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Recession, Tech Kill Middle-Class Jobs
Un pobre guey writes
"'To understand the impact technology is having on middle-class jobs in developed countries, the AP analyzed employment data from 20 countries; tracked changes in hiring by industry, pay and task; compared job losses and gains during recessions and expansions over the past four decades; and interviewed economists, technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, entrepreneurs and people in the labor force who ranged from CEOs to the unemployed.' Their findings: Technology has consistently reduced the number of manufacturing jobs for 30 years; people with repetitive jobs have been easy to replace in the past, and task jugglers like managers and supervisors will be likely targets in the future; companies in the S&P 500 have expanded their business and increased profits, but reduced staffing, thanks to tech; and startups are launching much more easily these days. The response to the article includes the dutifully repeated bad-government-is-at-fault and don't-worry-it's-like-the-Industrial-Revolution memes. But what if this time it's different? What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
I'm currently reading Critique of Economic Reason by André Gorz. Despite being almost 30 years old, it describes this situation well. Rises in productivity due to automation are incompatible with a culture that values 'work' on a moral basis, and associates it with a persons identity.
Got enough karma so might as well post this AC: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
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It's not just schooling. The fact of the matter is that some people aren't too bright. Without repetitive, simple jobs, these people will literally have no place in the economy. There's no comfortable answer here. Do we prevent the births of stupid people? Gene engineer all potential parents so that their children are smarter? How smart? Where are the boundaries? And who pays? Or do we just hand them all a check each month and encourage them to stay out of the way, and reproduce as little as possible?
20th century morality isn't going to stand up long to this 21st century problem. Somewhere, something's got to give. Good luck if you think "the marketplace" is a good way to solve this. I think that was tried in France, and in Russia.
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Tech could just as easily extend middle class jobs, if we chose productivity over cost efficiency. The problem is the people making those decisions seem to lean heavily towards saving their wealth, rather than investing and creating more. We ought to look into why they are making that decision, and also, why they are the ones who get to make it.
However reality is we live in a psychopathic insane society, where selfishness and greed have become dominant at the top. For them, if you have no useful function, you should starve and die. So the reality is automation presents a real problem for us as a transitional society.
With no attempts in place to reduce working hours, in fact the opposite occurring the reality is, society is far more likely disintegrate into violence as those at the top expect those at the bottom to simply die and those at the bottom refusing to do so.
The internet is helping to break down the control of the psychopathic minority but will it be quick enough to prevent societal collapse driven by insanity at the top? At the current rate no, with continuing pressure to reduce wages and increases hours rather than the required increase in wages with a reduction in working hours. Until that shift occurs to say a 6 hour 4 day week, things look pretty grim in the long term.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen