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But can people be unemployed because we run out of things for humans to do?

-- You'll always have something that some other human wants the human X to do. Whether that other person can pay human X sufficient money to make that activity their job is the question. And it seems plausible you'll reach a point where the answer will be no for a lot of people. You can call that "structural" if you wish but it seems related to the marginal utility provided by a given person and that goes down as one finds automated alternatives.

Anything that can be a job. Whatever people are willing to pay others to do, limited only by imagination.

And just from the definition of money, it's unlikely to find a scenario where people can't pay other people to do arbitrary labor. There will always be people that have a majority of wealth, however that's denoted

It's not possible for civilization as a whole to run out of jobs or money. both are human social concepts and can be re-imagined at any time

> both are human social concepts and can be re-imagined at any time

I think that's what's essentially being advocated (whether now or later): reimagining human social roles outside the wage/employment model (and perhaps distributing an "automation dividend" to ensure liquidity and market demand).

>limited only by imagination //

And by availability of resources, such as energy.

From the industrial revolution we've being living in a time of effectively limitless energy and without having considered the consequences of tapping that energy. Fossil fuels, and other resources are running out - or we can at least see the end of them - and the consequences of their use are starting to bite hard. Realistically we're looking at a 2degC average global temperature rise this century, and the destruction of ecosystems due to that relatively rapid rise is going to be massive.

When the energy and resources, that we've used to support a consumption economy, grow more scarce that economy will no longer work. We won't be able to get ourselves out of low employment by just consuming more and so making more jobs.

>There will always be people that have a majority of wealth, however that's denoted

That may be true but we can narrow the spread of wealth by a very large factor; and morally we should do so.

> I think there's two distinct ideas being discussed. Can people be unemployed because of structural, societal, or political reasons? Sure, and I think most people would agree. We have plenty of example of that happening - depressions, recessions, mass refugees, etc.

> But can people be unemployed because we run out of things for humans to do? That's what the video is arguing, but it won't be the case unless we've fully satisfied all of our desires. If we haven't, there are, by definition, still things to do.

The question at hand though is exactly why is this true of humans but not horses?

Well, there's slight of hand here on CGP Grays part (and sleight of hand in other parts of the video as well), since horses are not doing work out of their own volition and to meet their own needs. Correct for that, and the same will be true for horses - they're not going to run out of work to do until they've fulfilled their desires.

Now, I'm talking about typical desires as they stand now. Obviously you can have people creating increasingly exotic and bizarre desires to the point where it's impossible to satiate them all ("I want to own Antarctica"). It's also possible to hit resources limits, but that's a separate problem from "running out of work because of automation."

Consider a case where person A builds widget X, and person B builds widget Y, and they trade with each other. Automation takes over, they lose their jobs. If they continue getting the widgets they used to trade for (which are now created automatically), they simply have the same wealth as before but more time. If they don't have the widgets, they're now detached from the new automated widgets both in production and consumption. There's no reason they couldn't carry on the same work as before and continue to trade with each other. This might require societal and political will (they might need some sort of support to reach their previous arrangement), but if the desire for their old work is there and not being met, then there is work to be done.

> Consider a case where person A builds widget X, and person B builds widget Y, and they trade with each other. Automation takes over, they lose their jobs. If they continue getting the widgets they used to trade for (which are now created automatically), they simply have the same wealth as before but more time. If they don't have the widgets, they're now detached from the new automated widgets both in production and consumption. There's no reason they couldn't carry on the same work as before and continue to trade with each other. This might require societal and political will (they might need some sort of support to reach their previous arrangement), but if the desire for their old work is there and not being met, then there is work to be done.

I mean, sure this arrangement can happen. But why would it? Why would person A want to trade with person B when they can get their goods made by a robot cheaper and better?

Well, that's the point. If they're getting their goods from a robot, their needs are being met. If they're not, they could trade with person B.

Trade what to Person B?

But why are we assuming that they have needs that are not being met by the robots?

Because they don't have jobs any more, and can no longer afford to pay for the robot labour.

This works right up until the inputs for Widget X and Widget Y require capital.

Let's say Person A builds Widget X, and needs Input 1 to produce a Widget X. Person B builds Widget Y and needs Input 2 to produce Widget Y.

Person A uses their capital from their job to purchase Input 1 and produces Widget X. Person B uses their capital Input 2 and produces Y. Person A and B trade widgets and are happy.

But now, as before, automation takes the jobs of Person A and Person B. They lose their jobs, but retain their desire for the opposite widget.

Person A no longer has the resources to acquire Input 1, and Person B can no longer acquire Input 2. Neither X nor Y get produced, and both have their needs but are unsatisfied.

