Report Card for Donald Trump

[Warren Dew]

(01-11-2017, 04:27 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Now you're just making things up.  The first Unimation robots went out to GE in 1961, and the PUMA was made in 1978.  And yet the global number of manufacturing workers has not shrunk, has it?  The US numbers peaked in 1979, but plateaued for 20 years, and didn't start to tumble until 2000, which I maintain had much more to do with trade policy than it did automation.  It is presently increasing.  The global number of manufacturing workers didn't shrink during this period either.  In any event, the use of machines to boost human productivity in manufacturing has been going on for at least 200 years, i

Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?

[SomeGuy]

(01-11-2017, 08:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 04:27 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Now you're just making things up.  The first Unimation robots went out to GE in 1961, and the PUMA was made in 1978.  And yet the global number of manufacturing workers has not shrunk, has it?  The US numbers peaked in 1979, but plateaued for 20 years, and didn't start to tumble until 2000, which I maintain had much more to do with trade policy than it did automation.  It is presently increasing.  The global number of manufacturing workers didn't shrink during this period either.  In any event, the use of machines to boost human productivity in manufacturing has been going on for at least 200 years, i

Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?

At a glance, I'd say that it wasn't so much anything that happened at/around the year 2000 so much as the effect of the Chinese opening up hitting critical mass.  I mean, you could point to its accession into the WTO, or the continuing advance of productivity, stimulus to boost consumption in the States, etc.  But I really think the sudden surge of this large, reasonably high productivity (in comparison to, you know, South Africa or something) country soaring from being the size of Italy to being bigger than Japan in a ten year span.  It's not like there wasn't an expanding service sector in the West, or that the other Asian tigers from Japan on hadn't followed basically the same model, but it was the sheer scale of it from such a small base as such speed that really did it.

I mean, look at what happened to the commodity markets (not just oil, which had other issues viz peaking conventional production, Middle Eastern wars, etc. but all of them) during that time, versus the 90s. It just became this enormous roaring machine sucking in raw materials and intermediate goods and cranking out manufactured widgets for export (along with an enormous amount of internal improvements powered by foreign capital seeking better returns than in the West).

Of course, that's, just like, my opinion, man.

[pbrower2a]

(01-11-2017, 08:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 04:27 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Now you're just making things up.  The first Unimation robots went out to GE in 1961, and the PUMA was made in 1978.  And yet the global number of manufacturing workers has not shrunk, has it?  The US numbers peaked in 1979, but plateaued for 20 years, and didn't start to tumble until 2000, which I maintain had much more to do with trade policy than it did automation.  It is presently increasing.  The global number of manufacturing workers didn't shrink during this period either.  In any event, the use of machines to boost human productivity in manufacturing has been going on for at least 200 years, i

Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?

Politicians set policy. Politicians cannot stop some economic realities.

Capitalism is much more effective in creating opportunity where there are shortages. If multitudes want something new and expensive (like cars in the early part of the 20th century; wristwatches, refrigerators, radios, phonographs, televisions, personal computers,  and video-game players at various times, then there are opportunities for capitalists. Once markets are saturated, the high prices and opportunities for both capitalists and manufacturing workers are gone. The economy then goes to replacement which makes a manufactured object a commodity instead of a big-ticket item .

Think of the CRT color television:

Quote:The initial RCA Victor sets cost $1,000 in 1954. ...©onsumers that year also could buy a Chevrolet car for roughly the same price, so color TV sales were at first a tough sell.

http://old.post-gazette.com/tv/20031231c...1231p3.asp

...and those color TVs were expensive to maintain. There was a secondary business just in repairing TVs, typically involving the replacement of costly picture tubes that went out reliably.

Got an old color CRT TV that you bought in the 1980s for $700? Even if it is in good working condition, neither Goodwill nor Salvation Army wants it now. Back in the 1980s, America had a large industry in manufacturing televisions. Magnavox (the American brand for Philips for televisions) was a great company for which to work. Magnavox is largely an importer of televisions now.

Yes, I know -- one can pay about any price for a wristwatch, and whether one buys a Rolex or a cheap watch at Wally World says more about one's character and level of emotional security than about the utility of the watch. If I had a Rolex I would sell it.

To get a boom in manufactures, Americans would have to become hoarders -- something unlikely with the smaller living spaces in which many Americans now live. Maybe people would have to buy again into obsolete technologies with high costs built in.

