Driverless trucks move all iron ore at Rio Tinto's Pilbara mines, in world first
104 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49985112]the point is that robots won't do everything because you're not going to have an economy where people are going to spend a great deal of resources on inventing and developing robots that can do literally every single job a person can, only more cheaply.[/QUOTE]
This literally can and will happen with government subsidies though. It is completely plausible for a future to exist where most if not all things are completely automated. Hell, even if not ~absolutely everything~ is automated, with no more agriculture, mining, transportation, construction, factory, point of sale or assembly jobs there will be a MASSIVE dropoff in employment that just won't be met 1:1. If we ever develop a good bipedal robot, boom. Every single labor job is now replaced for a one-time flat fee.
Economics are not an observable fact of nature, they are an observable result of our current system.
[QUOTE=phygon;49987634]This literally can and will happen with government subsidies though. It is completely plausible for a future to exist where most if not all things are completely automated. Hell, even if not ~absolutely everything~ is automated, with no more agriculture, mining, transportation, construction, factory, point of sale or assembly jobs there will be a MASSIVE dropoff in employment that just won't be met 1:1. If we ever develop a good bipedal robot, boom. Every single labor job is now replaced for a one-time flat fee.
Economics are not an observable fact of nature, they are an observable result of our current system.[/QUOTE]
Government subsidies can only get so far. Automation is a strategy that is subject to diminishing returns.
Ultimately the long term result is not automation outpacing our ability to readjust the economy in response to it, but the eventual tapering off of automation as it becomes less and less profitable to business owners to spend a lot of money on what may be a potentially risky investment.
Remember that humans can be hired and fired for seasonal work. Robots are capital goods that you shut down when they aren't in operation. If your factory manufactures different goods that constantly change throughout the year, it's obviously going to be cheaper to hire workers that can be easily transferred, rather than buying a lot of robots and then shelving them when it turns out that either there's less work to be done or you are ending that production run.
Saying "they are just an observable result of our current system" misses the point that these are generalized rules derived from economic laws. It's not like people came up with them in a vacuum, but they directly observed nature. There's a reason that biology and economics overlaps much more than the people in both fields are willing to admit. Many of these laws are based on fundamental principles that ultimately stretch away into the realm of physics like with thermodynamics.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49987699]Government subsidies can only get so far. Automation is a strategy that is subject to diminishing returns.[/QUOTE]
How? If we develop a bipedal robot that can do tasks, how will that have diminishing returns? It would not be hard at all to completely replace workers for any job that followed simple rules, like transport or anything else like that.
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Ultimately the long term result is not automation outpacing our ability to readjust the economy in response to it, but the eventual tapering off of automation as it becomes less and less profitable to business owners to spend a lot of money on what may be a potentially risky investment.
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You're imagining a world where, for some reason, not paying workers costs more than paying workers. It won't happen overnight, but certain companies like Google, Tesla, etc are going to be pushing the edge on these automation machines. They already are. Your assumptions (wrongly) assume that tech won't advance much farther than it already has.
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Remember that humans can be hired and fired for seasonal work. Robots are capital goods that you shut down when they aren't in operation. If your factory manufactures different goods that constantly change throughout the year, it's obviously going to be cheaper to hire workers that can be easily transferred, rather than buying a lot of robots and then shelving them when it turns out that either there's less work to be done or you are ending that production run.
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Why would you ever replace your workforce with single-use robotics? A future of automation does not look like advanced, intricate automated assembly lines with a single use, it is of a more general purpose robot, and a cheap one at that. As robotics becomes more and more advanced, the first jobs to be replaced will be that of resource gathering- I'm only going to mention those resources that are important to robotics for this example, however.
First, transportation of goods will be automated. This will drop the price of just about everything substantially, which will lead to a [I]massive[/I] increase in trading and moving of resources leading to a more optimized economy. With reduced operation costs, companies will be able to invest more money in themselves- and when it comes to certain things like Mining, single-application robots will do the job nicely, it will just be economically viable with the research being done by AI companies like google. No more paying exorbitant miners wages, no more worrying about lawsuits, nada. One investment and your profit shoots through the roof because you aren't employing people anymore. With metals and their transportation now incredibly cheap, we'll be able to bump up production of essentially all parts of robots- Processor chip foundries are already moving closer and closer to automation as we speak. All of these will contribute to lower and lower production costs of robotics, which will lead to lower out-of-pocket cost for companies that wish to buy them. With decreased costs, the prospect of investing in robotics will begin to become more and more economically viable for various jobs. There is no indication that robots won't be able to handle most, if not all, manual labor jobs well.
In addition to all this, you could always rent robots from the companies producing them. This would still be FAR cheaper than employing folks to work for you.
This isn't fantasy, it's happening right now. The cogs are turning, and it is a very viable possibility.
