Artificial Intelligence as a "Road to Serfdom"?

Even if so, AI would only be one of many factors which could exacerbate further losses of freedom in the years ahead. In particular, AI should not be scapegoated for the kinds of equilibrium defining actions which humans have been responsible for, all along. What's really at stake, is how individual actors and associations choose to implement artificial intelligence in markets and workplaces. Might its use become mostly limited to the augmentation of professional functions, for instance? Why haven't we thought more about the right to actively participate in applied knowledge, as a valid component of economic and personal freedom?

With complex issues such as these, it helps to recall how supply side considerations also impact economic outcomes - especially for the high skill time based product of service sectors. Given the fact non tradable sector activity has become largely responsible for the dynamism of advanced economies, how might existing opportunities for scale be encouraged? When basic aspects of domestic aggregate output are purposely limited, demand deficiency results. And unfortunately, these general equilibrium conditions don't readily respond to either fiscal or monetary stimulus, when basic supply side factors create most of the existing imbalance.

Today's best opportunities for scale, lie in the greater inclusion of all individuals in economic participation. How so? Our dominant sectors are heavily linked to time and place. Once assets or services are specifically time and place related, the greatest potential for gains in scale is in terms of aggregate participation. This reality is radically different from centuries of tradable sector dominance, in which gains in scale (and progress) were determined by a growing output trajectory which gradually required fewer labour inputs over time.

Plus, no society can remain free, should too many citizens find themselves excluded from the most basic forms of domestic economic activity with connections to time and place. In an article for Project Syndicate, Robert Skidelsky wonders whether AI might contribute to a "road to serfdom", in part because of the slowdown in wage growth:

Studies around the world show that people want secure jobs. At the same time, they have always dreamed of a life free of toil. The rise of the robots has made the tension between these impulses palpable.

Skidelsky also emphasized the fact that technology has in fact been able to bolster wage capacity for a long time. What I believe has not been highlighted enough, is the fact that non tradable sector dominance has proven responsible for much of the present wage conundrum. Yet while technology has already provided millions with workplaces essentially free of physical toil, AI is beginning to enter territory which is increasingly unappealing to professionals. After all, deep learning processes enable AI to supplant some aspects of work which are part of intellectual challenge. Most high skill work has always been free of toil in a "beast of burden" sense.

This is why the high skill work of the present, needs to be recognized for the intellectual challenge rewards it can actually provide, for anyone fortunate enough to take part. Most important, is that much of this is work people would actually be willing to perform even without pay, if the circumstances of their lives allowed them to do so. Just the same, the costs of living in our most prosperous regions not only require one to do desirable work for pay, it needs to be substantial pay to live in these settings as well. Consequently, we still have high hopes which - alas - won't be met, to somehow gain higher incomes and stable jobs for everyone who tries hard enough to obtain them.

Fortunately, good economic options are on the horizon. However, there's still plenty of social turmoil to get through before those options start to become more obvious. And the biggest hurdle which has led to so many dashed hopes, is the myriad of ways society has defined what success supposedly looks like. Presently, we are being ground under by a massive accumulation of societal expectations - even though many of them are little more than lifestyle illusions.

Once we recognize the possibilities of innovating the domestic parts of our economy - that is, the ones which so often manage to make our incomes appear too small, we can begin to redefine the non tradable sector equilibrium conditions which have made the maintenance of our present lifestyles so fragile. AI can help us in this challenge, by radically reducing today's human capital investment costs. Instead of struggling to bring income capacity closer to supposed general equilibrium "necessities", it makes more sense to allow non tradable sector equilibrium dynamics to reflect a wide range of local wage capacity. Eventually, variations on defined local equilibrium, could also give citizens the ability to ensure that AI improves the prospects of all human capital.

What Economy Should We Be Preparing For?

Adam Ozimek wonders whether we could be worrying about the wrong things, in a recent Forbes article, "There are so many worse things than robots taking our jobs". Why scramble to put together a universal basic income, for instance, should productivity refuse to rise? And what if present day debt levels become a serious constraint to growth? Shouldn't we be addressing this possibility? For that matter, might these two issues be somehow interconnected? Ozimek continues:

It makes as much if not more sense to worry about slow growth and exploding debt than it does to worry about rapid productivity growth and disemployment.

Granted, future unemployment is a very real concern. However, it will ultimately need to be addressed in ways which don't create further demands on what has become a somewhat fragile general equilibrium. Already, extensive price making demands on aggregate revenue in recent decades, have meant both higher debt levels and sectoral imbalance.

These non tradable sector realities also contribute to relatively tight global monetary conditions, even as emerging economies rely on global monetary flows for their own continued growth. Such correlations between debt and productivity trajectories are quite real. Nevertheless, they will need a stronger theoretical economic framing, before increased labour force participation can be realistically created which will not negatively impact productivity levels.

Presently, total factor productivity still relies on labour (or increasingly, high skill time use preferences) as a residual of product formation. Before greater productivity can contribute to higher growth levels, wealth creation may need to take place via symmetric means, so as to sidestep the labour residual problem that now factors into low labour force participation. Plus, when high skill asymmetric compensation is created via traditional means, much of it becomes intangible product. However, this designation hides the degree to which the aggregate input of knowledge production can be much higher (across separate institutions), than the aggregate output of time/knowledge centered product these institutions are now capable of providing to the public.

Symmetric forms of mutual employment - or time arbitrage - would allow individuals to increase labour force participation which doesn't rely on further dilution of total factor productivity or the creation of further government debt. Indeed, this could be where the greatest possibilities for near future employment and wealth creation reside, since both local NIMBYism and nationalist protectionism have created limits to growth, in general equilibrium settings.

