[hooande]

This article was fantastically well written and comprehensive. Worth reading if you're interested at all in the topic of automation and its potential effects on the future of employment.

The narrative that machines will "eat" all the jobs leaving the mass of humanity unemployed is an easy to understand story, but it hasn't ever come to pass and probably won't for reasons that don't need to be detailed in this comment. The nobel laureate Robert Solow compared it to worrying about the earth being struck by an asteroid. Possible, even worth consideration, but highly unlikely.

The idea that machines will dominate labor to the point where a few rich people gain all the profits from labor and the rest of us are left jobless and effectively under their control is equally unlikely. A gem from the article:

"Capital isn’t just winning against labour: there’s no contest. If it were a boxing match, the referee would stop the fight."

Income inequality is probably the biggest problem facing our society today. But it can only go so far. If the majority of people don't have jobs, no one will be able to pay for new iphones or driverless car service fees. Even B2B companies depend on B2C customers for revenue at some point in the chain. The basic, common sense economics of the world dictate that there are limits to inequality. The idea that machines will create a truly dystopian scenario is still the realm of science fiction, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take steps to address the problem.

Finally, I loved this quote:

"Robert Gordon, an American economist who in 2012 published a provocative and compelling paper called ‘Is US Economic Growth Over?’ in which he contrasted the impact of computing and information technology with the effect of the second industrial revolution, between 1875 and 1900, which brought electric lightbulbs and the electric power station, the internal combustion engine, the telephone, radio, recorded music and cinema."

Worth noting that four of those seven inventions were created by one man. Not relevant to the topic of automation, just truly freaking amazing.

[robbrown451]

Regarding Edison, were they "created by one man" or "one man took the credit for them"? I get the impression it was closer to the latter.

[signa11]

> ... and probably won't for reasons that don't need to be detailed in this comment...

i would really appreciate if you could sketch your thoughts on this. thanks !

[hooande]

Only because you have so much karma...

Automation won't destroy jobs because technology and society change faster than automation can keep up. Think of all the job titles that didn't exist 30 years ago (social media marketer, seo specialist, etc). By the time those are automated away, they will be replaced another set of jobs that we can't even conceive of. It's tempting to think that it's different this time, but it probably isn't.

Secondly, the number of jobs and job titles is entirely arbitrary. We often think of the world as though there are a fixed number of jobs and once machines take them all then we're out of luck. But there is no limit or constraint of any kind on what a human can be hired to do. If you've ever worked at a growing startup you'll understand the impact of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time and resources allotted. In practice, companies tend to use the savings from automation to hire more people. And they should, it usually turns out to be a smart investment in human capital.

Ultimately, very few managers will say "I have enough people working for me and I don't need to hire anyone else". Those words have been uttered maybe 5 times in all of human history, including when I typed them just now. People like hiring, and the numbers just don't support the hypothesis of technology destroying jobs. The US unemployment rate now is similar to what it was in 1920. Despite automation in factories, Ford employs a similar number of people now to what it did in 1970, albeit no longer in factory jobs. If the advance of technology was truly putting people out of work, don't you think it would be evident by now?

[asdkl234890]

Think of all the job titles that didn't exist 30 years ago (social media marketer, seo specialist, etc

I like that you picked those two because they happen to be two that are already disappearing.

Search engines have been fighting SEO for years. And they have pretty much won. SEO was a hot industry just a few years ago, and is already disappearing.

And social media specialization of marketing and PR was taken on by very young people and thought to be a special skill, until recently. But already businesses have figured out that there is nothing special about it. And every marketer is expected to be a social media expert. It's not creating more new jobs, it's just adding those skills to existing jobs.

It's tempting to think that it's different this time, but it probably isn't.

I am sorry, but to me that argument sounds just like the future will be the same as the past. It's not exactly wrong, it's just an intellectually lazy argument to make.

Just one example of this time it's different is the income split between labor and capital. Historically it had been fixed at 70/30. This is across all industries, and all nations, since the industrial revolution. But now labor's share is down to just 62%. And that's happening in places like China and Mexico too, so it can't be simply due to offshoring. Source: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21588900...

Secondly, the number of jobs and job titles is entirely arbitrary.

That's not at all true. Automation has always created unemployment. There was no such thing as 3rd world before the industrial revolution. The economies of countries like China and India, which realized on a lot of textile production, collapsed when the industrial revolution took off in the UK. The UK exported both goods and unemployment. And what we call the 3rd world was brought into existence. We are seeing a very similar process today with Germany and the Southern belt of the EU. Germany too is exporting both its product and its unemployment.

If the advance of technology was truly putting people out of work, don't you think it would be evident by now?

Yes, I do. But I don't think we'd see the unemployment rate go up. I am sure we'll first see labor's share of income drop, and wages should stagnate. Which is quite similar to what we are indeed seeing right now.

[eli_gottlieb]

Technology has always reduced the total amount of work people need to do. That's why we now work 40-hour work-weeks in service outlets, factories, or offices instead of 100-hour work-weeks on farms.

The difference is that, once upon a time, we redefined "job" and "full-time" to balance between the economy's actual need for labor and humane living standards that allowed for active citizenship. We reduced the work-week and redefined a worker's life as involving more leisure, because our technology allowed us to do that.

These days, unemployment is high and labor participation is falling because technology has advanced, but we still expect the same work time. The result? A bifurcation of the labor market into a broad section of underemployed, unemployed, or just plain low-paid unskilled and semi-skilled workers, and a small cadre of overemployed professionals now working more than they ever previously did.

Stop trying to pretend the problem isn't there, and let's just fix it.

[shit_parade]

>The narrative that machines will "eat" all the jobs leaving the mass of humanity unemployed is an easy to understand story, but it hasn't ever come to pass and probably won't for reasons that don't need to be detailed in this comment.

It is already happening, just take a look at graphs of labor rate participation against productivity. Will it happen to 'all the jobs', no, but will it leave masses of humanity unemployed? Yeah that is already happening, EU unemployment for those under 30 is staggering.