Comment by nh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nh | Hacker News Reader

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The real surprising thing is that Amazon is accelerating the post industrial age. The economy is growing but wages are stagnant. A demand for human labor is declining while corporations are making massive profits. These drones are an example where machines are replacing jobs that were once done by humans.

As we pull out of the recession in the US, the fastest growing job market is the low wage/retail jobs. Walmart will have to match the technologies of Amazon as they fight for market share. Leading to more and more automation of human tasks. During this past thanksgiving there were worker strikes in some Walmart stores for a living wage (~$15/hr). What happens to society when these jobs are not even available?

The most interesting part of the 60 minutes interview was not the drones but this:

Charlie Rose: Is Amazon ruthless in their pursuit of market share?

Jeff Bezos: The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie, you know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.

It's a common but incorrect assumption to think that replacing repetitive human tasks with machines leads to wide-scale unemployment.

Of course the delivery person who is replaced by drones is out of a job initially, but this doesn't doom everyone to unemployment. Higher productivity through mechanisation leads to lower prices, which means more cash available for other purchases, which leads to jobs growth in other areas and a rise in living standards. There are always winners and losers in any technological change, but the general quality of life for society as a whole improves when menial repetitive tasks are replaced by automation.

There are more jobs around now than there was at the dawn of industrialisation, and has been, every step of the way. This will continue to be true, despite difficult adjustment periods for individuals and businesses in effected industries. Stagnation is much worse than progress, and trying to regulate away technological progress is even worse than that.

I think the major applications for this are in areas where people can't quite imagine yet. Like the increase in internet speed and portable processors which ran ahead of services to leverage it, this type of infrastructure may start by delivering books, and end who-knows-where. Distributed aged-care with medication and meals delivered in-home? Some bizarre physical-world words with friends? The possibilities are quite exciting if it can be intelligently standardized.

Higher productivity through mechanisation also leads to businesses being far more capital-intensive and less reliant on humans, which means a large proportion of the money coming in from those lower prices goes to members of the capital owning class - who, in general, don't spend nearly as much of it - which, in turn, means that spending power amongst the people who do actually spend will decrease faster than prices.

Well, no, that's not what I am saying at all. The beneficiaries of lower prices are the end customers, not the owners of the business. Most people live on (relatively) fixed incomes - a gradual lowering of prices for things that they buy simultaneously increases their quality of life by leaving a larger share of income for other purchases.

This is easily tested by most people - inflation adjusted, owning a device with the power of an iPhone is absurdly cheap by historical standards.

I would also argue that businesses are becoming less capital intensive in general. Sure, specific types of business require multi-billion investments, but many other businesses are launchable now with essentially 'zero down'. That's a combination of automation allowing previously labor intensive tasks, and of automation lowering the cost of capital goods. You can start a startup now with just a single laptop and some open-source software, the capital requirements are essentially nil. Ironically it is Amazon itself which carries credit for some of this - by automating virtualised computing resources, it has lowered the price of those resources and allowed more people to start businesses.

I'm surprised I have to post that on HN, but it's true.

Higher adoption of mechanisation leads to better availablity and lower prices for the machines, though.

I might be wrong, but think I see a trend where the barriers of entry for many businesses are becoming lower and lower. For example: 3d printers, UAV drones, computers, sewing machines, craft beer equipment. They are all easily obtainable by a private person without outside money.

Also, while some equipment is still too expensive for a layman, a huge amount of manufacturing processes are now offered as a service. Better automation makes it viable to produce small batches of custom products. It is because of this mechanisation trend that I'm now able to send a 3d file to some company in UK and get a few hundred custom injection moulded parts delivered by mail.

>There are more jobs around now than there was at the dawn of industrialization

But the population also exploded since then.[1]

I believe there are possibly no jobs for every one and a basic income of some kind should be considered. Just a way to avoid misery until people figure out their talents. [2]

I'm not a hater, though. I love the idea of Amazon Air, even though I'll probably never use it. Just to know it exists is a funny thing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-Population-1800-2100...

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-latvia-young-people-d...

In the long term yes. In the short term (the rest of an adult worker's life) there is widespread, chronic unemployment and reduction of quality of life.

I think optimism is the most important requirement for adaptation to any major technological change. How long has big media been kicking against the pricks of online distribution for purely political reasons, and how far has it gotten them? What could have been today if the MPAA, RIAA, and affiliated groups accepted the technological change and thought about how to best leverage it instead of sitting around sulking and suing because new strategies were required to successfully collect royalties?

The problem you're describing is purely psychological. New technologies open up many new opportunities. There's no reason the employees of the delivery apparatus obsoleted by Prime Air can't learn something new and seize the opportunity.

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