Nevertheless, the price taking coordination mechanism that would make time arbitrage a rational and cost effective response, requires innovation in physical infrastructure and building components, so that a price taking services defined equilibrium (bypassing the Baumol effect) doesn't lead to undue losses in living standards. Otherwise, there would be insufficient monetary equivalence - hence a lack of personal and group motivation - to make defined equilibrium settings truly functional. Importantly, better monetary equivalence (via real wage gains) is needed for all income levels that is not only free of further public debt, but private debt as well. The way to a better future for all is still through extensive supply side innovation - albeit this time in non tradable sectors.

For that matter, present day asset costs for non discretionary housing and traditional infrastructure, help to explain why it would be unwise to disturb the fragile equilibrium of asymmetric compensation which continues to support today's supply side structure. After all, the traditional means of knowledge use and preservation which evolved in recent centuries, can be maintained up to a point. We just need to prepare for the fact that price making strategies for knowledge use and preservation in general equilibrium, can no longer provide the long term growth which global populations still need.

Empathy, AI and the Knowledge Factor

Might artificial intelligence ultimately replace physicians? Bertalan Mesko argues that the medical community shouldn't be too concerned re a spate of recent dire predictions, and adds:

They're just plain wrong. All of them. Although many signs are pointing to the fact that A.I. will completely move the world of medicine, and many other technologies will have a transformative effect on the industry, stating that the majority of medical professionals will disappear, is fearmongering and irresponsible. 

Mesko offers five reasons why artificial intelligence won't replace physicians. However, I'd like to take a closer look at the first one where he asserts:

1) We cannot replace empathy.

Even if the array of technologies will offer brilliant solutions, it would be difficult for them to mimic empathy. Why? Because at the core of empathy, there is the process of building trust: listening to the other person, paying attention to their needs, expressing the feeling of compassion and responding in a manner that the other person knows they were understood.

Having come of age in an era when physicians weren't expected to be so considerate of their patients, I can appreciate the current emphasis on compassion. When it comes to patient/doctor relationships, one might say that expression of empathy has become the "right thing to do".

Hence until recently, I was convinced by arguments such as the above. Surely no robot could take the place of human empathy! But what really takes place? Most successful people face societal demands which greatly reduce how they can be expected to assist (mere) individuals. The higher one's level of compensated skill, the less time one generally has left, for one-on-one economic engagement. Yet empathy includes taking the time to stop and listen to pesky or even "troublesome" complaints, a chore which may occasionally include walking a mile in another's shoes. Otherwise, how to become less disagreeable, as to the "unreasonable" assessments others tend to hold re their circumstance? We may find snap judgments a bit distasteful, but they sure "save" a lot of time and bother, don't they. Yet physicians are hardly alone, in their inability to assume a level of basic observation that can only be likened to beginner's mind.

What's more, the present institutions responsible for our time based services, are separated from one another in ways which break up knowledge continuity and practical application, at the outset. In other words, people lose the ability to preserve the usefulness of hard won understandings concerning patients and clients, once individuals are handed off to the next institutional setting. Knowledge workers are now expected to juggle such an extensive array of information alongside administrative circumstance, that they can only tap a fraction of potential solution sets. Sometimes that's not enough, especially when patients or clients need informational continuity for any reason.

Could AI contribute to the knowledge preservation and continuity, that today's professionals are hard pressed to provide? Or, what if AI could even take into consideration, more of those pesky patient/client complaints and observations, should such information become part of the computer's knowledge landscape? In other words, might AI have the "time" to (respectfully?) "listen", if patients could actually report to them directly, particularly if they get little respect from professionals or workers entrusted with their care? What if AI could even be programmed so that it wouldn't react with human anger, when patients lash out in desperation or frustration at a society that has seemingly become too burdened to help them anymore? Yes, I hope that time arbitrage can eventually make a difference in terms of personal civility and mutual assistance, but we aren't there yet...

Granted: The examples in my barely controlled rant aren't normally how most people envision what supposedly constitutes empathy. Nevertheless, the impartial observation of beginner's mind, and continuity of knowledge application, are both important. Let's don't assume too quickly, that deep learning AI couldn't be programmed to "remember" things that might otherwise be disregarded or even discarded. Or, for that matter, that AI can't be expected to exhibit "empathy" towards patients - especially since it's often beyond the scarce time given means of professional providers, to be able to do so.

Educational Supply Chains: A Decentralized Role for AI

First, consider the potential for learning processes as self supporting supply chains, which in turn allow educational investments to directly disperse wealth and knowledge. Why education as a supply chain for growth? Since today's institutions mostly "random mine" skills and knowledge, the benefits of human capital are somewhat lacking in growth statistics. In "The Importance of Education and Skill Development for Economic Growth in the Information Era", Charles Hulten argues that the BLS assigns a "relatively small role to education", which he (understandably) believes is insufficient. How might we create a better organizational platform for human capital, in which education becomes a stronger component of economic dynamism?

Presently, as institutions randomly mine the investments of human capital, many aspects of knowledge use have to "wait in line" for tradable sector wealth origin - even to the extent that advanced economy workers "wait" for resource origin flows from emerging economies. Granted, these original wealth sources are supplemented via the monetary flows of physical assets (housing) and a wide array of debt backed instruments. Nevertheless, too much non tradable sector activity remains on the negative side of the ledger, in terms of a general equilibrium growth base. Possibly the non tradable sector activity of new housing (not its loan activity), is the major non tradable sector contributor, to the positive side of the wealth creation ledger.

