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We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

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Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#31

Post by AdamTReineke »

pg wrote: post #24

"Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth." Anyone who wants to make the claim that technology is net killing jobs has to be prepared to answer the question: why now? Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries. It's possible that technology could start to net kill jobs. But why now, when it hasn't in the past?

Haven't we finally reached the point where all the discoveries of the Industrial Age and Information Age are coming together to enable companies to produce goods as efficiently as humanly possible? And won't advances in AI and robotics enable us to push beyond those human limits?

I'd say that it hasn't in the past because up until 60 years ago, humans were the decision makers doing everything.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#33

Post by stonemetal »

TomOfTTB wrote: post #7
_delirium wrote: post #3

While this is not necessarily untrue, the prediction has been made a few times before, most notably during the early-20th-century wave of automation. Even the rather intelligent Bertrand Russell wrote a book in 1923, "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization", which spent a good deal of time worrying about that problem (though some of the other stuff he worried about did come closer to being true, like the prevalence…

I'm in the middle here. I don't think this piece holds much weight because he's connecting two unrelated phenomenon (a downturn caused by overuse of credit and automation). Note the retailers he cites (Circuit City, Sharper Image, KB Toys) were generally killed off by other local retailers (most notably Walmart but also Best Buy, Toys R Us, etc...) That said I do believe automation will begin to eat away at jobs when…

That said I do believe automation will begin to eat away at jobs when we get to the point where robotics can duplicate the functions performed by low end labor.

I have seen tire factories where the only time a tire is touched by a human is at the end of the line QC inspections. They basically have two types of workers operators who feed raw materials in to the machines and clear minor jams, and mechanics who perform maintenance and repair broken machines. Sure the change over to industrial automation isn't complete but it is much further along than you might suppose.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#34

Post by tsotha »

AdamTReineke wrote: post #31
pg wrote: post #24

"Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth." Anyone who wants to make the claim that technology is net killing jobs has to be prepared to answer the question: why now? Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries. It's possible that technology could start to net kill jobs. But why now, when it hasn't in the past?

Haven't we finally reached the point where all the discoveries of the Industrial Age and Information Age are coming together to enable companies to produce goods as efficiently as humanly possible? And won't advances in AI and robotics enable us to push beyond those human limits? I'd say that it hasn't in the past because up until 60 years ago, humans were the decision makers doing everything.

So what's the big technological difference between this year and, say, four years ago? Why was unemployment below 5% then?

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#35

Post by curt »

pg wrote: post #24

"Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth." Anyone who wants to make the claim that technology is net killing jobs has to be prepared to answer the question: why now? Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries. It's possible that technology could start to net kill jobs. But why now, when it hasn't in the past?

Exactly. How about all the unemployed horseshoe manufacturers (blacksmiths)? Technology doesn't kill jobs, it improves efficiency so capital can be deployed elsewhere. The problem today are the hurtles government places in the way in the form of regulations and taxes that inhibit the efficient deployment of capital.

The divergence is that to form a single job a knowledge worker requires far less capital compared to a manufacturing job. A developer needs 10k in equipment to be productive compared to 100k's for a manufacturing job. When you actually adjust for the US regulatory and tax environment the gap increases even more, making overseas manufacturing a no-brainer.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#37

Post by lukifer »

I've noticed this trend, and it's greatly concerning. There are plenty of downsides to wage slavery, but overall there has been a historical improvement to human dignity and quality of life due to people being useful as units of production.

As technology diminishes this and there are fewer roles that need to be fulfilled by actual humans, people will be forced to viciously compete over fewer and fewer jobs to stay out of abject poverty. So-called "knowledge work" isn't safe either, as these jobs gradually get gobbled up by software and specialized AI algorithms.

Maybe the unemployed will be able to invent new jobs for themselves to create more wealth; maybe technology advances will make a welfare state trivially cheap to maintain. But I think the prospects for mass poverty are very real.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#38

Post by VladRussian »

ikarous wrote: post #17
petercooper wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of others have predicted the rise of unemployment in proportion to increased automation, and they've been wrong before. Have they? In the long term, definitely, but in the short term, a sharp increase in automation is sure to have an effect on the amount of human labor required. Isn't a normal cycle that technology begins to replace workers but then those workers retrain and then get new types of jobs and reco…

I was referring to the long term, but you make a good point. Asimov posited that increased automation would temporarily increase unemployment but that the net benefit would always be positive. He thought that automation would allow human beings to focus on more interesting and rewarding jobs. The unspoken assumption is that these more interesting jobs are plentiful enough to support the displaced workers assuming tha…

>He thought that automation would allow human beings to focus on more interesting and rewarding jobs.

i think he is right. There is a bunch of problems in theoretical physics that somebody need to attend to asap and specifically there are some in gravitational waves theory that i'd like to get into as soon as somebody automate the enterprise software development. In the meantime we can't find people to fill open positions (30%) in our department.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#39

Post by tsotha »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #29
mdasen wrote: post #22

Do you have everything you want in life? I don't just mean, "do you have everything you want of what you could purchase with money today?" I mean everything you could want. Articles like this one make me feel like there isn't a lot left to do in the world - that we're close to stopping our progress toward better living standards. If we are stopping or slowing our progress toward higher living standards, then yes effi…

While I agree with you, history also shows that unemployment and wealth disparity often do rise high enough to cause massive civil unrest. Yes, high unemployment isn't permanent or a long-term trend. That isn't really relevant though when you're talking about the prospect of blood in the streets prior to returning to decent levels. The US seems completely arrogant in the sense that they don't seem to think this can h…

Or maybe it's not wealth disparity that causes civil unrest, but rather the absolute level of poverty on the low end. Here in the US there's no sign of any kind of generalized unrest. Far less than there was in the 70s when, according to the "disparity causes unrest" theory there should have been even less.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#40

Post by petercooper »

ikarous wrote: post #17
petercooper wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of others have predicted the rise of unemployment in proportion to increased automation, and they've been wrong before. Have they? In the long term, definitely, but in the short term, a sharp increase in automation is sure to have an effect on the amount of human labor required. Isn't a normal cycle that technology begins to replace workers but then those workers retrain and then get new types of jobs and reco…

I was referring to the long term, but you make a good point. Asimov posited that increased automation would temporarily increase unemployment but that the net benefit would always be positive. He thought that automation would allow human beings to focus on more interesting and rewarding jobs. The unspoken assumption is that these more interesting jobs are plentiful enough to support the displaced workers assuming tha…

Ok, cool, seems like we're thinking along similar lines :-) The problem I see, however, is perhaps different to the one you pose. As distasteful as this sounds, I suggest that perhaps the "average" person is ill equipped to deal with those more interesting and rewarding jobs, given that they're likely to require significant technical or creative skills.

Can we bring "the masses", as it were, up to the levels of talent and expertise we'll require in the future, or is there a limit to how good our education and training can be? Will we reach a point where a small number of people are, effectively, supporting the majority? A mini version of this seems to be happening in some Western countries with people who've lived their entire lives on welfare. Perhaps the future is just one where more of us end up on welfare and the government keeps us going on the spoils of the extremely smart and/or powerful.

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