(09-10-2012, 06:13 PM)kandrathe Wrote: The universe of vocations is always in transition -- e.g. since the advent of the motor car, we haven't needed as many stables or buggy whip manufacturers. With automation (computerization, robotics, lasers, etc.) we've seen vast improvements in the productivity of every industry. This has displaced many "qualified workers" where in all likelihood, their chosen profession is an anachronism. People who seek employment need to be mindful of the need to remain useful to the society.
It has been a nagging question in my mine for many years (and I've mentioned it on the Lounge before). What happens to society when due to productivity, the amount of employment needed falls below the amount of employment supplied? The mechanism (the employment system) by which most of our society has access to products and services is through the exchange of labor for money. We produce (in the production system) all the food, clothes, housing, and sundries for our society, with an ever diminishing amount of employment. Our society is stuck in a paradigm where we value and sustain people via a 40 hour work week, which may no longer be needed.
In monetary policy we've myopically emphasized a slight inflation of goods and services, while from a productivity stand point everything should cost much less. The result is a gradual depreciation of not just savings, but also in earning power. (see Hayak -- The Road to Serfdom). In any case, our governments have failed us. It is a structural error to think a stochastic politicized central authority can perpetually provide both high levels of stimulus and high levels of regulation without causing chaos in flow. Government has a role to play in the economy through limited mechanisms of the monetary system (supply, reserve currency), minor labor regulations to prevent abuse, enough of a social safety net, and institutions for the flow of proper information. They err dually in both over and under playing their proper role depending on the whimsy of the party in power.
I just don't think the outcomes are good for a society that no longer needs people.
I don't see what the Hayek inflation story has to do with the Marx-ish obsolescence of labour story, but nevertheless, here goes...
The amount an individual produces now, when compared with 300 years ago, is almost absurdly great - on the order of 30x on average globally, and more like 120x in high income countries. We are so much more productive it would blow the minds of Adam Smith and Karl Marx alike.
And yet, we are richer to match it. We don't seem to be any worse for wear, as people, now that we no longer need to hire scribes to illuminate manuscripts, that we no longer use slide rules to do logarithms, and a farmer with a tractor can do the work of a whole peasant village. Was any of that wrong? I can't see why, even if it meant taking far less human labour to do those jobs. Indeed, it is good *precisely* because it takes less labour to produce more stuff.
Why would the future be any different? The purchasing power of an hour of labour is going up not down, and in the scenario you describe, where producing almost anything requires almost no labour, it would go up to almost unfathomable levels. Prices will fall to match, and since real wages are wages/prices, we will get richer and richer.* Why not?
-Jester
*Barring, of course, some unfathomably stupid future, like nuclear war, or runaway warming. But that's not what you're describing.