Meanwhile, too much educational investment in general, has come up short in terms of providing directly to economic dynamism. Another way to think about this: When labour and human capital serve primarily as residuals (for both primary and secondary market activity), the potential for a knowledge continuum is broken or at least disrupted, at numerous junctures. Is it possible to provide stronger connection points - even a recognizable supply side chain - for knowledge use in general?

One way to approach this problem, is via the use of coordinated time arbitrage in knowledge use systems. Time arbitrage as a single price commodity unit, would allow individuals and groups to immediately cancel time debt, as it occurs in daily activity. Individuals would also be able to "buy" time insurance from others in the event they can't work, via voluntary service hours. This approach would allow purposeful matched time (and its accompanying knowledge use) to function as an ongoing continuum. Personal time value, along with skill and knowledge, would function as a supply chain model, making human capital a central component of growth and wealth creation.

Among the reasons people fear artificial intelligence, is the fact that human capital - despite its importance -  is still organizationally structured as a production residual. Whenever individuals need to specify their time as containing higher monetarily value than that of others, their time use becomes dependent on general equilibrium system flows. In other words, the costs of skills differentiation will frequently remove any first mover position for knowledge use we might hold, since one must enter their knowledge and skill into organizational processes which are also aligned to "wait" for the total compensation of the system.

So long as an excessive amount of labour remains in either secondary markets or residual production positioning, even professional groups end up in defensive positions, arguing for humans to remain "embedded in the loop". Calls for continued management via human judgement, have a more emotional element than the technical maintenance which AI will (more naturally) require, in the form of human assistance. In all of this: Since human capital is still organized as peripheral or "as needed", high and low skill levels are becoming default positions - even though average skill is more representative of human populations in general. Consequently, average intelligence would likely be an important characteristic, for the time based and educational supply chains of the future.

It is the central role of our time in knowledge based supply chains, that makes it possible for deep learning AI to assist us - meaning not inevitably the other way around. How so? For instance: One of the primary advantages of time based services in desirable regions, has been their ability to replicate specific and desirable skill sets - think brain surgery as an example. The deep learning of AI makes it possible to disperse specific skill replication functions as well, so that many skills sets can eventually be applied in environments which otherwise may lack "cutting edge" human skills capacity.

Decentralized services generation would mean an altogether different approach for deep learning AI is possible: One that includes helping locals assist one another with important service functions, especially during their primary educational years. It's the wealth generating capacity of equal time coordination, which allows these groups to make their dependency break with general equilibrium monetary flows for time use. By decentralizing service capacity, each group can build a continuum for progress which holds a reasonable chance of permanence, insofar as time use functions are recorded and preserved.

In knowledge use systems, humans would often seek the assistance of deep learning AI. However, this approach accentuates personal autonomy, and is quite different from that of human assistance for technology as part of a centralized system. Time arbitrage can allow for greater dispersal of knowledge use. It's the use of knowledge - not just its acquisition as investment - which drives economic dynamism and moves society forward.

When human capital functions primarily as a production residual, there's good reason to be concerned about educational investment roles, once general equilibrium capacity becomes constrained. Yet it is precisely the ability to build time based local wealth, which could allow human capital to fully function as a central part of knowledge based processes. When purposeful time serves as an economic core, deep learning AI - important though it is - would often provide a supportive role for the experiential product that people wish to share on more personal terms.

Deep Learning in a Time of Increasing Automation

Might deep learning roles continue to evolve in future workplaces, so as to include individuals and not just machines? To what degree will we retain the ability to choose areas of deep learning which also hold economic and social rewards? Answers to questions such as these, are important for people from all walks of life.

One reason it helps to distinguish potential rewards factors, is that so many individuals (wherever possible) choose deep learning for purely personal rewards, even when monetary or social rewards aren't part of the equation. While individuals have pursued deep learning through books for centuries, the digital realm now offers far more extensive possibilities.

Nevertheless, there's a paradox in this recent digital bounty. How do we fully appreciate these added learning possibilities, given the fact there are somewhat limited means to make deep learning count for society as a whole? Given these circumstance, digital learning possibilities don't seem as advantageous as would otherwise be the case. While the internet enables personal learning challenges; by the same token, it's no simple matter to share in personal knowledge quests or applications with others, without the requisite degrees. Also, some who are naturally inclined to pursue informal learning for personal rewards, may struggle to continue these quests during life periods when one's basic ability to survive is being tested.

Consequently, individuals may not be able to sustain either informal or formal deep learning, especially when they choose intellectual paths where economic rewards are not likely. Yet no longer is this merely a problem for "impractical" deep learning, as more pragmatic and hands on forms of deep learning will increasingly face the inroads of workplace automation, in the decades ahead. We have been caught in too many debates about the relative lack of economic value for many disciplines, when in reality, automation continues to erode the aggregate economic value of our supposedly most pragmatic fields of study.

Hence one of the main challenges of our time, is to create new knowledge use platforms which can better integrate both deep learning and learning specific formats into our social networks - especially since automation will take advantage of both. Since automation will do some of the heavy lifting for us, it will become easier to set aside time in a day for interaction which is low skill but holds other personal meaning. Even though full monetary rewards aren't possible for these forms of knowledge networks, we can still do a better job of securing survival means, so that individuals might continue pursuing deep learning, who do so for the emotional and intellectual rewards of the challenge.

What about deep learning in knowledge use systems? Deep learning would be compensated in small increments, as time arbitrage smoothes the human capital investment costs of deep learning through peer to peer assistance. Plus, deep learning is not always a necessity to participate in time based service interaction, since complicated but learning specific material can be divided into components which simultaneously generate more consumption access - much as earlier divisions of factory labour meant greater access to an expanded tradable sector marketplace.

