# What happens when the robots (peacefully) take over? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 9, 2012, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914 "2012-01-09T11:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/181 "2014-08-13T17:21:33Z")
But note that the situation in Elysium doesn’t make sense either. Everyone on Elysium is rich, right? They live up on a space station and don’t have any reliance on the hordes below. But the movie implies that the rich couldn’t be rich without keeping the masses in poverty. But that makes no sense. The space station is self-sufficient. Everything they need they already have. So what’s the point of oppressing the huddled masses? In previous times, to live a comfortable life you needed lots of workers supplying you with those comforts. You needed the whole Downton Abbey panoply of servants attending to your needs. Industrialists needed workers in their factories and plantations, otherwise the factories wouldn’t run. What do the “rich” folks in Elysium need from the masses on Earth? Nothing. They aren’t siphoning off Earth’s wealth to consume for themselves. So why are the folks on Earth so poor? A serf is poor because his agricultural surplus is constantly taken away by guys on horseback, and if those guys on horseback get killed there are plenty of horsemen ready to take their place. So if all the feudal aristocrats bugger off to a space station, in a generation a new breed of aristocrats take their place. So why, after all the rich people on Earth bugger off to Elysium, are the people on Earth still poor? ---
**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:** [August 13, 2014, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/182 "2014-08-13T20:02:18Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Except, how does “owning a factory” make you an oligarch? Building and making stuff can’t make you rich if the marginal cost of making stuff is zero. > > This is what I keep objecting to in this thread, the notion that ownership of the “means of production” will continue to be concentrated in smaller and smaller hands, and that said ownership will be more and more profitable. > > In fact, ownership of the means of production will get less and less profitable. Providing services will get less and less profitable. Owning stuff will get less and less profitable. We’re already seeing this at the low end–I know tons of struggling families, and their houses are packed to the roof with cheap crap. They may struggle to pay the rent, but they’ve got dishes and clothes and food and all sorts of things, because those things are dirt cheap to produce. The guy who owns the factory in China that is churning out 10 cent plastic plates isn’t getting super-rich doing it. And his potential for profit is just going to fall, when automated fabricators can be set up anywhere and everywhere. > > This doesn’t result in concentration of ownership of factories and automated systems–and remember that automated services are going to be even more ubiquitous than automated production of goods. Imagining that the oligarchs of the 22nd century are going to be industrialists and businessmen is like imagining that the oligarchs of the 20th Century would be feudal landholders. That entire system of obtaining and maintaining wealth fell apart in the face of the industrial revolution. Yes, there will be vast inequalities of wealth–Bill Gates has a net worth greater than the entire planet Earth in the middle ages. > > But that wealth will be used to allocate different scarce resources than we’re used to, here in 2014. What resources are going to be scarce in 2064? Land? There are millions of acres of cheap land in the midwest and Canada. Bill Gates isn’t buying up the Great Plains is he? When you have mega-rich people, the very most desirable plots of land can get bid up to astronomical levels. That doesn’t mean you can’t buy acres of desert scrub or taiga for cheap. But what are you going to do with your plot of wilderness? Live there? Maybe, if you don’t need a job because all the goods and services you need for a decent life are provided by automated systems and pensions–money you earn just by breathing. I am having trouble seeing your point. Say you own a fully automated factory that can make a popular product: DVD players. It’s really cheap for you to make those DVDs in your fully automated factory, but you still have to make enough to cover the cost of the production machinery and its maintenance over time, however low that cost might be. (Robots will be building your robots, I suppose.) So when you sell your DVDs, you factor in those costs, plus however much you need to make a profit for yourself and your shareholders. Say you need a dollar in profits for every DVD player. The parts cost five dollars, the production, 25 cents. So you sell your DVD player for $6.25, and because it’s so cheap and so good, you sell 300 million of them. You’ve made $300 million on that DVD player. You are not broke. Others with similar factories might want to undercut you, but they’ll want to make a profit too. They might cut their profit margin to 50 cents and only make $150 million. Well you can whittle down the profits only so far before you are charging profits so small that least little production cost overrun will sink you. So there’s a natural limiter on how low profits can go. That’s Capitalism 101. So how are the factory owners not making money? The only way I see them not making money is if nobody has money to buy their products … and I DO see that as a potential problem – in fact, THE potential problem. All those unemployed in a conservative/libertarian society will not be buying even the cheapest goods. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/183 "2014-08-13T20:45:36Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Well I haven’t seen the movie, just trailers for it, which have not looked all that intriguing to me, but I note that in the US the rich live comfortably among us. You mean . . . they’re adapting . . . copying our DNA. