We have seen actual labor shortages in rural America. Petrol drilling in the Dakotas. That lead to dramatic wage growth for anyone remotely qualified to work in petroleum engineering, so much so that at its height a qualified person with a 3 month training program could make 30k a month.
There is no magical land in the midwest where humans dare not tread that is a bountiful gold mine of productive capacity.
Demand for labor is not a reflection of "there is so much work to be done, if people are willing to do it for no pay" in the same way you cannot claim there is tremendous demand for mansions because most people do not live in them already. Demand comes from financial pressure on suppliers to generate supply. Be it labor, corn, or software. Real demand creates a business opportunity. All the examples you cited are just the exploitation of poor helpless masses for cheap labor to do work that would not be done if people could not be paid so little for it. Its the extra toaster cozy of the labor market, a thing you do not actually particularly want or need enough to create actual substantial demand, but something you will get on the cheap because its there and convenient.
There is no future in that. Economics cannot be powered by the utmost of human desperation and poverty. Well... it actually can, and was for much of the industrial revolution, but with our modern advent of human rights and treating workers like actual people rather than cost centers reverting to the use of the starving as disposable tools would hopefully be a bit repugnant to some.
People move from rural areas to urban ones because there is no demand for them where they came from. The land is utilized, and often constrained by freshwater access than actual square footage, but until crop prices rise enough to justify expensive pumping of freshwater to drier regions nothing will change there. So they have to go where even the slightest potential opportunity is, and that is what has driven people into cities for centuries.
> We have seen actual labor shortages in rural America. Petrol drilling in the Dakotas. That lead to dramatic wage growth for anyone remotely qualified to work in petroleum engineering, so much so that at its height a qualified person with a 3 month training program could make 30k a month.
Natural resources in demand requiring labor is can absolutely cause a labor shortage. But that's not the only way to achieve a labor shortage.
> Demand comes from financial pressure on suppliers to generate supply. Be it labor, corn, or software. Real demand creates a business opportunity.
Correct. Current configurations of labor determines what is and is not profitable. For centuries, horses and man were the most profitable configuration of labor. In my world, robots and AI are. How you configure labor determines the accessibility of demand, which determines venture opportunities in production.
> All the examples you cited are just the exploitation of poor helpless masses for cheap labor to do work that would not be done if people could not be paid so little for it.
My examples are of politically expedient labor doing work that politically inexpedient labor would do, highlighting the influence of political lobbyists in the consumption/demand model.
> Its the extra toaster cozy of the labor market, a thing you do not actually particularly want or need enough to create actual substantial demand, but something you will get on the cheap because its there and convenient.
I would argue this type of conspicuous demand is an artifact of technological slack, allowing producers to market and sell virtualized importance of their own goods. When paired with demand having excess wealth to expend, productive forces adapt accordingly. When technological slack is paired with lack of wealth expenditure, again, all this means is a labor shortage to drive the price points down. Having a robotic work force that can produce goods for pennies can allow those goods to be accessible to even the poorest, allowing them to depart with their wealth in exchange for the good. Thus, the reason the good is not consumed is because of its price point, which is caused by labor shortages. Robotic labor can soften the labor shortage price spike by simply allowing more labor that doesn't have human costs.
> There is no future in that. Economics cannot be powered by the utmost of human desperation and poverty.
Yes. However, the productive forces of economics can be decoupled from human desperation through robotic labor. That changes everything.
> People move from rural areas to urban ones because there is no demand for them where they came from.
There is no demand where they came from because they suffer from a labor shortage to provide the goods of their labors against urban economies of scale.
There is no magical land in the midwest where humans dare not tread that is a bountiful gold mine of productive capacity.
Demand for labor is not a reflection of "there is so much work to be done, if people are willing to do it for no pay" in the same way you cannot claim there is tremendous demand for mansions because most people do not live in them already. Demand comes from financial pressure on suppliers to generate supply. Be it labor, corn, or software. Real demand creates a business opportunity. All the examples you cited are just the exploitation of poor helpless masses for cheap labor to do work that would not be done if people could not be paid so little for it. Its the extra toaster cozy of the labor market, a thing you do not actually particularly want or need enough to create actual substantial demand, but something you will get on the cheap because its there and convenient.
There is no future in that. Economics cannot be powered by the utmost of human desperation and poverty. Well... it actually can, and was for much of the industrial revolution, but with our modern advent of human rights and treating workers like actual people rather than cost centers reverting to the use of the starving as disposable tools would hopefully be a bit repugnant to some.
People move from rural areas to urban ones because there is no demand for them where they came from. The land is utilized, and often constrained by freshwater access than actual square footage, but until crop prices rise enough to justify expensive pumping of freshwater to drier regions nothing will change there. So they have to go where even the slightest potential opportunity is, and that is what has driven people into cities for centuries.