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Comment by pyoung | Hacker News Reader

That is a difficult question to answer. A good parallel to what amazon is doing to retail is what globalization did to manufacturing. As we all know, manufacturing in the US has been gutted and is now largely based in developing countries. While this is good for the consumer because products are cheaper, this also resulted in a great deal of unemployment for a certain category of workers (primarily low skill). Retail, which is also a major employment source for low skill workers, is now facing similar pressure from companies like Amazon, who employ significantly fewer people than the companies that they replace.

Ultimately, developed countries are going to have a difficult time finding good paying, reliable jobs for low skilled employees. This is an inevitable by-product of our shift to a globalized, modern economy and is one of the primary reasons why the US and Europe are struggling to keep their social safety programs solvent.

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> As we all know, manufacturing in the US has been gutted and is now largely based in developing countries

We all know it, and yet it's not actually true. America is the largest manufacturer in the world.

The main that happened is America switched from making many multiples of cheap item, to making smaller quantities of much more expensive and complicated items.

The CNC mills have revolutionized small production runs. For example, it used to be very hard to restore old cars for which parts were no longer available. For example, decades ago a guy down the street restored some old Mercedes limousine he showed me, and I asked him how he dealt with the unavailablity of parts. He said "oh, I just made them" and showed me his fully equipped machine shop in his basement.

That can now be done with a simple CNC machine.

A lot of shops have sprung up that apparently have libraries of CNC designs, and they manufacture the parts on demand.

I suppose I should change the language of my post to say that "manufacturing employment has been gutted", as that is what I actually meant.

You are correct, there has been a resurgence in manufacturing in the US. The issue is that these new facilities are much more autonomous then their predecessors, and they are not going to result in pre-1980 manufacturing employment levels. While output may reach record highs, employment won't.

I don't believe that. Throughout history, labor-saving machinery has put people out of work, and they become available labor for entirely new industries.

For example, there's a growing industry now of digitizing the zillions of documents, books, photos, movies, art, etc. This is low skilled labor.

Or Apple/Google/Microsoft sticking camera hats on people and having them hike trails to develop maps.

The list is endless.

Both of those examples seem like temporary solutions at best. And robotic tech already exists that could theoretically replace humans for those tasks.

I may read too much sci-fi, but I am fully convinced that we are heading to a future where most menial, low skill tasks will soon be done by technology and robotics. We have been heading in that direction for quite some time and I don't see that changing. The end result is the near elimination of low skill jobs. This doesn't necessarily mean that people won't be able to find work, it's just that we will need to do a better job at educating them to prepare them for more high skilled labor.

> we will need to do a better job at educating them to prepare them for more high skilled labor.

What about people who can't be educated for high-skilled labor? Seems like a taboo subject, but there are a lot of people like this in the world. What do they do?

* edit. These labor shake-ups are going to take place in "high-skilled" areas, too. IBM's Watson can probably be trained to be more talented at illness diagnosis than most MDs. It will be interesting to see what happens to those MDs.

Regarding your first point, I don't have an answer. But, for a more ironic take on the issue, please read 'Player Piano' by Vonnegut.

Regarding your second point, I addressed this in the other post, but post-scarcity economics seems to be the best 'thought experiment' as to what a future society would look like. I truly believe that we are entering an age where human labor will become obsolete. It may take a while but, its going to happen.

> I truly believe that we are entering an age where human labor will become obsolete. It may take a while but, its going to happen.

I think you're correct.

For me, what's difficult is to understand what happens to us at that point...and I guess what happens to us on the way to that point. I can't tell if it will be good or bad (or a mixed-bag) for us/humans.

Alas, technology is destroying higher skilled, white collar jobs at a furious pace. At least that is the main thesis of the recent book by MIT business school faculty:

Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Prod...

They give three explanations for the current slow job growth: (1) business cycle lack of demand, needing normal Keynsian stimulus, (2) technology running out of steam in improving productivity, and (3) the opposite, technology accelerating and destroying the need for highly profitable businesses to hire more workers. The authors think technology acceleration has been underappreciated for its effects on suppressing job growth.

Totally agree. Once again, I may read too much sci-fi, but I think the end game (as it should be) to technological progress is the elimination of labor, completely. This probably won't happen in my lifetime, but assuming civilization can survive long enough, I believe it is inevitable. I can't even imagine what a society would look like under these conditions..., a post-scarcity economy would be a good starting point, I suppose.

I will definitely put that book on my 'to read' list. Very rarely have I been disappointed by an HN recommendation.

elimination of labor != post scarcity

We are physical beings with physical needs. We can't live on thin air, we need a basic input of energy and matter to survive. But our society is organized around private property. When you are born, you own nothing. So far, we've been exchanging labor in exchange or property. Once labor becomes valueless, the vast majority of people end up with no means to acquire property, which is essential for physically sustaining life. Something will have to give up, and I'm not placing my bet for the owner class suddenly having a change of heart and sharing their property with the rest of us. Which leaves the majority of people in a scarcer and scarcer world.

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