I think most of the predictions about permanent changes caused by the virus will turn out to be wildly wrong. Companies will view this as a rare event that's not worth spending significant resources to prepare for. The march toward more automation will press on just as it did before the virus, governed largely by the price of labor vs. the price of automation.
From what I've seen the thinking about permanent change is more that, massive changes are being made now, and inertia will mean those changes will stay in place, because they'll actually turn out to be better anyway. It's just that the cost of implementing or even considering those changes was too high before, but it's necessary now.
I think a lot of that is going to depend on the types of investors left in the stock market and the types of Highly Paid Consultants that Sell Their Vision after all of this.
At the moment it seems equally likely that some companies come out of all of this with the "lesson" that remote work caused their downturn in productivity and stock value (who can remember that every other company experienced the same when your investors only care "what have you done lately?" and "what have you done 'proactively'?") and we'll quickly see a return to "everybody needs to be in the office together" culture back backed by the same consultants that learned the wrong lessons after Marissa Mayer's Yahoo! house cleaning and were still badly ratcheting companies towards as miserable as possible colocation strategies.
It seems about 50/50 to me right now which group will prevail. At least with US public traded companies the only inertia seems to whatever shiny fad stock traders are enamored with versus whatever misery HPCs manage to sell on golf courses in C-Suite handshakes. (ETA: Some of whom, the worst stock investors and HPCs are the same people, of course.)
Well predicting some companies will do something can't be wrong.
But working from home will expose a lot of stuff that can be done from home, a lot of employees who turn out to prefer working from home, and a lot of CEOs and accountants and so on will realize a lot of money can be saved on real estate. People are being quoted in the news along these lines, you don't have to anticipate it.
I just hope more companies consider working from home even after this. I've talked with some buddies of mine, and i've heard massively different results (from productivity a lot higher than on-premises work (one of the companies is a shared-space coding house... so it's very understandable), to practically zero productivity (public sector, they've actually hired a private detective due to issues)..
I know working from home all the time is not optimal, but reducing the "drive to work" days and replcing then with "work from home" for people who prefer that would be great.
I think we will see a cottage industry focused on getting companies and employees certified as essential so they don't miss out on income next time around. Also around limiting companies liability in the event their policies cause employees to become infected by the next pandemic.
He's talking about companies not people. Most unemployed Americans are getting paid their full wage. Some even get more than they would be making working.
They must go through their state's unemployment office. The CARES [0] act added $600 per week to state unemployment benefits, expanded unemployment coverage to self-employed workers[1], and extended the time you can stay on unemployment to 39 weeks.
This is more than "full wage" for people with low incomes since it's an extra $31K/yr ($15/hr) on top of existing state unemployment benefits. It won't be more for higher incomes.
It's state managed, and we definitely have a huge surge of unemployment claims to process, so your family may not have benefits yet due to the backlog of claims. Also, states may have eligibility requirements which your family members don't meet. Which category do your family members fall into?
a) Have been denied unemployment
b) Are in the queue for unemployment, but haven't gotten it yet
c) Have unemployment, but it's less than their previous income
I see lots of evidence that this is going to be an ongoing situation for the next several years. There are a few likely outcomes depending on the scientific outcome and the country:
1. We could invent a vaccine and discover that COVID mutates slowly enough that we get long term immunity. After mass vaccination in rich countries, the problem is basically solved after 1-2 years and life can go back to what it was in 2019. However, after 2 years of changed consumer habits and a set of companies and supply chains that will naturally adapt to the situation in the interim, the new normal might be significantly different than the old normal. Governments and international trade will have been changed. Investments in automation and telework will have been made. Some changes will be permanent. Like with WW2, 9/11 or the Great Recession, the ripples of causality will spread out for decades.
2. We could realize that the virus mutates fast enough that even with vaccines, we have a new endemic virus, possibly resembling the prevalence of the flu, but much more deadly. COVID will be one of the leading causes of death, up along with heart disease and cancer. People accept this increase in mortality and accept shortened lifespans. After several years of adjusting to the new reality, people start to just live with it. Some common activities completely lose their appeal due to the increased risk, such as theaters, concerts, travel, public transportation, and open offices.
3. We are unable to vaccinate against the virus, but continue aggressive measures to keep it from spreading a much as possible. We accept a new form of digital surveillance state that keeps us the goldilocks amount of isolated. We accept the new reality of algorithms determining our ability to live, work, and socialize. Life is increasingly lived digitally and in VR.
I think it's important to consider these possibilities because of the Normalcy Bias. The best way to overcome it to to seriously consider that tomorrow will not at all be like today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
> Some common activities completely lose their appeal due to the increased risk, such as theaters, concerts, travel, public transportation, and open offices.
I really doubt that. Even with very dangerous disease, like Polio and Measles, most people lived their lives as normal.
Let's take a more recent disease as an example to investigate whether people are likely to make behavior changes due to the possibility of contracting an illness since those diseases you mention have had a vaccine for about 80 years and people do generally get their vaccinations.
The AIDS epidemic peaked in 1995 in the USA at 40k deaths per year. People absolutely made permanent changes to their sex practices as a result of the disease such as safe sex, regular STD testing, and taking preventive medications (PREP). Because of transmission characteristics, the disease spread fastest among gay men and the epidemic created huge cultural changes in gay America. Until PREP was available, the idea of having unsafe sex was extremely looked down upon and seen as an unnecessary risk, even though many men find condoms less pleasurable.
So I'd say that's pretty direct evidence that people are willing to curtail or modify their recreation when it becomes risky.
> The AIDS epidemic peaked in 1995 in the USA at 40k deaths per year. People absolutely made permanent changes to their sex practices as a result of the disease such as safe sex, regular STD testing, and taking preventive medications (PREP).
This is not a good example. Most people in the United States were never in a position to get AIDS because they are not MSMs and not promiscuous. Most sex takes place between spouses.
Gay men still have much higher prevalences of promiscuity and unsafe sex practices than the population at large. Promiscuity and 'unsafe sex' was never an issue in the general population.
Your link doesn't say what you imply it does, only that promiscuity is not the ONLY cause. Which is true, anal sex (vs. vaginal) and role switching are also huge factors, as evidenced by the study they reference.
"However, according to two large population surveys, the majority of gay men had similar numbers of unprotected sexual partners annually as straight men and women."
In 2007. Gay male promiscuity has been on a steady decline since the 80s, the time of the last epidemic. Honestly, using 2007 data for the 1980s is like saying that people didn't get sick of cholera from drinking out of toilet water wells because no one does that today.
The vast majority of people are not having anal sex, which is a more common practice among gay men. Anal sex is an incredibly effective way to spread AIDs. I don't understand why this is controversial. Promiscuous anal sex between men is a risk factor to spread AIDs. Promiscuous straight couples typically don't have anal sex.
Moreover, as your study points out, 'switching' who is in what role in anal sex is another effective way of spreading AIDs. Women cannot be the penetrative partners in anal sex, so even if a woman contracts AIDS via anal sex, she cannot spread it as a penetrating partner.
