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Comment by naterator | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the social implication will be when, over the next 20 years, whole sectors are automated. There are so many simple jobs that are /ripe/ for automation. If you're not doing the automation or some other high skill job, you're in serious trouble. Social welfare, and free money to the unemployed, are going to become an obligate, long-term realities.

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> Social welfare, and free money to the unemployed, are going to become an obligate, long-term realities

Something tells me from watching what is going on in places like greece, spain, and even stateside in places like detroit and camden, that the above is not going to happen. Or should people expect central banks to print more and allocate more debt to people?

That might be because governments keep talking about going back to growth after the austerity measures. If there is no growth and unemployment stays at the current levels, things eventually need to change. And it's not only a governments' thing, with a large part of the population without any money, consumption will suffer a lot so companies will feel it deeply.

It's going to take some time though as nowadays the middle class doesn't like the idea of more social welfare since there's currently a direct connection to heavier taxes.

I realize this is slightly off-topic, but reducing consumption is not a bad thing.

We can all collectively live on a lot less than we currently do (stuff-wise, not necessarily money-wise).

I keep hoping that a positive side effect of this economic shift will the reduction of accumulation of unessential crap..

I tend to agree but if the consequence is less money for the companies to hire people then extending social welfare needs to cover for the lack of jobs available. I can imagine a lot of positive side effects if this happens.

I think that the fruits of all these contemporary advancements won't be really seen until the global population starts dropping. Right now, automating generally puts someone out of a job and forces them into one that is more or less made up just so that they can have a job[1]. With a declining population, automation will pick up whatever slack worker 'scarcity' creates.

It's interesting to think about how that world would look like. Imagining a constant rate of production, this means that cheaper goods will be spread around fewer people. I imagine that this would drive a push away from mid-level jobs, probably into highly educated roles that innovate or maintain complex autonomous systems.

[1] http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

I'm just waiting for the time when society realize working may not be an existential need.

http://hateandanger.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/buckminster-...

Once again, we'll have large amounts of people in need of re education to learn new abilities for jobs that might not exist today. It's interesting as well what automation might do to economies with large work forces supported by governments.

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