Replaced by robots?

There are two things I didn't realize when I decided to tackle the subject of job automation this year. The first is the ironic thing that I could have expected: it is difficult to write about the obsolescence of work if you need to work many hours. The second thing is that right now, the subject of automation is very popular. Not a day goes by without large publications printing a piece on the future of work in a world where jobs are displaced by machines.

Now, I do think that most of these articles are not seeing the problem for what it is. For example, while there is widespread acceptance that car drivers will be replaced by autonomous vehicles, the recognition of such challenges is always accompanied by a future scenario in which humans make money through creative, social or intelligent work. However, there is no reason to assume that an upcoming revolution in the cognitive and computer sciences won't also open up these "human" ventures to automation.

Still, the fact remains that the discussion on jobs and machines is really taking off, and that means that I can do some light blogging by just sharing content that others made. The following is an attempt to do so. It is a lecture on whether humans will be replaced by robots, and I think it frames the issues for the near future in a very pragmatic way. This lecture accompanies a paper that claims that about half of today's jobs can be done by computers in 20 years, which drew a lot of attention from the press.

Towards the post-job world

We are moving towards a post-job world. Not only is automation radically altering the amount of work that needs to be done by humans in the first place, labor relations for the work that remains are also changing. Industries that see volatile skill requirements are hardly interested in hiring for life and, in several sectors, workers no longer depend on employers to provide them with means of production, to borrow a concept from Marxian economics. In other words, we are moving towards a world in which there is an increasing amount of contractors and entrepreneurs, doing a decreasing amount of total work.

Overall, this is a good thing. While I do not agree with thinkers like Bob Black, who considers work immoral in all its forms, I do think that Keynes' vision of a world of leisure, as premature as it may have been, is a vision of a good world. Not having to do work to keep the economy going does not mean we need to idle -- it just means that we can enter a society that is perhaps more ludic than it has ever been.

Moreover, I do somewhat agree with Black on the immorality of jobs. Now, rational individuals may sometimes be able to develop themselves through being an employee. The experience may endow them with skills and attitudes that increase their odds of success as free workers. Black ignores such cases, which are especially prevalent in higher-tier work, and classifies all jobs as incompatible with liberty. I think this goes too far, but do agree that the job system is essentially hierarchical. A lot can be -- and has been -- said about this, but for now I want to suffice by saying that my problem with jobs is their psychological effect, in that they render people uninspired and receptive to control.

In other words, the post-job world can be better than this world, and the post-work world can be better than the post-job world. Ergo, the fact that we're moving there is good news. Right?

Not really. In all matters social, the path is as important as the destination. And while it is certainly great to fantasize about a ludic world where the machines do all the work, the fact remains that our economic system distributes resources in a way that is supposed to be approximately proportional to contributions. We have no idea how to allocate resources in a world without work. Also, the past 200 years or so have seen economic, social and educational systems adapt to job-based work.

As a consequence, we are poorly prepared for the transition. Simply denying those without work access to society's resources, as we do now, means signing up for growing resentment and all the social unrest it may bring. Convincing skilled, competent and bright people that they are failures means wasting human capital and causing unnecessary suffering. Letting go of the middle class means losing aggregate demand, which ultimately means the happy few will need to reinvent the economy anyway. So why not do it in advance and bypass the painful processes?

This year, I want to consider possible scenarios for our rapidly automating world. What are the immediate challenges, and how could we deal with them? Which alternatives exist for a work-based economy? How should political actors of different stripes respond to technological unemployment? How can we make the transition towards a ludic society go as smoothly as possible? These questions need serious thought, as moving beyond our current model won't be easy.

In fact, losing work is going to take some effort.

Libertarian Dialectics

I have a love-hate relationship with libertarianism. The non-aggression principle, the world of voluntary transactions and the emphasis on individuality all sit well with me. As any form of minarchism, libertarianism is not without its problems, but they sound more like fun challenges than unsurmountable obstacles.

The libertarian reasoning I find on the Internet is another story entirely. Libertarians often see the state-market dichotomy as the only real division in politics, and approach it with a dialectical fervor that you rarely see outside Marxist circles. They don't need to be this way, but tradition has it that they see no real difference between social democrats, socialists and communists. As the anti-leftist FrontPage Magazine says: "Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out."

That might sounds like a nice and easy approach to politics, but it causes problems. Take the following reasoning, lifted straight from Soviet days.

1. All who do not subscribe to the Communist Party Line are saboteurs who wish to establish capitalist rule. 
2. Field worker Andrei does not agree with the Party Line. 
3. Therefore, Andrei is a saboteur who wants to establish capitalist rule.

This was really how people reasoned at the time. The first premise follows from dialectic thought, which was pretty much the official cognitive style in the Soviet era. In those days, it was literally lethal: dialectic logic led to slavery and executions. In libertarianism, it leads to name-calling and some pretty strange beliefs.

