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Say What ? I don't understand this line of reasoning. For every job that is lost, a new one is potentially created due to these industrial revolutions. For example, when Cars were invented, I am sure a lot of buggy drivers lost their jobs. But they probably learned to drive and moved on. Yes when the transition happens, there may be a period of adjustment but why not. That is how we have been able to progress from the stone age till now.

If things like Robots take over blue collar jobs, I bet we will need the same humans to operate those Robots at some capacity. Computers, anyone ? And yes, may be AI will change things a bit more but I am sure we will come up with a way to manage that as well.

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> when Cars were invented, I am sure a lot of buggy drivers lost their jobs. But they probably learned to drive and moved on.

When cars were invented, a lot of horses lost their jobs. Now, there aren't as many horses as there were before.

The invention of the car has almost certainly led to more jobs, even if you were to include the jobs lost by horses. In part because there were exponentially more cars that needed manufacturing, maintenance, roads to drive on etc.

Heck, I'd be interested in seeing the ratio between total employment numbers before the advent of the car in the late 1800s and automobile-related jobs at their peak (US only).

Which jobs has the invention of car manufacturing robots created? Was it anywhere near as many jobs as were lost in Detroit? We still manufacture roughly the same amount of cars per capita, so these robots didn't enable any new industries.

The only reason to automate, is because buying robots is cheaper then paying employees, for the same amount of output produced. Since those robots were built by people, who had to get paid... Clearly, at the end of the day, you are employing fewer people.

New jobs get created when the amount of produced goods grows, as happened in the industrial revolution. Unfortunately, we are currently in a supply glut - we are demand-limited.

Robotics production, tooling, software engineering, and the jobs associated with whole new industries that are enabled by robotic manufacturing. Also, the jobs associated with more cars being on the road and being more reliable.

I think it's fair to say that there are instances of technology causing variable effects on the labor market over time (particularly variable effects on different parts). That's not a particularly interesting result though :)

More broadly, economists overwhelmingly think that increases in productivity lead to improvements in quality of life of people over time. Either by improving their labor situation (better, safer jobs) or their consumer situation (cheaper goods, more choice etc).

The logical counterexample would be technology we wish we would not have created, of which I can come up with a few examples, but far fewer than the reverse.

> Robotics production, tooling, software engineering, and the jobs associated with whole new industries that are enabled by robotic manufacturing.

All of which employ far fewer people (And collectively pay them far less in wages) then the assembly lines did. If they didn't, the robots would be more expensive then assembly line workers.

> Also, the jobs associated with more cars being on the road and being more reliable.

More reliable cars arguably produce fewer jobs. More importantly, per-capita car ownership hasn't changed in the US in the past 35 years.

> More broadly, economists overwhelmingly think that increases in productivity lead to improvements in quality of life of people over time. Either by improving their labor situation (better, safer jobs) or their consumer situation (cheaper goods, more choice etc).

Have these economists ever considered that automation scales non-linearly? In the industrial revolution, if you wanted to double the amount of widgets you made, you needed to double your workforce. If you want to double the number of widgets you make today, you buy more robots - this does not double your costs.

If we take automation to its logical conclusion (Wherein robots can build other robots), then its clear that that claim is nonesense. Yes, the labor situation is improved (All jobs are safe, because no jobs are left), and yes, the consumer situation is improved (All goods are now made by robots, all robots are now made by robots). Yet, it's a complete disaster - as with no employees, nobody has the money to buy all these cheap goods.

For a capitalist, the best state of affairs is when he doesn't have to employ anyone to produce products. If automation is adopted, it's because it gets a factory closer to that point.

(And let's not forget that exponential growth in the production of goods will bring about an unmitigated ecological disaster... We need to produce fewer things - not more.)

Per non-adjusted output manufacturing employs fewer than Farming, and farming employs fewer people than hunting and gathering. I'm not totally disagreeing with you. I just think this a turtles all the way down situation.

"Reliable cars" have built in positives for the consumers productivity (they're reliable).

Yes, the majority of economists have considered that and it's why they love automation so much! As costs to produce goods come down, competition (in a competitive market) forces the end price down. Then the end consumer saves money! In your example if the costs hit zero while the consumers still have money then it's a complete miracle!

For a capitalist, the best state of affairs is when everyone can consume her products with enough margin to beat other possible places to invest capital! If automation is adopted, it's because it gets a factory closer to that point.

> In your example if the costs hit zero while the consumers still have money then it's a complete miracle!

