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'Automating Jobs Is How Society Makes Progress' (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz, written by Per Bylund, assistant professor at Oklahoma State University: Analysts discuss the automation of jobs as if robots are rising from the sea like Godzilla, rampaging through the Tokyo of stable employment, and leaving only chaos in their wake. According to data from PWC, 38% of jobs in the U.S. could become automated by the early 2030s. Meanwhile, a report from Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research warned that half of all American jobs could be replaced by automation. These prophecies of doom fail to recognize that automation and increased productivity are nothing new. From the cotton gin to the computer, automation has been happening for centuries. Consider the way automation has improved the mining industry over the past 100 years. Without machines, humans were forced to crawl into unstable passageways and chip away at rocks with primitive tools while avoiding the ever-present dangers of gas poisoning and cave-ins. Not only was this approach terrible for health, but it was also a highly inefficient use of skilled human laborers. With machines doing the heavy lifting, society was able to dedicate resources to building, servicing, and running the machinery.
Fewer people now do the traditional physical labor, but this advancement is celebrated rather than mourned. By letting machines handle the more tedious -- and, in some cases, dangerous -- tasks, people were liberated to use their labor in more efficient, effective, and fulfilling ways. Critics of automation miss the point. Nobody works for the sake of work -- people strive to create value, which helps pay our salaries and feed our families. Automation effectively opens the door for more new endeavors that will elevate our species to greater heights. Just as past generations turned away the mines for better careers, modern workers whose jobs are altered by automation will see their roles in society evolve rather than disappear.
Fewer people now do the traditional physical labor, but this advancement is celebrated rather than mourned. By letting machines handle the more tedious -- and, in some cases, dangerous -- tasks, people were liberated to use their labor in more efficient, effective, and fulfilling ways. Critics of automation miss the point. Nobody works for the sake of work -- people strive to create value, which helps pay our salaries and feed our families. Automation effectively opens the door for more new endeavors that will elevate our species to greater heights. Just as past generations turned away the mines for better careers, modern workers whose jobs are altered by automation will see their roles in society evolve rather than disappear.
It is not impossible, it is impossible for many. The world only needs soo many dead house-pet taxidermists. Yes the world will adjust. Society dosen't have a choice. But these periods of adjustment are historically rife with massive swings in wealth disparity, human suffering, and civil war. Being flippant to the chances that, we could all be eating out of dumpsters in 5 years or killing each-other in a massive rich/vs poor conflict, isn't proportional promotional to the urgency the issue deserves.
I think we do strive to create value. As you point out, even when you aren't working you're doing chores to create value for your own life. If we plunked you down somewhere with absolutely nothing, you'd be striving to create some clothing, shelter, and food. All of those things are quite valuable to you. In the past, you might have had to do all of those things on your own and either learn yourself or perhaps have been taught how to do so by your tribe.
However, today if you want some clothing, a house, or some food you can just give others some funny little slips of paper. Creating value for yourself is a matter of finding someone who will give you those slips of paper in exchange for some of your labor. That they also might derive some value from the transaction is really inconsequential to you as long as you feel as though you're getting more value out of the transaction than you feel you put into it with your labor.
If you thought you could make your own clothes, build your own home, and grow your own food for less than you could pay others to do it, you'd do it yourself and create value that way. On the other hand, you probably can't as all of those are specialized skills that themselves require several specialized skills to contribute to the process of producing the end product so it's much easier to create value in other ways. You could probably pay someone else to mow your lawn as well, but you don't think what you'd have to pay is worth the value created.
I don't think it's as easy as breaking it down into go to work and do what you're told. Value is only created if someone else wants to purchase your labor, otherwise we could just give people jobs fashioning cow manure into giant busts of David Hasselhoff and there would never be unemployment. If you were to start your own lawn mowing business you would be your own boss and it would be hard to argue that you're not creating value. You'd only be doing the labor that plenty of other people value doing, but simply don't do themselves because they value their own labor and time more dearly. The same goes for building houses, growing food, etc.
People should technically get paid more as their productivity increases, because as I have heard many times on Slashdot, people get paid according to their profitability to the company. But this increase in productivity has NEVER been shared with the worker. Most people barely get raises that keep up with inflation.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The US workforce has been on a downward trajectory for the last four decades. Not just because of automation, but it sure hasn't helped. The auto worker that loses his job to a robot isn't moving to a higher plane of enlightenment designing self-driving cars for Uber, he's going to be an Uber driver for far less money than he was making before.