To appreciate how these beliefs form, consider the effect that misrepresenting the beliefs of others can have in the long run. Once you start inferring other beliefs, motivations or even character traits from this misrepresentation, you're bound to get stuck. This is straw man reasoning in its purest and most insidious form. Libertarian thinking is not necessarily like this -- it is just a tradition that goes back to Ayn Rand, and that many libertarians have not yet left behind.

As an example, take a recent contribution to Google+ by +Michael van der Galien, a classical liberal with a libertarian streak. I often enjoy reading his views, but had great difficulty with this particular post.

Even if you assume Michael means something like 'leftists' when he says progressives -- the two are often erroneously lumped together -- it is easy to object to many of his claims. For example, there are many mixed economy leftists who are not anti-capitalist. Sure, they put a lot value onto social equality. They will always check whether there is too much of a conflict between the market and that core value. But they do not oppose the market system in itself. And while some leftists indeed see a mixed economy as the path to full socialism, others think that a dualistic economy in itself can be optimal. In any case, neither see capitalism as the root of all evil.

For Michael, the differences between various types of leftists are probably not interesting, because he subscribes to libertarian dialectics. The state-market dichotomy is all that counts then, and there are only radical sides to choose from -- all leftists are equal and all are pro-state and anti-capitalist, says the libertarian mantra. It is easy to see how such reasoning follows from dialectics.

It is less easy to see where Michael's claim about anti-colonialism comes from, more so because it is poorly phrased. People across the spectrum tend to believe that colonial powers acted as colonial powers in colonial times. That tautology is true by definition. Also, most of these same people agree that colonialism wasn't a very nice thing to do. In that sense, anti-colonialism is not confined to the heads of leftists or progressives, but much more widely spread phenomenon. So why does Michael focus on leftist anti-colonialism?

My guess would be that he meant to talk about neocolonialism. Leftists tend to worry about the accumulation of wealth and often claim that economic power is used to subjugate foreign lands. This economic power projection is akin to colonialism, or so they claim. Interestingly enough, even this view is shared more broadly than just among leftists. In fact, the (progressive) libertarian platform Antiwar.com often condemns modern-day equivalents of colonialism, be they through economic or military force. Of course, there is no room for such shades of gray in libertarian dialectics, and so Michael places anti-neocolonialism in the leftist camp.

Taking these caricatures, Michael goes on to claim that the Muslim Brotherhood thinks the same way as leftists do, and that this "explains" the support leftists give to the Muslim Brotherhood. This claim is dialectics at its finest: since it dictates that only two sides exist, people who share convictions are necessarily allies.

I don't think that claim stands up to scrutiny. When the military coup in Egypt ousted Morsi, there was condemnation from the religiously conservative regime in Ankara, but not from progressive politicians. There was disappointment about the failure of the democratic process; there was no disappointment about the Muslim Brotherhood not being able to push through its political agenda. Not even in progressive newspapers. If there's been any clear-cut, western, leftist or progressive support of the Muslim Brotherhood, I haven't come across it. Of course, I asked Michael if he could point me to specific statements of support, but his answer was not that helpful:

How about actually reading twitter and opinion pieces, looking at policies, and listening to what politicians say? Laughable response by a typical progressive.

This response did serve as yet another example of the Hegelian, libertarian mind at work: to Michael, my disagreement meant that I was a "typical progressive". While I don't want to join Michael in calling comments 'laughable', I have to admit this name-calling made me smile.

Of course, I could have known that I would not get a straight answer. Michael's reasoning didn't stop with the claim that the Muslim Brotherhood and progressives are in cahoots. This apparent conclusion is just another premise for an even grander Soviet Syllogism. In true libertarian fashion, Michael doesn't just want leftists to be wrong, he wants them to be evil. 

1. The Muslim Brotherhood does not respect gay or women rights.
2. The "progressives" side with the Muslim Brotherhood.



Misrepresentation of political opponents can lead to false beliefs

3. Therefore, the "progressives" do not respect gay or women rights.

If this conclusion seems to be at odds with about fifty years of leftist politics, you've been paying attention. Michael, however can explain this paradox. It is not that progressives and the Muslim Brotherhood aren't friends, nor is it that the conclusion of his final syllogism is unwarranted (it is, but I will leave that exercise in logical thinking to the reader). Instead, Michael argues, the New Left's flirtations with civil rights can be explained as a great way to undermine capitalism, colonialism and Christianity.

That's right. +Michael van der Galien is claiming that gay rights and feminism are just tools in a crusade against the free market and the Christian faith. According to him, leftists don't support these issues because they care about them as ends, they support them because they work well as means for some secret agenda. And he, I should add, is an otherwise intelligent guy, who often has sensible opinions.

This crazy conclusion is what happens if you stack misrepresentations and then draw conclusions from them. It is what happens if you choose to view the world in terms of two diametrically opposed camps. It is what happens if you accept libertarian dialectics.