Rise of the Robots - NYTimes.com

Krugman helps us see a day in the future where capital creates everything and there there is little need for labor.

Rise of the Robots - NYTimes.com:

this comment by "IU"  parallels my own thought experiment....

Actually I have thought about this. Imagine 10 000 years from now that everything is made by robots. You only type on your computer what you want delivered from the grocery distributor every week, and a robot driven van will automatically load it in your refrigerator. Now imagine that 10% own all the robots, production and distribution facilities. There is no labor force and the 90% have no income. When they push the button the computer will tell them that their credit card is maxed out. They will perish by hunger. 

So what are we going to do? Assert "property rights" or redistribute the wealth such that everybody would have some income? I will not say aloud what I think because it would give the Republicans a heart attack. ..... 

owenzidar clarifies with a larry summer thought experiment that lays out the future that the Krugman piece alludes to and argues the education can play a roll in counteracting the process.

I’m far from convinced by his argument on the role education can and should play. Larry Summers has a thought experiment that is helpful for thinking about these issues:

Suppose that a new technology called “the Doer” will be created tomorrow. Doers can do anything flawlessly. They can build a house, give a massage, or make a guitar. What would the world of Doers look like?

1) Cheaper, high quality goods would proliferate.

2) The price of raw materials would increase as raw inputs for doers would become more scarce and thus more valuable.

3) People who can think of new things for Doers to do or of new ways for Doers to do things will make a lot of money.

4) For everyone else, the value of working for an hour will be nearly zero (since Doers can do everything already, no extra value is created). Therefore, hourly wages will go to zero.

Number 3 is why I don’t think Krugman is quite right. Education can help workers develop, enhance, and optimize what doers can do. For example, knowing statistics will likely become more valuable since helping businesses make sense and use of reams of data will be increasingly hard and time-consuming without a statistics background. Similarly, coming up with new things for doers to do will be even better rewarded as the global customer pool expands. Helping doers do things better and coming up with new things for doers to do amplifies rather than undermines the need to provide high quality and broadly available education.

I can see education helping but I still see a future with a large, starving, or at least very poor, mass ruled by the owners of capital and natural resources and a few highly educated who help put the capital to work.

'via Blog this'