally no issue but then one day the spanish flu hits and kills more people then world war 1, the future is unpredictable and this kind of mindless optimism is going to get people killed. You can say "muh luddites" all you want but we're not discussing the introduction of steam-powered machinery here, it's a bit beyond that.

Become professional memers and panhandle on the Internet by shitposting and waiting for measly pocket change of Likes and Credits to roll in.

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>>51459107
>We all end up with a new currency(ies) not based on property, and intangibles that can be traded for with that new currency(ies). I anticipate something based on clicks, likes, and reblogs, which can be exchanged for more recognition.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-new-tool-for-social-control-a-credit-rating-for-everything-1480351590

Y'all should read about this if you haven't already

>>51464700
Nah that'll dry up and go away. There won't be a need for mass advertisement anymore as the consumer base will dry up.

>>51464740
Sesame Credit is so blatant that it's just funny.

>>51463424
It's not a bad thing if Obama does it. Don't forget how he scrapped habeas corpus and unlike Bush didn't even bother trying to get support from Congress for his flagrantly illegal military intervention.

>>51463344
>>51463424
>>51463466
>>51464819
Why do tg threads always turn into /pol/ nowadays

>>51464844
People want to anonymously discuss politics but they don't want to go to actual /pol/ because it's such a total shithole.

>>51464898
I dunno why they bother, at least with american politics.

>>51458181
You realize businesses get a shit ton more free money from the government than unemployed people, right?

>>51458012
Either we have the capitalist method, where wealth continues to aggregate to the top, and we end up with a tiny globalist elite and large slum populations. Or the socialist method, where the government seizes assets and creates a huge inefficient welfare state.

>>51463344
I would tell something but media told me only they can legaly browse wikileaks.

>>51464740
>wsj cuts off two paragraphs in and demands a subscription at an overblown fee I can't afford on my shoestring budget.

>Fortune.com offers a story for free but immediately refers to some dumbfuck show on Netflix.

>Washpo offers a story for free, but includes the line "And in this world, your score becomes the ultimate truth of who you are".

This is why I think we should make a daily ritual of randomly picking an online journalist to be dragged out into the street and beaten.

>>51463613
>>51464196
>>51464652
ITT: People who are dumb enough to believe that life is fair.

I mean, to start with, the people at the very top of the income distribution get most of their money from capital gains. In other words, their main skill is owning stuff. This is why people who are born into wealth experience returns similar to those of wealthy people who actually did some labor at some point.

Here's a very short description of the current situation with respect to the United States:

1. Income inequality began to increase in the 1970s. This trend was driven both by rising wages at the top of the income distribution and stagnating wages elsewhere. A recent study suggests that the bottom 50% of the US income distribution has experienced no wage growth in the last 40 years (in real terms, obviously).

2. Intergenerational social mobility has declined.

3. Wage stagnation continued even as productivity increased. This should be setting off alarm bells already, because the conventional assumption is that wages are determined by marginal productivity.

4. The proceeds of economic growth have been distributed in an unequal way, going principally to the rich.

5. Deregulation, privatization, and particularly the reinterpretation of antitrust law under the Reagan administration has lead to the consolidation of firms in many markets; we currently have a situation in which these markets are dominated by a small number of firms.

6. We have also learned that increasing inequality is (and was, I think?) driven by inequality between firms: a small number of firms have most of the cash. The word "rents" should be floating through your mind by now.

7. Entrepreneurship is declining; the rate of formation of new businesses is decreasing. This is pretty suspicious in light of the other stuff I've listed.

>>51466064
8. Inequality between firms has lead labor markets to take on a monopsonistic character: increasingly, getting a high income means landing a job with one of the rich firms.

9. Until very recently, economists pretty much ignored all of this because they believed that distribution was a solved field.

10. Other explanations, like occupational licensing, globalization, or automation, keep failing to explain these trends, although some of them (e.g., globalization) are clearly factors. As far as I can tell, a lot of hypotheses are looking pretty suspect right now; for example, it's hard to sustain the "superstar" hypothesis in light of evidence suggesting that company performance is very poorly correlated with CEO pay.

Answering the original question: In a situation where we maintain private ownership of the means of production, a case where laborers become unable to sell their labor means that everyone who's not a member of capitalist class starves to death. In other words, only the people who own the automated farms get to eat. Given these premises, there is no way around this: either we depart from a purely capitalistic framework via the shared ownership of robots or a basic income guarantee or something like that, or we face mass starvation. The classic response, given several times in this thread, is that this situation just can't happen, because it hasn't happened before-- labor will always be valued to a degree that exceeds the cost of living, because it always has been. I find this argument unconvincing.

I'm a dilettante with economics; my real interest is evolution. The posts about eugenics are somewhat amusing. I don't think you know how it was flawed or what it would take to make it effective.

>>51466064
>>51466277
Have you got sources for this? I'm not trying to smarmy; I just want to read about this in more detail.

>>51460536
Investment and maintenance tend to loose out (ini magnitude) to the cost of employing skilled laborers.

The limitation isn't cost of the robot, but as Ford and his union boss allegedly quipped back in the 70s,
"How are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?"

"How are you going to get them to buy cars?"

>>51458012
Everyone, the rich and poor alike, becomes useless. The robots don't need humans for highly specialized repairs, they can do it themselves.

Therefore, all humans would die out, and allow the next stage of humanity, robots, to control the world.

This is an unavoidable fate.

>>51466355
Not him, but if you've been paying attention to what's going on in the real world(tm) over the past thirty years, it should ring a few bells.

But source-wise, especially with the consolidation of companies; America's ISPs, (for example) are absolute leviathans, and abuse duopoly power while begging government protection. They're huge and monied, they can buy all the laws they want.

If you look at the states with the worst internet permeation, you'll find they're generally ones where politicians, usually republicans* have been bribed into writing protectionist state laws that prevent competition (literally, or just effectively) and prevent towns and cities from making their own infrastructure investments for internet provision. (And the FCC, which has just started to actually do anything, is now about to be defanged and defunded by @theDonald).

And they've been merging as fast as they can. (Media giants have been doing that too, perhaps you've seen the little infographics floating around about how we've gone from literally thousands of journalistic entities to 14 being 95% of american media in the past couple dozen years.)


*No telling if this is specifically relevant; gerrymandering has seen most state governorships republican for a while, probably just incidental. ISPs, not being retarded, do their best to muddy the waters and cast 'net neutrality' and 'ISP regulation' as partisan issues that red-blooded republican free-businessers should abhor. When what they actually want is basically legal protection from actual competition.

Most townships that have overcome obstructionist laws and made civic internet access a reality have A, been republican, and B, been very pleased with the results..

>>51466432
>"How are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?"
Didn't Ford hate Unions?

>>51458012
They fill all remaining unskilled labor jobs until none are left then are provided a living wage due to the insane wealth created by a robot economy

>>51466355
The honest answer is "sort of." My inequality file has 329 entries right now, but I have to admit that I don't follow the scientific literature directly— these are (hopefully reputable) second-tier sources. All I can say in my defense is that I don't live in an econ department. If you like, I can go through those links and pull out the ones relevant to the claims in the post, but I have to drive for about two hours now, so it'll be a while before I can make that post.

Honestly, though? I'm here for traditional games, not /pol/ shit. So here's the best article on the original topic that I've ever found: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/

Yes, it's Jacobin, a very left-wing source— but a /tg/-relevant discussion of this topic is almost required to be left-wing, because the right-wing answers amount to "you can't have a situation like that; the current system will continue indefinitely" or "everyone dies," neither of which makes a good game setting. I promise I'm not sending you to a polemic.

>>51459861
also america

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>>51464652
You know the fisheries will be gone in a decade or so, right?

>>51466434
>the robits become sentient !!!
sure anon, sure

>>51467178
even if they're not, they don't need us to fix 'em.
We aren't needed at any step of the process.

>>51467144
the official date for no edible fish in the oceans was 2050 a few years ago, now it's probably 2045

>>51458012
the elitist smarties use some social engineering to get most of the plebs to go into a VR utopia, all while their neural input serves as extra server space and a maybe some esoteric means of power gathering

>>51467178
>trying to dissuade us from believing so we won't be ready

I know your game, Mr. Smith.

>>51465020
what? that makes no fucking sense

>>51458012

A world that advanced would probably have solved the problem of excessive human population by now - in other words there would be no people besides highly specialized repairmen, professors, scientists, politicians and their families.

>>51466047
>wsj cuts off two paragraphs in and demands a subscription at an overblown fee I can't afford on my shoestring budget.
Sorry anon I didn't check the link, just clicked the first Google hit for "Chinese internet score"

>>51467299
A person that makes about 50k a year pays about $60 in taxes to fund unemployment, welfare, and food stamps. At the same time he's paying about $250 to Defense, $235 to Medicare, and a whopping $4000 to Corporate Subsidies.

>>51467195
sure, but many of the things you thought of as logical aren't related to actual stuff happening, at least any soon

>>51467380
it's one or two iterations of replacing all workers away, but yeah.
Humans are on the way out.

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>>51467299
>believing that the absurd world you live in makes sense

The Austrian army once fought ITSELF after getting really drunk, when they were supposed to be fighting the Turks. Australia lost an official war against EMUS. BIRDS. The Imperial Russian Navy was defeated not by the superior skill of the Japanese sailors, but by a level of incompetence I couldn't replicate intentionally - and I say this as someone incompetent in many if not all aspects of a sailor's life. The British and Spanish once fought a war over a man's EAR.

And it doesn't stop with humanity, nor did it start with us. We're a BYPRODUCT of the real madness.