But to directly contradict your false narrative. I'd point out that your study was done in 2007. That's 13 years ago. Gay male sexual behavior in 2007 greatly differed from that during the AIDs epidemic. By choosing to use an article from 2007 to explain away gay sexual behavior during the AIDs epidemic of the 1980s, it is clear that you are trying to spin a narrative instead of actually look at events. In the book "and the band played on" by Shilts, the number of partners recorded during the 80s among the minority of gay men who had AIDS was regularly in the hundreds. This is clearly more than most people -- gay or straight.
Like I said, AIDS is a disease that affected a relatively small amount of people who continued to live life as normal because they could not control themselves. This furthers my point that people are not necessarily willing to sacrifice life's pleasures due to a deadly disease
That's true, and would make the outcome more dependent on the quality of the county's healthcare system. Let's say we had an amazing antiviral that made the virus no more dangerous than the common flu. You'd need both testing capacity to rapidly identify who needed the drug, plus a ready supply of the drug so people could get treatment before their condition worsened. Rich countries could get back to a sense of normalcy, perhaps even quickly if the drug were discovered in the next month or two and were easy to manufacture. Poor countries without good healthcare systems would likely struggle and continue to suffer the worse effects of the virus for much longer till they could build up healthcare capacity. Drug discovery is normally a lengthy process and none of our current antivirals seem to be wonder drugs for this virus, so I think this scenario is unlikely.
Not anytime super-soon we won't. Even fast tracked, drugs take a while and often don't pan out. Chloroquine and the one Gilead developed both turned out to be duds. You're engaging in the normalcy bias.
I think in some countries (e.g. Australia, New Zealand) there is a real possibility that COVID may be eradicated within a few weeks/months. That could allow life to mostly go back to normal within the country, provided that severe restrictions are maintained on international travel. Those severe restrictions will do immense damage to industries that depend on international travel such tourism and higher education, and may have to be sustained for a lengthy period (at least a year, possibly several years). That outcome may be much harder to achieve in countries with a larger population and less physical isolation (such as difficult-to-control land borders).
I agree 100%, though in reality these events happen almost yearly at this point, just not quite this widespread. In just the past few years we've seen tons of localized outbreaks such as the ebola and zika scares. It's a pretty dangerous thing to assume as a one-off.
> Companies will view this as a rare event that's not worth spending significant resources to prepare for.
Rare event? The list of pandemic/epidemic events of the last two decades alone is long. The world was simply incredibly lucky the last few times, only that the Western world ignored what happened in Asia. There's a reason why so many infections and deaths are in Western countries.
With superbugs on the rise "thanks" to abuse of reserve antibiotics in farming, it's only a question of time until the world is ravaged by another pandemic.
The abuse of antibiotics leads to drug resistant bacteria not viruses. These superbugs pose a different sort of public health hazard than a flu like virus such as sarscov2. More like minor surgery leads to MRSA and death. Not to mention bacteria (even super resistant ones) don't have the airborne infectiousness to cause a pandemic in this day and age. Something like the bubonic plague can easily be controlled by basic hygienic practices.
> Not to mention bacteria (even super resistant ones) don't have the airborne infectiousness to cause a pandemic in this day and age.
Not yet, that is the point. It is only a matter of time.
> Something like the bubonic plague can easily be controlled by basic hygienic practices.
Agreed, but we see with coronavirus how many people (sometimes intentionally) ignore them. Besides many places even in developed nations lack basic hygienic needs, such as prisons (see e.g. https://www.coe.int/t/dg3/health/Prisonsreport_en.asp), which leads to endemic tuberculosis outbreaks in prison inmates.
> the Western world ignored what happened in Asia. There's a reason why so many infections and deaths are in Western countries.
Conversely, maybe Asia could make some changes to their food and wildlife handling practices so they aren't regularly introducing novel viruses to humans.
That's a racist argument, especially when looking at how Western ag farming practices have led to many epidemics and illnesses. We are all in this boat together but unlike most Western countries with lots of variety people would actually starve given that wet markets are their sole place to get food. No need to repeat Mao.
There isn't anything at all racist in my comment, either in intent or actual content. China, in particular, has stopped those exact markets in the past and they could do it again. They could build a food distribution system that does not rely on wildlife in wet markets. It is entirely reasonable to suggest that mitigation efforts for the next potential pandemic is absolutely as much their responsibility as it is any Western nation.
Epidemics are relatively common, but a global pandemic of this magnitude hasn't happened in 100 years. Maybe we'll see more of them, maybe we won't, but no company is going to invest in hedging against a once-a-century risk.
There is definitely some impact. Our IT team has been working hard to automate some manual processes that never got focus before because the labor was cheap enough.
Once those systems are developed they won't go away after the pandemic is over and those roles will likely be allowed atrophy by attrition.
Our business had seen its robotics and automation sector picking up before the pandemic hit and as other verticals have paused development plans, robotics and automation continue to press ahead.
The view here is momentum for automation already existed and the pandemic is seen as one more justification for continued investment.
Unusual and hard-to-predict events are going to more on everyone's minds. Insurance coverages will be increased. People will be more cautious and expecting the worst for 5+ years.
My take on this whole offshoring / automation conundrum is that although the current crisis won't immediately constitute a boon for automation, it will certainly pose the question in countless boardroom meetings. It's a question that's been asked before, but it's never been as top-of-mind as it is now, and that's first step to get the human and capital resources behind it to actually see this come to fruition.
From what I've heard in the manufacturing industry, automation is great conceptually but there are still many finer motor tasks for which the technology just isn't there yet, so cheap labor is the solution. Perhaps in hindsight these managers will find that concentrating all of that cheap labor in pretty much just one geography (China) isn't exactly the definition of redundancy, so supply chains in the long term will need to be redefined.
Slowly, geographies like Vietnam, Mexico, India and even the U.S. should benefit from this desire to diversify away from China. This "next generation" of factories will be smarter and pave the way for more advanced automation involving finer motor tasks.
> "The demand for smart factories is likely to grow with increased diversification of production locations – from China to Vietnam, India, and even the US." (Morgan Stanley Research. Investing in the Second
Machine Age – Picking the
Winners. July 19, 2019)
Most likely supply chain managers will establish "second source" policies, just like the US Defense Department has always done for many products. They won't necessarily move away from China entirely, but will build factories in other countries as well.
Yeah, this crisis has illustrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that you need second-, third-, fourth- sources if you can. Especially for critical goods. Moving to Vietnam doesn't do anything to solve the fundamental problem. It may not even make sense to build a second- source in vietnam. You want geographic and, to the extent that it's possible, population isolation.
So finding someplace along one of South America's coasts would be attractive. Australia would be extremely attractive if we could get automation right because labor costs there are just too high. Africa would also be attractive in the extreme. You wouldn't even have to take the resources off of the continent. Lowest labor costs around. Plus, two enormous coasts full of warm water ports.
Anyway, the idea would be to set things up so that if one region goes to the dogs, you just switch to the other.
EDIT: Now I think about it, there are some pretty large political issues in africa right now, so maybe africa wouldn't be the best place. Populism could easily end up landing you in the same situation as white farmers in Zimbabwe. Anyway, the fundamental idea still stands. Balance manufacturing from Asia and N America more towards S America, and Australia.
There is growing political demand to move away from China entirely though. I doubt its particularly popular with most people with influence, but if we've learned anything from 2016 it's that populism can be an unexpectedly potent force. If someone were to force the issue, the new GOP party line could very well end up being policy to move manufacturing away from China.