Even though technology will likely negate some of the monetary compensation for deep learning, we can respond by exploring how we most want deep learning to contribute to our interactions with others. When we replace the concept of labour with the concept of time value, we have a more rational response to the roles we might assume alongside technology. Time value as a commodity unit, serves as a vessel in which experiential and pragmatic knowledge use can take place.

Best, by placing the economic value on the reality of our mutual time preferences, we give ourselves a break and remove the necessity of determining the level of skill that is supposedly "necessary" for each reciprocal interaction. These expectations for specific skills levels have proven problematic, for they have assumed the provider has all the pertinent knowledge input (both in education and healthcare) while the recipient has none. The reality has often been quite different.

Technology and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

How might one think about economics as a system which is subject to the second law of thermodynamics? Specifically, are the input and wealth gains of present day technology, sufficient to maintain positive growth and the avoidance of entropy?

After all, economic activity is like other organic systems in this regard. Should economic activities be subjected to a certain amount of isolation (or insufficient energy input), ultimately the larger system may be in an increasing entropic state. Or, one might say economic dynamism refuses to "stand still" while yielding a "guaranteed" set of benefits, even if various NIMBY or protectionist factions wholeheartedly wish to make it so.

Can technology overcome such impulses? John Tamny is among those who remain convinced technology assures a positive economic outcome. In a recent Forbes article, "Notwithstanding the Warnings of the New York Times, Economic Growth is Limitless", he writes:

What the Times is revealing, either on purpose or unwittingly, is that ever there was some truth to the popular notion among economists about "limits to growth" all of it goes out the window with the ongoing rise of robots.  

And of a recent piece by NYT economist reporter Neil Irwin:

If Irwin is to be believed...too much economic growth has an inflationary downside.

John Tamny responds, "But it doesn't." What's at issue here? Considering the fact that today's aggregate output continues to take place via relatively less aggregate input, how do fewer inputs affect the system overall? Particularly if less energy may in fact be entering the system, even as technology makes the system more efficient. Which suggests more entropy could actually exist than is readily apparent. I was reminded of the second law of thermodynamics by a recent post from Shawn Parrish which highlighted both Steven Pinker's recent musings on the subject and Eric Beinkocker's "The Origin of Wealth", an excellent book which also takes the problems of isolated systems into account.

What economic components are particularly important for system energy? Money could be considered the nominal component of "system energy", since it is a direct expression of the real economy components of aggregate output and time value. However: an important consideration, is whether money as a nominal expression, maintains an anchor for both aggregate time value and output in the relevant system.

As I've noted in recent posts, sometimes technology is used not so much to contribute to additional output, but instead to reduce the costs of an already given level of output - particularly for important forms of product which involve time value. Ultimately, if a substantial amount of economic activity utilizes this process, it could result in a nonexistent to slight increase in output, as technology contributes to a still diminishing level of (nominally represented) time based input. Given this reality, the second law of thermodynamics may suggest problems for system stability.

To sum up, it's easy to imagine that technology contributes dynamic input in a reliable and constant relation to ever increasing economic output, yet this is not necessarily the case. If a growing percentage of output is not reliably recorded for GDP, there's little point in pretending that otherwise subjective gains are going to somehow make up the difference for system balance. Indeed: for centuries, technology has proven capable of expanding system boundaries via additional output. Now, system boundaries are becoming murky as they are increasingly defined in terms of exclusive outcomes.

Some Rationale for More Primary Market Capacity

After completing the last post, I continued thinking about robots, automation, and the vast differences in the organizational patterns they are intended to augment. In many respects, the automation of knowledge based skill, is a completely different form of wealth than the robotic components which have contributed so much to tradable sector output. Particularly since a fair portion of knowledge based skill continues to be utilized as derivative and asymmetric compensation - which in turn means reliance on already existing wealth.

A basic problem for much of today's automation - given the dominance of services over manufacture - may well be a lack of redistribution potential. One could even say (in terms of secondary market labour substitution): other than the obvious contributions to balance sheets and budget priorities, sometimes there's no "there", there. Thankfully, robots and automation benefit us all, especially when they augment the production of tradable goods and the redistributive potential associated therewith. But otherwise, robots and automation are increasingly becoming a stand in, for what was already a prior redistribution for time based labour. Unfortunately, further automation in an already derivative marketplace, does not necessarily equate to additional output.

Consequently, the automation which is intended to alleviate budget constraints, makes any further redistribution of 21st century wealth a complicated matter. Robots (whether they include public or private "ownership tags") which ultimately help to alleviate government budgets, aren't traditional wealth. Rather, they provide assistance in reducing government costs via the only way possible: addressing the negative side of the ledger. Many high incomes (some still "untouched" by robots) which occasionally appear ripe for revenue targeting, are also caught up in the investment requirements of these budget constraints. Until now we have been conditioned to expect greater efficiency - in spite of the occasional aggravations of digitized automation - to create additional output and economic growth. Alas, this is not always the case.

Fortunately, some of the organizational capacity of secondary markets could eventually be moved towards the real marketplace gains of a primary market position. "Commodity" time as a measured component of economic output, would help to alleviate today's problem of stagnant output and reduced employment capacity (in spite of recent wealth creation). Commodity definition for time value, is simply means to allow marketplace entry, via symmetric compensation as a common price for the scarce - but real - time at our disposal.

By bringing primary and secondary market patterns into better balance, more wealth would not only be possible, it could take place via easier to access terms. The actual time component (of knowledge assisted time product) would not be intended for production or consumption outside participating groups. Further, knowledge use assistance and permissions on the part of today's professionals, would reduce their long term budget pressures. How so? By helping those with limited means to pay for useful services, gradually learn how to assist one another more directly. Through contributions to knowledge use systems as primary market capacity, today's professionals would gradually become better able to reserve (their own) knowledge based services for customers who can reciprocate on their preferred terms.

