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Comment by margalabargala | Hacker News Reader

I would argue that production right now is "functionally" completely automated, when compared to 1000 years ago.

A single typical center-pivot irrigated field has an area of about 125 acres. For most crops, this can be planted, fertilized, and harvested by a single person driving a specialized, mostly autonomous machine. A single family can effectively farm dozens of such fields with the right equipment, totaling thousands of acres.

1000 years ago, the average family farmed about 12.5 acres each and had time for little else.

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> I would argue that production right now is "functionally" completely automated

Sorry, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Humans work significantly more today than compared to 1000 years ago. Most humans don't even have cushy office jobs on this planet, they labor in factories, fields, mines, forests, farms, etc... so "functionally" it's about the worst that it has ever been. Maybe the work looks different, but it's still work.

Like most things, it depends how you measure.

Among things that humans were producing 1000 years ago, if you look at the quantity of output per unit of human effort input, it is many orders of magnitude larger. Food, textiles, lumber, mining...all of these things are so mechanized and automated these days, that doing things the "old" way has become a "hobby" that some people do for enjoyment. In terms of a means of production, the effort of a single human is no longer relevant.

Yes, we have come up with new jobs to be done as the old ones are automated away. I think we will continue to do so.

You're missing my point.

Yes, capital (machinery, raw materials) does make up a much greater proportion of the over value added to items as compared to labor, but it's still not automated enough to let go of the requirement of human labor, not anywhere in the world. You can only say that it's fully automated when no more people are involved meaningfully in the process of production.

Ergo, it is not "functionally fully automated", because humans still work.

> Yes, we have come up with new jobs to be done as the old ones are automated away. I think we will continue to do so.

There is no basis for this. We're already struggling to find meaningful, productive employment for many people as a society. This is the same as "it will be X in the future because it was always X in the past".

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