But just think of the economic transformation of America since the seventeenth century... from hunter-gatherers (what the First Peoples were... and the French trappers and traders operated in such a world in America for sale of pelts to  agrarian Europe) to the agrarian order (where America was at the time of the Revolution, the North largely as yeoman farmers and the South in a semi-feudal order), then early industrialism (the order that Karl Marx knew, and saw as capitalism at its purest with its rapacious plutocrats and helpless proletariat), modern industrial capitalism (in which the capitalists spared themselves the danger of Marxist revolutions by transforming the helpless proletariat into a market), and now the service-oriented post-modern capitalist world.

Economic nostalgia makes bad social policy. There are rapacious plutocrats who would do exceedingly well if people were to revert to the profits-first order of early capitalism. Of course that would have a damaging effect: the specter of a proletarian revolution would also return.

[pbrower2a]

Something to think about.

KKK. Bolshevism. Nazism. Kim dynasty. $cientology. Unification Church. Symbionese Liberation Army. Taliban. People's Temple. Heaven's Gate. Branch Davidians. al-Qaeda. Aum Shinrikyo. ISIS. g@dh@tesf@gs.com. Baathism. Fundamentalist Church of LDS (not to be confused with conventional Mormons).

[SomeGuy]

(01-12-2017, 01:57 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: All of this shit assumes a monotonic "improvement function" or "progress curve."

Then there is the black swan.

Something that rhymes with the Age of Migrations.

Automation?

Hell ... not if but when we hit the inevitable mother-of-all-curve-balls (or rather, it hits us), you'll be lucky to have running water, sewage / trash removal, electricity, gas, etc.

I've been trying to point out all the potential discontinuities, as opposed to linear extrapolations of current trends, over such a long time frame for a while now here, and people haven't been buying it.  Like I said, I think it is pretty much faith-based at this point.

On the one hand you have peak oi, climate change, the potential for nuclear war, economic breakdown (whether globally or just in the US), etc.

On the other you have the Singularity (which I don't really buy into, but always a possibility), transhumanism, advances in genomics, etc.

The one thing we do know is that the mid-21st century is unlikely to be just 2016 with better stuff.

[Warren Dew]

(01-12-2017, 01:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 08:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 04:27 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Now you're just making things up.  The first Unimation robots went out to GE in 1961, and the PUMA was made in 1978.  And yet the global number of manufacturing workers has not shrunk, has it?  The US numbers peaked in 1979, but plateaued for 20 years, and didn't start to tumble until 2000, which I maintain had much more to do with trade policy than it did automation.  It is presently increasing.  The global number of manufacturing workers didn't shrink during this period either.  In any event, the use of machines to boost human productivity in manufacturing has been going on for at least 200 years, i

Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?

Politicians set policy. Politicians cannot stop some economic realities.

Capitalism is much more effective in creating opportunity where there are shortages. If multitudes want something new and expensive (like cars in the early part of the 20th century; wristwatches, refrigerators, radios, phonographs, televisions, personal computers,  and video-game players at various times, then there are opportunities for capitalists. Once markets are saturated, the high prices and opportunities for both capitalists and manufacturing workers are gone. The economy then goes to replacement which makes a manufactured object a commodity instead of a big-ticket item.

I was asking because 2000 was around when there was a steep decline in manufacturing employment in the US, compensated by a rise in health care and certain other categories.  The graph looked like what might result from a policy change, rather than economic changes, which are more continuous.

I agree with you that traditional manufacturing is not the future.  I think the future is in services, and ideally our economic policies should promote the transition to services.

[Warren Dew]

(01-10-2017, 11:50 AM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:I've never been a fan of the "everything not mandatory is forbidden" school of policy.  Dress shirts are not mandatory where I work, but most of the men wear 

I never said anything about "forbidden".  Wear what you can afford.  If the cost of supporting American industry as opposed to groups of small children in SE Asia is that you decide to start wearing polo shirts, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

Ah yes, as long as the pain doesn't hurt you, it's fine.

The truth is, what would happen is that people would substitute less comfortable poly/cotton blends for cotton, since those shirts last ten times as long.  And since they last ten times as long, there would be a lot less consumption, so virtually no jobs would be created in making them.  Demand for cotton would plummet too, hurting that industry as well.

