Sunday, November 25, 2018

It Is Time to Admit That Tucker Carlson is Just Bad When It Comes to Economics?

In the clip below, Tucker Carlson admits that he would ban automated driving trucks, even if they were safe, to "save" the jobs of truck drivers because "We can't throw the drivers out of work... because of the social costs?"

First Hayek, Mises and Rothbard are rolling over in their graves at the very idea of the concept of "social cost."

But further, how exactly is it that truck drivers being replaced by automation is bad for the economy?

If drivers are no longer needed in the truck driving sector, and truck driving gets done, then they are free to get jobs elsewhere, which means in total a gain in the productivity of the country.

Carlson, whether he realizes it or not, holds a very static model in his head of how the economy works. He thinks that a loss of jobs in one sector means the drivers can't find jobs elsewhere. This is a version of the Lump of Labor fallacy. The idea that there are a fixed number of jobs and that if some are eliminated there will be no work for others. There is also an implied argument that if work is found it is lower paid work. But if automation takes over previous work and workers are now free to create other goods and services, the number of total goods and services increase for an economy.

Carlson obviously doesn't get this and in the clip below is pretty proud in displaying his ignorance.



-RW 

8 comments:

  1. My favorite is his belief that government is justified using noble lies (using a bogus claim of safety). That says a lot about Carlson ... a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Libertardians have never offered any proof that more jobs are ALWAYS created when the other jobs are replaced. This is an assumption and nothing more.

    You can't stop most progress and no one wants to go back to hand sorting debris from pecans or walnuts or picking them by hand as an example. But no one notices we have economic system where people have to have money to do anything like feed themselves and can't explain where the jobs are going to come from when everything has been automated. Too bad libetardians want to import dysgenic populations into the mix.

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    Replies
    1. Re: The Lab Manager,

      --- Libertardians have never offered any proof that more jobs are ALWAYS created when the other jobs are replaced. ---

      You're right, we concede: the streets are littered wih the bodies of thousands of buggy drivers who starved to death after the arrival of the horseless carriage. All those computers (people who computed numbers and figures) who worked tirelessly for countless businesses and even NASA, now begging on the streets wih their emaciated children on tow, after the appearance of the microprocessor. We just refused to see them until now.

      We should cry for the candlemakers! The candlemakers, LTM! Who thinks of their children?

      Delete
    2. As usual Torres, you show your stupidity. What about the gutted Rust Belt thanks to government facilitated offshoring? Oh wait, you are not an American anyway, but a leftist.

      Delete
    3. Re: The Lab Manager,

      --- What about the gutted Rust Belt thanks to government facilitated offshoring? ---

      Who thinks of the steelmakers, all dying on the streets?

      Curiously, you decided to change the subject and bring out offshoring when the argument you made at the beginning was centered on (presumed) job-killing innovation.

      Delete
  3. This is ridiculous. It's amazing how deftly "Economics in One Lesson" demolishes this and yet this myth persists:

    "The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat."

    RW, I think it's time you started getting on with the program. Please do not maintain a website anymore. Instead, hire people to write your posts, print them out on paper, and mail it around the world with USPS. Won't think please think of the jobs? You can't just throw people out of a job!

    ReplyDelete
  4. https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-founder-of-panera-bread-explains-the-economic-forces-that-led-to-trump

    Last year, when Shaich took Panera private, he also stepped down as the C.E.O. (he is still the chairman of the board), to focus on a pet cause: warning the world about the dangers of short-term thinking. He has been travelling the country, giving speeches and talking to business leaders and policymakers, about the urgent need to return to the tradition of investing for the future. Some people are starting to listen. Tech titans including Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen have financially backed the creation of a new investment framework called the Long-Term Stock Exchange, which would give shareholders greater influence over a company the longer they hold shares. “We all believe the system is bigger than us, and we can’t fix it,” Shaich said. “But, if we don’t take control of that system, it’s misserving us in powerful ways.” He also founded an investment fund called Act III Holdings, which offers capital, with fewer time constraints, to entrepreneurs in the restaurant industry. (The Mediterranean chain CAVA is one of his investments.) “We’ve ended up in a situation, to the detriment of all of us, where our public companies are not able to do the things we want in the economy,” he said. “We say we want G.D.P. growth, but G.D.P. doesn’t come simply from a sugar high of tax cuts. G.D.P. growth only comes from innovation and productivity increases. And innovation and productivity increases occur because people make commitments and they make transformative events.” He added, “This system doesn’t serve the American people. There is an opportunity to ask ourselves, is this what we want?”

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  5. Truck drivers will never be replaced by driverless trucks. Even the so-called driverless trucks do not actually exist, as the manufacturers of enhanced vehicles admit themselves that their vehicles do not, and will never function without a human driver at the helm. They have features that supposedly allow the driver to do other additional things while the truck is rolling, yet he is always there. You can watch videos of these test vehicles on YouTube. And you can see the driver.

    ReplyDelete