There's an entire astronomical object consisting entirely of alcohol, the stars in the sky make animal shapes when you connect the dots, there's a sea slug that looks like a bunny, and at any point the fundamental building blocks of the universe could fall out from under us, causing all existence to wink out and cease to be, and we have no way of proving that there are not, in fact, Elder Gods awaiting the day when The Stars Are Right to descend upon us and drive us all to madness. It's unlikely, but the chance is still greater than 0%, which is stupid in and of itself.

THIS UNIVERSE MAKES NO SENSE.

>>51458012
Whatever brings them the most joy, so long as it doesn't prevent others from doing the same. Science would leap forward. Space travel and colonization would be likely.

>>51466583
>>51466691
Goddammit. Here I was hoping for a study or a neat package that I could use to get a quick survey of these trends with some data.

I've bookmarked the Jacobin article and read the intro, but it looks more like broad conjecture than a historical examination. After reading this, there'll be another entry on the long list of "shit I ought know enough about to make an informed opinion". I don't have enough fucking free time to get through even half of that list before I'm fifty.

Good on you for finding the time, anons, but I'm not sure I'm capable of doing it.

>>51467368
It's not your fault. I just don't have sufficient evidence to believe that this current generation of journalists and news personalities should count as people for moral purposes.

>>51467579
Oh, I can probably give you something like that.

Like I said, I was after the most */tg/-relevant* article, addressing OP's question. I construed that as being more about possible futures than recent economic history. I thought the "four futures" would be a better guide to thinking about setting ideas.

I'm running really late getting out of here.

>>51467657
Dude, don't be late for my sake. I'm just bitching on an anonymous board for Mongolian scrimshaw.

Seems kind of grim so far.

I was thinking of making a similar thread for my sci-fi setting, but this is basically the same. Are we doomed to die out binging on CAR like that SMBc comic predicted?

>>51458012
Riot.

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>>51466064
>>51466277
>guys the current system is flawed, that just means we need to implement the labor theory of value and that will solve everything

>>51467376
Where does the other $12,000 go?

>>51458012
>artisans
People would make a fortune off of handcrafted personalized things like pottery/fine china, wrought iron decorations, hand carved wooden furniture, hand forged silverware etc etc etc. "Oh? Your dining room table is a plastic one? What's wrong, your husband can't afford a real wooden table?" "Oh, all you have are printed photographs? Can't afford an oil painting?"
>chefs
Just look at modern day chefs in restaurants and catering services.
>free range farmers
Just look at all of the vegan and vegetarian and humanitarian backlash against industrial farming today, there's a potential goldmine there for customers who want to virtue signal for political and career reasons in the future.
>hollywood, authors, illustrators, documentary makers, journalism
>hand built customized houses for the elite, and all that goes with it such as plumbers, carpenters, painters, brick makers, saw mills, etc etc etc.
>keepers and breeders of domestic pets such as cats, dogs, horses, sheep, cows, goats, rabbits, as well as exotic pets such as snakes and reptiles, etc. etc etc.

>>51460393
The robots will turn you into a cyborg so you will be transformed into the epitome of human health and beauty. Then they will hold tournaments where they place you and the other cyborgs on display and compete over who shall possess you as their cyborg waifu/husbandou.

>>51458012
The answer depends on the amount of resources that are available to us as a species. If we're stuck here on Earth? Everyone is probably screwed, they'll sit around on some form of Dole like in Britain drinking and fucking themselves to death while becoming morbidly obese and causing the average life-expectancy to plummet but not quite fast enough to outpace the 8 to 10 children the end up popping out and the human race would probably go extinct or fall to some form of income based genocide and a fascist government.

If we make it off planet before that happens? I would envision a world much more like the one in the Expanse series of novels where those who want to work do, the rest chill out, population is regulated etc.

>>51467376
Actually, I just looked into this a bit and it appears to be bullshit. A person earning $50,000 in 2014 would have paid $8,294 in income tax. A sample of the things that would go towards includes:
$236 for food stamps
$2,105 for defense (including money paid to defense contractors, but also including $451 for military employees. Doesn't include $492 for veterans' benefits.)
$1,133 for interest on the national debt (bonds, basically. Not Chinese overlords.)
$27 to the EPA
$16 to the TSA
$3 to the FAA
$55 to NASA

>>51460770
Yes, so do butterflies, lobsters, and humans.

Genetic chimerism is actually where most (but not all) hermaphrodites come from. (the politically correct term for human hermaphrodites is intersex)

But the scary thing is not all genetic chimeras are hermaphrodites. Half the people posting in this thread could be genetic chimeras and not even realize it. Because the only way to know is if you have several samples taken from different parts of your body, have each tested, and then compare those tests to your closest relatives to make sure both sets of DNA are in fact yours, and are in fact genetically related to your biological family.

I remember hearing rumors that some male actor in that Heroes show was sued or whatnot for child support, and he had his DNA tested and it came back false. But then it was later found out he had genetic chimerism. It's just that the parts of his anatomy that create sperm, and thus pass down DNA, was a different set of DNA from wherever they swabbed him down for the paternity test. He was basically his own fraternal twin. And thus, he is both his own children's biological father, as well as their uncle.

I have no idea if this is in any way true, but it has been proven as scientifically possible.

What a mind fuck for everyone involved.

>>51464678
I've never actually cut out any canker sores OR left them alone, I just pinned them between my upper and lower teeth and then bit down hard enough to make them pop. After that I kept my mouth clean and they healed up just fine practically over night.

Of course I haven't had to do that in ages. I read about how most canker sores are caused by toothpastes these days, figured what have I got to lose? Went to the store and bought a completely different toothpaste I'd never used before. (Pronamel Sensodyne) And what do you know, haven't had a canker sore since.

>>51467439
And people believe Chaos Magic doesn't exist.

Humanity IS Chaos Magic.

>>51460869
Why do the remaining 10% need to have their goods and services bought? They're the ones who own the robots that can do any labour humans can, but better. They're self-sufficient 'trillionaire' kings of empires of robot servants, each with their own entourage of humans they keep around either because they can do something the robots still can't (maybe scientific research, maybe something else) and/or just to have other humans to keep them company and to have 'someone to rule over'.

Capitalists in the current system need people to buy their goods because they need money to pay lots of humans to keep their factories etc. working; even if the factories are robotic, you need lots of human technicians and so on. If your factory were completely self-sufficient and self-repairing, you wouldn't need to pay for anything except power and materials, and if you own a power plant, mines, and some farmland as well, that means you're completely self-sufficient because you can staff them all witb robots from your factory. Why do you need to ever interact with regular humans in economic transactions at that point? At most, you'd offer the odd genius food and shelter inside your ecodome in return for them figuring out how to improve the efficiency of your farming robots by 1%, and that's if you don't have an AI to do that for you.

>>51458012
As in a profession? Nothing. Any possible benefit which they could provide in economic terms is gone.

I would hope that a sufficient welfare system existed to support those individuals so devoid of talent and skill that their job can be better performed by a robot.

What I find more interesting is what people would do with their newfound time. I would hope that by definition with all labor performed by robots we might have moved into something of a post-scarcity economy as well as a post-labour economy,

>>51467579
My file on this stuff resembles a big pile of junk more than a well-organized bibliography, and I'm very tired, so this will have to do for now.

1. The general picture with respect to income inequality in the US. (Ignore the shitty clickbait headline. The second article discusses the study I mentioned in my first post.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/20/this-chart-explains-everything-you-need-to-know-about-inequality/?utm_term=.c4bca1deeafe

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/economy/a-bigger-economic-pie-but-a-smaller-slice-for-half-of-the-us.html

2. Social mobility. This is really just a representative article; you can find tons of them.

http://washingtonmonthly.com/2015/07/29/the-myth-of-mobility/

3. The gap between productivity and wages.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/why-the-gap-between-worker-pay-and-productivity-is-so-problematic/385931/

4. The unequal distribution of the gains from economic growth. (Ignore this shitty clickbait headline too.)

http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/9/25/6843509/income-distribution-recoveries-pavlina-tcherneva

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/upshot/you-cant-feed-a-family-with-gdp.html

5. Market consolidation.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/11/13/Mega-Danger-Mega-Deals-Monopolies-Are-Crushing-US-Workers-and-Consumers

6. Inequality between firms. This is really the most interesting thing in this list.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/29/economists-have-figured-out-whos-really-to-blame-for-inequality/?utm_term=.d7c77700b9df

7. Declining entrepreneurship. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/22/a-very-bad-sign-for-all-but-americas-biggest-cities/?utm_term=.75f6b83e5fd5

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2015/02/12/the-decline-of-american-entrepreneurship-in-five-charts/?utm_term=.f0e9cae42f2d

8. Monopsonistic labor markets.

https://promarket.org/monopsony-takes-center-stage/

>>51471519
9. Why economists didn't notice.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-01-04/why-economists-took-so-long-to-focus-on-inequality

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/05/06/Why-Economists-Are-Finally-Taking-Inequality-Seriously

10. This one is admittedly rather speculative and relies on you being an obsessive weirdo who reads anything anyone writes about income inequality. I don't have a compact reference for it. Here's Chris Dillow being skeptical about the notion that you can blame everything on globalization, though:

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2016/11/is-globalization-to-blame.html

>>51464400
The materials aren't cheap either because they're rare and widely sought after, and/or because they require labour to extract.

If you have an advanced robotic workforce, and you own a mine, you don't need to buy materials because you can just have your robots mine and refine them. If you don't own the mine, but you own a factory, and there's some other rich guy out there who owns a mine, but not a robot factory, you cut a deal with him to have him give you some of the mined materials in return for your robots mining them more cheaply than a human workforce could. Basically, the super-rich transcend the regular economic system to the point that they only significantly trade with each other, with materials, energy, and robotic labour being the commodities in question. The only other form of trade would be for ideas/culture, and that's only if nobody invents AI that does that (and every other mental task) better than humans.