While the time based product of secondary markets will continue to augment wealth creation, markets are so saturated with asymmetric compensation (of time based product), this organizational pattern is not longer well positioned to contribute to output and employment. So long as employment and gains in output remain lackluster, economic stagnation leads to conditions in which "Fortune and family now depend on how regulations get drawn up and how problems get defined.

More room is needed for economic access. A marketplace for time value could help to provide that room, with granted permissions to use knowledge in ways capable of growing the economy from the bottom up. If time based product is to meaningfully contribute to marketplace output, it needs the organizational capacity of a primary market position. Mutual employment would allow wealth creation to take place, in context which need not rely on already existing revenue or further debt formation. With time based product as a primary market position, new growth would not only enhance wealth, but output and employment potential as well.

No one need settle for the zero sum world that has become excess secondary market formation. Valuable though it is, to gain compensation for one's own extensive human capital investment, the result is now an incomplete economy. More important, is the fact that when we rely solely on asymmetric compensation, economic stagnation can also mean the loss of economic freedom, for activities that are important to us. Symmetric compensation could eventually do much to restore our economic freedom, in part because it reinforces the work of one's mind as a first mover marketplace position.

What if Governments Owned the Robots?

What if wealth creation depended even more on robots than is already the case? More specifically, some have asked in recent years: who "should own" the robots? Yet something about shared ownership of robots misses the mark, in terms of monetary flows and in some instances, a possible lack thereof. Hence one important question in this context is, to what outcome does the automation process contribute, in the first place? Is that outcome a direct representation of wealth, or a further derivative of wealth? If the answer is the latter, robots and their associated automation may not contribute to output in ways that are (also) available for redistribution.

Some of the "dark matter" of these system outcomes could affect investment patterns as well. Timothy Taylor noted in a recent post that "80% of gross investment now goes to replace old capital, rather than add to the capital stock." What else is at stake besides the reduced costs of automation? To what extent is dark matter caught up in human investment? Meanwhile, the human capital deemed most "important", is sometimes more costly than the capital investment long associated with firm activity.

A post from Tyler Cowen prompted me to consider the robots ownership discussion. He asked, what is government in a world where robots do the work? After all, government (at least beyond the military hardware involved) is mostly the paid labour of humans who generate time based product. One MR commenter also asked: why not an option where everyone owns robots? Perhaps the relevant equivalent here, however, is simply ownership in stock of companies where automation does lead to verifiable gains in output and wealth creation.

In spite of any further elements one might attribute to robots, basically they're little more than automation processes which follow the traditional productivity path of the Solow Residual. Thus far, this has been the path used by institutions in both primary and secondary market activity. Nevertheless, robots can contribute to tradable sector output and definable wealth, while the same is not necessarily true for non tradable sector output in a secondary market position.

The dependent position of the latter, also means automation accrues to reduced budget costs that are not necessarily associated with wealth creation. Unfortunately, the automation that reduces costs, does not have to be associated with either increased or definable output. And the difference matters, if society attempts to utilize robots as a potential source of redistribution. Indeed, much of the capacity which made it possible to do so, may already have been tapped via the use of robots and automation which contributed to tradable sector wealth in the twentieth century.

When Does Work "Want" To Be Experiential?

There are so many aspects to what we consider vital work in the first place, and I felt it would be helpful to spend a bit of time breaking them down. For instance, we may not always need to "save" certain forms of work (for posterity) where technology can perform those functions well, and we don't actually miss those functions in any vital capacity other than the monetary reimbursement itself. Or, we enjoy the functions but don't want to have to do them at the breakneck pace that innovation in large scale agriculture, for instance, seeks to remedy. I became more grateful for large scale agriculture after the occasionally pleasant toil in gardens - which at times - mostly provided bird, mammal and insect feasts!

The work we enjoy (and also find necessary) that isn't always available in the traditional sense of salary, can not only be apportioned by equal time but it can be envisioned in ways that lets everyone participate. Of course we don't need equal time measure (arbitrage) for work that anyone is willing to do directly (i.e. without skills arbitrage) for money, that robots are not already doing. Also to consider: When does the experience element we value lead to product outside ourselves, and when does it simply affect relationship dynamics amongst ourselves? That matters, even if we don't presently think of it in terms measureable by money.

There's the work we need, the work we desire, "busy work" to keep from having to think or which helps us think, the work we are willing to do and that which we also have to do. There's the work we're happiest doing ourselves, and the work we actually benefit from doing with others, which is what this post seeks to get at today. And - of course - there's the work which in the bigger picture sometimes seems a bit silly, in that it may exist mostly to capture profit and little else!

However there's a lot to be said for capturing profits and under any circumstances, that's how we generate dynamism in the first place. It doesn't really help to "rain" on the profits parade, tempting though it may be (and "distorted' though the profits may seem), without a clear understanding how we might capture the experiential work we want through more rational means. Plus, we want to do so in ways which continue to allow profits. After all, it is the profits which generate further economic choices on our part, and continued momentum for the process itself.

Presently, people are engaged in a struggle as to whether or not many jobs might eventually "go away". To a degree, this depends on whether we're willing to get at the core of what we actually want out of work. What work is experiential, and why does it matter? The work that matters in this regard, is especially the commons of knowledge use which we want to preserve.

