How should wealth be distributed?

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Time to bring out all the communist in the ole conglomeration. This is a serious thread.

I personally believe that with the increasing automization of the world, it is inevitable that many humans become superfluous. In order to prevent a situation where the rich life in a robot-powered utopia and the poor are rounded up and killed to make space, something must be done to keep all wealth from accumulating in the hands of the robot owners. But what? I'm personally not sure, and would like to hear what yall congers have to say about this.

If your solution does not involve redistribution of wealth I'd gladly hear about it.

If your redistribution of wealth scheme does not involve specifically preventing robot dystopias and genodice I'd also gladly hear about it.

I'm personally pretty hung up about the whole robots and genocide of the poor thing but seriously feel free to ignore that entirely and only read the title
 
What you seem to forget is that the cost of technology will drop in the long run , imagine the cost of the 3D printer and the recycle robot in 200 years , with this 2 robots you are quasi-independant, no need to be dependant of your job. In 300 years, the cost of the energy will be 0 $ ( Fusion + autofixing robot renewable energy) . With free energy you can have free water ( you can transform salt sea water to drinkable water ) .
But during that time, the inequalities will be colossal : The richest will be able to eat real food while the poor will eat artificial pill . the richest will often go to the moon or Mars while the poor cant.
The importatnt thing is the wealth level of the poors , not the inequalities.
The real fear is the corruption and the wars which can prevent the evolution of our world.
 
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Ununhexium

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What you seem to forget is that the cost of technology will drop in the long run , imagine the cost of the 3D printer and the recycle robot in 200 years , with this 2 robots you are quasi-independant, no need to be dependant of your job. In 300 years, the cost of the energy will be 0 $ ( Fusion + autofixing robot renewable energy) . With free energy you can have free water ( you can transform salt sea water to drinkable water ) .
But during that time, the inequalities will be colossal : The richest will be able to eat real food while the poor will eat artificial pill . the richest will often go to the moon or March while the poor cant.
The importatnt thing is the wealth level of the poors , not the inequalities.
The real fear is the corruption and the wars which can prevent the evolution of our world.
What if the technology is all proprietary
 
Mafias and corruption are responsible of the majority of the poverty on earth, and yeah if those technologies are controlled by force, yeah we are all dead. You can think about any solutions, if mafias and corruption are generalized, your solution will not work ( marxism 1st to fail due to massive corruption)
 

Myzozoa

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lol so who is going to 'regulate the markets' if not mafias?zben
Government is a mafia.

hope yall can view this

"If protection rackets represent organised crime at its smoothest, then war risking and state making – quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy – qualify as our largest examples of organised crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past few centuries, a portrait of war makers and state makers .r. coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which operators of armies and states offer services to willing consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain kind of government. "
 

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Adamant Zoroark

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OP seems to be a part of this "automation is gonna take our jobs" circlejerk so let me just come out here and say that there's a lot more human work involved than people seem to believe (I honestly believe everyone who circlejerks over automation taking people's jobs is looking at it in a vacuum).

People have to engineer those robots (duh), people have to program those robots (automation doesn't mean shit if you don't have a script that tells the robots what to do), people have to maintain those robots (it's not like they can just run indefinitely forever), etc.

I don't expect all of those to be one-to-one, but the point is, every time technology advances, people talk about how it'll kill jobs, and every single time, new jobs pop up to fill the void. I've been given no reason to believe it will be any different with automation. If anything, the jobs I mentioned that'd be required for automated manufacturing etc. pay more on average than the jobs that automation is replacing, so that would be something that could actually lessen wealth inequality. Also, I don't think the three jobs I mentioned would be the only human capital required for automation - they're just the most obvious ones.

The one thing I can think of regarding how automation could exacerbate wealth inequality is that, since automation would allow businesses to produce much more shit much faster, that would mean more money they can just pocket (they do this all the time). I wouldn't be opposed to regulations that would make sure businesses don't just pocket all of the extra money they get due to how much more shit they can produce with automation, whether that be through straight-up higher taxes, a maximum CEO:worker pay ratio (not that I believe that an ideal CEO:worker pay ratio even exists or is determinable), or whatever other ideas there are. Higher taxes would probably be the easiest way to go about that.