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>>51469870
>I was thinking of making a similar thread for my sci-fi setting, but this is basically the same. Are we doomed to die out binging on CAR like that SMBc comic predicted?
Honestly, I think we'll be fine. Some people think that life will lose all meaning if nobody has to work, but that's hard to imagine.

>Hey, uh, sorry to tell you this, but your position's been automated, so... you're getting laid off. On the bright side, the new legislation means that you get a pretty generous check in the mail every month anyway, so it's not like you actually need a job.

>You mean I don't have to work a shitty job as a cashier at BevMo anymore? N-no! My sense of purpose... dissolving! My life has no meaning if I can't man a register for a chain of liquor stores! MY VERY SOUL IS HOLLOW AND VOID WITHOUT YOU, BEVMO!

I think that people would actually just have a lot of fun playing video games, throwing parties, building monorails for puppies, sleeping in, hanging out with their friends and family, traveling— you know, horrible soul-deadening stuff like that. The horror, the horror.

>>51458181

I fucking love killing Nazis.

>>51470433
How do you tell the difference between a handmade pot and one made by robot hands that use noise functions to make it individual?

>>51458681
>implying AI couldn't do anything humans could

And besides, art and such would be supported by a patronage system. The ex-capitalist emperors of the future robotic swarms will have an entourage/city to entertain them. They'll have access to most resources, so they'll just look for artistd and feed them in return for art (if that's what they're interested in). The same goes for scientists and so forth. They'll use their robotic workforce to gain monopolies on manual labour and food so that everyone else becomes reliant on them; then they'll be able to pick and choose which pet to give the most resources.

I could be wrong, of course; maybe some sort of open-source, 3d printer-driven libertarian space race will occur whereby as many people try to become self-sufficient with a small robotic workforce as possible. That seems like a better outcome: nearly everyone owns just enouh land to support themselves with robotic farming, and recycling and salvaging methods are efficient enough that they're not entirely beholden to the whims of those who own the mines. Then, anyone aho can escape to the asteroid belt becomes truly free.

>>51458012
They shitpost on future 4chan and complain about other people being parasites.

>>51459709
Source? Google is being useless.

>>51464699
this
im imagining more that once the rich/powerful have the capabilites to both manufacture whatever they want and produce power by way of robots they lose any reason to keep poor people around. im guessing they hide underground for awhile and wait for humanity to destroy itself fighting over the scraps that are left. then emerge with their robot army and build a brave new world in their image.

>>51458012
There's an inflation in bullshit administrative jobs like "consultants." They have to figure out what you actually do before they can make a robot do it for you.

There's a bunch of assholes doing kickstarter/patreon/fiver projects. Sometimes they're legit.

People start living more people to a house/apartment, or moving out of cities (especially if they can do option 2).

There might be welfare reform (something along the lines of the UBI). I can see it juuuust covering your needs but not allowing a really comfortable life.

>>51458181
>until the money literally runs out
You do realize it can be spent a second, third, even a fourth time. Shit doesn't vanish when you use it. Unless you're doing some stupid shit like using a commodity currency.

>three kids
>five dads
Never mind. When you spend money on something the shopkeeper eats it I guess.

>>51472008
it would probably work out too because class warfare wouldnt be an issue anymore. there would be the rulers of the world, and then the subclass of robots that do anything they want without complaint. not to mention you dont need to feed a robot, take it to the doctor, give it workers comp, worry it will steal from you, go through hiring proceses, etc. as soon as the bottom line becomes expendable it will be expended.

>>51458181
I don't think you have any fucking clue how economics actually works.

>>51458012
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Here's a novella type story about 2 scenarios where this happens. One is bad end, one is good end.

I read this years ago and just googled it again, so if it's not related apologies.

>>51471641
>and you own a mine
Ok you own a mine and your buddy own a robot factory. You don't have logistics nor processing capabilities for the ores. All of you robots eventually crumble into disrepair and your buddy's aren't used.

You both starve.

>>51463728
>what do you mean, the majority of startup businesses fail or get bought out?
I don't see how being bought out is being a failure of a succesful startup. The guy who founded the startup is actually rich after that. That kinda go against your own point.

>>51472041
It's not that easy. For everything that isn't consumer products, full automation isn't something to strive for.

Hell, even robot factories nowadays aren't really automated themselves, because automation is way too expensive if you aren't shitting out the same thing by the 100000s

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Immersive virtual reality with haptic feedback bodysuits

>>51471005
thank god somebody is on the same page as me heres my posts
>>51472008
>>51472041
money and goods and services will be as useless as the average human. think about it. >the robot that will cook you dinner in the morning is powered by a robot running some sort of sustainable energy
>a robot will 3d print that new cool looking car you saw on tv
>construction robots will build your new house
>driven to work by a robot/ai
>cafe run by robots
>cops are perfectly logical robots that are programmed how the creators see fit for their world
>firefighters are autonomous extinguishers
>robot butler to get you anything around the house
>cleaning robot
>check into a hotel robot behind counter
>pilot is a perfect flying algorithm ai that has never had an accident
>teacher robot knows every text, historical event, scrap of information about human history
i just displaced about a dozen jobs some of them skilled and educated. now tell me you just graduated hs in whatever year this world exists, where do you belong here?

>>51472162
Robot-cooked meals and robot-prepared coffees are already available everywhere and people still eat in restaurants and drink in cafés run my human waiters.

It's not that easy.

>>51470520
Don't mean to nitpick, but intersex is the scientifically accurate term, not the PC one. Hermaphroditism is concerned with dual reproductive ability, and intersex people has at best one functional reproductive system.

>>51472187
and im not saying its gonna happen tomorrow
but i think that once energy->production->consumption
comes full circle with the help of robots outside of being a nice guy why would we need anybody for these jobs

>>51458181
>>51458972
Why do right wing assholes hate single mothers on welfare so much?

>>51461124
*networked for their wealth

>>51472222
>why would we need anybody for these jobs
Because maintaining cleaning robots, waiter robots, cops robots, firemen robots or chef robots would be hella expensive in terms of ressources. Complex robots break easily, wear easily and still aren't as flexible as humans.

>>51472266
your still constrained by what you think robots are today im not even sure this will happen in the next century. that said
>robots that clean the robots

>>51472298
this is all conjecture though so take it as you will anon but im not gonna lie im pretty uncertain about the future

>>51472298
>by what you think robots are today
I'm engineer in a r&d lab and I work with state of the art robots in one of the most advanced industry out there. I kinda understand what robots are good for and what they aren't.

>>51472327
mmk what will robots be good for 150 years from now expert

ITT: poor people believe that rich people only tolerate their existence for the purposes of labor and would delete them if they could
find some therapists to deal with this paranoia problems, my dudes.

>>51472337
im talking about a massive undertaking that probably will never happen in any of our lifetimes

>>51472340
>higher percentage of psycopaths as ceo's then gen pop
>not gonna delete them if they could

>>51472337
Their maintainance will always cost more than 2500 kcal a day, a mattress under a roof and some warm clothes.

>>51472363
I guess I have to blame the media for giving people an incorrect portrait of psychopathy, because they don't kill people on a whim. It's a matter of profit margins at best, and profit is remarkably insignificant thing in OP's future. Also why would anyone use CEOs as a model to represent the engineers that would rule this future who are building and maintaining the robot structure?

>>51471909
Boku no hero academia.

>>51472346
Ok, let's think about something.

We are one decade away from fully autonomous healthcare and food production can already be totally automated and hydroponic. Why the fuck would I waste stainless steel of building a robot waiter when there is billions of lowlives who would gladly accept to work for less ?

>>51466626
Yes and that was the point of it. If he only uses robots then the unions will die because they won't have members. Simultaneously Ford will die too because people won't have money to buy shit.

>>51460465
Abso-fucking-lutely massive start up costs of changing literally everything about your operation to accommodate them as well as maintenance costs. If one of em goes down you could lose production on the whole factory while one worker being sick is just a slight loss for that day.
>>51464196
The grand majority of millionaires are first generation.

>>51466064
>because the conventional assumption is that wages are determined by marginal productivity.
Yes but how much of that productivity is because of you and not the computer that the business owns. Not saying one way or the other but wages have remained stagnant since the 70s while productivity has grown because technology allows one to do that with very little extra work put in.

>>51458012
Manufacture robots

>but robots can do that

Do you want a robot uprising?

>>51463446
Also forgetting in real life there are cartels so they all sell for the same price
And anyone who tries to break those cartels? The others do a short term massive price drop to the level of losing money on the product
The new guy hasn't got the reserves to cope so goes bankrupt and then they ratchet the price back up

I wish people were smarter.

I don't mean hard laborers, I mean people who think they're smart. There's no reason we can't live in a society where, proportionate to increases in efficiency, people need to work less and still receive relatively the same income. The problem is, a group of edgy tards seems to think hyper-captialism is an excellent idea, and they're fundamentally brainwashed. Any time you see someone argue against basic social programs on 4chan or wherever, you're encountering a group of people arguing against their own interests entirely based on spite.

There is no need to work an 8 hour day 5 days a week. The only reason to do that so meaningless busy-work provides the illusion of fulfillment through soul-breaking oppression. The problem isn't that some people receive social assistance, the problem is that multi-billion dollar corporate entities want to indoctrinate people into their self-perpetuating ideology, so they don't radically have to reorganize their businesses.

Why do you think people with minimum wage jobs make less than people on social assistance? It's forced slavery, under the guise of meritocracy, and latent tribalism is used to control the terms of access.

