What To Do About The Long-Term Implications of Automation

I wonder who started that ridiculous rumour? A car is only as good as the person.caring for it, like training a dog.

 

sheesh. Again, as I pointed out, automation is just another way that efficiencies will rise. Still the same people assuming it will be catastrophic are going on with the same presumptions that no new jobs will be created, that there won't be any benefit to freeing up labor. We use to need more than 90% of the population to work in agriculture, but the development of things like tractors improved farming output. Still waiting to hear why tractors and improved farming techniques were a bad thing.

 

I don't believe that's the argument being made. At least I hope not.

There will be new jobs created. The question has more to do with what the qualifications will be for those new jobs.

Again, when we moved from agriculture to manufacturing, qualifications changed and we had to create high school because of that change.

On average, the jobs being created now and into the future are considered highly likely to require more education. Also, there is more rapid change in the job market, meaning that an increasing number of Americans will need to find different jobs and will have to do that more frequently. People are better able to move between jobs when they have more education and/or training.

We've seen the impact on those who have had careers in manual work related to manufacturing, mining, etc.

 

It's not being directly made, but it is implicitly being made - because automation is just another rapid growth of efficiency, and we've seen that many times before. It's never been a bad thing for society. It has always left some people with short term losses, as they jobs they had go away, but new venues open up for labor.

So over the short term there would be growing pains for the working class, but there is no rational reason to expect even the working class themselves to be worse off in the long-run.

 

I believe there will be less opportunity for good paying jobs for those who have less education and training.

Even today, simply having a college degree isn't guaranteeing employment in one's field of study as it once did. Employers are saying, "You have a college degree in what we do. Good. Now, what's your experience."

This last election cycle demonstrated that there are a significant number of manufacturing workers who have been left behind. A confirmation of that is looking at manufacturing employment stats, which show that US manufacturing recovered within a year or two after the 2008 recession, but employment has not even recovered to today.

We can't afford to look at that and just claim it was temporary. That has affected significant portions of the productive years of the lives of too many Americans to be written off so easily.

Also, guessing that was a one time phenomenon isn't good enough, either. Change is happening at an increasing pace. We're not going back.

 

For me, automation/robotics means work. That's what I do more than not. But even for those of us in the field, it is a constant race to keep up. I've been doing this for over 20 years and the new technology just keeps coming faster and faster. I have to learn some new software platform perhaps 2 to 6 times a year. It never stops. By the time I make the rounds and get up to date with all the latest. I have to start at the beginning all over again.

Imagine if Windows released a new platform 2-6 times a year. That is pretty much what it's like for me.

 

I'm not in that industry, but that's certainly consistent with my impression.

I think there are those whose impression is that once you've learned an automation system you're good to go. But, that's just not anything like the real world - even today, let alone in the future.

Someone new entering your field has a serious challenge ahead of them.

 

I can only tell you that if you put the government in charge of figuring that out, the qualifications will be whoever can figure out how to work with constantly evolving legislation. And we'll all end up wondering what the hell happened. Surely it was a good idea to let a bunch of elected officials tell employers what kind of people they should hire, and how they should do their jobs, how much they should get paid, and definitely don't hire white males because they're unholy minions of the dark lord.

So yeah, you guys continue to try and micromanage the collective's way towards success using the wrong tools for the job, but don't say I didn't warn you when your ideas fail.

 

We know how to do college. I suspect we can figure out how to do vocational training. Some are doing that now.

Corporations do the hiring, so I'm not sure what your concern is there. Is it the minimum wage issue? If people can't live on their wages, then I end up paying to support their employer - which I'm not excited about doing. Plus, I like it when employees have buying power.

 

The cotton gin made slaves more profitable and arguably caused the Civil War. Is this seriously the level of historical knowledge that you base your reasoning on?

 

I might have missed it, but has no one brought up AI? People keep saying "Well all those robots are going to need maintenance and people to design them. We're going to need people to create other things."

What happens when AI evolves and now robots are designing and maintaining other robots? What happens when robots are creating new things?

 

I have thought more about this topic, and upon seeing other academic "research" on it, have come to the conclusion it is a typical gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex hoax of the type often perpetrated during opposing Administrations when the economy is good. Of course the Complex can't laud the good economy, so its academic and MSM branches start pushing and cross-pollinating gloom and doom like this paper tiger and hoping it scares people. Therefore, I doubt you would be interested in my further honest feedback, and it wouldn't be particularly constructive within the thread, unless you want to see my standard spiel against the Complex adapted to this issue. I have already posted that in another thread on the topic in current events, so won't bother bloating the thread with it here.

As far as teachers and bureaucrats above the municipal level, yes I think they will be early in line for replacement by automation, and as far as what they will do once displaced, I agree with Troianii's previously posted points on that.