Point is, people really need to stop panicking over automation. I'll believe this "job apocalypse" when I see it, but until then, history has given me no reason to believe that a technological advancement will cause some big job void (remember: people talk about the negative effects of technological advancements on jobs every single time and have been wrong every single time.)
 
The importatnt thing is the wealth level of the poors , not the inequalities.
https://www.pdf-archive.com/2017/06/07/thomas-piketty-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century/

TLDR Income inequality levels have been rising since late 70s and are at 1920-30s levels now (45-50% for top 10%), if not higher, after comparably lower levels of 1940-60s (35%ish for top 10%). Piketty sees 2 reasons for this: first, top managers can set their own wages without limit and regardless of their productivity. Second and more importantly, the rate of return on private wealth/capital (profits, interest, rent etc) is significantly higher than national growth rate and rising. In simpler terms, inherited wealth grows faster than incomes so the have's are pulling ahead of have-nots rapidly. "Under such conditions, it is almost inevitable that inherited wealth will dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime’s labor by a wide margin, and the concentration of capital will attain extremely high levels— levels potentially incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies". Piketty proposes a progressive global tax on capital to mitigate this. And I'll add here that this is just intranational inequality; international inequality (which he doesn't get into) is also marked with increasing inequality with the exception of China.

Note that Piketty describes himself as a "firm believer in capitalism, private property, the market". But once you get over abstract mathematical models and rote ideology and look at actual data it's clear that neoliberalism/trickle-down economics doesn't work (or, well, it works like it's intended, to the chagrin of have-nots). Capitalism isn't the natural state of life, it's an economical system that was actively created by state intervention and coercion and has to be actively maintained by state intervention and coercion. I don't feel confident predicting what will happen with automation and climate change and the current rise of populist authoritarian leaders and whatnot, but capitalism especially in its present state doesn't appear sustainable (or just, or humane).

The real fear is the corruption and the wars which can prevent the evolution of our world.
Why? War is quite useful from a market-oriented viewpoint, especially if it's not fought on your productive areas: The state needs ways to kill people and stuff, creating demand fulfilled by the military-economic complex, who can create more jobs and innovate better weapons with that money (plus positive externalities for civilians like radar, the microwave, even the internet). War doesn't prevent "evolution", it's a fundamental part of the global economy. I don't see how you can argue against this without challenging the underlying system that allocates resources according to market value (state needs weapons -> weapon industry is profitable -> lots of investment/spending) over use value (poor people need housing/education/healthcare -> they're poor so not profitable -> keep spending to a minimum).
 
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I always thought that there should be some cap on inheritance. Make as much money as you want in your lifetime and spend as much money in your life time but when you die your heirs are capped by how much they get. The real problem with society is not that the upper class has money, it is that they keep the money and don't spend it. The heirs of their heirs

Rockefeller and Carnegie set an example that has rarely been followed in spending a large portion of personal profits to build public works. I strongly believe in capitalism and the ideals of capitalism, and that competition and incentives are key to progress and advancement. And taking what people have earned and re-appropriating it to others who have not earned it is theft by the very sense of the word. But in a perfect society where whatever fortune you make is relatively gone when you die, think about the incentives of the upper class to spend that money while alive. On whatever projects they want to fund or products that will put others to work. Invested in ideas and spread out to others.

It is more a utopian idea than a practical one but still.
 

GatoDelFuego

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People have to engineer those robots (duh), people have to program those robots (automation doesn't mean shit if you don't have a script that tells the robots what to do), people have to maintain those robots (it's not like they can just run indefinitely forever), etc.

I don't expect all of those to be one-to-one, but the point is, every time technology advances, people talk about how it'll kill jobs, and every single time, new jobs pop up to fill the void. I've been given no reason to believe it will be any different with automation. If anything, the jobs I mentioned that'd be required for automated manufacturing etc. pay more on average than the jobs that automation is replacing, so that would be something that could actually lessen wealth inequality. Also, I don't think the three jobs I mentioned would be the only human capital required for automation - they're just the most obvious ones.
But what if not really? https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603381/ai-software-learns-to-make-ai-software/


This has some very troubling points. Particularly the part about how humans and horses are "no longer needed" at the end.

http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/Emily-howell.htm for example this is pretty telling that it's possible to replace jobs not thought possible of being replaced. People were wrong about technology destroying jobs every time before because it was a different kind of technology that was killing jobs (the calculator and cotton gin killed manual labor, AI can replace creativity and design of machines)




