As a thought exercise, what will/would software developers do once 90% are made redundant by A.I. or something? Maybe "suck it up" and go back to school to become nurses?
An AI capable of doing 90% of the job of a software developer would likely be an AGI, and thus capable of doing 100% of the job of every human far better than the human can. At which point we stop worrying about details like "money" and "scarcity".
And start worrying about Skynet and robots with lasers!
If we are in some impossible world where that isn't true then I would say they should maybe go into medicine, engineering or law I guess.
Your question is too open ended to answer really. I have like 10 follow up questions to understand the parameters of the original question.
(I'm not directly responding to you, just your points which are typical responses.)
The general response when faced with uncomfortable questions is to avoid facing it - a "it would never happen to me" sort of rationalization. Or it would be an "impossible world" where my field would be illuminated.
Take "go into law" for example: I think the recent unemployment rate for new law graduates is something like 25%. Medicine is another field ripe for disruption (except nursing maybe).
"Just get another job" is another popular "let's not really think about the unthinkable" response.
It seems like many "answers" to the disruption problem boils down to "let them eat cake" and I was hoping to break through that.
Unemployment rate for doctors is around 1%.
The acceptance rate for medical school in the usa is 40%.
developers and cabbies are welcome to retrain.
To me, cabbies are local government employees. Let the government that licenses them pay them, just like they pay teachers and cops. So I am fine with this subsidy.
I don't have sympathy maybe because I own a bootstrapped software studio and we are constantly pivoting and growing. We did ios/web contract work, now we mostly do video games on Steam. Guess what though, video games on steam is getting tougher so we are also pivoting to something else right now.
Life is change. There was once a time when you could just ply your trade for your entire life, and for some people that is still true, but that is not some inalienable right that is owed to anyone.
Businesses constantly have to be on their grind and don't just get some guaranteed paycheck, and no one is entitled to such a thing. You have to provide a service to people that you can exchange for money. If you are not really doing that then you are not just entitled to money.
There's already an AI lawyer:
http://www.rossintelligence.com/ http://www.techinsider.io/the-worlds-first-artificially-inte...
and Watson played doctor:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ibms-watson-cracks-medical-mystery-...
Teach the AIs the other 10%, and get killed by Terminators ;-).
Its not that complicated actually.
Not all people can accomplish the same performance. Most HN users were just lucky. I am not sure where I would be today if I had not been born into a college educated family, had college educated friends and so on. Not all people have the same luck. Beyond that there are different levels of intelligence or just inability to concentrate etc. There are people on the job market who write and read on a level you had when you were 10 years old.
HN could really use some empathy. I would be ashamed if the cab driver, who actually lives next doors and gets up Friday and Saturday nights to drive drunk people home, because that's the only time you can make money here, would read this thread. When we talk about thousands of people we cannot just say "suck it up" and call it a day. HN should be the first to understand that the law of large numbers is at play here: People who do not want to work, will not matter for the whole group. If we do not want society to drift apart (which has enormous costs attached) we should solve the systemic issue.
10 years old? Really? Do we expect those people to be useful? Why not just give them a basic income and take them out of the workforce?
To your questions: An easy example would be immigrants, who I imagine could definitely be useful for society and still be bad at writing a foreign language.
Besides, many of the most important jobs there are do not require physics degrees but emotional intelligence and kindness. Everything that has to do with caring for living creatures. Many professions will disappear, but I expect these to be one of the last.