On September 26, 2018, Jon Christian writes on Futurism:
JOB THIEF
First came the factories. Between 1993 and 2007, as U.S. factories became highly automated, every new robot eliminated 5.6 human jobs, an economic think tank estimated in a study.
Now automation is starting to eat into a new industry: food and hospitality. Workers are concerned — according to the New York Times, the labor union that represents Marriott International hotel workers is demanding measures that will protect staff from being replaced by robots.
ROBO-STOP
The Times’ take is that food and hospitality jobs have been spared by automation because service workers make so little. But cheap, effective artificial intelligence means those jobs are no longer secure. Especially worrying to Marriott workers: Their employer is now deploying Amazon Echo speakers in rooms, which they worry will cut into the duties of human hotel workers.
And it’s not just Marriott. Fast food giant McDonald’s is rolling out cashier-replacing kiosks at 1,000 stores per quarter, which one former executive blamed on workers’ demands for higher wages. This spring, Las Vegas food workers voted to strike to protest technology they said was encroaching on human jobs in kitchens.
BURGER FLIPPERS
Robots haven’t pushed out the human bellhops or front desk workers quite yet. But experts predict that’s going to change radically. And we’ve already got examples of what the service sector will look like as robots shoulder more tasks, from the Boston-based automated kitchen Spyce to the Japanese “robot hotel” Henna na.
So buckle up. Automation is going to bring precipitous change to the job market — and if history is any guide, workers are unlikely to give up their jobs without a fight.
https://futurism.com/service-robots/
Gary Reber Comments:
What is not covered is with non-human substitutes for human labor, how will the resulting hordes of citizens of zero economic value earn an income to be “customers with money” to create demand for the goods, products and services produced by the “machines”?
There should be no questions as to whether fast-developing AI and automation technologies affect jobs or that the competitive prospects of employing non-human productive means in the future will be a global race to economic independence and greatness.
As a society, we need to develop and implement solutions that will empower our citizens to gain property ownership rights in the future development of the relentless pace of non-human productive means, made possible with rapid advances in machine learning and the increasing availability of big data and enhanced computation power. Greater deployment of non-human AI and automation has the potential to significantly boost economic growth by continually improving productive efficiencies, which in the process will create new types of jobs as well as destroy jobs.
The way to avoid economic inequality in the process is to finance the formation of all non-human productive means in ways that create new owners of the wealth-creating, income-producing assets formed. We should be shifting our focus on skills development to address the plight of workers whose jobs have disappeared and will disappear because of automation, which will erode at an even faster exponential rate as AI and new technologies become more sophisticated and displace workers, and instead, focus on ownership creation of all future non-human productive means whereby EVERY child, woman, and man is a productive capital (non-human means of production) owner.
The reality is that while automation has been displacing workers from a variety of occupations, most predominately in manufacturing, we are on the cusp of an intensified technological revolution in which AI and the quickening deployment of robotics of all manner will impact all industries and exacerbate the effects of job losses and disruptions to an antiquated system focused on job creation rather than ownership creation.
The only way to far greater prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice is to embrace technological innovation and invention and the resulting human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc. as the primary economic engine of growth.
But significantly, unless we reform our system to empower EVERY American to acquire as individuals (not collectively), via pure, interest-free insured capital credit loans, viable full-ownership holdings (and thus entitlement to full-dividend earnings and voting) in the corporations growing the economy, with the future earnings of the investments paying for the initial loan debt to acquire ownership, the concentration of ownership of ALL future productive capital will continue to be amassed by a wealthy minority ownership class. Companies will continue to globalize in search of “customers with money” or simply fail, as exponentially there will be fewer and fewer customers to support their businesses worldwide. Why, because the majority will be disconnected from the dividend income derived from the non-human means of production that is replacing the need for labor workers who earn wages and salaries, which are then used to purchase goods, products, and services.
If we do not reform the system, soon, industrial monopoly capitalism will reach its twin goals: concentration of productive capital ownership among the elite ownership class and work performed with as few labor workers and the lowest possible wages and salaries.
Significant substitution of labor workers with the non-human means of production is a never-ending process, and the speed at which this shift in the technologies of production occurs is dependent on the demand for economic growth fueled by “customers with money.” No or decreasing levels of “customers with money” means economic growth halts or becomes slower. All redistribution proposals seek to increase the level of “customers with money” by taxing those who are productive and redistributing the income — not the ownership and control — to those who need income, instead of creating the condition for EVERY citizen to produce income and become self-sufficient to meet their own consumption needs.
We need to understand that what has prevented us from solving economic inequality is manifested in the myth that labor work is the ONLY way to participate in production and earn income, and that individual talent and effort are what distinguish the wealthy from the non-wealthy. Long ago that was once true because labor provided 95 percent of the input into the production of products and services. But today that is not true. Physical capital provides not less than 90 to 95 percent of the input. When the “tools” of capital owners replace labor workers (non-capital owners) as the principal suppliers of products and services, labor employment alone becomes inadequate. Thus, we are left with government policies that redistribute income in one form or another.
We can no longer disregard the reality that productivity gains, without system reform, will continue to concentrate and further enrich the already wealthy capital ownership class. The solution to earning higher income is through capital ownership, not jobs.
Productivity growth should never be viewed as the enemy of workers, that is ONLY if workers and in the larger context, EVERY child, woman and man share in the productivity gains as OWNERS, and not be limited to wages alone or a redistributed basic income or a living wage provided by the State.
The solid foundation of any economy is whether it can produce what people consume, and whether every producer is a consumer, and vice versa. To put it more simply, if you want a sound economy, you have to produce what you consume, and consume what you produce, one way or another. Thus, if only labor is productive, then everybody needs to own his or her own labor — which, unless you’re a slave, is always the case. If only land is productive, then everybody needs to own land. If only technology (“AI” and “robots”) is productive, then everybody needs to own technology. Obviously, claiming that only one factor is productive is wrong; in a perfect world, everyone needs to own each factor of production, whether labor or capital, in the same proportion as it is used in production. This is not usually feasible, especially when people take advantage of their social nature and specialize, but it gives a good rule of thumb to follow. For example, if technology is ten times more productive than human labor, someone has to own technology that will produce ten times what his or her labor would produce just to have a decent income (absent distortions such as minimum wage laws and redistribution, of course). The bottom line is that only by owning — not taxing — robots will ordinary people gain enough income and restore Say’s Law of Markets so that all production is for consumption, and people have enough production to be able to consume.
For solutions see Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.
And the proposed Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act and Economic Empowerment Act) athttp://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/…/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-get…/, http://www.cesj.org/…/capita…/capital-homestead-act-summary/ andhttp://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/. And The Capital Homestead Act brochure, pdf print version athttp://www.cesj.org/…/uploads/2014/11/C-CHAflyer_1018101.pdf and Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs) at http://www.cesj.org/…/ch-v…/capital-homestead-accounts-chas/.
