Shouldn't we just *ban* automation?

Great Debates
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On the Connections show I linked to, James Burke points at that as Option 2: Selective Research Only.

Not a good choice because, for starters, who decides what is sociably desirable with new automation or tech? You? Me? and on what basis? Gut reaction? and that is often wrong if one is ignorant about the advances or research made before hand.

And speaking of guys like Carlson, their gut reaction when confronted with research that sounds useless or dumb at the beginning is often wrong or hopelessly ignorant. As a local non Carlson example showed, people that ignore that scientists also quantify an issue for very important reasons, could come to the wrong conclusion that it must be stupid for researchers to investigate an issue.lets say, investigate how many Russians die for consuming alcohol. (“Well duh! why should we waste money to re-discover the obvious thing that drinking more vodka kills more people?” <- what an ignorant would say)

Getting back to the issue at hand, one thing that guys like Carlson have trouble with is to check with proper experts, it seems that the experts they rely on are also “experts” that are being selected by lobbies or political groups that also ignore proper research and history, it is a very dangerous case of the blind leading the blind, and in this case, at a level that is bound to influence national policies.

Carlson needs to check other experts rather than the ones that just look at doom and gloom.
Autor, David H. (August 2015). “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation“. Journal of Economic Perspectives.

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Why not wait for this to actually happen, rather than ask about it when the unemployment rate is 4%?

It took about 100 years for Agriculture to go from 50% of the labor force to 3%, all of it due to automation, and none of it driving an unemployment apocalypse. 47% of the labor force was made unnecessary, and there was no apocalypse, now we’re worried that cutting back on grocery store cashiers is going to break our economy?
Chronos had it absolutely right

63

Except he used too many words.

That’s better.

64

We should definitely ban automation. I don’t understand how this is even a question. What do we have left if we automate everything? A bunch of automated things?

65

Not to defend that loathsomeness that is Carlson, but do we have a cite for him actually proposing this? When I search under Carlson and automation, all I find is his being concerned about the rise of automation and that nobody in the political sphere except Andrew Yang is talking about it, but don’t see him making any such proposal (or any proposal for that matter) as a solution.

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Who never drink coffee. Can’t do it with the jitters.
I know - really small Mormons!

67

The Carlson position can be deduced by looking at what he did agree with Andrew Yang.

Jobs at severe risk from robot takeover - Tucker Carlson 3/1/19

[QUOTE] CARLSON: You are one of the only people I have met honest about the effects of the de-industrialization. I remember in Washington, the idea was, they will all become computer programmers, and so everything is fine, but that didn’t happen.

My question is do we have to sit passively back and let this happen to the country?

YANG: Well, that’s why I’m running for President, Tucker. I think it would be insane to just sit back and watch this automation wave overtake our communities and our economy. So we are not ostriches. We can get our heads up out of the sand, and say, “Look, we get it. Artificial intelligence is real. Self-driving cars and trucks are being tested on the highways right now and we need to evolve.”

We need to actually start pushing the way we think of economic progress to include how our families are doing, how our children are doing, and things that would actually matter to the American people because GDP is going to lead us off a cliff.

You know, robot trucks — great for GDP, terrible for many, many American communities. So we need to get with the program and figure out how to actually make this economy work for people.

CARLSON: I sit with my jaw open. I agree with you so strongly. Let me ask you finally, why isn’t this a central question in the campaign of everybody running for President on any side, and why instead are they talking about issues that are really are kind of frivolous? Why aren’t they talking about this?

YANG: It’s a good question, Tucker. I mean, one of the reasons I’m running for President is to push this in the center of the mainstream agenda where every candidate should be talking about what we are going to do about the fact that we’re automating away the most common jobs in the economy right now.
[/QUOTE]

As David H. Autor reported, sure, several sectors in the economy will be affected; but it will not be as sudden or a disaster for the vast majority of Americans. I would add that Yang can (and we all should) worry about the ones left behind by the new developments, but we should not fall for the ‘it will be terrible for many, many American communities.’ predictions regarding this issue.

68

Absolutely not!

My job often involves working with small businesses, such as restaurants that hire minimum wage staff. They don’t make a lot of money. These aren’t greedy corporate titans. The owner draws income from the business after they have paid for of their expenses, and they sometimes make less money than their employees! If the business loses money, they have to get their money from elsewhere (sometimes shareholder loans, so they’re living off of credit). I’m not a fan of this kind of extreme “solution”.

We’re not going to eliminate word processing programs, which eliminated a lot of secretary jobs. We’re not going to eliminate dishwashers, which saves more water than washing dishes by hand. We’re not going to eliminate email, which has damaged any business that transports paper (delivering Amazon packages aren’t quite making up for this either). We are not going to eliminate online banking and ATMs, which together have reduced the need for tellers (and may be one reason tellers are now basically salespeople).