All well and good to say "horse and buggy" jobs disappeared 100 years ago, you will be fine.
There are two key differences that will make a stark impact:
1. Lowered standard of education
2. Faster pace of technological advancement - demanding constant upskilling
The problem here is that our edumacation factories have been designed to create good factory drones, and to help some rise above and get the tools to lead. We are all becoming leaders in our own right with automation. Delegation is a challenge where by the time everything has been explained, you are faster to have done it yourself, unless of course, if you have seen the movie before.
Every 5 years, the reset button is pressed, and everything starts from scratch again. Although the educational frameworks are changing, it will take at least another 30-40 years for that change to realistically bear fruit.
So factory workers and manual laborers will be left with a problem. They need to re-skill, or become entirely irrelevant. The results of this can be seen in rural England's factory towns. Factory closes, 3 generations are left unemployed and unemployable. There is no framework that currently exists to funnel and change that culture and to help and assist to re-educate.
The only realistic incentive to drive this, is drag and headwinds on the high end skillsets - i.e. you can't find enough skilled people, to the point that someone does something about it. Unlikely, as we are all geared to be opportunists these days, and that's "the governments problem."
The other one is that education becomes so cheap through automation itself, that bored individuals who want to do something better can get an entry level education, and hope that the previous statement holds enough so that they can get on the job training.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
there were decades of unemployment, social strife and wars following the industrial revolutions. They don't teach this in school unless you get to the 200+ level history courses in college. They kinda just gloss over it.
It takes a long time for other tech to catch up and replace the jobs automated by an industrial revolution. That shouldn't come as a surprise. It's much easier to automate an existing process than to create entirely new lines of work.
It's also _hard_ to retrain existing workers. Those workers are older, so they learn slower, they're typically working full time to support the families they had before their better paying jobs were automated and above all nobody wants to pay high taxes so somebody can get a free ride to college in their 30s or 40s
Automation fueled unemployment is a complex problem. To suggest otherwise is childishly naive. Let me put it this way: When in your life has the best (or even a good) solution to a complex problem been to ignore it and hope it sorts itself out?
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All well and good to say "horse and buggy" jobs disappeared 100 years ago, you will be fine. There are two key differences that will make a stark impact: 1. Lowered standard of education 2. Faster pace of technological advancement - demanding constant upskilling
I would argue that there is a third difference - concentration of wealth. Yes, that has also happened before. But now, the most common and most powerful corrective mechanism - revolution - is ever more unlikely and ever less possible. It's more unlikely because all those 'factory drones' you mention below are so thoroughly distracted and mollified by 'bread-and-circuses' so omnipresent that they might as well be the air we breathe. It's less possible because of the concentration of wealth, which is another way of saying 'concentration of power'. Today, any attempt at revolution that truly threatens the oligarchy, will be discovered and disarmed before it gets anywhere near to being executed.
The problem here is that our edumacation factories have been designed to create good factory drones, and to help some rise above and get the tools to lead. We are all becoming leaders in our own right with automation. Delegation is a challenge where by the time everything has been explained, you are faster to have done it yourself, unless of course, if you have seen the movie before.
That 'problem' you mention was in fact put in place as a solution, on this continent by the industrialists, and in earlier times in other places by various entities that strove for power and worked hard to enforce their own visions of social order. Look up John Taylor Gatto's 'The Underground History of American Education' - it's now available as a free PDF download. I'm quite sure the current 'powers that be' still consider the education system as their own personal mechanism for continuing to subjugate the populace and justifying it as noblesse oblige.
Every 5 years, the reset button is pressed, and everything starts from scratch again. Although the educational frameworks are changing, it will take at least another 30-40 years for that change to realistically bear fruit.
I also think those optimists who expect our system to magically evolve ever more job opportunities are missing a key point. Our current economy assumes an open system with limitless room and resources for growth. It's not, and we're slowly being forced to admit that in the face of global warming, resource scarcity, ocean pollution that we may never be able to reverse, and increasing extinction of both plants and animals. The physical realities of the world over the next century will make mere survival the top priority; everyone will be too busy just surviving to think about 'jobs', perhaps even the point-one-percenters.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.