Robot workers

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This item from Slashdot:
"Robots of the future will be capable of learning more complex behaviors than ever before if a new, pan-European research project succeeds in its goal of developing the world's first architecture for advanced robotic motor skills, reports Wired. If successful, the four-year AMARSi (Adaptive Modular Architecture for Rich Motor Skills) project could see a manufacturing world filled with autonomous, intelligent humanoid worker bots that can learn new skills by interacting with their co-workers."

I am curious as more workers are replaced by robots who don't get paid and who have no purchasing power who will have the money to buy what the robots produce?

The roboteers and CEOs will gladly take any money lost by the manual workers.

Other robots.

Capital owners. I don't think that there is a logical requirement of a certain distribution of purchasing power in the economy for economic function. If low-quality products are less popular then more money will be spent on high quality and perhaps decadent products.

Well after 50 years of robot assembly lines, the opposite seems to be true.

For example, there are people who decry their poverty today, and yet they have several gaming consoles, there is probably one or more automobiles in their house hold, and exotic veggies(even if just bananas) are available for purchase at reasonable prices. Further more, they are telling you all about their hardships from a personal computer. If pressed they have probably taken a vacation somewhere, even if its only a few hundred miles away. Even their clothes are discarded before needing mending. Did I mention cell phones?

Contrast with poverty before WWII(and automation). Relative purchasing power has increased... I dont care what anyone says. Poor meant going going hungry.

Even as a kid in the 70s I remember that discretionary purchases were much more expensive. That first Atari 2600 was a mark of affluence. I couldnt just march down to the super market and buy a dragon fruit for a dollar. And my family was solidly middle class.

It would be unbelievaby short sighted to do this under capitalism, profits would drop dramatically and there would be shorter periods between market crashes, with extremely weak periods of recovery.

@ fuzzy -

you're confusing correlation and causation.

the relative affluence (in parts of western europe and north america that is) of the past 50 years is a result of the increase in international trade post-WW2 (there are, of course, finite limits to this - which we probably have reached) - gains made by the working class in terms of living standards in the aforementioned regions has arisen out of workers in the second and third world being squeezed more and more for raw materials, labour etc.

Poor still means going hungry. Just not quite as much as it did for North America and West Europe. For the favelas and barrios around Buenos Aires, Lagos, Beijing and Johannesburg however.....

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01598.html

No I am not. Had mechanization not occurred, this society wouldn't have been possible even with increased trade. The seas would be flooded and polluted with tiny merchant vessels all rushing and fighting for a berth at port. In fact I am doubtful there would be enough ports for a portion of all the little ships needed. And imagine the logistics of sorting through all that paperwork?

I am well aware, as you should be, that automation and large scale storage enables the transport and reduced cost of many goods. You couldnt load those giant freighters fast enough by hand before the materials spoiled. Again, the sheer size of those vessels requires advanced and pervasive mechanization in their construction. They dissuade piracy and theft too.


So I think you are discounting causation with your correlation. Mechanization and automation enabled the demands for increased trade.

I've read enough of your posts to see that you might have read a lot of books, but you dont have much field experience with the logistics of social maintenance. Might I suggest a tour of a city water treatment plant to start? People forget all about luxury trade goods when the machinery stops giving them fresh water. Or they could brew their own beer and feed it to the kids each morning. Like you used to. Before mechanization.

Gaining a little hands on experience about what mechanization means for the society would bring your politics out of the 19th century. Marx and Trotsky did not foresee automation any where near the degree that we depend upon it. And those that followed in their shoes take it for granted. Making life better for the labourer when the (human) labourer is being phased out is banal.

Society is not done abstracting workers away from labour. One hundred years ago my ancestors harvested fields by blade and hand. 20 years later swathing machines did it. Now? Self propelled combines with an uplink to the farmers phone if something goes wrong. The former labourer is now a distant manager.





Well this I can agree with. The western standard for what is poor has changed.

Incidentally it was the realization that my personal income was lower that many third world peoples that led me to seek financial aid. I actually loaned money through Kiva to a carpenter. Kiva is a no interest loan organization. I didnt profit.. it was the right thing to do.

After I did this, I realized that what I loaned was a portion of the money which that carpenter borrowed each year from Kiva(he has an exemplary repayment record). What he borrowed had to be a fraction of his total income, and just what he borrows exceeds my yearly income.

And yet his life style is obviously somewhat hardscrabble whilst I sit here with three computers and a vehicle, clothed warm and well fed.

Last edited by Fuzzy on 14 Mar 2010, 12:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Profits would be up for any manufacturer who lowers costs. If that means robot workers, then that's what we'll have.

Anyways, your prediction is wrong. Just look at the past several centuries of history to see why.