Regaining manufacturing by going forward, such as through automation, makes sense; it may even be a reasonable source of knowledge worker jobs, such as the engineering jobs that the Japanese and Germans have.  Going backwards to try to regain low end assembly jobs is foolish and likely counterproductive in most cases, as it certainly would be in this case.

Quote:

Quote:You'll have to explain Air Jordans, whatever they are.

Ludicrously expensive high-top sneakers popular starting in the 80s?

Checking them out, they appear to have applied expensive running shoe technology to the sneaker market, allowing them to charge more.  Their advertising only supplemented a real technological edge.

[Warren Dew]

(01-11-2017, 09:07 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 08:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 04:27 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Now you're just making things up.  The first Unimation robots went out to GE in 1961, and the PUMA was made in 1978.  And yet the global number of manufacturing workers has not shrunk, has it?  The US numbers peaked in 1979, but plateaued for 20 years, and didn't start to tumble until 2000, which I maintain had much more to do with trade policy than it did automation.  It is presently increasing.  The global number of manufacturing workers didn't shrink during this period either.  In any event, the use of machines to boost human productivity in manufacturing has been going on for at least 200 years, i

Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?

At a glance, I'd say that it wasn't so much anything that happened at/around the year 2000 so much as the effect of the Chinese opening up hitting critical mass.  I mean, you could point to its accession into the WTO, or the continuing advance of productivity, stimulus to boost consumption in the States, etc.  But I really think the sudden surge of this large, reasonably high productivity (in comparison to, you know, South Africa or something) country soaring from being the size of Italy to being bigger than Japan in a ten year span.  It's not like there wasn't an expanding service sector in the West, or that the other Asian tigers from Japan on hadn't followed basically the same model, but it was the sheer scale of it from such a small base as such speed that really did it.

I mean, look at what happened to the commodity markets (not just oil, which had other issues viz peaking conventional production, Middle Eastern wars, etc. but all of them) during that time, versus the 90s.  It just became this enormous roaring machine sucking in raw materials and intermediate goods and cranking out manufactured widgets for export (along with an enormous amount of internal improvements powered by foreign capital seeking better returns than in the West).

Of course, that's, just like, my opinion, man.

Thanks for the answer, but that doesn't sound like a policy change to me, and isn't really consistent with the apparent discontinuity in slope in 2000 or so.

[SomeGuy]

Quote:Ah yes, as long as the pain doesn't hurt you, it's fine.

The pain of polyester dress shirts?  Polos?  The horrors. 

Quote:The truth is, what would happen is that people would substitute less comfortable poly/cotton blends for cotton, since those shirts last ten times as long.  And since they last ten times as long, there would be a lot less consumption, so virtually no jobs would be created in making them.  Demand for cotton would plummet too, hurting that industry as well.

Is that the truf?  De honest truf?  That our present set of arrangements, which have scarcely been free of political distortions and other contingent factors throughout the value chain, are in fact the only ones we can ever have, and that any effort to change them will only make things worse?  And this truth was revealed to you, how?
At exactly what price point (in terms of pure cotton shirts) does the durability and other qualities of polyester blend shirts (which makes them last literally 10 times as long) outweigh the comfort and any other positive qualities of said shirts?  Do you have a study on it?

Quote:Regaining manufacturing by going forward, such as through automation, makes sense; it may even be a reasonable source of knowledge worker jobs, such as the engineering jobs that the Japanese and Germans have.  Going backwards to try to regain low end assembly jobs is foolish and likely counterproductive in most cases, as it certainly would be in this case.

I don't seem to remember ever advocating the re-establishment of sweatshops in America employing no technology.  I think factories should be as automated as makes sense to the people running them, I simply would prefer if those factories are here.  You talk about knowledge worker jobs related to the manufacturing industry.  There have been a number of studies done on the impact of outsourcing on product innovation, how that trades off with efforts to cut costs, and the experiences of the Asian Tigers in particular leveraging their command of the manufacturing process to outcompete more established technology leaders in the US not only on price but eventually value as well.  It's just not as simple as saying that you're going to keep the "innovative" parts and outsource all the boring stuff.  Product innovation and process improvement comes not only from the engineers and designers in their offices, but from the people on the line, too, and especially from the interaction between the two.  An interaction that becomes more difficult when the two groups of people are on opposite sides of the world and speak different languages.
I am not advocating that we try and be the America of the 1950s again, just that it would be worthwhile going forward to borrow some best practices from people like the Germans and the Japanese.

