If demand for engraving remained constant, then a 10X improvement in productivity for an engraver would actually eliminate far more engraver jobs than the final switch to full automation.
It's possible demand could increase, but there's no reason it has to, or it doesn't have to increase proportionally enough to make up for the lost jobs.
I mean, engraving went from a super-special thing that only happens on 30-year service watches and gravestones, to a minimum requirement for children's baseball participation trophies. The market did get larger.
Sure. Just like farming over the last 150 years. Far fewer jobs, more food, and that's great for essentially everybody.
I just don't believe there's some cliff of automation effectiveness where it goes from a good thing to a bad thing. Greater productivity always means making more for less.
>I just don't believe there's some cliff of automation effectiveness where it goes from a good thing to a bad thing. Greater productivity always means making more for less.
Only if we think if only in first-order effects. But there are always second and third order effects.
Environmental costs is one of these.
The desirability (from a societal standpoint) of having more of X (whatever X is, e.g. cheaper more plenty fast food for a controversial example) is also another matter.
The impact of the jobs that replaced the deprecated ones is another issue (a third order effect).
It's always a good thing, plus the additional "bad" side-effect of less work for the populace to do, driving down the price of labor.
As the price of labor trends downwards, some cohorts are going to have a harder time selling their labor to pay for necessities: food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
A good amount of these problems could be mitigated by a strong welfare system and/or basic income.
> It's always a good thing, plus the additional "bad" side-effect of less work for the populace to do, driving down the price of labor.
The price of labor tends to be lowest in the lowest-productivity areas. And there are good theoretical reasons for that to be the case -- high labor prices tend to cause productivity increases as a way to avoid paying them, and productivity increases increase the value of labor, which would tend to lead to higher labor prices.
When everybody was a pitiful subsistence farmer, barely producing more than they needed to eat themselves, the price of labor was very low. And where that's still true... the price of labor is still very low.
Can you point to a current or historical example of the price of labor going down as productivity rises?
Fast food, if you look at the output in meals or revinue at peak times they can have extreme productivity, but they make less than a short order cook. There are many similar areas where productivity is economically less valuable than flexibility.
> productivity increases increase the value of labor
We might be using terms in a different way here. This statement is true in one sense, and untrue in another sense.
When there is higher productivity, an hour of labor accomplishes more work. Employers are getting more bang for their buck - an hour of laborer pay accomplishes more work for the employer. (i.e. the employer is getting more value)
On the other hand, because it's possible to accomplish more work with less labor, the demand for that type of labor drops. This leads to depressed wages (i.e. the employee is getting less value). A good historical example of this was at the beginning of the industrial revolution, when power-looms caused weaver-labor to become nearly worthless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_loom#Social_and_economic...
Many of the displaced workers became Luddites who wanted to smash the machines which put them out of work. You would think that being relieved from working would be a blessing, but not in their circumstance. Because the weavers' labor was so sharply devalued, they found it extremely difficult to sell their labor for enough money to eat.
The short-term effect isn't the whole story, of course. Textiles were incredibly cheap which did increase demand, and eventually led to the creation of (low-paying) jobs in textile factories. But even where things turn out fine in the long-term, the short-term disruption is not to be underestimated. Widespread unemployment due to power-looms caused riots.
> When everybody was a pitiful subsistence farmer, barely producing more than they needed to eat themselves, the price of labor was very low.
To the contrary, the price of labor then was incredibly high. As you say, serfs spent the majority of their time simply generating their own subsistence. Feudal lords were entitled to a portion of the serfs' labor, but it only amounted to a day or two out of the week. Consider the legions of subsistence farmers it would take to support specialized full-time jobs.
Once industrial agriculture started taking off, food was suddenly cheap and plentiful. This made sustenance much less expensive and freed up labor for other non-farming purposes.
> high labor prices tend to cause productivity increases as a way to avoid paying them
This I agree with! In fact I believe it expresses the same point that I'm trying to convey: increasing productivity means employers pay less for labor.
Witness the rise of self-checkout stations at grocery stores, as well as kiosks and automatic-burger flippers at fast food restaurants. The whole point of these innovations is to decrease the demand for such labor.
Shares in the economy could be how everyone gets money to live on. Like Alaska oil funds, every corporation that draws profits from a locale through sales may be required in the future to issue shares or dividends to the locale.
Isn't that basically already done as a taxable nexus?
The problem is what to do about people who live in locales where there aren't a lot of sales? So they don't get much money and don't increase sales. A catch-22.
