I agree that technology for society in general make us better of over time, but society consists of individuals who don't necessarily benefit from this. In fact 12 million jobs are in danger of being lost to automated cars. How are they going to benefit from that?
I'd have said, hopefully the world gets basic income and then a full leisure society sorted out. But honestly, not feeling optimistic right now. The Trumpoids and Brexiteers voted to get their makework back. They won't get it, the economics will make sure of that. But they probably will get unemployed.
Are you suggesting a Soylent solution?
This has always been the case throughout history: new technology makes some jobs irrelevant, and humans adapt by doing new jobs. It's unfortunate for people who cannot or will not adapt, but historically people have been resilient to such changes.
It's a legitimate issue when there aren't enough jobs to employ a significant portion of the population, and perhaps we're starting to reach that point now. We're seeing a decoupling in our economy: job growth is slowing while corporate growth and profits continue to rise. On one hand, this indicates that we are heading towards post-scarcity conditions. On the other hand, the current arrangement is that an increasing amount of wealth is being distributed to a decreasing number of people, leading to greater wealth inequality.
What can be done? We might increase wage/salary while cutting the number of hours worked per week, allowing more people to work while still providing a livable income. A basic income is another option, but that seems extreme; things would have to get much worse (or better, depending on your long-term view of automation) before that's taken seriously on a large scale.
It's only been the case for around 200 years. Before that the progress was so slow that there was no issues transitioning as most kind of work took generations to change.
The problem is that now things changes so fast that lots of people simply can't re-educate them selves and the market doesn't really need that many people, yet we have no plan what so ever for this issue besides UBI and a hope that technology will allow us to create a post scarcity society. Hourly wages rarely even make sense since thats exactly the kind of jobs that normally could be calculated that way which are going away.
I would really urge anyone who think that technology creates more jobs than it removes to show where those new jobs are besides to the countries we've been outsourcing them too.
But jobs moving to China and India isn't solving the underlying issue and I simply don't understand why people don't take it more seriously and why Luddite fallacy keeps coming up. It's not that good an explanation (not saying you talked about luddite fallacy just in general)
I thought we were talking about automation and technology? What do China and India have to do with this? I never said it's good for a society when their jobs are displaced to another region.
> I would really urge anyone who think that technology creates more jobs than it removes to show where those new jobs are
I would really urge people to think of "jobs" and "productivity" as separate metrics, since productivity will likely continue to climb as the number of jobs continues to fall. The challenge will be reacting to that effectively; trying to reverse the hands of time to bring back jobs is futile.
If jobs are moving from one region to another, that's mostly unrelated to technological progress. Instead, it's because low skill labor has moved to low cost markets with low standards of living. We'll get these jobs back when we have a lower standard of living then rural China and India.
In the meantime, our scientific and technological edge has been one of the few things keeping our economy semi-competitive. Can you imagine if we lost the low wage jobs and the highly skilled jobs? We probably won't have to wait much longer.
With regards to your second:
We are. I was just trying to pre-empt the claim that more jobs have been created.
Productivity goes up because of technology but those who gain financially are mostly those who work in technology or own resources.
Cost of living is going up too which while salaries for most aren't. The kind of jobs you can get if you aren't in a few privileged industries are wallmart jobs or part time jobs. 12 million people are about to get a run for their money when the one job that couldn't be outsourced suddenly can to robots.
So no I don't believe the competitive edge in the US is really about it's technological or scientific edge but rather a host of other things like the dollar which allow US to stay afloat despite it's soon to be 20 trillion dollar deficit, the size of the market, it's access to the international markets, the system which doesn't redistribute well and so on.
I have no interest of low-wage jobs coming back. What I do have an interest in is that people recognize that a lot of people are being left behind not just brushing it aside as the price of progress. Because never before have so many been left behind with no real chance of a future unless it's on welfare. And if you think this election was bad just wait til the next one, unless we start recognizing the problems and actually address them.
Unfortunately I really don't see anything near the push for education and training today. And that's an issue. I'm sure there was plenty of pains in the agrarian transition, but education gave an out that allowed the next generation to prosper. Without a good education or vocational training type system, it's not just the current generation of adults that might have pains with the automation transition, it's their kids as well.
A minimum wage is already part way to a basic income. The other half, a minumum wage for just being human and alive, would require similar political support.
