[andyt]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Any economy that has taxes has income redistribution. But we do not give Carpenters an extra burden for any project they use a power saw with, because other people don't have power saws. And make no mistake, industrial robots are nothing more than programmable power tools.

As Lemmy has shown you in the past as well, your delusion that industrial robots put people out of work is false. They increase productivity, and perform tasks that people didn't perform anyhow. They do the jobs people weren't doing anyhow, and they do it faster and cheaper than people could.

As Bart also rightly points out, making companies pay extra because they choose higher and cheaper methods of productivity will only result in less investment in the economy and a reduction in our standard of living. Everyone loses in that world.

$1:

Everyone should be able to benefit from productivity gains—in that, Keynes was united with his successors. His worry about technological unemployment was mainly a worry about a “temporary phase of maladjustment” as society and the economy adjusted to ever greater levels of productivity. So it could well prove. However, society may find itself sorely tested if, as seems possible, growth and innovation deliver handsome gains to the skilled, while the rest cling to dwindling employment opportunities at stagnant wages.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... t-not-less

As I say, the carpenter is already carrying the burden of taxation vs the less efficient worker. As the above article points out, we many be heading to a future of fewer carpenters producing more, with many people left behind. Societies will have to adapt if the don't want to regress to Victorian times, which seems to be the road we are trying to walk down right now.

Of course Steven Hawking warns that automation will supersede us altogether. I believe it was one of the 7 end of mankind scenarios put out recently.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

As I say, the carpenter is already carrying the burden of taxation vs the less efficient worker. As the above article points out, we many be heading to a future of fewer carpenters producing more, with many people left behind. Societies will have to adapt if the don't want to regress to Victorian times, which seems to be the road we are trying to walk down right now.

So what do you propose to do about the decline in the carpentry trades? Ban power tools and have everyone go back to buying hand-made products?

Why not innovate and come up with new ways to create jobs for people? Oh, wait, that's not how you roll. Your solution is always to tax and subsidize and the only thing you ever innovate are new ways to suck blood from productive people.

andyt andyt:

Of course Steven Hawking warns that automation will supersede us altogether. I believe it was one of the 7 end of mankind scenarios put out recently.

I'm sure there's no one out there trying to replace you with a robot. It's not like you do anything productive anyway.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

andyt andyt:

As I say, the carpenter is already carrying the burden of taxation vs the less efficient worker. As the above article points out, we many be heading to a future of fewer carpenters producing more, with many people left behind. Societies will have to adapt if the don't want to regress to Victorian times, which seems to be the road we are trying to walk down right now.

So what do you propose to do about the decline in the carpentry trades? Ban power tools and have everyone go back to buying hand-made products?

Why not innovate and come up with new ways to create jobs for people? Oh, wait, that's not how you roll. Your solution is always to tax and subsidize and the only thing you ever innovate are new ways to suck blood from productive people.

Well, if you had actually been following along, that is exactly what I proposed. Except that those jobs may not be profit generating, so they'll have to be subsidized - by taxes. People are continually trying to come up with new ways to generate profit - so it will be in the future. It just may not keep up with the job losses from automation. And what's happening right now is good jobs are being lost, plenty of McJobs being created. So we have govt subsidizing business in the form of assistance to low income working people already. See food stamps for Walmart workers, rent subsidies in BC, etc, etc. There is going to need to be more of that, and better yet create govt jobs that are a benefit to society but don't bring in a profit. If the current trend contiues, look out. At some point there will be enough working poor, that even tho they don't vote in the same numbers as the better off, will still be enough to elect very left leaning govts. Better to get ahead of that curve instead of winding up with populists who can do real damage to the country. Maybe even ones name Adolph or Benito, or just Huey. That's where those guys came from.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Any economy that has taxes has income redistribution. But we do not give Carpenters an extra burden for any project they use a power saw with, because other people don't have power saws. And make no mistake, industrial robots are nothing more than programmable power tools.

As Lemmy has shown you in the past as well, your delusion that industrial robots put people out of work is false. They increase productivity, and perform tasks that people didn't perform anyhow. They do the jobs people weren't doing anyhow, and they do it faster and cheaper than people could.

As Bart also rightly points out, making companies pay extra because they choose higher and cheaper methods of productivity will only result in less investment in the economy and a reduction in our standard of living. Everyone loses in that world.

$1:

Everyone should be able to benefit from productivity gains—in that, Keynes was united with his successors. His worry about technological unemployment was mainly a worry about a “temporary phase of maladjustment” as society and the economy adjusted to ever greater levels of productivity. So it could well prove. However, society may find itself sorely tested if, as seems possible, growth and innovation deliver handsome gains to the skilled, while the rest cling to dwindling employment opportunities at stagnant wages.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... t-not-less

As I say, the carpenter is already carrying the burden of taxation vs the less efficient worker.

So if a worker becomes more efficient than the carpenter, you want to tax him more? How does that make him want to be more efficient if it's only going to be taken away? How does someone make a better life for themselves if the government is just going to take it and give it to the welfare bum? See: Soviet Union.

andyt andyt:

As the above article points out, we many be heading to a future of fewer carpenters producing more, with many people left behind. Societies will have to adapt if the don't want to regress to Victorian times, which seems to be the road we are trying to walk down right now.

