Тег: Automation

How does ancap answer the question of unemployment that will arise as a result of the soon-to-be automation of intellectual labor by machines?

Not only will there be no need for ordinary taxi drivers and construction workers, but lawyers, doctors, artists, and others will also lose their jobs en masse.

Yes, some people will be social workers, jesters, and prostitutes, but why are all the others needed? And what will they live on? People who have a sufficient cushion of assets are the exception, even in developed countries. And why wouldn’t the state be able to use this crisis to build a totalitarian hell?

Vietnamese

I’ll start from the end. The state doesn’t need any special reasons to try and build a totalitarian hell; it tries to do so permanently, and is limited in this pursuit only by the willingness of its subjects to live in a totalitarian hell. All that remains is to understand whether the situation under consideration will create any preconditions for a huge number of people to willingly agree to a totalitarian hell.

So, a vast amount of intellectual labor, which is currently considered an exclusively human prerogative, has been automated. Let’s assume it’s an ancap world. This means a free market. After automation, productivity increases sharply—consequently, the supply of the produced good or service increases sharply. Therefore, with demand remaining unchanged, its price will inevitably fall. The technological revolution leads to a situation where maintaining a standard of living that was quite wealthy by the standards of the previous technological era requires mere pennies.

Those lucky few whose labor within the new technological order turns out to be necessary on a regular basis will earn an obscene amount of money. Those whom the new economy does not need as much will be able to provide themselves with an acceptable standard of living even with rare, sporadic earnings. Want to update the furniture in your house? Donate blood, participate as an extra in a movie, train a neural network. Don’t need any serious expenses? Well, check a box on the websites of a couple of charitable foundations, stating you wish to receive a basic income—and that will be enough.

Again, after every previous technological revolution, those who were no longer required in the former numbers eventually retrained themselves more or less, and for their children, the new reality was completely organic, and they no longer had problems finding an occupation in it. Peasants’ children became workers, and workers’ children became clerks. Clerks’ children will become, for example, motivators for those titans of thought whose labor proved impossible to automate, or enter other spheres that are difficult for us to even imagine now, just as it was once difficult to imagine professional esports.

And what changes if we encounter this new reality while still having modern-type states? It will be more regulated. Those who receive an obscene amount of money will not be those whose labor is necessary to maintain the new technological order, but those who rob them and redistribute the funds. A large class of government employees will remain. Many will consider the state of affairs, if not the best, then the only possible one. Will this be a totalitarian hell? Unlikely; rather a kingdom of apathy, not of artificial totalitarian enthusiasm—but that doesn’t make the picture any more pleasant.

What could allow such a scenario to be realized? Mass stupification and conformism. Do we see tendencies toward this? We certainly do! And what could make such a scenario stable? A high level of professionalism among managers, allowing them to maintain a high-tech society while leading a mass of fools and conformists. The scenario proves to be fundamentally unstable: current trends will inevitably force a transition to some other future. This could, of course, be new Dark Ages. Or it could turn out to be ancap. So let’s work toward making it ancap!

The new Dark Ages look something like this

How does capitalism work under conditions of full or nearly full automation of labor?

анонимный вопрос

The difference between an enterprise with automated and non-automated labor can be easily illustrated using the example of a kitchen. You could hire a cook, pay her pennies, and she would prepare whatever your heart desires and go to the market for groceries herself. Or you could buy a refrigerator, a microwave, and stock up on semi-finished products yourself. Such dining could be cheaper or more expensive than having a cook, but the hired employee is removed from the equation, along with all the baggage in their head, the need to rely on their conscientiousness, and the requirement to pay them regardless of whether you eat at home or at a restaurant today.

Labor automation does not even save so much as money (although in the long run, of course, it does). The main thing is that it saves nerves. An entrepreneur always strives to reduce their risks. Making the success of one’s activity dependent on someone’s goodwill is always a risk. Today the employee works hard, tomorrow they take sick leave, or bury a grandmother, or strike, or quit—and plans must be adjusted. Therefore, investing more capital to rely less on labor is always a great temptation, even if the monetary gain is relatively small.

In general, capitalism works magnificently under conditions of full or nearly full replacement of labor by capital. However, under conditions where labor is hardly automated, it always tends to degenerate into something paternalistic. One should seemingly think in terms of costs and profits, but is forced to think in terms of social responsibility. Therefore, mass manual production inevitably gives rise to various socialist or feudal practices, whereas automated production can be easily reduced to purely market relations.

I could gaze at it for a century! Only two supervisors for the robots, absolute beauty!