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Robots Help Manufacturing Recover Without Adding Jobs
kkleiner writes "For the last 30 years, automation has enabled U.S. manufacturing output to increase and lift profits without having to add any traditional jobs. Now, in the last decade, nearly a third of manufacturing jobs are gone. As manufacturing goes the way of agriculture, the job market must shift into new types of work lest mass technological unemployment and civil unrest overtake these beneficial gains."
These exact same fears were written about in 1980. There was a famous BBC TV programme about how robots and microprocessors would replace everyone.
We already know the outcome.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Assume you have an economy consisting entirely of factory workers. Now, half the work gets automated. What happens? Everybody can continue to live at the same standard of living but work only half as much, or half of the people can be unemployed while the other half work full time and pay half their salary to support the unemployed. Which future we get depends entirely on the policies we adopt. Unfortunately, policies intended to help workers and help the unemployed are increasingly looking like they are bringing about the second of these futures.
why does the job market have to switch into new areas to avoid unrest?
Because the silly engineers forgot to invent riot police robots before they invented factory manufacturing robots.
why can't we just accept that 10x productivity means that only 10% of the people actually need to do something to maintain our civilization's standard of living?
That would be un-American. Clearly, you can't have people living off someone else's work, even though that someone else is a machine, because...quick, help me someone here!
Ezekiel 23:20
Isn't this good news? Back in the 1970s we were all promised that increased automation would lead to us all needing to do less work, and having increased leisure time. It all seemed like a rosy future at the time. The only problem seems to be that the owners of the robots don't want to share the benefits. If they don't share then they deserve the unrest they get.
Korma: Good
Blue Collar workers are not stupid.
They are not bolting doors onto cars or running forklifts because they can't do anything else. When they joined the work force, these jobs were available and were jobs a person could raise a family with. A smart option for most, but the side effect is that you get stuck in a rut. The same way a guy who only known COBOL gets stuck.
But things change and Blue Collar manufacturing is less and less a job market that someone want's to join. New workers, who in the past would have gone into this job market, are capable of more. They can be the guys designing the robots, programming them, maintaining them, manufacturing them.
The knowledge of manufacturing is just as essential now as it was in the past and a robot has to put the nuts and bolts in pretty much the same order, as a human did. There is a lot of Tribal Knowledge about manufacturing that you don't learn at college and can pretty much only be found on the factory floor.
The Trades are not going away, just changing.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Socialism.
Capitalism does not guarantee low unemployment. It doesn't guarantee a meritocracy. We are fortunate that new technology has previously created new jobs for people to apply skills that gave them value to the rich. But as automation approaches human capabilities in more areas, there will be fewer opportunities available for humans. For those who don't already own capital, eventually the only jobs available to humans will be in the entertainment industry.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
In real life, I see most of the benefit of automation going to the owners/shareholders of the companies, and that money doesn't necessarily stay in the community where the factory is (or even in the same country).
aren't suddenly going to be able to become successful in a "creative class" job
And what's more, there is a massive surplus of people in the "creative class" jobs: The number of reasonably competent musicians, authors, artists, poets, etc far outnumbers the market for the arts. For every Brian May there are dozens if not hundreds of really talented and skilled guitarists that you've never heard of. For every Jackson Pollack there are many many good painters that you've never heard of. For every JK Rowling there are many many good authors toiling away in obscurity.
The completely fraudulent idea that has been pushed for the last 20 years is that if you give everyone in America a PhD, everyone will earn what a tenured professor makes. What actually happens is that if you give everyone in America a PhD, you have PhDs mopping floors for a living.
I am officially gone from
Socialism.
Maybe. Or Something like it. The interesting question is "What happens to people we just don't need anymore?" What do they do? McDonalds has a robot that flips burgers, but hasn't rolled it out because customers find the burger less appealing if it's entirely cooked by machine. What happens to people who work fast food and similar McJobs when the public accepts it and those jobs go away? It really isn't practical to say that they should build burger making robots. If they could do that, they wouldn't be flipping burgers.
Capitalism works when nearly everyone has a place that they can fit in the economy. There used to be a phrase "The world needs ditch-diggers, too". But now we don't. We need one guy operating a backhoe that does the work of 20 men with shovels. And the backhoe may not always need that one guy in the future.
This will really hit home in 10 to 15 years when Long-Haul trucks (not local deliveries, that's harder) are automated. The technology for driving coast-to-coast on I-70 isn't that demanding. Infinity has an SUV that can already stay in it's lane, and fully stop the car to avoid hitting stopped traffic ahead of it. It's not hard to see a truck pulled into a truck-stop by a human, it's dropped off and reconnected to an automated rig which is piloted by remote by a human until it gets on the interstate. Then it self-pilots for days until it ends up at another such stop in california.
