Slashdot Mirror
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 1880. Every wave of automation works the same way - as costs fall, people can buy stuff (or services) they couldn't before, and different industries need more workers.
I suspect semi-skilled work will still be around for my lifetime, just more personal services and less manufacturing or paper-shuffling.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
We already know the outcome.
Are you sure about that? I'm not advocating doom-and-gloom, but at the same time, the "don't bother worrying about it, it's always worked out in the past" optimism doesn't seem appropriate, either. I'd sure like something more solid than "past performance does predict future performance," which I think is just plain wrong in this context.
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
Yes and those fears were justified. The median worker's income has stagnated or declined in the US over the past 30 years. It's been hidden by the rise of the two income household and technological improvements in some classes of goods, so it's not obvious, but it's true. People are being driven into the few industries where automation hasn't yet been a major factor healthcare and education, but there's no reason to believe those fields will be immune forever.
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.
I think a natural equilibrium will be reached. The only reason to manufacture things is for people to buy them. If nobody has money because nobody has a job, then they won't bother to make robots to manufacture things. At some point the 'haves' need the 'have nots' to have money. Filthy rich people don't continue to get filthy rich off of one another.
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.
Things are always the same... until they're different.
Here's just a few consideration on why this automated future becomes more problematic than before.
1. For most of the industrial revolution, people wanted good/services just to make life tolerable. The result was that people were willing to work really hard to achieve those good/services. We're talking things like running water, electricity, roads, rail, food at the super market. You can see this phenomenon today in Asia where the Chinese, typically from rural areas, work like crazy just get here. Western people did this in previous times too. But once you have a achieved such a standard of living, people aren't willing to work for that next level of 'stuff'. Don't get me wrong... we all *want* that next level of stuff. But we're not willing to really work for it. I want a Ferarri, but I'm not willing to work for it. I want clean drinking water, and I am willing to work for it.
2. Deflation. Deflation is many things. Many are bad... especially if you view the growth economy. But one way to look at it is as a sign that people's needs as an aggregate are satisfied. Consider for example a world where everyone owns their own home. A utopia for many. Homelessness ended. Shelter solved. Now take a step back and look at how our society would handle such a utopia. The collapse of the entire housing and mortgage market. It would be seen as one of the most horrific events. And well... the recent housing crisis basically shows this. Instead of seeing cheaper housing as a good thing... it has been painted as a bad thing.
3. 'people services' are increasingly public services. Just what 'people services' do you think people are actually willing to pay for? Healthcare? Education? Those are the two main big ones. And in most countries... even the US, they are heavily if not totally government run. This was not the case in previous changes. Both the horse buggy and the automobile were private ventures. So with government services now, they are heavily paid for via taxation or mandates. To replace the demand of physical goods, governments are going to have to replace it with higher taxation and redistribution. Not just on the rich, but think of it as a forced service. A poor person working at mcdonalds is going to face higher taxes as he is 'forced' to purchase (via taxation or mandates) expensive healthcare services. Don't think for a second there are enough 'rich' people to provide this... the math doesn't work. This is not just a simple change in the economy from horse and buggy to car... it's a major social and political challenge.
If the government is basically going to run the future economy, then it must treat all workers fairly. Guaranteeing them equal access to work... It's a very complicated problem.
Again, this goes back 1 where what are people willing to work for to get. One can imagine world where I sit around paying for yoga classes. But if I had the choice to work hard and get yoga classes versus work less and not get yoga classes... most people will choose to work less. Again... rephrase that around the older industrial revolution. Work hard and get clean drinking water, or work less and suffer disease and poor health... Notice the difference. People services are really overrated... as is the general service economy.
4. The new industries require less and less work. The previous changes still required loads of people to operate. The change from horse and buggy to car still required many auto workers. The introduction of the telephone initially requires lots of switch operators. Increasingly new industries need a few highly skilled people to roll out. Some high quality engineers and technicians. The rest is automated. So while there are new jobs... there are not enough new jobs in the new industries for the masses. A small populations might be okay... but a large country like the US with 300 million people... there's enough jobs for everyone.
5. Women in the workforce. Not a problem... but a reality that we've basically doubled the number of jobs required to be created at at time when automation is getting rid of jobs.
But incomes went up.
Yes, but for whom?
As the summary implies, one way people use when they attempt to adjust is by killing people and breaking things. It is probably in our best interest, both individually and "as a society", to help these people adjust in a more orderly fashion.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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
What makes you think you have a machine? You don't have a job, so you couldn't possibly have bought the machine, or the feedstock matter supply, or the copyrighted/patented/exclusively licensed fabrication patterns that the machine uses to create the "anything" you had in mind.
Post-scarcity economy is fiction because if anyone can secure proprietary advantage over others they will. If necessary, scarcity can be completely artificial, but it will still exist, and as a consequence, we will always have "haves" and "have-nots".
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Countries like Japan, America, and northern Europe, where factories often have the latest tech, have far fewer unemployed young people than countries in southern Europe or India. The biggest problem is inflexible labor markets that make it hard to hire/fire and modify jobs.
Labor laws in Germany and Sweden are among the most inflexible ones in Europe but both countries are doing pretty well compared to the rest of Europe regarding unemployment.
Spain and Greece didn't have a problem with inflexible labor market. They had (and still have) a very serious problem with money circulation. Both countries had very high self-employment rate just before the recent crisis (25+%, three times higher percentage than Sweden or Germany), huge services sector and small industry. Their international income was mostly from tourism, not export of goods.
So I have a question for you: What happens when most of your customers run out of money? When you're a medium or big manufacturing business, you'll find new customers who have money. When you're self-employed and working in services, you'll go out of business. When 25+% of the entire country are self-emloyed people working in services, even a short recession can trigger massive domino effect.