Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Not exactly. There are a bunch of people out there who believe that government can make THEIR LIVES better - not "our lives better".
People who support regressive tax shifts, for example (say, cutting property taxes in exchange for a sales tax hike) believe that THEIR LIVES will be improved, even if every it makes renters worse off. Workers who support a higher minimum wage believe it will improve THEIR LIVES even if it makes other people worse off.
Renters actually pay property taxes as part of their rent. Often, due to homestead exemptions, they actually pay more than a property owner would.
But I'll play along...your new robot overlords would only take over the Earth if demand dictated producing enough for them to do so. If it happened, it would be quite natural and voluntary on humanity's part. We already did it to telephone switchboard operators with computer switching networks. Annihilated the entire occupational specialty, almost overnight, and we did it based on demand for cheaper and faster communications. Over half a million employees became obsolete overnight. AutoCAD annihilated the draftsman industry. Micro$oft Office and Lotus/Corel/etc vaporized the secretarial/typing pool. Electric refrigeration killed ice and milk delivery. Automated gas pumps killed the service station attendant job. Etc etc etc.
Progress kills jobs dead all the time. So yeah, maybe one day some super smart person will build a robot that does it all, and we'll kill ourselves. If that does occur, it will be because we wanted it, sought it out, and paid for it to occur...and we did so happily and with much gusto.
"We" don't have to kill ourselves, it just takes one wealthy businessman to crowd out every other human enterprise. As you observed, it's happened on a small scale many times before. But in the past, the robots were specialized; in the future, robots will hypothetically be able to replace any possible human activity. The old laborers were replaced by robots, and so the laborers became robot designers. But when the robots can design new robots, what happens? And I'm not sure that any aspect of what I described couldn't be done with close to modern technology; it's mostly just a matter of someone putting all the pieces together. And instead of literally one guy it would probably be a couple hundred Silicon Valley innovators and commodities tycoons investing in a company together, but I don't think that sort of simplification matters to the argument.
I mean, sure, in reality there could be some sort of movement of people who only buy human-made products or some nonsense, but anything like that would fly in the face of your reductionist supply/demand philosophy.
In short, it's not a straw man, it's a perfectly plausible near-future.
"We" don't have to kill ourselves, it just takes one wealthy businessman to crowd out every other human enterprise. As you observed, it's happened on a small scale many times before. But in the past, the robots were specialized; in the future, robots will hypothetically be able to replace any possible human activity. The old laborers were replaced by robots, and so the laborers became robot designers. But when the robots can design new robots, what happens? And I'm not sure that any aspect of what I described couldn't be done with close to modern technology; it's mostly just a matter of someone putting all the pieces together. And instead of literally one guy it would probably be a couple hundred Silicon Valley innovators and commodities tycoons investing in a company together, but I don't think that sort of simplification matters to the argument.
I mean, sure, in reality there could be some sort of movement of people who only buy human-made products or some nonsense, but anything like that would fly in the face of your reductionist supply/demand philosophy.
In short, it's not a straw man, it's a perfectly plausible near-future.
And in short, this still has nothing to do with why minimum wage is folly.
And in short, this still has nothing to do with why minimum wage is folly.
Let's focus on why throwing out "supply/demand" to every issue is a non-point, and then move on to more complicated issues. The point is that the law of supply/demand is largely irrelevant to m/w, in the same way that the law of gravity doesn't preclude walking.
Supply & Demand is best explained mathematically, using this mathematical thing called "a graph"
Every example you find, there will be an exterior force being applied to natural supply & demand trying in order to deny it's natural tendency. Take the opposing force away, or give capital a path of less resistance, and you'll see time and time again that S&D went nowhere, was always right there, and is working just as immutably as always.
Pricing strategies, command economies, Nixon price freezes, etc all illustrate this quite well. Command economies are the easiest because in virtually every command economy in history, one of the first things that pops up is black/grey markets, which is capital finding the path of least resistance, and supply and demand working naturally to get around the external force opposing it. Command economies only work by maintaining that external force and in every case in history, increasing it over time as supply and demand continues to erode the commander's power.
And when I say immutable, it is figurative, as in historically so predictable it may as well be a physical law. I realize social sciences are not physical, but Supply & Demand has indeed been so tried, true and predictable throughout history that it might as well be gravity for how easily one can predict what comes next.
Thank you. That's a valid explanation. As you do grasp the science (unlike many here), I expect you'll agree that our economic predictions can and do go wrong - sometimes severely.
It's probably not wise to use the term "immutable" when discussing economics. Too many people misunderstand scientific terms such as "law" and "theory." Throwing "immutable" into the mix can only muddy the water more.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
