From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Fri Dec 01 2006 - 17:48:11 EST
(* note to Ajit: I recognize that this is a different question than the one you asked.) > I think you may be wrong here. Paul C, Maybe, but I'm not convinced. The question here* involves, in part, the speed of the adoption of automation. That question can and has been related to the discounted worth of the costs and benefits of a robot. This can be and has been (as far back as 1981 by Kutzman) looked at graphically by plotting the projected trend for changes in labor costs vs. the projected costs of a robot. Actually, the above author produced a graph with a range assuming different rates of growth of labor costs. Kutzman's projections -- as it happened -- were not correct empirically for what I took at the time to be reasonably predictable grounds, i.e. he over-estimated the pace of the growth of wages (which included benefits for workers) and he over-estimated the rate at which the cost of robots would decline. But, the idea itself was sound: the pace of robotization is related not merely to wage costs but also to the costs of robots, costs that can be projected to decline with mass production, learning by doing, etc. Furthermore, the quality of robots can be expected to increase and with those changes they will become suitable for the replacing of workers at more and more tasks in more and more branches of production. Unless you artificially stipulate a limit to how advanced robots can become and how low their prices will go, then I see no necessary physical limit. Of course, there are social limits though: workers can rise up and organize against these and other changes. That's the only real limit that I can see: the limit that workers can potentially impose on capital. In solidarity, Jerry
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