# Capitalism vs common sense **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 6, 2015, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015 "2015-02-06T23:59:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/21 "2015-02-08T04:37:29Z")
Point of order: snark is never pointless. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/22 "2015-02-08T04:40:51Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#): > > If we truly have a post-scarcity society, then economics is solved and any economic system would work fine. But we’re never going to solve scarcity, because everything in life is limited, including time. Imagine a poor farmer around the early 1900s watching the rise of mechanized farming and predicting the end of scarcity, because in just a few years, there would be far more food than we could ever eat. If we manage to solve scarcity for consumer goods, society will just move on to more expensive stuff–in a few decades, people will be complaining that the poor can’t even afford personal spaceships or whatever. Sure, but why should capitalists give food, shelter, consumer goods, etc., to workers who have been replaced by automation? What do the former workers have to trade? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/23 "2015-02-08T04:42:42Z")
> [@andros](#): > > Point of order: snark is never pointless. /me looks at the the name of the forum. “Snark may not be pointless, but it does not constitute an argument.” ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/24 "2015-02-08T04:54:42Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > The reason capitalism will fail is not that poor people don’t buy basic necessities and few trinkets besides. It’s because human labor is becoming increasingly unnecessary to produce these things. When capitalists have no need to hire and pay people to produce almost all goods and services, because software and robots can do it cheaper, guess what happens to your marketplace? The marketplace offers everyone an amazing cornucopia of goods and services at prices much lower than what we pay now? There is no corporation on the planet which produces anything without hiring some non-zero number of people. In the USA, we do far more with computers and automation now than fifty years ago, but the unemployment rate has not changed much. No matter how much is done with software and robots, people will be needed to design, use, and fix those programs and robots, and to do tasks that only humans can do. As **John Mace** said, your scenario comes from science fiction, not reality. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/25 "2015-02-08T04:58:37Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The marketplace offers everyone an amazing cornucopia of goods and services at prices much lower than what we pay now? > > There is no corporation on the planet which produces anything without hiring some non-zero number of people. In the USA, we do far more with computers and automation now than fifty years ago, but the unemployment rate has not changed much. No matter how much is done with software and robots, people will be needed to design, use, and fix those programs and robots, and to do tasks that only humans can do. As **John Mace** said, your scenario comes from science fiction, not reality. Do you think automation is going to become more useful? Or less useful? Do you think robotics will become more useful, or less useful? Do you think automation and robotics are incapable of being developed to design, fix and build other robots? FTL is science fiction. AI is science fiction. Automation and robotics are present-day realities. The only question is, how far and how fast? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/26 "2015-02-08T05:12:10Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Sure, but why should capitalists give food, shelter, consumer goods, etc., to workers who have been replaced by automation? What do the former workers have to trade? If we are post-scarcity then giving away stuff should cost the “capitalists” nothing because they can buy absolutely anything they desire. In return, the capitalists reduce the risk of a violent revolution or social unrest threatening their privileged place in society. Put another way, by hoarding their wealth they have nothing to gain and everything to lose. You are also assuming that post-scarcity is actually achievable, which it isn’t, or that the future will consist of a super-rich elite and a vast underclass, which is (as stated above) just science fiction. Finally, there’s the fact that there are things that can’t be automated away, which means that workers can still trade their labor for money, just as they do today. The future is still going to need advisors, confidantes, writers, prostitutes, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/27 "2015-02-08T05:30:45Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > The reason capitalism will fail is not that poor people don’t buy basic necessities and few trinkets besides. It’s because human labor is becoming increasingly unnecessary to produce these things. When capitalists have no need to hire and pay people to produce almost all goods and services, because software and robots can do it cheaper, guess what happens to your marketplace? > > I suppose capitalism WOULD work if you were willing to embrace mass genocide starvation on the order of billions of people … I kind of hope that won’t happen. I was going to try and work in some sort of clever joke with the guy from The Matrix and Luddites, but it’s really the same, tired old argument from two centuries ago. You are still looking at things from a Marxist viewpoint when you say ‘human labor is becoming increasingly unnecessary to produce these things’, as if that’s a necessarily bad thing, that it’s a bug not a feature that people don’t have to be locked into soul destroying labor intensive manufacturing (not that even this is going away soon except in the countries where Capitalism is most prevalent…in your average workers paradise, even China, it’s still a very much alive and going state of affairs). Truth is, you are trying to save those buggy whip and switch board operator jobs that your early Neo brethren fretted about by wishing we had them back and worrying because they are going away in those nasty Capitalist oriented countries. