Life After Work

If all labor is automated and nobody can earn anything selling their own anymore, all that’s left are the other two factors of production: capital and land.

Land is scarce and cant be produced, so whoever already owns it will benefit after the change.

Capital can be produced, but what produces it? Labor. Even worse, capital depreciates over time so just owning some now doesn’t guarantee you an income in the post labor future.

In a fully automated world where human labor is truly of zero value it seems the main returns in the long run are to those who can gate keep valuable land, natural resources, and other fundamentally scarce assets.

The linked hiring page has a junior react/python position listed at $250k/yr

The rest of the piece makes a lot more sense given the context that the author is temporarily divorced from the broader economy

> This mechanical revolution had a profound impact on child labor. Whereas children working was previously seen as an unfortunate necessity, the new wealth created from automation turned it into an excess. Families who no longer depended on their children’s wages stopped sending them to work. In response, society reoriented its perception of childhood, from a period of economic activity to one devoted to education and play. Mass public schooling was established, and child labor was widely outlawed.

No, that’s not how it worked.

Children were made to work in mines and factories to the point of exhaustion - so much so that, by adulthood, many were in poor health.

Prussia outlawed child labor and introduced public schools not because of Enlightenment ideas about human rights or education, but to train soldiers.

This idealization is not just a small historical omission; it’s the root cause of many core issues in the current education system. We take the current school system for granted - "either this or a lack of education" - but many features (e.g., teaching by age cohorts; the teacher as superior; everything organized in inflexible blocks of time; students expected to sit and stand on command, etc.) are not universal and are likely not optimal for growth. They were, however, very good for training infantry and factory workers - over 100 years ago.

It’s natural to feel anxious as we approach the inevitable automation of all human labor

This is sell-side idealist thinking and blurred view of reality. We're not approaching it, we're not even seeing metrics to suggest that any sub-division of any business is making serious progress there at all.

Too many people are hyping something that will not happen in our lifetimes and we risk looking beyond the terrible state of large global economies, poor business practice and human exploitation on mass scales to a place we will never see. It's more fun to try and shape future possibilities for large profit that we'll probably never have to justify, than attempt to deal with current realities, and thus go against the grain of investment trends today, for an uncertain benefit.

"With trillions of digital workers and robots entering the economy, a tenfold increase in GDP represents a very conservative estimate of how much full automation could increase economic output. If this modest increase were reflected proportionally in US tax revenues, we could resolve all current Social Security funding shortfalls, lower the retirement age to 18, and increase the average payout to over $150,000 per adult per year."

From what money is that "ten-fold increase in revenue" coming from if no one is working? Is this a chicken/egg problem in the beginning in order to ramp this economy up? But even it it can get ramped up, the described scenario feels like a zero-sum game no? Like we're all just playing a continuous poker game with the same players and all the same money.

If/when we come to the level of artificial super-intelligence that no humans need to work, said AI would surely be smart enough to replace all human tasks?

At which point, what will be the "moat" between the haves and have nots?

Ideally this sort of AI would completely flatten the inequality curve, because whatever edge you would have, the AI would equalize that for those at a disadvantage. Given that the AI is equally available for everyone.

This alone, brings me to believe that when we get there, there will be some built-in safety mechanism to preserve power for those that are powerful. Sorry if I'm being a bit too general with this discussion, but if we're going to face a scenario where AI becomes too powerful, obviously all humans will/should feel the effect.

> The answer lies in recognizing that wages are just one source of income. People also earn income from investments....

I already can see the slant that, this whole article is going to be about. Capital holders are going to be the only people matter. Everyone else is trivial. i.e. the top 5% who hold 80% of all wealth in the world.

>Consider Qatar as a point of comparison. Migrant workers make up roughly 94% of the country’s workforce, yet only Qatari citizens, who make up the remaining 6%, are eligible to receive most government welfare benefits.

My father was one among those 94%. Stayed away from my family for more than a decade, only visiting us for 2 months every 2 years. Leaving with tears in his eyes every time. Qatar shouldn't be a point of comparison for capitalism. With no way for naturalization, a strong monarchy, and Labor oppression. I think it's the opposite of free trade capitalism as preached by the west.

What I got from this article was. More money for me, and none for the peasants, but that's okay because they or their work don't matter anyway.

It was logical to provide child welfare when children stopped working because parents loved kids. Similarly, most welfare systems work because economies run on labour, thus the owners of capital are motivated to appease the labourers. In a post labour world, what exactly motivates teh welfare?

One issue with historical comparisons is that a pool of labor (such as child labor) were freed to transition to some other workforce. If AI hyperscales to a point of generally out-competing human work forces, then we have nowhere else to go but the dwindling havens where AI and automation cannot touch for now. If we live in post-scarcity equitable society–and we assume human society can cope without a struggle or purpose– this is great. If we don’t, this is an unmitigated disaster.

> Now consider humanity after full automation. Instead of millions of migrant workers, humanity will have trillions of digital laborers at its disposal.

One piece in the logic I don't get is this: why would (or should) the earnings done by those workers go into the pockets of humanity, who isn't doing the work, rather than into the pockets of the laborers, whether digital or not?

I think the author assumed things will be spread fairly across the board. I don't think wealth gain will be evenly distributed. The other issue I have with the article is that the author assumed unlimited resource to build the robots. Resources will be limited. Building those robots won't be a nice green field either. I think there will be a lot of dirty waste by products that will be a major health concern for the human.

I do like that they notice the fact that automation and plummeting wages do not automatically mean immiseration for the population. I've read so many uninformed online discussions along the lines of "If no one has jobs anymore, who will buy their products" where people do not even briefly stop to think that automated jobs will most likely also depress prices of many goods and services.

I do not know whether the outcome will be good or not, but it's good to recognize that wealth can increase even in the face of widespread automation.