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From: kissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin Kissell)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Drifting Sideways
Message-ID: <653@flairvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 14-Jul-84 15:02:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: flairvax.653
Posted: Sat Jul 14 15:02:17 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Jul-84 10:11:48 EDT
Organization: Fairchild AI Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 43

(Responding to judy@ism780)

> I think the assumptions you make in the base note are 1) no new
> products and a static economy and 2) machines available to perform all
> menial tasks.  Since neither of these are true I don't think there is as
> much need for concern as you think.

I tried not to make any assumptions of stasis in the economy, and I was
not talking about a present-day crisis.  I was trying to point out that
the liberating goals and potential of automation are in conflict with the 
attitudes that govern our present society ("Ya don't work, ya don't eat.")
As a friend of mine pointed out, we will probably blow our civilization off 
the planet before it becomes a real problem.  If I may be permitted to be
optimistic, I still think we need to look hard at what we want to do to 
resolve the conflict.

> Robots are better suited than people to welding.  Let's face it, welding
> is unpleasant.  But they are not better suited for being masseuses,
> therapists, child care workers, etc..  The service
> industry will provide jobs to those workers displaced by technology.
> How much those services are worth will be measured by a free market.

Many people view the growth of the service sector to be unbounded and
a solution to industrial and agricultural sector unemployment.  This
does not hold up under closer scrutiny.  As one economist put it, you
cannot have a nation of people selling hamburgers to one another.  The
service system requires net input.  The input must come from some form 
of real production.

With regard to job sharing, as some have proposed it (and as is being
practiced in some industries in the Netherlands): when the cost of machine
labor becomes so low that the value of a day's labor cannot feed one person, 
how can it feed two?

Kevin D. Kissell
Fairchild Research Center
Advanced Processor Development
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