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/28 "2015-02-08T05:40:30Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Sure, but why should capitalists give food, shelter, consumer goods, etc., to workers who have been replaced by automation? What do the former workers have to trade? Their labor doing something else of course…same as has been the case when other jobs were eliminated. There will never be a true elimination of scarcity, since even if all your material needs are taking care of, there will always be a need for entertainment. Games to play, things to read and experience, or just thoughts to share. Again, you are thinking of this all in very limited Marxist terms (not saying you are a Marxist btw, just that you have the same narrow view point on this). ‘Labor’ can mean a lot of different things, and it doesn’t HAVE to mean sitting at a conveyor belt for 8 hours a day turning bolt A in slot B, nor does it mean that because we have a machine to do that now (in much of the 1st world anyway) that those workers have nothing to trade their labor for now so must starve on the streets. The US is one of the most heavily automated countries on Earth today, yet we don’t have 30 or 40% unemployment even though a fraction of the work force does manufacturing today. It’s like how we don’t have 90% unemployment because we have less than 1% of the population in agriculture compared to a large percentage of the population even 100 years ago…those ex-farmers took their labor to do other things. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/29 "2015-02-08T16:08:25Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > FTL is science fiction. AI is science fiction. Automation and robotics are present-day realities. The only question is, how far and how fast? AI is real. “Post-scarcity” is fiction-- it’s somewhat like trying to make extrapolations about an N-dimensional equation based on a linear model. ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/30 "2015-02-08T18:34:46Z")
Who said sense was common? This is Game Theory played by people on ego-power trips. Give up the delusion that people are supposed to make sense or give a damn about each other. :smack: psik ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2015, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/31 "2015-02-08T18:41:06Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Or they only buy a ‘few goods and services that capitalism’ provides? Capitalism is an abstraction. It does not “provide” anything. It is merely a rationalization for the way Europeans want to play economic power games. Do automobiles purchased by consumers depreciate? Is it CAPITALISM that keeps economists with Nobel Prizes from computing and reporting the depreciation of durable consumer goods in every country? Is it CAPITALISM that keeps them from discussing whether or not Planned Obsolescence is occurring? [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfbbF3oxf-E) psik ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/32 "2015-02-09T02:52:50Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Do you think automation is going to become more useful? Or less useful? Do you think robotics will become more useful, or less useful? Do you think automation and robotics are incapable of being developed to design, fix and build other robots? > > FTL is science fiction. AI is science fiction. Automation and robotics are present-day realities. The only question is, how far and how fast? I actually already addressed this before you posted in this thread. (See #9) It’s intuitive that as more labor-saving devices are invented, jobs will vanish and unemployment will rise. Intuitive, but wrong. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/33 "2015-02-09T03:44:55Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Do you think automation is going to become more useful? Or less useful? Do you think robotics will become more useful, or less useful? Do you think automation and robotics are incapable of being developed to design, fix and build other robots? > > FTL is science fiction. AI is science fiction. Automation and robotics are present-day realities. The only question is, how far and how fast? Where have you been for the last forty or fifty years? Automation and robotics aren’t preesent day realities. They’re OLD NEWS. People like you have been shrieking that the robots will take all the jobs since the early 1970s, if not before. Why hasn’t it happened? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/34 "2015-02-09T04:00:35Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Where have you been for the last forty or fifty years? Automation and robotics aren’t preesent day realities. They’re OLD NEWS. People like you have been shrieking that the robots will take all the jobs since the early 1970s, if not before. > > Why hasn’t it happened? Critics of the 1970s often succumbed to the [lump of labor fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy). They assumed that the work available to workers was fixed, so that mechanization would simply reduce the work available. Troublesome, if true. The wage mechanism defeats that. Instead, we saw a great deal of substitution of low skilled work for capable machines. During the 1950s and 1960s a strong back provided a decent way of making a living. Less so now. Real wages for unskilled work have declined in the US and real wages for those with only a high school diploma have been flat at best. But you can still operate a burger flipper at McDonalds, if you accept minimum wage or close to it. Or dance with a sandwich board in traffic. US manufacturing provided a bridge to the middle class for much of the 20th century. But since the 1970s US manufacturing output has risen as US manufacturing employment has declined. Work on the shop floor can be highly skilled, requiring a college education. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/35 "2015-02-09T04:09:47Z")