Nobody's going to buy or use a car if demand drops like a brick. All the automated factories in the world isn't going to help with the fact that inventories will just pile up, unbought and unused.
Demand will eventually recover. We're discussing what happens next, not what happens today. Supply chains and manufacturing in general, whether automated or not, don't change overnight.
HN User dillonmckay has a point. Recovery happened in all the cases you mentioned because labor had income. Which in turn created demand. Which you satisfied by increasing production. Which, at that time, required more labor. Which gave labor more income. And so on cyclically.
If we create even a sizable percentage of automated factories, then you don't necessarily need the same post-WWII levels of labor that you needed back then to get production increases. My own bet would be on inequality in the developed world actually accelerating. Businesses will be doing what's rational. Finding manufacturing locations close to coastal ports for the purposes of distributing their productive capacity across the globe in a bid for redundancy. Automating everything they can. And more.
All of which will be completely reasonable actions. It's just that the result will mean even fewer jobs, and even more education to get those jobs. Probably good for the HN crowd if I'm being honest. But not so good for opioid infested flyover country.
Technically there is one other outcome of increased automation without labor income increases - price drops of goods.
It is inferior to a rise in consumer goods in a few ways - less incentive to automate especially if there is little competition. However the lossiness of defection prisoner's dilemma works in the consumer's favor for once.
If one automates and takes lower margins then they gain market share but shrink the market cap. If multiple automate and scale up then it leads to even lower margins.
This approach does lead to more accessible goods however than an "inflated" higher income for workers norm but also devalues competition from the third world - China produces clothes even for Sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti as it is cheaper than even their labor in areas where there is less money to be made transporting goods and materials.
> Finding manufacturing locations close to coastal ports for the purposes of distributing their productive capacity across the globe in a bid for redundancy. Automating everything they can. And more.
Automation does not necessarily imply offshoring. Germany has highly automated industrial production within the country because it still has a high demand for qualified technicians in its factories, and has a highly integrated supply chain within the country and its neighbors.
This is still part of the same trends we have been experiencing for the past couple of decades. If anything it will force strategic thinking from governments of the very real second-order effects, many of which have been ignored.
That argument goes back at least to the luddites mostly unchanged. Yet here we are with many times the world population, nobody running manual spinning wheels or looms (except hobbiests for fun) and there are more than enough jobs to go around.
Sure. And if you're able to make a satisfactory living for yourself as a barista, grocery store clerk, or delivery driver, go right ahead. My only point is that in flyover country, even before, the available jobs were not giving people a decent living. A lot of them actually get more money by using the whole "disability" scheme. They're actually better off participating in that program, which is a major signal that something was wrong. My bet is that it will be more wrong in the future as measured by the number of people choosing the path of government assistance.
It's easy to say there are plenty of jobs from the perch of your average HN User. You have the skills. I have the skills. Good for us.
But from the perspective of people trying to get by in rural Wisconsin? Yeah. Not so much.
Because people will still need and want things. It's also the base case assumption. Stating otherwise would be an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence.
I think WFH is going to be the new norm, especially for higher wage office professions. Mostly because are all seeing that it can work. That alone is going to put some downward pressure on the auto sector, especially prestige automobiles.
And my wild-ass guess is that the oil markets are going to be fucked for years after this. I suspect there will be massive bankruptcies and consolidation that results in price spikes to the highest levels ever seen as mono/oligopolies emerge from the ashes and seek to capitalize on their victory in this price war.
I'd be very surprised if the auto industry as we know it know recovers from this recession.
I would say the extraordinary evidence is right in front of you. The global economy is an interconnected system and it has been shut down to a large degree, abandoning multiple balls in the air.
The oil glut crisis is an early result, our depression level unemployment rate is another. But balls are going to continue to drop: loan defaults, bankrupt businesses, hyperinflation in some countries, trade agreements blowing up.
And all of this is just the trajectory we are on right now - it may well get worse with a more severe COVID outbreak.
I think given the situation, the onus on you to explain why in the world these bad outcomes WON'T happen, since they seem l to be causally inevitable without strong intervention.
It is like the world has been juggling 5 balls at once and someone just turned out the lights. Maybe we get the lights back on in time, maybe we catch a couple of balls, but gravity is pulling everything to the ground whether we like it or not.
User dillonmckay is most likely using "demand" in the economic sense, sometimes referred to as effective demand. This refers not merely to whether people want things but how much they are willing—and able—to pay for them. Wants are effectively infinite, but demand is constrained by available resources.
As soon as this thing hit this was one of my first thoughts, once things recover there are going to be a lot of companies looking for ways to automate things because robots don't get sick, they don't have to worry about social distancing they keep going until you tell them to stop or the power gets cut.
I do wonder however if this effect will be hampered by the number of unemployed. More unemployed people means a greater supply of laborers and that translates to lower costs.
Of course on the flip side it may be that many companies are starting to see what is actually necessary for their company to operate and will run with a leaner staff moving forward.
The future will be wild that's for sure.
EDIT: When I say "translates to lower costs" I mean lower costs for labor, realized what I said could be ambiguous.
The flip side is really the question: Where does the money come from to buy the things produced by the robots if people are no longer being paid to produce things?
If you answer something like UBI, then you're just passing the buck and the obvious question is, "where does that money come from?"
This problem is secretly baked into the structure of the current crisis. More automation is inevitable, I'm not arguing about that, but it will only exacerbate the problem.
Money were once tied to gold, then became fiat. Most of society gets access to money by employment. Work for wage is a great equaliser, because the ability to work is distributed in the population. Now the equilibrium is under threat because automated work is not distributing money as much into society.
I think money could be tied directly to people if we quantify human needs. Then fulfilling these needs of the population would be the source of money. The more needs a company fulfils - food, energy, housing, communication, health, child care, transportation, education, recreation, science, arts, sports, the more it earns. If it's not benefitting people, then it is should be worth nothing.
Let them compete in serving the population, instead of us competing for jobs. Keep those incentives aligned with our real goal - to exist. We don't exist for money, money exist for us. If we redefine money to represent 'fulfilled human needs', we fix the goal alignment and the equal distribution problems.
What if we decided all resources and land were co-owned by Americans. If it is the ground or comes out of the ground. Land/oil specifically and minerals. Mining companies would still make bulk profit but there'd be taxes that are paid out in UBI.
All land for skyscrapers, office buildings, etc -- all land would be taxed at a specific value, and that would also go into UBI.
Then we could also have a VAT instead of income taxes so all Americans are also tax payers but UBI puts everyone above poverty so no biggie if we all pay tax on our purchases.
But there isn't much value in people spending their lives driving delivery cars or bagging groceries either.
The point of UBI proposals is that there is enough total value in our national economies to meet everyone's basic needs— the question of where the money/value "comes from" is simple, it comes from taking it back from where it's been concentrated over decades of inadequate taxation.
You're conflating financial value with moral value. There's a lot of financial value in delivery or bagging even if there's no moral value.
Printing money doesn't increase financial value it only increases liquidity.
> it comes from taking it back from where it's been concentrated over decades of inadequate taxation.
