Ask HN: Will automation generate social massive protests?

Stephen Hawking made a great point last year when he wrote that automation/robots aren't the problem, capitalism is the problem.

Most of the world takes for granted a system that allocates resources and the results of production in a way that encourages the highest profits with the least costs. Since humans are the highest cost, they are the biggest target for automation.

We have a golden opportunity to create a better, more equitable way of living now and in the future. Let's not let this moment go to waste.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15

The modern luddite movement is already here.

A few days ago I was unable to get an Uber out of Hyderabad airport because of a "strike". "Strike" might be the euphemism of the year - it refers to angry taxi drivers/autowales striking Uber drivers who continue to drive.

This is not an isolated experience, many other countries (Columbia, France, Brazil) have the same problem with violent angry mobs trying to shut down automated competition. Politicians mostly side with the luddites; here in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena (racist party of Maharashtra, for those unfamiliar) is strongly opposed to Uber. French politicians similarly surrendered to the terrorists.

We are destroying the natural world, without respect or harmony with nature. Itsn't the automation the real problem, its our relations with others people or kind of life.

Yes, but if we continue down our current path, they will not be directed at automation itself. Instead, advanced propaganda and bot networks will organize discontent against whichever targets allow the protesters to feel temporarily empowered, but that pose no actual threat to entrenched powers. The Russians are far further down this road than the US. Go read about how Surkov simultaneously creates Neo-Nazi movements, gives money to anti-Putin protestors, and props up the Russian Orthodox Church.

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surr...

I want to echo, in agreement, with the many people here who are saying that there will likely be protests, but not against automation itself. Present evidence suggests that it is true.

However I want to push back against the idea that current protests against, for example, lack of manufacturing jobs are totally misdirected or will be in the future (if they are not against automation). While I think blaming NAFTA and outsourcing for a loss of jobs is ridiculous at least people are recognizing that the problems are structural and public rather than technological.

What would protesting automation even look like? Stop the machines? The last movement to do that was small, ineffectual, and was perceived to be ridiculous.

Some kind of safety net or redistribution of wealth is needed in my opinion. The classic response to redistribution is to say that it's paternalistic, but if automation doesn't make up for the jobs it destroys what are the alternatives?

If modern civilization survives climate change ours and the next few generations are going to be judged with a very heavy hand and rightly so. There is no dearth of knowledge or critique in our culture, but there is an exceptional amount of inaction and passivity.

No, automation is not new anymore and unions are declining. Besides, domestic appliances and cellphones changed the way people look at machines and technology.

It is easier to demonize immigrants and globalization. That is already the main target of anger.

It's unlikely that people will identify automation as the cause of the problem. Take a look at the U.S. manufacturing sector. What is the story? Jobs are being shipped overseas, and the manufacturing sector is dying. What is the reality? Measured by output the U.S. manufacturing sector is bigger than ever before and has grown by a fifth since 2000, while cutting the number of workers by a third. Profits have soared, double what they were in the 90's. Automation is the cause of manufacturing job loss, but people blame nafta and elect trump to close the borders.

Before that will happen, we will likely see insanitites like a 25 hour workday

https://myprivate42.wordpress.com/2016/12/19/lets-shift-to-2...

or the abolition of cash.

I do believe there will be a tipping point if it really creates large scale unemployment even in a certain sector. Without an appropriate safety net people won't have enough money to buy food which will trigger substantial social unrest.

I doubt protests will be prompted by automation explicitly. Take Britain as an example, it used to be the largest manufacturer in the world [1]. Now less than 13% of its economy is based on manufacturing.

This hasn't cause massive protests at the level I think your proposing. The question therefore is if automation is likely to have knock-on effects, resulting in widespread poverty. This might well result in popular unrest.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_...

Indirectly. The protest will follow from unemployment combined with the huge income divide. These will be the results of automation, but the protest will focus on the inequality.

Perhaps some countries (kinda like France at the moment) will take action to strengthen job security by legislation, those countries will lose out economically though.

(gotta append this with stating this is guesswork)

There might be small protests but massive protests are unlikely. Back in 1980s in India there were massive protests against introduction of computers in banks. At that time people were not much aware about the positive role computers can play in society. Today things are different and people are more aware about technology.

probably not because it's happening slowly and has been happening for 2 centuries ...

I think that if the public continues to putter along on auto-pilot for much longer, absolutely not. Acknowledging that I sound like some nutbag conspiracy theorist, we can already see systems of mass control being quietly put in place. At the moment, the general public appears to be very accepting of these systems, or just totally unaware that they can (and will) be used to control society in the future.

I'm not just talking about your three letter agency direct dragnet surveillance type programs, I'm also talking about stuff like cloud-based voice & speech recognition that is only one FISA warrant away from being the NSA's very own voice-print database. I don't even think many of the people implementing these systems intend them to be used as systems of mass control. But they will, and they will be used very intentionally to stifle any kind of popular 'neo-luddite' movement.

Why? Because automation will result in massive concentration of wealth (remembering the 'auto-pilot' assumption). Production will become extremely capital-intensive (i.e. people replaced with machines), and the few people who are not owners of capital yet still 'employed' will probably be paid astronomical salaries due to their similarly astronomically high 'labor factor productivity'. So you will have a handful of extremely wealthy 'neo-capitalists' with much greater scope for 'free political speech' (i.e. buying politicians with their mountains of money).

Last time we had a huge jump in the amount of capital used in production (the industrial revolution), while I wouldn't call it a 'fair fight', workers at least had a fighting chance, because:

- Capitalists had relatively less resources than future neo-capitalists will. To analogise, if 'industrial revolution capitalists' could employ professional strike-breakers and private security forces, future neo-capitalists will have the resources to field entire armies. With laser rifles.

- Society hadn't, just prior to the industrial revolution, constructed massive and intricate systems of total social control. We're doing this right now, in many cases not realising it.

- The state was at least sort of impartial in most cases. In some historical periods the state even sympathised with workers' concerns, due the formation and mainstream success of political parties representing 'labor'. Even now, these 'labor' parties seem totally adrift, like rebels without a cause. And the effect of money (er, I mean 'political speech') in politics will only get exponentially worse as capitalists become exponentially richer (er, more eloquent and verbose).

- There were clearly identifiable groups of people (i.e.'the workers at factory x', 'the workers in industry y', etc.) with identifiable and specific common goals and interests (i.e. 'get industry y to share more of its profit with labour', 'get factory x to build fire escapes so we all don't burn to death next time' etc.). In the context of future automation, this simply will not exist. Good luck organising a strike at, say, googles robot factory, when you're not actually an employee (as you're not employed at all).

Under the 'auto-pilot' assumption, the only power we will truly have is as consumers. Even just typing that last sentence makes me feel a little ridiculous. Because of the factors outlined above, there will be no counter-revolution. There will be no Karl Marx. There will be no new 'extreme opposites' (like communism), nor will there be new 'moderate balancing forces' (like labor unions). They will be killed off in their infancy or, ideally, never conceived to begin with.

So if you don't want this future, the time for action is right now.