[ExI] keynes vs hayek again, was: RE: 3d printers for sale

[Charlie Stross]

On 26 Aug 2012, at 18:10, T. Watts <brainwav93 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> A) Robot ships will be built by robots. Most associated human jobs will be skilled; Joe Sixpack need not apply, unless he can get a technical degree or certificate.
> 
> B) You have triggered the Bastiat broken window fallacy. 
> 
> C) Military Keynesianism is even less efficient than normal Keynesianism, if such a thing is possible; military spending has a very high capital-to-labor ratio, it's expensive, for very little return in the way of jobs. 

If you want a Kenysian stimulus program that generates employment, then it needs to focus on some sector which is labour intensive and not amenable to automation (or rather, where the cost of automation vastly exceeds the cost of using trained labour).

Hairdressing: you *can't* reduce the time for a haircut (unless you switch to shaving) and the imaging and robotic systems needed to effectively identify hair growth patterns on unique and different individuals and come up with an aesthetically pleasing hairstyle based on same is challenging, to say the least.

Ditto cooking, waiting at tables, and other service sector jobs. We can maybe automate some cleaning, but short of full AI there's still going to be a role for humans in most of these areas.

The big one is of course personal care. And the increase in the proportion of the population living into old age suggests a great Keynsian stimulus program (with the caveat that if we crack the senescence problem it goes away fast): decent staffing levels for assisted living/old age homes would provide a *huge* employment opportunity, and deliver a significantly increased quality of life for the elderly as a side-effect.

Plus, I think that caring for people who need help is a more humane and useful source of make-work than building killer drones.



-- Charlie