21–30 of 47 posts
There will be industries and jobs enabled by today's technologies, that we can't picture today. My bet is on biotechnology. We know only a very small amount about the systems of life.
why would anyone want to job in the first place...? If you're in a place where you need to mindlessly execute duties, it's not a good place.
Could the inventors of the loom, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, have imagined the types of jobs most of have today, in the morning of the Information Revolution? I doubt it. There will be industries and jobs enabled by today's technologies, that we can't picture today. My bet is on biotechnology. We know only a very small amount about the systems of life.
We can't pretend that a new tool for humans to use is equivalent to a fully autonomous robot which can think for itself beyond any human capacity. Those two things are fundamentally un-alike.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TL;DR: > It is difficult to imagine productive activities that cannot be automated—mining, construction, many medical services, house cleaning: the list goes on and on. > A decline in the demand for labor, caused by automation, will result in lower wages, without necessarily producing an increase in employment (work effort will not grow if there is no work), let alone an increase in national income. However, as he al…
To extrapolate on what you said: "which will in turn allow people to live with much less money", I think this is absolutely true but the endgame is that most things will be nearly free but people will have no money to buy them. For example computers are effectively free now, they are widely available on Craigslist for under $100 and capable smartphones are bundled into most cellular plans. Flat screen TVs, for all th…
How do you think a non-violent revolt can succeed in a society where mercenaries keep the peace? Furthermore, what if these mercenaries are autonomous systems which require very few skilled individuals to operate? Surely they would simply work for the highest bidders, and viciously enforce whatever "society" these bidders require.
The truth is, going forward, an ever larger percentage of people (specifically their labor) will be deprecated by superior technology (capital). In fact, as technology progresses, most people will become an operating cost in society, as the cost of keeping the majority of people alive will outweigh their total lifetime labor contribution. This is the reality of capital in the technological era. Economics doesn't break down, it just means capital gets more and more of the production pie, and labor gets less.
It will be a brave new world, but in no way will it be better than now. The Dark Ages happened, and they can happen again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the owners of capital accept being taxed to fund that Given that the alternative seems to be riots and potentially a revolution, I think they will see that it is in their benefit to keep the population living reasonably well.
The incentives are wrong. Each taxpayer would like to reduce his own burden specifically, but everyone shares the cost of riots and revolution (which is mostly harder on the poor, anyway). Not having riots and revolution is a common good.
"In the 19th century, the maturation and standardization of weaving technology finally brought long-overdue raises to textile workers." Wow. Way to completely write out of the story the PEOPLE who fought tooth-and-nail to get those raises, WaPo.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls Of course, acknowledging the real struggle might seriously impact the whole "things will get better by themselves, just keep…
This article makes much more sense when viewed in the light of Amazon's current PR problems due to their treatment of poorly paid warehouse workers. They are desperately trying to automate as fast as possible, and this piece tries its best to spin it as a win-win for everyone.
To write an entire article using historical textile production as an example and not mention the impacts of contemporary globalization on the same industry is confusing at best and hopelessly optimistic at worst.
That said, there are some omissions. The American Colonies / Early United States were labor-constrained. The economy was growing rapidly, and there simply weren't enough warm bodies to meet demand (discussed in Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter VII). Wages were high, supplies of finished goods were limited, and the benefits of industrialization were high. This contrasted with England in which factories drew masses of labor from the countryside, city populations exploded (Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham grew from small towns of 4,000 - 6,000 in 1685 to major cities of 393,000 - 552,000 by 1881, see Arnold Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution), and working conditions in general were abysmal.
Which suggests other reasons why picking the Lowell factories as the analysis point is somewhat misguided. Toynbee's Lectures paint a markedly different picture of how industrialization proceeded in the UK.
The challenge now is that virtually all basic needs of survival ... and then some ... are satisfied. Does this mean that there's no additional demand or demand growth possible? No. But ... the situation's markedly different from the late 18th century.
Too: the dawn of the Industrial Revolution was a period in which there were vast untapped natural resources -- virgin land (or, if you prefer, newly cleared land by way of the aboriginal genocide and pandemics) in the Americas, forests, untilled prairies, and of course, untold gigatons of coal, oil, and gas in the ground. William Stanley Jevons noted that increased efficiencies tended to increase consumption of resources by increasing their marginal utility (the so-called Jevons Paradox)
We're looking at a constrained resource environment going out, which may well invert the logic of Jevons Paradox and see fewer resources consumed with increasing efficiency. Which would mean that automation would idle, not employ, hands.
One of the arguments of this article is that as technology stabilizes we will be able to demand higher pay. Technology will likely not stabilize.
Internet technology has stabilized already: we're still using HTML, HTTP, javascript, etc. The Space Jam website from 1996 still loads in a browser. Most servers and clients still use IPv4. Etc.
Would a web designer from 1996 have a job in today's market? In the same vein, it would be like saying the autoloom would still work today, obviously it would, but no one would use it to produce goods to sell commercially.
"In the 19th century, the maturation and standardization of weaving technology finally brought long-overdue raises to textile workers." Wow. Way to completely write out of the story the PEOPLE who fought tooth-and-nail to get those raises, WaPo.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls Of course, acknowledging the real struggle might seriously impact the whole "things will get better by themselves, just keep…
Another employer offers Fred $3, and so on, until Fred is making ($10 - opportunitycost).
In other words, Fred being way underpaid according to the value he produces is an unstable situation.
"In the 19th century, the maturation and standardization of weaving technology finally brought long-overdue raises to textile workers." Wow. Way to completely write out of the story the PEOPLE who fought tooth-and-nail to get those raises, WaPo.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls Of course, acknowledging the real struggle might seriously impact the whole "things will get better by themselves, just keep…
Keep in mind that The Washington Post was recently acquired by Jeff Bezos. This article makes much more sense when viewed in the light of Amazon's current PR problems due to their treatment of poorly paid warehouse workers. They are desperately trying to automate as fast as possible, and this piece tries its best to spin it as a win-win for everyone.