An era to look forward to

[MorkandMindy]

We are now entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution - or 4.0 - think of the possibilities.

As with each stage of the Industrial Revolution there are keywords such as this one is: faster smarter safer cleaner. A good contrast with the first one which put smoke all over every building in a factory town.

Industrial Revolution 3 was pretty good; far fewer hungry than anyone imagined, Malthus totally disproved. The media tortures us but the reality is mostly pretty good.

 

[MorkandMindy]

More advanced technology means we get more of what we want, but since 1975 we've been cutting down on workers.

We need to think a bit more about how to keep the newly available people happy and productive.

 

[Mark Quayle]

More advanced technology means we get more of what we want, but since 1975 we've been cutting down on people. We need to think a bit more about how to keep the newly available people happy and productive.

Social engineering is the government's job?

 

[MorkandMindy]

The watershed date during the third Industrial Revolution was the year 1975, though the US was wealthy and a lot of the effects of austerity hit in subsequent decades.

As the shortage of workers that had existed in pretty well all of history up until then, ended and turned into a surplus, strikes were used by workers in an attempt to retain power over wages and working conditions, but with workers in a surplus, ultimately the strikes were going to break.

What was special about 1975

1975 was the nexus of when a few factors that led to a surplus of workers all converged.
1. Computers began doing a lot of the main work in number crunching in accounting & data processing.
2. The US began importing substantial amounts of manufactured goods that therefore no longer had to be made in the USA.
3. As male pay began to decline women entered the workforce partly to make up the shortfall in money, but this further increased the surplus of workers and further weakened the workers bargaining position.
4. Automation reduced the demand for manufacturing workers, as mechanization did the same for agricultural workers.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Industrial Revolution 4.0 is going to make the unemployment problem even worse.

Or is that the wrong way to look at it?

There are a huge amount of things that need to be done

We were in this situation back in the 1930s:

 

[MorkandMindy]

We can do better. We can form 'colleges' of apprentices working on things they want to work on.

Make paintings, metalwork, woodwork, Christmas presents, helping old people, repair the really big old locomotive down in the middle of town. Make youtube episodes, put on history plays for schools. Even a few to greet in stores to help people find what they are looking for.

This is where the line is between employees and volunteers. The store is cutting down on staff to boost profits, but it then offers little service to people, particularly old people who can't read prices or what is on shelves.

But as Milton Friedman put it: a firm's sole responsibility is to its shareholders

So don't expect anything from companies anymore.

Nor can you expect the government to provide it,

so who will?

 

[MorkandMindy]

It's what Andrew Yang was talking about, the Peace Bonus or the War Bonus or whatever you decide to call it. I'll call it 'The machines are doing my job' bonus.


Think of it as just a problem with accounting

What's been happening until now is:
Terminate a US worker, then the company pays less money out, and the money goes out of the country, and the money to support the US worker now comes out of a government account instead of a company account,

and the govt pays living costs, healthcare costs, therapy sessions, pills for depression, and the worker loses a sense of purpose, but the money is now coming out of a different account. oh, and a good piece of it is going out of the country.

We've got to stop doing stupid accounting tricks and start making things ourselves, for years we've been sending 500 billion dollars a year, out of the country to get other countries to make things, and making our own people sit around doing nothing, at home or in some huge government office where there is nothing to do.

The economy has to work for us, and we have to start shaping it to work for all of us.