Whatever money consumers have will be quickly siphoned up by both the non-productive rentier class, and profit margins - just because the production costs zero human labour, doesn't mean that the cost of a product will be zero. (Who would want to build a factory, when you can't make any margin?)

I don't know; there were a hell of a lot of horses. Cars took generations to get up to that number. Not a good example?

And cars were preferable precisely because they took less effort/expense. It was actually cheaper to build a car than raise equivalent horse(s).

I'm speaking to not just the cars themselves, but all the jobs that are a derivative effect. As a quick example, horses were quite good on variable terrain. Whereas, we decided to dramatically increase spend on roads with the advent and popularization of the car.

I think you're missing the point in GP's analogy. _We are the horses._

>I bet we will need the same humans to operate those Robots at some capacity.

Not sure how you can explain this. You're saying that we would need 1 person per robot?

That's not even true currently, let alone in 10 years.

Not necessarily 1 Person per Robot. Lets say 1 Robot replaced 5 people. 1 of those handle the Robot directly, the other 4 are now pulled in things like maintenance, cleanup, admin etc that comes with running Robots. Just like for every computer programmer, we have QA, Testers, Sys Admins etc.

Firstly we do not need humans to "handle robots directly" now or even in the near future. Secondly it is highly wishful thinking that we would need 4 people to administrate or clean a robot as well. Going to be honest here, this doesn't hold any weight at all.

Besides, if it takes that many humans to maintain each robot, the robot is simply too expensive to replace those humans.

So you're at best replacing 5 skilled (higher paying) jobs with a robot + 5 unskilled (low paying) jobs, and at worst not replacing those jobs. Multiply this across the industry and how can you say this is a good thing for all these people?

>, the other 4 are now pulled in things like maintenance, cleanup, admin etc that comes with running Robots.

No they're not. The entire point of automation to be able to extract the benefits of labor without paying for the burden of human employees. Unemployment isn't a bug, it's a feature.

More likely - all five employees are fired, and whatever skills those employees had becomes useless to them, as regards future employment elsewhere.

Operation, maintenance, cleanup, admin, etc. gets farmed out to contractors for a fraction of those former employees' salaries, or else shared by the remaining employees. A few people wind up reaping the benefits, everyone else becomes surplus to requirements.

There's been huge gains in automation in various industries, yet the work force is only slowly decreasing in industry as a whole - and you can see that healthcare, business services, leisure employ more and more people:

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

You also have to admit that since minimum wage has not been tied to inflation that true automation is being staved off by sheer cost-savings.

Automating jobs requires a large up-front cost for a long-term payout. Industries have been cautious to move to full automation because for the last 20 years wages have, for the most part, favored the employer. Not to mention they can just move operations to Mexico to stave that off even further.

Governments also get upset when you destroy jobs, so it is beneficial for companies to say "boy I'd like this tax break or I might have to automate" as a way to blackmail governments for more tax breaks, less oversight, etc.

I'd love to bring up a bunch of statistics to refute what you're saying, and I may be wrong, but I don't believe many industries have actually moved over to full automation. Most of these automation processes are to improve productivity but keep jobs.

Globalists also don't want to deal with automation because that requires a fundamental change in economic systems, which significantly degrades their power. Globalist corporations and banks are probably in charge of most employment worldwide. Their reluctance to automate is basically in self-interest. Their ability to maintain jobs while improving productivity is in self-interest.

Once nimble companies thrive on automation and resist hostile takeovers, improve productivity, and drive prices down to the point where globalist bank-owned businesses have no choice but to follow suit, we will see this loss in jobs we are all talking about.

We will also see a change in the way economies work, most likely in some half-assed capitalist system that still manages to support the hyper wealthy.

> but I don't believe many industries have actually moved over to full automation. Most of these automation processes are to improve productivity but keep jobs.

I dont know, but every plant I have ever visited in the past 10 years has about no folks in the production area - most of the lines are completely automated. Yet they require lots of people for designing new lines and new products, planning for newer productions, managing inventories, shipments, etc... and all these folks are already aided in the work by software so make them more productive.

I don't see industries cutting even more jobs any time soon. Or maybe in places where labor is getting really expensive only.

The problem I see is that the education and intelligence floor for being employable keeps going up, and at some point there are going to be an untenable number of people underneath that floor.

Some of this is just blatant credentialism and signalling - what insignificant fraction of office jobs really require a college degree? But on the other hand, you're never going to turn somebody like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, who could get by working as a farm-hand in a pre-mechanized agricultural economy, into a software engineer.

