Comment by camccann | Hacker News Reader

Comment by camccann | Hacker News Reader

The other side of this, that I rarely hear discussed, is "What happens when automation renders some people permanently redundant?"

It's an easy platitude to say that technology obviates some jobs whilst creating others, but the new jobs tend progressively to more complex and/or creative work, that use the leverage of technology to do work that would have once needed many people (if possible at all).

Currently, the issue is cloaked in arguments over protectionism and trade, because Chinese workers are (for now) cheaper than robots for many things. What happens when automation is cheap and sophisticated enough that starting a manufacturing business is only slightly more difficult than a web startup is today? (Exhibit A: Projects such as Fab@Home and RepRap) It is, I suspect, not reasonable to expect even a significant percentage of people to handle the kinds of career that will remain.

While it's fun to imagine a world where one person can create enough wealth to support hundreds of people... what do you do with those hundreds, who can no longer create any wealth a machine can't do better?

This was answered by Hazlet in the 1940s:

"AMONG THE MOST viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. ... Whenever there is long-continued mass unemployment, machines get the blame anew.... The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat.

http://jim.com/econ/chap07p1.html

what do you do with those hundreds, who can no longer create any wealth a machine can't do better?

The snarky answer would be "wait for the revolution". However, more realistically, the odds of rebellion would depend on whether or not someone somewhere (most likely some combination or other of government + industry, as has been pretty much standard for most of human history) would succeed in keeping the Unwashed Masses more or less content with the way things are.

Mind you, by taking away anything even resembling an excuse for people to say "I am having a non-negligable, tangible effect on the world around me," that would probably be rendered a tad tricky.

On the other hand, remember how back in the 50s the plan was that all Americans would eventually have, e.g. a 25-hour work week, due to the massive productivity gains technology would bring about? Remember how that turned out? Never underestimate people's ability to waste their own time.

Never underestimate people's ability to waste their own time.

That would be the bureaucratopian scenario, where 29% of the people are managers, 70% are employed to handle the paperwork generated by the managers, and 1% of the people do all the actual work to support the whole system.

I just don't see that as a long-term sustainable solution absent heavy government interference (read: crushing regulatory burdens) in an environment where technology exists to allow a couple hackers and some salesmen to spin up a company that provides, not another social media platform, but all the fundamental necessities of life--an idea that is not particularly far-fetched.

The guy who started how stuff works had small book on the subject http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm.

But what really happens is that stuff finally becomes so cheap that people will stop buying more than they need of it and will presumably spend the rest of the money on things that are hard to make by robots: books, movies, professional services.

The they the robots can do that? Well then we will finally have obliterated the concept of scarcity, at which point the entire concept of economies are obsolete.

That's a seriously great story. When I first read it, I wasn't sure whether to be afraid of Manna or to start a startup to create Manna. It seems so very real.

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