Re:The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
by js8 on Friday August 12, 2016 @10:36AM
(#12275996)
I thought the point of having robots is to produce more so more can be consumed by people, having higher living standards. Robots (as described in the article) do not have living standard, because they don't have consciousness. They are conceptually no different from any other tool, which requires maintenance, but increases productivity.
So they eventually should contribute to higher living standard (that's their raison d'etre), although of course there are issues of social inequality, which however the OP's argument doesn't seem to address at all.
The efficiency in economics is always defined under assumption that it's somehow externally given (by human desires) what we want to produce. For example, efficiency in producing 1000 cars is given by how much materials and energy you need. But you cannot say that producing 100 cars is always more efficient than producing 1000 cars, because this is given by human desires; by that logic, the most efficient would be if Earth had no humans or even life at all.
So they eventually should contribute to higher living standard (that's their raison d'etre), although of course there are issues of social inequality, which however the OP's argument doesn't seem to address at all.
The efficiency in economics is always defined under assumption that it's somehow externally given (by human desires) what we want to produce. For example, efficiency in producing 1000 cars is given by how much materials and energy you need. But you cannot say that producing 100 cars is always more efficient than producing 1000 cars, because this is given by human desires; by that logic, the most efficient would be if Earth had no humans or even life at all.