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Are jobs obsolete?

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Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#111

Post by [deleted] »

jerrya wrote: post #62
hpvic03 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so impossible to believe. The objection I often hear (and I recall that this is PG's stance as well) is that as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place. For example, as the article mentioned, the former toll booth operator could now repair the automated toll booth system. So far this general idea has been true. Before computers existed as we know them, "computers" were people who did lengthy comput…

I agree. In the Star Trek economy (afaik), the inwention of the replicator was key to the end of money and the end of a scarcity based economy. Well, we already have a replicator for much of the economy $ cp And it looks as though soon we'll have some very advanced robots that will be able to automate most mundane jobs. So maybe this is good and we can all become Platos, relaxing, philosophizing, self-actualizing at…

[deleted]

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#112

Post by brazzy »

s_kilk wrote: post #101
hpvic03 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so impossible to believe. The objection I often hear (and I recall that this is PG's stance as well) is that as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place. For example, as the article mentioned, the former toll booth operator could now repair the automated toll booth system. So far this general idea has been true. Before computers existed as we know them, "computers" were people who did lengthy comput…

>> We may be reaching a discontinuous point on the economic timeline. I tend to agree. Up until about a year ago I was working as a cinema projectionist for a very successful UK cinema chain. It was a decent job, right up until the point where the company announced a plan to completely replace all 35mm projectors with new digital machines. Now, up until this point we had maybe 3 Digital projectors already installed a…

Nonsense. Companies can want to eliminate jobs till the cows come home and write it on their Santa wishlist - whether they actually can eliminate jobs is determined mostly by technology.

In your example, either the company bought new, more technologically advanced digital projectors that actually do need much less supervision and maintenance, or their plan simply failed and they had to re-hire people to run and repair the projectors after they had some expensive downtime and/or management and technical staff burnt out or quit.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#113

Post by tatsuke95 »

s_kilk wrote: post #101
hpvic03 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so impossible to believe. The objection I often hear (and I recall that this is PG's stance as well) is that as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place. For example, as the article mentioned, the former toll booth operator could now repair the automated toll booth system. So far this general idea has been true. Before computers existed as we know them, "computers" were people who did lengthy comput…

>> We may be reaching a discontinuous point on the economic timeline. I tend to agree. Up until about a year ago I was working as a cinema projectionist for a very successful UK cinema chain. It was a decent job, right up until the point where the company announced a plan to completely replace all 35mm projectors with new digital machines. Now, up until this point we had maybe 3 Digital projectors already installed a…

>"This is when I realised that the old myth of "as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place" wasn't true. The company had no intention of generating new work"

The jobs are very unlikely to be created at the point of elimination. The theory is that the jobs will be created somewhere else. And remember, somewhere else is now global.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#114

Post by moddedarmstrong »

zanny wrote: post #13

It is more a problem of motivation. Since we have not yet stopped universal entropy to guarantee our unending existance forever, we still have progress to be made. Too bad we have probably billions of human beings not contributing towards that progress. We need people motivated to enter the sciences and engineering disciplines to make the future happen. We will probably see our means of survival fully automated in ou…

I accept that humanities continuation as a species depends on science/tech, there has to be more to it. Living longer and expanding further should be the how, not the why.

Unifying people into action is historically only possible by getting them to engage in shared values and beliefs. We need culture, politics, philosophy and, dare I say it, religion to motivate people into tackling these problems. Promoting science beyond these seems unlikely to result in the kind of Utopian vision you are talking about.

Also, is toiling always such a bad thing? Hard work can be rewarding too.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#115

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

lucaspiller wrote: post #95
devs1010 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we are taxed at consumption as well, I'm assuming you mean you want even higher sales tax than we currently have but no income tax? I have felt that the current sales tax of up to 10% in some places is already fairly high as is

10%? Wow! Here in Ireland income tax is 20% on the first €32,000 and 40% above that. VAT (sales tax) is at 23%.

