Blekinge Museum: A museum... of my times gone by

About a month ago I had the chance to visit a wonderful small regional museum in Sweden, the Blekinge Museum. It lies very close to my recently deceased mother’s family house, in which I spent a lot of time in my youth. It was a shocking and a humbling experience. It was not a museum of very old times gone by; it was a museum of so much of, since 1950, my times gone by.

Images of heavy horses pulling carriages full of hay, Olivetti accounting machines, telephone exchanges with hundreds of cables, old bicycles, wrinkled by rough seas rowing boats, and hundred similar items that I have lived with, but that mostly no longer exists, and are much less used, shouted out… “Per, what on earth do you know about tomorrow… what does anyone know?”

Coming out of the museum, more than ever, I felt like praying “God make us daring”; or at least God make my children, grandchildren and their descendants daring, so that they are not among the so many to be left behind… doomed (by automation and robots) to end up like the heavy horses of my time. God let them live free, and faraway from the high priests of complacency.

And as for me, as an economist, as a citizen, as a parent and grandparent, if I only look back, and do not do our utmost to imagine what lies around the corners of tomorrow then, like old soldiers (and heavy horses) I might perhaps just better fade away.

Does all what we older have lived not mean anything for the young? Of course, it should signify a lot… but much more in terms of wisdom, than in terms of knowledge.

The sad fact that my mother had passed away just weeks earlier, on February 10, clearly made me reflect on our intergenerational responsibilities.

PS. Since 2023, blessed by in my lifetime being able to dialogue with AI, ChatGPT so as to get a glimpse of the future, more questions arise daily. E.g., whether if driving instructors will be among the many Heavy Horses of tomorrow.

@PerKurowski

Here some disorderly loose cannon questions about life in the just around the corner Robot/Automation La-La-Land

The more varied and crazy questions we pose, the better chance we have to prepare ourselves... and so, in no special order, here we go with some tweet-sized ones!!!

When Mexicans, Chinese and American compete for the jobs the robots are taking, is that not just a Lilliput/Blefuscu war?

If you built that Mexico wall who would benefit the most, the U.S. low-skill workers, or the robots?

Why is how to handle jobs being productively taken over by robots/automation, not sufficiently high on our agendas?

Who will be able to separate delivery robots with good intentions from those with bad ones?

How will net salaries not paid to robots be used: Lower prices, higher salaries, bonuses or dividends?

And when robots substitute for humans, what are the consequences for a nations tax base?

Should we tax robots low enough for these to do all possible jobs for us humans, or high enough for us humans to remain competitive for the jobs? (I guess that if in Sweden they could respond with a not so helpful “Tax them lagom”)

Should we allow 3rd class robots, only because of unfair competition, like no payroll taxes, to replace humans?

Since it is hard to define the work of robots, in order for humans to to compete with these for jobs on a level playing field, and for production to be structured in the most economical way, it would seem that current payroll taxes need to be eliminated... or;

Since payroll taxes help finance programs such as Medicare, should we not impose payroll taxes on robots?

Is not falling working-age population numbers quite irrelevant with so many robots volunteering to work? 

When 2nd class robots don’t cut it, how to we assure ourselves we get the 1st class ones?

The higher the minimum wage for humans, the more jobs for robots. Are those predicating higher minimum salaries just lobbyists contracted by robot manufacturers?

No minimum wages for humans. Those are just subsidies to robots. Robots must compete, so that we get the best robots.

Having your nation being “Second” is livable, but is having your robots not being “First” that?

The better the robots, the more we lose human jobs, the more the need of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Are we prepared?

Universal Basic Income threatens the redistribution profiteers so they will try to stop it. How can we stop them?

The lower trade tariffs and human salaries are, the more competition do robot manufacturers face. Is that good?

The higher the trade tariffs and human salaries are, the more will robot manufacturers profit. Is that good?

The better the robot, the more it can produce for us, but the more human jobs it can take from us. So what do we do?

In order to force our robots to become 1st class, do we not need to tax them, a lot? 

If land A has the better robots how can B compete: with tariffs or with lower dividends, salaries, bonuses and UBIs?

If my grandchildren’s future depends on the quality of their robots, is it really a sin to engage in some industrial espionage?

To who does robot productivity that supplants human productivity belong: to all, or to the 0.00000001 percenters?

How can I help my grandchildren to be needed as sane and happy humans, in tomorrows’ Robot/Automation-land?

With so much automation possibilities, how does one answer “Grandfather what to you think I should study?”

What are unions to do with a shrinking labor base? Will tomorrows CEO’s need a union? What if robots want to unionize?

With unions vigorously defending the employed, their clientele, don't the unemployed need to create their own unions? 

What’s better intelligent artificial intelligence or sort of dumb artificial intelligence we can still sort of better control?

In case Artificial Intelligence becomes too intelligent for our own good, should we put some dumbing brakes on it?

I can’t wait for artificial intelligence to take over from those dumb human bank regulators who believe that what’s perceived risky is more dangerous to our bank system than what is ex ante perceived as safe.

When supplanted by robots how can we avoid being thought of as an unneeded human surplus?

Will drones and robot soldiers send the drill sergeants home? 

If we humans are supplanted by robots, are we doomed to join Jethro Tull’s “Heavy Horses” in retirement? 

What if we had a thousand times more of more capable robots, would that not make it so much easier to stay home fighting coronavirus?

PS. 3D house printers also classify as robots

 

PS. We need decent and worthy unemployments

PS. Let robots make us an offer we can't refuse

PS. My Universal Basic Income 

Where are those Mexicans? (and the robot is laughing)