it is the end of capitalism. People will not voluntarily off themselves. We will have to wait till greatest generation and boomers go before this can be discussed in the open. I think this is why young people are becoming increasingly accepting of socialism.

The solution to many of our problems is to reduce our population. So, no, I don't see how you can restrict automation. Not with 300 million people all striving to stand out from the rest.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]

In earlier economic systems, new technologies were always adopted and chaned the way thins were manufactured. Even if we adopted a socialist economic model, factories would adopt new technologies.

After all, the printing press was invented before Capitalism was a gleam in the eye of Adam Smith's Great Grandfather.

The Industrial Revoltuion was born while Mercantilism was the reigning economic model and swept away the older labor intensive methods of making goods.

These sweeping changes are probably always resisted by the powerful. Thanks for your comment.

Our value is relative to our production.

Marx predicted automation and industrialization would only benefit the owners, not the workers. Marx was right. Who can argue with that?

The question is, in a post-industrial America, how do we transition from exploitative capitalism to economic and social justice?

on the status quo.

I believe automation can bring some social justice to the masses. If the burgers are being flipped by robots and the former workers get "life stipends" or whatever, perhaps there would be more charity and volunteer work getting done. I have pink glasses - literally - and I am wearing them today. They really do make things lovelier.

What you've outlined permeates more and more of society, and more and more livelihoods. Even the high-tech ones. So far we've (more or less - at least some of us) coped by becoming more and more innovative, and, if you will, by creating jobs 'on the backs of' many of the processes that have been automated.

But I don't quite share your optimism. Somethings' gotta give, at one time, sooner or later. Somewhere in some process or another, this way of 'coping' may reach the end of its rope.

60% unemployment would be a social disaster for sure.

but it seems like there was a moment somewhere along the way when technological innovation became an end in itself. Not about supplementing human work, but replacing it. Every year we need a new iPhone, or car model, or whatever. Not just good enough, but always, relentlessly better.

I can certainly see some downsides to a mostly automated world. Not everyone will become a self-actualized artist. I could see an even greater loss of purpose for some people. It could be even easier to get lost in video games or drugs. There could be even more people having children, adding to the already growing population. Or sex could become automated, and nobody would need each other at all. There would be downsides to it.

There have always been segments of the population who cannot cope with the radical changes that spring up on occasion.

We will soon be "useless eaters". I'm a proponent of inefficiency. It gives us all the chance to have more active a roll in our own existence.
Every technological advancement has given us the means to support more people with less effort. Who among us are willing to kill our neighbors to survive?
Is there any difference between killing someone with your own hand and removing the possibility for a neighbor to support themselves through their labor?

But why not take some fruits of tireless robot labor and just give it away to others just because they are human?

We can't afford to harm the profit takers, unless you happen to be one of the expendables.

compartmentalize the act of giving "unearned" money to people. Even though, generationally, we have all "earned" a share of the automation revolution.

Since the model is based on the illusion of infinite growth, innovation (even aesthetic innovation) is probably a major way of inspiring consumption. When we need to sell more of next year's cars than we did of last year's, and the two models are too similar, we won't sell enough of them.

It will be our downfall

On the surplus worker problem.

That appears to be the actual plan.

can make for some intensely motivated revolutionaries with nothing to lose.

train them in the lab we created in the middle east and central asia.

But that is a problem we have contended with (technological improvements for mass-murder) forever.

being able to fight us. That will take much longer than job elimination.

And yes, currently they have "minders" riding them with joysticks, but that will soon go away and they will be fully autonomous. Meanwhile darpa is funding huge projects on ground infantry class robotics. They are building the tech that will field armies that require a vastly reduced human factor. They are testing it out and proving it in their lab in the middle east.

but how do you get em to do it to their family members?

This will be the end of capitalism, but we are no where near, Terminator.

they just currently aren't killing anyone without a nominal human making the decision.

Certainly not every one would do it, but it only matters if enough do. Hopefully there isn't enough!

