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.

Comments

Jobs don't matter

[king neckbeard]

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.