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/184 "2014-08-13T21:20:03Z")
But in real life all sorts of businesses go under because they can’t make a profit. So you’re selling DVD players, and making a $1 profit on each unit. Another guy decides to get in on your action, and undercuts you, making a $0.50 profit. Another guy jumps in and tries to get some of that, and his profits are even less. Pretty soon a guy tries to get into the industry, but it turns out that he made a mistake and takes a $0.50 loss on each player. Sucks to be him, but it also sucks to be everyone else trying to compete against him because the market is flooded, and pretty soon you’re giving away DVD players in cereal boxes. Like, literally. I remember, and this was 20 years ago, that I saw a box of Captain Crunch, and the prize in the box was a digital watch. That’s when I knew I lived in the future. Yes, it was the cheapest, crappiest digital watch you can possibly imagine. No, cheaper than that. But still. Imagine in 1974 being told that a digital watch would the the prize in a cereal box. And the point is, in the future world of the future, ramping up a factory to produce a widget is going to be easier and easier. The capital goods needed to produce arbitrary widgets will get cheaper and cheaper, and more easy to customize. It’s pretty easy to imagine a "factory’ where you just download the specs from bittorrent and you can churn out as many widgets as you have feedstock for. The hard part isn’t making them, it’s putting them on shelves and somehow convincing people to pay money for them. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/185 "2014-08-13T23:44:42Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > But note that the situation in Elysium doesn’t make sense either. Everyone on Elysium is rich, right? They live up on a space station and don’t have any reliance on the hordes below. > > But the movie implies that the rich couldn’t be rich without keeping the masses in poverty. But that makes no sense. The space station is self-sufficient. Everything they need they already have. So what’s the point of oppressing the huddled masses? In order to feel superior to them. You _can’t be_ rich without poor people to be richer than. A post/semi-post scarcity society _doesn’t have_ poor people for them to feel superior to or push around, so of course the wealthy will do everything they can to prevent one from emerging. > [@Lemur866](#): > > What do the “rich” folks in Elysium need from the masses on Earth? Nothing. They aren’t siphoning off Earth’s wealth to consume for themselves. So why are the folks on Earth so poor? Deliberate manipulation of the economy by the wealthy, likely. In a class dominated society a major preoccupation of the upper class is to make sure that the lower class stays lower class, and has their lower class status rubbed in their face at every turn. Which is a likely reason for them to all move to a space station rather than something like an island or fortified enclave; it’s so they can _literally_ look down on everyone else and sneer at their poverty and illness. The poverty and lack of “healing beds” could be enforced by some form of [sumptuary laws](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law). ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/186 "2014-08-14T00:38:58Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Let’s leave aside for the moment all the dystopian visions of doom from an automated future (The Machine Stops, The Terminator, The Matrix, etc.), not because they couldn’t happen but because I have another question in mind. > > When we look around us and see ATMs, Roombas, GPS operated farm combines, iPhone’s Siri, etc., it’s not so hard to imagine that if we were to jump forward a few more decades or a century, we could find ourselves in a time where the vast majority of drudge work (from janitorial services, to construction and agriculture, to cooking and waiting tables at a restaurant, to manufacturing everything including the manufacturing robots themselves) is done by “robots”. Not C-3PO or R2D2, but computer-guided machinery of one sort or another. Perhaps there will be a few humans needed to guide things (almost like George Jetson, pushing buttons), plus of course artistic and creative vocations like political punditry or ballet; but the stuff that maintains people’s basic Maslow hierarchy needs (shelter, food, etc.) will be taken care of without human labour, as will additional layers of luxury. > > Further, this level of automation should mean that no one is wretchedly poor, that everyone will be able to live in at least reasonable comfort without having to “work for a living”. Right? Again, maybe those who do “extra” could have additional reward for doing so, but if robots can do all the stuff I described, and assuming population is under reasonable control, no one should want for the basics. > > So here’s my question: what does the transition to this state of affairs look like? Before we get to the point where people say “duh, this is obviously stupid to make people work for paychecks and pay for everything”, it strikes me that capitalist tech entrepeneurs will try to enrich themselves by taking over sectors of the economy that used to require human labour. After all, when washers and dryers and dishwashers were invented, they weren’t just passed out to families with a benevolent wish that housewives liberate themselves from drudgery. They were (and are) sold at a profit, just like those automatic GPS-driven farm combines. > > So when the janitorial robots become cheaper than hiring people, janitors and hotel housekeepers will be thrown out of work. Same thing for taxi drivers when automated cars are perfected. And so on and so forth. At what point then, and in what way, does it cross a rubicon from creating mass unemployment (which is bad) to obviating the need for employment at drudgery (which is good)? Will the robot-making companies find themselves increasingly with fewer and fewer customers because no one will have a job? Will governments just take over, Tea Partiers be damned? Or will it somehow happen organically without great turmoil? I can see the end result, but that transition is a muddle. Whaddaya think? This was a whole genre of science fiction mostly British in the 70’s. While Harlen Ellison was refusing to print in California anything that didn’t have the F word in it there was a lot of stories about automation taking over and I loved it, lived it, and breathed it. ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/187 "2014-08-14T00:46:04Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > I’ve got a cite of a well-known research study. You have balogna. I wonder which is more convincing to the disinterested observer? Actually a disinterested observer would by definition not be interested. ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/188 "2014-08-14T00:59:19Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > But in real life all sorts of businesses go under because they can’t make a profit. So you’re selling DVD players, and making a $1 profit on each unit. Another guy decides to get in on your action, and undercuts you, making a $0.50 profit. Another guy jumps in and tries to get some of that, and his profits are even less. Pretty soon a guy tries to get into the industry, but it turns out that he made a mistake and takes a $0.50 loss on each player. Sucks to be him, but it also sucks to be everyone else trying to compete against him because the market is flooded, and pretty soon you’re giving away DVD players in cereal boxes. > > Like, literally. I remember, and this was 20 years ago, that I saw a box of Captain Crunch, and the prize in the box was a digital watch. That’s when I knew I lived in the future. Yes, it was the cheapest, crappiest digital watch you can possibly imagine. No, cheaper than that. But still. Imagine in 1974 being told that a digital watch would the the prize in a cereal box. > > And the point is, in the future world of the future, ramping up a factory to produce a widget is going to be easier and easier. The capital goods needed to produce arbitrary widgets will get cheaper and cheaper, and more easy to customize. It’s pretty easy to imagine a "factory’ where you just download the specs from bittorrent and you can churn out as many widgets as you have feedstock for. The hard part isn’t making them, it’s putting them on shelves and somehow convincing people to pay money for them. Late 70’s we were in the extermination business rats mostly was our specialty. Our basic charge was $25.00 per month for controling rats in a restaurant or such. Then came a branch of a company in Arkansas and they were doing it for $15.00 and a bit later someone decided to guarantee you you wouldn’t have rats in your establishment for a year for a one time payment of $25.00 We got out of the business entirely, but continued to get calls for several years. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/189 "2014-08-14T01:10:19Z")
> [@DingoelGringo](#): > > Actually a disinterested observer would by definition not be interested. That’s not what the word “disinterested” means. ---
**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:** [August 14, 2014, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/190 "2014-08-14T06:56:16Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > But in real life all sorts of businesses go under because they can’t make a profit. So you’re selling DVD players, and making a $1 profit on each unit. Another guy decides to get in on your action, and undercuts you, making a $0.50 profit. Another guy jumps in and tries to get some of that, and his profits are even less. Pretty soon a guy tries to get into the industry, but it turns out that he made a mistake and takes a $0.50 loss on each player. Sucks to be him, but it also sucks to be everyone else trying to compete against him because the market is flooded, and pretty soon you’re giving away DVD players in cereal boxes. > > Like, literally. I remember, and this was 20 years ago, that I saw a box of Captain Crunch, and the prize in the box was a digital watch. That’s when I knew I lived in the future. Yes, it was the cheapest, crappiest digital watch you can possibly imagine. No, cheaper than that. But still. Imagine in 1974 being told that a digital watch would the the prize in a cereal box. > > And the point is, in the future world of the future, ramping up a factory to produce a widget is going to be easier and easier. The capital goods needed to produce arbitrary widgets will get cheaper and cheaper, and more easy to customize. It’s pretty easy to imagine a "factory’ where you just download the specs from bittorrent and you can churn out as many widgets as you have feedstock for. The hard part isn’t making them, it’s putting them on shelves and somehow convincing people to pay money for them. It sounds like you think the future of factories will be not factories as we know them but something like a Star Trek replicators. That may occur, but I don’t think 3D printers are going to morph into Star Trek replicators anytime soon. I’m talking about changes that will occur in a handful of decades at most – Star Trek replicators, if they are even possible, are probably a century or three out there. ---
**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:** [August 14, 2014, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/191 "2014-08-14T06:58:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You mean . . . they’re adapting . . . copying our DNA. I guess the rich ARE different from the rest of us! ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/192 "2014-08-14T09:24:38Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > What do the “rich” folks in Elysium need from the masses on Earth? Nothing. They aren’t siphoning off Earth’s wealth to consume for themselves. Actually, the Matt Damon character toils, with poor, unsafe working conditions, in a factory making robots for the corporation owned (or at least run) by one of the super-rich Elysium residents, who periodically comes down to visit, travelling in an armored car with robot bodyguards. But what I kept thinking about was the middle-manager type who wore a short sleeved dress shirt and tie. He bossed Damon around, but the CEO treated him like a peon who was apt to infect him with something (though why he’d be afraid of germs with that med-bed back home is another good question). That was the kind of guy I would think would have, as a job perq, at least access to a communal med-bed if he really needed one. > [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Well of course, long term, it won’t work. Problem is, I see the technology moving a lot faster than our cultural and political mores are moving, and what’s even worse, the cultural and political mores among the wealthy in the US are moving in the exact opposite direction of what would work for the emergent societies where most don’t need to work to provide goods and services. Even in Europe, the wealthy ends of society are moving toward conservative/libertarian views. In the US it’s especially alarming because control over wealth and political power are shifting rapidly to these wealthy elites. I was mostly agreeing with you until that last bit. I don’t see where