I think that is pretty cool honestly.

In Belgium, the previous name of one of our main internet provider was Skynet. So I guess the History books in year 3000 will say that the robot revolution started in our country ;)

I thought this news/article was quite interesting as in Western Europe, we talk about the "Überization of society" when debating about the downfall of traditional employment and the movement towards entrepreneurship (mostly in "sole proprietorship" due to no/few capital at the beginning) and so, it's quite ironic that even Über which is seen as the ideal of the new economy (not yet accepted in W-EU) will just tend to dump its "affiliates" by replacing them with automatization.

Creativity & Crafts is one way to go as it requires the human mind and its "imperfection" which brings novelty (thus hardly reproduceable by robots even if there are some current AI research to develop robotic creativity) but in the facts that we actually have before us, it would actually result in a huge surge of "me-too" like we see on Youtube, Android Marketplace, Steam Greenlight and such where the offer and the demand don't correlate with the offer and thus leading back to the 20-80 Pareto law.

Thus in the end, you get more people under the line of poverty as it's the inherent risk of self-employment. One way to avoid that is the "universal/global income" but since politics and part of the population are reluctant to it....

More news to add to the many reasons I have no future in life and will die soon.

I have yet to see a topic pertaining to economics that has SJW participation, which seems odd because there is nothing more unjust than modern economics.


Is it not crude and barbaric to see human value strictly in terms of usefulness?

How many of you are bothered by the fact that the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions are meaningless shams that were never intended to be applied universally?


The reason human society remains crude and barbaric is because it's economics have remained crude and barbaric. In the absence of civilized economics, human rights cannot exist. And in it's place we have rampant disease, dysfunctionality, and disequilibrium.

The amount of people designing and programming such robots will be much less than the amount of people the robots are replacing...

Yes, it is interesting and I'm sorry I missed its original run.

But nope on the quote I left. The thing everyone forgets is that economics is a two way street.

- We just established as premise that a lot of stuff will be produced much cheaper because of no humans.
- Then we are assuming there are as a result a lot of unemployed or little employed humans. Ok so far.
- We conclude that these humans with little income will be absolutely poor. How come? Part of the premises was that consumption would be cheaper because of all that automatic cheapo - magical production right?

Why would prices hold up unless there is some kind of monopoly? Let prices fall with demand, and a new equilibrium will be found. There was no mass poverty to go with agricultural revolution unemployment. There was no mass poverty from industrial revolution unemployment.

The thing that is preventing technological productivity from resulting in lower prices overall is the state and the belief central planning is possible for such complex systems. The illusion of price control. Of safety.

See this graph I found earlier today and compare education, health and to some extent housing with IT, electronics, and software related stuff. Notice furniture, clothing is null - the kind of stuff that will always be needed. Food is interesting example - it's a stark one since centralized markets were abandoned (historically food provision was the main area of state intervention of course) and the raise in prices hides substantial quality / individualization changes (positive changes obviously). Well, and like with housing there is some subsidization on food markets.

Anyway just like we went from plain clothes and plain food towards abundance and choice. I expect same thing will happen if we let the markets work. Instead of trying to stop the steamroller, let's focus on communnaly helping the few that will be unable to cope - but let's do it locally.

So to me, when this topic comes up, the elephant in the room is always the same. That many people are so afraid of change they let others have power over everyone.

Entertainment is cheaper than ever, and it just happened organically - and yet we consider health or education so valuable, that we ironically prevent it from becoming cheaper - by which I actually mean, from becoming accessible. Then we turn around and try to mandate affordability, and we cause markets to collapse.

Economy gets a very bad reputation as a science. It and IT should be taught much more than they are.

Anyway, this is simplistic counterpoint to the pessimistic majority. I offer it for contrast, and because as you all know it's my missionary zeal. :P

I work at a nursing home, so I guess my job is pretty safe. All the soft skills required for this can never be completely emulated by an robot or artificial intelligence.

Take for example patients with dementia: There are many types of dementia and the effects or symptoms shown by patients are highly individual, based on the patient's characters, his or her biography, the social environment ect.

Coping with that means that you will often have to break your routine, to improvise and to consider every situation anew. In communication you sometimes need the skills to read betweens the lines, interpret distorted body language and come up with an honest reply, which you will need to express not only in words but your voice and your own body language.

Sure in the future even my job will include robtos and advanced technological machinery, but I think they will be used as auxiliary.

Economics is a bastardized science that is predominantly dogmatic. It is the financial elite that have given us powerful, intrusive states. Why? Because having the power to create money allowed them to buy the politicians necessary to control economic policy, thus consolidating their power.

If I get my choice governments will not have power over economic policy - nothing to bribe them over. Problem solved.

Or rather, then it's up to us to control ourselves. How quaint.

Too late. This world has been bought and paid for.

My claim about your post is not an attack against you personally as I belief that you, just like myself, try to understand the world and therefore are looking for explanations. And like myself, you're most likely taking explanations that supports your bias which is just human (Cognitive bias).
And I also know that Wikipedia is far from being a perfect information source, but it is at least a place where non-scientists can start their research.

First, the article you're linking to is published by the FEE which is according to their own "About"-site founded by Leonard E. Read who was a libertarian activist.

Second, the graph in that article is most likely based on the so called market basket. According to the German wiki-entry market baskets have to be adjusted for different purposes. Market baskets for example for poor and rich people have to be different.

Third, you write that Economics gets a bad reputation and you ascribe that to a lack of education. But you're completely ignoring the possibility that the decline of the reputation could be a result of the people recognizing the contradictions between what is declared as the economic truth in the mainstream media and the actual reality.

Edit:
Correcting mistakes.

I appreciate the good faith. So let us jump straight to the crux of the matter shall we?

Economic history of the world shows price controls cause shortages and that competitive markets increase material welfare.

Do you see the above as propaganda or fact? Feel free to use wikipedia before answering and to ask for definitions.


As to the 3 further point you make:
1 - I am pretty close to being ideologicaly libertarian myself... not sure what the label matters here when the substance of what and why I believe was made explicit.
2 - The graph does not stop being true depending on who reads it. At most its truths are more / less applicable for those under different socioeconomic circunstances.
3 - I did not even try to exhaust the topic of why economic illiteracy is as it is. For one, the economic mainstream as presented in media tends to be macro, whereas micro which is the much more scientifc and less controversial is more obscure. For another, there is a lot of ideological propaganda muddying the waters even outside of media - from academia to politics.

Yes, very much so. For example, why are there no movements that promote debt free living and less working hours? It would be a useful way to hire more of the unemployed youth giving less unmployment so less conflicts caused by it, less stress so people are healthier etc.. Apparently people are instead obssessed by some meaningless addiction that they have to feed. Addictions and debt are the enemies of modern life.