8 ms·

You are essentially making the luddite case. The counterargument usually goes like this: yes, people would be fired and there will be serious pain in the short

You are essentially making the luddite case. The counterargument usually goes like this: yes, people would be fired and there will be serious pain in the short run; however the machines will drastically improve productivity, therefore reduce prices, so real wages will go up along with demand and the extra income not spent on, say, buying feed stock for your horse, will go in creating other jobs and economic sectors that will make use of the available labor. The government can and should ease the transition by offering skill-training and incentives. While economically sound, I'm skeptical this process can go on forever. The human biology and mind is clearly limited, while the progress of machines does not seem to be. So eventually you will hit a fundamental limit where larger and larger chunks of the workforce will simply be too old, uneducated or simply too human to keep up. How close we are to this fundamental limit it's anyone's guess, but I would venture to say we are closer than most think. At the point where a serious part of the population is unable to participate in the labor market, this ceases to be an appropriate system to distribute the fruits of economic activity and some form of basic income is required to maintain social order.

deegles 11y ago
I read somewhere that the amount of people employed in the transportation industry is roughly equal to the tech industry. If 75% or more become redundant, where will they go? Certainly not the restaurant industry... One theory I have about all of the coding "boot camps" popping up is that they are preparing for an exodus of people from the next job sector to be automated/eliminated (auto-lated?).
- protomyth 11y ago
  If you look at the most popular job in each state, you will find truck driving is either #1 or pretty high on the list.
  - greeneggs 11y ago
    Citation: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t... The prevalence of secretaries from 1984-1988 is interesting, too.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  No, coding boot camps are just capitalizing on the idea that there is a shortcut to the high wages some people earn in the tech industry. It's not "preparing for" anything, it's trying to exploit a present market opportunity.
  - danjayh 11y ago
    I teach CS classes at a community college when I have the time. Our CC has a 2 year program; having taught classes in the 1st semester and the 4th semester, I have noticed that the 1st semester classes are larger than the 4th semester classes, much larger. This school offers eight sections of the intro programming class, and not more than one section of any top level class (Java, .net, and C++). The top level class sizes are also smaller, and not offered every semester (the intro class is). Net, I'd say that around 3/4 of the students fail out, quit, or change majors. I've seen students bust their asses to get it. Spend time with tutors, countless hours with the book, with study groups, and other students and still not get it. I've also seen students sleep through most of their classes and pound out not only the lab, but also their entire three week assignment during the lab time. Anyway, my point is that trying to get a tech degree is far from a sure thing, and for many people, something that they may not be able to finish. It takes a certain kind of thought process to write good software, and while some of it can be taught, I firmly believe that innate ability is equally important. Just like you couldn't teach me to be a good salesman if you had to, some people can't be taught to do tech jobs.
    - epalmer 11y ago
      I think access to CS concepts for all ages in schools is a good thing because 1) technology is increasing a part of the fabric of life and 2) it is good have a way to identify early those whose inate abilities could do technology jobs. The same could be said of people that want to become engineers. Some can and some can't. I think any activity in school or out of school at an early age that exposures students to a set of possible tasks for them to do and to learn from helps people learn about and grow their inate strengths. I am experienced in FIRST Robitcs as one of those out of school programs that does just that. For years I have witnessed students learn what they are good at and get better. Yes some of that is CS, CAD design, fabrication and trouble shooting but for some it is marketing, business planning, fund raising and presentation skills. I have witinessed this first hand as a mentor and parent of middle school and high school students.
kdamken 11y ago
> however the machines will drastically improve productivity, therefore reduce prices Except why would that ever happen? If you were a business owner selling widget X, and it suddenly cost you half as much to make that due to automation, you don't pass those savings on to your customers, you celebrate how much better your margins have gotten and how much more profit you're making.
- tedsanders 11y ago
  Competition is one reason. Increased sales volume is a second. Social pressure is a third. It's why we get clean tap water for less money than it would cost someone to bring it by bucket. It's why a gallon of gasoline costs less than the bale of hay equivalent. Regardless of the mechanism, the world is full of examples of technology lowering costs. Certainly you're correct that not all of the cost savings will be passed on to consumers, but as long as the market is not a zero-price-elasticity monopoly immune to social pressure and government regulation, some savings ought to be passed on.
- seabee 11y ago
  True in a monopoly situation, but if you have competition and they can automate like you, there will be a race to the bottom.
  - makomk 11y ago
    Now suppose the automation technology is thoroughly patented and the inventor effectively has a government-granted monopoly on the right to use it or anything similar to it.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      That might delay things, but (1) patents expire and (2) there are often ways around them.
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      In this case, the inventor gets rich, and everything still gets cheaper (just not as much as in the alternative).
oconnore 11y ago
> You are essentially making the luddite case. I'm not, I'm just countering some "don't worry, everything will be fine" idealism. I don't think we should halt progress, but I do think we should be more intentional about how we go about it. There is not currently a solution on the table to address mass un/under-employment caused by near-term automation. Basic income is thrown around, but even if enacted, does not change the fact that our culture views work ethic ~= value. People want to be valued. Choosing not to address it in the next couple of years results in a large number of mostly young, angry, disillusioned people with lots of free time. If you've got a history book handy, you can read plenty about what happens after that.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  The opposite side of idealism is cynicism. Further more if there's one thing humanity has proven itself bad at, it's the ability to make economic predictions. I'm not saying your comment isn't a valuable counter-weight, just that we have a ways to go in this discussion still.
