We Speak For Earth

How The 1% and the Machines May Come To Rule Us All

That’s my own sensational title, but it’s very fitting. This article, from the Atlantic and part of a 3 segment excerpt from a new book, is basically the article (and book?) I’ve been waiting 4 years to read! And also very timely with OWS, which is an awesome bonus.

As RCS followers know, I’m a major tech lover. That said, tech innovation also scares the pants off of me. There are for a few reasons, with the terminator-apocalypse low on the list. More realistically, a major concern of mine has been how technology will put people out of work. Because while technology can empower the average citizen (e.g. 3DP), it can also decimate fields of work, even destroying businesses. (Just think of how badly the US Postal Service is doing due to email, or how self-driving cars will effect taxi-drivers and truckers.)

This is a serious problem. A very serious problem, and one which I’ve been thinking about for some time. What will we do when robots can replace us? And don’t think it’s just simple, menial labor. It might almost be the opposite. There’s a lot of research into machines and programs for augmenting (read: decimating) and replacing (you read that right) even highly skilled positions like doctors (e.g. here, here, and here) and, say, stock-traders. Cause sure, there may still be a few positions left for humans even after machines mostly take control (e.g. one security guard monitoring 10 security cameras), but even cutting half of the positions for a field will produce an avalanche of problems. For instance, already now with unemployment at 9% [!], we’re seeing many students dropping out of college b/c the cost of tuition is extremely high and there’s no job security; thus, less incentive to go especially with the risk of heavy debt weighing down on a graduate’s shoulders.

And it’s a bit odd: On the one hand, robotic labor seems to open up the possibility of a more Utopian world where people needn’t work much (or at all?) to live; however, unless some big changes happen to the planet, the more likely scenario is that a few extremely wealthy people will simply own the robots that can do everything. And what will we do when there’s little-to-no work for us to do?

I don’t know. Like I said, it scares the pants off me. This article doesn’t suggest a solution (though it does emphasize the greater need for higher education, and perhaps we should work to include that in the public schooling system). And I’d really like to hear one.

Seriously, if you have any ideas, let me know!

(Hat tip to emergentfutures for the link.)

• RCS Highlights:

At least since the followers of Ned Ludd smashed mechanized looms in 1811, workers have worried about automation destroying jobs. Economists have reassured them that new jobs would be created even as old ones were eliminated…. However.. There is no economic law that says that everyone, or even most people, automatically benefit from technological progress... [T]echnological progress is not a rising tide that automatically raises all incomes. Even as overall wealth increases, there can be, and usually will be, winners and losers. And the losers are not necessarily some small segment of the labor force like buggy whip manufacturers. In principle, they can be a majority or even 90% or more of the population…

If wages can freely adjust… [then] at some point, the equilibrium wages for workers might fall below the level needed for subsistence. A rational human would see no point in taking a job at a wage that low, so the worker would go unemployed and the work would be done by a machine instead…

As technology continues to advance in the second half of the chessboard [nice Kurzweil reference - Ari], taking on jobs and tasks that used to belong only to human workers, one can imagine a time in the future when more and more jobs are more cheaply done by machines than humans. And indeed, the wages of unskilled workers have trended downward for over 30 years, at least in the United States. …lower pay only postpones the day of reckoning. Moore’s Law is not a one-time blip but an accelerating exponential trend…

We’ll start with skill-biased technical change… A lot of factory automation falls into this category, as routine drudgery is turned over to machines…

It’s clear … that wage divergence accelerated in the digital era. As documented in careful studies..  the increase in the relative demand for skilled labor is closely correlated with advances in technology, particularly digital technologies. Hence, the moniker “skill-biased technical change,” or SBTC….

Ever-greater investments in education, dramatically increasing the average educational level of the American workforce, helped prevent inequality from soaring as technology automated more and more unskilled work…

A key aspect of SBTC was not just the skills of those working with computers, but more importantly the broader changes in work organization that were made possible by information technology. The most productive firms reinvented and reorganized.. to get the most from the technology…

The second division is between superstars and everyone else. Many industries are winner-take-all or winner-take-most competitions, in which a few individuals get the lion’s share of the rewards… The superstars in each field can now earn much larger rewards than they did in earlier decades.

The effects are evident at the top of the income distribution. The top 10% of the wage distribution has done much better than the rest of the labor force, but even within this group there has been growing inequality. Income has grown faster for the top 1% than the rest of the top decile. In turn, the top 0.1% and top 0.01% have seen their income grow even faster. This is not run-of-the-mill skill-biased technical change but rather reflects the unique rewards of superstardom... If technology exists for a single seller to cheaply replicate his or her services, then the top-quality provider can capture most—or all—of the market. The next-best provider might be almost as good yet get only a tiny fraction of the revenue.

Technology can convert an ordinary market into one that is characterized by superstars. Before the era of recorded music, the very best singer might have filled a large concert hall but at most would only be able to reach thousands of listeners over the course of a year… Once music could be recorded and distributed at a very low marginal cost, however, a small number of top performers could capture the majority of revenues in every market, from classical music’s Yo-Yo Ma to pop’s Lady Gaga…

According to economist Emmanuel Saez, the top 1% of U.S. households got 65% of all the growth in the economy since 2002. In fact, Saez reports that the top 0.01% of households in the United States—that is, the 14,588 families with income above $11,477,000—saw their share of national income double from 3% to 6% between 1995 and 2007…

The third division is between capital and labor. Most types of production require both machinery and human labor… If the technology decreases the relative importance of human labor in a particular production process, the owners of capital equipment will be able to capture a bigger share of income from the goods and services produced...
According to the recently updated data from the U.S. Commerce Department, recent corporate profits accounted for 23.8% of total domestic corporate income, a record high share that is more than 1 full percentage point above the previous record. Similarly, corporate profits as a share of GDP are at 50-year highs. Meanwhile, compensation to labor in all forms, including wages and benefits, is at a 50-year low. Capital is getting a bigger share of the pie, relative to labor.

(via celfri)

theatlantic:

50% of All Workers Made Less than $26,000 in 2010

Today we get our first look at American wages in 2010 based on payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration. David Cay Johnston picks out the most important takeaways, including:

1) Half of all workers made less than $26,364, the median wage in 2010. That’s the lowest level since 1999, after adjusting for inflation.

2) The number of millionaires increased by about 20 percent.

3) The size of the missing workforce is 10 million. The number of working people fell by 5.2 million since 2007. But that’s not the entire job deficit, because, based on population growth estimates, 4.5 million more would have joined the workforce between 2007 and 2011. Add it up, and you get a 10-million-worker gap. Read more.

Damn.

Quick, half-baked thoughts:

1) I’ve really liked the sign, “Put politicians on minimum wage, and see how quick things change”. I would equally argue, “limit politicians’ salaries to the median wage…”. It seems slightly more realistic.. hmm…

2) WTF?! This is why simply saying, “oh well, it’s a recession” is misleading. It’s a recession for most people, but some are making bank.

3) Population growth is a concern of mine, primarily because we’ll eventually hit the point when Earth just can’t support any more people. But there are also effects to the economy and job market etc (though I’m not an economist, so, caveat lector). I can’t believe all that cr@p about cutting funding to agencies like Family Planning. Just a vicious cycle which gets worse and worse.