Actually, your article disagrees with that:

$1:

There will still be jobs. Even Mr Frey and Mr Osborne, whose research speaks of 47% of job categories being open to automation within two decades, accept that some jobs—especially those currently associated with high levels of education and high wages—will survive (see table). Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University and a much-read blogger, writes in his most recent book, “Average is Over”, that rich economies seem to be bifurcating into a small group of workers with skills highly complementary with machine intelligence, for whom he has high hopes, and the rest, for whom not so much.

andyt andyt:

Of course Steven Hawking warns that automation will supersede us altogether. I believe it was one of the 7 end of mankind scenarios put out recently.

No, he didn't.

[andyt]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

So if a worker becomes more efficient than the carpenter, you want to tax him more? How does that make him want to be more efficient if it's only going to be taken away? How does someone make a better life for themselves if the government is just going to take it and give it to the welfare bum? See: Soviet Union.

Nope. See Canada. As the worker earns more, he is taxed more. Funny how you focus totally on the worker - automation is about capital, not workers

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

andyt andyt:

As the above article points out, we many be heading to a future of fewer carpenters producing more, with many people left behind. Societies will have to adapt if the don't want to regress to Victorian times, which seems to be the road we are trying to walk down right now.

Actually, your article disagrees with that:

$1:

There will still be jobs. Even Mr Frey and Mr Osborne, whose research speaks of 47% of job categories being open to automation within two decades, accept that some jobs—especially those currently associated with high levels of education and high wages—will survive (see table). Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University and a much-read blogger, writes in his most recent book, “Average is Over”, that rich economies seem to be bifurcating into a small group of workers with skills highly complementary with machine intelligence, for whom he has high hopes, and the rest, for whom not so much.

If you're fine with that situation, that's your choice. Doesn't make for a comfortable society to live in.

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

andyt andyt:

Of course Steven Hawking warns that automation will supersede us altogether. I believe it was one of the 7 end of mankind scenarios put out recently.

No, he didn't.

$1:

Stephen Hawking is in the news this week warning that if humans develop a computer with full artificial intelligence, it could "spell the end of the human race."

He says there's a risk the computer might "redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate."

"Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded,"

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

So if a worker becomes more efficient than the carpenter, you want to tax him more? How does that make him want to be more efficient if it's only going to be taken away? How does someone make a better life for themselves if the government is just going to take it and give it to the welfare bum? See: Soviet Union.

Nope. See Canada. As the worker earns more, he is taxed more. Funny how you focus totally on the worker - automation is about capital, not workers

Funny, because that wasn't what you said.

andyt andyt:

It makes more sense to be efficient and use robots, but the wealth generated by those robots needs to be distributed to the population and not just the owners of the robots.

So if a company becomes more efficient by using robots (or a carpenter becomes more efficient by using power tool) then you want to take away that efficiency by taxing the company/carpenter more thereby removing the motivation to innovate.

andyt andyt:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

andyt andyt:

As the above article points out, we many be heading to a future of fewer carpenters producing more, with many people left behind. Societies will have to adapt if the don't want to regress to Victorian times, which seems to be the road we are trying to walk down right now.

Actually, your article disagrees with that:

$1:

There will still be jobs. Even Mr Frey and Mr Osborne, whose research speaks of 47% of job categories being open to automation within two decades, accept that some jobs—especially those currently associated with high levels of education and high wages—will survive (see table). Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University and a much-read blogger, writes in his most recent book, “Average is Over”, that rich economies seem to be bifurcating into a small group of workers with skills highly complementary with machine intelligence, for whom he has high hopes, and the rest, for whom not so much.

If you're fine with that situation, that's your choice. Doesn't make for a comfortable society to live in.

And your article shows that since the 1500's, that's exactly what has improved working conditions, society as a whole, and moved people out of menial tasks by automating those menial tasks!

andyt andyt:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

andyt andyt:

Of course Steven Hawking warns that automation will supersede us altogether. I believe it was one of the 7 end of mankind scenarios put out recently.

No, he didn't.

$1:

Stephen Hawking is in the news this week warning that if humans develop a computer with full artificial intelligence, it could "spell the end of the human race."

He says there's a risk the computer might "redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate."

"Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded,"

Right, he didn't say that automation will destroy society, he said it was AI that we need to watch out for. Like I said, industrial robots are programmable power tools. About as smart as a clock radio. Nothing to worry about.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

The issue here is comparing peanuts to spaceships. Direct employment is one thing, real global employment is another thing entirely. There is absolutely no comparison between jobs that exist because of green energy and jobs that exist because of oil.

ONE MORE TIME:

The topic is Canada's OILSANDS. Not the broader conventional oil sector and not global oil sector either. Oilsands and "Oil" are not synomynous.

The point is that there are as many people in the Green Energy secotr as there are in the Alberta oilsands.

REPEAT: Alberta Oilsands. Not conventional oil and gas.

It's still comparing peanuts to spaceships. "Hey everyone, look how awesome green energy is. There's more people working in the entire green energy sector all across Canada than there are working in the oil industry in one specific location in one province".

