Why even would someone against that be on HN? It's a place where people interested in startups are. Automating jobs away is always seen as a fantastic opportunity here.
It's a great opportunity for those automating. I'm totally for automation as it creates wealth and I think is good for humanity in the long run, but people suffer from automation (losing jobs, homes, provision for their families) in the short term. People suffering from automation is a major reason why Trump was elected. It's highly insensitive to not be aware of the pain that is caused by automation by technologists like us.
For the most part, automation doesn't create wealth. Sometimes it dramatically improves the functionality of an operation, but mostly it just lets private enterprise replace humans with capital. Thus, it enormously increases the wealth of the owners of that capital, and moderately increases the wealth of the managers of that capital, but overall wealth is not increased, only distributed differently.
Also, to the extent that Trump was elected because of economic factors rather than social factors, a cultural reaction against the rampant libertinism of late-stage liberalism, it was because their jobs were not automated but exported overseas. If their jobs hadn't been exported en masse, they would have been largely protected from automation for the last 30 years and until 10 to 20 years from now when things really get serious.
>wealth is not increased, only distributed differently
When we have the technology to meet the population's needs without its involvement in production, we have something much better than wealth: we have our lives back, our time and energy, our freedom from wage slavery.
We have government for the distribution problem.
The most viscerally disturbing thing I've ever seen a human do, is wish that others be forced to expend useless, unnecessary effort to "earn" what we could just hand out.
I understand the argument about stealing person A's labor output and giving it to person B, but no individual has a legitimate moral claim on the output of a fully automated process.
>>That tops eating out of a dumpster (literally, like eating unwrapped, half-eaten discards)? Or defecating in a stairwell?
> Neither of those things are wishing lifetimes of drudgery as a condition of survival onto your fellow human beings.
You're either not communicating your point effectively, or you don't seem to have any understanding of reality.
Who, exactly, is "wishing lifetimes of drudgery as a condition of survival onto [their] fellow human beings"?
And who, in their right mind, would willingly forego stable access to the necessities of life (food, a home...) because they find such stability intolerable compared to a lifetime of drudgery?
>> It isn't working as redistribution through taxation
> Which companies are paying taxes on their automated output comparable to what the payroll would cost?
We seem to agree that redistribution through taxation categorically does not* solve the problem of providing people with the necessities of life. So what is the point in discussing a specific aspect of taxation?
Instead, I'll ask again - what is your proposed solution, such that people's basic survival needs are accommodated, given that charity doesn't solve the problem either?
* I'm not saying that it can't. I'm saying that it doesn't - primarily because the wealthy have bought 6 decades worth of across the board, increasing tax cuts (among other things) by buying government.
Man is an economic animal. If you want to see what purposeless leisure looks like, look at the underclass: rampant drug problems, animalistically promiscuous women, broken families, bastard, fatherless children, trash culture, and crime.
50 years ago, those people, except for the absolute worst of the worst, were productive, law-abiding citizens with intact families, functional homes, and a place in the world.
When a man is made economically useless, he ceases to be a man. He becomes just another useless mouth to feed, like an animal in a zoo, but unlike the zoo animal in that people do everything in their power to avoid seeing him.
Back when the labor movements were stronger it could be a good thing for (almost) everyone because in order to introduce new automation, management would have to offer employees something in return (high wages, benefits, shorter working hours, etc).
The end result is that everyone up and down the income distribution benefited from gains in efficiency. And those who were displaced had little problem finding new work because their former coworkers now had more money and/or leisure time to spend on new economic activity.
What libertine thing are you referring to? Equal rights for gay people, women making the same wages as men for equivalent work? I'm from a southern state, and I hear a lot of grousing about uppity women and black folks (and people don't use words as nice as that). They want revenge. That's the kind of thing that I see people complaining about liberals. And that kind of behavior is ugly and unneeded. I can think of things that appear as silly to me, like safe spaces, trigger warnings, but I've never encountered such things in real life.
"cool opportunity"
what a time to be alive