[resu_nimda]

I don't think the assertions are that ridiculous. Look at all the automation that we've already developed. "In 1870, almost 50 percent of the US population was employed in agriculture.[16] As of 2008, less than 2 percent of the population is directly employed in agriculture."

Does anyone today feel as though we've lost half of our jobs to mechanized farming? Not really, it allowed other industries like entertainment to flourish. Now that less of us have to do X, we can do more Y. I think it's absolutely a valid point to say "job loss will be slow enough that people will be able to adapt."

I honestly don't get the "robots will take our jobs" thing. It's sort of like "with more technology people will work less" - which has thus far proven to not be the case. People will always find more work to do, more ways to convince other people to spend money (and since the sales of X are now supporting less people, more money is freed up for Y).

The number of "jobs" available to a given population isn't really a function of the level of automation. It's a function of who is in control of capital/wealth and how that wealth flows between entities. Thanks to the automation we've already developed, we can already technically afford to provide everyone (in the US) with a basic income for the "job" of simply existing. Or we could place a high(er) tax on top earners and use that to double the minimum wage and split those jobs in half. Boom, look at all those new jobs created simply by a policy change. We just have collectively not chosen to do those things. Jobs are a red herring. We don't "need jobs" that are being destroyed by automation. The automation is adding value, not destroying it. We just have a setup where a small number of people are capturing most of that value. What we need are socioeconomic policies that even out that distribution.

[Nadya]

>Does anyone today feel as though we've lost half of our jobs to mechanized farming, those jobs were "destroyed?" Not really, it allowed other industries like entertainment to flourish. Now that less of us have to do X, we can do more Y. I think it's absolutely a valid point to say "job loss will be slow enough that people will be able to adapt."

Someone else phrased it best, I read it from an HN user but they may have been using someone else's argument. Paraphrasing here:

"Machines made physical labor easier, requiring fewer people to do physical labor. Those people moved to doing mental labor. Now machines are replacing mental tasks too. Where can people go when fewer of them are needed for mental tasks?"

The last remaining type of labor would be creative labor. Writing, music, performance. Things machines either still struggle at or won't be able to perform until we have humanoids that move fluidly. Even then, humans seem to prefer humans performing "artsy" things - based on criticisms I've seen of robots who create art (mostly music and drawings).

Art also, notoriously, doesn't pay very well for all but a small fraction of artists. What happens when this market is over-saturated because it is the only job left for large parts of the population?

[resu_nimda]

The underlying point is that not everyone needs a job. "Everyone has a job" is not an important fundamental requirement of functioning society. Everyone needs food, water, and shelter. In the early days, everyone needed a job because that's what it took to provide those basic needs. As we develop automation that allows those things to be provided to more people with less human labor, we shouldn't say "oh shit, we're running out of jobs, and people need jobs!" We should say, "how can we run a society where less human labor is necessary?"

What happens when this market is over-saturated because it is the only job left for large parts of the population?

I don't know, what happens? We've reached the endgame, we've fully automated all of the work required to keep people's needs taken care of, but we have some sort of problem because not everyone has a "job"? It's like some kind of dark comedy..."let's break all these robots that are growing food and building houses for us, we need jobs god dammit!" We just need to get away from the idea that "having a job" is a necessary goal in and of itself.

[Nadya]

>The underlying point is that not everyone needs a job. "Everyone has a job" is not an important fundamental requirement of functioning society.

The discussion was about whether or not jobs have been lost. Not whether or not jobs will be or are necessary. For the time being, jobs are both being lost and necessary. At least for most people and people who don't enjoy being homeless.

[resu_nimda]

In 1870, nearly half of the workforce worked in agriculture. Almost all of those "jobs" were "lost" over the next century. Did that have a meaningful correlation with unemployment rate?

There is not some fixed amount of "work that needs to be done" that in turn creates a fixed (and steadily diminishing) pool of jobs to draw from. The amount of jobs available is a purely socioeconomic function of who is willing to pay whom for what.

Take Facebook. Do the jobs there carve out some section of the total amount of work that needs to be done today? Not really, a guy made a thing, and convinced people to give him an arbitrary amount of money, and decided to give an arbitrary number of people arbitrary amounts of that money to help him out. A certain number of jobs were created because of the way people decided to distribute their money. Not because they took some of the limited "available job" slots.