[inconditus]

Is this a serious argument? One could say the same thing about:

1) The advent of modern gardening and genetically modified crops. With increased efficiency, where will the extra farmers go?

2) The advent of computers. What will happen to books? The tree cutters? The people who ship the trees to the lumber plant?

I could go on and on about ANY technological advance in the last 200 years. I don't see how cars are any different that will bring "marxism or communism".

[analyst74]

I have similar feeling. Heck, invention of farming have caused many the hunters and gatherers to lose their jobs!

I can't believe how "taking away jobs" sort of argument against technological advancement keeps showing up over and over, despite being refuted every time.

[ericd]

Eh, it might be right one of those times. People have been retreating up the skill chain as technology has become more and more advanced. If we could make a tool that does everything as well as humans for much less, society would have to change massively. It has in the past for lesser changes in technology.

[learc83]

>If we could make a tool that does everything as well as humans

That goes so far beyond anything we have any experience with that it's impossible to speculate. Every technological advance in history has been a labor saving device; a device that does everything as well as humans is no longer a tool, it's our replacement (i.e., strong AI).

>People have been retreating up the skill chain as technology has become more and more advanced.

The majority of jobs created by industrialization required less skill than previous jobs (e.g., farmers to assembly line workers).

[ericd]

Of course, I'm just saying that the limit of technological advancement as t approaches infinite in some scenarios implies no human employment, so it's not obvious that just because permanent mass unemployment has never happened that it will never happen.

Since industrialization, the skill required by good jobs not made artificially lucrative by unions has become more specialized and advanced. Whereas being good at manual labor has become less useful. That's what I meant by going up the skill chain - it's harder to replace thinking jobs with tech, so more recently, people have been trying to work in those.

[saraid216]

My favorite comeback is, "Think of all those poor switchboard operators that the Internet put out on the street."