Just the other day I bought an ultrasonic cleaner for my contact lenses (these are gas permeable rigid and are very expensive). I have to wear these for a year, and while I’ve had no eye infections the lenses got cloudy from protein build-up. The lenses are so curved that I cannot get my (fat?) fingers to the center on the inner side, so … I got an ultrasonic cleaner. That is an automated device, and I’m not going to sacrifice my vision over some nonsense. (Nor will I go to the optometrist to get them professionally cleaned once per week, as that’s both expensive and inconvenient… and that’s assuming they even offer that service.)

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I think that just the fact that Ned Ludd Carson came up with the idea indicates that it is a wholly worthless idea.

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WHAT? What Tucker says here is the same kind of hysterical “The robots are coming!” rhetoric we’ve been hearing everywhere, including by lots of people on this board and just about all of the candidates for President.

That’s a far cry from, “We should ban all automation”, or even “We should ban ANY automation.” For all you know, what Tucker wants ‘done’ is a universal basic income. You can ‘deduce’ that position from the same set of quotes. That seems even more likely given that the person he’s talking to thinks a universal income is an answer. and Tucker is agreeing with him on the potential problems of automation.

I went looking for the actual quote by Tucker, and I can’t find it. Searches keep turning up this interview, and nothing else. So at this point, I’m going to call ‘fake news’, unless someone can cough up a sourced quote from him that says anything like “We should ban all automation.”

If that quote doesn’t exist, then someone decided to twist Tucker’s words into a political hit, and we fell for it.

The real danger is not automation, but polticians short-circuiting the adaptation process by providing a living to people displaced by it, thereby reducing their incentive to retrain and find other work.

Imagine if a universal income had been the response to the mechanization of agriculture. We’d probably still have a giant underclass of ex-farmers living on dessicated, defunct ‘family farms’ on subsistence wages. Because moving off the farm, getting an education, and living in a strange city was a hell of a lot harder transition than going from, say a city banker to a city programmer, or going from being a welder to being a pipefitter when robotic welders are introduced. But somehow, tens of millions of displaced farmers managed to find work.

Let’s make sure we don’t kill off the ‘creative’ aspect of creative destruction by incentivizing the unemployed to take the easy road.

71

I see it as an exaggeration of what Tucker said, but remember: he said that he strongly agreed with Yang after he said that this would be “terrible for many, many American communities”, and that is still a gross exaggeration IMHO.

We had this conversation before, as I pointed then any universal income has to have a condition that it would happen as an incentive for the displaced to go to the places where new jobs are, and/or to get that income while they train for a new type of job.

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You know this is a dumb idea because Tucker Carlson is the one espousing it. Full stop.

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Look at how bad our civilization has gone because of it!! I mean, in the good old days when men were men and sheep were scared, we built things by hand…with stone tools! Or…well, forget those, they just make things easier. In the REAL good old days, we used our fingernails and teeth. None of this fancy fire stuff. None of those namby pamby stones used to smash things!!

I hope you were speaking mainly tongue in cheek. I sure was. :wink:

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We could call it something fancy like “the Great Leap Forward” or in this case “the great leap backwards”

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The Fox News audience is too stupid to know the difference between mao and Maga anyways, as long as guns, fuck yeah!

76

Enjoy starvation.

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Yep, sure. Great idea.

YOU start off by stopping the use of your electric can opener, your car, your phone, and your computer.
ALL of which are merely automated versions of more basic tools.

Have fun!

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So, wanted to link to [this](Final Submission: Database Design Report Package In Module Seven, you will submit your final project. It should be a complete, polished artifact containing all of the critical elements of the final product. It should reflect the incorporation of feedback gained throughout the course. This submission will be graded with the Final Project Rubric.) video by one of the guys I subscribe too. It’s not specifically about automation, but instead it’s about UBI (or what I call BLS), since that’s been brought up a few times. It’s not a really deep dive into the subject, but more a dipping your toe in kind of thing, and I thought it was interesting.

79

Just raid Disney’s Hall of Presidents.

Automation is not the problem. The problem is that as the economy advances a lot of human labor has very little value.

80

This is reminding me of an SF short story. The robots were androids, rather than automated factory machines. The solution to the problem was to make a law that only individuals could own androids and (I think) that no person could own more than five. Factory owners had to lease the androids from individuals, which created an income stream for individuals.

I can see a lot of ways that could be gamed, and most automation isn’t in the form of androids.

OK, now I’ve got visions of androids acting as carriers for sedan chairs. I should stay out of political threads.

(Automated wheelchairs roaming the city, mapping where ADA ramps are missing.)