the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson are wielding a ton of political power. They are trying, but so far not accomplishing much. And I don’t see GOP prospects in 2016 as any better than 2012. ---
**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:** [August 14, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/193 "2014-08-14T16:41:24Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I was mostly agreeing with you until that last bit. I don’t see where the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson are wielding a ton of political power. They are trying, but so far not accomplishing much. And I don’t see GOP prospects in 2016 as any better than 2012. Not only do the wealthy elites control American policy (while economically average Americans have little to no control) _but it has been that way for at least the last thirty years_. Don’t take my word for it: a couple of political scientists have[conducted a study that makes it very clear.](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/15/government-wealthy-study_n_5154879.html) > [@Gilens and Page](#): > > “Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all,” the researchers write in the article titled, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” > > Affluent Americans, however, “have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy,” Gilens and Page write. Organized interest groups also “have a large, positive, highly significant impact upon public policy.” ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/194 "2014-08-14T16:49:29Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Actually, the Matt Damon character toils, with poor, unsafe working conditions, in a factory making robots for the corporation owned (or at least run) by one of the super-rich Elysium residents, who periodically comes down to visit, travelling in an armored car with robot bodyguards. So…the humans toil all day in sweatshops, making robots that do all the other work. Is there anything wrong with this picture? ---
**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:** [August 14, 2014, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/195 "2014-08-14T16:54:20Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > So…the humans toil all day in sweatshops, making robots that do all the other work. Is there anything wrong with this picture? Other than it not making a lick of sense? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/196 "2014-08-14T21:06:38Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Not only do the wealthy elites control American policy (while economically average Americans have little to no control) _but it has been that way for at least the last thirty years_. Don’t take my word for it: a couple of political scientists have[conducted a study that makes it very clear.](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/15/government-wealthy-study_n_5154879.html) The facts are plain, regardless of what some political scientists spin things to say. The wealthy, antigovernment, anti-regulation, anti-tax libertarian types you keep referring to spent hundreds of millions of dollars in 2012 and got jack-diddly for it. ---
**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:** [August 14, 2014, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/197 "2014-08-14T21:29:40Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > The facts are plain, regardless of what some political scientists spin things to say. The wealthy, antigovernment, anti-regulation, anti-tax libertarian types you keep referring to spent hundreds of millions of dollars in 2012 and got jack-diddly for it. There is a distinction to be made between policy (what laws are passed) and politics (who gets elected). It seems that no matter WHO gets elected, the man on the street does not get heard unless they are in agreement with the wealthy elites, who DO get heard. ---
**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:** [August 20, 2014, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/198 "2014-08-20T06:10:07Z")
[Interesting video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXcDir9Y9CI#t=665)on the ways IBM’s Watson is being used and its capacity expanded. It kind of demonstrates my notion that the current wave of joblessness is different from all the others, because the computers are flexible and can expand into new areas very easily. If I were a knowledge worker of any kind, I’d be nervous as hell. And in China, the first move toward replacing human waiters and waitresses by robots is under way. ([Another video, sorry, but interesting, I think.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlfvFE1Gj20)) ---
**Author:** ![Crazier\_Catlady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Crazier\_Catlady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazier_Catlady)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2014, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/199 "2014-08-20T12:50:58Z")
I do think stuff will continue to get cheaper with more automation regardless of scarcity of materials. After all, the materials from the products we’ve used go somewhere. There are already plans to mine landfills for some of those materials and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at some point there would be robots sorting rubbish in order to recycle it. At some point in future we might reach a point where recycling would get us all the raw materials we’d need and it’d be cheap because robots would be doing it. ---
**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:** [August 20, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/200 "2014-08-20T18:59:57Z")
> [@Crazier\_Catlady](#): > > I do think stuff will continue to get cheaper with more automation regardless of scarcity of materials. After all, the materials from the products we’ve used go somewhere. There are already plans to mine landfills for some of those materials and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at some point there would be robots sorting rubbish in order to recycle it. At some point in future we might reach a point where recycling would get us all the raw materials we’d need and it’d be cheap because robots would be doing it. Good point, landfills will be mined and replaced by automated recyling centers. And of course, robots will replace miners as well, as it is one of the most difficult, dangerous jobs there is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=11)