Quote:Thanks for the answer, but that doesn't sound like a policy change to me, and isn't really consistent with the apparent discontinuity in slope in 2000 or so.

Did a bit of looking, and at least somebody begs to differ.

[pbrower2a]

(01-12-2017, 01:57 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: All of this shit assumes a monotonic "improvement function" or "progress curve."

Then there is the black swan.

Something that rhymes with the Age of Migrations.

Automation?

Hell ... not if but when we hit the inevitable mother-of-all-curve-balls (or rather, it hits us), you'll be lucky to have running water, sewage / trash removal, electricity, gas, etc.

Economic progress looks like a titration curve. 



To describe it -- the technology of George Washington's time was more like that of the time of Tutankhamen than that of the time of John F. Kennedy. The world changed that slowly. Man could adapt even genetically to technological change. Whatever change happened, practically anyone could understand.  Not until the mid-nineteenth century (the railroads, steamboats, and the reaping machine -- the latter still pulled by horses) did technological change become sharp.

Railroads, reapers, electricity, steamboats, and the telegraph may demonstrate the early hastening of technological change. In the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, the  remarkable inventions of Thomas Alva Edison introduced many objects that we would now consider basic. That's before I discuss such inventions as the telegraph, automobile, and wireless telegraphy associated with a 'one-trick-pony' inventor like Bell or Marconi, or some collaboration of inventors.  There may still be low-tech trades like barbering and house-painting, but in general nobody could confuse the world of 2017 with that of 1917.

For the last century or so we have expected technology to supply an easy fix to numerous personal and economic problems. We may be approaching the end of such a possibility. The basic technologies are likely all done, and technological advances are largely adaptations of existing technologies. Technologies have gone from potential discovery through tinkering (as Edison came up with his now-basic inventions) to requiring the collaboration of multitudes of engineers and scientists. One is not going to make a basic innovation in a garage anymore.

We may have begun to pass the vertical stage of progress through technological innovation. Further refinements of technology are becoming intellectually difficult, and may be running into physical reality at the scale of sub-atomic particles, and obvious limit to technological power. Technology too complicated for customer use will not enjoy mass use and will be difficult to market.

Hereon we may have to solve our new problems the hard way -- with solutions that have nothing to do with technology but may need to be addressed in institutional choices that can be no better than the moral choices of those who run the institutions.

[SomeGuy]

Here is an interesting, albeit fairly brief, look at the automation issue from MIT's Technology Review.

[David Horn]

Skipping the rest ...

(01-11-2017, 04:27 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:The PUMA was the first actual robot to be marginally useful, and just barely at that. That was 1983, as your own link indicates. I actually remember the early applications -- primarily fixed welding.

Now you're just making things up.  The first Unimation robots went out to GE in 1961, and the PUMA was made in 1978.  And yet the global number of manufacturing workers has not shrunk, has it?  The US numbers peaked in 1979, but plateaued for 20 years, and didn't start to tumble until 2000, which I maintain had much more to do with trade policy than it did automation.  It is presently increasing.  The global number of manufacturing workers didn't shrink during this period either.  In any event, the use of machines to boost human productivity in manufacturing has been going on for at least 200 years, ...

The Ultimate was a great prototype product, but it was still just that. True numerical control didn't exist, because the control circuitry to utilize and implement it needed processing and control technology that didn't exist at the time. By the time PUMA came to be, at least working level solutions to those problems were available. PUMA was still a programmable tool, but a much more powerful one.

FWIW, true robots will have the ability to adapt to the needs of the job, and do it on the fly. NASA has already demonstrated some early versions with the explorers on Mars. Self driving cars have similar challenges.

[David Horn]

(01-11-2017, 09:07 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 08:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 04:27 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Now you're just making things up.  The first Unimation robots went out to GE in 1961, and the PUMA was made in 1978.  And yet the global number of manufacturing workers has not shrunk, has it?  The US numbers peaked in 1979, but plateaued for 20 years, and didn't start to tumble until 2000, which I maintain had much more to do with trade policy than it did automation.  It is presently increasing.  The global number of manufacturing workers didn't shrink during this period either.  In any event, the use of machines to boost human productivity in manufacturing has been going on for at least 200 years, i

Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?