Again you're not increasing the financial value, you're changing how it's disbursed. Whether your fuel is in the form of gasoline or electricity you still have a finite amount of it and once you burn through it, it's gone unless you're adding more to the system.
Could you expand on what you mean by "moral value" here? Something like job satisfaction, self-actualization etc?
"Moral" as a descriptor seems likely to derail the argument here. There's nothing immoral about delivering groceries; it's providing a genuinely useful service, and can be intrinsically rewarding as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of people volunteering to do it for free in the UK at the moment.
> But there isn't much value in people spending their lives driving delivery cars or bagging groceries either.
The parent is conflating different meanings for the word "value". The grandparent is talking economic value, eg receiving money for labor. Clearly there is economic value for delivery services since I'm happy to pay them and their drivers do infact get paid.
Therefore the parent must intend a different meaning of value. The most likely meaning (that makes sense in this context) is moral value. There may be great moral value in being a doctor for instance - saving the lives of others.
I am not saying that it is the case that there exists no moral value in delivery jobs or grocery. I am saying that even if it were the case that those jobs have no moral value they still have economic value.
(I would argue all work well done has moral value, but that's irrelevant)
I do mean economic value— the jobs literally don't pay very much, mostly because there's a sizable pool of people willing to do them because they lack alternatives.
In a UBI world where those people weren't working to avoid starvation and homelessness, it's likely that much of this bottom-tier work would start to look more like the kind of job a middle class teenager does while living with their parents— they're not there to survive, they're there to earn supplementary cash for a video game or prom dress. I'd expect then that:
- Employers would experience some frustration with the flakiness of non-desperate personnel, and would be willing to pay at least something of a premium for labour that sticks around.
- That premium and the promise of even greater reliability gains would lead to increased automation pressure at the bottom end.
- Poor people who used to work themselves to the bone just surviving (eg, Stephanie Land) actually have the time to take training programs and ready themselves for higher-value work.
<- Employers would experience some frustration with the flakiness of non-desperate personnel, and would be willing to pay at least something of a premium for labour that sticks around.>
That labor cost premium would have to be reflected in higher prices. I'm not paying a premium for marginal items. That's the whole definition of premium...
<- Poor people who used to work themselves to the bone just surviving (eg, Stephanie Land) actually have the time to take training programs and ready themselves for higher-value work.>
Not everyone is cut out for higher-value work, and the amount of higher-value work is also limited. Rembember Carlin's Axiom [1]
The reason these jobs don't pay very much isn't just because there's a large pool of people willing to take them. In fact, many menial job positions have a hard time being staffed because the labor pool is not big. The reason they pay poorly is because they have low economic value. They add little marginal value to a product or service.
For example, if I want a hamburger, I can cook one at home for approximately $1.50. A nice bun, 1/4lb of fresh meat, some condiments. If I get a Quarter Pounder from McDonalds, it's around $4. So I normally only buy one for convenience; when I'm too far from home, or too tired to cook. Now if that ends up $8, then I'll cook one at home every time I want one.
[1]George Carlin — 'Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.'
Conflict diamonds and non fair trade coffee are also cheaper than what replaced them. Obviously these kinds of ethical externalities exist on a scale, but the point is that it's more complicated than just arbitrarily declaring an item or class of labour as "marginal" and moving on.
> Not everyone is cut out for higher-value work...
The snide value judgment aside, lots of artists/writers/musicians/etc begrudgingly participate in the "low value labour" market as a means of staying afloat while they pursue their real passion on the side. Isn't all of this just a further argument for taking on as a society the obligation to meet people's basic needs? Do we really need to hold people's livelihoods hostage just so that upper middle class software professionals can still get a $4 hamburger whenever they want it?
It's not the middle class that needs the $4 hamburger. They're going to get overpriced cocktails and three course meal deals at a sit down experience.
And yes quite a few people want to be artists or musicians and can't. They should be able to try but also at some point we need a mechanism for them to realize they may need to try a different career path if it's not working out and they aren't creating value.
With UBI, you're just making a subset of the population pay for everyone else. Sometimes that tradeoff makes sense - food stamps - but when you end up just increasing inflation and hurting those who it's meant to benefit then it seems like tail chasing.
The value of money comes from the fact that most exchanges are taxable and taxes must be payed in federal reserve notes ("Federal Reserve Note" is what is printed on the top of any dollars you happen to have in your wallet.)
If you were out in the middle of the woods self-sufficient except for some bartering with your friends, you would still have to pay property taxes and your barter transactions would be subject to taxation, which you would have to pay with Federal Reserve Notes or the government could come and take your stuff and imprison you.
Before the income tax (1911) you could live in the countryside and you wouldn't even have to think about the federal government, just your state and local governments, unless you were importing things. People didn't even used to elect senators, that was the state government's job.
Instead of big banks getting bailed out over and over again, before the federal reserve, you'd just call up the local rich guy, like Rockefeller who would bail out your company out of his personal bank account. People didn't need the banks to survive to move things along. These days, if there was no income tax, and the fed, you'd probably just call up some fabulously wealthy venture capitalist every time you needed some money. The low taxes on venture capital QSBS and carried interest have led to this phenomenon to some extent.
All countries of the world that purchase oil and most imports need dollars to do so. All dollars are created as debt. If there's a sudden collapse in the amount of debt created because the money multiplier is destroying debt faster than it's being created, dollars become more scarce and are bid up. The Argentinan and Venezuelans can't create more dollars to pay for their oil, so they print and have to chase scarce dollars along with all the other countries. Domestic U.S banks and companies get first access to any dollars that are created. This is essentially what happened to them in the 80s during Latin America's lost decade when the U.S interest rates went up a lot.
“Five cents, please,” his front door said when he tried to open it. One thing, anyhow, hadn’t changed. The toll door had an innate stubbornness to it; probably it would hold out after everything else. After everything except it had long since reverted, perhaps in the whole city … if not the whole world.
He paid the door a nickel, hurried down the hall to the moving ramp which he had used only minutes ago.
[…]
“I don’t have any more nickels,” G. G. said. “I can’t get out.”
Glancing at Joe, then at G. G., Pat said, “Have one of mine.” She tossed G. G. a coin, which he caught, an expression of bewilderment on his face. The bewilderment then, by degrees, changed to aggrieved sullenness.
“You sure shot me down,” he said as he deposited the nickel in the door’s slot. “Both of you,” he muttered as the door closed after him. “I discovered her. This is really a cutthroat business, when —“ His voice faded out as the door clamped shut. There was, then, silence.
[…]
“I’ll go get my test equipment from the car,” Joe said, starting towards the door.
“Five cents, please,”
“Pay the door,” Hoe said to G. G. Ashwood.
[...]
“Can I borrow a couple of poscreds from you?” Joe said. “So I can eat breakfast?”
“Mr. Hammond warned me that you would try to borrow money from me. He informed me that he already provided you with sufficient funds to pay for your hotel room, plus a round of drinks, as well as —“
“Al based his estimate on the assumption that I would rent a more modest room than this."
Is a CEO with multiple mansions and private jets and billions in the bank more worthy of life than the guy working in the mines processing the raw materials of modern civilization but living from paycheck to paycheck and barely able to support a family?
