What to do with the money saved by automation, that’s where the disconnect starts. In our current hyper capitalism environment, businesses will fight hard to get to keep that money for their executives and shareholders.

In a social market economy, at least part of that money will get back to the former employees who are out of a job now.

Only one of those systems will work long term without a serious level of oppression.

In a competitive environment, the savings are eventually passed to the consumer, with some profit retained briefly by the early innovators. It must be passed along, otherwise any firm which does not do this will get its market share taken away by the firms which do pass it along.

Unfortunately, a large part of the method used to fight to get to keep that money is lobbying government to restrict competition, or make it difficult for new firms to compete. We need to stop accepting this as normal practice, and realize that it's an immoral system which benefits the few at the expense of everyone else.

In a social market economy, the innovations either won't happen at all, or won't happen as quickly, because the innovators won't be able to keep as much of the benefits for being first to market.

That's true. Only free market systems can exist without a violent state enforcement apparatus.

Who are the shareholders?

You do realize I hope that the stock market is dominated by institutions like public sector union pension funds, mutual funds, 401ks etc. if you don’t believe me checkout the institutional ownership of the largest companies in the S&P 500. Also checkout public sector funds in the USA regarding their assets. CALPERS would be a good place to start. I know three people who worked in the public sector who were in unions that have very comfortable retirements at pretty early retirement ages. One was a teacher, another was a fire fighter, and the other was a city worker. I also know people in that worked in the private sector that have 401ks that will afford them a nice comfy retirement along with SS. Also note that public sector union members that have long careers in the public sector generally speaking don’t get Social Security. The point is this, a lot more people (read it a whole lot of people) benefit greatly from capitalism because they directly/indirectly own stock in companies that are profitable.

That is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. Think about this for a moment, what would your life be like with a highly constrained market for consumer non durable goods like food, fuel, clothing, shoes, toothpaste, toilet paper, and such? That stuff doesn’t grow on trees, it has to be produced. Profit margins for a lot of this stuff is not that high but the consumer demand for these products is very high and very steady which is the reason companies get involved in the production of these goods. Would you really be for government constraining the production of these goods?

T
Nope that’s not what it states at all. To my way of thinking skills are acquired so acquiring the skills to work as a doctor is a lot different than acquiring skills to flip burgers. It says nothing about the opportunity to acquire more skills. I will say simply that holding people back from acquiring skillls due to ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and such is wrong and government certainly has a huge responsibility in righting those wrongs. FTR I think there are wrongs to be righted so to speak.

It isn’t rhetoric it is a fact. It is why a doctor makes more money than a burger flipper.

This is a pretty vague statement. I will answer it this way, Exxon-Mobile had somewhere around $237 billion in revenue with a profit of $19.7 billion in 2017. Which means their expenses basically were $200 billion plus. Say that a different CEO could reduce the $200 billion costs by 0.1% every year for the next 20 years, how much would you pay a new CEO to do that? The $ amount is $200 million per year.

I’m not good at predicting the future but who is though. I think you are right about McDs and may be correct about the higher skilled positions. I mean I can’t state you are wrong because I don’t know what is going to happen.

beat me to it
Too simplistic, level 1 thinking. Say at the end of each year you convince Super CEO to accept just $100 million so he can scrape by. You could reduce costs by .05% every year. How much would you pay yourself? Who would pay whom? Say you eliminate the CEO position, businesses pretty much run themselves anyway, or you automate it, and maybe pay some schlub minimum wage to watch the machine work and dust if off occasionally.

Deus ex machina riding to the rescue of capitalists pissed off at paying even CEOs ?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dict...20ex%20machina

Can't get around the old minimum wage, Mortimer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQNLozNA0Eg

Are you saying there’s no innovation in countries like Germany? Would be pretty sad for the US to have such a huge trade deficit with a country without innovation.

I don’t know if there’s any extensive research about it yet, but several pieces I’ve read suggest that people in countries with working social nets like in Scandinavia are significantly less worried about the effects of automation.
The question is if white male doctors are more skilled than African-American female doctors? Because the first group makes more money.

You somehow misread that I meant ALL innovation when I was referring to ones involving labor replacing automation. Is Germany replacing workers with automation? I don't even know if that's a thing over there. In any case, what does the trade deficit have to do with innovation? Is China innovative? We have a huge trade deficit there too. Getting off topic, but I don't care about trade deficits at all. The wording is loaded, with "deficit" carrying a negative connotation. But is it actually bad? It's just people and companies in each country making exchanges, and each believing they benefit from those exchanges. In most cases they are both correct. So what if more goods go one way and more money goes the other way. Those extra dollars are coming back here in one way or another.

Are they replacing workers with automation in Scandinavian countries? Are they even talking about it? I have no idea. Is what people are worried about the main concern? I'm not that worried about automation in general because the logical result is that we all work less on average while enjoying the same living standards through cheaper products and services. Maybe we shorten the work week, maybe we go back to single earner families, maybe a little of both. On an individual level of some will suffer, but this is always a risk of life in a changing world.

Not addressed to me, but "doctor" refers to a very inhomogeneous group of specializations and employment situations. Are white male doctors going into more lucrative specialties? Are they more likely to be in more lucrative types of practices?

I didn’t pose that question you did. It is a stupid question.

Just so I don’t give you the wrong impression. I truly appreciate your engagement on this topic. It has been fun.

The irony and lack of self awareness is absolutely stunning.

Yeah, I guess I could have been a little more obvious with the sarcasm

What you call sarcasm is the raison d'etre of managerial accounting systems, the skynet of business management.

Here in Australia McDonalds have automatic drink machines, that automatically pour all the ordered drinks.

Free refills offered ?

There is a trend in the US and some other countries by McDonalds to cut back on order-takers job functions by pushing touchscreen ordering in many locations.

FWIW, McDonalds also totally eliminated employees' hand cooking burger patties at stores, they simply microwave pre-cooked patties, cutting labor cost per burger.

none of this will matter once the robot sex machines are one of the perks of universal basic income. and high quality cocaine.

Seems that legal recreational marijuana has made its way to Henderson.

The idea is fine in theory. However they need to have a row of machines, not just like 2. You ever see a boomer or genxer try to use a self checkout at grocery store? they are computer ******ed. If there's not enough machines there will be a huge line.

No, no free refills.The McDonalds machines are linked to the POS system so if a server inputs an order including 2 cokes the machine fills 2 cups with coke and ice and leaves them in a collection area for the server to pick up.

Hungry Jacks ( Burger King in Oz where they aren't allowed to use that name) did give free refills and use customer operated machines but that seems to have disappeared from the one closest to me not sure about all of them.

Touch screen ordering and App based ordering are both used by McDonalds.

you should be able to push a button and get a rum and coke with your comp card.

Especially in a casino where probably 50-75% of the people there are 90 years old. Grandpa is going to throw a fit when he can't get his alcohol because he can't figure out how to use a touch screen.

... and rightfully so,

"Machines will replace us all soon"

Signed
1985