| As usual the chorus will be something along the lines of: "Nothing to see here. We've had these shifts before and more jobs will be created than lost and people will transition to new jobs etc..." To which the response is, yes that's true, however never have we seen it at such a pace. Shifts are now likely to happen multiple times in a single working lifetime, as opposed to once a generation (1960-2000 - Solid State & industrial automation) or once every third generation (1800-1920 - Industrialization). From years 0-1800 you could expect that your children would probably do the same job you and your grandfather did (more than likely farming). From 1950's on, children would likely go into a different line of work than their parents were in. Now it's common for a parent to have multiple careers with completely different skill sets and so on for their children. This would be all well and good if one of these options were true: 1. People could adapt as quickly as advances in machine processes are changing (the outcome of which obviates machine efficiencies) 2. There was flexibility in the system which would allow people the time to adapt The only other way to keep people around and not in poverty conditions would be to decouple human needs from business processes - which is effectively what UBI is trying to do in a roundabout way. I think has interesting long term outcomes, namely that a few dominant machine organizations would feed, clothe, house and train the population. |
This would change your figures to around 2 generations for the current automation revolution, and industrialization to between 4-6 generations.