[jiggy2011]

When I was a teenager the most popular part time jobs among my piers were either working in a supermarket or at a fast food place.

Lots of supermarkets are starting to replace humans with self-checkouts and things like this will probably become standard in fast food.

So how is a teenager supposed to fund his pot habit in 2020?

[Dove]

It's 2020. Lots of teenagers don't have jobs and would like them. Someone starts a new business based on the available cheap labor.

Dog poop scooping? Personal couriers? Game testing? Something we haven't thought of because the relevant industry doesn't exist yet?

Economies aren't static. You can always find something useful to do.

[jkeel]

I agree. Even now (2012 - almost 2013) there are still lots of services needed but when I was a teenager I unfortunately kept looking for a type of job that my friends had instead of looking for a need to fill (I eventually did land a very different job though working alongside field workers).

Today I've seen adults in their 30's and 40's jump out of the IT industry to start their own business scooping dog poop out of back yards and making enough money to live on. Same thing with cleaning swimming pools. There are lots of services they could provide.

[Dove]

Indeed. The out-of-work teenager doesn't necessarily need to start the business himself--someone will see the opportunity--but it is helpful if he can. I think it is a better mindset to try to be useful than to seek a job.

[jlarocco]

I'd love to see enough jobs automated so that when somebody asks, "But what about the people who do those jobs now?" the answer is "Everybody in the remaining jobs drop down to 20 hours a week, the unemployed take up the other 20 hours a week, and we all enjoy more leisure time." I don't see it happening, but it would be nice.

It's a little disappointing that despite immense advances in technology and production, and increased efficiency, all we're achieving is having people toil the same amount as before, but doing something else.

[Dove]

I think that will happen to the extent that people want it to. It's happening now, in fact, with things like semi-retirement and freelancing and professional (but not rich) bloggers/web comic authors and so forth on the rise. You can live a very frugal lifestyle and have a lot of free time if you want.

Most people seem to be choosing to spend productivity gains on "more stuff" rather than "more time". And that is certainly their prerogative. :) I mean, with so many people working so productively for so many hours, there is a lot of cool stuff available nowadays.

[Evbn]

That is contingent upon minimum wage rising to match, or an Alask-style guaranteed income trust.

[mertd]

In 2020, they will probably be able to grab some weed from the family pantry.

On a different note, I am curious to see how economy and society will shape up once most low entry barrier jobs are automated.

[alwaysabove]

It's a triumph that we're automating these kind of jobs. Why are we wasting human talent on inane jobs like store checkout or junk food production? Every person in one of those jobs is a wasted mind. If we could put those minds to work on something meaningful think what we could achieve.

[nathan_long]

I absolutely agree. The moment there's a more economically efficient way to do X, doing X the old way is a "broken window".

That doesn't mean there aren't downsides, though.

[crosbytho]

There's a psychological and human aspect that some deem as positive that you are overlooking. While some shun away from the human experience, it's refreshing to head to an In-N-out burger and have well-paid smiling faces take your order and serve you delicious food.

Sure you could automate that kid, but while trying not to be sappy, that's another face you get to see during the day amidst a traditional day filled with computers, iPads, and now according to this -- machines making our food.

[alwaysabove]

I don't agree with this argument.

When I want to socialise with people, I'll go to a bar, my friend's house, a coffee shop, etc. If I want a burger, I want to get issued with that burger ASAP, without having to deal with someone who you may consider to be a nice person, but I may consider to be a douche-bag.

If that well-paid smiling person didn't have to work at the burger place, she might have something more interesting to talk about when we meet in a proper social environment.

[jiggy2011]

I find that having a face to face interaction with another human being at least once a day makes you feel more human.

Sometimes I can go a few days to a week where me and my friends are all busy doing things, I buy all my stuff from the self checkout or via amazon and don't really interact with anyone.

Then when on friday night I go out to a busy party it feels like a shock.