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Saying "they are just an observable result of our current system" misses the point that these are generalized rules derived from economic laws. It's not like people came up with them in a vacuum, but they directly observed nature. There's a reason that biology and economics overlaps much more than the people in both fields are willing to admit. Many of these laws are based on fundamental principles that ultimately stretch away into the realm of physics like with thermodynamics.[/quote]
Economics works very similarly to natural systems because both operate around scarcity. Scarcity of food, mates, fop, whatever. It's all the same. However, as we automate more and more, we simply factor more and more scarcity out of the system. Will it ever be completely gone? Of course not, but we can get very close. Our current system locks us to scarcity, but as things can just be [I]done[/I] for us, even if there is an overhead cost, that begins to melt away. It won't be immediate. It won't be unexpected. It's not a magic bullet. But it will definitely reduce scarcity, and it will DEFINITELY axe millions of jobs.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49987699]Remember that humans can be hired and fired for seasonal work. Robots are capital goods that you shut down when they aren't in operation. If your factory manufactures different goods that constantly change throughout the year, it's obviously going to be cheaper to hire workers that can be easily transferred, rather than buying a lot of robots and then shelving them when it turns out that either there's less work to be done or you are ending that production run.[/QUOTE]
There are already companies that rent heavy machinery and equipment instead of buying them, so if general purpose robots ever get produced you can bet your ass companies will rent them for seasonal work and stuff.
[QUOTE=Buck.;49983224]Driving them mining dump trucks pays really good money as well. It's like $25 Australlian dollaroos per hour.[/QUOTE]
That's not that great ...
[QUOTE=download;49986569]You've linked an opinion piece that linked to a statement by Julia Gillard. I think I can safely dismiss that.
You haven't justified it there other than some special pleading bullshit. Why should any business not using their fuel on a public road have to pay for them? Are you going to call for peaking diesel power station to pay fuel tax as well? You haven't justified it at all.
"Royalty free thrsholds" as you claim don't exist in your source. I can also just dismiss that.
Oh look, they want to tax the mining companies at a special 40% rate while charging everyone else 28%, and then taking away royalty control from the states. No wonder it was so unpopular.
You've cited a clearly biased website that cites a labour government report. No thanks.[/QUOTE]
Your source criticism has come down to "I do not like this, therefore it is completely false". I'm wrong about royalty free thresholds, but still, they pay a piss poor amount of tax. To the point about the fuel, allright. Have it your way, they only have to pay 75% of that particular tax, since only 25% goes to maintaining the nations roads that they apparently don't use ever not even a little.
I'm actually really pissed you've just dismissed my argument because you don't like my source. On that first point, again, it's complete shit. Here is a lovely piece by John Passant, who is from the Australian National University explaining an effective 13-17% tax rate in 2010. It mostly points out problems with the mining tax, which in my opinion was needed but poorly thought out. [url=http://theconversation.com/mining-tax-shortfall-the-experts-respond-12105]Source.[/url]
Secondly if you'd just take a gander at that labor government report you'd see that it has been thoroughly vetted by a variety of respected Australian and International academics. It's pretty fucking bulletproof.
Oh please. Stop talking shit and actually read up on what you're discussing. The fact you keep posting misinformation shows you've never done more than Google this.
Fuel tax rebates only apply when driven [U]off-road[/U]. Mining companies pay fuel tax for ever litre they burn on a public road.
Opinion articles and sources from political parties are not valid in any way here. It's easy for nearly anyone to manipulate statistics like that and political parties are notorious for it.
It has already been explained to you how an effective tax rate is deceptive.
[QUOTE=download;49989793]Oh please. Stop talking shit and actually read up on what you're discussing. The fact you keep posting misinformation shows you've never done more than Google this.
Fuel tax rebates only apply when driven [U]off-road[/U]. Mining companies pay fuel tax for ever litre they burn on a public road.
Opinion articles and sources from political parties are not valid in any way here. It's easy for nearly anyone to manipulate statistics like that and political parties are notorious for it.
It has already been explained to you how an effective tax rate is deceptive.[/QUOTE]
Nice, they should still pay the taxes. It's corporate welfare. They can easily afford to pay for this fuel. They make Billions in profit a year, why are we giving them more money on top of that?
It is nice that you think that, but are you really trying to discredit an ANU academic here? It's a valid source. He's attached his name to it and gone on the record saying that. Fair enough though, it isn't a peer reviewed journal article. Secondly, if you read carefully, the labor government report isn't by the labor government, but for the labor government. Again, it is vetted by independent, highly respected academics and economic professionals.
I'd like to thank sb27 for taking the time to explain an effective tax rate. However it doesn't mean i'm wrong. It may be deceptive, but it still applies.
[QUOTE=Whomobile;49981932]Even if theirs less drivers, theirs still the need for engineers/comp sci people to run them.