Your job is gone? Here just have money.
Dignity? Oh no see you don't need that. Just have money. What will you do all day in a world where people derive a lot of purpose from jobs and your basic income isn't enough to just do what you want? ummm... we could legalize pot.
A leisure society is being able to do your vocation. It's about hackers being able to hack without needing a "day job" and without trying to squeeze what you want to do into the leftover energy after spending your day on makework.
Jobs are going to be lost anyways, whether from cars or from a different technology.
Are you arguing the problem is that people aren't able to continue to do trivial things which technology can easily replace them at? Or that they will not have a relevant skill / source of income?
If the former than we should give hoes and scythes back to 90% of the population and get rid of agricultural machinery. If the later - it's a problem that needs to be addressed one way or another, self-driving cars are really a minor detail here..
Not sure why we are suddenly discussing what I propose instead.
All I am saying is that it's easy to forget that real people are effected by progress and that the narrative that we all benefit is kind of disingenuous from that perspective and I believe we need to think harder on what to do about that because it's only going to increase.
Maybe we'll all be ok immersed in VR adventures as long as we're fed and clothed...
Sounds like a fantastic job for machines! Humor aside, even with UBI you will always increase your income and wealth if you put in extra work, unless some current schemes where your income stagnates or even falls if you earn enough to put yourself outside some arbitrary bracket.
It's fantastically expensive.
So, ~4.4% GDP is pure healthcare waste. Social Security is 4.9% GDP and welfare is another ~4%. So, right now we could use 13.3% GDP or 7k per person in the US. However, that 7k would remove the justification for a lot of low income tax breaks freeing up enough to hit the 1,000$ per month range without raising net taxes.
Now, this would take a huge shift at the federal and state levels, but compared to say the 'New Deal' it's not actually that large a change in policy. Further, while some people would stay at home, it would also free up a lot of jobs and inefficiency.
The real problem is a small but very influential slice of the population would be worse off.
PS: Remember, every policy change is going to make somebody worse off, so harming someone is not enough to make a change bad.
Think back to when people were just becoming aware of computers and how they will change the workplace. The same arguments were made - high unemployment, etc.
Look where we are today. Imagine a world without computers!
I see the same for automated driving. It will lead to the creation of more jobs than it will kill. Yes, some jobs will go, just as computers killed some professions.
Get ready for change folks. Embrace or go the way of the dodo
You must be able to point to some jobs that actually provide more, just claiming it will create more while the reality is that it doesn't unless we are talking wallmart jobs isn't an argument thats more a religious belief.
There are around 3-4 million software developers in the US. 18million worldwide. Those and some other areas of STEM jobs are providing some of us with a future and rising income. But for most other people they are on the wrong side of that divide.
So you were not old enough to be part of that discussion.
But what jobs am I talking about?
Back then, the counter argument was computers will create jobs for those who have to design them and those who have to maintain them. That was the best they could muster. Very little was said about computer networking back then.
But today, we have developers, system and network admins, operations people. And that's just those that are directly involved in managing computers.
So don't panic. Robots, autonomous vehicles will create more jobs than they'll kill. Humans will be needed to build and maintain then. In many instances, they will need to be networked. Humans will be needed to set up and maintain such network of robots and fleets of autonomous vehicles.
The future is bright. Embrace it!
There are 18 million developers world wide, a little more than 3million in the US.
Between 1998-2004 the us lost 4 million jobs to china, in the same period china lost 15 million jobs to the robots.
Outsourcing is just the step before automation.
I am not panicking as I am one of those who benefit mostly from this, I am just painfully aware of some of the consequences. And you haven't provided a single example of new jobs for those without education which is the base of this discussion.
When I was at university google had 8 employees :) ... who would have imagined then jobs like SEO/SEM Consultant, blogger, online life-coach, android indie game designer, stay-at-home person selling junk on ebay, etc, etc.
For self driving cars... how about:
- Guide (jump into the self-driving van, and I (human) will give you a personal and engaging tour of the region, parks, people, wines .... we'll do a few stops at designated restaurants and souvenir stores (where I'll get a few dollars per visitor).
- Self-driven drug / alcohol / party stuff / shopping / pet / kids / delivery
- Artist (drawing random patterns on the dusty planes with programmed cars?)
