The end of private ownership in the means of production

Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

Your argument is that the more people, time, and labour it takes to produce something, the better off we are. That is in direct opposition to common sense. Are you richer if you can make a car and a house in 1 second by lifting your finger, or if it takes 10,000 men a whole year to make them for you?

Imagine if all material needs could be satisfied by pressing a button. No one would have a job, but everyone would be richer than Bill Gates. Would we be worse off or better off? It should be obvious that the cheaper, easier, and quicker it is to make things, the better off we all are (assuming avoidance of planet-killing pollution and waste output etc).

Another point to consider is that the bigger the population, the greater the probability of outlier super-producers like Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Ghandi/Mandela etc being born and having a huge beneficial impact on society.
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No I am not saying that at all, have you actually been reading my posts or am I really bad at explaining myself? Who could argue that people working less for more is a bad thing? My point is that I think this will create a situation where a centrally planned economy will naturally emerge, which I find quite concerning but maybe maybe you don't. Does this mean I think we should stop developing technology, no of course not.

I have not advocated population control in any of my posts, in fact I seem to remember saying to somebody you can't stop people having kids.
 
What everyone is missing here is that prices are set by supply-demand.

If you have 1,000,000 cans of caviar and I have a pencil, and nothing else exists, -- I'll trade you a pencil for 500,000 cans of caviar. And you'll do it -- why? Supply-demand.

Prices change. What goods/ services are priced at now will change too and some prices will change to an absurd degree like the caviar-pencil exchange.

In a society where there are 5 owners of automated production and 1,000 layed off workers, supply-demand will simply price the factory's goods for stuff the layed off workers can produce. Even if it's only stupid stuff like the lint in their jeans, the owners of production will buy it for what would be absurd prices today.. like 5 lbs of steak for jean lint. Such prices seem insane but the assumption of such automation is just as different from current reality.
 
Quote from ZapCoffee:

What everyone is missing here is that prices are set by supply-demand.

If you have 1,000,000 cans of caviar and I have a pencil, and nothing else exists, -- I'll trade you a pencil for 500,000 cans of caviar. And you'll do it -- why? Supply-demand.

Prices change. What goods/ services are priced at now will change too and some prices will change to an absurd degree like the caviar-pencil exchange.

In a society where there are 5 owners of automated production and 1,000 layed off workers, supply-demand will simply price the factory's goods for stuff the layed off workers can produce. Even if it's only stupid stuff like the lint in their jeans, the owners of production will buy it for what would be absurd prices today.. like 5 lbs of steak for jean lint. Such prices seem insane but the assumption of such automation is just as different from current reality.
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That's an interesting take on it, thanks.
 
Quote from Matt Houston:

I have not advocated population control in any of my posts, in fact I seem to remember saying to somebody you can't stop people having kids.
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2 kids per family is about right.
Then there is more money for their education.
Compulsory sterialisation after 2 !!
A man near me has 17 from about 5 different mothers. Never done a paid days work in his life, just sponges off the rest of us !! Probably over 18 by now and no apologies from sponger.

The do-gooders justify that he can if he wants. Mostly the rest don't care.

The Popes are guilty of over populating in Catholic countries. The bible and St ? were long before contraception was necessary.
 
Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

Google "lump of labour fallacy". The short answer is that your fears won't come to pass. The long answer is that your suggested 'cure' is far more likely to bring about disastrous impoverishment of the majority of the working and middle class than anything else; and that western-style capitalism with a moderate social safety net has achieved by far the closest to economic utopia for the masses out of any other system adopted by any other society in human history. You think the working class and middle class are suffering now? Move to Latin America, Africa, most of Asia or most of Eastern Europe for a year or two and live there - there IS no middle class, only the downtrodden poor and the corrupt rich. The West's system is the best, by far. Only Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong - all who adopted the western approach, either by choice (Singapore) or force by the west (Japan, Hong Kong) - now have comparable living standards. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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But what if there is a tipping point beyond which capital does not make labor more productive, it makes it obsolete? We've simply never had machines that could replicate thinking of the sort necessary in the relatively low-level white collar work that we are seeing happen now, so referencing historical outcomes doesn't seem valid.

In the book I referenced earlier, "Lights in the Tunnel", the author deals with the various axioms of economics that "might" fail to hold in a world where the "average" job is completely automated. As the author points out, from the perspective of mass production of certain types of goods, a worker who makes the median income is just as good a consumer as the CEO of a global company, since one can only have so many cell phones. The obsolescence of these masses' labor is what is on the docket.
 
Quote from ZapCoffee:

What everyone is missing here is that prices are set by supply-demand.

If you have 1,000,000 cans of caviar and I have a pencil, and nothing else exists, -- I'll trade you a pencil for 500,000 cans of caviar. And you'll do it -- why? Supply-demand.

Prices change. What goods/ services are priced at now will change too and some prices will change to an absurd degree like the caviar-pencil exchange.

In a society where there are 5 owners of automated production and 1,000 layed off workers, supply-demand will simply price the factory's goods for stuff the layed off workers can produce. Even if it's only stupid stuff like the lint in their jeans, the owners of production will buy it for what would be absurd prices today.. like 5 lbs of steak for jean lint. Such prices seem insane but the assumption of such automation is just as different from current reality.
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Where you gonna get the jeans if you have no labor to exchange for currency to buy them?

You're assuming that parties have to trade simply because both parties have different goods available for trade. That's not true because the party with the more "valuable" good can always wait for another trade offer to come along and refuse to trade for the first offer that comes along.
 
Quote from logic_man:

Where you gonna get the jeans if you have no labor to exchange for currency to buy them?

You're assuming that parties have to trade simply because both parties have different goods available for trade. That's not true because the party with the more "valuable" good can always wait for another trade offer to come along and refuse to trade for the first offer that comes along.
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Obviously. The man may not need or want the other guy's pencil.
 
Everyone assumes that the USA is a democracy !

It is NOT. It is more a plutocracy where mostly everything is reduced to money.

Why is Romney in Israel, saying what they are over joyed to hear - like if Israel takes out Iran's nuclear project Romney would respect that.

Because of money raising for the The Republican Party from the Jewish community. He is their dummy because without a bigger " war chest " than Obama he wouldn't have a hope of winning.

If you are a US citizen then you are likely to go in the same direction as your wallet. Policies you mumble ? Yeah well they will be decided later, gotta keep the paymasters happy.
 
So far, manufacturing jobs made obsolete by automation have been replaced by service jobs ... if we get to a point that low-level service jobs get replaced by technology, and there are no replacement jobs created, we have to put some restraint to this technological development (e.g., laws prohibiting replacing certain jobs by technology).

We are already at a point where the majority of the population lives in great wealth compared to our ancestors (e.g. in the Netherlands, about 90% of the population lives a relatively wealthy life). So the focus should shift to increasing well-being, a fulfilled life, not more wealth. Having a job is important for well-being I think; if goods could be produced by pressing a button, and noone would have to work anymore, that could lead to great societal disruption. We're close to that situation, with the development of nanotechnology.
 
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