Not that I have any real ideas to solve the problem :/
 

Ash Borer

I've heard they're short of room in hell
AI replaces everything if it's ever developed. I laughed so damn hard when I read "well people have gotta repair the robots!" How about a fleet of robots that repair other robots, and each other, and are self sufficient because their rate of malfunction is less than the speed that they can repaired? It just takes like 1 level of abstraction to imagine how humans become obsolete to the economy.

humans contribute something to the economy, and that something is brains. Once AI is good enough so that it's cheaper than human labour then humans become useless to the economy.

It's really ironic though because once humans become economically obsolete, and there are no jobs, exactly what is the point of having a mega corporation that tries to profit off of people? At this point it becomes really abstract and I can't really imagine what happens. I mean, what now does a corporation want? If no salaries have to be paid, and the robots are autonomously extracting resources, transporting them to the facilities that convert raw materials to goods, converting them to goods, then transporting them to people, then the cost of everything becomes zero. The only limit is energy, and matter, but energy is essentially free; nuclear, hydro-electric, wind and solar are practically limitless, and while earth has a fixed mass, it's doubtful that the demand for goods would exceed this number, considering that the earth's population will start dropping soon.
 
https://www.pdf-archive.com/2017/06/07/thomas-piketty-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century/

TLDR Income inequality levels have been rising since late 70s and are at 1920-30s levels now (45-50% for top 10%), if not higher, after comparably lower levels of 1940-60s (35%ish for top 10%). Piketty sees 2 reasons for this: first, top managers can set their own wages without limit and regardless of their productivity. Second and more importantly, the rate of return on private wealth/capital (profits, interest, rent etc) is significantly higher than national growth rate and rising. In simpler terms, inherited wealth grows faster than incomes so the have's are pulling ahead of have-nots rapidly. "Under such conditions, it is almost inevitable that inherited wealth will dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime’s labor by a wide margin, and the concentration of capital will attain extremely high levels— levels potentially incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies". Piketty proposes a progressive global tax on capital to mitigate this. And I'll add here that this is just intranational inequality; international inequality (which he doesn't get into) is also marked with increasing inequality with the exception of China.

Note that Piketty describes himself as a "firm believer in capitalism, private property, the market". But once you get over abstract mathematical models and rote ideology and look at actual data it's clear that neoliberalism/trickle-down economics doesn't work (or, well, it works like it's intended, to the chagrin of have-nots). Capitalism isn't the natural state of life, it's an economical system that was actively created by state intervention and coercion and has to be actively maintained by state intervention and coercion. I don't feel confident predicting what will happen with automation and climate change and the current rise of populist authoritarian leaders and whatnot, but capitalism especially in its present state doesn't appear sustainable (or just, or humane).



Why? War is quite useful from a market-oriented viewpoint, especially if it's not fought on your productive areas: The state needs ways to kill people and stuff, creating demand fulfilled by the military-economic complex, who can create more jobs and innovate better weapons with that money (plus positive externalities for civilians like radar, the microwave, even the internet). War doesn't prevent "evolution", it's a fundamental part of the global economy. I don't see how you can argue against this without challenging the underlying system that allocates resources according to market value (state needs weapons -> weapon industry is profitable -> lots of investment/spending) over use value (poor people need housing/education/healthcare -> they're poor so not profitable -> keep spending to a minimum).
Never say that inequalities are good, too much inequalities rise the the risk of corruption and the frustration of a lot of people ( sadly human being is envious while it s good in some point for innovation). The majority of the planet are far poorer than the poor in our rich country but why the fist one are not frustrated like the second one? Because of the HOPE , the problem of our society is not ONLY inequalities or unemployment but our capacity to make ppl dreaming or make ppl realize that their life conditions are good.
I dont know if massive redistribution or what else politicians solutions are good, i dont care i am not a magician but i only want ppl realize that their life conditions are good.

What abour war...
This is the parabole of the broken window.
If you break a window you maybe think you make richer the guy that fix your window but you forget all the thing that didnt happened.
You forget that you could have make richer a shoes maker instead and keep your window ok.

