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SuperNova on 25 May 2016
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Zkuq said:
SuperNova said:

Actually the companies replacing employes with robots should probably be the first ones to think about that. What is short to middle term profit to them will over time translate to a collapse of sales because they ushered their very own consumerbase into unemployment.

True, foxconn factory workers or Mc Donalds employees aren't exactly middle class, but nevertheless their income gives them spending power, wich in turn provides conditions for a more permeable society and therefore bigger middle class. These jobs are an entry point to rising in society with future generations and they are vanishing.

Companies are going to have to deal with the question of where their money is supposed to come from eventually. At the moment they are busy cutting down the roots of their own income and so far society has no plan B for large unemployment rates.

I don't think it's the companies' problem to worry about social issues. Ideally they would think about things like that, but I doubt they will. Social responsibility is something companies aiming to maximize profits aren't very eager to consider. We should also remember that the actions of each company alone won't be enough, it's the actions of all the companies that matter. If a lot of other companies are going to replace workers with robots, it will be very hard for any single company to not replace their workers with robots because human workers cost more in the long run. The environment will pressure the companies into robotization unless governments interfere, and I don't think they're going to be very eager to do that with all the lobbying.

I don't think there's any realistic way to fight robotization. You'd need to get practically every government in the world to agree to prevent robotization, and that's just not going to happen. Robots will replace human workers in the near future, and we need to learn how to cope with it. It will be painful but I doubt there's much we can do about it. It'll be easiest if we simply accept it and come up with ideas to cope with it.

I realize all of that. And my point was not to turn companies into wellfare (although I would prefer slower and more healthy growth rates and less profit with more reinvestments). I'm saying they should worry about this for their own sake, because no consumer base equals no profit in the long run.

If they were smart they would do their business diffrently.

I don't think we even need to fight robotization. Robotization could be potentially awesome. But it also means that companies will have to be prepared to pay out insanely high wages for relatively few working hours, as multiple people will probably have to share the same job position, or a small amount of working people will have to earn enough to pay enough taxes to provide for the unemployed masses.

You can't really take companies out of the equation and expect the state to fix everything. Where is the tax money to care for society supposed to come from when the majority of people is umemployed? Without companies to pay wages and those wages getting redistributed by taxes and retranslated into spending power no state can properly function. And for that matter, neither can any business. At least not with our current system.

And while a few new job opporunities will certainly pop up with robotization, that won't nearly be enough to cover the new unemployment rates.

(I personally see handcafts having sort of a renaissance for a while, with wealthy people paying good money for quality handcrafted stuff. And we'll probaby see a surge of 'young creatives' leading to a total oversaturation of that market [wich as an illistrator honestly scares the crap out of me. ]).

So countries will eventually have to find a system to get to the riches of the upper 10% and distributing it down to the masses. (wich will be interesting since thise upper 10% also happen to have enormous political influence and are not likely to part with their money willingly.) It would be in the businesses own interest if they would help with that.