Quote from: SpontaneousDisorder on May 05, 2012, 08:36:41 PM

Quote from: LightRider on May 05, 2012, 07:41:10 PM

What do you do when 99% of all labor is "divided" into the responsibility of robots, automation and AI? What kind of economy do you expect to have then? Shall all 7 billion people continue to compete for the remaining positions of labor just to live? What kind of sickness are you people promoting who still cling to the ancient and useless ideas of pre industrial society and economic theory? Why don't you start recognizing what is actually happening and start participating rationally?

How is this different from a Luddite fallacy?

+100

Anyone who worries about "robots stealing all the work" doesn't realize that it's not work we want, but production, and to the extent production can occur more efficiently, means more wealth for humanity. Furthermore, every time a robot is invented to do something humans used to do, the cost savings of that production frees up new capital to be put to better use elsewhere, and employment will likely be found in that new industry.

In 1700 almost everyone was a farmer. Machines completely changed that - and food is almost exclusively produced by robots now (what percent of the population still farms??). Yet, is everyone sitting around without work? And this is with a population increase of billions of people since the year 1700!! Where did that new work come from?

Machines, so long as they are profitably employed, will almost always create more new job opportunities than they destroy. If you want more people to have a job, you should hope for more machines, not fewer.