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>There are a lot of jobs that humans can inherently perform better than robots for the next few decades at least: taking care of the elderly, hospice care, comm

>There are a lot of jobs that humans can inherently perform better than robots for the next few decades at least: taking care of the elderly, hospice care, community development, physical therapy, etc. Humans are wired to trust and engage with our own species over any machines that could be developed any time soon. While this is true and one of the unintended consequences of guaranteed minimum income would be even harder to obtain elderly care, not everyone is suited for this kind of work - and if you think a large % of people who spent the last 20 years driving cabs and trucks can now go on to be a nurse or some such I don't think it's very realistic. IMO there will soon be a new class of unemployable people - with low social skills and low enough IQ to not be trainable fast enough (one thing that is a requirement in modern economy is fast training and adaptation - no more learn one job and do that for the next 30 years - you stick around for one job for a couple of years and then your position gets automated, the company reduces capacity, relocates operation, shifts focus, etc. etc.) So on one hand there will be vacancies for many jobs (like competent programmers right now) but on the other hand people available will not be able to enter those markets in any reasonable amount of time. I can tell you myself - years of working on a computer over 8 hours a day have left my motor system very very underdeveloped and I have a hard time focusing on menial things, my first job was physical labor after highschool - I took months to get to the point where I could be useful and I was a work hazard during my training - the only reason I got a job there was because the manager knew me from school "internship" and he knew I could code/was a fast learner - he gave me a job before he could get an opening to move me to production planning/management. I needed the money because I was poor. But there was 0 point in hiring a person like me for that kind of work - if I was hired for that job I would be fired way before I got good enough at it to not be a hazard. On the other hand I've seen new people come on out of school that learned much faster and were just better at it. Just like there would be 0 point in hiring anyone that was good at that job to be a programmer.

nopinsight 11y ago
For those with lower social skills, there are plumbing, home improvement (hard/risky for elderly or the ill), security guards, public infrastructure development (welding, checking for leaks), household/public gardening, etc. There are a lot of needs which humans will be more cost-effective than advanced robots in the foreseeable future. If everything is perfect in a country, they can send aid to a foreign land for compassion, goodwill, and diplomatic relations. Always more work is available to do until.. When the whole world becomes like heaven and nowhere is left to improve, which is a long time to come, money would be far less important than it is now.
- moonchrome 11y ago
  My point is not everyone can be a plumber - at least not a competent one. If you're going to do it professionally, especially as we get more advanced we expect higher standards, markets get more competitive and middle man services like uber are going to become a norm in contracting - IMO - making it easier to filter out the bad contractors after a few botched jobs. And in most areas even if the job doesn't become fully automated it will get better tools that will either be trivial enough to use on your own or require skill to operate, or allow a smaller number of people to do the same job efficiently. Basically optimization. Automation will probably outpace demand growth especially considering the effect it will have on demand : a) it makes skilled workers much more productive and as we know in SW dev they don't scale by add more workers -> linearly increase output - a skilled worker working longer > two workers for the same job, so market get more competitive and value longer work hours = less time for consumption b) short term unemployment from automation = lower demand on low end And then you have a deflationary spiral basically. I don't see this "getting better on it's own" and despite all the cons I still think something like guaranteed income would create a floor + boost demand more efficiently than the current pump money into financials with negative interest rates

nopinsight 11y ago

For those with lower social skills, there are plumbing, home improvement (hard/risky for elderly or the ill), security guards, public infrastructure development (welding, checking for leaks), household/public gardening, etc. There are a lot of needs which humans will be more cost-effective than advanced robots in the foreseeable future. If everything is perfect in a country, they can send aid to a foreign land for compassion, goodwill, and diplomatic relations. Always more work is available to do until.. When the whole world becomes like heaven and nowhere is left to improve, which is a long time to come, money would be far less important than it is now.

moonchrome 11y ago
My point is not everyone can be a plumber - at least not a competent one. If you're going to do it professionally, especially as we get more advanced we expect higher standards, markets get more competitive and middle man services like uber are going to become a norm in contracting - IMO - making it easier to filter out the bad contractors after a few botched jobs. And in most areas even if the job doesn't become fully automated it will get better tools that will either be trivial enough to use on your own or require skill to operate, or allow a smaller number of people to do the same job efficiently. Basically optimization. Automation will probably outpace demand growth especially considering the effect it will have on demand : a) it makes skilled workers much more productive and as we know in SW dev they don't scale by add more workers -> linearly increase output - a skilled worker working longer > two workers for the same job, so market get more competitive and value longer work hours = less time for consumption b) short term unemployment from automation = lower demand on low end And then you have a deflationary spiral basically. I don't see this "getting better on it's own" and despite all the cons I still think something like guaranteed income would create a floor + boost demand more efficiently than the current pump money into financials with negative interest rates