Back in the 90's, people were theorizing a 20 hour work week. I'm not saying that's realistic, but what I am saying is, stop parroting braindead capitalist ideologies that undermine your social position, based purely on spite.

>>51472633
Some social programs are objectively bad tho. Giving money to poorfags because they have kids is one of them. Even social democracies are starting to cut on this (recently, France).

>>51472676
But why?

While I agree there is nothing biologically significant about being about to shit out a child, there is no reason the child should have to suffer because there parents are retarded.

The issue isn't giving them money, the issue is how they spend the money. If they had to report all of their expenditures in order to receive the full amount of money, you can bet people become more fiscally responsible.

>>51472232
Because they aint getting any. These are the same guys who protest outside abortion clinics but really just hope that they finally get a girl who is loose, or coerce a girl into keeping a kid that will grow up loose.

>>51463850

Yes but we'll duct tape all the NEETs into giant duct tape mummies to stop them from bothering real people

>>51458012
Those people would've been breed out and or killed. Like any efficiency whore (futuristic setting) things would get so complex that you HAVE to cut off the things that take up time and resources wherever you can. Especially in mechanical things or learning pursuits.

A realistic variant of this is how many jobs exist that can be completely replaced by machines. It's a fucking lot. There are too many people. Not because xD no resources or whatever but because the vast amount of people are completely worthless when it comes to improving humanity or would drown in excess if given a way to support themselves when robots take their job.

The average man is already holding back humanity. Just imagine the problems caused with higher levels of tech.

>>51472797
>The average man is already holding back humanity. Just imagine the problems caused with higher levels of tech.
But anon, YOU are the average man, wasting your time on 4chan. Don't be retarded and advocate against yourself. People are only as productive as society enables them, which is why you have isolated stone-age tribes.

>>51472817
I advocate what is effective, it doesn't matter if it's against myself.
>People are only as productive as society enables them
True. Which is why the everyman is so shit.

>>51472846
An organism with no interest in self-preservation quickly dies out. The problem here is that you have no interest in preserving yourself, which means you should probably see a psychiatrist.

>I advocate what is effective
Then you should know there are a myriad of choices, and even the most efficient felicity calculus boils down to picking what causes the least harm.

>>51472797
>A realistic variant of this is how many jobs exist that can be completely replaced by machines.
Not that many, at least not in an economically efficient way.

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>>51472875
I'm already seeing a psychiatrist thank you very much.
>>51472929
Would've been more accurate to say how wide spread the effect of just a few of those jobs/types of jobs being replaced would be. Very tired.

>>51458181
Money is not real faglord. If we ever reach this event horizon it's easier to kill the rothschild and change the system than to kill everyone else and let the filthy rich go mad when they realize they don't have anyone to steal from anymore.

>>51458181
Why the fuck would you cut out a canker sore? You just wait a day or so and they go away. You wouldn't even get them in the first place if you didn't eat so many chips.

>>51458181
U rite.
>>51472232
There are a lot of single moms. There are a lot of single moms that have a lot of kids. Single moms usually can't raise kids for shit. Those kids usually have rough childhoods. They grow up wanting that to stop.

This shit isn't hard.

>>51458181
>(which is already true, we just have enough low-skill jobs left to justify this)
Let's just be honest here : any low-skill job which could be automated or outsourced has already been. Guess that people aren't that useless.

>>51473181
Also, if automation is to replace manual labour everywhere, factories will likely come back to the first world where there is enough engineers and skilled tech to maintain them.

>>51470516
Better save money by cutting the EPA, clearly.
fuck the TSA

>>51458181

B8 post. You clearly have little or no knowledge of economics. But what you do give us are straw man "conservative" ideas... founded on liberal premises.

>We are rapidly approaching this situation in the modern world. Soon, 90% of people are going to be useless.

The whole point of free markets are to ensure that every productive resource is kept in play, and organized optimally to maximize consumer utility. Even when a resource like robots are 100% better, human labor will still be employed under the principle of comparative advantage.

>And because the government is unable to admit that 90% of people have no value to society

That's not government's job. And a word like "society" has no meaning except as a collection of individuals. Who have meaning to themselves.

You're painting this picture of some abstract collective having some existence of its own, with the government as the ruler and moral arbiter.

>(which is already true, we just have enough low-skill jobs left to justify this)

Which, when you get to community college and take remedial economics for the mentally impaired, is always the case in a free market. Double or halve the number of unskilled laborers and at equilibrium there will be "just enough" jobs for them.

>they will be paid for by the high-and-mighty until the money literally runs out at the economy collapses in a way that will make the Great Depression look like an everyday stockmarket dip.

And that's where I realized that this was a b8 post from a liberal. An economy isn't a declining balance of green pieces of paper. It's an interlocking series of value-creating activities. India under socialism was a huge morass of poverty and unemployment, but once they liberalized the jobs appeared and standards of living started to rise (not fast, but their economy isn't that free yet either). By your logic they would have "run out" of rupees. It's like being afraid that if you sail your boat too much you'll run out of wind.

>>51472957

God made America the capitalist paradise it is. Trying to change the system is sacrilegious, communist, and probably treason.

>>51458181

2/2

>Soon, eugenics is going to make a comeback. When it does, there will be no place in society for the single mother with three different kids from five different dads. They will be cut out like a canker sore.

The Left has been pushing eugenics for a century to no avail. Buck vs Bell was argued basically on your logic... but we don't sterilize racial and social deplorables anymore.

We probably will have eugenics. But it will be parents choosing and paying to augment their kids, not the Central Committee sterilizing groups they find irredeemable.

>>51466626
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/16/robots-buy-cars/
I got the date wrong.

>>51458012
>Post-scaracity society
>Implying it would follow rules of scaracity society
Son, you are missing the point so fucking hard, it's not even funny.
And idiots who instantly jump to conclusions about societal collapse - nice knowing there are so many retards around, absolutely incapable of thinking outside the basic box that by default is made invalid.

>>51472232
Poverty has a 0.3 correlation with crime.

Single Motherhood has a 0.9 correlation.

Single Motherhood is the primary cause of the destruction of the Black Culture.

When growing up without a solid male rolemodel, male children will seek to express an exaggerated form of masculinity.

The female parent is also far more violent and moody. Using violent punishment and coercion far more readily, and often as their only form of behavior control. Once they can no longer physically dominate a male child, the lose the ability to control that child. Which tends to happen in the early to mid teens. Coincidentally the ages in which most of those who will join gangs, no?

Prior to the advent of the welfare state, the black populace of America had a higher rate of family stability than the white populace, and as a whole had a higher share of the wealth and lower criminality. Think about that for a minute, blacks were doing better in the Jim Crow South than they are under the Welfare State.

It isn't a coincidence though. The Welfare state was expressly set up to tear apart the families of those on it. The women of the Black Community chose to marry the State, and their children have suffered for it ever since.

And it is eroding the White Community as well, because Welfare's express goal is to create a dependent free-range slave class that votes constantly to further strengthen their chains.

>>51458681

When automation replaced all the agricultural jobs, who could have even conceived of most of the jobs we do now? Or believed that there would be enough for full employment?

Then mechanization struck, and the Luddites (literally) appeared again not able to conceive of anything but permanent unemployment without manual labor in factories. Slowly, automation has done the same thing for machine-operating jobs in manufacturing, and now THEY have the same concerns.

Oh, and all through the 90s we watched all the secretaries, travel agents, and journalists go through the same thing. Every time they talk themselves into thinking that this time it's different.

Chillax, bros. The free market's got this.

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>>51471813
Fatcats be fat

>>51459790

Cost of living will go way down. The whole point t of automation is that robots are cheaper, right? A big part of those savings get passed along to the consumer.

At even very modest growth rates, our standard of living will be on the order of a dozen or more times what it is now in a century. We may enjoy that standard of living very differently than we do now, but overall quality of life will be considerably higher.

The scenario where this doesn't happen due to automation is where robots don't improve productivity per resources invested in employing them... In which case robotization doesn't happen in the first place.

>>51460271

tfw workers in China are complaining about companies outsourcing to cheap labor in Vietnam.

You know, the Transhuman Space rpg dealt with these questions a decade ago. Some of the supplements were written by real economists, scientists, and futurists.

>>51460393

You'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

In the year 2525...

>>51460836

They've done studies of class mobility. At least in the United States, there's considerable (though declining) mobility between economic classes. Speaking very generally, the lag is about one generation, so you can set your kids up for life, but probably not your grandkids.

So Conrad Hilton builds an empire, his kids run it, and his grandkids are whores. Joe Kennedy builds a (drug) empire, his kids are senators and presidents, his grandkids are playboys, and his great-grand kids are falling out of their wealth. These are extreme examples, of course, because grand-dad was SO successful. For ordinary levels of super-wealth, the transition is even faster. Even in the newspaper industry, where family connections make a huge difference, the family that runs the NYTimes ended up headed by a guy who's currently running it into the ground.

Meanwhile, look at the lists of billionaires and the super-wealthy. The vast majority of them are entrepreneurs who'd built their empires themselves. Those will in turn get diluted by kids who share the empire, and operate but don't grow it. Their grandkids will squander it.

In status-driven industries like politics and the performing arts, this lag takes a little longer, but in most industries the effect holds up pretty well. Luck makes a HUGE difference, but inheritance not nearly as much as you'd think.

>>51461492

Tacit collusion was a hot topic in economics in the 90s but the reality is that except when you have cartel-encouraging barriers to entry the effect is minimal. Remember, you're not just cutting prices to steal market share from your competitors, you're cutting them because lower prices increase total quantity demanded and with a lower marginal cost your profit-maximizing price goes down as well.

