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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32663 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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US ports are actually some of the least efficient in the world because of this point-blank refusal to adopt automation, IIRC they were next to Tanzania on the leaderboard. China and Japan are far ahead.

However, we do need to consider a balance between automation and human labour renumeration and leverage. I doubt any of us have worked in a port. Few of us are professional artists or actors, I suspect. I imagine many here would be much more sympathetic to extremely highly-paid software engineering or finance jobs getting axed and replaced by AI.

It may well be that a reasonable balance for ports vs port workers involves this thug and his hangers-on being sent off to prison for economic wrecking, mass sackings and prompt automation. But similarly reasonable balances may be imposed on unruly, arrogant tech-bros by the rest of society. Some level of working-class unity (interpreted broadly to mean all who derive most of their earning from their wage) may be appropriate here. What happens when we automated the dock workers, automated the factory workers, automate the retail workers... who will be left to go on strike when they automate us? And then where is our leverage to negotiate anything in the future?

There was a Liu Cixin short story about an Ancap civilization enforced by AI NAP killbots where one capitalist ended up owning all the parks, all the water and air after winning a completely fair free-market competition. Everyone else was confined to desolate hive cities, rasping away in filthy reprocessed air until their machines failed, unable to step a few metres away and enjoy the beautiful landscape. It is all private property. I am a NVIDIA shareholder and feel somewhat insulated by all of this... but many are not. Who is to say that someone or something won't decide 'oh these little people who bought shares pre-singularity didn't really contribute, off to penury with them! Print out another billion clones of us!'? We need leverage to negotiate and getting into a habit of discarding leverage may not be helpful, despite obvious good reasons to do so.

It may well be that a reasonable balance for ports vs port workers involves this thug and his hangers-on being sent off to prison for economic wrecking, mass sackings and prompt automation.

Good.

But similarly reasonable balances may be imposed on unruly, arrogant tech-bros by the rest of society.

Good.

Productivity is the source of wealth. Holding productivity back in pursuit of rents is how you get extended (ie. century long) periods of economic stagnation.

What happens when we automated the dock workers, automated the factory workers, automate the retail workers... who will be left to go on strike when they automate us? And then where is our leverage to negotiate anything in the future?

What does happen when they automate all the farm work? Where will we go?

-- Farm laborer, 1860, when 70% of the population worked in agriculture.

Productivity is the source of wealth. What happens when we, individual human beings without exceptional skills (and eventually them too), are no longer productive in any job? It's going to happen sooner or later, likely sooner.

When we are no longer productive, all we have are legal/moral claims to wealth that is fundamentally controlled by others. That's a precarious position to be in!

Competing states are absolutely advantaged by higher productivity but you and I aren't states or economies or large firms.

What happens when we, individual human beings without exceptional skills (and eventually them too), are no longer productive in any job?

I suggest you read about the microeconomic term "comparative advantage".

I suggest you read about the microeconomic term "comparative advantage".

Right back at you.

I hate it when people brandish "comparative advantage" as a talisman against the idea of technological unemployment, illustrating that they fail to understand it. Ricardo, the very economist who originally coined the term "comparative advantage" recognized that technological unemployment was still possible, even likely, despite it.

"Comparative advantage" says that the value of an individual's labor will never fall to zero, and that they will still be better off specializing in something, and trading the products of that specialty for the things they don't specialize in, than if they try to be fully self-sufficient. It does not at all guarantee that the maximum value of an individual's labor, when they specialize in their comparative advantage, cannot fall below their cost of living. Indeed, there are some people alive right now, among the most severely disabled, whose labor is worth less than what it costs to keep them alive. There's nothing in "comparative advantage" that prevents large portions of the population from joining them.

I'd point to this quote from economist Karl Smith back in 2012:

My longer thesis is that the rising return to unskilled labor is a function of industrialization and that industrialization is unique in this. The wage rate on unskilled labor never benefited before and its not immediately clear that it will ever benefit again.

This is because rents always accrue to the scarce factors of production. Industrialization meant that the only thing we were short on were “control systems” everything else in the production process was effectively cheap.

However, any mentally healthy human being is a decent control system. So, this meant huge returns to being a human. It also meant collapsing returns to being a horse. Though, people think of this as a difference in kind, I urge you not to. Horses are not so different than you and I.

As it so happened the wage rate for horses fell below sustenance and they died off. There is simply no basic reason this cannot happen to humans, save for the fact that other humans will enact policies to stop it. The market itself will not differentiate.

See also Smith in Forbes here. I can't find the specific passage at the moment, but I remember Gregory Clark in A Farewell to Alms also making a similar comparison to what happened to horses as an example of what could await most of us.

While human wants may be infinite, jobs depend on humans being able to meaningfully contribute to the production of those wants. Humans are finite, and thus, I would argue that our capacities are finite, and thus, the number of ways we can meaningly contribute to the production of goods and services is ultimately also finite. I'll point to Kevin Kohler's Substack post here:

So, are we destined to eventually follow the path of the horse in the economy? Daron Acemoglu & Pascal Restrepo (2018) argue that “the difference between human labor and horses is that humans have a comparative advantage in new and more complex tasks. Horses did not. If this comparative advantage is significant and the creation of new tasks continues, employment and the labor share can remain stable in the long run even in the face of rapid automation.” In other words, the high human general intelligence allows us to be more adaptive and shift to new tasks as the automation of more established tasks rolls forward.

