[tro2102]

how about "suck it up and do it anyway"?

I don't necessarily disagree with this sentiment, but this doesn't really address the question, which is about what happens to an industry when it's made redundant by technology. Cab drivers competing with self-driving cars can't "suck it up".

"what if they don't want to" in regard to people working?

Again, I feel you haven't read the spirit of this comment accurately. What happens to an entire class of working people (truck drivers, for instance), when their trade is replaced by tech which is 1/10 (conservatively) the cost to produce? I too want to say innovation is worth it, but it's definitely worth the thought cycles to consider what happens when we make an entire workforce obsolete.

[BurningFrog]

> what happens to an industry when it's made redundant by technology

We have over 200 years experience of countless industries being made redundant by technology. It's not a new scary thing that has never happened before.

[onion2k]

We also have 200 years of people in the redundant industries complaining about it, and 200 years of government regulating to make the transition less painful. Why should we stop that with taxis?

[TeMPOraL]

And it bears reminding that some of this 200 years of history was pretty bloody precisely because people were fed up of being told to "suck it up" and do what the entrepreneurs say them to to survive. The mostly sane working conditions we enjoy today - like somewhat reasonable working hours, like leaves and insurances - things a lot of people in my generation work to destory, for some reason -- all those things were paid for in blood by our great-grandfathers.

[chii]

> 200 years of government regulating to make the transition less painful.

i find that hard to believe - what was done in the last 200 years to lessen the pain of any transition?

[onion2k]

Here in the UK there were a number of Factory Acts passed between 1802 and 1961 that were designed to limit the impact of the industrial revolution on workers, lessening the pain of transition from agriculture and cottage industry to the modern mechanised factories. The one closest to 200 years ago did such progressive things as limiting the working hours a 9 year old child could do to 12 hours a day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Acts

[ambicapter]

How is that easing the transition? Sounds more like making sure the current working environment doesn't suck, and that the benefits of technology are actually passed on to those who are using it.

[allendoerfer]

Pensions, accident insurance, and medical care. Not 200 years, but 150-175 years [0]. Universal unemployment insurance came only in 1927.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Germany

[xg15]

So how would you solve the problem based on that experience?

[BigJono]

A good welfare system pretty much solves it. I'm not sure why America is struggling to create one.

Here in Australia the government will happily pay you $300 a week until you can find a job. It costs us something like $9.5B per year, which is pretty much nothing. Our government doesn't have to disincentivise innovation to help people adjust.

Sure, some people are going to find it hard to live on that amount, but they won't go hungry or homeless. I think it's well within the realms of "suck it up".

[allendoerfer]

> A good welfare system pretty much solves it. I'm not sure why America is struggling to create one.

America is still divided even on the question whether healthcare should be universal, which other states introduced ~50 years before unemployment benefits were invented, so I think this will still take a while.

[erklik]

Some sort of basic income or a welfare scheme. As someone else mentioned, Australian's out of job get paid $300 or $400 depending on how many kids you have etc and how much savings. This allows the government to make sure that everyone out of a job doesn't go homeless but its not enough to be comfortable so people don't become dependent on it. ( Some people do become dependent on it, its not a 100% unfortunately )

[fnj]

Comfortable? Exactly how does $1200 per month come anywhere near paying housing, food, and clothing even for one single person?

[sokoloff]

It isn't meant to be "comfortable". That was clear I think from the parent comment. If you want to live long-term on the government money, it might be possible in a group living situation, with pooled resources. But it's meant to be a floor against abject poverty, not a recliner.

[BigJono]

It's not easy but it's not particularly difficult either. The only hard part is if you're living in a suburb that HN readers tend to live in, you'll have to move house and possibly get a housemate or two if you're single so you can cover the rent. But once you accept that, it's really just a matter of cooking your own meals and buying in bulk where possible.

[TACIXAT]

Get roommates in a cheap city, your rent could be down near $400-$600 / mo., that leaves plenty left over for food and necessities. Buy cheap clothing.

[algorias]

I think you misread

    but its not (enough to be comfortable)

as

    but its (not enough) to be comfortable

[Trundle]

Again, I feel you haven't read the spirit of this comment accurately.

The comment specifically talked about those people not wanting to do another form of work. It wasn't a generic "lets talk about mass automation induced redundancy" which appears to be what you're trying to discuss with me.