What about the mogul who raises essentials prices during a crisis? Or the traffickers running prostitution rings? There are many ways to make money without "earning" it. Can you make sure that only the people who earned their money can have it?
The point of UBI is to not have to ask or try to answer these sorts of questions.
Sure, just follow their bank statements and other financial ledgers.
> Do they need it?
I dunno, 'need' is tricky to define. Could you list all of the needs that you think you have? Why do you think you are entitled to those needs?
> Is a CEO with multiple mansions and private jets and billions in the bank more worthy of life than the guy working in the mines processing the raw materials of modern civilization but living from paycheck to paycheck and barely able to support a family?
Certainly not. Are we talking about life or money?
> What about the mogul who raises essentials prices during a crisis? Or the traffickers running prostitution rings? There are many ways to make money without "earning" it. Can you make sure that only the people who earned their money can have it?
You make a fair point, there are many ways to collect money with questionably ethical methods. Does that matter? What about rich technology workers? Folks that own businesses that aren't spectacular, like car insurance companies, speed boat manufacturers, construction companies, etc?
The burden of proof is on you to show that they did not earn it.
> Do they need it?
Irrelevant. It's theirs whether they need it or not. And whether they need it is not for you to decide.
> Is a CEO with … billions in the bank more worthy of life than the guy working in the mines…?
No, they are equally worthy of life. Which has nothing at all to do with how much wealth each of them has earned. In any case these CEOs are rare outliers; as rich as they are, if you took all their assets combined and diluted them evenly among the rest of the population nothing would materially change, at least in the short term. In the long term, since you'd no longer have competent individuals administering things, the economy would implode and everyone would be far worse off.
What, you thought corporate shareholders hired CEOs and offered them huge salaries for administering their companies at a loss? The difference they make in the company's bottom line far exceeds their pay.
Moreover, if you actually liquidated those billions of dollars worth of shares in order to fund consumption then
the companies and the productive capital they represent would rapidly cease to exist. Those few of us who survive can look forward to a bare subsistence standard of living in exchange for long, hard days of manual labor in the fields. But at least we'd all be equally poor, right?
> What about the mogul who raises essentials prices during a crisis?
Raising prices on scarce goods during a crisis is economically and socially productive. It ensures that these essentials will be saved for the situations where they are actually needed most and incentivizes the production of more essentials. If you hold prices low and pretend that it's just business-as-usual then you're going to end up with shortages.
> Or the traffickers running prostitution rings?
That's what the courts are for. But you'll have to prove it, not just throw around vague accusations.
> Can you make sure that only the people who earned their money can have it?
Guilty until proven innocent? That's not how this works.
> The point of UBI is to not have to ask or try to answer these sorts of questions.
That isn't really the point of UBI, and even if it were it wouldn't be a laudable goal. Solving the perceived problem of unequal outcomes at the expense of justice is not a trade worth even a moment's consideration—even if UBI actually had a chance of accomplishing that, which it doesn't.
> It was a response to "Didn't they earn it?" so the burden of proof is on them.
You want to take what they have away from them, so the burden of proof is on you to justify that. No one is obligated to justify keeping what they already have.
> So why can't it be given to anybody else whether they need it or not?
The owner can give it to anybody else whether they need it or not. You are not the owner.
> Why are you against the idea of people being able to live without having to constantly struggle for basic needs and comforts?
I'm not against that; the universe is.
What I am opposed to is the idea that it's acceptable for some people to take what they want from other people in order to avoid "having to constantly struggle for basic needs and comforts". Find a way to avoid the struggle without taking anything away from others and I'll be 100% on board.
Well with oil prices going negative, maybe they just bundle free unlimited gas with your car when you lease it and the oil producers pay you to take it. The government can bail out these industries to sell for negative prices. This is one way to sort of take the benefits of increased efficiency and push them back to the people.
Well, I do not think we are at the point where AI powered robots can fully replace a human service worker, but, we can definitely have a hybrid solution, where remote workers can control the more difficult parts.
So, jobs for the unemployed, and robots that can’t get sick.
Worth noting that a lot of niche industries only work today because we have better automation to support oddball things that aren't truly "mass produced." More and better automation will enable even more of these segments to exist.
Mechanical keyboards are a good example. There's a wide variety of plates, cases, and circuit boards available today that would be infeasible to make by hand, and were not cost effective to make just a few years ago. But here we are today with an appreciable hobby and market that wouldn't exist if not for improvements in manufacturing efficiency.
The automation is here and is used everywhere right now if it makes economically sense. Good overview of the pricing here: https://blog.robotiq.com/what-is-the-price-of-collaborative-... Basic robot $50k, advanced application - $100k. One can hire lots of workers for the money. Especially during recession.
Aren't these robots so expensive only because they are sold in low volumes?
It seems to me that if mass produced, they should at lesat cost less than entry-level cars, since they are a similar size/weight and simpler, so less than 15k.
And it also feels like they should cost a similar amount to premium versions of appliances like dishwashers/washing machines/etc., so in the 1-5k range.
Robots are mass-produced. Fanuc press material says they're doing 7000 robots arms per month (that's two of their locations, they have more doing other industrial automation).
"One can hire lots of workers for the money. Especially during recession."
When you hire a person, you have to pay them continuously for their work. Once you pay for a robot, you don't owe it a salary.
There's obviously other factors - ongoing costs to keep robots going, but also robots never call in sick and can sometimes work faster or more precisely than a numan.
You do have to pay for a maintenance contract and part supply chain. Even if the robot keeps working your business may not legally be able to operate outside a certain window if you're public facing (eg a clothing store).
There are times the math works out for the robot but it's not very often. Keep in mind the robots need to be managed - someone has to make sure they're working and be able to take over when they go down.
My point wasn't that it's a slam dunk - my point was just that "$100k buys a lot of labor in a recession" is a strawman in the other directions.
Industrial automation is only getting cheaper, more capable, and easier to use with every passing year. Things you "know" from even a couple years ago don't apply today. The rate of progress is pretty incredible.
Could you, please, provide any examples about current progress? Autonomous ground vehicles are there, but paths are planned drawing lines on the floor. It’s not that far from carts with ropes from 1970s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E05GSshnMOM This is the start of a multi-video series where a relatively small shop talks about implementing a robot in his factory today. Notably, he tried (and gave up on it) just 4 years ago.
I know those aren't robots walking around the floor - but that level of automation to load/unload parts is a huge thing to "keep the CNC machines fed" in more and more factories.
Look up Fanuc robots on youtube for tons of examples of automation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKrlXyLQbwM is a cool example of 2 robots on a rail servicing 4 CNC machines. What's neat here is that it's taking parts from machine to machine to work through all manufacturing steps.
None of this is exactly that "high end", either. Plenty of high end hobbyists/micro-businesses run Robodrills (like the last video) in their home garage. The UR robot in the first video I linked is super accessible as well and showing up in more and more small (<10 employee) machine shops.
You have to depreciate that purchase. How long do these robots last?
And, as a sibling comment points out, you have to pay for maintenance and operating costs. The capital price of robots is kind of irrelevant, what's the annualised TCO?
And automated systems require babysitters. How long does a 100% robot-controlled factory operate when its supervisors are in quarantine? While it's true that the robots aren't concerned with infection, I doubt that a pandemic-style shutdown can really be fully averted, even if the manufacturing process is "100%" automatic.
