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Technologies Like Google's Self-Driving Car: Destroying Jobs?
Nerval's Lobster writes "For quite some time, some economists and social scientists have argued that advances in robotics and computer technology are systematically wrecking the job prospects of human beings. Back in June, for example, an MIT Technology Review article detailed Erik Brynjolfsson (a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management) and a co-author suggesting that the evolution of computer technology was "largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years." Of course, technological change and its impact on the workforce is nothing new; just look at the Industrial Revolution, when labor-saving devices put many a hard-working homo sapien out of economic commission. But how far can things go? There are even arguments that the technology behind Google's Self-Driving Car, which allows machines to rapidly adapt to situations, could put whole new subsets of people out of jobs."
All technology destroys jobs. We invent things to save time and effort. I can't wait until we've saved so much time and effort that I don't have to work anymore...Not in my lifetime, unfortunately.
When that day comes, in whomever's lifetime, when nobody has to work anymore, where will people get food from? Where will people get energy from? Where will people get entertainment from? Oh, you mean in the future when we have a two tier system where the top 1% don't have to work, but the rest of us have menial jobs because technology has replaced all of the formerly middle class jobs that one could raise a family on. We had that system in the middle ages. It was called feudalism. Before too long in the West, we will most likely return to it as long as we keep the proletariat distracted long enough.