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Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by paulpauper on Monday May 08, 2017 @11:03AM (#14292087)
The savings from automation and outsourcing far exceeds what Apple (a common example) could earn from the increased purchasing power from US Apple employees if some of those employees had slightly more money to buy Apple products. The odds of employees taking their increased wages and ONLY buying your goods, is slim, and this logic does not work for companies such as Boeing , that make products that no possible employee could ever afford.
Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by TimJYoung on Monday May 08, 2017 @11:21AM (#14292281)
You have to keep going and not stop at the first level (for example, who buys airline tickets ?). What you'll find is that, eventually, it all comes back to consumer demand.
Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by bryondowd on Monday May 08, 2017 @12:16PM (#14292946)
But the people making decisions at any one company can't go beyond that level for their decision-making. While it would be beneficial to the company if consumers in general had more spending power, each company's decisions can only make a negligible influence on that, and would in fact just be providing a tiny subsidy that the rest of the market would likely eat up without returning the favor. Most owners and shareholders and such wouldn't stand for that, and whatever few eccentrics who would, wouldn't reach the critical mass necessary for it to benefit anyone much. I don't know of any way to resolve that short of government intervention or massive employee unionization, which are both rather far-fetched in the current environment, but perhaps will become more plausible as more people get their jobs automated.
Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by TimJYoung on Monday May 08, 2017 @01:25PM (#14293648)
Yes, it is absolutely a problem along the same lines as the Prisoner's dilemma:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

And yes, I agree, we're going to need a countervailing market mechanism to stop it from proceeding to its logical conclusion: a persistent, severe recession. Whatever the mechanism, it's going to need to be dynamic and adaptable, or it's "dead on arrival" as a solution.