#3 A few more comments from "What is the plan"?

The question "What is the plan if a computer or robotic workforce cause catastrophic unemployment?" was raised in an on-line debate forum.  Here are some more comments from this source.

http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-plan-if-a-computer-or-robotic-workforce-cause-catastrophic-unemployment

I actually think you can find inspiration for this question in Alaska of all places. In Alaska, the state makes so much money that it literally pays people just because they live there.  In a future where corporations made huge amounts of money and employed few, it's reasonable to expect that goods would be extremely cheap and that corporations could be taxed at a high enough rate to pay a dividend to many of the masses such that they could have an okay or good life even if they were unemployed.

But, really what it comes down to is that...(a) the guy who owns all the robots is going to have to admit that he isn't really earning what they produce.  And...(b) we're going to have to come up with a plan for allocating spare resources among those who don't actually earn them. This means that the our choices are going to be widespread welfare or genocide.

Great question and answers. I hesitate to add anything but it seems to me there is an assumption underlying many answers which may not be reliable.The assumption is that governments will be able to redress the concentration of economic power. Voters who elect governments will want redistribution of some significant wealth from robot owners to the rest of us. The robot owners may or may not resist this. If they do resist it, then Government may not have sufficient power or will to prevail against the robot-owning class. Over time there may be a power shift, including militarily, from the Government to the robot owners. I accept this power shift will take a long time but it will start I suspect in the next decade or two. Even now look at the comparative power of corporations v. government compared to a hundred years ago.

I believe therefore that the future will play out like this: As robots develop more and more capabilities the value of labor versus capital will plunge.  At some point if you are not a shareholder, property holder, or sitting on a pile of raw materials, you will be outside the economy.  This will go for doctors, lawyers, programmers, engineers, accountants ... basically everyone.  

At this point the justifications for capitalism are just not there.  Capitalism makes sense in this world where humans must provide labor and intelligence to make things.  In today's world the unequal distribution of wealth is justified (or is justified by some at least) because people are contributing disproportionately to production.  In a world where everyone contributes the same amount to production (i.e. ZERO), there isn't really any justification for unequal distribution.  We do need to move away from classic capitalism and implement new ways for humans to obtain basic needs and more importantly free themselves up to contribute more fully without the distractions and waste of commuting to work, and also remove mundane and useless and demotivating jobs.

That's not to say that things will be distributed fairly.  Because they won't be.  People will take the share of output that is proportional to their ownership of capital.  If you don't own shares in some productive (fully automated now) industry, or own land, or own resources, you will legally own nothing.  For the meatbags elsewhere outside the shareholding and landowning population, I suppose Tom Caldwell's answer above is one optimistic possibility, i.e. we all get a permanent retirement with some small fixed share of amenities to keep us alive (although with rapidly accelerating development, these amenities might rapidly go beyond our wildest dreams).

Capitalism is clearly not compatible with a non-human workforce and so whatever we do, short of changing drastically the economic system, will lead to collapse. Such a collapse is not necessarily a bad thing though. The problem is how we avoid the chaos when it happens and how we get out of it. I would like to think that we will all get together and build a system in which the newly expanded wealth is shared between everyone. This is entirely feasible, but this would entail having public means of production (because there won’t be a profit motive for private investors anymore) and a fixed amount of “money” given for free to each citizen (with very different properties from our current money). I think this is possible if the political system existing when the collapse takes place is very democratic (e.g. Swiss-like direct democracy), such that the balance of power between the citizen and those in power is in favor of the citizen. 

We do need to move away from classic capitalism and implement new ways for humans to obtain basic needs and more importantly free themselves up to contribute more fully without the distractions and waste of commuting to work, and also remove mundane and useless and demotivating jobs.

Grants and stipends.   People do lose jobs to computers, and we have  stipends called unemployment insurance.  I would set up an additional program of grants to those affected, based on merit, but structured so most displaced people get them.  This would be decentralized, set up on the Federal, state, local levels and from for-profit companies and non profits. Of course it might be a mess at first, but its better than being too centralized.