Increased trade has helped a lot, but you can't discount the role of technological advances. Improved manufacturing efficiency has resulted in real increases in wealth.

Frankly, I'm surprised that a Marxist would ever regard trade as more important than technological advance.

It is frankly hilarious that there is a total blind sidedness as to the threat of the elimination of a major part of the work force to total mechanization without any compensation towards seeing to it that the money dispensation which is a prime economic factor in seeing to it that a working market is maintained. Back in the late 1940's there was much talk of the possibility of decreasing the working hours so that the wage earners could take advantage of technological advances which tremendously increased their efficiency. But all of that economic reward for increased efficiency has been diverted to the pockets of the wealthy and the wage earners who comprise the bulk of the market seem these days to be even further pressed to work beyond the previously accepted 40 hour week with little compensation if any. When I was young it was accepted that one wage earner in a family could support the family economically while the other parent could devote full time to the responsibility of family necessities. Today even two working parents are often hard pressed to meet economic requirements. Technological advance has been marvelous for the wealthy owner class while the much praised American middle class is rapidly shrinking to create a huge chasm of wealth very characteristic of third world countries.
Jurassic reactionaries like ruveyn who see only malignancy in the kind of government control that, through taxation and public works, once saw to the maintenance of necessary national infrastructure and basic health and education are equally deaf, blind and dumb to the vicious economic vandalism of the corporate entities that are ravaging the economy. Higher education which was once the gateway to economic success is being priced out of the possibility of the average citizen and lower education supported by the archaic real estate taxes is failing immensely. And the so-called free enterprise system is also not functioning to even maintain proper technological capabilities. The functioning of the airlines is a total disgrace and the rail systems and general public transportation in the USA are completely inadequate to world standards. The US communications systems are also falling far behind (see http://www.counterpunch.org/rosen03122010.html) due to the greed and stupidities of the companies in charge.

To compare the approaching economic economic devastation to the rise of technology in the early industrial revolution (which also had its frightful miseries) is to misunderstand the immense impact of a totally mechanical industry with no provision for sensible human existence. The stupidity and unawareness is profound and dismaying in what should be intelligent perception.

Your impression of robot workers should be relabled robot slave workers. Slavery is unsustainable. Progress your model further from the perspective of the AI.

Though your concern for human supremecy is valid and you are one of my favorite comentors here, Sand, I do not feel the fear you seem to associate with this loss of supremacy.

Slavery of organic creatures has been traditional throughout human history and has only become indefensible through the acceptance that decent treatment amongst humans is a requisite of civilization. To describe robots as slaves is a wild misconception since a vacuum cleaner or an automobile cannot be termed a slave without a move towards psychosis. When robots attain human sensibilities there may be new perceptions on the matter. But what disturbs me is not the use of robots to do work undesired by humans but the use of robots to replace the ability of humans to have a place in the economic system without some way for humans in general to benefit from that accomplishment. The old relationships simply will not function any longer and the miseries approaching will be tsunamic.

At least America doesn't have to worry. Robots won't be cheaper than the Mexicans, Southeast Asians or other assorted brown people we currently "employ" to do our s**t jobs for a long time. At any rate, there's a lesson to be learned. We already know what happens when you find labor that costs far below what you'd need to pay a citizen of your society a living wage, we're already experiencing it.

At the moment this is true but robots and all other labor saving devices have the propensity to work faster and with far more efficiency than human labor and economically, at end, may prove far cheaper to use than human labor.

Sand: I agree. The robotic manufacturing devices of today are unthinking doers, lacking the capacity for sentient thought. How much cognitive power will we endow them with before we afford them the rights we give animals? When it's ok to own, buy, and sell a robot, but not to abuse a robot?

The old relationships will indeed cease to function. I'm questioning whether or not this is a bad thing.

Sentient artificial intelligence constructs worthy of the title are coming. Efficiency beats out inneficiency. Your original post seems to suggest you see the inneficiency of a system where workers have no buying power. I agree but I think the problem lies in the stagnant and self destructive system, not the progress that comes from it.



Then again, even knowing people who have constructs in development, I have to concede that sentient constructs could still be outside of my own lifetime, while the scenario you're pointing out is very much currently relevant.

What, then, would you suggest as measures to lessen the danger of such an unsustainable model?

Sand, I honestly see no difference between your complaints and the equally naïve claims, voiced hundreds of years ago, against sewing machines and any other labor-saving device.

Well... you're wrong in your understanding of the facts. Look at Fuzzy's post—he is not wealthy (at least not by Western standards) but he enjoys a standard of living that would have been unimagined a century ago. The average American today lives better than kings of centuries past.