While we often think of commons in terms of resources outside ourselves, we are also capable of creating a knowledge use commons wherever we structure work in equal time. Value in exchange is certainly here (profit as driver of further choice), but we can structure value in use (skills arbitrage) as a prior to best capture the value in exchange dynamic. When work "wants" to be experiential that in fact benefits us, for we can think how it would be structured, recorded and measured through knowledge commons. Equal time use also allows us to take advantage locally of the wealth of knowledge now being spread through the digital realm, in real time.

In a recent post titled "Spontaneous Order is More Than Markets", Don Boudreaux of Café Hayek points to two authors with books related to this subject. If you have time, check out the "Glory of the Commons" link. And of course, I'm always glad when Elinor Ostrom gets a mention. But it was this unexpected quote from Hayek, that my recent post about families and economic dynamism seemed to echo:

Part of our present difficulty is that we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts, and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within the different kinds of orders according to different rules. If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed, rules of the micro cosmos (i.e. the small band or troop, or say our families) to the macro-cosmos (our wider civilization) as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet if we were always to apply the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of worlds at once.

...And yet those two worlds are often forgotten (or defended in the wrong terms), as people struggle for a single economic world that is rapidly falling away. Few are yet prepared to face the workplace as it has increasingly become defined. While some have spoken of spreading the ownership of capital, we no longer live in the kind of world that thought process seemed to symbolize. The real issue in this regard are separations of working classes which are no longer possible in terms held until only recently, and I will address that in my next post. Now, back to the main subject!

One of the primary things people like about work is its experiential characteristics, something which no robot even needs to have, in spite of what science fiction may continue to imagine. What we have to consider: even though people want much out of work that is not necessarily experiential, this factor makes the work feel important enough that we attach it to our identity, and consequently make room for it in our lives.

A simple way to explain this and I recall an example where someone walked away from a great salary: not everyone is capable of getting up in the morning and going through the required ritual, only to be hidden away all day long doing grunt work and having no one around to speak to. Note to progressives - no one should have to either, even if we want to continue rewarding them handsomely for doing so...out of guilt, perhaps, for the good fortune and pleasure of the lifelong knowledge job?

Even so, we have to be careful about the experiential element of work being lost to a greater degree in the present, because our reliance on a resource rich world to continue funding experiential elements in a collective sense is now being brought into question. Not addressing the issue only means even more experiential work will be lost. How do we think about this?

Part of this discussion goes back to the choices people might actually want to make with one another in a system of equal time measure, which I feel presents viable options to further knowledge based growth from the technological advances of the present. Just the same, the question of experiential work remains important in a larger sense as well, in that budget choices continue to be made now which - when people don't really think about it - they wake up one morning to find that the work they deemed meaningful has been "downgraded" in some not quite quantifiable sense. The dreaded word "efficiency" includes negating experience elements, and people may be compelled to rationalize that personal experiences are not really important.

In healthcare terms - for instance - it is often quite clear when the value in exchange paradigm that demands "results" runs headlong into the experiential element, which may not provide a concrete perimeter to shift expectation levels. What we feel about the experience in this circumstance may become separate from the experience itself. A patient with a chronic condition for instance which is worsening, reaches a point where it's hard to seek a doctor yet again, in the knowing that more expensive tests will be done, more prognosis (or not), more of the same "result" - blood test or whatever, that does not change the significance of the overall issue.

If we were going to do something different in terms of this example, what would it be? Of course a doctor or nurse with a good bedside manner always helps. But the bigger issue is that this described circumstance - which is rapidly running into diminishing returns - is bleeding money all the while at a frightening rate. What a person really needs when they reach this point is something that allows them to make peace with the process itself, rather than a frantic and expensive denial that perhaps delays the inevitable for a little while longer. Also, think about the actual measure nations do for longevity that is part of the prolonging itself. What gets left out is the time shared element which might give a person reason to live longer, in the first place.

Much of the experiential element in any circumstance is simply dialogue. What's more, there are many circumstances in the workplace when additional dialogue is not even really necessary. That's especially true when what we need is a concrete result that benefits from action to get the needed result quickly. Just the same, healthcare in many respects is a far more subjective environment than most that adhere to specific product. Yet it has increasingly put a stop to the kinds of dialogue that might help individuals outside the healthcare environment itself. When we are in reasonably good shape, we can learn how to take care of ourselves on our own, but when we reach a certain point, we need the shared space of time to validate our own concerns that only one on one time with other individuals can provide.

The degree of validation we need from others in one on one time varies, and is dependent on what we actually want to accomplish - is it a matter of understanding a broader aspect of life, or is it something as seemingly simple as some technological quirk that goes right over our head? Even the process of asking for help - when we can't find or figure out online directions - depends on whether we want to know the solution or answer for future reference. Or, is finding that tech answer what we need in just a one time situation, for instance.

For the most part we don't really think about economic activity in terms of individual to individual assistance, even though we struggle with that part of life on a consistent basis. We learned a long time ago not to think of our own person to person concerns as economic. Just the same, that's the part of our lives that we need to reclaim, and not just for the supposedly "feel-good" reasons that of course automatically suggest themselves. Plus, we shouldn't have to feel bad about that aspect anyway. We also need to reclaim person to person assistance for our economic lives for practical reasons: some days we just can't figure out the online answer when no one else is around who can help.

Fortunately, we are able to take many aspects of validation, confirmation and questioning of our own thoughts online, and this post is certainly not to diminish that tremendous benefit. The problem for us is that we also need to be able to express these vital elements of our lives both economically and with others in concrete ways, especially at local levels where arbitrary divisions have often left us unexpectedly powerless to help one another in economic terms. It really is a coordination problem, but not just in terms of coordinating what already is. We also need to coordinate what we in fact, do not want to lose from our lives.

