4-13-2010 - Department Of Redundancy Department

[snafu]

Workers all over the world realizing that fact will grant, that every system everywhere will be and stay inefficient (enough).
greater efficiency = less work = less workers

By the way, the title of course comes from tvtropes. This statement will lure more people into this life-ending trap.

[Winterbay]

I've never felt the need to read any more than at most 1 tvtropes page at a time. It's really not such an interesting site.

[Sagacious D]

If I ever give a lecture on the history of Luddism, I am so opening with this strip. Contrary to popular conceptions, Luddites do NOT hate all technology -- they just don't like automations that rob trained craftsmen of their livelihoods. This strip illustrates the distinction beautifully. Good show, Greg.

[ShadowDog]

I can see both sides. I don't like people losing jobs but if it wasn't for automation I'd be spending too much time working the fields to have time to fuck off playing video games.

PS. Your sig is making me hungry, Saga. Mmmmm, meat gun.

[adciv]

Eh. I figure if I can automate your job and make it cost effective, you're under-employed. Mind you, I think most engineers do this.

[bagheadinc]

I try to automate as much as I can, I just don't tell my boss.

[Mae Dean]

Ditto. I mostly do it because I know I have a shit-ton of other web design stuff down the pipe, and it frees up my time to work on that. Plus, most of the stuff I'm automating is actually stuff OTHER people in the office do.

[collegestudent22]

I prefer to automate in a way that requires someone to start the process - myself being the only one who knows where and how to do that part. Cuts time requirements down, but in a way that only I can do it. Although, I like Greg's methods.

[Sagacious D]

Still on the subject of automation: I just read a blog post that reminded me of this strip. Dude lays out a fairly serious argument that the economic supremacy of machine labor may not last for much longer. In a nutshell: machines only win for as long as concentrated energy supplies remain abundant (and therefore cheap) enough to reliably power them and the industrial infrastructure that produces parts for them. Once oil, coal, gas, and uranium supplies peak and decline (and if renewable energy tech cannot replace them), that infrastructure will become far more expensive to maintain, and savvy employers will have better luck with human labor again. We may be slow, but we're relatively low-maintenance and can produce our own replacements.

I'm probably posting this too late after the comic to be noticed, but what the hell.

[collegestudent22]

Oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium supplies are far from peaking - provided the government gets the hell out of the way. Furthermore, fusion is getting closer to being a viable energy source - and only requires hydrogen and massive laser systems.

[snafu]

Unless you are a believer of the abiogenic petroleum origin theory, the peak will come. And i am not sure, which of your sources suggest that it will come later then the efficiency of fusion.
The hydrogen it "only" requires are most likely the isotopes Deuterium or Tritium, which nullifies the "only".

[collegestudent22]

As to the peak, the US still has vast supplies of oil, natural gas, and coal that the government has put "off limits". Therefore, if the government removes that restriction, we can push that peak back, from current estimates, anywhere from 10 to 30 years. Farther, if oil from shale becomes more viable to get at the oil in the Rockies.

[jerald_parker]

Well my two cents about the "concentrated energy" supplies thing you brought up is that oil and coal are NOT comparable in concentration of energy needed for "automated work" i.e. robots to fission because that sort of "energy" is mostly transferred as electrical potential. Oil matters for transportation but as far as "automated processes" go where you sit in one spot with a machine and it does something over and over fission is way more efficient in terms of needed volume of input and volume of waste output even using our current system in the US. I say the current system because its actually not the most "waste efficient" fission system known, the US just doesn't want to use processes that created enriched fissionable "wastes" in excess of the US Navy's need to consume them. With something in the neighborhood of 600 coal power plants in the US, coal produces roughly 40% of the electricity in the (percentage number from 2008), while with about 100 nuclear power plants, nuclear fission produced right at 20% of the US's electricity ( again for 2008). Slight difference in the footprints eh?

Attacking it from a different and ignoring the source of the energy, you can just make the machines more efficient at the electrical/mechanical energy conversion and put them closer to energy generation locations lessening the loss of energy due to travel. See, I think that automation isn't about making people lose a job its about giving the opportunity to look for more/bigger/better/interesting/uplifting things to do. Automation doesn't stop a given individual from having available manhours to work by taking away "their job", it gives them more hours to accomplish another goal. It should be considered an opportunity to expand human potential not an evil that wrecks humanity.

Be positive!

[StruckingFuggle]

By the way, the title of course comes from tvtropes. This statement will lure more people into this life-ending trap.

Not quite.

[ijuin]

Human labor will not become cheaper than machine labor mainly because even now food for humans costs more per unit energy than biodiesel.

For example, take an acre of corn. If that corn is converted into engine fuel, then the machines powered by it will be able to do more work than the number of humans that could be fed by eating that corn, assuming that said humans are eating what we in current America consider a "normal" quantity of food as opposed to being unhealthfully underfed. Also, the machines will not require fuel for the time when they are NOT doing any work, unlike humans, nor will the machines require wages, clothing, or humane treatment.

In short, by the time that machinery for productive purposes (as opposed to convenience such as personal transportation or air conditioning) becomes too expensive to power, you won't be able to afford to pay for enough human workers to take up the slack.