That human "work" time has decreased due to technological advancement through out history. A few thousand years ago the vast majority of society 95% had to work long hours simply to obtain the food needed to survive. As the percentage of the work force needed to produce food decreased the amount of "leisure" class increased allowing for more time to devote to other activities (from painting to war etc...) The response to the last 100 years of technology is a decrease in the expected work load to 40 hours a week and 2 days off. With more rapid advancement soon the work force will see a standard of 20-30 hour work week become the norm and more time off to do creative things. The decrease in working hours and increase in time "off" as the expected norm will prevent the poverty collapse and lead to a more creative society.

There is a certain amount of truth to the statement, but there is also a certain expectation about "socioeconomic-class" in that statement as well. While many people believe this... without massive government regulations and societal infrastructure I don't see it as the reality of the masses. Although it will likely be true for a small subset of "middle class." Without a major change in societal governance philosophy the world will have major problems due to automation within most DUers lifetime. We have it now some would argue.

are much more efficiently done in low to zero gravity and so automation that can produce while in orbit is another level of efficiency. Humans have to move into a collective mode in order to keep evolving.

There's lots and lots of manufacturing that relies on gravity. For example, basic convection (hot air rises) is a large part of a whole lot of manufacturing processes, and that doesn't happen in microgravity.

One can "mimic" (or whatever) gravity in orbit, but you can't mimic microgravity on earth. (can you?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_manufacturing

And the "gravity" is not consistent. It's much stronger at the outside of the wheel than the inside.

One of the reasons we haven't built any of the "ring" space stations from Sci-Fi is the ring needs to be enormous for a human to experience the same "gravity" at their head as at their feet.

or sub orbit using centripetal force to emulate gravity. I think. hahaha.

of what is possible in terms of non-human manufacturing and production.

when agriculture was so labor intensive that most people in the world were involved in it, and it took all that to produce a surplus to feed those that were not. And most other productive industries, textiles, metal-working and so forth, were also so labor intensive and the products were so relatively expensive that most people didn't make much more than what was necessary to survive, and goods were always scarce.

The industrial revolution changed all that, slowly. Even the house I live in, which was typical of the 20's when it was build, has small rooms and no closets - people didn't used to have much stuff and storage wasn't much of a concern. Gradually, stuff has gotten cheaper, productivity has increased, and wages have more or less followed suit. Its very easy now to have mountains of stuff even if you're poor (needless to say, there's much more to poverty than how much stuff you have).

Automation in agriculture meant that fewer people were required to produce the food everybody needed. Automation in the textile industry meant fewer people were required to make the fabrics everyone needed. Automation in the car industry...well, you get the point. In a modern world where material things are cheap and abundant, and the labor to produce them doesn't employ that many, the fair distribution of the profits from production is critical. The service industry can recycle and redistribute funds just fine, if allowed, and people are as happy, I think, spending money doing things with other people as they are buying stuff.

and the pattern in that time is machinery with greater potential productivity and not surprisingly much greater cost.

In the late 80's my 65 acres were farmed with little 60 hp Farmall tractor and equipment, including a 3 bottom moldboard plow that probably was manufactured originally in the late 1940s. The yields were something like 85 bushels per acre of maize

In 2012, the same fields were farmed with a monster ~200 hp tractor with tracks rather than wheels, a chisel plow that seemed to be somewhere between 16 and 20 feet wide, GMO seeds and heavy application of Round-Up. Clearly there were a lot greater financing costs involved, but the yield only went up to 105 bushels per acre for maize.

It was pretty clear that while the machines were tremendously powerful, they were rather overmatched to drumlin fields with rather steep small hills. Fields of that part of the county were BIG if they were 60-80 acre.

While in 1989 the farmer could make a semi-retired living working 100 acres, the leasor of 2012 not only farmed a patchwork of ~200 acres and a small cattle operation, he also had to work a 2nd shift job making "Lil Friskies" dog food.

Yes, the productivity of the equipment has increased, but its price has also increased just as exponentially. The net dollar gain after equipment payments, pesticides, and custom harvesting doesn't really seem to be significantly in favor of the guy working the land with 'best available' equipment