Full automation

[weekender]

Got to data cleanse first.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Automated machinery, in all its various guises, as far as I can tell, has never in itself led to a reduction in working hours

Important to keep reminding ourselves as we discuss this that so many influential factors have also been in flux over that period. As the economy has evolved, the need to work has remained. Business need to keep labour costs low - and with it, working hours high - has remained.

I agree that automation is not a fully emancipating tool, because of the profit motive and consumerism. The profit motive simply raises the bar higher. That bar, by human nature must then be raised further, requiring human labour until the next innovation.

Star Trek envisaged humans creator a matter generator because that is one of the few things that come to mind that really would render billions redundant.

Full automation is in my view both impossible and undesirable, but I agree with Paul Mason that surplus labour globally will reach a tipping point where they will need to start being paid to be alive, because there won't be anything conceivable for all of them to do that isn't wretched pointless busy-work.

The reason people are busy and pressurized is because of the profit motive and consumerism. This is also the reason why consumerism is a mixed bag in terms of happiness. Fast food, movies etc are products aimed at people who are without energy who need a quick fix. What we need is an extra day of rest, universal basic income, and tighter credit so ordinary people aren't debt slaves or wage slaves.

[Pingers]

Sadly the last post and the one from SWP rather miss the point. Automation only equals freedom if uncoupled from capitalism. What was depressing at the last general election was how old and tired the offer from the socialist left was - we'll create this many nursing jobs, this many 'green' jobs, etc. It's all a bit too USSR and Stakhanov. Imagine going to the public and instead saying "look, we could let machines do most of the work and you could all have everything you need and a lot of things you don't need, and never have to worry about having enough and just enjoy yourselves, and the only people standing in your way are them [point to capitalists]".

The free broadband idea was more on the money, because the cost of a lot of things is getting so low that even in a capitalist economy they could be virtually free - but of course that doesn't fit with the profit motive and so capitalism creates artificial scarcity, because that's how you can keep prices up. People understand that's how housebuilders operate, but tend not to understand it's how other sectors operate. The cost of generating wind power keeps falling, for example, but consumers pay the same. The market has to distort its very own mechanisms to save itself from itself. Challenging that kind of madness would be genuinely radical, not perpetuating the status quo with more balanced income distribution.

[touchingcloth]

Sadly the last post and the one from SWP rather miss the point. Automation only equals freedom if uncoupled from capitalism. What was depressing at the last general election was how old and tired the offer from the socialist left was - we'll create this many nursing jobs, this many 'green' jobs, etc. It's all a bit too USSR and Stakhanov. Imagine going to the public and instead saying "look, we could let machines do most of the work and you could all have everything you need and a lot of things you don't need, and never have to worry about having enough and just enjoy yourselves, and the only people standing in your way are them [point to capitalists]".

The free broadband idea was more on the money, because the cost of a lot of things is getting so low that even in a capitalist economy they could be virtually free - but of course that doesn't fit with the profit motive and so capitalism creates artificial scarcity, because that's how you can keep prices up. People understand that's how housebuilders operate, but tend not to understand it's how other sectors operate. The cost of generating wind power keeps falling, for example, but consumers pay the same. The market has to distort its very own mechanisms to save itself from itself. Challenging that kind of madness would be genuinely radical, not perpetuating the status quo with more balanced income distribution.

A great post. Capitalism begets protectionism and ultimately the opposite of free markets - the last large scale example which risked the masses being able to see the machinery was the relative lack of foreclosures if people defaulting on their mortgages following the 2008 crash when the banks held onto their inventories to avoid a glut of supply depressing prices. I think people can tend to see the De Beers diamond hoarding model as an aberration rather than the norm.

