[p2p-research] Tick, tock, tick, tock… BING

[Michel Bauwens]

yes, I'm afraind that Paul has a faith-based approach, as long as you know
that no amount of arguments or facts can get in the way of that certainty ..
<g>

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Stan Rhodes <stanleyrhodes at gmail.com>wrote:

> I agree completely with Kevin about the red herring of automation.  Paul
> seems obsessed with it.  Although I haven't managed to read every email and
> link, I've thus far found none of it significantly compelling.  After one
> attempt to encourage more active skepticism on his part, back near the
> beginning of July, I quickly saw the writing on the wall.  However, until
> now, I've been missing a trick performed right in front of my nose.  Now
> it's caught my eye:
>
> Paul, I assume you are the wikipedia user "Freevolution," who has written
> most of the Wikipedia "jobless recovery" article, right?  You've linked to
> it in multiple emails, including this one, quoting it with no mention that
> you're essentially quoting yourself.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery  Really man, what the hell?
>
> Also, happy holidays, p2pr.
> -- Stan
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Kevin Carson <
> free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 12/9/09, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
>>
>> >  Marshall Brain was the first person I read who was really explicit,
>> step by
>> > step, about the link between automation and joblessness at all levels,
>> > especially in Manna. It had been said before for a long time, but he
>> really
>> > seemed especially clear about it. And he makes clear an economic link in
>> the
>> > sidebar here, written around 2002:
>> >   http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
>> >  """
>> >  The "Jobless Recovery" that we are currently experiencing in the U.S.
>> is
>> > big news. See for example The Mystery of the 'jobless recovery':
>> >   "Consider these facts: Employment growth at the moment is the lowest
>> for
>> > any recovery since the government started keeping such statistics in
>> 1939.
>> > The labor force shrank in July as discouraged workers stopped seeking
>> > employment. The number of people employed has fallen by more than 1
>> million
>> > since the "recovery" began in the fall of 2001." [ref]
>>
>> Paul, as interesting and well-argued as your posts on the subject are,
>> I'm afraid I'm extremely skeptical that automation is the primary
>> reason for the jobless recovery, or that that will be a primary cause
>> of structural unemployment in the near term.
>>
>> For one thing, replacing humans with industrial robots is the kind of
>> expensive, capital-intensive investment that the old mass-production
>> industrial core was prone to in its heyday.
>>
>> But the old manufacturing corporations are deliberately eschewing
>> investment in capital-intensive factory machinery, for the reasons
>> described by Piore and Sabel, and instead outsourcing production to
>> small-job shops in distributed supplier networks.  Those job-shops may
>> be more technically sophisticated than the factories they're
>> replacing, but it's the kind of sophisticated machine design that
>> expands the machine's usefulness as a craft tool in the hands of a
>> skilled worker.
>>
>> More than anything, I think structural unemployment results from
>> excess industrial capacity and the lack of sufficient demand to run
>> industry at capacity.
>>
>> And even for mass-production industry, it's of questionable economic
>> benefit.  For one thing, a robot hand with sufficient manual dexterity
>> to perform a wide range of delicate operations is great, but until
>> there's also a robot with the processing capability of the human mind
>> that's capable of the craft skills and judgment to run a range of
>> general-purpose machinery, the way a Japanese worker does on the shop
>> floor, robots are probably the least thing folks in Detroit have to
>> worry about.
>>
>> The Japanese deliberately chose Taichi Ohno's reinvented version of
>> craft production with flexible machinery and a skilled work force,
>> over robotization and deskilling of the work force.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Kevin Carson
>> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
>> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
>> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
>> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
>> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>>
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