The robot economy (AKA how robots will steal your jobs)

From: smithaa02 (asdf_at_asdf.net)
Date: 07/27/04 

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:26:06 -0500

Imagine as a thought experiement that there exist robots that are identical
to humans in every way except they turn over any income to their owners.

Now in addition to these robots there are humans and limited land. The
humans are subdivided into land owners and non-landowners.

The humans break down into your classic equilibrium economy... The worker
humans do what they do best in working the land, and the landowning humans
do max out their comparitive advantige of owning the land and collecting
what the working humans make.

Say with 5 workers, the farmer is unhappy. He is fat, but he wishes to be
fatter, so he hatches a plan... He reasons that if he can eat what the
workers eat, then he can achieve his dream.

He faces a dillema... If he eats the food intended for the workers, then
the workers may go on strike (to increase their bargainning power) to which
he the landowner would go hungry. To prevent this he devises a plan to
create robots. He will pay 1 worker slightly more to make a batch of robots
instead of making food.

This one worker then creates 5 new robots at the end of the harvesting
season for the landowner. The landowner then has the robots go compete with
the workers at the annual land auction to determine how much rent each
worker will have to pay to use the land.

The robots and the humans thus compete for the lowest land rent. This year
bolds ill for the human workers, for where they had last worked X hours for
yearly food, the robots will now accept that wage as well, thus displacing
the human workers. The humans get desparate (for they need food to eat), so
they outcompete the robots to offer to work 2X hours for the same amount of
food.

The landowner has a touch of pity, so he offer a couple of lucky saps food
for a mere 1.5X labor to make some more robots!

The same happens next year, and the year after...

Each time increasing the misery of workers while increasingly fattening the
productive means owners.

Here the workers are producing the rope to hang themselves. Another way of
putting this is that the workers through their generation of non-worker
owned capital are creating overpopulation of sorts. Given a finite amount
of base means of production that is privately controlled, an increase in
worker population will not hurt the means of production owner, but will hurt
the property-less workers. More entities competing for the same limited
production capabilities, will surely drive down the price of labor. Now it
can be seen that these robots are merely an attempt by the landowner to
induce artifical overpopulation (the owner's consumption is the source of
overpopulated demand). The owners want to create overpopulation because it
drives down the bargainning power of competing labor interest, to give the
owner more wealth.

Hence capital throughout history has not been the tool increase the ratio of
fruit of labor, but to do the opposite and steal from the laborers to give
to the capitalists.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The robot economy (AKA how robots will steal your jobs)
    ... >> to humans in every way except they turn over any income to their owners. ... >> Now in addition to these robots there are humans and limited land. ... >> workers eat, then he can achieve his dream. ...
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  • Re: The robot economy (AKA how robots will steal your jobs)
    ... >to humans in every way except they turn over any income to their owners. ... >humans are subdivided into land owners and non-landowners. ... >workers eat, then he can achieve his dream. ... He will pay 1 worker slightly more to make a batch of robots ...
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