And if they don't, no one suffers since we've added so much efficiency to the workforce through technology that the idea would be that we could easily fund this social net. Obviously it's a complex idea that isn't easily implemented or transitioned to, but there's merit to it.

But seriously, would all you Chicken Littles out there that think the world has either come to an end and we'll never have a good job market again, or whom think that we live in some Star Trek sci-fi advanced universe in which human labor has become obsolete just shut the fuck up.

God.

Damn!

It's called a recession. It's been brought about by horrifyingly anti-business policies out of our government, coupled with idiotic notions pumped in to gullible, foolish children's heads that they deserve a paycheck just for breathing and shitting.

Good fucking lord...instead of continually asking for how we can devise a system by which you can spend your life sitting on your ass collecting a government check, why don't some of you fucktards with so much time on your hands go INNOVATE something and CREATE JOBS...

Fuck!

The government check I describe here wouldn't be free, it would require upstanding citizenship and participation in society through community service and education.

What I feel this boils down to, Krellin, is that you feel being an upstanding citizen implies working for a living, and I don't necessarily agree. Working for a living is a way to be an upstanding citizen but doesn't have to be the only way.

Disclaimer: I know the ideas I'm proposing here increase the reliability people will have on government, and I know that idea doesn't fly with a lot of people. I personally see the potential benefits significantly outweighing that downside.

@ Draugnar

Sure, but fewer and fewer humans will be required to maintain these robotics. Combine that with overpopulation, and you have a recipe for disaster. Just tour a factory sometime. There's a handful of guys keeping an eye on scores of robots. 50 years ago at that same factory, there were 200 guys manning a few semi-autonomous machines.

@ y2k

"how are you going to force government organizations and private corporations to forego the economic benefits of increased efficiency due to the use of technology in favor of much less efficient human manual labor? Does that sound like a good way to you to ensure economic health?"

No, but that seems to be the only other option aside from allowing technology to render must human occupations obsolete. If the factory floor worker and the ditch digger are relegated to the ash heap of history, it's only a matter of time before the accountant and the doctor are in jeopardy too.

Such a "backwards step" couldn't be orchestrated without an unacceptable amount of interference from the government, which I stand in opposition to. I'm not a serious proponent of my own hypothesis stated in my last post, but I see no other options.

Look, guys, the reality is that 20, 30, maybe 50 years from now, a combination of increasing automation and population will leave the US without enough work for everyone to work a 40-hour week. You can try to pretend to yourselves that that's not true but you're wrong and that's really the end of that.

So if we're to keep a market economy (which I firmly believe we ought; it is by far and away the most efficient economic system mankind has ever developed), we will need to do something about the inexorable rise of structural unemployment. Here are our options:

1) Pursue a policy of limiting population growth: mandatory limits on the number of kids people are allowed to have, sharper immigration quotas, and forced emigration. None of these are remotely tasteful, ethical or effective. Limiting reproduction has disastrous long-term consequences for a society's age distribution, sharper immigration quotas will only increase the amount of illegal immigration into the country, and forced emigration is a nonstarter both morally and practically (granting the government the power to kick people out of the country in the name of economic vitality is a dangerous precedent, and realistically, people who are out of a job aren't going to leave the country, they'd more likely resort to crime to feed their families).

2) Expanding the current welfare state. The current welfare state is already unsustainable in the long-term as it is; any expansion to accommodate more people going on the public dole would only accelerate its inevitable collapse.

3) Doing nothing and letting those without work fend for themselves. What happens here is that the poor turn to crime to feed their families -- not because they're somehow morally deficient but because *they have no realistic alternative to survive*. And when crime goes up like that, you can either greatly expand the police force to keep people safe, or you can let people get robbed, burglarized, murdered, etc. The latter would lead to societal collapse and the former would rapidly accelerate and encourage the current trend of police militarization, ending notions of freedom as you know them... and on top of that, as more people end up in prison, either prison conditions become unlivable (in which case you've just empowered police to throw people in inhumane prisons as a means of saving your economy -- good one!) or prisons become too expensive to maintain (as they effectively replace welfare).

