Blog: Comparative Advantage and Robots
The recent debate at the SOHO Forum on automation and potential joblessness got me thinking about the issue. One thing that I think Antony never brought up is comparative advantage.
Econ students will understand this point in regards to countries. Even if country A is worse at every single line of production than country B, it is still advantageous for both countries to engage in production, since B (even being superior at everything) still cannot produce infinite amounts of everything.
If this concept is applied to humans vs robots; even if robots someday can do absolutely everything better than humans, it does not follow that humans will have no jobs.
Regardless, Antony did a great job. I just didn’t see his opponent overcoming Antony’s point that automation has only ever made the masses better off, not worse.
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About The Author
Andrew Kern
Andrew Kern is the author of The Myth of the Social Contract: Refuting Common Arguments for Government Authority, and he has written on libertarianism, anarchism, and private alternatives to state authority. He founded The Principled Libertarian website in 2017, with the goal of spreading the ideas of liberty and helping to define what it means to be free. His work has been published by Antiwar.com, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, Being Libertarian, among others.