XPost: alt.abortion, alt.acting, alt.appalachian   
   XPost: alt.arguments   
   From: losers@cnn.com   
      
   Mark Zuckerberg has returned to Harvard and gained an honorary   
   degree instead of the earned one he dropped out not to get. He   
   also gave the commencement speech which was not a bad effort at   
   all. However, there's one piece of it which shows that his   
   thinking still isn't quite correct. It's over the economics of   
   jobs, job losses to automation, all that onward march of   
   technology stuff. He's indicating that we've got to work hard to   
   create the jobs needed by those replaced by automation. And   
   that's really not the right way around to be thinking of it.   
   Instead, much more important, is that automation frees up labour   
   to go off and do other things. This is something we must get the   
   right way around or we'll end up like Bill Gates and   
   recommending the absurdity of a tax upon robots. No, we want as   
   much automation as fast as we can get it:   
      
   Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg returned to the university   
   Thursday to give graduates a commencement address, filled with   
   calls for building a connected world "where every single person   
   has a sense of purpose."   
      
   In a wide-ranging speech that touched on climate change,   
   charity, volunteering, education and universal basic income, the   
   billionaire CEO of Facebook championed globalism and called   
   fighting authoritarianism and nationalism "the struggle of our   
   time."   
      
   I too support the universal basic income but that''s more about,   
   for me, the thought that it's a better welfare system than the   
   one we have now rather than being necessitated by automation.   
   I'm a big, big, believer in the power of incentives and concepts   
   like the Laffer Curve. Where I differ from many is that I see   
   the tax and benefit withdrawal rates faced by low income earners   
   who better themselves as being so high that they're creating   
   Laffer effects. Sure, this is more prevalent here in Europe than   
   in the US but in Britain we know very well that there are   
   millions of poor people who face 60% and above effective tax   
   rates if they increase their working hours and thus their   
   income. The, to me, benefit of the UBI is that it entirely   
   eliminates those Laffer effects.   
      
   As a CEO, Zuckerberg sees his role as managing risk. "On a day-   
   to-day basis, a lot of the decisions I am making are like, 'Okay   
   is this going to destroy the company?' Because if not, then let   
   them test it," says Zuckerberg.   
      
   "If the cost of the test isn't going to be super high, then in   
   general, we are going to learn a lot more by experimenting and   
   by letting the teams go and explore the things that are worth   
   exploring than by having a heavy hand in that," he says.   
      
   That's from an interview but that's an interesting point being   
   made. Because it's the underlying argument in favour of a market   
   based economic system. Allow people to go try whatever, that's   
   how we find out what works. And one way of looking at a market   
   based system, as opposed to a planned one, is that it's an   
   experiment machine. Technology continually changes, so do human   
   tastes and desires, a market allows us to process through the   
   various combinations of what can be done and what people want   
   done faster than any other system. That's why it works.   
      
   Noting that society will likely see "tens of millions of jobs   
   replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks" in the   
   coming years, Zuckerberg called for young people to work on   
   large public works projects to make new jobs. Though he didn't   
   specify what sorts of projects those should be, or what hand   
   companies such as Facebook could play in them, he did cite some   
   past examples.   
      
   Zuckerberg noted that previous generations have their own   
   "defining works" - the Hoover Dam, the space program, the fight   
   against polio - that pulled them together and imbued America   
   with civic pride. Citing global problems including climate   
   change and pandemics, Zuckerberg said that millennials, himself   
   included, understand themselves as global citizens rather than   
   belonging to any nation-state.   
      
   "To keep our society moving forward, we have a generational   
   challenge - to not only create new jobs, but create a renewed   
   sense of purpose," he said.   
      
   But that's where Zuckerberg's economic understanding is going a   
   little astray. Because it simply isn't true that we want to   
   create jobs, that's not the point of it all. Quite the opposite   
   in fact, we want to destroy jobs, destroy as many as we can.   
   Which is the value of automation to us of course, that we do   
   destroy jobs. From the prepared remarks at Facebook:   
      
   Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs   
   replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks. But we   
   have the potential to do so much more together.   
   Every generation has its defining works. More than 300,000   
   people worked to put a man on the moon – including that janitor.   
   Millions of volunteers immunized children around the world   
   against polio. Millions of more people built the Hoover dam and   
   other great projects.   
   These projects didn't just provide purpose for the people doing   
   those jobs, they gave our whole country a sense of pride that we   
   could do great things.   
      
   That's really not the right way around to think of it. Instead,   
   we should consider it in this manner. It's the curing polio,   
   having electricity, going to the Moon that we want to do. If we   
   could do that with one little gizmo that took 10 minutes to make   
   and needs one gal to flip the switch then that's great. If it   
   requires 1 million people to work together then that's just what   
   we have to do. But we've got to recall, insist on remembering,   
   that the jobs are a cost of our getting that thing done. The   
   reason we must so insist is the old economic problem itself.   
   We've an unlimited number of things we want to get done but   
   we've only scarce resources to do them with. And human labour is   
   one of those scarce resources. Which is why we're so happy when   
   a job is automated away. That means the labour of one human   
   being has been liberated, freed up, to go and aid in achieving   
   one of those other goals that we want to achieve.   
      
   Only if we do get this right in our own minds are we going to be   
   able to react correctly to technological change. There's   
   absolutely nothing wrong at all with grand projects, with   
   millions cooperating to achieve them. But it's the project we   
   want to achieve, the jobs are the cost of doing so.   
      
   https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/05/26/zuckerbergs-   
   harvard-speech-shows-he-doesnt-quite-get-the-economics-of-jobs-   
   and-automation/#77e304ec1671   
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)