5 ms·
> Suppose right now, we have 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 3 lab techs per 50 patients per day. I think technology generally lets us do the same job with just 2 nurses
by avz 10y ago
> Suppose right now, we have 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 3 lab techs per 50 patients per day. I think technology generally lets us do the same job with just 2 nurses and 1 lab tech. So we lose 40% of the jobs from the higher paying side and probably more like 50-75% of the pay.
You're making the extreme assumption that the amount of medical care demanded remains constant despite the fall in prices (e.g. employees: 5->3, patients: 50->50). An alternative extreme is that employment remains fixed while falling prices improve accessibility (e.g. employees: 5->5, patients: 50->90).
In reality we may easily end up somewhere in between (e.g. employees: 5->4, patients: 50->70). This also highlights two aspects of automation: on the dark side, it reduces demand for work, on the bright side it improves availability (here, of medical care). If as a society we're able to deal with the former (e.g. by conjuring up new occupations) we stand to improve our future significantly through the latter.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoI agree automation increases availability. I never implied it didn't have benefits -- just that we're likely to see the disappearance of middle class jobs because we'll be able to fill new ones with computers faster than with people. Even if it increases employment and availability (4 nurses, 2 techs, 100 customers), we're seeing a decrease in income provided -- 1 doctor and 1 tech for 3 nurses. Less spread across more people.
- notahacker 10y agoUnless we're positing a singularity, I don't think the public's demand for better treatment is remotely close to satiation point, or that computerised efficiency and accuracy will reduce the demand for nice, qualified middle-class people to explain what the computer is recommending for them. That's even before we've started considering whole new classes of middle class job that mass adoption of technologies like gene sequencing could entail, or the largely-justifiable layers of regulation and respect that give medical professionals a lot more power to keep their jobs relevant than the average union member I don't think "surplus of trained doctors" is a real problem I'm likely to see in my lifetime, never mind a likely consequence of the foreseeable future improvements in medical data collection and diagnosis.