- Chinjut 11y ago
  The solution I'd like to see: Enact basic income AND change the fact that our culture views work ethic (narrowly defined in terms of market income) ~= value.
  - T2_t2 11y ago
    > AND change the fact that our culture views When has that ever worked? I can't think of a single example. Things people may raise like racism and sexism, in so far as they are changed, weren't changed per se, but merged with pre-existing values (liberty, fairness, equality) and morphed into a (usually) more consistent new definition. "We can all vote but not women" is more caveats than the new reality. Sexist ideas and elements weren't so much changed, they were contrasted with other values, and the inconsistency removed. Women vote, we can't pay less based on religion/race/gender etc. Same values, inconsistency removed. So rather than change the view, I think the question is what can we contrast "work ~= value" with so that the inconsistency is clear? Maybe a sense of "money isn't everything"? That's all I've got, but then all the "77c on the dollar" talk puts money front and centre in almost every debate, making the "money is not everything" hard to sell as a deep cultural concept. I dunno, the protestant work ethic is deeply, deeply ingrained in the west - not sure we really can change it, or what it can be merged with that we believe as strongly.
erikpukinskis 11y ago
> The human biology and mind is clearly limited, while the progress of machines does not seem to be. Can you explain what you mean by that? That's not an intuitive idea to me, animals/AIs just seem like two different kinds of machines to me with different computational characteristics, neither of which can fully simulate the other.
- felipeko 11y ago
  Not op, but i will try. There's no distinction of biological computation and machine computation, there's just computation. What our brain is doing is computation, we may not fully understand how it does what it does yet, but what we know is that our brain is a very powerful computational machine, that's why it is so hard to emulate its processes. But as man-made machines are still getting more powerful, it will someday be able to do everything our brains do (from playing chess, go, understanding images, walking, driving to understanding language, creating a self-model a reality model and having self awareness). But as man-made machines are not constrained to a skull and body, and other physical limitations, it will eventually surpass our processing power. There will be some limit for it though, just nowhere close to our wetware.
  - dropit_sphere 11y ago
    >There's no distinction of biological computation and machine computation, there's just computation. What our brain is doing is computation, we may not fully understand how it does what it does yet, Doesn't the second part cast doubt on the first part?
    - erkkie 11y ago
      Only if you fundamentally believe there's something "magical" going on in the brain; scientifically there's no reason to believe that (given current understanding). We understand individual neurons and how they can lead to computation, we also understand (the existence of) emergent behavior in general.
crdoconnor 11y ago
>yes, people would be fired and there will be serious pain in the short run If by serious pain, you mean profit margins take a serious dent, then yes, there will be pain. There's a LOT more whinging and stamping of feet by profit-focused lobby groups... http://conservativetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/billboard-san-fran-470x321.jpg http://conservativetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/bi... ...than actual lost jobs, however: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-seattle-s-minimum-wage-kills-jobs-but-data-20160222-column.html http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-seattle-s-m...
marcosdumay 11y ago
And you are essentially repeating the "wealth inequality does not exist" mantra. But it does not matter how many times people repeat, it does not become real. Inequality exists. Those people fired will be out of places to go. Yes, overall people will become richer, those people are an exception.
- tma-1 11y ago
  Let them automate and buy their own stocks back, it's gonna bit them in the ass sooner or later.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Yes, overall people will become richer That's not a given either. The working masses are many many times more than the business owners in count. So, while a few business owners can get cheaper with being able to fire part of their employees, those employees will be a bigger number that the business owners who benefited. As for customers, they'll hardly see any difference (except negative, if they're also part, or their spouse/parents are part, of those workers being fired). Everybody becoming an entrepreneur is not gonna help either -- there's only so much entrepreneurs a market needs or can support. (It's like everybody becoming an artist with easy access to self-releases on the internet: the end result is not everybody getting into the top of the charts, but, if anything, even those getting there having much fewer listeners that stars did in the past).
  - zanny 11y ago
    It is median vs mean wealth. Median wealth has been, and will probably continue to, either stagnate or decline while mean wealth keeps going up. Our economies are still growing. Those fruits are just going to the owners of capital rather than the workers.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Does anyone have any economic information on what happened to grocery stores when the scanner was introduced? Did prices go down? What happened to those workers? I bet consumers didn't notice any benefits. I bet wait times stayed the same because fewer lines were open. I bet prices didn't go down either.
- lr4444lr 11y ago
  Grocery stores operate on very low profit margins already. Also, agriculture/husbandry and mass transport is heavily subsidized and regulated (in thr USA at least). It's a good suggestion, but I don't think cashiers are a major labor cost, and suspect the lessons to be gleaned from that industry will have limited predictive power.
- sanxiyn 11y ago
  Following papers investigate this very interesting issue: Raising the Barcode Scanner: Technology and Productivity in the Retail Sector (2011): http://ssrn.com/abstract=1754469 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1754469 Change at the Checkout: Tracing the Impact of a Process Innovation (2013): http://ssrn.com/abstract=2215258 http://ssrn.com/abstract=2215258 Q. Did prices go down? A. Yes! Scanners reduced prices of groceries by about 1.4% in their first decade. (p<1%) Q. What happened to those workers? A. We don't know, but scanning stores reduced their wage bills by about 4.5%. (p<1%) Revenue didn't change. Data is insufficient to answer whether payroll reduction was achieved by reducing cashiers or deskilling cashiers. I bet consumers didn't notice any benefits but did receive benefits. I bet wait times stayed the same because fewer lines were open. I bet prices did go down.
- jes 11y ago
  When I go to the supermarket I go through a self-serve scanner to pay for my items. It's much faster than waiting in line. So yes, some consumers get benefits.
  - orkoden 11y ago
    Using a self-serve scanner means you work for free for the store.

