The blackbox in your car

I will state this one last time for the spectators. Permit the cars to self-drive, like google cars in Arizona and then black boxes will not be required. The money saved in law enforcement reduction would be considerable for state budgets. Drivers could also stop paying insurance! That is a clean $2k saved per year per driver.

I think the machines which replace workers and jobs should be paid for the work they do, and thus pay taxes to compensate for all the revenue lost.

1. It is not seizure if the insurance company pays for the vehicle.

2. Shouldn't we want bad drivers to have to pay a price for their incompetence behind the wheel?

3. With black box data collection it will be possible to gather better performance data on safety devices in the real world.

So why is this a bad idea?

I think the machines which replace workers and jobs should be paid for the work they do, and thus pay taxes to compensate for all the revenue lost.

That does not even make sense. There is no lost revenue, what a machine earns goes to the owner, and the owner pays the tax from it...lol.

Such information gathering constitutes "unreasonable search and seizure".

Of course, violations of the constitution do not bother today's government.

BTW there would be no crime if all people were presumed to be guilty of a crime and had no freedom to say otherwise.

Another Big Brother device that we have no need for! It's very rare that we don't find the cause of an accident even with our 'primitive' technology. In the future these boxes will be monitored and we will be issued citations for every little thing we do. BB will know where we've been, who we've been with and what we have been doing. Let's just say, "liberty left behind".

Insurance? Collide with a g00gle-car and find out who pays, it ain't gonna be g00gle.

It fits in with the iPhone, Google, and Facebook watching your every move. I'm surprised I still have internet acce....

So youre saying automated factory owners will pay the same taxes as all the workers his machines replace?

What happens when general purpose robots become more common in everyday jobs than people? How do you support the permanently unemployed?

Such luddite thinking does not make sense, and shows a profound ignorance of economics.

It already happened. Welfare is enough to support those that do not find another job, payed for by taxes or by printing the money.

They're not proposing wireless transmitters that the government/other entity that's out to get you will use to gather information. ... Stop being so paranoid.

So all we need to do is shift back the money from owners income to workers. That should be done with taxation (taking income from owners) and welfare (paying to workers

What happens when general purpose robots become more common in everyday jobs than people? How do you support the permanently unemployed?

It already happened. Welfare is enough to support those that do not find another job, payed for by taxes or by printing the money. Increased productivity will make it simple. Todays welfare recipients live like pasts kings.

You mean wireless transmitters like the OnStar system? These separate systems will eventually merge. And if you don't think so, stop being so naive

I'm naive to think that, because there is currently the technology to wirelessly transmit data from a vehicle, therefore the government will use similar transmitters to continuously gather information about you for.... what end again?

I dont know what your little rant about military drones has even in common with what I said, or economics.

corporate industrial war machine![?]

but considering that cops will stop you for a routine check, what's to stop them from interrogating your black box with a device similar to the one that the Michigan State Police uses to interrogate mobile phones?

Pay drones and robotanks and unmanned destroyers and smart bombs the wages of the servicemen they replace.

That would make automatization meaningless, it is the purpose of technology to make products cheaper.

The purpose if tech is to make products more CAPABLE.

I don't see what point you were trying to make with your comment.

It's time for the people to profit from the wars they fight instead of the corporate industrial war machine![?] Pay drones and robotanks and unmanned destroyers and smart bombs the wages of the servicemen they replace.

It's time for the people to profit from the wars they fight instead of the corporate industrial war machine![?]Pay drones and robotanks and unmanned destroyers and smart bombs the wages of the servicemen they replace.

Youd lose the war very quickly this way.

Youd also similarly lose an "economic" war (competition) in civilian industries.

Robots are not people. They are mere tools. You dont pay money to your hammer.

The purpose of tech is to make products more capable, or cheaper, or both.

My point was that replacing workers with robots and then paying the same price for the services of the robots is nonsense.

Their primary purpose is to be cheaper than human work (make more products per dollar required).

