01-08-2017, 07:16 PM
Quote:Any automation will ultimately lead to fewer jobs unless a even greater gain in GDP is created, which is unlikely in this scenario. Instead, you get a reduction in exporting jobs that may more than offset the gains from on-shoring.
You presume that manufacturing exports are larger than manufacturing imports. They are not. As imports are subtracted from GDP, a shift in this balance of trade would lead to an increase in GDP, other things being equal. They are not, but whether the net effect is positive depends on a host of questions that neither of us have addressed, viz the extent to which the increase in prices counteracts an increase in US income available for consumption, how this affects the value of the dollar, the resulting distribution of income, etc. You also need to remember that a lot of the things the US still exports are things like petrochemicals, aircraft, military equipment, pharmaceuticals, grain, etc. that are not traded purely in terms of price, that other sources of these products may not be regarded as acceptable substitutes do to issues of distribution channels, quality, geopolitics, etc.
I personally am inclined to think that a reduction of manufacturing imports from low-wage nations, particularly in Asia, in favor of domestic production would be a net positive, but I cannot claim to know how all of those issues I mentioned above would play out and I accept that there may be perfectly valid differences of opinion here in the absence of more data.
Quote:The bugaboo is still technology. This is the real challenge. How is this disruption scenario accommodated as the destructive part consistently outpaces the creative part?
Remember, self-replicating machines are already well underway for applications in space. Why assume that this is the only use they will have? Once machines can reproduce, the value of human labor drops almost to nothing. We better be ready a long time before we get there.
It's like a religious thing with you, isn't it? That link isn't for something in production, it's the wikipedia page of a concept that has more sources from science fiction going back decades than it does current projects. You keep asserting that "the destructive part" MUST "consistently outpace the creative part", but you never prove why that must be so. All you do is wave your hands, and completely ignore the long history of those claims, their persistent failure in the past, and the absence of any real evidence in support of why IT's DIFFERENT THIS TIME.
Atomic energy was supposed to be "too cheap to meter", and prototypes were built of atomic cars, atomic airplanes, etc.? What happened there? We landed people on the Moon in 1969, when did we land people on Mars? The Space Shuttle was supposed to make travel to orbit as cheap and convenient as jet airplane ride? How did that work out? DARPA built a walking robot for the US Army for use in Vietnam, and they're still playing around with the idea now.
Just because something can be imagined doesn't mean it can be built. Just because it can be built doesn't mean it is feasible to use. Just because it can be used doesn't mean it will be cost-effective to do so compared to the alternatives.
You have already acknowledged that this is not an imminent thing, need I quote you to nail you down on that subject? Given this, what you are instead making is a long-term prediction on technological trends, several decades out. Do you have any idea what the history of that sort of thing looks like? You should check out Victorian predictions of the 20th century, mid-century depictions of the early 21th century. Where are the jet packs, the space colonies, the food pills? Where was the Internet in any of their predictions? The very fact that people here at the height of a tech boom are converging on one vision of what the future a few decades out looks like is a pretty solid indicator that that isn't how it is going to be.
Do you actually have a real response to any of these issues I raised as to consumer preference, energy usage, relative labor costs, or the like, or is all you can manage a plaintive "THE MACHINES WILL TAKE OVER BECAUSE SCIENCE!"?