So you're saying that we'll be producing a number of robots so immense that we'll need BILLIONS of people just to make, repair and maintain then?
That, AND there will be billions upon billions of labor hours necessary to help produce everything that is not currently being produced by robots.
So you're telling me that we'll be able to build tens of millions of automated factories to get those people a job? Even if that makes sense economically, it's basically impossible for society to have that many robots as to give that many people a job!
No it isn't. Human labor is radically more scarce than robot labor.
We don't have a free market and that is precisely why there are people who can't enter it.
The free market isn't perfect.
It does not need to be perfect for there to be more than enough room for all unskilled laborers.
Can't you conceive a world were there are only a few millions of jobs worldwide that DON'T require a college degree?
Sure, but you don't seem to be able to conceive a world where there is a finite supply of robots, but an infinite supply of them.
If all labor were human labor, and that was no where close to being able to produce everything we can conceivably need of want, what the hell makes you believe that replacing existing human workers with robots can do it?
There is only a labor surplus when there is a price floor for labor, which YOU advocate.
You don't seem to be able to separate the unintended consequences of your own beliefs, with the alternative solution for them that eliminates the cause.
If you advocate for a price floor for labor, which CAUSES a labor surplus, i.e. unemployment, then the fault is not robots, but your minimum price floor advocacy!
You want to have your cake and eat it too. You want a price floor for labor, but without the consequences of unemployment. So instead of realizing the problem is the price floor, you double down and want more government intervention to redistribute existing weslth. That intervention also has unintended consequences, which you don't quite understand but I already know you also want more government intervention to solve. Then that has more unintended consequences. And on and on. There is no logical end to what you want other than 1984. Fear got you there.
One where the machines clean everything, drive everything and take care of pretty much everything which isn't college-degree worthy?
But there is not an infinite supply of robots. You say take care of "pretty much everything". No, that is just the limit of your own finite imagination, today. Tomorrow you could have a new idea. Tomorrow, billions of others could have billions of ideas, and what used to seem like " pretty much everything" is in fact "pretty much nothing".
Imagine people during the dark ages. What was their material life like? There was brick, candles, textiles, metals, livestock, and not much else. At that time, if all labor, which was predominantly farming, were replaced by machines?
While they would be aggressing against each other, and stealing from each other in their own ignorance and short sightedness, what about all the new goods and services since then that needed labor?
The free market will ALWAYS need people because demand for newer and better and more abundant products is practically INFINITE.
But people will no longer needed to produce them!
YES THEY WILL. A finite supply of robots cannot possibly satisfy an infinite set of wants. Neither will a finite supply of robots AND a finite supply of labor. But, if the choice is between inferior goods and superior goods, then it is better to have superior goods.
Even if you flooded a market with iron, that wouldn't suddenly make everyone want to buy ALL the iron you could give them. Same with labor.
But labor is not like iron. Labor is used to produce other goods other than iron when the relative supply of iron is high enough, while other goods are not enough. There will always be a need for more labor to produce that which the finite supply of robots cannot produce.
No matter how many better products we can acquire, there is always a desire for newer and better and higher quality goods.
Which don't require high amounts of labor for their production BUT require raw resources and other quality goods (e.g machines) to be produced, which are more limited than labor. And thus the bottleneck is machines, not labor, or at least not unskilled ones.
No, we require high amounts of labor. We need a lot more labor. The bottleneck is and has always been labor.
Your view of mankind is rather depressing.
Robots will outsmart us eventually, and they'll start with the unskilled.
Start what?
If me being smarter than you has neither incentivized nor motivated me to kill you or enslave you, what makes you believe smarter robots necessarily will?
You are talking about a very small subset of robotics: AI. One that people today are nowhere close to worrying about, and should not me how we treat each other today vis a vis dedicated single task robots.
That falsely assumes there is a fixed demand for goods. But the desire for more and better goods is always greater than any ability to satiate it. The entire world's savings could in principle be profitably invested in just one city.
Sure. But you keep assuming that the production of goods will require large amounts of unskilled labor, it won't.
It will. You are falsely assuming it won't. Not all goods and services that would be valuable goods and services require only skilled labor. If the price of unskilled labor is free to fall, and if prices of goods and services are free to fall, there will always be a need for unskilled labor.
One example: If I had to choose between a robot or an unskilled laborer to sweep my floors, and the price of that labor was free to fall to the price of the robot, I could very well choose the unskilled laborer, because I could teach the unskilled laborer and make his labor more valuable. With the robot, I could not. This is remember an inexpensive robot whose purpose is to sweep the floors.
Now some other people may choose the robot over the human labor, because maybe they don't value having a more intelligent sweeper and don't mind the lack of human connection.
It is possible that most unskilled labor will become most useful in the service industries. When I go to the beach, I don't want a robot to greet me with a drink, I want a nice person with a smile who I can talk with. No robot can do this, so today, NOW, human labor is needed.
Decades from now, when the robots become human like, and I start to not mind a robot greeting me on that beach, then I may still value human laborers to provide me with other services where I prefer a human being.
The point is that no matter how many things you can imagine a robot doing at any given time, I can always imagine what they cannot do with the benefits of new experiences and new knowledge that is acquired over time.
You keep assuming that because at indefinite points in the future where a certain task might be automated, and then another, and another, you exhaust your imagination today and believe all that you can imagine today, is all that anyone could ever imagine.
But they are talented enough to contribute. As long as they can compete on price legally, they can contribute.
They can't compete against a machine when all they can do is simple enough to be done by a machine, not necessarily one with current technology, but maybe one with 2030 technology.
They can compete with a machine because the supply of machines will always be finite.
You are assuming that the supply of robots is infinite.
No, they can be useful in the division of labor. No matter how dimwitted a person is, they can be productive.
What kind of job which requires no college degree (or equivalent level of skills) won't become obsolete in the next 50 years and will be needed in large enough amounts to employ millions of people?
Are you saying that because some task might make some labor obsolete in 50 years, that unskilled people cannot or ought not work for 50 years until then?
Why should people living today not benefit from labor that cannot be done with robots until long after they are dead or retired?
Once a particular job in a particular location makes human labor obsolete, due to a robot, it does not mean everyone will be the owner of such a robot, nor does it mean that unskilled labor is not needed for other, new jobs that the existing supply of robots is inefficient.
If you want to give charity, as I do, then go ahead. Just don't point a gun at me. That's the thing with libertarians, even if you had a thousand people suffering behind you, whose suffering you could fully alleviate with a single gesture, yet if you didn't feel like it you would complain against who forced you to make that single gesture to help those people. It's absolutely batshit fucking insane, but if you really feel like the smallest amount of coercion is worse than any amount of human suffering, then so be it. EVERYONE has a use in the division of labor. EVERYONE. When machines can do everything a uneducated human can do, then what then? Then the guy should be free to offer his labor at $2.99 Now the lawnmower just cost 1$ cause technology keeps advancing. Is 0.99$ enough not to starve? No, it isn't, it can't get you a roof either, so what now?