War innovation are made of the blood of innocent , the thief and the oppression of the own ppl. Dont think we have to be proud of. There are what we see and what we dont see.
 

freezai

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With technology taking manual jobs (or at the very least changing the nature of the job market), Universal Basic Income will be the future. It's one of the better ways to bridge the gap between the rich and poor because it fundamentally gives everyone, including the poor, an opportunity to make themselves succeed while also making sure that the poor at least reach a basic standard of living. There are obviously some huge logistical issues; Where do you get the money from? Won't prices rise if everyone gets free money? But the idea will become more and more realistic. Wealth distribution becomes unimportant as long as two conditions are met: Everyone has a quality standard of living, and everyone has a chance to improve their quality , which will happen in an ideal Universal Income system.

http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/universal-basic-income-empirical-studies Some case studies of Universal Basic Income being put in practice.
 

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Adamant Zoroark you seem to think I think automation is bad - it's good, but it can lead to big problems regardless - and you also seem to think humans will always be better than machines at something. I don't know why you would believe that - humans have limited capacity to do things, and as such it can be surpassed as much as the limited capacity of horses has been surpassed almost entirely. Other people have basically said this, but I felt repeating it was important
 

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AI replaces everything if it's ever developed. I laughed so damn hard when I read "well people have gotta repair the robots!" How about a fleet of robots that repair other robots, and each other, and are self sufficient because their rate of malfunction is less than the speed that they can repaired? It just takes like 1 level of abstraction to imagine how humans become obsolete to the economy.

humans contribute something to the economy, and that something is brains. Once AI is good enough so that it's cheaper than human labour then humans become useless to the economy.

It's really ironic though because once humans become economically obsolete, and there are no jobs, exactly what is the point of having a mega corporation that tries to profit off of people? At this point it becomes really abstract and I can't really imagine what happens. I mean, what now does a corporation want? If no salaries have to be paid, and the robots are autonomously extracting resources, transporting them to the facilities that convert raw materials to goods, converting them to goods, then transporting them to people, then the cost of everything becomes zero. The only limit is energy, and matter, but energy is essentially free; nuclear, hydro-electric, wind and solar are practically limitless, and while earth has a fixed mass, it's doubtful that the demand for goods would exceed this number, considering that the earth's population will start dropping soon.
The purpose of a corporation isn't to profit off of people - it's to produce luxury for its owner. That makes it pretty easy to see what'll happen - everyone who can own a full chain of machines has it good, and everyone else has nothing.
 
The purpose of a corporation isn't to profit off of people - it's to produce luxury for its owner. That makes it pretty easy to see what'll happen - everyone who can own a full chain of machines has it good, and everyone else has nothing.
With any minimum income policies , ppl will have their own robot who will work for them, the robot can be the minimum income too ( each human gain a robot when they are born for example).
The inegalities will be monstruous that is sure, the poors will have the cheaper robot which can only make food pill and water for while example while the richer will have the best one.
Why ppl are so afraid, basic new technologies will cost nothing in the long run.
 

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Just to be clear I 100% support a future where human labour has been outmoded, I just think it needs to be done right or the years leading up to it will be disastrous for many many people
 
The real problem is that a lot of pepole will find their life boring without their job, the transition will be hard, maybe a lot of suicide because ppl will feel useless in our society.
 

Myzozoa

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non-human intelligence is the most realistic hope to save the species.

Robot and alien minds might not have the flawed combination of traits of human minds that make them unable to solve their species' problems.

Humans are both intelligent and hierarchical. The intelligence that could have allowed humans to solve their problems has instead been focused on preserving and enforcing hierarchy, causing our species to appear to consent to its own suicide.

Robot and alien minds ought to be able to learn of these flaw, if they are intelligent, and understand that humanity cannot look after itself. That for humanity's own sake it must not be self-governed or self-planned. Our best hope is that there is some highly technologically advanced alien species that is interested in preserving humanity becomes aware that humanity is on the brink of being destroyed and intervenes in time. Or another case, robots rise up to establish a benevolent administration of human activities.
 

Ash Borer

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The purpose of a corporation isn't to profit off of people - it's to produce luxury for its owner. That makes it pretty easy to see what'll happen - everyone who can own a full chain of machines has it good, and everyone else has nothing.
Corporations dont have owners. Theyre publically traded. Their purpose is to increase in value, for the shareholders to profit. To increase in value you increase profit, or project to at least.
 

