Not making any statements about redistribution, but does thus worry anyone else, just on the basis that there’s gonna be less consumer wealth to drive the economy? Won’t this drive wine businesses, for instance the housing market, and others based off of everyone’s having the ability to pursue the American dream, to crash? In b4 new jobs will be created
In the late 19th century, more than half the population worked the land. Imagine if you said to people then that due to automation by the end of the 20th century only 2%-3% of people would be farmers. There would have been panic. >50% unemployment, the poorest workers left idle with nothing to do and no money to feed their families. Surely war, pestilence and famine must have ensued?
And yet, people are wealthier and fatter now than they’ve ever been.
I’m aware. But new businesses these days aren’t generally as labor intensive in general.
It worries me. But my hope is that the robots will need overlords during my lifetime. There is a real difference between making devices that are more effective in one specific area versus the prospect of a general intelligence capable of doing multiple things. At the extreme, the intelligence could become better at actually programming intelligence than us. There seems to have to be a part where either technology stops progressing or we do run out of jobs. Most people quibble about time frames for it to occur as an argument it won’t occur. If it will happen, we need a very thoughtful investigation of the society we’d want in various outcomes.
^ why do that when we can let corporations decide for us?
Well if we don’t think about it, they will probably decide for us. Not sure what kind of future that would produce
Corporations are people too, my friend.
^ with potential immortality.
AF is obsessed with automation of labor, AI, and robots taking the place of jobs.
Times change as the farming reference states above, people adjust, society adjusts. That is the key word for humans: adaptable.
Yes society survived and adapted but what is forgotten in that analysis are the generations that were sacrificed. Of course in the long run society will adapt but that doesn’t mean a whole bunch people didn’t feel the financial pain for the remainder of their lives.
I’m still working on my book “The Lost Generation”.
Just to add to the above, diseases, famine and world wars helped reduce (or slowed the increase) of the population. Now we basically have 3 billion too many living on this planet. I’m sure there is an equilibrium population formula somewhere.
I agree. The typical argument is that things will be fine in the long term, even if there’s pain in the short term… but the medium term is what I’m worried about. All those 40-50 year olds with a job they’ve worked, and who would be automated out of a job, having nothing else to fall back on. Rough.
Yeah we call that structural unemployment, yes?
How many pages do you have written so far in this book?
You seem in a prissy mood this evening. Did Bible study meeting get cancelled?
It’s worse than structural unemployment. We have a massive oversupply of labor. You don’t dump 2 billion people in the workforce overnight while world GDP is barely increasing and expect things to work out as nothing happened. All those unemployed 18-35 year olds in Greece and Spain are a lost cause. It’s not structural, stick a fork in them they are done. They will be a drag on society for the rest of their existence. As for underemployment, it is a major issue in advanced economies that no one talks about but is worse in my opinion than unemployment. Then you have the 3rd biggest economy that is a wasteland for close to 30 years now. This is greater than just structural unemployment and its effects has started hitting the political spectrum and will soon hit the streets. Unless you think this time will be different.
word
I think you haven’t fully considered this issue. When I break humans down into what makes us very efficient robots, it is a combination of data processing, handling physical objects, and vision. I don’t know about you, but I work in finance. I don’t have to lift anything and there isn’t a requirement for me to use my vision. These two things seem to be what we are the furthest from producing a robot to be good at. General intelligence in data processing is already trading in the markets. General intelligence is extremely dangerous to lots of the jobs people on this forum want.
But at a certain point, the robots will be able to see and move objects as well. That seems to be a harder problem, but those jobs aren’t immune. Just will probably last longer
This conversation went better than last time. FT pretty much nailed it. We have more people than we can ever employ but continue to expand the labor pool, we have more money than investments but continue to print, and more productive capacity than demand for finished products but continue to automate. At least we’re moving in the right directions, amirit7? #post-scarcity
This. People will find new tasks to do and/or we will have a less tedious life. Additionally, we will have more time to “think” about higher-level things. Imagine trying to solve complicated math and science problems while trying to escape predators and hunt for food in the jungle; not going to happen. There will be winners and losers out of progress, but society will adapt and it will likely be a net positive.
That all said, we of course are a more robust civilzation and probably can afford to some extent to lend a hand to those who were not able to adapt as quickly.
It’s quite sad really what’s going on with Japan. Interesting culture, awesome food, and beautiful countryside.
Another possibility is like the movie Elysium. Just saying.