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Comment by irdc | Hacker News Reader

But at some point a human will add so little value that they're not worth the price.

We can only hope that when this day comes, we end up with fully automated gay space communism.

But the reality will probably be that plumbers and builders become the next tech bros telling us to learn tiling. Just go with the flow I guess. If tech becomes automated, move to the next thing.

what happens to the wages of plumbers and electricians when 200 million people start retraining to be them?

Good thing they are already a regulated job (in much of the US) so it’ll be easy to gatekeep access.

200 million people aren't going to want to deal with excrement filled pipes, bug, rat, snake infested crawl spaces, understand all the dangers involed and all the other reasons that plumbers and electricians have such high pay scales.

Not 200 million but certainly plenty enough to impact the financial security of trade jobs. People DIY for fun. Now you’re saying it’s the best way to make a living? Well, sure - let’s give it a go. Who will train all these people? Recall we just put multiple industries out of business with a masterful reference and generation program

At some point, "wages" don't make sense. We're not there yet, but LLMs have given us a taste of it.

Instead of worrying about bullshit metrics from times gone by, let's ask questions like "what happens to the happiness of plumbers and electricians when they realize that they too can relax and let the machines take care of the grunt work?"

This is an excellent and overlooked point. Everyone is talking about intellectual jobs being at risk - what happens when these college graduates are forced to do manual labor instead?

They become old and bitter and spend too much time commenting on HN?

Just a guess…

This is totally a tangent, but after all this time, I'm surprised someone hasn't engineered plumbing systems that don't clog as often. Toilet and sink (esp. in bathrooms, because of hair) clogs are still commonplace. We could use some kind of self-maintaining plumbing systems.

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