[Mr_Simnock]

The free broadband idea was more on the money, because the cost of a lot of things is getting so low that even in a capitalist economy they could be virtually free - but of course that doesn't fit with the profit motive and so capitalism creates artificial scarcity, because that's how you can keep prices up. People understand that's how housebuilders operate, but tend not to understand it's how other sectors operate. The cost of generating wind power keeps falling, for example, but consumers pay the same. The market has to distort its very own mechanisms to save itself from itself. Challenging that kind of madness would be genuinely radical, not perpetuating the status quo with more balanced income distribution.

citation needed

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Sadly the last post and the one from SWP rather miss the point. Automation only equals freedom if uncoupled from capitalism. What was depressing at the last general election was how old and tired the offer from the socialist left was - we'll create this many nursing jobs, this many 'green' jobs, etc. It's all a bit too USSR and Stakhanov. Imagine going to the public and instead saying "look, we could let machines do most of the work and you could all have everything you need and a lot of things you don't need, and never have to worry about having enough and just enjoy yourselves, and the only people standing in your way are them [point to capitalists]".

What things are going to be automated though? I don't think we're quite at the point where we can leave machines to "do most of the work". Even if we could, I suspect that we'd still be looking at a massive reduction in everyone's standard of living. There's no such thing as fully automated holidays, and while fancy clothes and cars are automated at the production end (to an extent), there's still massive amounts of organisation/planning that goes into making them happen. All that's going to cost, and these are the luxuries most people work towards.

I think what you'd really need to focus on is getting the public accept less money/treats for more freedom/peace of mind. Grappling with abstract concepts like capitalism, which might mean completely different things to different people, isn't really going to do anything. I really like Mark Fisher (I think you posted a link to his book earlier) but I think he suffered from the typically academic delusion that naming things and casting doubt is anything more than a particularly righteous form of poetry. It's really enough to say that people like pleasure and working where they can see a tangible result, and that it's very difficult to get anyone to do anything where they can't see the improvement. I would argue that what you call the capitalism is really the megalopolitan problem: the issue of getting people to work to communitarian ends when most people don't live in functional communities anymore.

As I said previously, I don't think you're going to force most people into an epiphany without some major crisis. I strongly suspect this will be served up by nature rather than technology.

The free broadband idea was more on the money, because the cost of a lot of things is getting so low that even in a capitalist economy they could be virtually free.

But couldn't you just as well argue that because broadband is so cheap now (I pay £20 per month for fibre) no one really notices the money whipped out of their account each month, and it's not much of an inducement for people to vote Labour to abrogate what they don't miss?

I think Miliband was nearer the mark with his energy caps/controls. There's a policy that's at least more in line with what people are worried out. I don't think even students and the unemployed are lying awake at night sweating over their monthly broadband costs.

[Blumf]

Ooo, hello!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-05/spanish-government-aims-to-roll-out-basic-income-soon

The Spanish government is working to roll out a universal basic income as soon as possible, as part of a battery of actions aimed at countering the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Economy Minister Nadia Calvino.
...
But the government's broader ambition is that basic income becomes an instrument "that stays forever, that becomes a structural instrument, a permanent instrument," she said.

[greenman]

I'm conflicted with this. On the one hand businesses are looking to lower the labour force, but on the other I think there is a notion that people need to be working if only to stop idle hands getting up to anything subversive.

One thing's for sure, the shift from blue collar to white collar work isn't all good. It's definitely less physically destructive or dangerous, you're probably not going to be around any nasty chemicals or whatever but mentally it's a lot worse I reckon. If you work on a production line making widgets, or dig a hole there's usually an obvious reason as to why you're doing that. In big corporate structures that's far less true - lots of people are just paperwork creators for internal reporting, they're just generating information the world doesn't need. I guess the reason businesses don't bin them is because they're billable. It doesn't matter to the cunts upstairs if the work done serves no useful purpose if it's generating revenue.

It's probably why there are entire industries, both pharmaceutical and things like mindfulness that basically amount to retuning yourself into thinking the universe is ok. But it's not.

I think it's inevitable that automation will put an end to these people. Internal processes mean that people in offices are often just walking flow charts, human glue code between disparate systems and more and more systems are getting better at talking to each other without that glue.

Whilst it might sound like sixth form politics I do suspect theres a good deal of truth to that, a great deal of the electorate voting against there own interests probably owes its existence to people simply being too tired to really move beyond whats fed to them in the most straight forward fashion.

