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

Sat Dec 12 09:22:44 CET 2009

No one doubts that automation plays a role in productivity, that it
displaces jobs in the sectors where it is applied .. the question however if
this is the monopolar element that drives every detail; such as using it as
sole explanation of current unemployment  in the US, as it claimed by
Paul .... so suddenly automation doubled in one year; independently of the
economic meltdown ? (For me, this explanation is in the same league as
claiming joblessness is the result of lazyness, the usual claim of the
right

I'm happy to learn households robots have taken over from domestic help in
the cayman islands and south africa, though it is the first time I hear
about this, definitely in my part of the world; and that includes even happy
robot Japan, there are zero household robots in operation (unless of course
you want to count mixers and washing machines...); domestic help is still
where it is at .. Given me a nurse or a masseuse any time over a machine,
i'm pretty sure a lot of people think differently than you on this score;
they're happy to take the germs and the human warmth and relationship above
a germ-free robot

Of course automation and productivity increase is one of the underlying
mechanisms of the capital system, and it does carry the promise of ending
the scarcity paradigm in certain areas of material production; and it is far
from certain that the current configuration of capital knows what to do
about this, it's part of the crisis of value  that we have been discussing
here ..

I find your theory of Japan interesting, though it is also the first time I
hear it expressed.

So Ryan; you think that Japan has reached some kind of hard limit in
material expansion? I'm interested to hear more about this thesis,

Michel

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 2:02 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  On 12/10/09, 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.
>
>
> I disagree completely.  Productivity has been wiping out jobs for some
> time.  Whether the variable term "robotics" has any meaning on the topic is
> debatable, but not so much in Detroit.  Robotics in the AGI sense is still
> 10-20 years off.  I can say that in my field, workforce development, it
> isn't even controversial.  There is less work than there is economic
> capacity to do it.  Always has been...and it is getting worse.  It will get
> much worse.
>
> Our workforce here has exploded with unskilled labor in areas like house
> helpers.  But people don't want them...just as they didn't in South Africa
> when I was there.  Do you think people will choose a human who carries
> germs, has an attitude, needs help when sick, etc. to load their washing
> machine when they can spend 10,000 USD for a robot to do it?  It won't be
> close.  People will always choose automation...just as businesses have.
> Automation doesn't form unions, doesn't call in sick, doesn't need
> retraining, and has a consistent measureable level of quality and output
> that can generally be improved.
>
> The more basic and simple problem is that people cannot consume what we can
> make under any economic model that makes even the remotest sense in market
> terms.  It is, I believe, why we have invented the super-rich again.  Their
> capacity to consume and waste is simply necessary for capital to work.
>
> Just look at farming where one or 2% of the population over-produces demand
> easily...and 2% is down from 90%.  Imagine industrialized production coming
> online in Africa which is far more fertile and has much longer and better
> growing seasons than nearby Europe.
>
> Why would that change in other fields?  The real controversy is that people
> thought there was infinite economic demand.  There isn't.  Japan is proving
> that decisively...2x their GDP in stimulus has pushed a rope.  There is no
> uptake.  Even with the explosive consumerism in Europe and the US in recent
> years, there is no prospect of ever really de-leveraging consumer and small
> business debt (certainly not in our lifetimes).  Thus demand will again be
> stagnant for at least 10-30 years.  It was the libertarian market guys who
> got the world wholly wrong.  They destroyed us.
>
> Even still, we deliberately kept the developing world developing so as to
> avoid their labor influx to a low-demand world.  Now we have the technology
> to improve productivity without unskilled labor.
>
> If you wish to starve in the future, have skills that have no economic
> meaning.  Your choice.  Governments are no longer able to carry the weak.
> So, we are essentially returning to something like Russia in 1916.  There
> are vast numbers of useless people.  Something must be done...either they
> gain power (which has never worked before) or they are eliminated (which is
> gruesome but works) or there is a third way.  I vote for the third way...
>
> The end of any project of scarcity is always increasing scarcity and social
> collapse.  With technology and market knowledge, it is impossible to
> maintain scarcity in balance with workforce at a level that maintains social
> stability.  Thus, abundance theory isn't an interesting take on information
> fields, it is an essential political philosophy of the future that breaks
> with the now long-obsolete thoughts of the 19th and 18th centuries.
>
> Ryan
>
>
>
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