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syllogism comments on The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ - Less Wrong
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(Upvoted.) I've been reading Tyler and I read McAfee. So far, your comment here is the most impressive argument for this position I've seen anywhere, and so I don't feel bad about not addressing it earlier. I'm not sure you really address the central point either; why can't the disemployed people find new jobs like in the last four centuries, and why did unemployment drop in Germany once they fixed their labor market, and why hasn't employment dropped in Australia, etcetera? (And note that anything along the lines of 'regional boom' contradicts ZMP and completely outcompeted humans and other explanations which postulate unemployability, not 'unemployable unless regional boom'.) Why is the IQ 70 kid not able to do laundry as so many others once did earlier, if the economy is so productive - shouldn't someone be able to hire him in his area of Ricardian comparative advantage? Maybe eventually AI will disemploy that kid but right now humans are still doing laundry! Again, the economy of 1920 seemed to do quite well handling disemployment pressures like this with reemployment, so what changed?
Quick question: To what extent are you playing Devil's Advocate above and to what extent do you actually think that the robotic disemployment thesis is correct, a primary cause of current unemployment, not solvable with NGDP level targeting, and unfixable due to some humans being too-much-outcompeted, rather than due to other environmental changes like the regulatory environment etcetera?
In addition to gwern's objections, what if his RCA price-point turns out to be, say, 50c an hour? The utility curve is not smooth. Past a point, a starvation wage is still a starvation wage. Even in a hypothetical world where there were zero welfare and no opportunities for crime, he'd be better off spending the time looking for low-probability alternatives than settling on spending 40 hours a week working for sure starvation.
An awful lot of people on this Earth would be very glad of 50c/hour.
This reminds me place premium, an interesting concept that someone doing the same job in one country can earn more than in another. Though we are talking about some kid who can't even get a job in the first place, this concept works well.
For example if a homogenous region such as country, city, or even suburb, has automated to such a degree that menial jobs are few. Has attracted the best people, and the best people to serve the best people. Such a region has 'place premium' as the top creative jobs, programming, finance, design work, etc, pay extremely well to entice the best. These people demand, via their wealth, the best service and so entice those that are skilled, good looking, whatever attributes required for service. Continuously filtering people.
I'll also argue that the US is a special case in that US dollar holders get a subsidy to living via the petrodollar/global reserve currency. Payed for by any foreigners wanting to by [relative to them] foreign products. This only increases the place premium of living in the US, and thus earning a wage in USD.
For the IQ 70 kids, perhaps there ARE no jobs for them in the region they live in. They have been filtered out by better (in the sense of selected for the jobs in that region) people after the region's 'place premium'.
The solution is to move somewhere else, go opposite the flow of people moving to higher 'place premium' locations; the one they are in has been saturated by above average people. Perhaps even it is time to think of immigration to one of those countries where they can earn 50c/hour.
Of course with the advent of nation states there is no longer free flow of people, so without welfare these kids might just starve to death, denied the freedom to move.
"The solution is to move somewhere else, go opposite the flow of people moving to higher 'place premium' locations; the one they are in has been saturated by above average people."
The problem, besides foreign countries wanting to get rid of their own low IQ pop., is in admitting to oneself that they should be in the out-going group rather than, say, assume one just needs more education.
Yes, but location isn't fungible, and not all jobs are telecommutable. A 50c/hour wage in the Bay Area is a death sentence without some supplemental source, even if someone in the Congo might live like a king on it.