There does seem to be a divide between blue and white collar work when it comes to guarding against automation, on the white collar side a lot more in the way of legalities that keep some human involvement with tasks such as accountancy .

[olliebean]

But couldn't you just as well argue that because broadband is so cheap now (I pay £20 per month for fibre) no one really notices the money whipped out of their account each month, and it's not much of an inducement for people to vote Labour to abrogate what they don't miss?

There are plenty of people for whom £20 per month is not especially cheap.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Ooo, hello!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-05/spanish-government-aims-to-roll-out-basic-income-soon

I think they did something similarly progressive with their miners a while back. Big fat severance packages that would be enough for younger people to take their time in finding a new vocation or large enough to see you into retirement if you're older.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I think there is a notion that people need to be working if only to stop idle hands getting up to anything subversive.

Protestant work ethic. That despite living in the most abundantly individualistic dog eat dog consumer society you could imagine, we still all have to 'pull together', and that there is a UK plc that can't afford shirkers.

This whole thing is grounded in Protestant work doctrines. It is absolute bollocks that can only be flogged to the masses via jingoism.

The other salient point is that idle hands engaging in subverting the norm can be a good thing if the norm is shit. The slave trade wasn't ended because workers had too much time off, but because the injustice was so compelling and the alternative so repellant.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

The work ethic thing is more self-rationalisation than anything doctrinal, I reckon. The people I've worked with who openly moan about the work shy/people on benefits have all been highly agitated characters, almost on the borderline of mania in some cases. They're just not aware that their baseline is completely off and most people don't see the need to rush around like the sky's about to fall in.

Of course, the issue is that these are the people who are most likely to get into positions of power. They're the ones willing to work 12 hours and day and every weekend, bank holiday, perhaps even their kid's birthday. It's not particularly surprising that they get to set the tone of life the rest of us have to follow. It's an intractable problem: how do you get the people who just want to chill into positions of power? How do you convince them it's worth the effort when, by nature, they're generally inclined not to care?

Buggered if I know.

[Urinal Cake]

Protestant work ethic. That despite living in the most abundantly individualistic dog eat dog consumer society you could imagine, we still all have to 'pull together', and that there is a UK plc that can't afford shirkers.

This whole thing is grounded in Protestant work doctrines. It is absolute bollocks that can only be flogged to the masses via jingoism.

The other salient point is that idle hands engaging in subverting the norm can be a good thing if the norm is shit. The slave trade wasn't ended because workers had too much time off, but because the injustice was so compelling and the alternative so repellant.

And more specifically Calvinism. Also part of it is that 'charity' such as government programs was bad since it encouraged people to be lazy and not working for God or something.

[Mister Six]

It's entirely within our reach to make that the new normal, except not being stuck at home. Maybe each of us would have to work a day or two a week, the rest of the time we could do as we pleased - spend more time with family, read, provide support to the people in our communities as we are doing now, paint, make music - play. It's time to sack work off and play.

You are Iain M Banks' Culture novels AICM£5.

[Blumf]

Ooo, hola!

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-04-12/pope-ponders-universal-basic-income-as-boris-johnson-is-discharged-opec-strikes-deal

Pope Francis on Sunday advocated for a form of universal basic income that would "dignify the noble, essential tasks" carried out by street vendors, small farmers, construction workers and caregivers around the world.

UBI, all the cool kids want it.

[Dewt]

It has to be tracked to a comfortable standard of living or else it's a curse.

People can say a lot of high-minded buzzwords about this idea, but I feel certain that the previous sixteen-word sentence is the absolute most important thing about this, especially as they are starting to get visible boners about it.

[Dex Sawash]

Pope Francis on Sunday advocated for a form of universal basic income that would "dignify the noble, essential tasks" carried out by street vendors, small farmers, construction workers and caregivers around the world.

DEAD SOON

[Blumf]

It has to be tracked to a comfortable standard of living or else it's a curse.