One human maintaining a factory full of robots is obeying social distancing constraints. They can't infect the robots, and the robots can't infect them. Unlike a factory full of low-paid workers this is actually very low risk for the spread of infection.
We actually get to see a small model of this on farms. Once upon a time every farm had dozens or even hundreds of workers. Whether planting and harvesting corn or milking cows, it was all done by hand, and it took a lot of people working in close proximity. Today's farmer has a lot of automation, which means far fewer people. One person in a harvester can harvest a field of wheat, maybe a truck drives out to them once in a while, exchanges hand signals, nobody's close enough to get infected. A couple of people can handle milking a herd of cows, they touch the cows but no need to get close to each other. No problem keeping appropriate distances.
Not every farm is like that, it's going to be a problem for fruit harvesting for example where you'd usually bring in a lot of temporary workers once a year. But these systems don't have to change everything. If there are six factories in your city, and three of them remain unchanged but the other three just become a bunch of robots, with the only human on site one mechanic and a security guard that's an enormous change.
I'd predict the opposite. The world will shortly have an international depression, and to the extent that businesses are allowed to be open, there will be 1000 applicants for every position. Wages will collapse. Demand for products generally will be low, dampened by the fact that a huge number of possible buyers are flat broke.
Those are conditions to retard the growth of automation, not increase it. You're going to spend a zillion dollars automating to produce a product people can't afford to buy while there are thousands of people outside your factory saying "we want to make your shit by hand for nearly free"?
Next couple of years will be a LOW time for automation, not a high time. (Which doesn't mean zero, obviously certain products are still going to be produced by increasingly cheap automated processes.) But some big surge in the rate of automation? No way.
We've already had massive automation events, the computer, the internet, mobile, self-checkout, etc. Everytime these steps made life better mostly, and more automated or at least allowed most people to be more independent.
The last mile of automation is costly, where the first ones were money savers.
Building physical robots and tuning them, maintenance, cleaning, updates, security, new versions etc etc.
This last phase of robots, drones and self-driving vehicles will take a long time to get right and it is much more costly to enter it. The speed of innovation also makes it quickly out of date when you do commit to it.
The automation remaining involves mostly hardware which is more costly, the initial ones were software that saved lots of money and wasted time.
I've thought about this too. A lot of businesses will come back to the US from China. They'll likely be building new state of the art plants. Automation tech has become quite abundant in the recent years. I mean, hobbyists are making industrial-ish robot arms with arduino/rpi's for under $2k. The programming is becoming much simpler as well using encoders and physically moving the robot and having it record the moves instead of coding it all from scratch. Here's one I've been looking at building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfJn7T4D-6k
Production is not going to come back to the United States when we have draconian labor laws. That is the reason it left in the first place. We are going to be more dependent on foreign cheap labor as time goes on. We cannot weaken our currency and tighten our labor laws and expect investment in manufacturing at the same time.
"Draconian labor laws" make no difference if you don't have any labor. That's key to grasping how different heavy automation makes things. Additional overhead of (let's pick a nice round guess) $5000 per worker adds up fast in a factory with 500 workers ($2.5M). But when you're only paying a maintenance technician and a security guard it's ten grand, and there are a lot of things a business might reasonably choose to do that cost ten grand without flinching.
My point is that the US industry has no compelling reason to invest in automation when foreign labor is so cheap. It is cheap because labor here is expensive. It is expensive because of regulatory and statutory intervention. You are correct that we do not have any labor(somewhat hyperbolic of course). I understand why in some cases automation makes total sense on the micro and macro level. Are you trying to say that because it is expensive to employ labor here automation will fill in the gap? If so, why? Labor is cheap in other regions and money is getting tighter as we speak. Automation requires heavy upfront costs.
You're 100% right so long as disease pandemics and other disruptive events are discounted.
And I think in a board room in 2019 you could do that, you could say it makes no sense to hedge against a disease pandemic, those never happen. It makes no sense to optimise for locality when we can get cheap labour on the far side of the globe and disruption won't happen.
But the trouble is that when you make that presentation in 2021 every single person in the room knows it isn't true, they all lived through this, they saw it themselves.
Usually the next argument is the one you already brought up - but labour costs in the US are too high. But a robot factory doesn't incur labour costs as I explained.
With the global lockdowns in place, you would have to consider the hedge. That is the point of the article and your point. There will certainly be companies that move toward automation. I wonder whether the moves toward automation at the micro level are offset by the lack of growth in the macro. Is it a wash? For how long? These are questions that we will find out.
Draconian labors laws? Oh dear.
I live in the US since 6 years. I never felt like I never had a proper contracts. All at-will stuff with no long terms commitments on either ways.
That's the tip of the ice burg. There is also the American's with Disabilities Act, Civil Rights Act, and others that combined make it incredibly expensive to employ labor.
Assuming your incredulity is not disingenuous. Is it news to you that companies have insurance and that insurance cost a lot of money. The larger your labor force is, the more likely you are to be sued under those acts. That raises the cost of insurance. Whether you agree with the Acts or not, increased costs is a simple concept.
What part of "quantify" is unclear? When you say "incredibly expensive", you are definitely making a quantitative assertion and I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what that really is.
I don't mean to suggest I'm immune to evidence against my prejudices, but I am doubtful enough I'm not going to do my own research right now.
I hate false precision, so I'm not asking for that either. Just, like, what do you think the cost of those things is in percentage points, to one or two significant figures and why?
If you run a business or something (I don't) where you have first hand knowledge, I would expect you would immediately know numbers.
You doubt it is incredibly expensive or you doubt it has any costs at all?
> If you run a business or something (I don't) where you have first hand knowledge, I would expect you would immediately know numbers.
Even if I do run a business(which I have). Insurance companies do not itemize the premiums paid by which external factors affect the amount. A person cannot quantify the factors that affect this. Literally anything in the world can happen. The actuaries calculate what they can based on past and future costs to the best of their ability.
Each one of those companies either paid up front or through insurance. When the insurance company is forced to pay out on your behalf, your premiums will likely go up. There are actions that can be taken to mitigate this. Some companies choose to have discrimination awareness campaigns as an example. This helps in two ways. It shows the insurance company that you are less of a risk, therefore your cost goes down. It also gives you evidence in court for your next suit to persuade a jury that you are not discriminating. These campaigns cost money.
You may say, "well, they would not have incurred the cost if they did not discriminate". However, lawsuits can be filed where no discrimination existed. They still cost companies "incredible" amounts of money. Either way, before the CRA, a person could not file a lawsuit based on discrimination and now they can. So costs necessarily have to increase. Even if discrimination was non existent, lawsuits would still be filed, because their is a lot of money to be made.
"Insurance companies do not itemize the premiums paid by which external factors affect the amount"
Of course not. You can still estimate numbers to your own satisfaction though, and according to my idea of logic you must have done that in order to call them incredibly large, even in a very rough sense.
I have no particular standard of evidence I'm trying to impose on you; I'm just asking for what convinced you of your opinion that complying with civil rights laws is incredibly expensive. As long as your opinion is genuine, you are able to share its basis.
