this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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Futurology

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Analysis of why and how humanoid robots will displace human physical labour.

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[โ€“] Lugh@futurology.today 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

the marginal cost of labor will rapidly approach zero.....................................Moreover, history shows that although capital (in the form of facilities, machinery, and knowledge) have substituted and thus displaced labor time and time again, labor has nevertheless evolved to remain complementary to that capital.

This illustrates the problem I always have with these discussions. It's even more frustrating in this article, as it clearly states facts, but in the most cowardly of fashions avoids honest implications. How are we supposed to have a free market economy based on capitalism when there is zero value for labor either physical or intellectual?

Every single part of our financial system is based on that; from banking to mortgages to consumer spending to the stock market having valuations to property having valuations. If every single job you can imagine, even the future ones, can be done by machines that are vastly cheaper than humans on the minimum wage, you cannot possibly have an economy that is anything like today's. Yet cowards that they are, the authors of this article lead us all they way to that conclusion, but are too scared to say it.

[โ€“] Philosofuel@futurology.today 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I don't think they are cowards, but in this piece indeed these implications don't come forward. In other articles and books they do talk about what the conditions should be for using the many transitions they talk about for good, or if those conditions aren't met, how they will not benefit most people. I think their work does capsulate well how these kind of transition will totally change current markets and partially economic systems, but how this exactly will play out is anybody's guess.

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