Ireland's quite weird in terms of tax policy internationally. We have supposedly low rates of income tax, high sales taxes and low corporate tax. Ireland also has more deductible than I've seen in the UK. I went looking for things I could use to reduce my tax bill (there's loads in Ireland), but there appeared to be no comparable tax reliefs available for me in the UK :(.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#116

Post by speleding »

david927 wrote: post #94
angstrom wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak Labor. Anyone that's ever argued this in the past 200 years has been called a luddite. Yet, in the past 40 years as computers have automated more work, both labor and white collar, it's become clear that the productivity gains are only making it into the pockets of the 20% or so that own investments.

That's exactly right. Recently Foxconn in China has started to replace some of its workers with automation. Think about that: when even low paid work in China can't beat automation, you have a problem. There used to be a place for unskilled/semi-skilled labor: factory work, travel agents, insurance sales people. It's what created the middle class. And it's gone. Now you have the owners of the travel web site making a…

If unskilled labor is no longer needed for factory work it becomes available again for other low cost service work. A century ago lots of families employed a nanny, a cook, a cleaning lady and a gardener. Perhaps we will return to that time.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#117

Post by jonnathanson »

hpvic03 wrote: post #47
jerrya wrote: post #10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin, published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group.[1] In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as information technology eliminates tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and servic…

It's not so impossible to believe. The objection I often hear (and I recall that this is PG's stance as well) is that as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place. For example, as the article mentioned, the former toll booth operator could now repair the automated toll booth system. So far this general idea has been true. Before computers existed as we know them, "computers" were people who did lengthy comput…

In theory, gains in productivity from computerized resources would replace the need for human work. (Voicemail and word processors made secretaries obsolete in many organizations, for instance). But in practice, work has simply grown more complex and more voluminous to accommodate the productivity gains.

Consider the humble spreadsheet, arguably the most powerful business innovation of the last 50 years. Now that people can calculate complex models in hours, not weeks, have the fields of corporate finance and forecasting gone away? Hardly. If anything, more work gets packed into each day to fill the vacuum left by not having to crunch numbers on paper for days on end. And the level of sophistication going into deal analysis has increased, allowing people to spend more time planning and less time bean-counting.

Sure, some jobs have been in outright decline since the rise of technology. Secretaries, human computers (sorry, Frank Herbert!), many factory workers, and so forth. But the net amount of work to be done hasn't decreased. If anything, it's increased dramatically. It's just shifted to the knowledge-worker side. And knowledge workers' workloads have skyrocketed. All of this technology has actually made us busier and more productive, because it has allowed us to do more each day.

The theory that technology replaces the need for X or Y work is based on the flawed assumption that the total need for X or Y work remains static over time. In the knowledge worker's domain, it does not. It turns out that meeting the need for X and Y actually increases the need for, or at least the expectation of, more X and Y. In this sense, I tend to agree with PG's argument (and the arguments of those like him).

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#118

Post by zerostar07 »

aseembehl wrote: post #103

Captain Jean-Luc Picard states in the film Star Trek: First Contact that "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." Disclaimer: Copied from the comments on the original article.

Generally, one ought to start thinking about this instead of the "End of jobs". Jobs are an industrial-era economic construction, work is something we always had and will probably always have, even as an evolutionary relic.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#119

Post by paraschopra »

In 1900s, with Nietzsche, we killed God but at least people had distractions of "work".

But in 2000s, we are slowly killing work itself and replacing it with automaton.

Without a world with religion or necessary work, I wonder, what is there for (majority of) humans to "cling to"? Without distractions, won't their "freedom" drive them insane? Without God and profession, what would give meaning to their life?

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#120

Post by ArtB »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #113
s_kilk wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We may be reaching a discontinuous point on the economic timeline. I tend to agree. Up until about a year ago I was working as a cinema projectionist for a very successful UK cinema chain. It was a decent job, right up until the point where the company announced a plan to completely replace all 35mm projectors with new digital machines. Now, up until this point we had maybe 3 Digital projectors already installed a…

> "This is when I realised that the old myth of "as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place" wasn't true. The company had no intention of generating new work" The jobs are very unlikely to be created at the point of elimination. The theory is that the jobs will be created somewhere else. And remember, somewhere else is now global.

Also, no one says the job will be at a comparable skill-level. The jobs that are often created are much more technologically sophisticated so that those who lose them have no where to go while those well off merely get more employment options. My genuine concern is that the jobs that can provide people with just a decent lifestyle are beyond the mental talents of many people.
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