As you'll note, I'm pro basic income. I just don't think it's fair to say I'm not properly addressing the spirit, when in this case that means ignoring the specific language the commenter chose to use and just having the same generic conversation that's continuously being had all over the internet. I'm interested in debating this guy if he does actually think work is something people only do if it's intrinsically motivating and thus we should consider taxi drivers desire to spend their day driving around rather than doing math, I'm not interested in just having a standard /r/futurology back and forth.

I mean hell, I even hedged against this with my last paragraph.

[acidburnNSA]

I didn't say they don't want to do another job. I said they don't want to go back to school. They either hated school or were bored sick of it. So they'll generally look for other jobs available at their skill level. That's why inequality grows. Disruptive tech creates jobs for educated ambitious people while displacing people who are less so. Yeah we as a society can tell them it's their problem, but there might be a lot of them, and they might be a force to be reckoned with politically. Will it escalate beyond Trump, Brexit, etc.? Who knows.

Telling people to get more school is something educated people often do, but it's sometimes a bit self-serving. It makes themselves feel like they're a winner and they deserve it when often their circumstances positioned them better to be able to get that education in the first place.

[sokoloff]

I'd like to be fit and in-shape. OK, great. Yeah, but I don't want to change at all what I eat nor do I want to do any physical exercise.

At some point, personal initiative and responsibility is going to come into the picture. Those who demonstrate it will have better outcomes in the aggregate than those who don't.

There's a genuine question of how much we should take from those who do and transfer to those who don't in order that they don't starve. It's far from obvious that the answer should be "none" but it's equally far to suggest the answer should naturally be "a lot".

[eggy]

That is like saying take back the washing machine, since it took away washer women jobs, of which my Irish grandma was when she emigrated. Change, flow, adapt, is life.

And work is not something you do because you just get compensated for it. Some one pays you what they think a task is worth, and you take up that task, because you are not able or not wanting to move up or horizontally to another job.

It takes energy at the most primal level to accomplish work. The problem with politics is that people then think energy can be printed and everyone can be made happy with an endless supply of happy. We try our best to be compassionate, and hope for everyone's well being, but in the end, work needs to be done to gain something.

[pfisch]

I'm pretty sure the answer is to retrain and/or go into a different profession.

[chrisbennet]

As a thought exercise, what will/would software developers do once 90% are made redundant by A.I. or something? Maybe "suck it up" and go back to school to become nurses?

[JoshTriplett]

> As a thought exercise, what will/would software developers do once 90% are made redundant by A.I. or something?

An AI capable of doing 90% of the job of a software developer would likely be an AGI, and thus capable of doing 100% of the job of every human far better than the human can. At which point we stop worrying about details like "money" and "scarcity".

[oblio]

> At which point we stop worrying about details like "money" and "scarcity".

And start worrying about Skynet and robots with lasers!

[pfisch]

Well, if software developers are made redundant by AI then we have already transitioned to a new type of economy because virtually every other job has been replaced except service industry.

If we are in some impossible world where that isn't true then I would say they should maybe go into medicine, engineering or law I guess.

Your question is too open ended to answer really. I have like 10 follow up questions to understand the parameters of the original question.

[chrisbennet]

The question was meant as a thought exercise aimed at my fellow developers. I was hoping they would ask themselves, "What will I do once my field is disrupted?" I was hoping that they could feel a little empathy for others whose livelihood has been turned upside down.

(I'm not directly responding to you, just your points which are typical responses.)

The general response when faced with uncomfortable questions is to avoid facing it - a "it would never happen to me" sort of rationalization. Or it would be an "impossible world" where my field would be illuminated.

Take "go into law" for example: I think the recent unemployment rate for new law graduates is something like 25%. Medicine is another field ripe for disruption (except nursing maybe).

"Just get another job" is another popular "let's not really think about the unthinkable" response.

It seems like many "answers" to the disruption problem boils down to "let them eat cake" and I was hoping to break through that.

[pfisch]

If you drive a taxi/vehicle as your job, then it has very obviously been in the works for years now that your job is going to see diminishing returns over time and you need to find a new angle.

I don't have sympathy maybe because I own a bootstrapped software studio and we are constantly pivoting and growing. We did ios/web contract work, now we mostly do video games on Steam. Guess what though, video games on steam is getting tougher so we are also pivoting to something else right now.

Life is change. There was once a time when you could just ply your trade for your entire life, and for some people that is still true, but that is not some inalienable right that is owed to anyone.

