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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what everyone is so afraid of? There will be tensions and a political problem about redistribution if "simple" jobs dry up, sure, but isn't automation a good thing regardless? It means we make more stuff withuot putting in more effort.

Automation and industrialization over the last 150 years already meant we went from 120h weeks on farms to 40h weeks in offices and factories, while living standards increased. Measured in 40h/week jobs per person that means we lost 2 of 3 jobs in the industrialization! The world didn't end. And now everyone is worried that if we go from 40 to 30h or 20h weeks that will be a disaster?

We can't afford to have a large fraction of the people unemployed and the rest still working 40h weeks in ever fewer jobs of course, but that's a problem societies will hopefully solve.

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Four years ago, I was working full time. That job was automated away, but I found another part-time job that paid minimum wage for fewer hours, so my income dropped dramatically. That job was automated away, and I was very lucky to find a job (that ended up being around double full-time hours, but only paid for half of them, so legally I was paid about half of minimum wage), which went away. Now, I'm working one third of a full time job, for minimum wage. That doesn't even cover living costs, and it's looking like it'll be automated away in the next few months.

As working hours drop and wages tend toward minimum, we do indeed end up in a bad situation.

Care to share what jobs you had that were automated away?

Sorry to hear about your job troubles. Can you share what you do that has been automated away? Were all these jobs in the same industry? If so, what are your plans to shift to jobs that are less prone to automation (if you don't mind my asking)?

This is a very idealistic view that I don't believe is based in reality.

While we still measure a person's worth out of how much they make, this is going to pose an enormous problem for all of us. We can't just take away people's livelihoods for the benefit of a few (us, to be honest).

There will be a violent reaction, as there has been every time this situation has arisen throughout history.

> We can't just take away people's livelihoods for the benefit of a few

But how is shifting from e.g. production to services taking away peoples livielihood any more than shifting from farms to industry was?

> While we still measure a person's worth out of how much they make, this is going to pose an enormous problem for all of us.

Aren't most developed countries already either speculating in, or already effectively using shorter working hours now than say just one or two decades ago? Working less seems like the natural way to go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_...

Edit: I should add: I'm optimistic about this in societies with a high degree of labour organization, a flexible/agile political system, reasonably strong welfare states and a population that is positive towards working less in general.

Simply put: if you are in an OECD country and using kilograms you'll be fine.

The service industry generally pays less and as a society we respect it less.

And service jobs are not immune to automation either, eg Eatsa.

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