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If everything was going to be automated all at once, this "devastation" might be the case. But it won't happen all at once, it happens over the course of a dec

If everything was going to be automated all at once, this "devastation" might be the case. But it won't happen all at once, it happens over the course of a decade or two. In almost every case in history, automation has increased jobs and increased the quality of life. Your post reminds me of this story: "Prof. Friedman visited China in the early 1960s and was taken by a government official to see a public works project. Chinese workers were building a canal. Friedman was struck by seeing everyone digging the canal with shovels. Friedman asked the official, "why no heavy earth-moving equipment?" The official said, "oh, this is a jobs program." So Friedman then says to the official, "then why don't you just give them spoons instead of shovels to create even more jobs?"

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
History is what it is when it comes to changes in technology. However there have been moments in history which were R3voltionary, where a great deal of people were no longer necessary and that change came with periods of upheaval
notNow 11y ago
Since you quoted that super villain Friedman, it's a futile exercise to discuss this issue with you but touching on the silly analogy cited by Dr. Evil: Abandoning spoons to shovels ==> 1000X efficiency gain and net positive mass-scale job opportunities Abandoning shovels to heavy equipment ===> 100X efficiency gain and net positive of mass-scale specialized job opportunities. Abandoning manual trucks to fully auto ===> ~1X efficiency (disputed) and net negative of job opportunities for the masses save for highly specialized super white collar jobs such as for engineers and developers like us. Do you really think that it's OK from an economic point of view and not politically as this is almost settled to destroy the livelihoods of these poor & lower middle class people just to get an estimated albeit unrealistic 100% efficiency boost? Are you ready to pay the price in terms of increasing crime rates and lower median quality of life and seeing decrepit hoods everywhere except inside your gated community where you plan to hide from all those poor people and truckers-turned-criminals on the street?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Look at this the other way - humans shouldn't even be doing this task, the only reason we have truck drivers is because we didn't know how to make trucks drive themselves. Now we do, so there's no point in keeping humans doing what machines could do better. Yes, this generalizes to all jobs and the entire economy. It's about time we accepted it.
- Retra 11y ago
  They can band together and start their own transportation companies. It will be significantly cheaper, now that the trucks don't require wages and health coverage.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Any job that is created by automation will later be automated anyway. That's the whole point of automation. It's a recursive function, and in the past it was so that the jobs were created faster that they were automated away. But I don't think it's reasonable to assume this will continue. There's a great qualitative difference between automating muscle power (what we did in past centuries) and brain power (what we're doing now). Even now more and more jobs that are created are jobs that are harmful to society and shouldn't exist in the first place. Imagine a slight modification of your story - that there are two public works projects; one is digging a canal, the other is filling it up. More and more fuel, material and man hours are being used up as both sides gain access to additional workers and better technologies, and yet the canal stays half-built, as one group cancels out the work of the other. Now replace canal building with advertising industry, and it's exactly what we have today in the real world. Hell, I'd argue that half of the web industry is also such useless waste of time and resources. This is what we get because we still keep the meme that you need to work to be a decent human being. A lot of unsustainable make-believe work. The so-called "bullshit jobs". It's high time for the world to embrace that jobs are going away, as they should.

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago

History is what it is when it comes to changes in technology. However there have been moments in history which were R3voltionary, where a great deal of people were no longer necessary and that change came with periods of upheaval

notNow 11y ago

Since you quoted that super villain Friedman, it's a futile exercise to discuss this issue with you but touching on the silly analogy cited by Dr. Evil: Abandoning spoons to shovels ==> 1000X efficiency gain and net positive mass-scale job opportunities Abandoning shovels to heavy equipment ===> 100X efficiency gain and net positive of mass-scale specialized job opportunities. Abandoning manual trucks to fully auto ===> ~1X efficiency (disputed) and net negative of job opportunities for the masses save for highly specialized super white collar jobs such as for engineers and developers like us. Do you really think that it's OK from an economic point of view and not politically as this is almost settled to destroy the livelihoods of these poor & lower middle class people just to get an estimated albeit unrealistic 100% efficiency boost? Are you ready to pay the price in terms of increasing crime rates and lower median quality of life and seeing decrepit hoods everywhere except inside your gated community where you plan to hide from all those poor people and truckers-turned-criminals on the street?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Look at this the other way - humans shouldn't even be doing this task, the only reason we have truck drivers is because we didn't know how to make trucks drive themselves. Now we do, so there's no point in keeping humans doing what machines could do better. Yes, this generalizes to all jobs and the entire economy. It's about time we accepted it.
Retra 11y ago
They can band together and start their own transportation companies. It will be significantly cheaper, now that the trucks don't require wages and health coverage.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Any job that is created by automation will later be automated anyway. That's the whole point of automation. It's a recursive function, and in the past it was so that the jobs were created faster that they were automated away. But I don't think it's reasonable to assume this will continue. There's a great qualitative difference between automating muscle power (what we did in past centuries) and brain power (what we're doing now). Even now more and more jobs that are created are jobs that are harmful to society and shouldn't exist in the first place. Imagine a slight modification of your story - that there are two public works projects; one is digging a canal, the other is filling it up. More and more fuel, material and man hours are being used up as both sides gain access to additional workers and better technologies, and yet the canal stays half-built, as one group cancels out the work of the other. Now replace canal building with advertising industry, and it's exactly what we have today in the real world. Hell, I'd argue that half of the web industry is also such useless waste of time and resources. This is what we get because we still keep the meme that you need to work to be a decent human being. A lot of unsustainable make-believe work. The so-called "bullshit jobs". It's high time for the world to embrace that jobs are going away, as they should.