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Why Automation Won't Displace Human Workers (diginomica.com)
"There was never a job opening for a drone pilot until there was something to fly," writes the founder of market research firm Beagle Research Group, arguing that automation won't inevitably lead society to a universal basic income "free lunch" because new jobs arise when "new capabilities, technical and otherwise, innovate them into existence."
Heck, computer programmers had no existence until computers. At one point a computer was just someone who was very good at math performing calculations all day...it took a year to check all of the calculations needed to produce the atomic bomb and that work was all done by humans. Imagine how history might be different if even one of them had a pocket calculator. You get the idea. New technology inspires new jobs.
He also argues that historically automation eliminates jobs that were "dull, dirty, and dangerous," and that automation also ends up performing previously-nonexistent jobs -- or work that was forced onto customers in self-service scenarios.
He also argues that historically automation eliminates jobs that were "dull, dirty, and dangerous," and that automation also ends up performing previously-nonexistent jobs -- or work that was forced onto customers in self-service scenarios.
"There was never a job opening for a drone pilot until there was something to fly,"
A drone is not automation. A self driving drone that knows what to pick up and where to deliver it autonomously is automation. It doesn't need a pilot.
I'd be concerned ordering market research studies from this man's company.
I've automated a few production lines and the reasons for the automation was to reduce the number of people running the lines. What does happen is a skilled maintenance engineer is required to fix problems on that line and generally a few other similar lines. That can result in the loss of 100 jobs and the creation of 1.
Some processes can result in totally unmanned sites and people only are needed on site when the equipment reports a fault actually often not even then since a backup system tends to come online.
It's not a bad thing to automate jobs but there is a cost to communities when the jobs go.
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This is how it has always worked before because previous technologies solved specific problems better than human hands alone.
We are on the cusp of general purpose automation. It won't work this way again.
Yes, it's true that every automation, starting with steam engines to run mines, led to an explosion of new job categories.
But what he's missing is that the concept of "everyone should get a job" is just plain wrong. The increase in productivity, and in automation, ought to lead to a situation where goods are so plentiful that we do not need to work, or maybe only work 20 hrs/week for 15 years before retiring. The whole "work ethic" thing arose from two events. The first was humans drifting out of their natural habitat into regions hostile to survival, necessitating a "work or die" paradigm. The second was the development of communities with leaders & followers, in which sooner or later the leaders stop working but spread the gospel of hard work -- which the proles must do to support the leaders.
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If you want to try out your analysis of silly, start by trying to answer "What employment sector can absorb the 3.5 million truck drivers who will be replaced with automated vehicles?". Apply your own biases for how quickly this will have to happen; I'm wild guessing ~5-7 years, starting ~5 years from now.
Then add a million bus and taxi drivers, and then add the job count you ascribe to the edges of trucking (convenience stores and such that cater to them) ... These are essentially unskilled jobs. All you need is a certain threshold of reliability and discipline; for that, you get a good, heretofore stable, career.
The beginning of automation saw a replacement of human and animal muscle power with water and (later) chemical power. There was little displacement going on, and the increase in output was a necessity anyway due to there being severe shortages. No problems here, quite the opposite.
The next wave was the replacement of menial work with mechanical work. Especially in agriculture a lot of farmhands were replaced by machinery. Low skilled jobs were eliminated in favor of higher skilled jobs that again increased output. This did displace workers and was one of the reasons of the early problems with working poor in the early days of the industrial revolution, where farmhands that were out of a job now moved to the cities where industries offered them.
Next in line were industry jobs getting the same axing, with more streamlining and fewer low skilled jobs being replaced by mechanical workers. This was buffered by the emerging service industry that could gobble up the eliminated low education workforce. That we were fighting world spanning wars around that time sure also helped.
Fast forward to today. Again, jobs are being replaced by robots. This time around, though, none of the former buffering and mitigating factors come into play. We do not need more production. We already produce more than we can sell. By some margin and then some. We also cannot put more people into the service sector, 3 out of 4 people are already working there, and a service industry is highly dependent on people having spare spending money, so these people will not be moving towards another industry branch. They also cannot move anywhere because there is nowhere to go where jobs are being offered.
This time around this is going to sting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sure, automation creates new jobs, But not everyone has the wherewithal to be a software developer. High-skill jobs will always exist, but how many will be available to all of the truck drivers displaced by self-driving trucks?
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.