To be clear, the goal of libertarian society is not to assure the same standard of living to everyone, but to provide the room to people who wants to improve their conditions to do it. (Mostly by removing any state sponsored protections/entitlement of any special interests be it cronies or unions)

My point is that the poor will not starve because they are unemployed, because unemployment can't exist in a free world, only the price of labor would vary.
Making it, at some point, competitive with machines.
I also want to debunk the idea that anyone has "to take care" on their behalf. If only they are authorized to work for one another, they can develop their own economy (which still exist today... outlawed).

Your general argument is that without having access to production goods for making their own goods through work, there can be no economy at all.
I would say that it will mainly change the domains in which they will work, they will develop an economy around product that do not need large amount of capital. (Personal services to each other, agriculture)

Agriculture still needs land though, which would, I suspect, make them migrate from city to country side where the price of land is lower. (Don't forget that we are concentrated on cities, because there is work, if they can't work, then they will stop concentrating in cities)
I have not read again what smith said about rent/labor/capital, I will and come back with his arguments, I had too much things to code lately.


I only care about being coherent with the ideas I hold, and it seems you did not took time to read my logic about why, in a free world, the 45 yo guy would be still be able to find a job, and why, if you consider it a priority to protect it by force, then you will get the inverse consequence of what you want.
You are also oblivious to the fact that "big company provide jobs" is a really new concept which came from industrial revolution. Before that most people where self employed, without the need of big corporation.

If you get into a state where poor people can't buy what the market provide through automation, why do you think they will starve and not just work for each other as they did in the past ? Why do you think that "a big company HAS to provide jobs" ? Why do you think the price of food will not drop out ?

No, in a free world, I would not fire him in the first place, because a man can always be more economical than a machine, at a certain wage. I will tell him : now your wage will be as high as what the robot cost me, do you want to stay ?

Ask yourself the question about why men get fired by robots : because regulation prevent us to employ someone at a lesser wage than a robot.

At a time where most work are based solely on knowledge available for free on the internet ? (average Joe has internet isn it ?)
I work in IT, and I can tell you that 2 months of self learning on internet is enough to find a job, it has never been so easy in ages to find a job. But yes, you have to adapt to the market condition. The market is just the aggregate of what people think is your value. If you are average Joe working in factory and getting paid shit, then you are not valuable to the market place.
2 months of training in web development, and suddenly, you'll make more than the shitty job in factory that you did.

If you don't want to train yourself, and claim what you think is your just value by force, then you are basically searching special entitlement to the state, as cronies do. What I think is the most despicable way of stealing people who does not search to be entitled by leveraging force.
In the case of the 45yo Joe you talked about, if state protects his jobs, it will actually prevent "Poor Joe 2" to get a job at a factory, who was willing to be less costly than a robot.

@Nicolas Dorier - sorry mate but your post is shit. It's scary how an adult person can detach himself from reality and common sense just to be able to carry on wearing his libertarian label for a bit longer.

On top of other things you absolutely fail to acknowledge that every human has inherent costs of living and cannot go with their wage requirements below certain level.

But what strikes me the most is that you're pointing at 'alternative economy' as a solution to automation and yet you believe in 'free market'. For anyone in the right mind moving backwards to less effective solutions and having to build alternative economy (with all the related unrest) is something extremely undesirable and a clear sign that the free market model simply doesn't work.

I think as long as governments exist, such like IRS provides a good sum of revenue to the system everythings going to be taxed.

Its something uncontrolled and out of your hands, since there is a existing system, and fall into the category as same as stocks or other forms of investment will fall under.

Alright. But I don't see how poor people would have a chance to improve their condition. Like I said, most would eventually be working all available time just to eat. Automation will displace most people of their work. So they wouldn't have time to spend improving themselves. Too much competition for the jobs still available, or jobs in an alternative economy they try to create. And that alternative economy will provide much worse living conditions for people caught in it.


No. My argument is that living conditions would worsen a lot for those not already rich. Maybe poor people would be able to create an alternative economy. Maybe not. But I don't see why they should be forced to do it in a society that can sustain everyone at a higher living standard.


Concentrating people in cities has advantages. Makes some things more efficient. That is lost when you force them to disperse like that. But most people would be out of work. And not everyone would be able to buy their plot of land. Most people would always have a landlord. And even if land and other resources could be found to make an alternative economy work I think pawel7777 is right: the same problems would happen again forcing people to move elsewhere. And if this is a system that doesn't take care of most people, why should they support it? There must be a better way to organize society. I think eizh made a good point too:

Recently, wrote something similar to another discussion thread. income should be completely tax free. But, there should be a higher tax for gains on stocks larger than a particular amount -- let's say 1 million. The most rich people had worked hard to get rich but then they get richer just for letting there money work.

Not all rich people got there by working hard. Some just inherited their money. Closing loopholes in that tax should help too. Then make sure corporations can't evade their taxes.


Not that I want to defend the current system. But that only happens if money doesn't circulate right? If it is taxed as he proposes it could help. Maybe even work.


I'm all for celebrating technological unemployment. If it is work that can be done more efficiently by machines it frees people to do other things. Hopefully better things. That's great. But if most people will have worse living conditions because of it something will need to change to help them. Maybe unconditional income. Maybe something else. Btw, socialism doesn't necessarily depend on government.

You need to stop treating Milton Friedman as some sort of godsent know it all guy that defined the be all end all of economics. It's over. Repeat with me: It's over. Automation will reach a point of no return, where it will be simply unnecessary for the majority of people to work, because you'll have an higher quality of life accepting welfare/supply from the machines than trying to pick up a job, ANY job, even if it's unnecessary. No one will pay you to do an unnecessary job. Entrepreneurs are a minority. And the majority of workforce are simple tasks and those will be the first ones that disappear. There will be a time when we don't even need more machines, so "trying to compete with your own machines so to speak", will be just silly.

What we need to end this "the rich will own all the machines" bullshit is simply have decentralized, open source machines that supply people with what they need, and everyone is free to improve upon them. Automation and technology will make any monetary based system deprecated in the following 1000 years.

If we are still half retarded uneducated monkeys bashing each other in 1000 years, we'll be fucked.

im not too good in economics and this is very dens for me but the fact that machines could turn into intelegent we need a main contol like in terminators or something to be able to live happly with robots and the control of them its the key that for future for now the machins dont tkae more than 20% labor work of low knowlege workers i guess (knowlage workers are highly needed still)

my $200 robot vaccum cleaner has left me un employed from a lot of vacuuming....however it does require some maintenance/care, and cannot pick somethings up as well as the push upright dyson. However it can cover alot more area than I can as it does all the edges and does not get bored.

This tech will improve.

I enjoy to vaccum and dig in the yard, build stuff though...sometimes.....so maybe it will become like running is now, a recreational fitness thing

When a robot can do dishwashing and hanging up the clothes.....

 

One major difference from the Industrial Revolution in England is that England had large (often captive) external markets.  Unless the Pleiadeans want to buy your structured finance products and get manicures, in a flat global world, that just isn't true any more.  Robots immigrate freely.

The major reason to keep the masses liquid is to uphold demand.  But consumption levels today already press resource limits: Supporting consumption requires increasing resource efficiency; without a huge efficiency boost, the masses will  be liquidated. Thus technological unemployment is strictly required in order to avoid mass poverty.  How liquidity will flow to the unemployed remains to be seen.  Classic patterns are less and less applicable as services are saturated and automated.