Reducing these two costs, economic cost and human life cost, is still the primary drive to have robotic armies. Not more capability. More capability per dollar and human life spend.

Reducing these two costs, economic cost and human life cost, is still the primary drive to have robotic armies. Not more capability. More capability per dollar and human life spend.

In economics unfortunately, people are commodities which respond to supply and demand. A shortage of labor drives up wages and vice versa. Robots can and are replacing people as workers. To economists and their calculations they are often equivalent. Robots are also consumers of energy and infrastructure, of service and parts and housing, just like us.

You're starting to sound like the creationist here- 'people are special, gods image, sacrosanct' and all that.

No, again their primary purpose is to be more effective that humans at the same tasks. This often involves replacing many workers and being more productive.

But these workers are still there, sitting around and wishing they had jobs. Why should only owners benefit? This is an old injustice. I'm offering a new solution that has recently become available due to computer and communications tech.

More effective=more productivity per unit of money.

Your "solution" is to make automation meaningless through taxing it into oblivion. To keep the status quo.

Here is something from Cato Institute pertaining to this:
http://www.cato-a...-to-u-s/

Now youre totally losing it. Who said anything about oblivion?

Automation is making workers meaningless, and robbing their govt of the revenue it needs to function.

You want to enable corporate fatcats to pocket this profit, and then try to get it back from them, which IS the status quo.

I am proposing to eliminate a few steps in between doing the work and collecting the revenues for it.

Automation is making workers meaningless, and robbing their govt of the revenue it needs to function.

Automation is making workers meaningless, and robbing their govt of the revenue it needs to function.

Not to mention that this is nonsense. Under income tax, the gov would get exactly the same revenue whether the work is done by people or by robots. When taxing profits, the tax revenue will in fact increase quite a bit. Also, companys income will probably increase by incorporating robots into production, and cheaper products will be beneficial for the people.

You said that the robots will have to be paid thev same money as the workers they replace.

No, it is making the economy more productive, thus increasing the amount of tax revenue or causing deflation, if anything

If corporate fatcats dont pay the money for useless labour, they pay it for other things

Money never dissapears.

Tracking robots (how do you define a robot?)

is the epitome of bureaucratic inefficiency

Taxing income or profit is much more effective and simpler

Work done by machines can be ascertained exactly and taxed immediately. It need not be paid for to owners, be filtered through accountants.

Productive for whom? Fewer wage earners means less demand.

Yah like Caribbean islands and race horses.

Work done by machines can be ascertained exactly and taxed immediately.

It need not be paid for to owners, be filtered through accountants.

But lower costs of products also means more demand.

now we have a group of people that can be put into other work, which is good.

In this case, they earned it, so what? Also, it is luxury goods that push humanity forward.

How? It would be a bureaucratic mess.

This could be automated, too.

But I think machines should be able to pay their own insurance. I think the machines which replace workers and jobs should be paid for the work they do, and thus pay taxes to compensate for all the revenue lost. This could mean cars could pay for themselves and 'partners' who drive them may not actually own them. Sort of like a lease I suppose.

This would mainly be a way to offset the effects of a shrinking workforce, and could just be a matter of paperwork. No they wouldnt need to vote.

Less costs mean more demand, more demand leads to higher costs. Thats how the price creation mechanism works and stabilizes around the market value.

since demand wont be lower due to automatisation

No, that is fair profit after taxation.
You seem to have problem with rich people. Why is that, are you jealous?

I only have problem with the existence of POOR people.

must also track every machine.

No, that is fair profit after taxation.

would be larger than workers income drop

No one has a right or expectation to privacy while in a public setting.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Ghost of Otto, do you believe in collective bargaining rights for robots? Just wondering...

Yes. Point? Who says anything about increasing taxes?

So all we need to do is shift back the money from owners income to workers. That should be done with taxation (taking income from owners) and welfare (paying to workers).

