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Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg: Tax the Robots?

I guess that will really fast track the Sky Net take over. NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!!

And of course I laughed hard, Futurama Style at that one.

bender-laughing-gif-5.gif
 
For what you'd assume to be pretty bright guys, they sure pull bone heads out of their collective hats from time to time, don't they?
 
If Robots Steal Our Jobs, Should We Tax Them?

Tax only the middle class and the poor robots. Oh, and steal their robot kids also. That will teach robot parents to not be uppity.

/s
 
But we have to do something because humans tend to need to work to stay healthy. This is the kind of thinking we need to see more of.

Yawn......Every technological advancement is met with the same sky is falling mentality and yet the human race adapts and continues to progress. As certain industries close eventually more will be created in their place, we are already seeing the exponential increase in media/entertainment opportunities. You can literally get on a computer and make a living playing video games or even simply talk into a microphone.
 
Yawn......Every technological advancement is met with the same sky is falling mentality and yet the human race adapts and continues to progress. As certain industries close eventually more will be created in their place, we are already seeing the exponential increase in media/entertainment opportunities. You can literally get on a computer and make a living playing video games or even simply talk into a microphone.

You really should pay more attention.

THings are not going well with humans.
 
For what you'd assume to be pretty bright guys, they sure pull bone heads out of their collective hats from time to time, don't they?

Mass automatisation and robotisation are leading to the end of the workforce as we know it. If shareholders could run a profitable company without paying any salaries, they would do it in the blink of an eye.
I think the advancement of technology and the realization that pure growth capitalism is essentially not a viable solution in the long run will inevitably lead to a society where taxing all means of production will be necessary.

A functioning society needs tax revenue. If robotisation kills jobs, people won't have revenue any more and won't be able to pay taxes.

I think, personally, that the job market will adapt. Think built by human hands will be seemed as valuable, authentic, vintage. The demand for handcrafted products will increase and so will their price, making it a lucrative career choice.

All in all, it's not a silly idea if automatisation kills the amount of jobs being created. I don't think it will.
 
Mass automatisation and robotisation are leading to the end of the workforce as we know it. If shareholders could run a profitable company without paying any salaries, they would do it in the blink of an eye.
I think the advancement of technology and the realization that pure growth capitalism is essentially not a viable solution in the long run will inevitably lead to a society where taxing all means of production will be necessary.

A functioning society needs tax revenue. If robotisation kills jobs, people won't have revenue any more and won't be able to pay taxes.

I think, personally, that the job market will adapt. Think built by human hands will be seemed as valuable, authentic, vintage. The demand for handcrafted products will increase and so will their price, making it a lucrative career choice.

All in all, it's not a silly idea if automatisation kills the amount of jobs being created. I don't think it will.

*The demand for handcrafted products*

A major problem with this is these particular skill sets aren't being taught any more, short of apprenticeships. And a problem with apprenticeships is you go through 5 to 10 apprentices to get 1 that actually wants to learn and work. Bring back vocational schools.
 
Are robot's people?

Obviously not. A robot isn't a person but then again, neither is a corporation.
Corporations "are people" but a corporation is not "a person".
Sounds like a subtle difference but if you compare "are people" and "is a person", there's actually an enormous difference.
Citizens United basically turns a corporation into an individual, "a person", a potentially immortal person with virtually unlimited cash and power, an entirely new class of rights that supercedes those of ordinary flesh and blood human beings.

If we're going to go rushing headlong into a brand new Lockner Era, then robots might as well be persons, too...why not.
 
Obviously not. A robot isn't a person but then again, neither is a corporation.
Corporations "are people" but a corporation is not "a person".
Sounds like a subtle difference but if you compare "are people" and "is a person", there's actually an enormous difference.
Citizens United basically turns a corporation into an individual, "a person", a potentially immortal person with virtually unlimited cash and power, an entirely new class of rights that supercedes those of ordinary flesh and blood human beings.

If we're going to go rushing headlong into a brand new Lockner Era, then robots might as well be persons, too...why not.

Can they vote?
 
A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound

Are robot's people?

First of all, it's not robots stealing jobs. The expansion of automation to places & functions not automated before has to do with operational efficiencies, not with the robots' desire to usurp all functions. In other words, the decision to automate is a cost/benefit decision, even if full automation means that most people could end up not working - because we're not efficient enough to hold down a job in a hyper-competitive commercial/production World.

& it's not even the bad ol' capitalist tycoons who are to blame - it's the economics of getting the most production for the least expenditure of funds, treating labor as a fungible cost. In economic terms that's a dead-end - if nobody has a job, how do they get money (or credit, or whatever M1 morphs into) to buy anything with? What keeps the factories producing @ any level of efficiency, if all the markets collapse for lack of funds? (Money does make the World go around, in some economic sense.)

Japan looked @ including robots in unions, with about the results you'd expect. (See https://www.csmonitor.com/1982/1214/121431.html) But very soon, we're (humanity) going to have to seriously look @ these issues. Without money or some equivalent means of exchange, the entire World economy will come screeching to a halt - or reduce to some kind of barter. I can't imagine what a post-money economy would look like. & I doubt that it would a world we'd want to live in, compared to our current levels of technological comfort.

In order to get around this roadblock - a by-product of the nature of economic competitiveness, remember - it's built into the system itself, if only now becoming technologically possible in the physical World - we need to consider alternatives. We may very well have to go with a basic guaranteed income to all citizens of a polity - however distasteful this may be to fundamental economic/political system traditionalists. In Western Civilization, @ least, economics dies out if there's no standardized exchange of monetary values to drive the gears of improving production.
 
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