Less jobs in one area can open up more jobs in another.[/QUOTE]
So you're expecting middle aged truck drivers to go to college and get comp sci degrees now? That doesn't seem like a feasible solution. These people's days are numbered, plain and simple.
[QUOTE=The Aussie;49989983]Nice, they should still pay the taxes. It's corporate welfare. They can easily afford to pay for this fuel. They make Billions in profit a year, why are we giving them more money on top of that?
It is nice that you think that, but are you really trying to discredit an ANU academic here? It's a valid source. He's attached his name to it and gone on the record saying that. Fair enough though, it isn't a peer reviewed journal article. Secondly, if you read carefully, the labor government report isn't by the labor government, but for the labor government. Again, it is vetted by independent, highly respected academics and economic professionals.
I'd like to thank sb27 for taking the time to explain an effective tax rate. However it doesn't mean i'm wrong. It may be deceptive, but it still applies.[/QUOTE]
When you say 13% tax do you mean on average they pay that much tax on their taxable income after applying foreign tax rebates etc.? I'm having trouble understanding where that figure comes from.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49983315]In the long run, job loss and job creation are 1:1. The main reason for that is because it's an economic equilibrium that is only distorted in the short term by things such as technology or policy changes such as increasing interest rates.
What's important isn't protecting jobs that a machine can do, but making sure people have the skills to adapt and helping to both retrain them and give them a general set of skills and knowledge they can use.
Technology isn't accelerating. If anything, the rate of technological change seems to be slowing down now.
People get worried about robots replacing workers, but considering that society is rapidly getting older I'm more concerned about whenever or not robots can replace workers /fast enough/[/QUOTE]
your argument rests on the assumption that because humans have never hit peak employment before (arguably we already have), we never will. Assumptions tend to fail the moment new factors start getting changed. Never before has automation freed up so many jobs so quickly and so sweepingly, even our modern agriculture took hundreds of years of slow displacement of farm workers to cities, thats plenty of time for retraining and for the economy to adapt. Many of the traits we consider human such as dextirity and above-animal decision making are being superseded entirely by AIs, office jobs already get eliminated en masse by automation programmers. A lot of the time today people joke about how little work actually gets done in offices these days thanks to all the tools, but how long will that keep up before the trends start. it makes sense if you pretend that technology will slow down at just the perfect time and just the perfect rate to keep unemployment from spiraling out of control, but again, this is an empty assumption.
I really like CGP Grey's horse example. Horse labor peaked with the automobile, there is only a limited number of things horses can do and they were relegated to niche roles. Despite this, beforehand horse population had only risen continuously, and the horses would have argued just as you are, that history shows they would always get new jobs. After all, the plow, the carriage, all made their jobs more effecient, letting fewer horses do more. WHy would this ever change? While the applications for human labor are much more diverse, there are huge swaths of the population that are more or less horses about to be replaced by the automobiles. Do you really expect them all to become engineers? The very traits that most humans employ in their work are being superceded, this isn't the assembly line(equivalent to the carriage or plow) where humans are just utilized more efficiently by clever placement.
Your posts about magic 1:1 job replacement read like your copy pasting out of a high school economics textbook. When you read those books you should be aware that while the information is useful in standard scenarios, many important factors that allow those scenarios to be accurate are left unexplained or unnoticed by the authors. Nobody thinks to note that "oh yeah, this is only true assuming the economy never tips in this or that direction or some new technology that allows this or this comes out" because its way too specific and you'd never see the end of it. It's not a free pass to pretend its a holy book.
[QUOTE=Badballer;49990138]When you say 13% tax do you mean on average they pay that much tax on their taxable income after applying foreign tax rebates etc.? I'm having trouble understanding where that figure comes from.[/QUOTE]
Yeah pretty much.
Ah righto. Well, I guess you have to look at it this way. The highest earning tax is payroll tax. If something causes jobs and pay to decrease, payroll tax decreases. So sure, while a higher royalty rate over the usual 6.5% or whatever will recoup some taxes in some places, it will also decrease revenue from other taxes. I'm no economist and don't know what the perfect balance is, but there is a lot to think about.
[QUOTE=Badballer;49990323]Ah righto. Well, I guess you have to look at it this way. The highest earning tax is payroll tax. If something causes jobs and pay to decrease, payroll tax decreases. So sure, while a higher royalty rate over the usual 6.5% or whatever will recoup some taxes in some places, it will also decrease revenue from other taxes. I'm no economist and don't know what the perfect balance is, but there is a lot to think about.[/QUOTE]
Very true, but mining in Australia only employs roughly 46 thousand people. I'm almost positive that a reduced amount of workers and the loss of payroll tax would still leave a net gain for the country after application of sufficient and fair taxes.
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