[Evbn]

Walmart has greeters. In and Out can always have same.

[jiggy2011]

True, but of course not all minds are created equal. There is also the risk that they put those minds to work on something that is not so meaningful (e.g crime).

[alwaysabove]

If someone is a fucking idiot, still better to have them say, spend their time in an retirement home talking to and looking after elderly people, than it is to have them feeding groceries to a scanner as some kind of redundant biological link in a machine.

[bmj]

This is terrible attitude, and it greatly devalues necessary work. Yes, if you are an engineer, you see stocking grocery store shelves as a technical problem to be solved, but other folks look at it as a way to make a rather meager living. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone can do white collar labor for a reasonable middle class salary.

Don't get me wrong, I think some work certainly could be automated, but at the same time, we need to consider the human cost of automating that work. A glib response of "learn how to write specs" or referring to people that do some tasks as "fucking idiots" does very little to advance the conversation.

[alwaysabove]

That's not my point at all.

I'm saying if someone can't do intellectual work, get them to do something that uses other skills. But let's make that something useful, rather than something we could automate away.

[jiggy2011]

Not sure I would have wanted my late grandmother to be looked after by "a fucking idiot".

[philhippus]

Now workers can be promoted to tomato feeder, or waste fat disposer - at least until those tasks are also automated.

[krapp]

Yeah, that's the problem with automation isn't it? The point is not to free the mind of the common salaryman from the burden of manual labor but just to free the company of the burden of employees, much less of paying them more to do something else. And when there are no more bottom tier positions left which haven't been filled by a machine or outsourced for a tenth of your salary (to someone who's going to be replaced by a machine themselves in a few years)... too bad for you I guess.

[jiggy2011]

I have a feeling that many low barrier jobs will end up being stuff that is either dangerous or morally gray (I forsee a booming market for sex work for example). So a lot of stuff that people wouldn't be comfortable with minors doing.

[tomjen3]

I disagree with selling sex being morally in a grey area, but minors are already banned or prevented from taking many (most?) dangerous jobs that nobody have a moral issue with (say taxi driving).

[antoko]

I disagree with selling sex being morally in a grey area

You didn't specify, do you think it is a morally white area? or a morally black area?

Better yet let's move away from colors. Do you think sex trade is immoral?

I'm genuinely curious because it wasn't obvious form reading your comment - and I'm not sure I have strong feelings one way other the other and so it would seem to me to be the epitome of a "gray area"

[tomjen3]

I don't think there is anything wrong with people willing selling any kind of service, sex included.

[columbo]

Well Stanislaw Lem's Memiors of a Space Traveler (24th Voyage) suggests we will all be flattened into glass discs and placed in random locations over the planet.

Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=1DNVzphAHD0C&lpg=PA24&#...

[alexkus]

> So how is a teenager supposed to fund his pot habit in 2020?

Learn how to maintain/fix robots.

[nathan_long]

More importantly, how will people learn basic job skills, like "show up on time" and "do what you're told" if all the traditional first jobs are automated?

[alwaysabove]

Isn't that what schools do? Or actually, parents before you get to school age?

[jiggy2011]

School is a lot more lax about it because it's so much more difficult for them to kick you out.

When I was at school we would sometimes turn up over an hour late or just skip the day altogether. Was a culture shock when I started my first job and got a roasting for being 5 mins late.

[ovi256]

Ask any teacher, and he/she'll have plenty of stories about parents who do nothing to teach their kids these habits, or even exactly the opposite of that.

[Evbn]

Without basic jobs, "basic job" skills are irrelevant.

Plenty of jobs don't have the two rules you mention.

[nathan_long]

Plenty of jobs don't have set schedules or require you to march lockstep. But even CEOs of tech companies can't say to potential clients, "sorry I missed that meeting and didn't call, I wasn't feeling good..."