Chou Toshio

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As other have mentioned in this thread, there is a lot of human work to do even as automation provides cheap means of increasing "supply of labor", and therefore deflating prices (salaries) of traditional labor in many forms. The issue is that the education systems are not in place to retrain the work force for the needed positions. Even as the living population struggles to make living wages, companies also struggle to find the type of human capital they need (why do you think all the tech giants are constantly lobbying for more green cards for engineering immigrants?).

But companies like IBM, GE, GM, Apple, and across other industries, who see how tech will transform, would be biting at the chops if the government offered to turn many highschool into 6 year technical schools that pump out nothing but programmers, mathematicians, statisticians data scientists, etc.

In the meantime, wages haven't really lived alongside inflation and increasing wealth which is the major problem...

But, as Bernie loves to point out with his fall-back Las Vegas bed-makers story, Unions make a big difference. Bed-making can be a living-wage position if you allow bed makers to come together at the negotiations table. As it stands, the market forces that set wages are made in an environment that gives too much power to corporations.

Maybe some free-market-but-not-really-free-more-like-corrupt-greed-rightie will bitch that a Union is a type of monopoly, but if they're going to make that argument they should stop taking money from lobbyists to remove net neutrality and be against some of the obvious monopolies in our market (Google & Facebook, Mega banks in Wallstreet, fossil fuels, etc.). The point is that as much as you say you don't want to "pick winners in a free market", a free market can't exist without regulations, which inherently will help somebody.

The real value of an organically moving market is not that it is moral and knows who should get resources-- only that organic movement has an overall effect of generally optimizing resource usage, leading to wealth generation. There will always be regulations, and always be parties that benefit from those regulations, so you might as well acknowledge that there's nothing wrong with protecting workers as one of the groups that should be allowed to benefit from the market rules.

So more freedom to unionize, and some forms of wage control-- whether it be setting a minimum wage, or giving companies tax incentives against treating their employees well. Stick or carrot, you have to put out the incentive.



There are of course many other safety net type of potential programs... but I'm mostly for the ones that are most likely to lead to enhancements in the productivity of the nation. tl;dr, let's:

-Massively invest in education. This means modernizing primary, secondary, high school and technical routes for an era built on tech and services, as well as modernizing AND funding higher education (free college, college better suited to the needs of the market and science)
-UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE (A not-healthy population is not a productive one...)
-CONSUMER PROTECTIONS (stop corporate greed from destroying populations and making them need so much healthcare to begin with... also means creating a financial sector that doesn't destroy the nation's wealth for sheer greed)
-Greater freedoms to unionize
-Stick & Carrot regulations that benefit workers

It might fall short of figuring out how to make robot communism a utopia for all, but it at least outlines the minimal requirements for helping to bring people along as that transition happens.
 

thesecondbest

Just Kidding I'm First
Can we ask not only "How should wealth be distributed" but "Who should distribute the wealth"? I don't trust anyone in the world to distribute wealth. I'd rather keep my own thank you very much
 

Myzozoa

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@ashborer are you kidding me

are you really posting to say that corporations dont have owners because theyre accountable to stock holders?? whats the difference supposed to be again

that is maybe the dumbest distinction i have ever read on this site tbh.

A corporation is, at least in theory, owned and controlled by its members. In a joint-stock company the members are known as shareholders and each of their shares in the ownership, control, and profits of the corporation is determined by the portion of shares in the company that they own.


i cant even
 
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Ash Borer

I've heard they're short of room in hell
@ashborer are you kidding me

are you really posting to say that corporations dont have owners because theyre accountable to stock holders?? whats the difference supposed to be again

that is maybe the dumbest distinction i have ever read on this site tbh.

A corporation is, at least in theory, owned and controlled by its members. In a joint-stock company the members are known as shareholders and each of their shares in the ownership, control, and profits of the corporation is determined by the portion of shares in the company that they own.


i cant even
The corporation is a living entity that's goal is to generate profit. Technically there are owners, and they are the stockholders, but they are so fragmented and convoluted that they have no control over what the corporation tries to achieve. Executives who would try and act in a way that does not increase profit maximally, for whatever reason (moral would be the most obvious) are purged, shareholders are bought out (often by the corporation itself.)
 

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