Maybe we can simplify the process and tools enough that more people are capable of working with very complex things and being productive, but it's hard making abstractions that don't leak.

>If things like Robots take over blue collar jobs, I bet we will need the same humans to operate those Robots at some capacity.

Yes, but we'll need a lot less of them...otherwise, what's the point in having automation?

First up: 10 million truckers in the US; cabbies and bus drivers to a lesser extent. Where will those people go?

Back to University or go and do other jobs ? Create their own companies and new services ? Why would they necessarily end up as homeless on the streets?

For the same reason they haven't already gone to school to get a better job than the one they currently have: they either don't have the money or the mental capability to do it. What makes you think this is going to change?

Erm... online education being now a thing, for one. Them having more resources now after having worked for x years than when they started without education. Them being probably married after a while and therefore having a safety net inside the family to be able to take some time off to learn new skills. Many things are plausible.

Wow, you have an incredibly naïve and rosy view of what life is like for the lower and working classes. Maybe you should try meeting some of them in person and seeing what their lives are really like instead of spouting this BS.

I come from a lower class family so im not sure why you assume i dont know what i am talking about.

You say that like anyone can just up and go back to university or simply create their own service (presumably some new, inventive one because the one they just had is already nearly perfected by machines). Neither of those things are especially easy to do with a decent paycheck, and these people wouldn't even have that.

Not just anyone, but the possibility is there. Stories of business owners who made it starting from nothing are not rare (obviously many fail as well) - but do not underestimate the resourcefulness of people who have their back against the wall.

The "let them eat cake" solution. If they had the opportunity to go back to university or create their own companies, wouldn't they have done so already?

Don't leave out Programmers. No barriers to entry. Just a good mind, and an Internet connection. There's millions of people around the world learning to Program. It's cool. It's hip. They all want to learn, and it's getting easier yearly. And you don't even need to go to college.

I cringe when ever I hear Programmers left of out of the, "Where will these people go." Guys like Willie Brown are alwready wondering what San Francisco is going to do with the new homeless that will be hitting the streets--when this current bubble ends.

Yes, the Rock Star Programmers will always have a job, but that's a minority of you.

One important factor to consider is that this won't happen overnight. Once autonomous trucks actually hit the roads, there will be a long period where the drivers will still have to be behind the wheel. And even then, there is a lot of other work a truck driver does other than drive. My father runs a small trucking business, and according to him, the logistics are a way bigger annoyance than the actual driving. You have to time deliveries, you have to unload the cargo without damaging anything, you have to repair the truck (or call a tow / mobile repair) you have to take photos of any potentially damaged products, you have to make sure there are people there to sign off on a successful delivery, you need to find the right people when nobody knows anything about your delivery, etc... The job sounds pretty cut and dry, but in reality, every delivery has some new issue and the driver is usually the one that ends up dealing with it.

I'm not saying that the job won't be automated eventually, but the actual driving is only a part of the job. And even when the automation begins to happen, I think there will be time for them to transition into new roles.

Partially agree. I think big fleets will be first as soon as the bugs are worked out.

Long haul trucks are loading dock to loading dock, so you don't need the driver to do loading.

Uber is another fleet: they just want to do transport-as-a-service so they HATE drivers as overhead. They have signed up to buy 100,000 Mercedes (future autonomous upgrade). They've indicated interest in 500,000 Teslas.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/news/a28508/uber-ord...

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/07/08/uber-tesla-self-driving-c...

> For example, when Cars were invented, I am sure a lot of buggy drivers lost their jobs.

Following your reasoning, the difference with those buggy drivers is the level of education you need to cover the new jobs. The education funnel left a lot of people behind.

> If things like Robots take over blue collar jobs, I bet we will need the same humans to operate those Robots at some capacity. Computers, anyone ? And yes, may be AI will change things a bit more but I am sure we will come up with a way to manage that as well.

Exactly. It seems like most people on HN reason with the "work revolutions" being zero-sum games or something. It's been proven over and over again it never ends up being like that, despite the numerous revolutions the Human Race has seen. It's getting a little old.

So for autonomous trucks how will human truckers keep their jobs? For the auto manufacture industry, how many less humans does Tesla employ to produce a vehicle vs in 1996? For the service industry...how many jobs are being replaced as McDonalds rolls out kiosks?

You are uninformed if you believe these jobs are staying. There is no way, mark my words, that our economy doesn't experience a net negative in jobs during this next revolution.