At a glance, I'd say that it wasn't so much anything that happened at/around the year 2000 so much as the effect of the Chinese opening up hitting critical mass.  I mean, you could point to its accession into the WTO, or the continuing advance of productivity, stimulus to boost consumption in the States, etc.  But I really think the sudden surge of this large, reasonably high productivity (in comparison to, you know, South Africa or something) country soaring from being the size of Italy to being bigger than Japan in a ten year span.  It's not like there wasn't an expanding service sector in the West, or that the other Asian tigers from Japan on hadn't followed basically the same model, but it was the sheer scale of it from such a small base as such speed that really did it.

I mean, look at what happened to the commodity markets (not just oil, which had other issues viz peaking conventional production, Middle Eastern wars, etc. but all of them) during that time, versus the 90s.  It just became this enormous roaring machine sucking in raw materials and intermediate goods and cranking out manufactured widgets for export (along with an enormous amount of internal improvements powered by foreign capital seeking better returns than in the West).

Of course, that's, just like, my opinion, man.

OK, I can agree with this: the Great Leap Forward that finally leaped forward, so to speak.  The unresolved question is: how much productivity is needed to meet all the demands of the public, assuming the public is the entire world's population?  That's the limit.  We can't know the limit for sure, but we can see indications that the rate of gain is slowing.  Still unresolved: is that a pause in the curve or the new trend?

[SomeGuy]

I see that that was NOT your last post in this thread, welcome back!

Quote:The Ultimate was a great prototype product, but it was still just that. True numerical control didn't exist, because the control circuitry to utilize and implement it needed processing and control technology that didn't exist at the time. By the time PUMA came to be, at least working level solutions to those problems were available. PUMA was still a programmable tool, but a much more powerful one. 

You mean the Unimate, which seemed to have gone past the prototype phase.  Wasn't that phase supposed to have been in the '80s, according to you?

Quote:FWIW, true robots will have the ability to adapt to the needs of the job, and do it on the fly.

Thus spake the prophet?

Quote:NASA has already demonstrated some early versions with the explorers on Mars.

That is a very charitable description of the Mars rover program.

Quote:Self driving cars have similar challenges.

Including the first death!  Am very curious how that industry actually evolves.

[SomeGuy]

(01-14-2017, 11:34 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 09:07 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 08:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 04:27 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Now you're just making things up.  The first Unimation robots went out to GE in 1961, and the PUMA was made in 1978.  And yet the global number of manufacturing workers has not shrunk, has it?  The US numbers peaked in 1979, but plateaued for 20 years, and didn't start to tumble until 2000, which I maintain had much more to do with trade policy than it did automation.  It is presently increasing.  The global number of manufacturing workers didn't shrink during this period either.  In any event, the use of machines to boost human productivity in manufacturing has been going on for at least 200 years, i

Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?

At a glance, I'd say that it wasn't so much anything that happened at/around the year 2000 so much as the effect of the Chinese opening up hitting critical mass.  I mean, you could point to its accession into the WTO, or the continuing advance of productivity, stimulus to boost consumption in the States, etc.  But I really think the sudden surge of this large, reasonably high productivity (in comparison to, you know, South Africa or something) country soaring from being the size of Italy to being bigger than Japan in a ten year span.  It's not like there wasn't an expanding service sector in the West, or that the other Asian tigers from Japan on hadn't followed basically the same model, but it was the sheer scale of it from such a small base as such speed that really did it.

I mean, look at what happened to the commodity markets (not just oil, which had other issues viz peaking conventional production, Middle Eastern wars, etc. but all of them) during that time, versus the 90s.  It just became this enormous roaring machine sucking in raw materials and intermediate goods and cranking out manufactured widgets for export (along with an enormous amount of internal improvements powered by foreign capital seeking better returns than in the West).

Of course, that's, just like, my opinion, man.

OK, I can agree with this: the Great Leap Forward that finally leaped forward, so to speak.  The unresolved question is: how much productivity is needed to meet all the demands of the public, assuming the public is the entire world's population?  That's the limit.  We can't know the limit for sure, but we can see indications that the rate of gain is slowing.  Still unresolved: is that a pause in the curve or the new trend?

Yeah, and I posted up a follow-link that seemed to suggest that it is a reasonable assumption.  As for your questions, are we assuming demand is static (this goes back to something I was saying before about new wants)?  As for your bit on productivity, you're going to have to untangle that for me a bit, Dave.