There is no guarantee that new automation will continue to fulfill all the desires that were fulfilled previously.

> That's what the video is arguing, but it won't be the case unless we've fully satisfied all of our desires. If we haven't, there are, by definition, still things to do.

Obviously true, but that doesn't mean the things still left to do can be done by anyone.

In a world where there's not enough food or housing, everyone can be gainfully employed, since just about everyone can learn to plant seeds or cut wood.

In a world where all of our material desires are already met, plenty of people will still want e.g. new AAA-quality video games every year. But what are the people who aren't programmers or artists supposed to do?

> But what are the people who aren't programmers or artists supposed to do?

Keep the programmers and artists happy.

You can make a lot more and better AAA games if 50% of your time isn’t spent on life chores.

> You can make a lot more and better AAA games if 50% of your time isn’t spent on life chores.

That's what the robots are for! And they never complain, never need to sleep, and are always one software upgrade away from amazing new capabilities.

That, and human population is still growing, meaning there are more and more humans who need jobs, yet as robots improve, the types of jobs left for humans get fewer. At some point, the lines will cross. Maybe it won't be soon, but if population keeps growing and robots keep being able to do more jobs, then eventually it will happen.

I just finished reading Bullshit Jobs. The author makes a good argument for the users that because we decided working is a moral good, we are also great at making up things for people to do.

For example: the ballooning of admin jobs in academia that add no benefit to services rendered other than keeping other useless admins busy.

According to the book, when you remove the bullshit jobs and bullshit work most of us already work 20 hour weeks or less.

> According to the book, when you remove the bullshit jobs and bullshit work most of us already work 20 hour weeks or less.

That wouldn't be a problem if the BS was more or less evenly distributed. But unfortunately the distribution is highly uneven, so eliminating the BS, even if you resolve to not cut paychecks, would leave quite a few folks entirely unemployed (so no paycheck at all), and quite a few more significantly underemployed (so at high risk of their employer consolidating three 5h/week jobs into one 15h/week job).

The robots will be making better AAA games than humans before they're able to clean a house as well as a human.

People can be unemployed because there's nothing they can do that generates enough value to pay them enough to live on.

And if that happens to enough people they can simply decide that they should get their share of the robots' output. Hopefully more people will agree with that before then.

> That's what the video is arguing, but it won't be the case unless we've fully satisfied all of our desires. If we haven't, there are, by definition, still things to do.

If wealth continues to become increasingly centralised, the wealthy might be able to have all their desires fully satisfied, while the poor won't have enough power to demand that - which potentially creates a vicious cycle.

Then the existence of sufficient jobs is fraught.

Continues? The world is more equal than it ever has been, at least since the invention of agriculture.

In western economies, Piketty showed that equality peaked approximately in the 1950's, and has been dropping since. (Almost) no one recommends we have another world war to decrease the assets owned by the rich, but Piketty, like the original article, also recommends a wealth tax (this article includes the significant refinement that the tax be on corporations and not individuals; Piketty does not go into details for his wealth tax proposal).

If you disagree with these points, please site evidence.

Western economies? What about the rest of the world?

Citation: World Bank. "Poverty and Prosperity 2016 / Taking on Inequality"[1].

1. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/2...

That’s largely an effect of bringing more regions of the world into the industrialized paradigm, whereas what the other commenter said describes what happens to people in industrialized countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_eq...

World Gini coefficient for wealth has increased from 0.804 to 0.904 between 2008 and 2018, where 1 means that a single person holds all the wealth.

Wealth inequality is immaterial; what matters is (lifetime) consumption inequality. Income inequality is an imperfect substitute measure.

Labour accounts for about half of world income, from memory, with capital accounting for the other half of world income. If wealth centralises, then so does income.

Besides, you replied to try and refute a comment which was quite unambiguously about wealth inequality. It's possible to occasionally admit you were wrong, rather than doubling down when you are.

> Continues? The world is more equal than it ever has been, at least since the invention of agriculture.

Sure, globally. But that's as a result of a rising floor beneath extreme poverty, ie. the percentage of people subsisting on less than $1.90 per day has been dropping.

Sure, that's only a part of the story, and a growing global middle class is nothing to sneeze at, but the reduction in poverty is projected to slow considerably over the next decade, with half a billion remaining in extreme poverty in 2030, 87% of whom will be concentrated in sub-saharan Africa.

Meanwhile, social mobility up and out of the middle class is also slowing considerably in the various advanced economies, as is downward mobility from the upper class into the middle class, while downward mobility from middle to working class is growing.

I don't mean to diminish the progress that has been made so far, but it is starting to look likely that these successes are stagnating.