- Game host (where you offer 50 cars to some players who do some kind of AR laser tag activity while driven ... all the while trying to figure out the patterns they are driving in to win)
- Real-life marketing consultant (sell pay-per-detour, is paying for the detour worth it? Only if they used keyword X last, week and you have the right store front design, blah, blah, blah).
- Scheduling Assistant (Human helper to call your rides)
- Mobile Mechanic (fast response team to fix those helpless cars stopped on the road because a leaf covered the LIDAR)
Will the number of jobs add up? It's anybody's guess. I think the transition is going to hurt badly. But it will reach a new equilibrium eventually.
What is happening these days is an increase of capital rather than labour heavy companies. The number of new companies is falling in all of europe and the size of the large companies is falling net.
Most of those things are on the verge to be automated too.
So you are not even remotely showing anything.
Do you have any estimates or references about _that_ number?
People seem to be too focused on jobs that will be lost because of automated cars/vehicles, but are not looking at the jobs that will be created because of that. Think back to when people were just becoming aware of computers and how they will change the workplace. The same arguments were made - high unemployment, etc. Look where we are today. Imagine a world without computers! I see the same for automated driving. It will lead to the creation of more jobs than it will kill.
Not sure how you figure that.
But you have to admit, there's going to be riots in the streets when it's no longer economical to pay a human to drive a trunk/taxi.
Look at the protest people have over Uber, and they're not even destroying jobs, they're just moving them from one place to another. And already you can see that non-trivial parts of society can't handle that.
There's going to be protests, poverty and chaos, and eventually the market will redistribute the workforce but short of a major welfare program like 'basic income' I don't think we can have any illusion of this being a soft transition.
Why would there be riots in the streets for self-driving cars in particular? Like when there were riots for the assembly-line or the tractor? There will be riots for education, healthcare and opportunity - and probably there should be. Technological progress of civilization should be something more meaningful than the rich getting richer.
Yes, exactly like that.
While I am not a nationalist and I think it's commendable that the human race is making progress, I'm concerned that advances in technology are causing troubling concentrations of wealth among those who operate and control the technology.
The cold hard reality is that a lot of the jobs that's been created in the US are wallmart jobs or part time jobs and that the cost of living is going up.
So those who keep mentioning luddite fallacy owe it to explain what new jobs it is they see replacing the current jobs. Because if it's just a hope that it will be all right in the future some day it's not really an argument for anything.
I agree it is a problem that people will be put out of work, but that is kind of an inevitability. Which is why a lot of people are arguing that basic income needs to be investigated much more closely.
The issue isn't The Wealthy having all the money. The issue is technology that will actively remove jobs. It doesn't matter if minimum wage is 90 pounds an hour if you don't have a job. An automated train isn't The Wealthy stealing money. It is a conductor out of work because their job could be handled by a raspberry pi.
Basic Income is a theoretical concept (been implemented in small, borderline meaningless, experiments) to combat that. Everyone gets a bare minimum "salary" regardless of if they work. That covers cost of living (how much more varies). Then, those with jobs have the potential to earn a lot more (incentive to work) on top of that.
What Thomas Piketty proposes wouldn't address the lack of income to those put out of work by technology but could, possibly, help to pay for solutions that would.
Take it a few steps forward. At some point the factory owner (whether local or conglomerate) holds all the money and has 0 workers. The only thing he can buy is new resources to produce more stuff, but no one can buy that stuff because no one works anymore.
At some point it's just a machine making stuff that no one can afford to use other than the very few owning the machine.
Money is useless unless it's spread around and in rotation through the system. The unemployment of uneducated is the one thing I really sympethize with in this election, but the solution isn't going backwards, because there's nothing there anymore.
I understand that the solution isn't one step forward, but maybe 5, and people will suffer in the interim, but that only means it's ever more important to swiftly move in the right direction.
How is road safety relevant to a discussion about zero sum games?
Sure you can cherry pick your perspective and make OPs statement true, but whats the point of that.
They get cheaper and better self-driving cars. I know that's not nearly enough to compensate for lost income and self-worth. The rest of society has easily enough gains to compensate them property, but because of outdated ideas about work, worth and capitalism we haven't done so.
Step 2 is on the TBD. We'll let you know when we promise. Just around the corner really. We promise.
I'm serious about step 1 though. Should be preparing now.