P.S. I apologize for the extra length today! This subject was originally intended for two posts, but an important issue came up in the midst of this undertaking that I wanted to address sooner, rather than later, in the next post.

Robots Need Not Apply: Say's Law and the Work We Really Want

Recently there have been quite a number of discussions about the growing effect of robots on the workforce, and Robin Hanson (of Overcoming Bias) listed a short summary at a recent post for all who are interested. Hanson - along with the other discussants referenced here -  holds views on the future which are quite different from my own, but what was interesting for me is that he doesn't believe we are near as close to any potential singularity, or "rise of the robots", as some might believe. Certainly, technology has been well positioned to take on more and more repetitive tasks and even some non repetitive, but robots are not quite ready to take on the more important tasks of our lives. And even if they were... then what? The choice really is ours, and the way to reclaim the work we want comes from the most unexpected of places: a reclamation of Say's Law, which in simple form could be stated as supply creates its own demand. Say's Law could apply to services just as well as manufactured products, with more thoughtful use of our own aggregate time commitments, and the use of nominal targeting.,

Where to begin? First, it helps to put aside all unnecessary complexities and look at this with a "beginner's mind". For instance: Keynesians are right to say that Say's Law has been put through the shredder, but I guarantee you that is nothing to be proud of. Nothing makes sense if people have to give up on finding demand for the supply of their own skill and effort. Instead of people gaining value from their own merits, artificial limitations to knowledge use now have us viewing one another primarily as competitors for both scarce resources and jobs.Yes, certain resources will always be scarce. But those generally are not the ones we need every day. Many important services that are even more important than actual product, were also set up to appear as though scarce. Because we didn't realize we could become our own suppliers/providers of knowledge and skills services, the demand for them now has people backed up in "waiting rooms" of all kinds...the modern day equivalent of standing in lines for manufactured goods, in the twentieth century.

To be sure, there is plenty of work to share with the robots which readily take repetitive tasks of all kinds, including highly technical and demanding ones. Eventually, there could be robots for much repetitive work, but  some of those tasks will always remain worth keeping for ourselves. The main problem for us is that we have not quite thought through - monetarily speaking - how best to apportion a growing amount of the work we want and need most for a productive society.  Part of the present problems with central bank transmission mechanisms reflect earlier default settings for services provisions which are no longer adequate. Before we look at more effective ways to utilize our time, there are four categories that we will eventually want to either integrate into our routines or assign to robots: high skill non repetitive, low skill non repetitive, high skill repetitive and low skill repetitive. This is a dialogue that all need to take part in, and it should not be rushed.

The problem we face now is that we are trying to take on increasing amounts of life's challenges with neither money or economic measure. Some efforts happen in volunteer settings where only a fraction of potential clientele are served. Some is work that doesn't get counted as economic activity because it takes place within our families, friends or extended networks. What's important here is that there are times when we need to be able to accomplish such tasks beyond our own circles of activity, especially when our existing institutions continue to "outsource" portions of their activities to us on a regular basis, in spite of our full schedules. Whatever coordinated systems we eventually create, need to address that growing reality. Institutions can't remain strong by robbing individuals of their limited time, robots or not.

Some of the more challenging aspects of work might also exist as informal coordinated scaffolding of sorts, for the growing challenges our institutions cannot handle. This is why rights to knowledge use is so important. Otherwise, we will not be able to fill in for our institutions when they do fall short, and we certainly would not be able to reimburse ourselves monetarily. Institutions presently capture knowledge use within their bounds in ways that make it difficult for people to work together to find solutions, or even to perform the simplest volunteer functions inside of institutional settings. No amount of robots and outsourcing is really going to substitute for the mental challenges between institutions which we will always need to take part in. Likewise, there will always be important research projects that present day limitations on investments and tax collection cannot address.

Rights to knowledge use also allow us to reflect the best of civilization wherever we are, even to the point that a small town setting is fully capable of becoming a mirror of the world around it. Without rights to knowledge use, the individual is not capable of actualizing the wealth potential that took such time and resource use. With clear and designated rights, an entrepreneurial understanding as to arbitrage would also gain social settings where preferences and wants can often be dealt with on a one to one basis. Like the free markets and bureaucratic orders of the present, such preferences could be expressed both in timed and ongoing, spontaneous settings. Knowledge can only become an abundant good when we actually give ourselves the right to use it, otherwise austerity remains a constant threat in the background, even when it is constrained.

Applying Say's Law to arbitrage of our most basic obligations and skills sets is also a good stabilization strategy overall. No  nation can readily control the vagaries of commodity changes and circumstances, but the social aspects of our lives do not change so quickly, which is why they need special consideration now. Even though what we are able to do also depends on the resources at our disposal, the aggregate value of our time is the best anchor, even if a lack of complexity in one's economy makes it difficult for income and consumption to be the prime monetary representation. Plus, whenever populations feel positive about coordination in economic relations, efforts to maintain such coordination in resource use are also more likely to come to fruition. The better we are able to measure all economic activity, the better off we are.

Incremental Ownership and the Near Future

Part of what concerns me about discussions online: an underlying assumption that a previous "order" of sorts needs defending, on the part of all political parties. But that previous "order" has already moved on in some important aspects, which I hope to touch on in this post in a positive sense. Plus, too much concern about a future taken over by robots and other related "power mongers" makes some conversations either too antagonistic or self defeating to do much good! Or...if one hears the words "capital" or "labor" in casual conversation, it's fairly safe to assume that present day evolution of knowledge capacity isn't being fully accounted for in the dialogue. How did we struggle so for individual aspiration in recent centuries; only to collectively give it all up for the idea of robots taking over our best mental capacity, or else destroying the robots (let's just dig ditches with spoons) so that the robots won't rob our minds!