People get too hung up on fighting over whose standards evidence must meet, and I think in a lot of cases, better communication would happen by simply looking within and honestly saying "this is why I think X and you make up your own mind".
> I have no particular standard of evidence I'm trying to impose on you; I'm just asking for what convinced you of your opinion that complying with civil rights laws is incredibly expensive. As long as your opinion is genuine, you are able to share its basis.
Were the individual examples listed in my link not evidence of increased costs? I define those as incredible costs. Do you understand how insurance works?
Your mind is made up it seems, but there’s no need to accuse the person above of ignorance.
Your example linked “ 5 Big Companies Sued for Racial Discrimination”. An article showing small businesses being sued/settling for discrimination would support your argument much better imo.
I have taken almost the opposite insight away from this whole ordeal. Automation is inelastic. Retooling is expensive and slow. It depends on lots of upstream suppliers having elastic production. Humans are on the opposite end of the spectrum. They're great for on-demand additional capacity at a cost.
Certainly seems like an automated stream of Coronavirus riding agenda's.
Anything that has "Coming soon" or "Than we thought" always triggers a level of credibility erosion in me, this just went full on.
Thing is with automation, what do you do with all those excess humans who are no longer needed to work as I do recall the 70's champion the future would see us all spend most of our time on leasure and 3 day working weeks. Seems a case of some people end up working 6-7 day weeks and others none.
But automation has been on it's way for so long, it's not an overnight shift, but a gradual one. Then the net result is never what is expected. Heck other day people read abour Rumba and how ealy models failed sooner as people was using them daily instead of weekly as previously. So the time saved in one area of interacting with cleaning shifted to another of almost gamified interaction, marking out area's, playing with it and stats. So whilst some automation can do wonders, it can often shift the problem into something else and still not save overall.
I don't fully understand the arguments in these kinds of pieces. Haven't businesses always been economically incentivized to automate everything, because that's just how labor costs work?
It seems implausible to me that the bottleneck to mass automation (or rather, more widespread automation) is the willingness of corporations to invest in it. The more feasible blockers—the fundamental technology even existing, the cost of research/production, etc—don't seem correlated to Coronavirus.
When companies are making easy money, there is very little incentive to improve efficiency, and a lot of incentive to continue the status quo. It’s only during tight times do companies actually begin to seek out new efficiencies.
Example: automated oil rig machines have existed for quite a while, but they really didn’t see a lot of usage until the oil crash in 2016[0]. After this crash the number of oil rig workers remained at low levels, even as oil rigs starting to produce again. Those jobs were already vulnerable to automation, it just took a financial crisis to trigger it.
That's fascinating, and makes sense. I didn't think of it until you brought it up, but the risk/reward of investing in automation vs. maintaining current margins certainly flips when current margins plummet.
Purchases made with leveraged money that is all but disappearing. We are no longer in a 2016 scenario. Your link is to another article that is pushing for UBI using fear of automation that has no historical backing. Automation has been taking place since the dawn of man and people magically still have jobs even though the population has exploded. This is nonsense.
One blocker within company is the labor itself not being in favor of automation, because they care about having jobs.
Software engineers on HN should have had experience of significantly improving some manual procedures, only for half the department to be laid off later.
I worked on a project once that would have had that effect, if it had been successful. But it depended on the assistance of the people doing things manually, who were overseas. It seemed to me their self-preservation depended on communication problems sinking the project. So I had this feeling it was doomed from the beginning being entirely predicated on conflicts of interest.
Anyway, I later developed the hypothesis that one counterbalance to lower productivity in the government is that when people essentially cannot be fired, they are less likely to resist automation and efficiency. There may be more "dead weight" but it's not actively fighting the people who are improving things as much as in the private sector. Laziness cuts both ways. I'm interesting in why anyone might think this is clearly incorrect.
There will be many Covid survivors with lung damage who once the air pollution starts to increase find they struggle badly.
In fact many of us may struggle if as predicted levels dramatically and quickly increase as lockdowns are lifted.
Plenty of us may also struggle with the noise pollution also.
There will be a massive push for clean air and possibly a more quieter world.
This was all exactly what Yang was running on. His campaign must be fairly bummed to have not stayed on message and instead making the various faux pas with is supporters such as endorsing Biden and saying Asian Americans must be more American in face of discrimination.
I can't be the only one who has noticed the huge influx of articles and comments for UBI in places like reddit and even HN, of late. It seems that the ongoing crisis is fuelling a lot of agendas.
If a crisis exposes a weakness in a system and you're making a good faith suggestion is that really a bad thing?
The US government's attempts to keep people afloat have pretty clear major issues, for instance. Is it really a bad thing to suggest that we should have a system in place to handle these sorts of events, even on smaller scales, rather than trying to rush something out when every day counts? I'm not arguing for UBI per se, but if somebody thinks it's the right solution then is it a bad thing to argue for it when an example of its usefulness is fresh in everybody's mind?
Obviously there are plenty of bad faith suggestions going around too, but I can't help but think platitudes like this do more to shutdown good ideas than bad.
Stimulus cheques handed out at an actual time of crisis is not the same thing as an unending flow of such cheques during times of low unemployment and economic stability. I think that distinction is being lost in this discussion.
A lot of people who are in favour of some kind of intervention right now aren't necessarily going to want to turn this permanent.
> Stimulus cheques handed out at an actual time of crisis is not the same thing as an unending flow of such cheques during times of low unemployment and economic stability. I think that distinction is being lost in this discussion.
For people who can't gain sufficient employment* this is an ongoing problem. The people who won't want to make it permanent are people who do not experience this type of instability on a regular basis.
It is interesting how our first thought to say "obviously this is temporary" rather than taking an empathetic look at what it must feel like all the time for a segment of the population (I'm just as guilty here).
* i.e. 1 job, 40 hours a week or less, that allows one to live a fulfilling life
> Stimulus cheques handed out at an actual time of crisis is not the same thing as an unending flow of such cheques during times of low unemployment and economic stability.
A regular flow of such cheques compared to crisis stimulus cheques has a couple of advantages though:
- you don't have any ramp-up time, not even if you decide to up the amount in crisis time, as the system already exists
- you don't need to coordinate with multiple levels of governments, insurances, ... to hand out the checks
- regular UBI could offset/replace many struggling programs, from food assistance over child support to other financial aid, thus leading to less overhead costs
... which is probably the reason so many wealthy-ish are against UBI. A lot of jobs would have to be paid their actual worth and in improved conditions (farming, nurses, education, trash/sewage, "nannies", cleaning, meatpacking) if those working the jobs would do it out of passion instead out of the need to survive.
An awful lot of the wealth in Western states is based on this exploitation.
I don't think it's so much a question of bad faith, as that there are times when people are more receptive to taking drastic measures. I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about seizing those opportunities if one's proposal is moral. That doesn't mean that it's not being done consciously in many cases.
Some of that make me pretty sick. I saw some startups pop up with public recruitment going through competitions and abusing the volunteers to push themselves to work for the cause so they can get funding from the investors for their "covid" cash cow project. I didn't have words when the guy made few announcements threatening people about unemployment, mentioning how rich they can get if they just follow him, if they don't follow him all's left for them is recession, unemployment and lot of nasty manipulating shit. Calling people losers and patting themselves on the back for solving the problem by introducing yet another surveillance clone.