The economists Anton Korinek & Donghyun Suh (2024) have created a model specifically considering why humans might run out of new tasks in the face of AGI and what would happen to wages in such a scenario. Their basic approach is that all possible tasks that could be performed by humans are ordered in terms of computational complexity and as digital computation expands more and more tasks can be automated moving the automation frontier from left to right. This is essentially a restatement of Moravec’s metaphorical landscape of human competences and automation (see figure below). In this metaphor the peaks reflect the most complex human competences, whereas AI automation is represented as a rising tide that continuously moves the shore line up.

…

If the complexity of economic tasks performed by humans is bounded (in other words, if there is no infinitely high mountain in Moravec’s landscape of human competences), automation will eventually cover all tasks, leading to complete automation. In the short term, automation increases productivity and boosts wages for non-automated tasks. In the long term, humans run out of tasks at which they can outperform machines and the labor share of income collapses fairly steeply as we approach full automation.

…

My judgement is that it’s likely that AI will eventually be able to outperform humans even on tasks with unbounded complexity and irreducible uncertainty. First, in some domains the ability of AI to perform complex tasks can already not be matched by humans. No human can filter mails or social media posts based on 10’000-dimensional decision boundaries. Second, the exponential growth of parameters in artificial neural networks means that, given enough training data and compute, AI can represent an exponentially growing amount of complexity, whereas our biological neural networks have fairly fixed upper limits.

…

If, at some point in the future, AGI can work at or below the cost of human labor and masters the meta-ability to learn novel tasks at least as quick and as well as humans, we have permanently lost the reskilling race. Then, new tasks can be automated as quickly as they are created.

And what this leaves out, is that human capacities are not only finite, but unequal; some of us will "run out" of ways to meaningfully contribute — again, the value of contributing will never hit zero, but it can fall below subsistence — before others. (As a disabled individual surviving by parasitizing of hard-working taxpayers via the public dole, this is quite an acute point for me.)

Ok, let's work through this. Let's actually start here:

Indeed, there are some people alive right now, among the most severely disabled, whose labor is worth less than what it costs to keep them alive.

I agree that there are, and have always been, severely disabled people who are simply unable to support themselves.

"Comparative advantage" says that the value of an individual's labor will never fall to zero, and that they will still be better off specializing in something, and trading the products of that specialty for the things they don't specialize in, than if they try to be fully self-sufficient.

Here, you acknowledge, but skip right over something key. You acknowledge that being fully self-sufficient is a lower bound. That is, excepting the severely disabled, the vast vast majority of able-bodied humans can, indeed, be self-sufficient, as evidenced by millennia of history. Comparative advantage means that you will be better off than being self-sufficient, by your own acknowledgement.

It does not at all guarantee that the maximum value of an individual's labor, when they specialize in their comparative advantage, cannot fall below their cost of living.

But here is where you contradict yourself. You just said that they will be better off than being self-sufficient. That is, better off than their cost of living.

humans are horses

Humans are not horses. They're still not horses. This is literally a meme on the badecon subreddit, for good reason. Humans have agency, can understand (or at least act as if they understand) opportunity cost and comparative advantage. Like, the primary things under discussion here are a major reason why humans are not horses. Horses are more like hammers than they are humans.

Humans are finite, and thus, I would argue that our capacities are finite, and thus, the number of ways we can meaningly contribute to the production of goods and services is ultimately also finite.

Sure. Irrelevant, but sure.

automation will eventually cover all tasks, leading to complete automation

You're telling me that delivering me an even better standard of living than I currently have is going to be fully automated? And the marginal cost of such automation is going to be basically zero? (At the very least, lower than the cost of convincing someone to switch from their life of abundance and leisure to helping out.) Huh. Sounds pretty nice.

Like, what is even your model here? A magic robot that can provide all your food, shelter, luxury desires, etc., it costs how much? Why does it cost that much? Who is being paid when one is purchased? It must be obscenely cheap to beat out how cheap those things would be otherwise. $10? $100?

some of us will "run out" of ways to meaningfully contribute — again, the value of contributing will never hit zero, but it can fall below subsistence

Nah, you already agreed that subsistence is a lower bound for anyone who is not severely disabled.

Here, you acknowledge, but skip right over something key. You acknowledge that being fully self-sufficient is a lower bound. That is, excepting the severely disabled, the vast vast majority of able-bodied humans can, indeed, be self-sufficient, as evidenced by millennia of history.

He said:

than if they try to be fully self-sufficient.

To try is not to be.

Right in that first block quote is:

That is, excepting the severely disabled, the vast vast majority of able-bodied humans can, indeed, be self-sufficient, as evidenced by millennia of history.

That's your block quote. The second quote in my comment is from Capital_Room. They do not match as you say they do.

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