4) Recognize the inevitable failures of 1-3 and restructure your economy in line with the new technological reality. This means ending the increasingly flawed notion that one must hold down a job to be a successful person and a "good" member of society. I mean shit, this is the opposite of what capitalism is about. Socialism promotes the notion that everyone should be working and that it's all about labor, etc. etc. Capitalism is fundamentally about getting the most shit done with the fewest inputs, labor included. That irreconcilably clashes with the idea that you must work to be a good citizen. What if the efficient thing to do is to have some people not working, and to automate work they could do? Are they somehow lesser people or lesser members of society for it? Once you end that, all manner of government spending to create unproductive jobs can safely be ended -- ranging from military contracts on weapons that never get used, to middling bureaucratic paper-pushing jobs that, when it comes to actually useful labor (i.e. not wasting time in or preparing bullshit presentations and motivational seminars, or posting on webDiplomacy during work hours) have 10 people do what one person could. And then, to take care of the people who are unable to get work, you pay them a guaranteed minimum income.

"But Eden!" you might protest, "If they don't work for their money, why would anyone work at all?" Because no one wants to go through life living on $10K or $15K a year? Duh? Okay, so obviously not *no one*, there will be some people who will choose to do that. Great for them, I guess. The overwhelming majority of society will still want to find work and better themselves financially. For them, those avenues of opportunity are still open. People will still be needed for the foreseeable future in fields that require more dynamic thinking/acting. Computers can process complex economic variables better than humans ever could, but they have no chance of being able to generate the kinds of original insights that lead to optimal decision-making. My laptop, given Excel 2010 and the right numbers and formulas, could spit out USRGDP for 2013 without fail no matter what variables I changed. But it cannot recommend economic policy based on that. It can crunch data on labor costs and prices, but it can't run a business. At the end of the day anything involving dynamic thought or action will probably never be replicated by machines (or at least, that's something for the *far* far future). So there will always be opportunities for people to work and make more money -- and people will want to do it, because no one wants to live on what's effectively the minimum wage if not lower.

"Won't that be expensive to administer?" Nah. $15K for all US citizens of working age (16+) would cost 3.6T per year to administer right now. Sounds like a lot, right? But when you factor in that we can couple this with completely eliminating current welfare spending, all legislative pork and slashing projects that aren't really "necessary," the net cost drops sharply. There would probably need to be an increase in taxes to some extent to cover everything after slashing other spending, still -- total tax revenue in 2012 was $5.1T, for 2013 was $5.5T, projected at $5.9T for 2014, and this policy would take up the majority of that revenue -- but it's not nearly as infeasible as it sounds and is very likely to be solvent in the long run.

"But this isn't very libertarian/conservative/etc. of you!" I disagree with this, I think this is quite the pro-market policy at least. It replaces several inefficient government expenditures with one pristine, streamlined program; and it takes a serious step toward solving both the question of what to do about any supposed societal obligation to take care of its least fortunate members, and what to do about the fact that market economies are entering a state of fundamental change in the wake of technological advancement.

I understand the concerns with letting technology run rampant and render human labor obsolete. Given the power of technology and the direct benefit it gives to pretty much any individual, governing body, or corporation from an efficiency standpoint, it's pretty much impossible to stop people from using it unless you forced it on them. People like fast progress and quick growth. In terms of the use of technology, consequently, I'm in favor of the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy.

"Because no one wants to go through life living on $10K or $15K a year?"

Moron...there are plenty of people content to sit at home sucking off the government. they have a roof, their food stamps, they got their cable tv...that's all the need. What fucking world do you live in? Sheltered much?

krellin can't read, shocker.

"Okay, so obviously not *no one*, there will be some people who will choose to do that. Great for them, I guess. The overwhelming majority of society will still want to find work and better themselves financially."