If this comes true, thousands of middle class families will be destroyed, because there isn't an obvious place for those blue-collar drivers to go and make similar income. Society simply won't need them anymore. And whomever owns the automated trucks will increase their profit.
Eventually, either wealth redistribution or revolt will happen.
Was the last century a fluke where a large middle class had power, which will soon revert to the more common system in human history where a tiny few live in splendor and the rest live under their heel?
Probably. When capitalism functions as designed, the price of labor drops to just above survival level. This is the "iron law of wages", and held for most of history. For much of the 20th century, in the developed world, it was different. When productivity went up, so did wages. That was driven by two factors - unions, and fear of communism.
Nobody has taken communism seriously in decades, even the remaining communists. But from the 1930s to the 1970s, it was seen as a serious threat to capitalism. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, capitalism failed, while communism in the USSR was on the way up. There was real fear that communism might win economically. Fear of nationalization forced companies to increase wages and treat their workers better.
When the USSR started building atomic bombs, space satellites, and ICBMs, there was fear in the US that the USSR might pull ahead in technology. This fear drove the "space race", and is why the US set up NASA and funded the space program so heavily.
This all ended in the 1970s. The best year ever for blue collar workers in the US was 1973. The USSR no longer seemed to be an economic threat. So things gradually went back to normal, and real wages in the US went down for several decades thereafter.
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." - Orwell.
work is not virtuous.
I am no philosopher wise man (and judging by your post neither are you) but I have experienced periods in my work where I sat around doing nothing, just surfing the internet. I have also done extremely useful work writing code that went into production. Even though I made the exact same money "working" exactly same hours, I can tell you that my mood and mental health during the two periods were drastically different, like night and day.
There is something to be said about meaningful work. The writers of old knew more than you think.
Socialism.
So do I get (or forced) to be the one that stays home because I'm not needed.
This same argument is pretty applicable to capitalism right now. Take a look at the long term unemployed here in the US. They're forced to stay home because they aren't (percieved as being) needed.
Even better, take a look at Europe, where unemployment among new college grads is near 50% in some cases. These are motivated people who have followed the rules, and done what society has told them that they're supposed to do. But it isn't paying off. Sooner or later, they're going to decide that following the rules is for chumps. And that's when the real trouble is gonna start.
The interesting question is "What happens to people we just don't need anymore?" What do they do?
Unfortunately, the answer, at least from some quarters in the US, seems to be really simple: let them die of neglect. For instance, the obvious effect of drastically cutting Social Security and Medicare (which is a major goal of the current Republican Party) is to kill old and disabled people through starvation, neglect, lack of medical care, etc. After all, they can't work, so they're economically useless, so why bother keeping them alive?
I should mention that as far as your trucking scenario goes, having a whole bunch of automated trucks travel coast-to-coast is far less efficient than having a single (potentially automated) freight train travel coast-to-coast.
I am officially gone from
Keep in mind that this is not a black and white issue. Yes, it is ridiculous to assume that the demand for labor is fixed. But it is also ridiculous to assume that it is not possible for automation to take over so many jobs that a substantial portion of the workforce can no longer find work.
Based on the changes over the past 250 years new jobs will replace the lost jobs. Short term unemployment occurs due to new technology, in the long term enough new jobs are created to meed demand. What this argument really amounts to is "Because things have happened that way for a long them they will always happen that way." Sure, that is a good assumption to make when you don't have more information, but it does not create an unassailable argument.
The entire point of automation is to eliminate the need for human labor. We can't do it yet; our automation is just not that good. But some day it might be. I don't think that day is anywhere near, and I think panicking about it is silly. But dismissing concerns about the possibility is also unreasonable. Maybe automation really will eliminate the need for human labor . Or, more likely, so many of the low-education jobs will be automated that a substantial portion of the population is not capable of learning what it takes to get one of the remaining jobs.
-WolvesOfTheNight
Even if automation does increase unemployment without creating new opportunities, that is no reason to stop. The correct response is not "lets halt science and engineering so that everybody can continue doing work that humans no longer need to do." That makes no sense.
The correct response is, "now that fewer humans need to work, we can establish new socialist policies to meet their needs anyway."
That, however, rubs red-blooded Americans the wrong way, meaning that the actual response is (and will continue to be):
"Automate away! Anyone who can't adapt and find new work can conveniently starve to death or turn to crime and wind up in jail, where taxpayer dollars will provide for all their needs but breeding will not be an option, resulting in an eventual die-off of all non-essential humans."
That's just how people do things around here, for better or for worse.