deegles 11y ago

I read somewhere that the amount of people employed in the transportation industry is roughly equal to the tech industry. If 75% or more become redundant, where will they go? Certainly not the restaurant industry... One theory I have about all of the coding "boot camps" popping up is that they are preparing for an exodus of people from the next job sector to be automated/eliminated (auto-lated?).

protomyth 11y ago
If you look at the most popular job in each state, you will find truck driving is either #1 or pretty high on the list.
- greeneggs 11y ago
  Citation: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t... The prevalence of secretaries from 1984-1988 is interesting, too.
dragonwriter 11y ago
No, coding boot camps are just capitalizing on the idea that there is a shortcut to the high wages some people earn in the tech industry. It's not "preparing for" anything, it's trying to exploit a present market opportunity.
- danjayh 11y ago
  I teach CS classes at a community college when I have the time. Our CC has a 2 year program; having taught classes in the 1st semester and the 4th semester, I have noticed that the 1st semester classes are larger than the 4th semester classes, much larger. This school offers eight sections of the intro programming class, and not more than one section of any top level class (Java, .net, and C++). The top level class sizes are also smaller, and not offered every semester (the intro class is). Net, I'd say that around 3/4 of the students fail out, quit, or change majors. I've seen students bust their asses to get it. Spend time with tutors, countless hours with the book, with study groups, and other students and still not get it. I've also seen students sleep through most of their classes and pound out not only the lab, but also their entire three week assignment during the lab time. Anyway, my point is that trying to get a tech degree is far from a sure thing, and for many people, something that they may not be able to finish. It takes a certain kind of thought process to write good software, and while some of it can be taught, I firmly believe that innate ability is equally important. Just like you couldn't teach me to be a good salesman if you had to, some people can't be taught to do tech jobs.
  - epalmer 11y ago
    I think access to CS concepts for all ages in schools is a good thing because 1) technology is increasing a part of the fabric of life and 2) it is good have a way to identify early those whose inate abilities could do technology jobs. The same could be said of people that want to become engineers. Some can and some can't. I think any activity in school or out of school at an early age that exposures students to a set of possible tasks for them to do and to learn from helps people learn about and grow their inate strengths. I am experienced in FIRST Robitcs as one of those out of school programs that does just that. For years I have witnessed students learn what they are good at and get better. Yes some of that is CS, CAD design, fabrication and trouble shooting but for some it is marketing, business planning, fund raising and presentation skills. I have witinessed this first hand as a mentor and parent of middle school and high school students.

