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

T. Watts brainwav93 at hotmail.com
Sun Aug 26 22:10:22 UTC 2012


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. 

> From: spike66 at att.net
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 09:05:13 -0700
> Subject: [ExI] keynes vs hayek again, was:  RE:  3d printers for sale
> 
> 
> >... On Behalf Of BillK
> Subject: Re: [ExI] 3d printers for sale
> 
> On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 5:28 PM, spike wrote:
> >>... Got a 3D printer three weeks ago, set it to print a copy of itself...
> >
> >
> 
> >...What happens if a neighbour starts doing the same as you? Do you feed
> each others machines into your machines?
> Where will it all end?  BillK
> _______________________________________________
> 
> If he tries that, I will throw him into the feeder for my printer and make
> two copies of me, since he is twice my size.  Problem solved.  {8^D
> 
> BillK, I want you to read the following and comment, since I respect your
> opinion and would like a British point of view.
> 
> Thought experiment: take two big industrialized nations that make war stuff,
> such as the US and China, have them build an enormous naval fleet to go out
> into the middle of the Pacific and fight it out.  With modern automated
> controls, there is no reason to endanger actual humans, so make everything
> robotic or remote controlled, all the guns, identification friend or foe,
> all the communications between ships, everything.  These ships will be
> constructed in shipyards all along the US west coast, and will be supplied
> by subcontractors everywhere making stuff.  All unemployed people will be
> taken in by something somewhere in this supply chain, even if they are
> perfectly useless: they can be greeters like Walmart has, who only need to
> smile and say good morning to the workers coming in, if they can't do
> anything else at all.  In return, there is no more welfare, for there is no
> need for it: anyone who wants a job can get one.  It doesn't pay much, but
> it beats starvation.  Daycare is available on station, as a benefit, and as
> soon as the kids hit about 15, they are given a job after their studies are
> done for the day.
> 
> Instantly the unemployment rate drops from a stubborn 8% to nada, and the
> tax money is flowing like a waterfall, which is good because the cost of all
> this is appalling, but hey, the economy is steaming ahead as both countries,
> and all the other countries who supply cars and furniture and all the other
> stuff, have enormous emerging markets, since everyone is as busy as a hive
> of bees on a spring day.  When the ships are all finished, they steam out to
> the middle of the sea and blast each other until the whole robo-mess rests
> on the bottom of the sea while each side sits at computer monitors on shore,
> cheering for their own side.  When the smoke clears, there is nothing to
> show for it but a big oil slicks where the robo-fleets once sailed.
> 
> So now they start on the next robo-olympics, as all that junk forms a very
> expensive artificial reef.  Keynes would comment: This is brilliant.  Hayek
> would comment: This is madness.
> 
> As the US is facing the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on 1 Jan 2013, we
> have an across-the-board budget cut mandated to go with it.  It occurs to me
> that we have developed a system that is analogous to the robo-demolition
> derby described above: we build all this defense stuff, and eventually we
> evolved an economic dependence on it, madness or otherwise.  Now the
> political news is dominated by commentary on local economies which will
> suffer if their piece of the supply line is cut.  Our congressional budget
> office is forecasting a recession if the across-the-board cuts go forth.
> Yet neither party is making an effort to stop it, and most Americans realize
> that painful or not, the alternative is not sustainable.  We are living
> waaaay beyond our means, but if all the cuts take place along with the tax
> increases, we will be living only a few hundred billion beyond our means, a
> fraction of the previous deficit. 
> 
> BillK, what would you say of that?  Anders and the various monster brains
> present, what say ye?  Hardcore libertarians among us, commentary please?
> 
> spike
> 
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