And they will have a much better means to enter those jobs eventually by focusing on educating and bettering themselves in the meantime, rather than struggling to make ends meet with lowly jobs in the interim.

And the few that don't and live on the safety net indefinitely, who the fuck cares? Pay for them to sit on their ass and not cause trouble; the work force doesn't need or want them, and they don't want to be a part of it either.

@ PE

That's a notable break from your previously stated libertarian beliefs.

krellin, you've had this discussion before. This comment: "It's called a recession. It's been brought about by horrifyingly anti-business policies out of our government, [blah blah blah]" indicates that you still don't understand the concept of structural economic changes.

PE, that's very similar to my thinking, and why I've sort of moved toward a single-payer insurance approach (i.e. real government health insurance): when we're obviously going to have the government involved in a particular sector of society, it's best to go ahead and make it fair and efficient. It's not like we've had a free market in health care in the last several decades, anyway.

But the problem with the plan, and the only reason I can't endorse it wholeheartedly, is that I can't imagine getting rid of everything else. If you'd guarantee trading all the various forms of indirect and direct welfare and tax loopholes and so on for a single universal minimum income and mandatory catastrophic health insurance provided by the government, I'd take that. But we'd get the income and the insurance, but we'd keep the regulations and prohibitions, plus all the extra tax credits and loopholes and bonuses for families and farmers and minorities and businessmen and so on and so forth.

Gunfighter, I consider it reconcilable with libertarianism. I don't see any way that the current system is sustainable -- human population is growing while technology (which reduces the amount of labor needed to work) grows as well. We're going to run out of work, and something has to be done about it; I think the only viable long-term solution that would keep the US free is a basic income.

I agree with ckroberts's criticism in that I don't think people would get rid of everything else, and I don't know that I would support any version of a basic income as it would, practically speaking, be implemented. But the concept itself seems like the way forward to me.

"technology (which reduces the amount of labor needed to work) grows "

That is actually a misnomer. Technology reduces the labor required to do a task in a given amount of time, allowing us to get even more done with the same amount of labor. Production is not a constant that can't be increased. So technology increases output per man hour, but as long as demand exceeds supply, we can continue to use the additional man hours to produce even more.

The other assumption here is that menial labor people can only do menial labor. I hate to sound like krellin, but that is rather insulting to the blue collar class. Don't assume the majority of blue collar workers couldn't be retrained to do white collar work. They can if they are willing to apply themselves and most are.

"...They can if they are willing to apply themselves and most are."

That promotes the idea that this social net would work, right? If most people working the types of jobs that technology would replace are willing and able to look for higher and better work, especially if encouraged and aided by the government, then the fear of freeloaders breaking this system is mitigated.

I have less concern with freeloaders if this is a barebones system where no one would *want* to live on it long term.

"So technology increases output per man hour, but as long as demand exceeds supply, we can continue to use the additional man hours to produce even more."

Not if things are becoming automated, which is the trend that I'm discussing here (and concerned with). Technology increases like, say, being able to use a computer to type instead of handwriting things certainly does what you're talking about -- but we're talking more along the lines of automated checkout lanes replacing cashiers, for instance.

"Don't assume the majority of blue collar workers couldn't be retrained to do white collar work. They can if they are willing to apply themselves and most are."

y2kjbk just covered this, but I agree with you here and I'm not meaning to say that blue-collar workers are beyond saving, or anything silly like that. This basic income allows people to live while not working -- which doesn't necessarily mean just freeloading. I can go to school and become an engineer, or computer scientist, or whatever, put in a few tough years of living on the barebones $15K while on a student loan, get a fairly high-paying job and be in the clear.

I definitely believe that most unskilled blue-collar workers would be willing to put in the time and effort to learn a skill and get a high-paying job; they're mostly constrained by a lack of opportunity. This solution not only solves the issue of figuring out what they can do when their jobs inevitably disappear, it also solves one of the bigger issues with economic mobility that is starting to become a bigger and bigger problem as well.