[David Horn]

(01-12-2017, 05:23 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-12-2017, 01:57 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: All of this shit assumes a monotonic "improvement function" or "progress curve."

Then there is the black swan.

Something that rhymes with the Age of Migrations.

Automation?

Hell ... not if but when we hit the inevitable mother-of-all-curve-balls (or rather, it hits us), you'll be lucky to have running water, sewage / trash removal, electricity, gas, etc.

I've been trying to point out all the potential discontinuities, as opposed to linear extrapolations of current trends, over such a long time frame for a while now here, and people haven't been buying it.  Like I said, I think it is pretty much faith-based at this point.

On the one hand you have peak oil, climate change, the potential for nuclear war, economic breakdown (whether globally or just in the US), etc.

On the other you have the Singularity (which I don't really buy into, but always a possibility), transhumanism, advances in genomics, etc.

The one thing we do know is that the mid-21st century is unlikely to be just 2016 with better stuff.

Not a bad survey of the issues, but pretending that nothing can be known so nothing can be done is not a solution either.  Getting to mid-century will involve taking risks, but risks should address reality.  My concern about Trump: he may actually believe his own blather.  Among the many issues of importance, ignoring AGW and growing economic inequality are unacceptable behaviors from any risk perspective.  Failing is never as bad as not even trying.

[David Horn]

(01-12-2017, 09:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-12-2017, 01:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 08:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?

Politicians set policy. Politicians cannot stop some economic realities.

Capitalism is much more effective in creating opportunity where there are shortages. If multitudes want something new and expensive (like cars in the early part of the 20th century; wristwatches, refrigerators, radios, phonographs, televisions, personal computers,  and video-game players at various times, then there are opportunities for capitalists. Once markets are saturated, the high prices and opportunities for both capitalists and manufacturing workers are gone. The economy then goes to replacement which makes a manufactured object a commodity instead of a big-ticket item.

I was asking because 2000 was around when there was a steep decline in manufacturing employment in the US, compensated by a rise in health care and certain other categories.  The graph looked like what might result from a policy change, rather than economic changes, which are more continuous.

I agree with you that traditional manufacturing is not the future.  I think the future is in services, and ideally our economic policies should promote the transition to services.

The first indication of discontinuity was the unlinking of productivity and median income gains.  That happened ~1973 and the new trend lines continued up to the present.

[SomeGuy]

(01-14-2017, 11:42 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-12-2017, 05:23 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-12-2017, 01:57 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: All of this shit assumes a monotonic "improvement function" or "progress curve."

Then there is the black swan.

Something that rhymes with the Age of Migrations.

Automation?

Hell ... not if but when we hit the inevitable mother-of-all-curve-balls (or rather, it hits us), you'll be lucky to have running water, sewage / trash removal, electricity, gas, etc.

I've been trying to point out all the potential discontinuities, as opposed to linear extrapolations of current trends, over such a long time frame for a while now here, and people haven't been buying it.  Like I said, I think it is pretty much faith-based at this point.

On the one hand you have peak oil, climate change, the potential for nuclear war, economic breakdown (whether globally or just in the US), etc.

On the other you have the Singularity (which I don't really buy into, but always a possibility), transhumanism, advances in genomics, etc.

The one thing we do know is that the mid-21st century is unlikely to be just 2016 with better stuff.

Not a bad survey of the issues, but pretending that nothing can be known so nothing can be done is not a solution either.  Getting to mid-century will involve taking risks, but risks should address reality.  My concern about Trump: he may actually believe his own blather.  Among the many issues of importance, ignoring AGW and growing economic inequality are unacceptable behaviors from any risk perspective.  Failing is never as bad as not even trying.

I am not saying that nothing should be done, just that we should work within a shorter time-frame.  I have outlined some of the things that Trump ran on that I would like to see done.  This is not to say that there aren't other (more "left"-y) things that I would also like to see done, but that will have to wait for a future administration.  And, as I pointed out in the other thread (Donald Trump: America's Berlusconi), the victory of Donald Trump is an excellent opportunity for the Dems or whoever on the left to clear away the Clinton/DNC legacy and come up with something better.

Quote:The first indication of discontinuity was the unlinking of productivity and median income gains.  That happened ~1973 and the new trend lines continued up to the present.

It is an issue, and a serious one at that.  One I don't think was linked to automation (not that I am accusing you of saying that it is).