That's why monopolies don't charge infinity. They charge more than a free market would, and there's no competitive pressure to improve quality, but even in the extreme case you have a profit motive to lower prices if your costs go down.

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>all these hyper-optimistic ghetto einsteins who don't know that Moore's law is dead and oil is going to run out in 50 years

>>51473862

I suggest you get the futurebabble book.

>>51464844
>nowadays

/pol/tards of both political persuasions can't stop themselves.

>>51473862
I, for one, am looking foreward to the post-oil wasteland.
I call dibs on being that guy who the raiders are beating up before kenshiro shows up.

Or a skeleton clutching a treasure.

>>51463245
>Make the widget with automation for $5,
Sell it as a computer engineered, precision machined, premium widget, 100% made in america* for $22. Report a loss on your tax return.

*From imported parts.

>>51470516

And bear in mind that most of those food stamps monies would be for children and people in work but getting income top ups because they don't get enough hours to pay rent and pay for food.

>>51472076
>implying

You have a point, sure: one complexity of the whole automisation of labour business is that not all industries will become automated at once. Trains might be first, then maybe trucks- or maybe like in this scenario, the mines and factories become automated first. If using robot workers is actually more economical than using humans, then the automated facility is just another step in the supply chain- you'll have some facilitoes in the chain be automated, and some not, with the number of automated facilities growing until either societal collapse due to mass unemployment and poverty, the takeover of all automated facilities by a totalitarian regime, the rise of technological self-sufficiency, or full automation and some kind of UBI utopia or dystopia.

But just because your intermediary is (currently) human-staffed doesn't really change the situation too much: you just need to build up a stock of raw materials and let them go bankrupt, then buy their premises and automate them before things start breaking down/you purge the plebs.

We're all fucked in this scenario, but the auto-facility owners still come off the best, because if the economy is going to break down to the point it doesn't make sense to sell produced goods to pay for the processing of materials in cash, they can do the billionaire's version of prepping and rustle up a private militia, (of people promised food and/or deathcollared or of robots, if reliable war robots exist- probably both) and take over the refineries when shit goes down.

>>51472187
Until we have androids that are convincing enough and cheap enough to replace pretty faces, you're right, but the robot meals part of it is just a matter of robots not being as good as 5 star chefs yet.

>>51472008
t.isaac asimov

>>51466355

Actual economist here. He's got a mish-mash of stuff, some true, some not. Basically everything he's got on bargaining power and wages is wrong. Most of his conclusions fall straight through from his premises: "Assume A, therefore B, therefore A, which proves A."

He is correct about rising income inequality (he blames Reagan but of course it's happened under presidents of both parties for a long time now, and accelerated under Obama). Of course, that's also a natural consequence of the log-normal distribution of incomes. I personally believe that this is a consequence of the distribution of productivity in a knowledge economy, which follows a power law in a large number of knowledge-producing industries, but that's speculation on my part.

His point about capital gains is misleading, because the notion of "capital" varies considerably. He's lumping together the hedge fund manager, the venture capitalist, the trust fund princess, and the CEO paid in stock options as if they're all performing the same function; in reality, so much income gets funneled through stocks due to the tax code. In the Old Days, income inequality was considerably lower... because high ranking executives got so many job perks that weren't included in compensation valuations.

The thing is, if you start from the premise that "we need to abandon the capitalist framework", then you'll always find ways to justify it by finding things that you consider flaws, then promise to fix those flaws without anything else changing, if only you put more resources at the disposal of political elites instead of business elites. If you're not a political elite yourself, you should be very, very skeptical of arguments like that.

>>51472364
You're right about the raw energy cost, but electricity is cheaper to transport than food.

In a way though, you're right: 'zombified' humans woud be superior at the moment. Consider, though, possible advancements in emulating or combining nature with robotics. Ultimately, if you can(!) get a robotic system that's self-repairing without human input, it's a matter of playing the numbers after that.

>>51473862
Get ready for more than moore, 3d electronics, stacked nanowires, quantum computing on silicon and more you faggits.

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>>51464652
>Nah but I don't blame others for my lack of success. That's what you are doing.
I'm not actually any of the anons you were talking to.
I was just laughing at your retarded "everyone who disagrees with me is just le millennials" shitposting. As if you're some wise old successful billionaire shitposting on 4chan.

>>51466064
>all that projecting and tl;dr
wew kid

>>51472528
>The grand majority of millionaires are first generation.
That has nothing to do with my post.

Either you're a moron who replied to the wrong post or you're seriously projecting to attack some strawman.

>>51474052
It's merely the fact that it is totally unneficient and way too expensive to use robots for anything else than shitty prepared meals.

>>51473285

>muh talk radio conspiracy theory

>>51471519
>>51471533

Could I instead suggest that you take a good microeconomics course at a university? Then a good macro course. The math scares people off (especially the journalists who wrote most of those articles you're citing) but it's really not that bad-- mostly HS algebra that should be cake for anybody nerdy enough to be on /tg/.

The problem is that you have journalists lobbying politicians who have an axe to grind, and so they're cherry-picking studies that aren't really ready for prime time consumption. A good basic understanding of the quantities, definitions, and math involved would make you a much more informed consumer of this stuff. Pick a left-wing professor if you think I'm some kind of propagandist-- odds are very low that you'll end up in my classroom.

Just to pick an example, Christine Romer's a good economist. But her studies on neo-keynesian stimulus are often cited as "proving" the value of deficit spending on the economy and the whole neo-keynesian perpetual motion machine it implies. Keynes is a minority view to begin with, but her study made the a priori assumption that stimulus works to study something else. It's good work but totally misrepresented.

If your field is a physical science or psychology, consider how nearly every study in your own field that makes it into the papers it totally misrepresented. Economics is 10x worse.

There's a case for what that anon was saying. I don't buy it, because there are other cases for other interpretations of the data that i find much more convincing, but some classwork will help you understand the issues and make your own decision

And please don't ever trust a graph of any kind that says, "the only graph you'll ever need to see on X" because what they're really saying is, "please don't check our work or look at any other sources ever again."

>>51474052
Hell, some people already prefer more cartoonish faces and characters to real people.
Sure it's most extreme in social rejects like you can find on places like 4chan but even the "normies" appreciate attractive characters in video games and other media.

What if you getting your coffee at a drive-through is completely automated but a friendly virtual character helps present it to you and thank you for your patronage, like something like that miku virtual pop star thing? You could even have it greet the customer when they drive up and offer to mention any deals or specials or whatever.

As that sort of stuff becomes more common I can also imagine it socially normalising as people get used to it.

>>51474370
Who would you recommend he reads then?

Because I can't really see too much fault in people using data to support their arguments, but there should be plenty of people using that data to support their arguments on the other side.

>>51472633

Shut up and get me my chai latte. Your womyn's studies degree can wait; it's already been 6 years and you're still an undergrad.

Or, if you like, move to Venezuela, where you're ideology is being tried right now. Or, rather, the marxist theory that YOU'RE parroting right now, that came from someone much smarter but still wrong.

>>51458012
Either they become artists or craftsmen, or they do nothing and sit at home watching reality TV all day.

>>51458078
>experiments in towns with Basic Income, and what happened was not everyone stopped working

Because they knew it was temporary, and they needed to keep their jobs when the free money stopped flowing.
If someone paid me 15k a year, no strings attached, I sure as fuck wouldn't show up for work unless I got at least 20k for doing so.

Robots or not, the welfare system and a good part of the workers rights are already on their way out in the west because there is no money anymore as the boomers finish to drain it. Manpower costs falling will make robots less competitive.

>>51473423
>You know, the Transhuman Space rpg dealt with these questions a decade ago. Some of the supplements were written by real economists, scientists, and futurists.

THS posits a few things relevant to this thread.

First, that the unemployed are funded via social welfare systems. Productivity is high enough that the sliver of the economy that bothers getting jobs can easily provide decent standards of living to the unemployed while living very well themselves.

Second, there's rampant transhumanism (duh). AIs aren't all that much greater than normal human intelligence, but normal humans are greatly augmented by cybernetics and genetic upgrades. The killer combo is upgraded humans with AI support-- that beats pure AI as well as variations on humanity.

Third, there's a four tier class structure in most developed countries:

1) Slaves: This is nearly all robotic (or uplifted animals and bio-robots). Non-sapient AI does most of the production, and it's arguable whether you should bother calling them slaves anymore than you would a toaster or screwdriver.

2) the bistro crowd: These are unemployed people on welfare, perhaps lacking ability but usually just not interested in working. Standards of living are comfortable enough, but there isn't enough money for more than basic transhuman upgrades. They play VR games, make art, chat about philosophy at cafes, etc. You can get a job if you want, perhaps short-time employment to afford some luxury or upgrade they're keen on. Most don't bother.

3) the struggling class: These guys work. Work weeks are shorter but much more intellectually demanding. Pay is good, but most people in this class are really trying to either score big or save up enough to join the Eloi. They're in this class because they're naturally ambitious. Often they make "investments" in upgrades.

cont...

>>51473862
There is literally no reason we can't run on nuclear. It has a reputation for being dangerous and causing heavy pollution, but it does better in both of those categories than any other form of energy, renewables included. Many people have fallen for the anti-nuclear meme, but eventually there will be a point where it'll be easier to accept the facts about nuclear than it is to accept a massive decline in quality of life from dwindling energy supplies.

>>51472633
Capitalism is the one system that can bring about the era of post-scarcity, we aren't as near to that as you believe though.

>>51474476

The problem isn't his data or analysis, it's that neither he nor the journalists he's reading understand the data/analysis.

I mean, I'm a conservative/libertarian myself. So I'll cite mostly guys like Thomas Sowell (general economics) or the late Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek (political implications). Sowell's books are split between politics and some great general primers on economics.