Indeed, it needs to be implemented in concert with many other things e.g. rent/mortgage reform. Otherwise, it just becomes a way to filter money to the wealthy through higher prices.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Article here suggesting only 8 hours f of 'work' are all you need to reach fulfilment.



https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-effective-dose-of-work-you-need-to-feel-fulfilled-is-surprisingly-low?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[DistressedArea]

A robot clown dials robot Samaritans.

[Pingers]

citation needed

The oil industry is giving us a great example of this right now. Drop in demand meant that the price of oil came right down - good for everyone else right? No, we can't have the market actually working, so OPEC countries have cut production to get the price back up. It's capitalism creating artificial scarcity to benefit a small percentage of people at the top, and they've done this for decades. Given what we now know about burning fossil fuels it's not in hindsight a bad thing that oil production has been reined in at times, but if we transfer that model to renewables it would mean that what should be a virtually free source of clean, renewable energy will be artificially limited for the sake of profit. So we'll have wind turbines being turned off for 'maintenance' or whatever shit, to keep the price up. If we ditch capitalism we can have free, clean energy for life.

[Abnormal Palm]

Increasingly, I realise how my sociopolitical ideology is most closely reflected by dasharezone.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The oil industry is giving us a great example of this right now. Drop in demand meant that the price of oil came right down - good for everyone else right? No, we can't have the market actually working, so OPEC countries have cut production to get the price back up. It's capitalism creating artificial scarcity to benefit a small percentage of people at the top, and they've done this for decades. Given what we now know about burning fossil fuels it's not in hindsight a bad thing that oil production has been reined in at times, but if we transfer that model to renewables it would mean that what should be a virtually free source of clean, renewable energy will be artificially limited for the sake of profit. So we'll have wind turbines being turned off for 'maintenance' or whatever shit, to keep the price up. If we ditch capitalism we can have free, clean energy for life.

They don't really need such underhanded methods due to the lack of storage. Surge pricing based on availability seems to be the thing, combined with 'smart' devices that can can take signals from the grid and alter their cycles e.g. a frige or washing machine that can wait a bit to turn on their compressor/water heater. Of course this means the poor, that can't afford to replace all their stuff will be the ones paying the most for energy. As per usual. And it means they can bilk shitloads out of the government for shitty smartmeters and getting rid of staff in the process.

[shh]

One thing I like about UBI is the political shift I think it would cause. 'Low information voters' could be very easily bribed by parties who promise to put the UBI up.

Well that combination of condescension and wishful thinking certainly served the Conservatives very well at the last election.

[Mr_Simnock]

There is plenty of oil storage out there, world wide apparently it's currently above 70% now which is unusually high. Some investors/oil companies are hiring tankers to sit there and fill up on it so they can keep extracting new oil. The very low cost of brent crude right now is also making life very hard for most oil companies too especially those that obtain it from fracking which needs brent crude above $65 a barrel to make any sort of profit, this is currently at $19.33 so they are all now just dead weights haemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate. Production has only been lowered because they are running out of storage space and lengthy talks with Russia who handily helped bring down the cost of crude quicker because they initially refused to lower production.

As for 'turning off wind farms' well if you have been keeping watch on the UK energy mix you will know the days of fossil fuels powering the country are numbered. The national grid expects this around 2025 (for the first fossil free day) but the way things have gone this year I expect that might come sooner, we have had many days this year already where gas power (coal is now dead) has been below both nuclear and renewables in energy production. Once battery storage capacity takes off the final nail in the coffin for profitable fossil fuel electricity in the UK will have been hammered in.

Right now the COVID 19 situation is deeply problematic for oil and gas.

[Blumf]

Always nice to look at:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Currently: Solar 24%, Gas 23%, Wind 22%, Nuke 20%

Coal is at 0%, and has been for a while. They only spark that up over winter now, and only occasionally.

[Mr_Simnock]

To think not that long ago fosil fuels were about 90% of the energy mix, last 10 years has been devastating for them.

[shh]

When it's good it's very very good as the poet said. It's only as strong as its weakest day though. That site also has historical data.

[Johnny Yesno]

As I said previously, I don't think you're going to force most people into an epiphany without some major crisis. I strongly suspect this will be served up by nature rather than technology.

Er...