Technology is now destroying more jobs than it creates | Hacker News Reader

Technology is now destroying more jobs than it creates

businessinsider.com

8 pointsdorfsmay8 comments

I believe that history disproves the idea presented. Ever since the start of the industrial revolution there are have been luddites thinking that mass unemployment are around the corner because of technology. Once 90% of the country (England) was involved in agriculture. Today it is down to around 10% but we do not have 90% unemployment. Those workers have been released to do other work.

So far there is no end in sight for human wants and needs and so there is no sign that demand will stop at a point that creates the mass unemployment envisioned. Income inequality is the big issues.

> there is no end in sight for human wants

This is exactly the point.

There will probably be markets that don't support more growth, like agriculture, so lesser people will work there.

But if a company suddenly can produce the same with 50% of the workforce and the marked still has place to grow, they will simply produce 200% and keep their employees.

I'm pretty sure that steam shovels destroyed more jobs than they created, too. Samuel Butler, a century ago contemplated that change and also foresaw that this would eventually happen to jobs requiring more brain work, as well.

But the real problem is, what happens when the vast majority of people can't offer any kind of labor or service that a machine can't do quicker and better. Will we need a second economy? (As the medieval church once was.) Will we prepare for this eventuality or just blunder into it?

We will definitely need to change to a different type of economy, new problems will be:

How do we set a value to things and services, since some resources will still be limited? For example we won't all be able to travel as much as we want.

Some jobs will still exists and will take a long time before they can be replaced by robots. Some will be desirable, we can share those more so people don't have to work as much, but some won't. How are we going to chose who does those jobs?

If a job is undesirable and can't be automated, you would expect it the command a much higher level of compensation.

Yes, we're back to the problem of value...

If there is not enough work for everybody, and a lot of tasks are covered by robot, we end up in a sharing economy. How do you assign value in a sharing economy?

Thus my plumber is now a rich guy. Judging from my bill.

A generation has to grow old and die before we can make progress on this. There's too much FUD flying around, even mentioning things like Basic Income etc. Folks holler 'Socialism' and 'Lazy Bastards can't have my money!' and 'But taxes!' You can't even begin the conversation.

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