kdamken 11y ago

> however the machines will drastically improve productivity, therefore reduce prices Except why would that ever happen? If you were a business owner selling widget X, and it suddenly cost you half as much to make that due to automation, you don't pass those savings on to your customers, you celebrate how much better your margins have gotten and how much more profit you're making.

tedsanders 11y ago
Competition is one reason. Increased sales volume is a second. Social pressure is a third. It's why we get clean tap water for less money than it would cost someone to bring it by bucket. It's why a gallon of gasoline costs less than the bale of hay equivalent. Regardless of the mechanism, the world is full of examples of technology lowering costs. Certainly you're correct that not all of the cost savings will be passed on to consumers, but as long as the market is not a zero-price-elasticity monopoly immune to social pressure and government regulation, some savings ought to be passed on.
seabee 11y ago
True in a monopoly situation, but if you have competition and they can automate like you, there will be a race to the bottom.
- makomk 11y ago
  Now suppose the automation technology is thoroughly patented and the inventor effectively has a government-granted monopoly on the right to use it or anything similar to it.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    That might delay things, but (1) patents expire and (2) there are often ways around them.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    In this case, the inventor gets rich, and everything still gets cheaper (just not as much as in the alternative).

oconnore 11y ago

> You are essentially making the luddite case. I'm not, I'm just countering some "don't worry, everything will be fine" idealism. I don't think we should halt progress, but I do think we should be more intentional about how we go about it. There is not currently a solution on the table to address mass un/under-employment caused by near-term automation. Basic income is thrown around, but even if enacted, does not change the fact that our culture views work ethic ~= value. People want to be valued. Choosing not to address it in the next couple of years results in a large number of mostly young, angry, disillusioned people with lots of free time. If you've got a history book handy, you can read plenty about what happens after that.

jonesb6 11y ago
The opposite side of idealism is cynicism. Further more if there's one thing humanity has proven itself bad at, it's the ability to make economic predictions. I'm not saying your comment isn't a valuable counter-weight, just that we have a ways to go in this discussion still.
Chinjut 11y ago
The solution I'd like to see: Enact basic income AND change the fact that our culture views work ethic (narrowly defined in terms of market income) ~= value.
- T2_t2 11y ago
  > AND change the fact that our culture views When has that ever worked? I can't think of a single example. Things people may raise like racism and sexism, in so far as they are changed, weren't changed per se, but merged with pre-existing values (liberty, fairness, equality) and morphed into a (usually) more consistent new definition. "We can all vote but not women" is more caveats than the new reality. Sexist ideas and elements weren't so much changed, they were contrasted with other values, and the inconsistency removed. Women vote, we can't pay less based on religion/race/gender etc. Same values, inconsistency removed. So rather than change the view, I think the question is what can we contrast "work ~= value" with so that the inconsistency is clear? Maybe a sense of "money isn't everything"? That's all I've got, but then all the "77c on the dollar" talk puts money front and centre in almost every debate, making the "money is not everything" hard to sell as a deep cultural concept. I dunno, the protestant work ethic is deeply, deeply ingrained in the west - not sure we really can change it, or what it can be merged with that we believe as strongly.

erikpukinskis 11y ago

> The human biology and mind is clearly limited, while the progress of machines does not seem to be. Can you explain what you mean by that? That's not an intuitive idea to me, animals/AIs just seem like two different kinds of machines to me with different computational characteristics, neither of which can fully simulate the other.