So no BF, the topic isn't about Canada's oilsands, the topic is about making idiotic comparisons.
Hey look, here's another idiotic comparison. Did you know that there are more people working in the small aircraft industry all across Canada than build cars in Edmonton? Hmm, I wonder what unfounded conclusions we can reach from that.

Of course the question really is, are the numbers of jobs in the green energy sector actual jobs or jobs that are said to exist? Ya know, like in Ontario where two plants that build parts for wind turbines were said to employ some 1500 people between them but the reality is only a total of 80 people work full-time at the two plants.

[andyt]

For the umpteenth time, we already tax more efficient companies more, because they are more profitable. And yet,they continue to automate, because they still wind up with more profit than not doing so and being taxed less.

The underlined part is exactly what the article I cited, that you love to point to, ended with. General agreement on that. And as I've been trying to show you, despite your wriggling, it's already happening.

AS opposed to the 1500's, today it's the menial tasks that are not automated, the McJobs. And you quoted me quoting the article, where it says just that.

AI is a form of automation. We do need to watch out for it. With less intelligent automation we can just reap the benefits but are better off sharing them across society - as the article I quoted says there is general agreement on. With AI, we'd better watch it tho. It is a scenario where we all become jobless and even lifeless.

[Thanos]

The lethal & murderous AI trope is probably one of the most annoying and dumbest things that's ever crossed over from science fiction to the general population.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

AI is a form of automation. We do need to watch out for it. With less intelligent automation we can just reap the benefits but are better off sharing them across society - as the article I quoted says there is general agreement on. With AI, we'd better watch it tho. It is a scenario where we all become jobless and even lifeless.

No, it isn't. AI is us recreating ours own minds and/or bodies in machine form, it is not automation. Automation is just a machine that reflects some of our physical characteristics. It has no intelligence.

Seriously, that's why humans are not allowed anywhere near industrial robots, because they don't even have the capability to know when they turned a person into wonder jello. There have been some bad accidents, because industrial robots are so stupid.

[andyt]

AI is just automating thinking instead of doing. As AI advances, there will probably be jobs lost to it as well.

[andyt]

IRobot Introduces System to Help Machines Think for Themselves

http://www.wsj.com/articles/irobot-intr ... 1412827295

[BeaverFever]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

The issue here is comparing peanuts to spaceships. Direct employment is one thing, real global employment is another thing entirely. There is absolutely no comparison between jobs that exist because of green energy and jobs that exist because of oil.

ONE MORE TIME:

The topic is Canada's OILSANDS. Not the broader conventional oil sector and not global oil sector either. Oilsands and "Oil" are not synomynous.

The point is that there are as many people in the Green Energy secotr as there are in the Alberta oilsands.

REPEAT: Alberta Oilsands. Not conventional oil and gas.

It's still comparing peanuts to spaceships. "Hey everyone, look how awesome green energy is. There's more people working in the entire green energy sector all across Canada than there are working in the oil industry in one specific location in one province".


So no BF, the topic isn't about Canada's oilsands, the topic is about making idiotic comparisons.
Hey look, here's another idiotic comparison. Did you know that there are more people working in the small aircraft industry all across Canada than build cars in Edmonton? Hmm, I wonder what unfounded conclusions we can reach from that.

Don't be silly of course this is relevant.

You've heard of the oilsands, right? It's been in the news a few times, yes? There are issues and concerns that are specific to oilsands and energy alternatives. Everyone has stong opinions about the oilsands and they're often put up on a pedestal but their supporters as an essential and irreplacable pillar of our economy and labour market.

So your straw man comparison above doesn't work. More like:

A controversial Edmonton automaker who gets special government subsidies, tax breaks and environmental expemptions, and who spends billions of dollars to convince people that Edmonton-made cars are the lifeblood of Canada's national economy, and who claims to be a delicate golden goose that needs to be handled with velvet gloves in order to support the national economy, and who claims that investments in the small aircraft sector are a waste of money and a threat to the golden goose....

Well, here is one study that suggests as many people are employed in green tech as are employed in oilsands. That's all it's saying....in terms of the number of people employed, there are more workers in green energy jobs than in oilsands jobs. That's not the end-all and be-all of statistics, but it is one piece of the puzzle.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

IRobot Introduces System to Help Machines Think for Themselves

http://www.wsj.com/articles/irobot-intr ... 1412827295

Roomba is a vacuum cleaner. It's not even 'clock radio' smart. Having a machine that knows more about it's world is not anymore 'AI' than the movie 'Hackers' was about the real world. It just means a moron that has some sense of it's surroundings.

Cars that can drive themselves still aren't smart enough to replicate. Can they even gas themselves up? Nothing to see here, move along . . move along. . .

AI is defined as 'if you don't know you are talking to a machine or a human, then it's AI'. We are a very long way from that.

[OnTheIce]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

It's still comparing peanuts to spaceships. "Hey everyone, look how awesome green energy is. There's more people working in the entire green energy sector all across Canada than there are working in the oil industry in one specific location in one province".

Winner!

All this false cheerleading was so fun to watch....more fun to watch it burn.