Obviously, I can also push him to right-wing media (instead of the NYTimes and The Atlantic) and right-wing activists (instead of Vox and the like) but then I'm just committing the same sin in reverse and he's no better off.

Really what he needs is to sit down in a classroom, engage with a professor he can talk to and have questions answered with, and actually work his way through some problem sets. Even if he comes out the other end believing similar things, I think he'll look at these problems differently and VERY importantly understand that a lot of what he's quoting is misleading and a lot of his conclusions don't make sense once he understands how a market works.

The data's critical, but that's the least important piece of the puzzle if he can't analyze it. If he's at a university, he's probably required to take a semester of economics anyway (given the choice, micro is FAR more important than macro), so it's not like it's out of his way. Once you know what you're doing, you can go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and other groups like the IMF and World Bank and download the data yourself. You can run an analysis like this in Excel in about 20 minutes and see for yourself, rather than hearing it fifth hand from Vox and be fed a load of garbage.

>>51464652
>They deserve every cent of their money, and you don't get to say shit about it.

ok so I'm going to use a perfectly legal loopholes to buy up all the property in your town, automate everything and ignore you and your families pleas for help. or I can use my vast wealth to just steamroll you with private security forces. I'm sure your no morality shit will hold up and you won't cry about being a victim. for fucks sake even Ayn Rand espoused benevolence right under self interest
.>>51474490
>Shut up and get me my chai latte. Your womyn's studies degree can wait; it's already been 6 years and you're still an undergrad.

I thought you natsoc fags were harder to trigger

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It baffles me that there are still retards who think economy as we intend it will still exist in such environment, the next industrial revolution will completely change how money works or even eliminate it bringing in also huge societal changes.

>>51474877
This, the first industrial revolution fucked up the way wealth worked, full automation would do it again.

>>51472604
If having robots manufacture robots ends up being cheaper, someone will do it.

>>51458012
Is it a capitalist society? They're fucked. They either join the military, the cops, or turn to crime as their only option of gaining any wealth in a fully automated society. And that's assuming police and military aren't robots too.

If the society is communist, however, automation is welcomed as it allows workers to pursue leisure, education, and the arts.

>>51474695

4) The Eloi: these are mostly people who USED to be in the struggling class, or the kids of people who were. With vastly increasing life expediencies, it's getting increasingly hard for the kids of the super-wealthy to count on their parents dying. Anyway, they have a nest egg and can live on the interest, plus afford advanced transhuman upgrades and medical care. Since most diseases and injuries can be quickly and easily cured, your main advantage here is life extension. Obviously, rich AIs and uploaded humans get that already (uploading is currently cheap but fatal, you can make a low-rez simulation of yourself non-destructively but not a perfect copy without destroying your brain).

In the THS universe, America went through a very hard century trying to adapt to this. Culturally, most Americans define themselves by their occupation, and so the society couldn't handle 50%+ of its citizens being permanently unemployed. Social unrest, conflict, resentment, and failed attempts to stop the tide of automation. Plus dealing with the disintegration of Canada and the cross-border crime problem from the Maple Leaf Syndicate. Most canadians aren't thugs and gangsters, but there's certainly a bit of a stereotype.

Whereas the EU sailed through that period. The vast productivity gains paid down their welfare states, and the public there was already used to very high government-subsidized unemployment. The Eloi basically run everything via benign eurocrat paternalism. If you're pissed off enough about it that you want to achieve, then you just have to get out of your bistro and work your way into the Eloi class, then you'll have a voice.

There's an equilibrium between AI and human labor, and thanks to widespread welfare that means very high unemployment rates, but ultimately there's work if you want it. These days even many sentient *AI* programs are unemployed (obsoleted by new models or just uninterested in holding a job), so they're in the same boat.

>>51474989
>technological advancement
>communism
You can pick one.

To talk about full automation of all primary and secondary and most of tertiary sector jobs without talking about fulll space communism is stupid.

This thread and all the steve jobs wannabes that probably work in Wal-mart proves it. Stop reading bullshit in books written by failed brokers and austrian school lunatics start reading actual economy books.

>>51475061
>le meme

>>51475061
>first artificial satellite
>first man in space
>many advanced surgical techniques

meanwhile, drug companies aren't making new antibiotics because they're not profitable, and so we're all going to die from superbugs. Thanks capitalism!

>>51475061
Bait

>>51474989
I'm pretty sure money might become a thing for pleasure, since everything automated means it's not that important.
So like, communist for your needs (like WIC and foodstamps to ensure you don't starve) and you have to get money for what you want, like that unhealthy but delicious double chocolate ice cream cake.

Or to put another way, the bread communist, the circus is capitalist.

>>51475099
But that wasn't true socialism/communism, also these achievements pale in comparison with the other side.

>>51475099

Ummm, we nationalized the healthcare industry. Remember big evil pharma was getting reigned in by President Obama? Remember how they were going to take away all those stupid wasteful profits?

Well, they did. When you count all the drugs that fail to pan out and don't get approved, the average new drug takes a billion dollars and ten years to get through the approvals process. Then has seven years to make all that money back and subsidize all the drugs that don't make it. Surprise surprise, take away the profits and something had to be cut-- research into new drugs.

Communism is very good at vast "hero" projects that are high on PR. During the time that Russia was winning successes in its space program, it was unable to feed its own citizens-- this from a country that was a food exporter both before and after communism. It made up part of the difference on basic consumer goods via its network of slave labor camps for political dissenters. Senior apparatchiks got most of their goods from elite-only stores that sold stuff imported from the West. Also space isn't a valid comparison because it was only recently that we even semi-privatized the space program

As for advanced surgical techniques, which ones? The biggest advances that come to my mind all came from the free market West: teleoperated surgery, laproscopic medicine, non-invasive diagnostics like ultrasound/CAT/PET/MRI. Capsule endoscopy was a western innovation, too. 3d printed organs grown from stem cells are also a western innovation, though obviously most socialist countries had already collapsed by that point.

>>51474213
That's true, as long as robots are as shit and as expensive to protoype/produce/upkeep as they are now. Really, much better AI is needed for all this to work, because you need the robots to be repaired/maintained by other robots, too. It's not an 'in 2027 no more humans will be employed!!' Kind of deal; who knows how long it will take before the technology is mature and robust enough to use like this in any economical sense.

>>51475271
>During the time that Russia was winning successes in its space program, it was unable to feed its own citizens
??
Why is this a bad thing?
Why is starving people in communism the governments ( lmao every single time. Marx defined communism as governmentless ) fault
But people starving in capitalism is their own fault for being dumb and lazy?

>>51475271
>we nationalized the healthcare industry.
We actually didn't. Obamacare was a gutted shell of what it was supposed to be that put a bit more money in the private insurers pockets and covered a few people and is even then about to get repealed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Soviet_inventions

Notably about the food thing, that's what happens when the entire rest of the world is trying to shit on you. I'm not saying Communism is the perfect system, but as an experiment it basically wasn't allowed to succeed since their only friends were the poor as fuck at the time China and other half-baked asian ex-colonies.

>>51475332

He is baiting, don't even reply. Also famines after the crisis in Ucrania are bullshit.

>>51475138

Except that economically there's no difference between wants and needs. The only meaningful way to draw a firm line distinguishing between the two is political: "needs" are the wants that someone has that some third party who has or wants a position of authority expresses an obligation to satisfy.

Draw a list of needs. Go ahead.

OK, now, cross off "food" and write down what specific food, on what schedule and at what quality grade, is the "need". Cross off "housing" or "healthcare" and do the same thing: determine how much, at what quality grade, and in other words specifically WHAT counts as bread and what counts as circus. It's when you get to the specifics like these that you start to realize that there's no firm line and that the distinction between the two is totally artificial.

And, sure enough, WIC and foodstamps can be used to buy that delicious double chocolate ice cream cake, if you're clever enough about where and how you spend them. Even your artificially inflated distinction breaks down in actual practice. More often, these "basic needs" problems fall in murky and ambiguous territory in practice.

(Most importantly, communism tends to create shortages. The last sector of your economy you'd want to be socialized is basic areas like food. Venezuela is extreme for how fast it happened and how far they fell without a free market revolution, but they're in no way unusual.)

It's true that socialism is least dysfunctional in a "post-scarcity society*", but since the whole point of such a system is to resolve the problem of scarcity in the first place, why bother implementing a solution that only works when there's no problem?

* Post-scarcity is loaded with its own assumptions that don't hold up, but let's assume we can make the term have some meaning for the moment.

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>reminder that the Soviet union was actually state capitalism and thus all of its achievements are due to capitalism

>>51474297
You can say that, but that really does seem to be their intention. Politicians do everything in their power to tilt elections.

Look up 'gerrymandering' for a strong example of what politicians will do to ensure they get votes in the future. The idea of using welfare to encourage left-leaning votes... isn't even that wild in comparison to things that have happened and been recorded.

>>51475341
>We actually didn't. Obamacare was a gutted shell of what it was supposed to be that put a bit more money in the private insurers pockets and covered a few people and is even then about to get repealed.

Get repealed because it flopped so badly. But more to the point, you're saying "it didn't work because it got politicized and broke down due to all the interest groups". Except this isn't some kind of special circumstance that makes it not count; that's what always happens when you nationalize anything. The whole point of taking something out of the market economy (voluntary transactions between private individuals) and pulling it into the political arena (involuntary mandates determined by a political process). If you didn't want something to break down due to political factors, then you shouldn't have handed that industry to political control in the first place.

You could argue that the problem was money in politics; that is, some lingering influence of those who'd been winners in the market economy, or in a mixed economy the out-sized influence of those who are still operating in the market sector. Hence why communist countries confiscate everything, and then employ a secret police to catch the "wreckers and breakers" who must be sabotaging things.

