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sc94597 on 31 July 2014
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Mr Khan said:
Blouge said:
""labor" is going to become insanely cheap and abundant due to the proliferation of robots/machines" - Mr. Khan

This is sheer nonsense. See von Mises:

"Our world is different. Labor is more scarce than material factors of production... there are material factors of production which remain unused because the labor required is needed for the satisfaction of more urgent needs. In our world there is no abundance, but a shortage of manpower, and there are unused material factors of production, i.e. land, mineral deposits, and even plants and equipment."

Then explain the slack in the labor market. Weak wages and stubborn unemployment levels, but not diminishing productivity or profits.

If labor were scarce, we'd never have to worry about capitalism because the laws of supply and demand would mean *everyone* got paid well.

I would personally say that high unemployment and overall low wages (in tandem) are caused by distortions in the perceived market value of different uses of labor caused by unfree markets (taxes/subsidies.) The jobs in which wages are low are so because - much like the housing crisis - a bubble was created through inefficient subsidies, and a surplus of workers in that field exists, which would not otherwise exist in a free market. This instead was an education bubble. There is a false belief that level of education should (in itself) provide higher income and more secure job opportunities, when in fact it has also to do with a diversity and specificity in education and skills. Companies want unique individuals who can give them what can't be found elsewhere. And that is where the "scarcity" in labor comes from, the diversity of human beings able to fill a specific niche that an unintelligent machine or a standard human with no skills cannot perform. Whoever can fill as many niches as possible has the most job security and the highest negotiability for pay-raises. Marx's predicts and the assumption of  the labor theory of value fail for this reason. For example, he predicted the United States would be the first country to have a socialist revoluton, just because the United States had powerful labor unions at his time. Instead, the jobs shifted from factories and mining to railroads and steel and then to automobiles and infastructure, and also to service jobs like office-administration and teaching. The workforce was content because of the diversification of labor, and the ability to suit specific niches for which they enjoyed. Today, the United States is one of the countries in the world least primed for a socialist revolution, albeit the rise of fascism/corporatism is mostly a reason for that as well.