I particularly liked one of the points that Grey made towards the end: what do we do about all of the people who will be "unemployable through no fault of their own"? Right now our economic system is predicated on rewarding those who deserve wealth (as judged by ability or hard work). The converse of that is that we as a society accept that the undeserving (stupid and/or lazy) will be punished economically. We rationalize this because we convince ourselves that it was their own fault, therefore it's "fair" . But what happens when intelligent, hard-working -- and therefore deserving -- people are unemployable? It's going to be a massive shock to people and to the system. (Or we will enter a state of mass cognitive dissonance and convince ourselves that the majority of the population has become stupid and lazy and so is getting what they deserve.)
>Or we will enter a state of mass cognitive dissonance and convince ourselves that the majority of the population has become stupid and lazy and so is getting what they deserve.
A lot of people have already convinced themselves of that. Everyone is a part of a persecuted minority now, which has the simultaneous benefits of justifying the suffering of others (i.e. they deserve it), and providing a nice scapegoat for their own suffering (it's the goddamn liberals, red-staters, intellectuals, Hollywood, christian fundamentalists, etc. etc.). It allows people to be angry about their situation (which is unavoidable) while keeping that anger totally impotent. So goes the theory, anyway.
So you can oppress pretty much everyone, and present it to each group a little differently, and as long as you keep them at each others throats they will accept it.
We already have an issue in the united states with not enough jobs to go around, if this dystopian outlook is truly inevitable, what are our options for mitigating it, or at least coping with it?
I have thought quite a bit about autonomous vehicles and how I can't wait to buy one and never have to drive again, how many benefits it will have on society (faster commutes, fewer accidents, etc), but I hadn't considered how much the transportation industry will be affected and especially how much truck drivers in particular would be ideal to replace. The NYT ran a story the other day (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/upshot/the-trucking-indust...) about how we don't have enough drivers to fulfill the needs, but "Autos" could swing that pendulum swiftly in the opposite direction once legeslation and production catch up. How do we handle 3.6M truck, delivery and taxi drivers looking for a new job?
I personally just hope that for once, governments, organisations and media outlets around the world can tackle something proactively and responsibly.
With social shifts as large and potentially difficult as those suggested by this video, we need a mental, moral and legislative framework for coping as soon as possible. Preferably before they are necessitated by the negative consequences of inaction.
I don't buy the "this time it's different" argument. The reason to automate things is to make more money, right? If you believe the video, nobody will be able to afford the stuff that is being made cheaper through automation.
If we're making everything faster, cheaper, and more efficient, the overall wealth for humans can only go up, not down. The question is who will get that wealth. My guess is it'll be the same as it always is: A small group of people will get most of it, and everyone else will get a little bit. In other words we'll all be better off, I think. To assume the destruction of the middle class means that the upper class will lose all of its buyers. Economics has proven time and time again that over the long term, improving efficiency makes everyone better off.
Oh, I see what you're saying. You mean that wealthy individuals will someday be able to use technology to completely automate out the need for goods and services from others. That seems farfetched, even in a mostly automated economy. Somebody's still got to produce, upgrade, and repair all those bots. Not to mention greet people on the phone, give haircuts, make sales, and do other jobs that benefit from a human touch.
Now if those bots can produce, upgrade, and repair themselves, and do jobs in a "human" way, that's approaching strong AI. At that point if everything is automated top to bottom from mining raw materials to a finished product, why wouldn't it all be free for everyone? That sounds like a post-scarcity economy to me, so it would seem pointless to hoard at that point. Backing up, the reason why I disagree with you and the video is because I think that over the long term, the more things get automated, the cheaper they'll be, for everyone, and therefore overall everyone's real wealth has gone up, on average.
It is easy to say that this may result in a greater concentration of wealth, and that will probably be the case. Where I disagree is that it will result in the "everyone else" group being worse off than they are now. At the very least I think their/our quality of life would remain the same. I don't think overall wealth will increase slower than the concentration of wealth, if that makes sense.
I enjoyed it as well. This definitely feels like his most substantial video to date. It was less fun-fact-filled and quirky than his usual videos; instead, it was more serious/thorough, and focused on a major trend. Really quality stuff.