The only real solution is to reeducate people so that they are again needed in economy, while keeping them on welfare in the meantime. Doing a useless job is also not a solution.

No they wont, I am not planning to buy any "tracker" into various machines I use at my work, nor I plan to triple my prices because I have to pay wages to my machines.

I look forward to the day when all crime will be impossible.

1. A robot goes bankrupt. Will a perfectly good robot be dismantled "just because"?

Won't the debts ultimately be on the taxpayer?

Why would machines need to accrue personal wealth? Re; this point of yours:

Optimal management: robot wage = expenses + taxes. (Don't get richer or poorer.)

Taxes could be considered 'profit'. The more profitable, the more revenue collected.

Wage is paid by the owner. But the owner already pays expenses and taxes for the robot nowadays

There would be no 'owner' except perhaps the people, the state.

Equivalence proved, QED

Paying them directly and automatically deducting tax, maintenance, insurance, recycling, etc would save a number of steps and the associated overhead and profit associated with them. No owners or middlemen or bureaucrats needed.

1. A robot goes bankrupt. Will a perfectly good robot be dismantled "just because"?

Won't the debts ultimately be on the taxpayer?

Optimal management: robot wage = expenses + taxes. (Don't get richer or poorer.)

Wage is paid by the owner. But the owner already pays expenses and taxes for the robot nowadays

Equivalence proved

Your idea is intriguing,but it's a rather roundabout way of achieving the same, with possible inefficiencies due to sub-optimal management.

Oh, so nationalisation of all "means of production".. Oh boy, here we go again... :) That route was already tried, and failed spectacularly. You are communist in disguise (just like all those Zeitgeist crooks are).

Idle machines eat nothing. But fools might think they do if those machines were purchased with borrowed money.

Otto treats money like some fundamental object of Nature. Money is in the mind, it's merely a system for humans to keep track of allocated resources

Forget money and think about resources. Producing more goods with less human drudge work is not a bad thing!

We don't need to keep people busy to justify giving them the bounty produced by society.

But as to keeping your old car...what if it is no longer legal to do so...

I assure you thousands more bureaucrats would be needed to manage your system.

You still haven't answered: What do you do with the excess money? (Robots getting rich.)

What do you do with missing money? (Robots going bankrupt.)

The trouble is, they can never really "manage themselves".

There are always tricky points like who decides where robots work and where they don't work, how much they get, what robot to allocate to what place/job, how often do they move around.

Who gets to decide that?

Your system requires *extreme* centralization.

If a tiny part of the constant management goes wrong it will be absolute chaos.

it should be used for humans too

You'll live in a communist utopia

The point is there will still need to be an accurate accounting of the relative value of work, in some form of money. Watt-bucks or somesuch.

There already is, it is called free market. Not bureaucratic behemoth you propose, which would only distort the value of both human and robotic work.

I don't see the point in paying non-sentient robots salaries, but I do see the point in taxing them as if they had a salary.

The corporations owning such machines would then have to pay the taxes on their machines labor.

They can provide exact numbers for everything it takes to do work, and they can do it with NO human intervention.

They can provide exact numbers for everything it takes to do work, and they can do it with NO human intervention.

Otto, you're an idiot. Machines can't do ANYTHING without human intervention.

Didja ever notice when you're sitting in your bathtub playing with your, uh, toy submarine, that you can switch it on, let it go, and watch it putter around all by itself? This would be just like that only a little more complicated.

I just don't agree each robot should have a dedicated bank account to let it accrue money or owe money.

No it's not. That's an example of chaos. There's no thought to it.

exceed human motivations

Of course they can, and they will, and they DO, because we will show them how.

It seems you think machines actually think. They don't. Computers are nothing more than "if this, than that" machines. They have no ability to reason.

I don't see how that would be more efficient than owners paying taxes as they do now.

Machines in this case would say, 'I did exactly this much work and expended this much energy.'

Let's count steps:
Machine does work; owner gets paid...