> People have been talking about automation for generations. Sure. But there's some truly devastating automations coming up unlike any before it. Self-driving

> People have been talking about automation for generations. Sure. But there's some truly devastating automations coming up unlike any before it. Self-driving vehicles are going to kill four million decent paying jobs driving semis. Where are these jobs going to go? Manufacturing is all but gone here. Outsourcing is taking out another huge swath of skilled workers. We're not going to be able to run an entire economy on the service industry. And even those jobs aren't safe. Grocery stores are steadily replacing cashiers with self-checkouts. Fast food is increasingly being automated -- Eatsa has one employee working per store. People are staying home and ordering online where warehouse jobs at eg Amazon are increasingly assisted by automation. Yes, if we look at the past, there's a lot of unnecessary jobs we've eliminated. Pin setters for bowling alleys, street lamp lighters, phone switch operators, etc. Then we have the really good paying jobs we've cut through outsourcing manufacturing and programming jobs. And yes, every time we've had some new job for people to go to. And they've always been worse jobs with lower pay. We've gone from a time where one person working could afford a house and two cars, and get a pension retirement at 65; to now where both spouses need to work, probably can't afford a house, and will need their kids to get by on student loans to go to college. 401Ks do not replace pensions, and they can disappear out from under you (eg MCI Worldcom.) But this time is different: we're really on the bottom rung of jobs in the service industry. Replace these jobs, and there's nowhere else to go. Society is going to be forced to deal with a post-work economy. I don't mean no one working, but I do mean "there aren't enough jobs for everyone to work 40, let alone 60, hours a week." Broken window fallacy and all. I think the pace of automation is slow right now, as we still aren't very good with AI. But eventually there's going to be a breakthrough in AI, and I don't see our governments keeping up with how rapidly everything is going to change. Maybe this future is 10 years away. Maybe it's 100 years away. But it is coming.