Now that it's happening (and has been for a couple decades) we only hear FUD from folks trying to get everybody back to work.
Now I can find phone numbers, share photos with family, watch movies on demand and hurl abuse at politicians, all without leaving my chair.
A movie rental place had more or less all blockbusters (pun intended) and a huge stack of old movies. Netflix today, not the old postal order Netflix, has nowhere near the assortment of a kinda crappy movie rental place of the late 90s.
Farming is highly automated both in terms of pre-made bulk chemicals and machines on the fields.
We mass-produce cars. Indeed, we have cars that we can leave months on end without maintenance. And they run both faster and further than a horse.
We have automated labs that can produce and test medicine in high pace.
We have seriously large industries (gaming, cruising, performing arts) that do nothing but give people something to do now that we don't have to worry about having enough food by end of winter.
Having an abundance of food and not relying on substance farming for the majority of your needs also has the knock-on effect of kids not being needed on a farm, but getting education instead. Which in term will eventually lead to more industrialisation etc.
...but what does Upstart do? https://youtu.be/WWxl4W_eVUA?t=110
You are mistaking a (large, obnoxious, all-encompassing) trend of the economic moment (albeit a moment that has existed for 1.5 to 2 decades now) for the greater direction of civilization. A mistake in scale.
But < 2% of Americans anyway work in agriculture. Down from 98% a century or two ago.
And US population grew by what, 50% in 30 years? But jobs by 25%. Manufacturing jobs dropped steadily as a pct of population. Because, automation?
It's often repeated that automation just allows people to get better jobs running the robots. Trouble is, 2 people run a robot that replaced 200.
Just ask Detroit how much automation benefitted jobs.
I have far more time with my kids than my parents ever had with us, partly because I simply do not grocery shop or merchandise shop anymore. Yes there’s still plenty of humans involved but both are heavily automated with AMRs.
This is hours a week of freed time.
Again, to each their own. But for me it’s huge and I love and cherish it.
But a number of services exist now that didn’t 30 years ago. Largely in part to many forms of normalization and automation.
I guess countries are becoming more of what they already were: the US gets more unequal and exploitative. Other, more socialist countries are getting more so. China is getting totalitarian using automated facial recognition and censorship.
The Ubers and doordashes and deliveroos of this world are predicated upon the growth of the precariat.
India had all this stuff 50 years ago, just without an app. I remember it not being unusual to have Starbucks delivered to your door in Buenos Aires in 2012. Again, no app.
When you sent a document to the printer, an employee called a "peon" would pick it up and bring it to your office. He would also bring around tea and cookies in the afternoon. Now that's service!
IIRC, the breakdown was typically around 1% lords and priests, 9+% soldiers to protect the lords and priests against other lords and priests, and 90% unfree agricultural labor of one form or another (being a serf was slightly better than being a slave, but only a bit).
No matter how good automation gets, the government is going to lag way behind. I don’t foresee a transition to any sort of utopian era where everyone enjoys the fruits of automation. I think those at the top will continue to hoard the wealth because they own those systems.
A UBI for instance could help with that. But there's nothing but FUD on that subject.
Hmm, not on-topic for OP, but oh well.
The additional problem to this framing is that anywhere between $0-[amount dictated to provide a stable life, including inflation] is a hellscape and has proven extremely difficult for majority of people to escape from for a variety of reasons.
But sure, the solution is everyone being their own boss hashtag entrepreneur... but wait if everyone is their own boss... who do the bosses exploit so they can nudge themselves further down the number line faster than others?
The issue is not people working or not working; The issue is the distribution of power. If it's not a problem of the people in power, then it won't get solved, easy as that. This is not something that can be solved on the individual level, because due to the population numbers, we now exist in a huge, global, interconnected system of societies, governments, and such. And these issues, at the end of the day, could be solved by evolving, changing that system. And the individuals follow, as their incentives dictate.
-- some idiot 50 years ago. Glad things have changed!
Becoming a billionaire is definitely from hard work and not at all luck and being born with the tight parents!
It's more galling when you realize these shortages, at least of housing, are artificially created in order to make sure people keep working as much as possible.
Mostly just homeowners voting in their self interest, and unintended consequences.
Even with rent increases, I can live in 500 sqft apartments and basically retire in my 30s/40s.
If I buy a house I’ll work until I’m 70. And I’ll be house poor that whole time.
The price of single-family detached homes is so out of line that it is absurd.
How will you pay for the ever-increasing rent on apartments when you're 70 and beyond?
Owning a house is short-term pain but allows you to lock in a "rent" (mortgage) which will never increase and will at one point go to zero, hopefully before you retire.
Today's luxuries becomes tomorrow's bare necessities.
Each generation ends up having more than the previous one could dream of, and yet they keep wanting more.
This makes sense though -- I think it's somewhat natural for people to want growth/progress. I've found that working towards goals is one of the things that makes me the happiest and most fulfilled in life.
Not only do we always want more, we also want more than other people.
And those workers would get more money. And have more stuff, better medical care, more experiences.
And then someone would say “thats unfair they have more money than me”.
Rinse and repeat.