Slashdot Mirror
Workers: Fear Not the Robot Apocalypse (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For retailers, the robot apocalypse isn't a science-fiction movie. As digital giants swallow a growing share of shoppers' spending, thousands of stores have closed and tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs. The brick-and-mortar retail swoon has been accompanied by a less headline-grabbing e-commerce boom that has created more jobs in the U.S. than traditional stores have cut. Those jobs, in turn, pay better, because its workers are so much more productive. This demonstrates something routinely overlooked in the anxiety about the job-destroying potential of robots, artificial intelligence and other forms of automation. Throughout history, automation commonly creates more, and better-paying, jobs than it destroys. The reason: Companies don't use automation simply to produce the same thing more cheaply. Instead, they find ways to offer entirely new, improved products. As customers flock to these new offerings, companies have to hire more people.
Jobs don't matter. Jobs have never mattered. There are, and will always be, a means to an end. That end being not starving to death. In the past, jobs were a means of divvying up the limited resources for that goal, but as the resources become less limited, something like a UBI will become necessary.
This should be a good thing, but we've got such pig-headed ideas about economics that we're taking the blessing of not needing labor and turning it into a curse.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Having been a business owner myself, with an excitable and somewhat undisciplined partner, I have no illusions about economic models predicated on perfectly rational choices. However, most people know not to hire someone if they won't generate the revenue to cover their salary.
The flip side is often problematic: people who refuse to hire the help they need and so limit their profits. That's very common.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Normally this is not one of my issues, but I felt compelled to offer a different interpretation. People in the United States are not powerless, they just THINK they are. When the electorate makes their wishes known to the leaders and then consistently punishes those leaders that will not attend them, the leaders soon start paying meaningful attention.
As long as American voters believe they have no power, however, they do not act, and the leaders get whatever they want.
This is important because the only countervailing force to corporate empowerment is governmental legislation.
Sad anecdote - Two millennials with whom I work were complaining bitterly about Trump's victory. Later in the conversation I asked them about where they voted and both innocently admitted that they had not voted.