It's not all bad though, it could push us towards UBI, maybe a supply based economy. Otherwise we're basically saying jesus take the wheel.

A guy can dream.

Jobs will definitely disappear, and some people will definitely suffer, but new jobs and new industries will rise up. Those who can adapt to changes will do just fine, and the rest, well, they will get left behind.

The world is changing, faster than it has in the past. No one know exactly what will happen, but there's a whole new generation of people who have no idea what it used to be like, and they will do their best to survive.

The economy, and life, will find a way.

>but new jobs and new industries will rise up.

At some point you have to admit that there is a limit to the potential jobs that a society can support. You can hope these hypothetical new jobs get created, but I don't know how you can prepare for them.

I sincerely believe there is no way to invent enough jobs, by convenience or necessity, to replace the amount of jobs that will be destroyed by automation.

> At some point you have to admit that there is a limit to the potential jobs that a society can support

How about the people Google and Facebook and Twitter employ ? That's a huge workforce and these jobs were not predicted by anyone 15 years back.

And I'm not even talking about the network effect, i.e. businesses and freelancers and individuals who were able to build their businesses on top of the services offered by such companies.

And that's just a single industry. Look at how the solar panel industry is growing, or the smartphone industry (it did not exist 10 years ago), and look at all these companies living off it making apps and services around those.

Seriously, opportunities arise by themselves.

Google and Facebook have a combined market cap of 900 billion, and employ 70,000 people between the two of them. Their profit last year was ~20 billion.

Ford alone employs 200,000 people, with a market cap of... 48 billion. And a profit of ~7 billion. GM also employs ~200,000 people. With a market cap of... 50 billion. And a profit of ~7 billion.

Tech employs very few people, compared to the amount of money it brings in.

You are not counting the jobs they enabled.

> You are uninformed if you believe these jobs are staying. There is no way, mark my words, that our economy doesn't experience a net negative in jobs during this next revolution.

People were saying the exact same thing when sophisticated machines were introduced in automotive industry manufacturing. Sure, some people could not convert and lost jobs, but everyone else moved on to be productive in other areas.

This prophecy of Doom is happening every 10 years or so.

>Sure, some people could not convert and lost jobs, but everyone else moved on to be productive in other areas.

Tell this to the midwest, where the lie of our government's unemployment reporting is most obvious. It's honestly kind of offensive that you said that as I am from Michigan.

And as I have said in other comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12605690), there are factors like the stagnant minimum wage and self-interest at play that have kept jobs in these companies that could be replaced currently let alone in 10 years.

I am not here to convince you to change your mind about potential job loss. Understanding the technology, our current economy, and the political atmosphere around jobs should be enough to convince you of this truth.

As others have said, maybe there are imaginary jobs that will be invented to make up for these losses. I'm sure the banks will do their best to make sure that happens.

So, when is the entire Rust Belt going to pack up, and move to be productive in other areas? Where are they going to go? San Francisco?

Is there some demand for the general skills of former lathe operators, that we've all missed?

Should millions of people start building websites that make money by advertising other websites that make money by advertising other websites?

It's different this time around. Video that can explain this far better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

If you put all the taxi and truck drivers and burger-flippers out of work, what exactly do you propose they do for work in the new automated future? Any job they can do, a robot can do better.

If you're answer is "fix robots", that's fantasy. If these people had the capacity for highly technical jobs, they wouldn't be working as burger-flippers. And for the few exceptions who might have the capacity for it, they're not doing it because they don't have money to go to school instead of work, and that's not going to change either if society has the mindset of refusing to adopt UBI.

So when assembly line automation occurred in Detroit, those people moved on to what positions? Because... it would appear the entire place is now in shambles and never recovered. Lots of people living in what can only be described as abject poverty with no hopes of EVER getting another job that will pay them what they once earned.

Detroit is in shambles because it was a town living on a single Industry. That kind of model always spell doom, just like towns based on coal mining who ended up with massive unemployment. That's actually very predictable but does not represent the economy as a whole at all.

First, Detroit isn't a closed system. Yes, those jobs are gone in Detroit-but people moved elsewhere.

Almost every major manufacturing industry is now automated, we don't have to go to the future to see the effects of automation.

These assembly line workers had to have gone somewhere, because if they haven't, we'd be experiencing extreme unemployment now-let alone the future.

>because if they haven't, we'd be experiencing extreme unemployment

Born and raised and still live around Detroit. There is staggering unemployment.

I'm amazed that anyone believes otherwise...

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