Businesses constantly have to be on their grind and don't just get some guaranteed paycheck, and no one is entitled to such a thing. You have to provide a service to people that you can exchange for money. If you are not really doing that then you are not just entitled to money.

[naveen99]

Why do you think medicine is ripe for disruption ?

Unemployment rate for doctors is around 1%.

The acceptance rate for medical school in the usa is 40%.

developers and cabbies are welcome to retrain.

To me, cabbies are local government employees. Let the government that licenses them pay them, just like they pay teachers and cops. So I am fine with this subsidy.

[JoeAltmaier]

Because of the tremendous shortage, as illustrated by that data. In fact home diagnosis apps were one of the first successful PC software products.

[Cozumel]

> I would say they should maybe go into medicine, engineering or law

There's already an AI lawyer:

http://www.rossintelligence.com/ http://www.techinsider.io/the-worlds-first-artificially-inte...

and Watson played doctor:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ibms-watson-cracks-medical-mystery-...

[eli_gottlieb]

>As a thought exercise, what will/would software developers do once 90% are made redundant by A.I. or something?

Teach the AIs the other 10%, and get killed by Terminators ;-).

[erklik]

Yup. Or learn how to make A.I.'s ?? I don't know yet but basically find a different job.

Its not that complicated actually.

[allendoerfer]

I am not saying this specifically to your comment, but to the whole thread:

Not all people can accomplish the same performance. Most HN users were just lucky. I am not sure where I would be today if I had not been born into a college educated family, had college educated friends and so on. Not all people have the same luck. Beyond that there are different levels of intelligence or just inability to concentrate etc. There are people on the job market who write and read on a level you had when you were 10 years old.

HN could really use some empathy. I would be ashamed if the cab driver, who actually lives next doors and gets up Friday and Saturday nights to drive drunk people home, because that's the only time you can make money here, would read this thread. When we talk about thousands of people we cannot just say "suck it up" and call it a day. HN should be the first to understand that the law of large numbers is at play here: People who do not want to work, will not matter for the whole group. If we do not want society to drift apart (which has enormous costs attached) we should solve the systemic issue.

[ambicapter]

> There are people on the job market who write and read on a level you had when you were 10 years old.

10 years old? Really? Do we expect those people to be useful? Why not just give them a basic income and take them out of the workforce?

[allendoerfer]

I was not making suggestions on what exactly we should do about them. I am just saying that they exist and that HN should avoid sounding like a dick by stating that they should just suck it up.

To your questions: An easy example would be immigrants, who I imagine could definitely be useful for society and still be bad at writing a foreign language.

Besides, many of the most important jobs there are do not require physics degrees but emotional intelligence and kindness. Everything that has to do with caring for living creatures. Many professions will disappear, but I expect these to be one of the last.

[maverick_iceman]

What happened to the drivers of horse-drawn carriages when automobiles arrived?

[flamedoge]

What happened to the horses?

[govg]

The glue factory?

[hx87]

> What happens to an entire class of working people

In a free market capitalist society, the most optimal case is that they spend a significant portion of their earnings buying capital (i.e. stocks and bonds), so as time goes on more of their earnings come from capital. Unfortunately, in the USA at least, we make capital accumulation ridiculously hard for working class people due to the cult of homeownership and a tax system where interest on mortgages (but not stock purchases) are deductible.

[pjc50]

Homeownership is capital accumulation.

I'm not sure that a system where a large part of GDP is directed at stock purchase is sustainable; that's how private pensions are supposed to work but the system is creaking.

[allendoerfer]

Additionally, home-ownership has the unique feature to be financed with money which would otherwise be a sunken cost.

I like the idea of some kind of modern/virtual self-sustained living, where you own your house, produce your own energy and cover all costs by dividends from stocks of the same companies you buy products from.

[hx87]

A home is a massively illiquid and spectacularly undiversified asset, and the same benefits can be gained by, say, investing in a spread-out housing cooperative with a diverse set of owners.

[pjc50]

Ownership by the workers of the means of production and distribution! ;)

[allendoerfer]

Yep, but actual ownership of a share with the choice on what to own on top of a capitalist base, not forced ownership together with everyone else through a state with corrupt elites.

[ajmurmann]

I think that's why we need something like universal basic income. Keeping dysfunctional companies our entire industries alive is holding everybody back and also unfair to people who are part of smaller industries that fall through the cracks.