• fidodo@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Since we tax the income of workers we should also tax the economic output of those robots and use that to fund UBI. We shouldn’t give tax breaks to robots.

      • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 months ago

        How would that work in practice? You can say that a whole factory is effectively one single robot, or dozens. Is self checkout a robot, but in this case still employs somrone?

        • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          And what’s the difference between a cashier, who operates a checkout line, and a self-checkout attendant, who operates multiple booths at once? The tax law would have to codify that. And any time you codify something like that, you get people designing to optimize for tax law instead of making the best machines possible.

          • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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            11 months ago

            There are supermarkets where you don’t even check out. You bring the scanner with you and leave the store.

            What about self service laundry mats? Those exist for ages. Do we need to tax them because they don’t hire people?

            I like the idea another user have that you just have normal corporate revenue tax and then if you hire people you get a tax break. But other than that you can’t really tax “robots”

    • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Sometimes machines just fall short. Machines can automate some types of repetitive tasks, true. But others are tasks that are more difficult to truly automate, like busing tables. Most people can bus tables, but it would be tricky for a machine to do so reliably.

      Edit: Oh, well, maybe I spoke too soon about busing tables.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Machines and robots remove unskilled labour and provide skilled labour opportunities instead. Back in the days farmer was just a dirty peasant with a shovel and barely any skills. Today farmer is a highly skilled managerial role.

        But some people decide to never get any skills, the society doesn’t need such people.

        • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          To a point, but again some things are just really hard to mechanize. I don’t see cashier or janitor disappearing anytime soon. Sure, a single person can clean an area much faster now than a hundred years ago using tools, but something fully automated like the Roomba can barely do a half-ass job on a single floor.

          • Aux@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Ever been to an Amazon Fresh shop? Zero staff inside. You just walk in, take what you want and walk out.

            Ever ordered groceries from Ocado? They’re fully automated until delivery process.

            Hard or not - everything is possible.

            • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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              11 months ago

              I have not visited an Amazon Fresh shop, but from what I’ve heard they’re not doing so great. Maybe it’s just a pause in their inevitable takeover, but their already paltry number has been reduced as of late.

        • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          Lol you have been taught to be scared of shadows.

          Its literally just a book on economics, and a lot of it is providing more solid proofs for earlier theories of Smith and Ricardo

          The answer to your question is

          “So you don’t say ignorant things like “just replace all unskilled labor with automation””