Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 115 posts

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#61

Post by mikeg8 »

fullshark wrote: post #14
brycehamrick wrote: post #7

I'm not a Yang supporter but this article is total garbage. Slate has been very disappointing lately. The key takeaway seems to be while Yang says automation has displaced jobs there's a lack of academic consensus on the weight placed between trade policy and technology improvements; but everyone agrees both have had a significant effect. Ok... so we shouldn't be coming up with a plan for how to address economic chan…

Agreed, there are some good points in the piece, but the headline and concluding paragraph are not supported by the body.

Curious as to what you identified as a good point? I didn’t really see any to be honest

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#62

Post by darkmoney007 »

kadoban wrote: post #8

"[...] Long-haul truckers, who tend to make middle-class wages, will be replaced by poorly paid drivers tasked with steering autonomous vehicles through tricky city streets, which onboard navigation systems handle less well than highways. That’s not all jobs disappearing. It’s jobs changing." Uhm, that's halfway decent careers turning into far fewer and shittier jobs. That's jobs disappearing. And it ignores that eve…

That's BS about being capable of navigating Interstate highways autonomously.

Whoever does the research needs go actually go along an Over The Road truck driver and actually see what challenges technology face.

Different highways with crumpling road markers. Severe weather. Unpredictable human drivers. Fueling. Construction sites and their differences between displaying markers.

I do not see autonomous technology taking over long haul truckers anytime soon, especially if the state and federal government doesn't maintain the highways and keeps cutting budget.

The few scenarios where the present technology can handle is a local route that has greatly maintained roads and stable weather. Even in this case, it's foolish to think human drivers will not be as careless as before. In fact, I predict they will think its so safe that they will cut the truck off ever closer, thus creating more disasters.

Source: I'm a trucker and know the challenges computer vision and its sensors could possibly face.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#63

Post by ctdonath »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #43
PakG1 wrote: post #3

In a 2018 paper, UC–Berkeley sociologist Steve Viscelli suggested that in the most likely scenario, long-haul truckers, who tend to make middle-class wages, will be replaced by poorly paid drivers tasked with steering autonomous vehicles through tricky city streets, which onboard navigation systems handle less well than highways. That’s not all jobs disappearing. It’s jobs changing. I'm not sure if the author is clai…

Why would the new jobs be lower pay? If a truck driver can operate one truck while an autonomous truck operator can operate say 10, then the latter's marginal revenue is 10x more. Technology makes people more productive, which leads to greater wealth and higher pay.

Making productivity easier decreases the value of that productivity. Their wealth & pay may increase, but not as a 1:1 ratio to productivity.

Were that not the case, there would be no incentive for customers to select the new service.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#64

Post by MilnerRoute »

trhway wrote: post #48
MilnerRoute wrote: post #27

The article's most compelling point for me is the graph it links to showing all U.S. manufacturing jobs from 1939 to 2009. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP There's a big, sudden drop in 2000. It also cites a paper that says that the number of factories in the U.S. has been dropping (between 2000 and 2014)...

>There's a big, sudden drop in 2000. actually it is in 2001. Also in 2008. The years of big busts.

Yeah, but the jobs never come back after those drops. (It's almost entirely a one-way trend over the last 19 years...)

There's a big three-year drop that starts in 2001. Then it goes from that steep drop to a slowly-declining drop -- before that next massive "2008" drop (which lasts through December of 2009).

So it seems plausible that the loss of jobs was caused by specific events. (Whereas if it were the creep of automation, it seems like it'd be happening more gradually, factory by factory....)

I guess you can argue that the economic hardship of a bust forced companies into sudden and widespread cost-cutting measures like replacing humans with robots. But another study cited in the article argues against that theory. (The article acknowledges that automation has taken some jobs, but that it's a much smaller fraction, and that latching onto that as the single explanation makes us miss the other factors -- as well as possible solutions.)

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#65

Post by aey »

Yang is totally wrong about automation. The main cause of the shift of manufacturing from US to China is trade policy and China’s monetary policy.

If automation was the problem, then US would be price competitive on goods with China. Somehow US automation is only good enough to eliminate jobs in the US, but not good enough to compete with cheap labor in China.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#66

Post by mikedilger »

PakG1 wrote: post #42
mikedilger wrote: post #39

This complaint about robots and AI taking all our jobs is hundreds of years old. Still hasn't happened. US is at record levels of employment. Humans are terrible at predicting the future. Let's just wait and see and react when it actually happens. My guess... there will be plenty of jobs for humans for thousands of years to come. Ever since the industrial revolution jobs have gone by the wayside. We no longer have wa…

If you just look at the jobs going away, you're missing the other side of the picture, the jobs being created. I don't think Yang is missing the other side of the picture. He's saying that society sucks at getting displaced people to the other side in a humane manner.

I don't disagree with that.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#67

Post by empath75 »

darkmoney007 wrote: post #62
kadoban wrote: post #8

"[...] Long-haul truckers, who tend to make middle-class wages, will be replaced by poorly paid drivers tasked with steering autonomous vehicles through tricky city streets, which onboard navigation systems handle less well than highways. That’s not all jobs disappearing. It’s jobs changing." Uhm, that's halfway decent careers turning into far fewer and shittier jobs. That's jobs disappearing. And it ignores that eve…

That's BS about being capable of navigating Interstate highways autonomously. Whoever does the research needs go actually go along an Over The Road truck driver and actually see what challenges technology face. Different highways with crumpling road markers. Severe weather. Unpredictable human drivers. Fueling. Construction sites and their differences between displaying markers. I do not see autonomous technology tak…

Probably caravans where you have one driver per 3 trucks will be first or something similar to that.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#69

Post by nyhc99 »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #16
PakG1 wrote: post #3

In a 2018 paper, UC–Berkeley sociologist Steve Viscelli suggested that in the most likely scenario, long-haul truckers, who tend to make middle-class wages, will be replaced by poorly paid drivers tasked with steering autonomous vehicles through tricky city streets, which onboard navigation systems handle less well than highways. That’s not all jobs disappearing. It’s jobs changing. I'm not sure if the author is clai…

Yeah, honestly I don't really understand the article's point. Is it that say McDonalds switching to electronic kiosks to order your burger is going to create as MANY tech jobs as it took away? Because that doesn't pass the smell test.

There were a slew of anti-yang articles that came out from the leftmost media sources immediately after the debate, owing to the fact that Yang made Elizabeth Warren look unprepared in her answer about job loss.

Andrew Yang, snake oil salesman: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/andrew-yang-tech-entr...

Is Yang doing more harm than good to the case for universal income?: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/16/andrew-ya...

Andrew Yang is Full of it: https://slate.com/business/2019/10/andrew-yang-automation-un...

There was one more I can't find. It's good to be generating hit pieces; it means someone views you as a threat.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#70

Post by lend000 »

PakG1 wrote: post #3

In a 2018 paper, UC–Berkeley sociologist Steve Viscelli suggested that in the most likely scenario, long-haul truckers, who tend to make middle-class wages, will be replaced by poorly paid drivers tasked with steering autonomous vehicles through tricky city streets, which onboard navigation systems handle less well than highways. That’s not all jobs disappearing. It’s jobs changing. I'm not sure if the author is clai…

If only we hadn't invented the printing press, scribes would still be making good wages. Somehow everybody found a job afterwards, though -- the economy adjusts with an increased supply of labor. UBI is a promising antidote for short term automation shocks, which Yang is also a proponent of.
Post reply on HN