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> "Job destruction caused by technology is not a futuristic concern. It is something we have been living with for two generations" If American thought leaders

> "Job destruction caused by technology is not a futuristic concern. It is something we have been living with for two generations" If American thought leaders such as Larry Summers think that technology destroys jobs and that it's a relatively recent phenomenon, then America is truly screwed.

SEJeff 10y ago
I do suspect some industries, such as trucking, will get hit with a severe blow. Many truckers make decent money without many skills to transfer to alternative industries. It will be really rough for them even if it will make shipping safer and cheaper.
- jdhawk 10y ago
  In the interim, I imagine that long haul truckers will be decimated - and short haul trucking (last 20 miles) will flourish. That should soften the blow through the transition period; where AI is good enough to drive straight out of a loading facility, down the highway, and straight into another facility, but not quite good enough to back down an ally in a congested city and get the paperwork stamped by the right person.
  - SEJeff 10y ago
    But the fallacy with that train of thought is that last mile truckers already exist, and are flourishing. More often than not long haul truckers drop loads at regional depots where last mile drivers pick them up and deliver things. You'll see increased competition between last mile drivers due to less trucking jobs overall with a constant demand for work. The one law which is hardest to break is that of supply and demand.
tdb7893 10y ago
It's all just this century's Luddites
- knieveltech 10y ago
  Nonsense. I encourage you to point out a single industry that has cropped up in the last 50 years that generates large numbers of high paying jobs that aren't subject to being automated away. In 1985 people freaking out about computers and networking was luddite behavior. Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse?
  - Raphmedia 10y ago
    > Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse? Space colonies? That or war.
  - mohamedattahri 10y ago
    That's exactly the point. People fail when they look at what exists today. Technology opens opportunities people did not imagine before.
    - knieveltech 10y ago
      Demonstrably incorrect. Technology reduces labor force participation. Some portion of that void has been filled with McJobs in the last 15 years but that isn't sustainable.
  - 2AF3 10y ago
    plus millions who who support truckers, truckstop workers etc
  - tdb7893 10y ago
    I don't know. So far unemployment due to more efficient technical advances hasn't lead to overall structural unemployment so I'm not too worried in the long term. For example if we can ship goods much more efficiently it could lead to increase in production of goods, mining of raw materials, even the service industry as people have more disposable income and that's not even counting the jobs running and maintaining the autonomous fleet. I'm not saying the short term might be kinda hard but long term the economy will adjust.
daviddavis 10y ago
I think you miss the point of the article. It's not that technology destroys jobs but that in the next century, technology could potentially destroy jobs at a faster rate than it adds new ones. That would be an unprecedented event in American history.
- candiodari 10y ago
  I think the point of the first graph in the article is that this is not true. Technology is destroying jobs faster than creating them for ~45 years now. The thing people forget when comparing to past technological advances is that for the largest part of history unemployment was 90%+ at the best of times, ever since a few hundred years into the Roman Empire, if you count subsistence farming as unemployment (and since people didn't do that unless they had to, you should). I think this is what's really happening. The economy is reverting to it's natural state. Of course for most of us that's not a good description of what's happening. Better would be to say "conditions are returning to what they were in the middle ages".
tuna-piano 10y ago
I'll leave this here for those making the "technical unemployment" argument. After hundreds of years of virtually the same argument being made, I think the burden is on you to say why this time is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#Pre_16th_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#Pre...
- nabla9 10y ago
  1) If you are climbing the S-curve, most of the journey looks like exponential growth. 2) It's less of unemployment argument than reduced value argument. Unemployment is result from the lower limit for the living wage. People in India can find work for $1 per day even in automated society. If we are willing to reverse wage increases, remove laws regulating working conditions and remove all kinds of welfare, we can keep people employed for very long time. 3) In the past people could just leave menial jobs and pick a new job that required more intellectual capacity. We are reaching the limit where average Joe has no intellectual capacity that would increase their value in economy.
  - mohamedattahri 10y ago
    Totally agree. I think the real issue is that education is not catching up.
    - sn9 10y ago
      There's also the issue of paying people to work 60+ hours when you could just hire two or more people to work ~30 hours per week. You'd have more rested people being more productive and have more people employed while giving an opportunity for improved work-life balance. That and on-the-job training seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur.
- drewcrawford 10y ago
  It's not actually any different; "technical unemployment" has caused many problems that are clearly visible from a cursory examination of the historical record. The obvious place to start is the horse: the horse population in the US peaked at 26M in 1917 and had declined to 3M by 1960, almost 1/10th of its peak value [0]. When those horses were unemployed by the automobile, we did not retrain them in new lines of work. They just died. It got so bad that conversation societies were established to protect endangered breeds. Eventually we created a handful of new jobs in the recreational sector for them, so the population of horses is rising now, but it is nowhere close to the peak value, and of course we did not create those jobs within the lifetime of any displaced horse. In fact what the historical record shows is that massive technological shocks produce long-term unemployment. It doesn't seem to matter if it's a horse, because of course they're just resources to be exploited in the furtherance of human goals. But then again, so are you. [0] http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/hsp/soaiv_07_ch10.pdf http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/hsp/soaiv_07_ch10.p...