 

1: Train everyone for these future jobs. That means no financial aid for english, liberal arts, and psychology majors.
2: Cap the max workweek starting at 40 hours and any time over is time-and-a-half pay. Begin reducing this as automation takes over to maintain universal employment.
3: The profits from automation will go to the rich. So make sure that corporate taxes and progressive income taxes shift wealth back to the middle class and poor though income tax refunds.

Result: Automation will make production far more cheap and everyone will benefit and won't have to work as much as machines do more.

 

After NAFTA was done in the 90's I traveled to Mexico for work. I was training the folks there.One reason I took the job was to see what was going on at ground level. I saw folks making products they could not afford to buy.

The question I had was, how is reducing the customer base good for any economy?

I have been working with advanced automation for the past 20 years or so. The same question comes to my mind.

Here is what I see playing out: People lose jobs due to automation. That means less customers to buy products. It also means fewer people paying taxes. So fewer service sector jobs and fewer government jobs which leads to fewer customers and fewer tax payers....see the cycle?

 

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So given the above, don't you think it makes sense for us to at least start considering what we might do to restructure our society in preparation for this next major shift in order to ensure that living standards for all sectors are maintained​

 

Is that even possible? People will probably be lucky to have enough food to survive. I doubt maintaining the living standard will be anyone's concern a few decades from now.

 

I didn't see that in the OP - I think the idea of deliberate social changes is something you read into the past. These things happened rather organically - there was no reordering of society on a top-down level, and certainly not from the government. These changes happened organically.

ultimately. That's a pretty key word there. In the short-term it didn't lead to that, it wasn't a smooth, near-instantaneous transition to better jobs. In early American history women mostly worked out of home - factory owners had to scrounge to find workers, and had to get creative to find ways to draw in female workers. Henry Ford's assembly line disrupted many markets, and left many workers unemployed.

Key here is that creative destruction ultimately leads to the improvement of the lives of the whole, and in the long-term usually for all. One such example is the so-called "netflix effect". About the time that netflix was founded, there were about 175,000 workers employed in video rental. Now there are less than 10,000. Netflix killed off businesses like blockbuster, and it's now bleeding traditional cable companies. Those people should be finding new employment - but stop and consider, for a moment, how much more video entertainment for how much less of a cost consumers are getting?

That differs, of course, from manufacturing, because we're use to manufacturing being highly compensated, and not to video rental. But people often forget, or are unaware, that the overcompensation in manufacturing is a contributing factor to the rapid loss of manufacturing jobs. After WW2 there was little manufacturing competition in the world - what existed before was largely in Europe and was mostly destroyed. Because there was so little competition unions could demand better compensation, and they got it - but when foreign manufacturing picked up again, it limited how much American manufacturing could - because so many American manufacturers were locked into untenable union contracts. Then, with the opening of China, manufacturing in third world countries (there are others, but China was a major shift) became vastly cheaper that even after accounting for shipping costs, domestic production just couldn't remain competitive.

Again, the kind of job explosion you're talking about that occurred during the industrial revolution wasn't overnight - it took many decades. You're mistaken in thinking that factories quickly offered higher wages - they didn't. There is a reason why early American factories (usually called "mills", because of how they were powered) primarily employed women. Factories weren't able to offer competitive wages, but the wages they offered were enough to entice women, who had few other opportunities for work. I'd recommend looking at the Lowell Mill system. Women would be offered sex-exclusive quarters by the mills, and it was an opportunity for them to supplement the income of their families at home or, quite commonly, save money for their marriage.

No, it doesn't. These things have always occurred organically, and they will continue to. They've always ended up improving the lives of the people overall - and they will continue to.

 

ORGANIC CHANGE
we can agree that virtually all historical change has been organic
So.... Of course it is true to say that “these things have always happened organically”

It is further true that no matter what we do, inorganic change cannot be divorced from organic change... so that attempts at planning (inorganic change) will inherently include a component of organic adaption

And still further it is the case that the systems we are discussing are so complicated that it is extremely difficult to plan out the full impacts of attempted inorganic change... which leads us to observe failures of inorganic change... planning failures like communism

Do these facts lead us to the inexorable conclusion that so called organic change should be allowed to function alone with no interference... and that this strategy will inherently deliver the optimal results when compared to a hybrid approach that includes planning (inorganic change)? Do we have proof that all attempts at planning (inorganic change) are doomed to disaster? If not, what is the acceptable scope for central planning?


BTW
If you feel that I have poorly characterized your views on organic vs inorganic change, I look forward to better understanding your views on these topics

 

I am curious if there is any way to avoid this fate?

 

quality of life is measured in more metrics than just improving inefficiencies.

automation just makes the lifestyles of the poorer classes more turnkey than it already is, it does not improve upon present innovations in the context of progress for the human condition.

in other words half of Americans are still sick even though they have access to the best health care in the world, and they don't have the same standard of comfort and happiness as their richer compatriots.

https://www.google.com/search?sourc......1.1.64.psy-ab..12.6.2251.0...0.5zy4QVLmHuw