Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

[Kinser79]

(08-16-2017, 01:18 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-16-2017, 09:26 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-15-2017, 09:36 AM)David Horn Wrote: Adding my $0.02: Automation has a terminal phase, where all work is automated.  We're a long way from that, but we had better start thinking about what this means, and start that thinking now!  The automatons are owned by capitalists, mostly through corporations.  What they produce, whether goods or services, have to be obtained by others with money (at least today).  If work is nonexistent, then the buyers will be few and far between.  

Essentially, this is a world of owners.  What about the rest of us?

That terminal phase would be a post scarcity society.  One for which I don't think we have the means to contemplate, much like the Roman Pope in the IXth century didn't have the means to contemplate our world today or even that of a century ago.

Engels wrote about capitalism eventually bringing about is own destruction, but Marxian economics is flawed from the outset.

That being said, let us suppose that full automation were possible and no other better economic system than capitalism could be devised.  Then capitalism must collapse. However, I do not think that such a terminal phase is even reachable.

If we use an industrial revolution example.  We start with a village blacksmith who can make 100 nails a day.  But then some capitalist comes along and builds a factory that makes 1000 nails a day.  What happens?  Sure the blacksmith might lose his job (or more likely he might get one in the factory) but the most important thing that happens is the price of nails drops.  This has ripple effects throughout the economy.

Because nails are cheaper nailing things is cheaper, which means tables and cabinets and houses become cheaper, which means that the people who would buy those anyway now have extra money to spend on something else, like a hair cut or a new suit.

I strongly recommend watching the video in my previous post.

I agree that this is the arc of economic history so far, but the arc seems to be reaching a point where the creation of jobs is lagging the rate of change in the economies of advanced countries.  We need to start this discussion now, but the current winners don't see any advantage to them in modifying the model.  nonetheless, the change will come one way or another.  It's better for it to be incremental and peaceful than revolutionary and violent.

I really don't see how we could have such a conversation or even start one.  As I pointed out in my previous post it would be like expecting someone from the 9th century attempting to develop a working economic model for an industrial society.

I would, however, say that it occurs to me that there would be a demographic shift required to maintain an economy wherein the human population declines (which urbanization itself would contribute too).  As economies in the west have developed from the agricultrial age to the industrial age to whatever we are now we see a pattern.

Agricultural age people marry very young, have loads of children as they are necessary to provide farm labor and people die relatively young (though the human lifespan remains unchanged--I expect I don't have to explain to you the difference between expected total lifespan and average lifespan, like I would to Eric who rejects mathematics as well as science).

In the Industrial age we've seen to population patterns.  I call them "early" and "late".  The early pattern, the pattern that India is experiencing for example, people move to the city but maintain their pattern of having lots of kids.  However, due to moving to cities and improvements in health care and sanitation more survive to adulthood and people discover that in the city children are really more an expense than an asset (particularly after child labor is abolished--and so far at some point every society that industrializes seems to abolish child labor).  Late pattern we have people who have lived in an urban (or suburban) environment for sometime, or all their lives and they seem only interested in having approximately 2.3 children (replacement level) and sometimes not even that.  There are of course those who never biologically reproduce for whatever reason.

As that late pattern advances countries experience a "demographic winter" where the pattern inverts.  This of course strains welfare states built on the early model and some societies attempt to address that issue by importing from elsewhere the necessary young population rather than automating themselves out of the problem. (seeking to obtain a population column rather than pyramid)  However, in the attempt to do so, they end up destroying their own societies. 

I would hypothesize that if we are discussing a post-scarcity society which has undergone a demographic winter, a lot of the jobs that have been automated, or are under threat of automation now are done by machines, while humans maintain control of design, programming, coding and so on. Any surplus population could be dealt with by establishing space colonies which is an absolute requirement for the continuation of the species.