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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

In the short term it's unemployment, in the long term it's freeing up those people to work on something more useful than picking strawberries.

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The problem is that the number of jobs that a completely unskilled person can do better than a robot are rapidly diminishing, and there already aren't enough to go around. To achieve this utopia, we need to invest in much better education for everyone, and we need to do it 30 years ago at least. An unskilled labourer made unemployed at 40 or 50 has nowhere to go.

> To achieve this utopia, we need to invest in much better education for everyone, and we need to do it 30 years ago at least. An unskilled labourer made unemployed at 40 or 50 has nowhere to go.

In the general sense, this might not work since white collar jobs are also subject to automation. For example, we don't need as many lawyers combing through legal documents when search algorithms can do the job. If anything, it's easier for computer systems to manipulate digitalized information than work in the physical domain.

In a more specific sense, if for example USA invested more in education, it would do little to help those who would be replaced by farm automation. The majority of farm workers are immigrants on temporary H2A visas or undocumented: http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/farm-wor...

It's true that white collar jobs are under threat too, I'm in the UK so less aware of how the US labour market operates, but in both countries we have issues with people for whom there simply are not jobs.

Globally, this situation is pretty worrying. How do we share resources when input is not even required from most people? How do we keep people occupied and give them purpose in life? People without purpose in life are the ones who will happily vote/act to trash the system after all.

I've thought for a while that if you really want to change the world, find a way to profit from unskilled labour in the Western world (where minimum wages, welfare systems exist) in a distributable and scalable way, that can't be replaced by robots.

The number of employed people in the US grew from ~100 million in 1980 to about 155 million today. That happened while automation accelerated and while China and India entered the global economy.

It seems that jobs on average now are "lower quality" than jobs then, but maybe the better take on that growth, given the headwinds, is that it has not been so bad?

That's just because the population has been growing (yes, there are 44% more people now in the US since 1980).

The employment ratio of population has steadily dropped. Economists call it the 'labor participation rate', and it has declined quite markedly since ~2000 or so:

http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2018/01/05/the-reluctant-lab...

See the 'Two Labor Stories' chart.

"The lack of labor force growth going on nearly a decade now means that in every likelihood there remains a deep pool of American labor from among which Americans would work if there was any (at the margins) to be hired at a decent rate."

Long history: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

LPR initially went up as women joined the workforce; it peaked around 1997.

Right, but my argument isn't that things are all gravy for people working low paying jobs, it is just to point out that many many jobs have been added.

It's fairly clear that more jobs would be better for the US work force; it's less clear whether automation is the main thing driving the reduction in job "quality" and labor force participation.

Your point has validity to it. But that can't be used to stunt the growth of automation industry.

My father works primarily on building various automation units in textile factories. I'm hazy on the technicalities, but one such unit he built a few years ago crushed coal and fired it into a huge furnace, the heat of which is used by the factory for various purposes. Most factories in the city use these units now. Before that however, there were men (there still are). They'd work in shifts of 10-12 hrs everyday. Shirtless, they shovelled coal into mouth of the furnace non-stop until the furnace was hot enough, take a break of 10-15 minutes, maybe less, and start again. And these weren't small kitchen furnaces, these were huge. At 20 feet away, you can feel the heat envelop and drain fluids from your body (a small 'mis-flare' nearly burnt my father's face). The city easily touches around 43 °C (109 °F) in summers, so it's not like we live in a cool place either. You should see how their bodies look. These men toil away their entire lives on extremely cheap labour, contract all kinds of diseases, and when their sons grow up, they get into the same business, because that's the only thing they know and it's "financially risk free". And there were so many of them. In short term, sure the machines take away jobs. In the long term they take the entire demand away. When pushing against automation, people forget that modern society currently stands on the back of such people. The faster we automate these, lesser number from the next generation gets into these. It should be easier to solve unemployment IMHO.

Particularly if at the same time we are trying to achieve an egalitarian society where an unskilled worker is only financially marginally worse off than a skilled worker.

Approximately 15% of the population have an IQ less than 85. Education isn't the solution for this group. For most in this group, picking strawberries is challenging and rewarding. (For the lower 1/3 of this group, picking strawberries is too intellectually challenging as it is.)

Hand-waving and saying 'job training' and 'education' isn't a solution for about 10% of the population. I don't know what the solution is. But, the number of people who are excluded from the marketplace due to tech is increasing rapidly. Not good to have 15%+ of a poulation unemployable. Leads to breakdown and instability.

I don't believe ability is tied in 15% of the population to fundamental brain reality. It's more tied to experience.

If more people are brought through the experiences, they will be able to perform the tasks. It's accumulating failures through experience, and then repeating the actions that causes skill. Not some magical IQ.

How much time have you spent amongst the lower 15%? Ever lived in a trailer park? Every lived in the projects? I doubt it. It's not a knock on you. But, it's very easy to live one's life without encountering those with sub-85 IQ. They ain't online, you know. Most wouldn't be able to figure out how to use the Hacker News interface. You know, the U.S. military won't take someone with an IQ less than 85... they're too dumb to even learn how to clean a rifle. In any case, no amount of experience or education will enable someone who lacks mental ability to function at a tech job. There are those who will never -- even with months of hands on training -- be able to grasp opening a Word DOC. What do we do with them? It's about 15% of the population.

I grew up extremely poor with gang violence, so all of my childhood until age... maybe 21?

They are online by the way.

Those out of work for the decade(s) while the economy retools wont see it as short-term. And the 'freeing' of labour in one place drives down the cost/wages elsewhere. The more useful thing in the short term will be things that previously nobody ever wanted/needed to do.

Like the outcome of Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin?

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