I got into an argument with a person who believes that we can remove scarcity by having government apportion resources “efficiently.” Further in, he posted this on the topic on the need for labor:
I have ten people. All of them are, I don’t know, dust bin technicians.
I build a dust bin robot.
It can do the work of 4 dust bin technicians. It only takes two people to build it, and one person to service it.
Now I have one dust binbot, two dustbinbot builders, and one dustbinbot mechanic.
and one guy who is redundant.
The dust binbot guys make another binbot. the mechanic has enough time to service two binbots.
Now I have two dust binbot builders, two dust binbots, and one dustbinbot mechanic. I still have two dustbinbot technicians.
And five redundant guys.
So what do we do with all the people who are no longer needed? Whose jobs have become obsolete, who have been downsized and outsourced? We’ve still got the same amount of stuff. In fact we keep getting more and more stuff. But now all these obsolete people can’t buy the stuff. They don’t have anything to buy it with. So now we have people who can’t buy stuff, stuff we can’t sell, and lots of binbots.
I could build a robotic grocery store. Wouldn’t be very hard, even. And a robotic gas station, a robotic coffee shop, a robotic, oh, I don’t know, damn near anything. One Red-Box Kiosk is an entire Block Buster Video, and it replaces all the people who work at blockbuster with a couple of technicians. The entire health insurance industry could be swept away by a universal healthcare system. They’re not doing anything helpful or useful, they’re just unnecessary overhead that refuses to die. Wallstreet? They actually cost us money. All the financiers and hedge fund whatevers, zoosh! Totally useless, get rid of them. Janitors? Roombas. Airline pilots? Bad idea anyway, autopilot is more reliable? Taxi drivers? Google is going to have a Johnnycab on the streets in five years. Weather forcasters? They’re basically stand up comics at this point. Newscasters? Reddit does a better job for fun. Clothes manufacture? I could build a robot tailor that would fit in a retail storefront and kick out high quality clothes that actually fit you. Foxconn is thinking about replacing all it’s workers with robots that don’t jump of buildings. We have combines that can do the work of a thousand farmers. When someone eventually builds an automated lettuce picker the agriculture industry is going to be entirely hands-free. GPS guided robot combines can probably hoe a straigher row anyway. Soldiers? Why? We can do it better with robots, and since we don’t have to worry about humans we can pack more of them into less space and do things that would be suicidal with meat troops. God, what do people even do these days? the only things that humans do because robots can’t is some creative work, and we’ve got AIs on the way that will be able to do a lot of that.
We’re kept down by this persistent, hideous fear of actually accepting the future.
This is standard stuff, yet I have not yet typed up a response to this argument. I’m thinking of writing one and submitting it to the Mises Daily if you guys think it might be good enough.
Here is my approach to the idea:
He thinks that the economy is some separate entity that exists outside of the satisfaction of human demand. This leads to him believing that you can have all of this technological improvement in the void, outside the market process.
What does this mean? It means that he thinks that automated everything would just “be made”, and suddenly no one has jobs.
Yet he never stops to think of what the purpose behind these businesses and time-saving devices is. The point is to bring a product to market. If everyone suddenly has no job and can’t use the services, then all of this technology is pointless. The shops would all fail because they would have no more purpose, because no one can buy the goods. Ultimately, production exists to fuel consumption, but before any consumption can be executed, there must be first and foremost production.
The fellow making the above argument arrives at a state in the economy where there is no production by the masses. Hence, there can be no consumption. Hence, the production of even the few people left with capital becomes pointless, as there is no demand for it.
The scenario he proposes is thus absurd.
Am I right, here?