Also, some econoblog discussions are difficult for me to take part in directly, and one of those is taxation. Taxation is presently a problem because fiscal concerns have been overwhelmed by many existing disciplines, which now compete for the limited tax monies. I believe that most transfers utilized for skills would actually create more wealth through direct arbitrage coordination of  higher (and lower) non-repetitive level skills use. What's more, allowing more economic actors in this regard - even with an established time base for monetary reimbursement - would still produce greater aggregate wealth than is presently possible. Another problem area is the ongoing dialogue of finance itself, with its morality plays, twists and turns. Attempts to reform finance especially don't seem to accomplish much, for every time such reforms are tried, the consumer seems to pay the difference. Incremental ownership and flexibility in terms of housing and construction reform is the best way to change the problematic nature of finance, for the long run. The gradual growth level target of NGDP reflects such a common sense approach, where one doesn't automatically reopen the contractual "floodgates" just because some element of economic growth got particularly interesting.

Bungled attempts at corralling both skills and lifestyle expectations have led to the demographic asymmetries of the present, where it appears one generation "must" somehow pay for earlier generational excesses! As both skills use and living circumstance remain captured by local interests and long term contracts, (please take your eyes off the debt load...a small part of this picture)  the ways we are expected to live and access work are much more restrictive than actually necessary. However, less restrictions do not mean we necessarily get a base, crude existence, as some would tell us. On the contrary! Less restrictions mean that not only would technology be freed to provide us beautiful and low maintenance environments, but we would also be free to actually explore the ways we wish to work with one another, and learn from one another. What's more - if we allow ourselves true value for our participation -  technology could also free us to expand our personal space, one incremental step at a time. That way, no Keynesian need pull out their hair over consumer debt loads, and no Austrian need go into lockdown over government debt loads.

Technology greatly augments our ownership capacity, which has been hard to remember because of recent limitations to exclusive gains for most technology. Once I finally became familiar enough with computer use to start using it for word processing, that meant my notes and scribbles would (only recently) finally start making some sense. However, we inadvertently lost the technology capacity that would allow our living environments to become simpler and easier to maintain, which means we have aging wood structures for homes which - especially in the south - tend to get eaten up by termites, hit by floodwaters and hurricanes and are just in general sitting targets for deterioration without easy remedies for replacement. Plus, these stuck in the mud...er, ground homes cannot pick up and go with us when opportunities arise. They certainly can not be pulled apart, if and when we need to go our own or separate ways. Thus one, both or several of their inhabitants suffer. In fact, such suffering can ripple out into communities and over long spans of time.

We could have made lightweight, pull apart and strong building components: components which augmented our ownership capacity by overcoming immobility, gradual deterioration, and lack of resources for adequate maintenance. We still could, and by incremental means that would allow us to buy further components whenever we gain income, with self contained units for specific parts of what we need. With construction reform, economies of scale and innovative land use, no one would need long term contracts for such building components. If we can hurtle down the road towards each other in lightweight cars, lightweight home components surely ought to be safe. However there are lots of people to convince that incremental ownership is desirable. It would be best to convince them now, instead of building more of the kinds of homes that can be such a stretch, to sacrifice for. This is all the more important now, as not every community is capable of recreating adequate work opportunities. Before too long, people may finally have to leave some of their immobile homes behind to find where the opportunities actually are.

Psychological gains from incremental and small scale ownership would be more significant than some may realize, as this is not the easiest mindset to duplicate in a simple experiment. However, plenty of experiments do an excellent job of illustrating one's positive mindset and problem solving ability, when we feel and believe ourselves to be in control of our environment (as much as possible, at any rate). Such an experiment is quite similar (I remember a dejected poor dog whose control was taken away), and suffices to show the social gains possible, should we allow one another more incremental means to regain control over our destinies. By the way, small and tiny houses (and apartments) have indeed come on the scene in recent years. But these have yet to take advantage of full scale manufacturing gains, which mostly leaves them beyond the reach of many low skill workers and are primarily for those with higher incomes.

The above discussion concerning construction (yet again)  provides ample options which could limit  many finance problems of the present, not to mention the government and businesses enterprises which presently own our living quarters more than we do. Not only that, the incremental nature of gradual ownership patterns could go a long way to help public understanding how nominal targeting also backs such incremental goals in the first place. Now, for the proposal that would limit today's need to transfer skills responsibility frameworks between generational settings: that of incremental skills use options through the course of one's lifetime. What this basically amounts to is our willingness to give one another the right to freely use our knowledge for one another.

By now the reader probably gets that when I talk about incremental ownership, I'm not talking about our monetary share of the robot workforce. Rather, we need to be able to add to our living environments and all other investment possibilities when the nature of our monetary compensation actually allows us to do so. But also in that same vein, we need the right of incremental use of our skills and knowledge capacity for the totality of our lives. Such responsibility is not only possible when we are quite young, it is also something our youth very much need, yet we have not known how to provide to them since education was formalized along with work laws that excluded youth. However, the right to educate (and even the right to heal, to a degree) on the part of youth is a far cry from some of the expected work conditions of the past, which understandably were put to an end. If we are willing to trust our youth to partake in economic life at a young age, the problems we have with economic entry at adulthood could fade into distant memory. No more daytime daycare needed.

What do we mean by incremental ownership in knowledge and skills use, and how might one actually untangle some of these from the institutions which can  no longer fully provide them? While this whole area is a candidate for potential coordination possibilities, at least some of the basic attributes and functions will be touched on in the next post.