SEJeff 10y ago

I do suspect some industries, such as trucking, will get hit with a severe blow. Many truckers make decent money without many skills to transfer to alternative industries. It will be really rough for them even if it will make shipping safer and cheaper.

jdhawk 10y ago
In the interim, I imagine that long haul truckers will be decimated - and short haul trucking (last 20 miles) will flourish. That should soften the blow through the transition period; where AI is good enough to drive straight out of a loading facility, down the highway, and straight into another facility, but not quite good enough to back down an ally in a congested city and get the paperwork stamped by the right person.
- SEJeff 10y ago
  But the fallacy with that train of thought is that last mile truckers already exist, and are flourishing. More often than not long haul truckers drop loads at regional depots where last mile drivers pick them up and deliver things. You'll see increased competition between last mile drivers due to less trucking jobs overall with a constant demand for work. The one law which is hardest to break is that of supply and demand.

tdb7893 10y ago

It's all just this century's Luddites

knieveltech 10y ago
Nonsense. I encourage you to point out a single industry that has cropped up in the last 50 years that generates large numbers of high paying jobs that aren't subject to being automated away. In 1985 people freaking out about computers and networking was luddite behavior. Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse?
- Raphmedia 10y ago
  > Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse? Space colonies? That or war.
- mohamedattahri 10y ago
  That's exactly the point. People fail when they look at what exists today. Technology opens opportunities people did not imagine before.
  - knieveltech 10y ago
    Demonstrably incorrect. Technology reduces labor force participation. Some portion of that void has been filled with McJobs in the last 15 years but that isn't sustainable.
- 2AF3 10y ago
  plus millions who who support truckers, truckstop workers etc
- tdb7893 10y ago
  I don't know. So far unemployment due to more efficient technical advances hasn't lead to overall structural unemployment so I'm not too worried in the long term. For example if we can ship goods much more efficiently it could lead to increase in production of goods, mining of raw materials, even the service industry as people have more disposable income and that's not even counting the jobs running and maintaining the autonomous fleet. I'm not saying the short term might be kinda hard but long term the economy will adjust.

daviddavis 10y ago

I think you miss the point of the article. It's not that technology destroys jobs but that in the next century, technology could potentially destroy jobs at a faster rate than it adds new ones. That would be an unprecedented event in American history.

candiodari 10y ago
I think the point of the first graph in the article is that this is not true. Technology is destroying jobs faster than creating them for ~45 years now. The thing people forget when comparing to past technological advances is that for the largest part of history unemployment was 90%+ at the best of times, ever since a few hundred years into the Roman Empire, if you count subsistence farming as unemployment (and since people didn't do that unless they had to, you should). I think this is what's really happening. The economy is reverting to it's natural state. Of course for most of us that's not a good description of what's happening. Better would be to say "conditions are returning to what they were in the middle ages".

tuna-piano 10y ago

I'll leave this here for those making the "technical unemployment" argument. After hundreds of years of virtually the same argument being made, I think the burden is on you to say why this time is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#Pre_16th_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#Pre...

nabla9 10y ago
1) If you are climbing the S-curve, most of the journey looks like exponential growth. 2) It's less of unemployment argument than reduced value argument. Unemployment is result from the lower limit for the living wage. People in India can find work for $1 per day even in automated society. If we are willing to reverse wage increases, remove laws regulating working conditions and remove all kinds of welfare, we can keep people employed for very long time. 3) In the past people could just leave menial jobs and pick a new job that required more intellectual capacity. We are reaching the limit where average Joe has no intellectual capacity that would increase their value in economy.
- mohamedattahri 10y ago
  Totally agree. I think the real issue is that education is not catching up.
  - sn9 10y ago
    There's also the issue of paying people to work 60+ hours when you could just hire two or more people to work ~30 hours per week. You'd have more rested people being more productive and have more people employed while giving an opportunity for improved work-life balance. That and on-the-job training seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur.
drewcrawford 10y ago
It's not actually any different; "technical unemployment" has caused many problems that are clearly visible from a cursory examination of the historical record. The obvious place to start is the horse: the horse population in the US peaked at 26M in 1917 and had declined to 3M by 1960, almost 1/10th of its peak value [0]. When those horses were unemployed by the automobile, we did not retrain them in new lines of work. They just died. It got so bad that conversation societies were established to protect endangered breeds. Eventually we created a handful of new jobs in the recreational sector for them, so the population of horses is rising now, but it is nowhere close to the peak value, and of course we did not create those jobs within the lifetime of any displaced horse. In fact what the historical record shows is that massive technological shocks produce long-term unemployment. It doesn't seem to matter if it's a horse, because of course they're just resources to be exploited in the furtherance of human goals. But then again, so are you. [0] http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/hsp/soaiv_07_ch10.pdf http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/hsp/soaiv_07_ch10.p...