But at its essence, it's all doomed because you can't get the politics out of politics.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Soviet_inventions

I think that link is illustrating my point. Actually go through and look down that list (and then contrast with what came out of the free market democracies during the same period).

>>51472364
A functional human workforce has huge startup and maintenance costs though. You can't ignore the cost of research and development. It takes years to make each one.

>>51475271
>During the time that Russia was winning successes in its space program, it was unable to feed its own citizens

It wasn't 'unable'. There were shortages, but they were engineered. They kicked the landowning peasants off the land and forbid anyone to give them food. Then they turned the farms over to city folk with no experience, who'd do exactly as they were told. Even if that killed the yield.

>>51475620
It takes year but can ultimately counted as 5000kcal a day and two mattresses under the same roof for a self-replicating unit.

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Its really funny when socialism is in such a bad state as an ideology that its supporters have to resort to dream scenarios such as post-scarcity to pretend it can actually work.

>>51475341

>Notably about the food thing, that's what happens when the entire rest of the world is trying to shit on you. I'm not saying Communism is the perfect system, but as an experiment it basically wasn't allowed to succeed since their only friends were the poor as fuck at the time China and other half-baked asian ex-colonies.

What specifically did they do? You're saying "shit on" but as far as I can tell both sides were confronting one another, but only one side was capable of feeding itself. That side also ended up selling surplus food to feed communists who just a few years before had been able to feed themselves. Once communism was overthrown, suddenly Russians were food exporters again. Russia could more than feed itself all along, so what happened that they didn't for 80 years of communism? What did the west do, poison the farms?

If more than half the world and far more than half the land area was organized under communism, how much more do you need to make the experiment valid in your eyes? 90%, 99%? Is ONE capitalist, operating somewhere in the world, sufficient to tear down the communist project that everyone else is invested in? The hunt for that one guy is how the labor camps and mass executions start, btw.

And China's an instructive example. Deng Xiaoping (imo one of the most important and influential leaders of the 20th century) permitted limited free markets, and suddenly China went from subsistence agriculture to 15%+ growth per year, every year. That's doubling their standard of living about every 5 years, incidentally. Then they widen the experiment, and soon THOSE parts of the country are growing.

China is STILL largely communist, but the communist bits are now heavily subsidized by the free markets. Poof! Three decades and they're an industrial powerhouse, with a huge growing middle class and rapidly improving standards of living. And that's all while propping up the unproductive empires of the political/military leadership.

>>51475698
Well, reality keeps proving them wrong, so they can only find solace in dreams.

Hell this last year Veneuzela finally ran out of other people's money, and the populace was starving in the streets if they couldn't catch a pidgeon, rat, zoo animal, or neighborhood pet...

>>51475715
There're two types of Communist Agitators.

Those who're so mentally stunted that they really believe the BS that Marx dreamt up to explain away his failure as a human being.

And those who think they'll be part of the Inner Party when the revolution comes, and we be able to live the high life on the backs of the former group.

FFS, these people worship Che Guevara...

>>51475479

Actually, you're confused about which class gets the most welfare. You're thinking it's the poor, but it's really the middle class, in the form of various giveaways and nickel-and-dime subsidies.

Obviously the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse are the government employees themselves, and their contractors. The network of millions of people who take their cut of the money they got robbing Peter before giving what's left to Paul. The contractors who get paid to build the weapons, provide support services, and deliver products that keep these government functions open. The consultants who are paid to advise the political leaders, the lobbyists, lawyers, and activists who try to sway things by law or media, and the academics who try to cut through all the arguments, or fuel them with studies and data, and get paid very handsomely in government grants and appropriations. If you're in college, go ask a sciences professor how much time he spends writing grant applications, or an econ professor whether he does government consulting or expert witness testimony. And then there's the politicians and operatives....

There's a whole class of apparatchiks who live and breath based on government. They're now who you think of when you hear about "the 47%" and they certainly don't think of themselves as welfare queens. But the guy making six figures doing consulting or administration or government relations or legal work is every bit as much dependent on that system as the guy getting WIC trying to support his family because he's still unemployed after eight years. In fact, that economist who wrote that unemployed guy off when calculating U-3 is probably MORE dependent on the government to put food on his table than the guy on WIC.

It's very easy to become confused about who the real in-practice beneficiaries of the system are. But it shouldn't be surprising that resources allocated politically will mostly benefit people with political power.

>>51475715
>If more than half the world and far more than half the land area was organized under communism, how much more do you need to make the experiment valid in your eyes? 90%, 99%? Is ONE capitalist, operating somewhere in the world, sufficient to tear down the communist project that everyone else is invested in? The hunt for that one guy is how the labor camps and mass executions start, btw.
Actually, Russia itself would have been fine, had the other developed countries in the world been willing to trade and interact.

Like, if the whole free world hadn't shut out the Communists and it became the usual game of intercountry trade, it would have been a great experiment, even if Russia fell. It's a disappointing missed opportunity.

>China is STILL largely communist, but the communist bits are now heavily subsidized by the free markets.
And we don't have trade blocks with China, so it's really interesting watching it? Is the communist undercurrent of the free market helping? How so? Or is it because China's getting to trade with the free world, unlike the USSR? If China wasn't blocking information so much it could be a really interesting economic study, and no doubt there are plenty happening anyway.
That's what I'm interested in. I'm not sure communism is a failed system, so much as a system that was tripped.

Post-scarcity wil never be a thing, because thermodynamics.
To get a thing will need to transform another thing and a lot of energy is wasted in the process, you will never have enough of everything for everyone.

Also because of subjective value the cost of a thing changes the desirability of that thing, the lower its cost the higher the number of people that will want it, you can never have enough of everything that everyone wants.

>>51474817
I'll check them out. Thanks bruh

>>51475905
Being paid a wage in exchange for a service (no matter how useless you think it is) is a far cry from receiving money due to unemployment.
A better example of middle class welfare would be agricultural subsidies.

>>51475561
>democracies
Not him but you're going to say "Russia invented this vs THE REST OF THE FREE WORLD INVENTED ALL THIS"
No shit that second list'll be longer, it's most every other country on the planet that mattered, all trading with and supporting each other. That's like saying that some random flyover state is a shitty state because the other 49 put together outdid it.

>>51475429
And it's failures too, going by that logic.

>>51475741
That wasn't the problem though.
Venezuela was so badly managed that it had no saving or safeguards. They spent years living a centimeter to the left of a total collapse thanks to managing to barely cover the state's expenses with oil. The instant oil prices dropped it went to fucking hell real fast.
>>51475715
Man, I wish Chile wasn't targeted by Op. Condor. If anything, it would have been a definite example of what does/does not work in socialism.

>>51475672

I'm not talking about the genocide against the Kulaks. Yes, that mass famine was an intentional effort to destroy the small landowning independent farmers. As far as I'm concerned that's a separate issue.

I'm talking about the day-to-day inability to produce enough food to feed the population that started with the Revolution and ended with the collapse of the Revolution. The communists tried everything they could think of (other than free markets) but they could never figure out how to produce enough wheat to feed their people.

It's weird because I think I'm talking to a generation that has no memory of the Soviets when they were still around. So I think they genuinely don't know much about what happened then and why and how it came to an end. At first it was so recent that nobody wanted to bother rehashing the arguments that were now finally resolved. Then, later, a new generation grew up and never really learned that all these communist promises had been made and tried and then broken multiple times, again and again.

Go down the poster anon linked here >>51475698 and then look at how different communist countries would try to deliver on each promise, fail, and then more often than not embrace denying something to the people as a matter of high principle and noble sacrifice. Has communism ever kept ANY of those promises? Even the ones that should have been free to provide like gay rights?

>>51475417
So how would you see a technological revolution work where there's even less jobs because automization, because I was still saying there's a chance to be capitalistic on one side, not go full communist

>>51475827

And a third, and I honestly think that's who I'm talking to this time. A guy who's literally never heard these arguments before, who isn't too clear on the history, but he just kind of has a CNN's eye view of the world and wants to know more.

The thing is, we've had to re-fight these rhetorical battles every generation since the 1900s. Sometimes we learn by argument and debate, and sometimes by bitter experience. I'm not going to fault someone who actually seriously wants to sit down and hash it out.

And, btw, with the rise of Trump, let's not forget that many on the RIGHT have forgotten these lessons, too. Go onto /pol/ and you'll find an army of people who insist they hate the Left, hate socialism, in fact they're the exact OPPOSITE... and then you drill down to what they believe and what policies they support and they're making the exact same arguments as the socialists. For different reasons, with different goals in mind, but wrong for the exact same reasons.

Power is a deadly, deadly trap. That's what it really is. "If only people weren't free to choose for themselves. If only people did what *I* think they should do. Then everything would be better." That's what this whole debate boils down to, but the wrong answer is so unbelievably seductive and so good at masquerading as virtue and altruism.

>>51476031
Not him, but there was a time where the vast majority of people worked on farms, automatization has almost completely eliminated that kind of work and the population has grown several times what it used to be and there was still no complete collapse of the system, the thing is that the capitalist system is extremely efficient at adapting to chaging circumstances, new markets open up and markets that were formerly exclusive to few become available to more people.

>>51475919

OK, first off, we COULD trade with Russia. We did all the time. For decades, the United States sold wheat to the Soviets. There were restrictions on high-tech stuff, of course, but those restrictions shouldn't have affected food production.

But let's cook up some scenario where there was an 80 year trade embargo with Russia. What vital resource was denied to them? What was missing? What couldn't they produce themselves? They had well over half the world under their thumbs, what was so essential that was in the other half?