[David Horn]

(01-14-2017, 12:12 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(01-14-2017, 11:42 AM)David Horn Wrote: Not a bad survey of the issues, but pretending that nothing can be known so nothing can be done is not a solution either.  Getting to mid-century will involve taking risks, but risks should address reality.  My concern about Trump: he may actually believe his own blather.  Among the many issues of importance, ignoring AGW and growing economic inequality are unacceptable behaviors from any risk perspective.  Failing is never as bad as not even trying.

I am not saying that nothing should be done, just that we should work within a shorter time-frame.  I have outlined some of the things that Trump ran on that I would like to see done.  This is not to say that there aren't other (more "left"-y) things that I would also like to see done, but that will have to wait for a future administration.  And, as I pointed out in the other thread (Donald Trump: America's Berlusconi), the victory of Donald Trump is an excellent opportunity for the Dems or whoever on the left to clear away the Clinton/DNC legacy and come up with something better.

I agree that this is the most likely way to motivate the Dems to make real changes to their structure and focus, but it may be too much to do in too short a time frame. The GOP is still living in a mythical past, with pluperfect factories manned by happy workers and bosses free to be what they want to be.  Their social model isn't any newer, so they can't be the change agent unless they change first.  Dems aren't any better with their teams of cats leading in 100 (indicative, not normative) directions.  Starting from weakness helps focus the mind, but many supporters still demand an unachievable 'perfect' and shun 'good' no matter how close to ideal.

For the Dems, I don't see this as a Presidential cycle project.  For the GOP, I don't see it in the cards.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:The first indication of discontinuity was the unlinking of productivity and median income gains.  That happened ~1973 and the new trend lines continued up to the present.

It is an issue, and a serious one at that.  One I don't think was linked to automation (not that I am accusing you of saying that it is).

No, that was linked to massive disruption in the oil markets and, more to the point, a collapsing union movement.  We can argue the union collapse in a separate thread, if you wish.

[Warren Dew]

(01-12-2017, 09:59 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:Ah yes, as long as the pain doesn't hurt you, it's fine.

The pain of polyester dress shirts?  Polos?  The horrors.

For people with sensitive skin and glasses, yes.

Quote:

Quote:Regaining manufacturing by going forward, such as through automation, makes sense; it may even be a reasonable source of knowledge worker jobs, such as the engineering jobs that the Japanese and Germans have.  Going backwards to try to regain low end assembly jobs is foolish and likely counterproductive in most cases, as it certainly would be in this case.

I don't seem to remember ever advocating the re-establishment of sweatshops in America employing no technology.  I think factories should be as automated as makes sense to the people running them, I simply would prefer if those factories are here.

You contradict yourself.  Some industries, such as certain types of clothing manufacture, are dependent on sweatshop style labor, because there's no technology capable of substituting for the labor.  If you want those factories here, you're advocating reestablishment of sweatshops in America.

Quote:You talk about knowledge worker jobs related to the manufacturing industry.  There have been a number of studies done on the impact of outsourcing on product innovation, how that trades off with efforts to cut costs, and the experiences of the Asian Tigers in particular leveraging their command of the manufacturing process to outcompete more established technology leaders in the US not only on price but eventually value as well.  It's just not as simple as saying that you're going to keep the "innovative" parts and outsource all the boring stuff.  Product innovation and process improvement comes not only from the engineers and designers in their offices, but from the people on the line, too, and especially from the interaction between the two.  An interaction that becomes more difficult when the two groups of people are on opposite sides of the world and speak different languages.

I am not advocating that we try and be the America of the 1950s again, just that it would be worthwhile going forward to borrow some best practices from people like the Germans and the Japanese.

I agree that separating process management from process execution is questionable, and for industries where the intellectual input is primarily in process management rather than product design, the entire firm is often better located in on geographic area.  That doesn't mean the entire value chain has to be in one geographic area; the fact that gold is mined in Russia and South Africa doesn't mean that electronics manufacture, which involves gold plated contacts, has to all be located in Russia and South  Africa.

The best practices from the Germans and Japanese include focusing on highly automatable parts of the manufacturing industry where much of the work is knowledge worker work rather than repetitive assembly work.  They are okay with importing dress shirts while they are exporting automobiles.  If we are going to have the manufacturing success that they do, we're going to have to be okay with that too.