There isn’t a dichotomy between the factory jobs of the 60s and being a Burger Flipper. I know LOTS of folks without a college education who do pretty well as skilled tradespeople. Carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/36 "2015-02-09T04:14:07Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Why hasn’t it happened? Well, they did. Most people found others. One thing that Evil Captor missed is that, even assuming robots do ultimately replace almost everyone, it drives down the marginal cost of everything to near-zero. Which is basically what has always happened: automation frequently does cause people to lose jobs, but at a net savings in money expended on that good or service. Which means society is can consume more of it. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/37 "2015-02-09T04:21:24Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I know LOTS of folks without a college education who do pretty well as skilled tradespeople. Carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc. Sure. But anecdote isn’t data. The decline in opportunities for lesser skilled workers is pretty well established. As is the increasing educational level of those in their mid 20s. Most have at least some college. I should say though that the manufacturing sector isn’t the only one where you can find decent work for high school grads. Quite the contrary: as noted it is shrinking in the US. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/38 "2015-02-09T05:01:45Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Sure. But anecdote isn’t data. The decline in opportunities for lesser skilled workers is pretty well established. As is the increasing educational level of those in their mid 20s. Most have at least some college. I think carpenters & etc would look very unfavorably upon you for suggested they are not skilled tradesmen. Because they are, in fact, skilled tradesmen. If anything, their skills are more difficult to acquire than a college education. Precisely because it’s become so common, college is largely meaningless for most workers. It is no longer a mark of skills or intelligence and companies don’t treat it as such. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/39 "2015-02-09T06:19:58Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > US manufacturing provided a bridge to the middle class for much of the 20th century. But since the 1970s US manufacturing output has risen as US manufacturing employment has declined. Work on the shop floor can be highly skilled, requiring a college education. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > There isn’t a dichotomy between the factory jobs of the 60s and being a Burger Flipper. I know LOTS of folks without a college education who do pretty well as skilled tradespeople. Carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc. For these reasons and the rising costs of tuition, I think that in the near future, college will return to being a pathway to highly skilled professions while trade schools will take the place of most people who aspire to be middle to upper level management today. Yes, you can’t be a high school dropout, but work hard and make a middle class living like my grandfathers could do in the 1950s. That world is gone and never to return. But in the near future, it may not be necessary to pay up to $100k to earn a college degree to be a car salesman or an office manager. Take a few classes and still earn that middle class living. Change is the only constant. The world isn’t ending because we can’t be blacksmiths, tailors, or back breaking laborers. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/40 "2015-02-09T06:30:40Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > I think carpenters & etc would look very unfavorably upon you for suggested they are not skilled tradesmen. > > Because they are, in fact, skilled tradesmen. If anything, their skills are more difficult to acquire than a college education. Precisely because it’s become so common, college is largely meaningless for most workers. It is no longer a mark of skills or intelligence and companies don’t treat it as such. I totally agree and I was worried that I may have made a misleading impression. There are unskilled workers. There are skilled workers. And education level is a separate variable. Some carpenters are unskilled of course (I once knew a guy…), but I’m guessing the great majority aren’t (ditto). Plummers sure have skills. The facts I stated remain though. In 2010, 61% of those 25-34 had attended at least some college. [Cite](http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education/educational_attainment.html). **jtgain** - Sure. It’s just that the next phase over the next 40 years might be to cut into the job prospects of the professional class. Just because they’ve been insulated up to now, doesn’t mean they always will be. I’m a technological optimist, but I would _hope_ that I’m not a social change denialist. Job prospects for folks with different temperaments have and will go up and down in long cycles. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015.md?page=3)