And, more importantly, in this hypothetical case where east-west trade never happened, why didn't the West collapse because we were denied access to what THEY had? If there was no trade west-to-east, then there was no trade east-to-west, right? So why didn't we collapse?

Both sides benefit when trade occurs. But there's no reason why we should have grown and thrived while they stagnated and eventually collapsed... unless there was some characteristic about their internal system that caused them to squander their vast natural and human resources.

>>51475922

Very pithy, and pretty much true. "Post-scarcity" implies that what we want will remain static, and can be satisfied materially.

>>51475960

Or college student aid. Or home mortgage deductions. Milton Friedman goes down a very long list in his old PBS specials from the 70s (available on youtube) and points out that with some exceptions that government spends a huge amount of its effort taking from the middle class, giving right back to the middle class, and then congratulating itself on its generosity to the poor.

However, in this case I'm talking about dependency. That economics professor who earns his living at a college (paid for by tuitions that are federally supported, and by grants direct from the federal government-- and that's assuming it isn't state-owned and operated outright), who gets federal research grants to study social problems, and who also does some consulting on the side for think tanks seeking to influence government policy, and for government agencies trying to formulate it-- that guy is every bit as much dependent on government checks and the large powerful government that writes them as the jobless former steel worker who gets welfare, medicaid, and housing benefits.

You think that econ professor doesn't know his situation? Or how he depends on the government? You think he won't vote his self-interest?

Well, maybe some will vote against their self-interests, or make those arguments anonymously on 4chan. I wouldn't bet my tenure that those guys are too common.

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>>51475922
>>51476245
We obviously just need to tap the expansion of the universe for energy so we can recreate the big bang and make anime real.

>>51476379
Sounds reasonable.

>>51475972

The Soviet Union had a higher land area and population than the United States for pretty much the entire Cold War. Also the communist bloc as a whole (aka the "second world") had more land area and population than the free market democracies (aka the "first world"). So the comparison actually favors communism.

If I added in advances from the non-aligned countries where their economies were heavily socialized but not truly socialist, (the "third world"), then you'd have a good point.

>>51475972
Even if we only count the US, the Soviets still lose.

>>51476406
Populatin isn't the big factor in inventing, but rather trade or warfare is. When different countries interact, invention is the result.

The US+Britian+France+Half of Germany+Post-war economic miracle Japan which is questionably capitalistic to me, the developed nations at the time
VS
Soviet Russia, and maybe a few other slavic countries because China was shit-tier at the time, and so was Veitnam and Korea.
There wasn't as much interaction going on on the 2nd world side because man, those are some pretty low quality allies.

>>51476490
*population

>>51476031

This guy answered it, he's absolutely right.

>>51476219

New needs will emerge and we'll see people re-deployed to fulfill those needs. Free markets allocate resources efficiently. That means not leaving resources idle, and deploying all resources to achieve the best fit for what people want.

That applies to labor as well. Some labor would get "lost", or rather spent by the laborer himself in the form of shorter work weeks and longer vacations. This would continue a trend that's been going on for as long as the industrial revolution. France flirted with imposing the 30 hour work week by mandate, but the truth is when productivity goes high enough that most employees would prefer to spend those extra ten hours a week on leisure rather than whatever goods the wages would have otherwise bought, then you'll see that work week appear on its own.

Some will be increased quality of products we already buy. Instead of a chicken and a pound of flour, we go out to eat. Or we cook at home, but we get cage free organic chickens. We indulge our own sense of morality by treating farm animals better, and our sense that it's worth a few extra bucks to have a chicken without chemicals or hormones that we have reason to be suspicious of. Or pre-prepared meals that save us time we can use for other pursuits.

Or, we consume entirely new products which would have been inconceivable before. Like TV and the internet. Try to explain that to someone from the 1800s, or how it could be paid for mostly by you viewing advertisements.

There are needs you don't know you have that will be fulfilled thanks to increased standards of living. If nothing else, you'll pay to improve yourself: physically via transhumanism, or morally vs religion/spiritualism/self-help, or intellectually via education, or "self-actualization' via art and leisure. And of course you'll pay to have others help you do it.

>>51476490
>trade or warfare

Nobody was involved in more wars than the Soviets. They were exporting their revolution ever since they'd had theirs.

As for trade, well, isn't that the point of free markets? If you mean that the Soviet Union was one country and the western democracies were many countries, then I think you're missing that One Nation is a tenet of communism.

The USSR was made of many countries forcibly united into a single country (Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbajin, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, and more). Plus post-WW2 they maintained a long list of alliances with eastern european countries not formally annexed: east germany, bulgaria, austria, czechoslovakia, yugoslavia, romania, etc. Plus countries like China, Mongolia, and Cuba. The soviets could and did trade with all of them.

The problem wasn't trade across national borders. It was trade between individuals within those national borders who stood to benefit from mutually beneficial exchanges but couldn't enact them because the only exchanges that were permitted were those mandated by law. And that had to be, because the moment you allow free voluntary exchange, you'd resurrected free markets.

>>51475561
On healthcare, note that until recent right-wing sabotage, the British NHS was the most efficient medical system in the world as a whole.

>>51476759

Wreckers and breakers everywhere!

Also note that Britain's system (and europes') has been free-riding on medical research intended for the American market for decades now. With America's system finally teetering towards nationalization (and apparently that'll happen under Trump as well), that free ride has been coming to a close.

However, I don't know enough about the British system to comment. Theory suggests that technology will lag, costs will escalate, there will be long waits to get services, and the emergence of a tacit or explicit parallel system for the rich and well-connected. You ought to see an uptick in fatalities from diseases that respond well to early intervention (due to delays and lack of technology). But whether or not everything was actually great until a few years ago I have no idea. Britain as a whole seems very proud of their system, though they also spend a lot of time complaining about it in their internal debates.

>>51476869
man america's been behind in medical technology for years now

>>51474817
I took introductory economics, environmental economics, and intermediate microeconomics. I found them intensely dull, owing to my own background in biology. Biology has been called "the science of exceptions" because it is so tremendously recalcitrant to summarization in terms of broad, sweeping theories, and biologists look askance at theoretical claims without dense empirical support, promptly delivered. I did not enjoy suffering through an endless series of widget-making factories A and B, and I had an incredibly hard time taking the courses that invoked them seriously; I felt that I was being asked to explain human behavior using tools that wouldn't pass muster with starfish. It is sort of like the inverse of the experience Robert Lucas had with genetics: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/robert-lucas-in-biology-class.html . (I think Noah has a point there, but he's also being somewhat uncharitable.) (Note, further, that crossing-over is really the tip of the iceberg. It only gets hairier from there, as evidenced by the posts about chimerism above. On a similar note, did you know you can get recombination in mitochondrial DNA? I wish I knew precisely how that happens.) It was only long after I took those classes that I encountered economics again, spurred by the realization that economists knew that the simple models I had been taught did not match reality, and were keenly interested in the degree and manner in which real markets diverged from them. In fairness, I was also greatly surprised at the degree to which the field had simply neglected to study income and wealth distributions, and have followed that topic much more closely than most others.

It's true, though, that I don't know enough to be able to pull data off of FRED or BLS and redo published analyses. I wish we'd done that in those econ classes. Would have been nice.

>>51458012
Post on 4chan.

>>51477021
Anyway, do you dispute the reality of any of the trends I've listed?

>>51477021
>It's true, though, that I don't know enough to be able to pull data off of FRED or BLS and redo published analyses. I wish we'd done that in those econ classes. Would have been nice.

Heh, yeah we don't usually do that in my class either, though I've had students approach me in office hours and I walked them through it. Most of the calculations are pretty straightforward once you know what you should be calculating. You should already have enough math to get to regression, which is enough that you'll know enough to interpret the results of most econometrics for yourself.

Economics has a bad case of physics envy, and that's really how you should understand it. When on /tg/ we're talking about designing realistic(ish) dragons, for example, what comes up? Well, basic back-of-the-envelope estimates of how many kW you need to fly, where you get those calories from, and basic mechanical estimates of the structural properties you'd need. Blackbody calculations to estimate heat radiation, that kind of thing. The physicist doesn't know the mechanics of how the metabolism works, but he also knows that there are thermodynamic and mechanical limits on what the parameters have to look like, and by calculating those he can paint a pretty good picture of what generally has to be going on in the process.

Economics works in much the same way. We can't dig open the mechanisms of how an individual makes his decisions, but we can see how a population acting collectively will tend towards an equilibrium condition and that there are general economic limits on what the parameters have to look like. When "knowledge creation" is a variable (aka innovation), you'll never a priori have enough of an understanding of the transformation process to make deterministic predictions, but there's plenty of room to make very accurate stochastic forecasts.

And the thing is, while Macro is a mess, Micro can and does make very accurate predictions that people can and do take to the bank.

>>51477335
>You should already have enough math to get to regression, which is enough that you'll know enough to interpret the results of most econometrics for yourself.
Yeah, regression is (apparently; I'm just learning about it now) the bread and butter of inclusive fitness models, and I'm in paleobiology, which has a surprisingly large methodological overlap with social science (and some of the same problems: imperfect data, difficulties in the detection of causal relationships, an inability to do controlled experiments...).

>Economics has a bad case of physics envy, and that's really how you should understand it.
The difference in attitude between economics and biology, with respect to mathematical models, is probably best summarized by this quote from the famed ecologist G. E. Hutchinson:

>It is not necessary in any empirical science to keep an elaborate logicomathematical system always apparent, any more than it is necessary to keep a vacuum cleaner conspicuously in the middle of a room at all times. When a lot of irrelevant litter has accumulated the machine must be brought out, used, and then put away.