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The real problem with the world
economy |
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Robots are
our problem, and taxing them may be the solution. America is in
economic crisis both current and looming. The congress and
the fed are taking unprecedented moves to shore up failing financial
institutions. The conventional wisdom is the sub-prime mortgage
crisis is the root. But is it really the root, or simply the fruit of
the poisonous tree. Has the American social and economic model
failed? Watch international
news and you will quickly realize that our problems are just
the American face on a world wide catastrophic
trend, In Australia the news is the countless middle class people who
are moving into trailer parks because they can no longer afford more
traditional housing. In China the government fears that if the economy
stops growing there will be riots. In Indonesia the middle class are
taking over the institutions of power, because the
feel that the poor are favored. European governments are funneling
hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilize their banking
systems. While the pundits and recent political campaigns
imply that the sub-prime mortgage crisis was caused by American
deadbeats, and greedy financial wizards. But the fact that the problem
is impacting on all countries of the world, raises the suspicion that the
problem is not American deadbeats who scammed the banking industry, but
instead a fundamental problem in the world economy. When
we take a quick look at the problem of the mortgage crisis the easy answer is
to blame the banks, or blame the borrowers, and there is enough blame
and self recriminations to go around for all concerned. However,
when we look more deeply at why these people have been unwilling or unable to
meet these mortgages, we find at the root the economics of life not just in
America but around the world. More and more responsible skilled
people are living on the financial edge. Financially over-stretched people
are unemployed, underemployed, or fully employed but fearful of the ax.
With little or no cushion from a rapid devolution from a cherished lifestyle,
for kids, wives and pets. Prudent people have worked out tight budgets
to live a full and convenient life and maintain solid credit. But
when prices suddenly shoot up like the recent gas crisis. Budgets crash
into a new reality. Fractious quality of life decisions, about
cable and cell phones, and special expense, must be made and consensus
reached within families, and often the mortgage lacks a lobbyist. When
this phenomenon is combined with the fact that we have been convinced to
overpay for the basics of life through credit cards, it doesn't take much to
send many families into foreclosure. Why,
are so many people around the world struggling to make ends meet? Of
course we could blame the rising middle classes around the world, who are
beginning to compete with more established affluent populations for goods and
services. We could blame modern marketing, and the philosophies
of western governments to promote democracy and freedom around the world to
increase the customer base for multinational firms. And yet
neither of these significant phenomena can account for the steadily increasing
gap between the "good life" and the reality of the working
citizen. The
culprit may be our heroic reverence for automation. Robots,
software solutions, automation, or efficiency enhancements all make our lives
easier, if not simpler. But are they slowly eroding our disposable
income and therefore our quality of life. We all love our email,
and our cell phones, remote controllers, washing machines and our
automated movie rental systems. But too few of us consider that
each of these devices have both positive and negative effects on world
economies. When I look at old movies where when the poor family fell on
hard times, the mother would concede that she would have to take in more of
the rich people's wash to make ends meet. The widespread
acceptance of the automatic washing machine put an end to that cherished
source of emergency income not just in Mississippi, but in India, in China,
and all countries of the world where it penetrates. We respond to
such losses with the platitudes of better education, and wider availability
of risk capital as the solutions. However, it is not just the poor who
are being displaced by automation. The popular DVD kiosks where
you can rent a movie, for a deceptively low price, take away a significant
number of starter jobs for middle class youth, and management jobs for middle
class adults. Sure the argument in defense is that it saves
people money, and that it creates jobs for engineers, designers, technicians,
and administrators, while also increasing the exposure of the public to
creative materials. And this is all true, however the jobs lost
is 10-100 for every job gained. And you can not
have a society where only the brilliant can make a good living.
Everybody doesn't want to be an engineer, or a boss, a lot of people are most
capable of repetitive social or mechanical tasks. And yet they still
like to live and eat like engineers, and designers. The
amount of meaningful work that is available to growing populations is
shrinking due to automation! It's easy to point to endless of
examples of these phenomena, which has been forecast by creative products
from Woody Allen, and Aldous Huxley. All
around the globe people with excellent skills and experience are being forced
in to underemployment by the lack of work in their chosen area caused either
directly or indirectly by automation. There is now an
seemingly endless cycle of re-training for the new jobs, lawyers, carpenters,
and factory workers trying to become computer experts. In a couple of
years perhaps everyone will try to learn robot repair, then what? And
is this the best use of human potential? To
paraphrase an old proverb "when the robot ATMs replaced the
bank tellers, I said nothing because I was not a bank teller, when the self check robot came for the cashiers, I said
nothing because I wasn't a cashier...But when the robot took my job, there
was no one left to say "hey he needs a paycheck to
survive". Accountants are being replaced by quick-books,
lawyers are being replaced by automated document grinders, the
doctors are being replaced by artificial intelligence based diagnostic
software. Who is next? Of course those who automate their
businesses make fortunes, while in the national statistics it's called
productivity gains, the result is a rising imbalance of rich and the
struggling. As
in most cases, our hands are not clean, and our feet are of clay.
We love the low prices and convenience that automation brings to our
lives, my Romba is bumping around in the room above
me even as I write this piece. But I do try my best to favor the
human cashier at the supermarket over the self check out machines. At
my local grocery I have seen people lined up for the self-check machines,
while the human cashiers stand idle, probably thinking about how to get a new
job. Of course automation is indefatigable. It will make our
lives easier, probably longer, and in many ways better. But what, if
anything can be done to combat the erosion of base amount of work that exists
in human society. If
incomes continue to erode due to automation, we will feel the pain most when
the marginal benefits such as lower prices, and easier lives drops below our
ability to afford these luxuries. At some point the basic nature of
work will have to be reexamined. Work is more than income, work is a
part of the way we define ourselves as individuals. Work is the
way we judge our goodness and worth in most western societies, and under the
context of the Abrahamic religions. The
erosion of useful work will tear at the very fabric of society. Will we all
become endless job seekers, watching the good life pass us by? What
are the broad consequences of this phenomenon, and what if anything can be
done? From the personal income perspective, I think that the models of
oil rich countries, who provide most essential services such as health care,
housing and education is one that could work. Unemployment
payments would begin automatically at age 18, and only stop if you find
suitable employment. Perhaps, if people are left to turn there efforts to excellence rather than survival a new
culture can take root over generations and become and acceptable lifestyle
for mankind. Some care will be required to providing sufficient
challenges to a population to foster this excellence, but the western
celebrity culture may prove as least partially effective in generating
productive dreams. Where
will the money come from to support this new utopia? One method
would be to begin forcing robots to pay taxes. These taxes could
be generated in the form of a government surcharge every-time you rent a DVD
from a robot, use the automated checkout, or get your car washed by a
robot. While the industrial robots that replace manufacturing jobs
would be charged based upon their output, and this would be added to the
price of the products they produce. These robots could fund local,
state, and even federal governments world wide. And if the surcharges made the prices
of the products better reflect the costs to society of employing them, then
those "advances" which have actual negative impacts on human life
would be marginalized. A
robot tax...something to think about. Gare Henderson Gravitational
Systems, LLC. Chairman
of the Singapore alternative energy conference.
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