[swalsh]

Can't you see the trend emerging today? Entrepreneurship is "cool" and every year seems to be ever more encouraged. At the same time, the internet is leveling everything. Barriers to entry are being plowed across the board. For example look at Arduino, a lot of the things people are making with it aren't exactly amazing. But consider how many posts you've seen of people with 0 experience in electronics, doing things that previously would have been "advanced".

That trend is only going to continue. Think about scaling a new website today, I can go from idea to scalable infrastructure without ever leaving my chair or breaking the bank. Imagine how 3D printing, and other new technologies are going to enable a new generation of people to do cool things.

None of this stuff is out of the grasp of teenagers either. I would not be surprised if you start seeing more and more stories about teenagers building new things, and making a few bucks while they're at it. They've always had the creativity, and drive. But now they have the capability.

Look at youtube, i've been watching videos made by teenagers that look better then most movies made in the 1980's. SLR's, and super high quality video, plus cheap computers & applications are enabling amateurs to do near professional quality stuff.

[ippisl]

Both with the simplicity of the web, and the relative simplicity of building simple apps with good tools , we didn't see a great number of teenagers making money from building web sites or mobile apps.

It would probably makes more sense to outsource building a site to someone from low-cost country that have gained experience than to a local teenager. The same sense probably operate on arduino development and 3d design by teens.

And teen entrepreneurship didn't scale for web-develpoment or mobile apps, no reason to think it would scale this time.

[blhack]

This is the future. It's not just highschoolers that can't fund their pot habits (ha), it's adults who can't put food on their family's table.

[tomjen3]

Nobody can make money at all if they refuse to think about how they can create value and then do it.

In other words, if you expect your life to continue as it has always done, it won't.

[ebiester]

It's not the people on this board who need to worry. What responsibility does society have for those (let's say.. IQ 75) who are incapable of this?

[tomjen3]

Thinking doesn't mean finding the theory of everything. It can be as simple as taking a walk and see what people who have money are currently doing that you could do for them.

Cleaning lawns, walking their dog (scales wonderfully, as you can walk with more than one dog at a time), buying their groceries for them (easily worth it, as you would only buy exactly what was on the list and not 'hey this is cheap') and it scales reasonably.

That list is by no means exhaustive, btw. Just of the top of my head.

None of these can be done by robots anytime soon, none of these require a high school education.

Yes I have some idea of how though this is -- my granddad started working as unskilled labor at age 14, and he raised both him and my grandmother from homeless near orphans to living in a (small) house with a car and in the process raising two kids to have families of their own.

[ebiester]

Your grandfather, while not educated, likely had his wits about him.

Cleaning lawns often requires average intelligence. If I have to tell the person common sense things and basically supervise the work (people with this intelligence often don't adapt well to change, the kind of change required for each customer) and will tend to be slower and require tasks to be broken down for them. You don't want to have someone completely break down when you send them to the store and the brand you specify isn't available.

From people I've seen, they're already barely functioning in jobs. As the job market gets tighter, many of these people have been pushed out. Some have had advocates able to argue them on to disability, but others haven't.

You could do this. I could do this. But you're overestimating the capacity of 10% of Americans, perhaps as much as 15-20% of Americans.

[ebiester]

More importantly, what about mentally challenged people? Already today, there are many people now who cannot function on their own, the jobs for which they were qualified have dried up. How many people can we support on disability as job requirements keep rising?

[Evbn]

Labor income is a trivial portion of the cost of care for a mentally disabled person. They could do volunteer work instead, with only the slightest change in lifestyle.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

Learn programming and do some spec work.

[digitalsushi]

I don't know the first thing about statistics, but I know that the set of people reading this website are in a selection problem- everyone here could probably learn to program and go some spec work. For each person here, there are some ratio of other people that cannot do this work. Why they cannot is undefined. Maybe it's as simple as they find it boring or have a low dedication. But I believe it is a fact that there are some number of people who cannot simply ramp up their mental aperture and get a better profession.