If your default approach is cynicism, how would you know the difference between let's say a topic being relevant to world events, and fueling agendas? Like did you consider that maybe people genuinely believe that discussion regarding UBI is especially relevant during this once-in-history, civilization-disrupting event?
the debate over automation and ubi has been raging ever since 2009, when a lot of jobs were permanently loss due to the crisis. Not just low-skilled jobs being threatened by middle class jobs too Pre-2009 here seemed to be much less interest and concern in regard to UBI and automation.
The Corona virus situation is shining a lot of light into the dark corners of our society and the way things currently function, and it's not flattering.
I saw a tweet that summed it up perfectly.
"Corona virus is a black light and our current world is a c*m-stained hotel room".
Given so many people are out of work, and this need for social distancing may continue for years, it's the perfect time to discuss improving society.
Did shutting down huge swaths of the economy "improve society"? Even if one agrees that is has been necessary in the short term (most seem to agree it has been needed), if we're still mired in this even mere months from now, we've probably got far bigger problems with which to contend than pushing projects like UBI.
> Did shutting down huge swaths of the economy "improve society"?
Just to name a few off the top of my head:
There is vastly less pollution, people are spending much more time with their loved ones, people are spending much less time in vehicles and commuting, and people have much more time to explore their passions and hobbies like instruments and drawing.
> pushing projects like UBI
Calm down. I'm not "pushing" anything, certainly not UBI. I simply said it's a great time to have discussions about the pros and cons of out current system, and any possible improvements.
> people are spending much more time with their loved ones
Some people, maybe. I live by myself. The rest of my family lives two states away. I normally drive to visit them several times each year. I've already been forced to cancel one planned visit and it's difficult to say when the next one will be. My parents at least have each other, but they miss spending time with their grandchildren (my nephews). Likewise for my grandparents. The occasional group video calls are nice but just not the same.
I hardly think my case is unique. People are spending more time with people they live with, because they're forced to stay at home. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the situation. I'm sure it's caused problems for people suffering from domestic abuse, for example. One's loved ones need not live in the same house—and the people you live with may not be your loved ones.
> people have much more time to explore their passions and hobbies like instruments and drawing
Not if they're working remotely—you don't necessarily have more free time just because you're at home all day. For the rest, they could have had that time before just by quitting their jobs. Certainly the extra free time and lower pollution are something of a silver lining, but let's not pretend that this is a net improvement compared to the way things were before. Being forced to stay home is not something people would have chosen out of preference.
Not sure why you were flagged - times of discontinuity seem like the best time to discuss how we'd like the next equilibrium to look.
Maybe people are just reflexively opposed to contemplating the possibility that the next 'business as usual' won't be familiar. It is scary to contemplate revising a lot models I have of the world, if I'm honest.
It's a bit of a tangent, but is downvoting or flagging on a site like HN a threat to free speech? Maybe it restricts speech on HN, specifically, but then we would be separating the more traditional understanding of "free speech" (linked specifically with government intervention) from another one (like the happenings in a private forum such as HN).
I do downvote people I disagree with on HN, that seems like simply a low-effort way of registering one's opinion. Flagging I think of as being intended more for abusive, as opposed to just unintelligent, statements. Certainly, if someone abused the tool to flag everyone who expressed a certain opinion, that would be suppressing free speech. Whether the government would be obligated to intervene would likely depend on whether the owners of HN would like the suppression to stop.
>There is vastly less pollution, people are spending much more time with their loved ones, people are spending much less time in vehicles and commuting, and people have much more time to explore their passions and hobbies like instruments and drawing.
Some people. We have to be careful not to frame the discussion exclusively from our own, respective positions. I'm very fortunate, for instance, to be able to work from home very easily. This is not the case at all for many. Some have seen their hours increase if they're in the "essential" (a word I hate, but it has become the norm) job category, and/or have taken on risks to their health. Many have lost their jobs entirely.
The reduction in pollution is good. Don't get too used to it.
>Calm down.
That wasn't necessary.
>I'm not "pushing" anything, certainly not UBI.
You may not be, but there is no question that there are many who are, and that's why this thread exists.
something is going to give somewhere, either we get something like temp/perm UBI, contact tracing, pervasive testing. Each of these things has their pros/cons and the last 2 have "slippery slope" implications with privacy and/or bodily autonomy. The first has the "slippery slope" implications the right complains about, but I don't believe a UBI would lead to a massive outbreak of lazy. It _would_ lead to a massive outbreak of people leaving BS jobs - especially if we get healthcare fixed.
What you call "BS jobs" are necessary to someone out there right now. That said, if they cannot fill those jobs because UBI is more attractive than the wages for said jobs, indeed one might find those jobs to be automated in the future - ironically (or not?) leading to more "need" for UBI?
In Australia the minimum wage is $19.49/hr and it has the world's most liberal welfare where it's perfectly easy for anyone to get $1130/mo (more if you have kids, more for rent assistance.) even university students can get paid to go to school.
Those things have been true and in place for decades, and they have not destroyed the economy. There are not jobs that are unfilled because people don't want to do them. In fact Australia's economy survived the 2008 crash as well as the best in the world, and continues to be very strong.
You don't need to make guesses about what will happen if free money from the government is available to the masses, you can look at places that are almost doing it already.
"Did shutting down huge swaths of the economy "improve society"
Well, how many lives does the lack of pollution save? People talk about suffering from being unemployed, but if that can be dealt with by temporary wealth redistribution...
All I know is self-driving cars are going to be killing a lot of passengers and pedestrians when corporations and programmers now get government liability waivers, rush out the project and just say "oops" when the spot the bug in the code.
I mean who goes to prison when a car runs someone over and no-one is driving? What is a developer's motivation to be careful and defer to safety? We've already proven a good chunk of the population are sociopaths, they don't care who dies as long as they get their paycheck.
>If you assume something will automatically happen, without a particular mechanism
He didn't mention it, but there are some pretty obvious mechanisms for this to be true:
1. Automated drivers don't get tired.
2. Automated drivers may "see" more of their environment than a human can. Human sensors aren't upgradeable.
3. Automated drivers don't get drunk.
4. Automated drivers don't have emotions.
5. Automated drivers aren't distracted by the infotainment system, the children in the back seat, or even some thought about what just happened at work.
6. With time, automated drivers can be improved, while human weaknesses stay constant.
There are of course drawbacks:
1. Humans have intuition about situations they've never been in. Most AI/machine learning still generalizes poorly.
2. The programming may be buggy.
3. The datasets may be inadequate.
So what will happen is definitely out there, but there are clear mechanisms for this to happen.
A list of possible advantages is not what I mean by "a mechanism". It's very, very much not. I'm not saying I disagree with anything in particular that you listed, but you can list any number of things and it simply doesn't even assert what those things sum up to.
Automation requires investment. Recession means less capital for investment. The estimate of $12 dollar meal implies that people would be spending the time they use to cook the meal to work instead. That is idealistic. People generally do not work every waking moment of their lives.
As we get to the bottom of the article we find the real point is to push UBI. When money is created and given to people who do not work, that money becomes worthless. What manufacturer is going to invest in robots to create products for people who have monopoly money?
