Robots: BIGness or Barbarity

Marshall Brain writes today over in his Robotic Nation blog: “[C]onventional wisdom says that, as robots take over jobs, the increased productivity should be good for everyone. With robots taking the mundane jobs and increasing productivity, people should make lots more money.”

He proposes, however, that a recent article from USAToday, paints a different picture, when it points out:

"Since Bush took office, nearly 700,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the region [ie, "the crescent of states stretching across the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River"]. Many are gone forever, outsourced to places such as China and Mexico where labor costs are lower. Even if the jobs are replaced, the salaries and benefits often aren't. 'The jobs that are replacing them are much lower wage,' says Jeff Collins, a business professor at the University of Arkansas."

“Manufacturing,” continues Brain, “is, right now, the most robotic area of the economy. As the service sector turns robotic, we should expect to see this same downward spiral there as well... [M]ost of the "normal" jobs head toward minimum wage instead of getting better as the robots arrive. Instead of the wealth created by robots spreading out to everyone, it concentrates in the wealthy, since the wealthy own the robots.”

This is an argument Brain has made in several places, among them, notably, an essay entitled Robotic Freedom.

Mundi Collaborator and Friend James Hughes neatly summarizes Brain’s recommendations for coping with these dilemmas in an excellent and sympathetic column of his own, “Getting Paid in Our Jobless Future."

“Brain," writes Hughes, "argues that every American adult should receive an annual income of US$25,000 from the federal government. This would save capitalism by keeping the demand-side strong, eliminate poverty, establish general economic security and give people the leisure to spend long years in school learning to do something that robots can't.” Hughes goes on to expound his own case for a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) as a way to disseminate rather than concentrate the enormous new wealth created by increasing automation in another column of his, "Embrace the End of Work."

Here is the very clear-eyed and compelling conclusion of Hughes’ argument in that piece:

“In the end, business would rather invest first in people in the developing world and then infotech and robots rather than expensive human workers in the developed world. Because of this, wages in the developed countries will fall in competition with the lowest wage human competitors around the world, and then in competition with the increasingly inexpensive robots and expert systems. Jobs will disappear, wages will fall and we will face three choices: Luddism, barbarism or basic income.

"The Luddites might win a temporary battle here and there, delaying one or the other labor-saving device or innovation. But in the end they will lose, and the technologies will come. Then the question will be what happens to the displaced, and to the economy.

"Without an expanded social wage (benefits and income from the government) in general, and a guaranteed basic income in particular, we face widespread immiseration, economic contraction and polarization between the wealthy, the shrinking working class and the structurally redundant.

"Or we can avoid this bleak future by re-embracing the techno-utopian vision and consciously striving to shrink working life by reducing the work week, mandating paid vacations, raising the minimum wage, improving workplace protections and providing health insurance and a basic income as a right of citizenship. All these policies will make human labor more expensive and investments in automation increasingly attractive. Employment will shrink, social wealth will grow and be shared more equally, and we can start rejoicing instead of despairing about the end of work. As Marshall Brain says, humanity can go on a permanent vacation."