The Automation Bogy
Simon, Herbert A.
Since liberalism has a long agenda of needed action, it is crucial that we put the important items first, and not be diverted by imaginary bogiemen. Criers of alarm— notable among them Don...
...if that were not so, socialism and capitalism would be equally empty of hope...
...This algebraic analysis demonstrates the highly important point that, under any reasonable assumptions about the capitalsaving and labor-saving character of technological change, wage rates, and not the rate of interest, will capture all of the gains...
...I myself would be suspicious of such an optimistic conclusion, however rigorous the algebra, if it did not accord so strikingly with the historical facts...
...I did not use the doctrine of comparative advantage to prove that "technological innovation is severely limited in its power to spread," hence Mr...
...Ben Seligman is unpersuaded, I take it, that the arguments presented in my Shape of Automation show that this picture is wrong, and that we may dismiss automation from the list of items calling urgently for social action...
...He wants to deny that more than a century of history, during which productivity rose almost continually without causing any long-term downward trend in employment, and during which the labor share of total product also rose, has any predictive value for the future...
...Seligman claims...
...Mr...
...Silberman's analysis published in Fortune...
...As an example of his accuracy in reporting, he accuses me of attributing to agriculture "most of the recent gains" in productivity, then shows how foolish this view is...
...His caricature of my book (now available in paperback) is so gross that I can only suggest that anyone who wants to know what I really said will have to take time to read its first fifty pages...
...Liberals may then behave like consumers in an economics textbook by selecting whatever problem person ally brings them the greatest marginal ings that, for ten years or more, have proclaimed imminent mass unemployment that remains (thank goodness) always just around the corner...
...Seligman's criticisms...
...If the wolf comes, his name may be Pestilence, Famine, War, or Death...
...On the empirical side, we have, among others, the studies of Kendrick and Sato...
...We must not allow ourselves to be either distracted or lulled by their cries of "wolf"—tiresomely repeated decade after decade...
...Now comes the President's Committee on Automation, with distinguished representatives from labor, business, and university economics, reaching substantially the same conclusions as the previous investigators, after a thorough review of the earlier work as well as extensive new studies...
...He gives no reason for his denial of history— except that not to deny it would be to deny Marx "in whose system technology appeared as a fundamental disruptive force...
...Seligman's next bout of windmill tilting aims at the doctrine of comparative advantage, which, as he demonstrates throughout his essay, he fails to understand...
...One was Mr...
...He can point only to hysterical warnOne supposes that when raw nerves are exposed there will be some sort of reaction...
...Those who cry alarm about automation are the real reactionaries, condoning featherbedding and loom wrecking, luring us with their Luddite fears into diversion from the genuinely urgent problems that face us...
...Seligman's impassioned refutation is simply irrelevant: The doctrine of comparative advantage does not assume, by the way, "fixed proportions of capital and labor" as Mr...
...On the contrary, they have rescued man from perpetual serfdom...
...a second was my Shape of Automation...
...It will not be Automation...
...Mr...
...He points out, in short, that if labor is not employed, or if the economy operates at less than full productivity, labor won't prosper...
...Within the past few years, a number of careful attempts have been made to assess the probable economic and social effects of automation on our society...
...Seligman's attack on the algebra is again a masterpiece of irrelevancy, for it has nothing to do with what the algebra was intended to prove...
...have put food in his mouth...
...Of course no such view is taken in my book (nor one that could remotely be mistaken for it...
...Any level of employment is compatible with any level of productivity of an economy...
...I cannot repeat the arguments at length here, and I see no reason to revise them after studying Mr...
...He wants to deny that our government has learned how to manage the monetary and fiscal system and the budget so as to maintain a high level of demand and avoid continuing large-scale unemployment...
...Whether government can maintain full employment is surely a discussable question, but one that has little relation to whether there is or isn't technological change, is or isn't automation...
...Finally, Mr...
...Since he gives no page reference, I am unable even to imagine how he got that idea...
...In logic, this kind of proposition is called a "counterfactual conditional" and is comparable with statements like "If Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo...
...Seligman has a go at my little algebraic exercise...
...In my book, I use the principle for the limited and legitimate purposes of (1) showing that full employment is compatible with (i.e., not inconsistent with) any level of productivity of men and machines, and (2) assessing what shifts are likely to take place in the profile of demand for occupations and skills as automation progresses...
...They picture for us a future in which we must choose between eating to the vomiting point (although, since we shall be jobless, we won't be able to buy food) or droning through our days in the boredom of unwanted leisure...
...All too often such reactions are like the flailing of arms by a patient in a dentist's chair...
...Mr...
...During the past forty years of rapid technological progress, labor's share of the pie of national products has grown from about 72% to 78%, while capital's share has shrunk from 287"o to 22%, with no trend of increase in unemployment...
...Automation and technological change do not threaten liberal progress...
...Simon behaves like the patient...
...Criers of alarm— notable among them Don Michael, Mary Alice Hilton, Robert Heilbroner, and now Ben Seligman—preaching cybernation and the Triple Revolution, have sought a place for automation toward the top of the agenda...
...Seligman's real objections are all implicit...
...Since liberalism has a long agenda of needed action, it is crucial that we put the important items first, and not be diverted by imaginary bogiemen...
...Mr...
...They have made it possible, for the first time, to talk realistically of a world free from poverty...
...Simon's desire to avoid certain facts of life permits him to rank the problems of our society in an extraor dinarily orderly fashion, somewhat like the display of tinned food in a super market...
...Seligman can point to no comparable comprehensive factual or theoretical analyses that support his side of the argument...
Vol. 13 • July 1966 • No. 4