felipeko 11y ago
Not op, but i will try. There's no distinction of biological computation and machine computation, there's just computation. What our brain is doing is computation, we may not fully understand how it does what it does yet, but what we know is that our brain is a very powerful computational machine, that's why it is so hard to emulate its processes. But as man-made machines are still getting more powerful, it will someday be able to do everything our brains do (from playing chess, go, understanding images, walking, driving to understanding language, creating a self-model a reality model and having self awareness). But as man-made machines are not constrained to a skull and body, and other physical limitations, it will eventually surpass our processing power. There will be some limit for it though, just nowhere close to our wetware.
- dropit_sphere 11y ago
  >There's no distinction of biological computation and machine computation, there's just computation. What our brain is doing is computation, we may not fully understand how it does what it does yet, Doesn't the second part cast doubt on the first part?
  - erkkie 11y ago
    Only if you fundamentally believe there's something "magical" going on in the brain; scientifically there's no reason to believe that (given current understanding). We understand individual neurons and how they can lead to computation, we also understand (the existence of) emergent behavior in general.

crdoconnor 11y ago

>yes, people would be fired and there will be serious pain in the short run If by serious pain, you mean profit margins take a serious dent, then yes, there will be pain. There's a LOT more whinging and stamping of feet by profit-focused lobby groups... http://conservativetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/billboard-san-fran-470x321.jpg http://conservativetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/bi... ...than actual lost jobs, however: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-seattle-s-minimum-wage-kills-jobs-but-data-20160222-column.html http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-seattle-s-m...

marcosdumay 11y ago

And you are essentially repeating the "wealth inequality does not exist" mantra. But it does not matter how many times people repeat, it does not become real. Inequality exists. Those people fired will be out of places to go. Yes, overall people will become richer, those people are an exception.

tma-1 11y ago
Let them automate and buy their own stocks back, it's gonna bit them in the ass sooner or later.
coldtea 11y ago
>Yes, overall people will become richer That's not a given either. The working masses are many many times more than the business owners in count. So, while a few business owners can get cheaper with being able to fire part of their employees, those employees will be a bigger number that the business owners who benefited. As for customers, they'll hardly see any difference (except negative, if they're also part, or their spouse/parents are part, of those workers being fired). Everybody becoming an entrepreneur is not gonna help either -- there's only so much entrepreneurs a market needs or can support. (It's like everybody becoming an artist with easy access to self-releases on the internet: the end result is not everybody getting into the top of the charts, but, if anything, even those getting there having much fewer listeners that stars did in the past).
- zanny 11y ago
  It is median vs mean wealth. Median wealth has been, and will probably continue to, either stagnate or decline while mean wealth keeps going up. Our economies are still growing. Those fruits are just going to the owners of capital rather than the workers.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Does anyone have any economic information on what happened to grocery stores when the scanner was introduced? Did prices go down? What happened to those workers? I bet consumers didn't notice any benefits. I bet wait times stayed the same because fewer lines were open. I bet prices didn't go down either.

lr4444lr 11y ago
Grocery stores operate on very low profit margins already. Also, agriculture/husbandry and mass transport is heavily subsidized and regulated (in thr USA at least). It's a good suggestion, but I don't think cashiers are a major labor cost, and suspect the lessons to be gleaned from that industry will have limited predictive power.
sanxiyn 11y ago
Following papers investigate this very interesting issue: Raising the Barcode Scanner: Technology and Productivity in the Retail Sector (2011): http://ssrn.com/abstract=1754469 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1754469 Change at the Checkout: Tracing the Impact of a Process Innovation (2013): http://ssrn.com/abstract=2215258 http://ssrn.com/abstract=2215258 Q. Did prices go down? A. Yes! Scanners reduced prices of groceries by about 1.4% in their first decade. (p<1%) Q. What happened to those workers? A. We don't know, but scanning stores reduced their wage bills by about 4.5%. (p<1%) Revenue didn't change. Data is insufficient to answer whether payroll reduction was achieved by reducing cashiers or deskilling cashiers. I bet consumers didn't notice any benefits but did receive benefits. I bet wait times stayed the same because fewer lines were open. I bet prices did go down.
jes 11y ago
When I go to the supermarket I go through a self-serve scanner to pay for my items. It's much faster than waiting in line. So yes, some consumers get benefits.
- orkoden 11y ago
  Using a self-serve scanner means you work for free for the store.