4 ms·
The same thing that, at the turn of the century when one in ten people were employed in agriculture. (today it's closer to 1/100) they go find other work. Same
by jackhack 9y ago
The same thing that, at the turn of the century when one in ten people were employed in agriculture. (today it's closer to 1/100) they go find other work.
Same goes for a farrier or a blacksmith or milkman, or ice delivery, or newpaper boy shouting "extra, extra - read all about it" from the street corner. In some cases, the job is simply gone. In others, the work still exists, but is nowhere as common.
- wonderwonder 9y agoI agree to a point but I think it is a different scenario today as you have unprecedented concentration of wealth in the top 1 % as well as the means of production. I have a hard time seeing how 5% of the nations workforce suddenly transitions to jobs that did not exist before. You also have an increase in the cost of living where most households require two incomes compounding the issue. With agriculture new jobs were created as people moved to cities and new communities were created. those cities already exist. Short of a sudden civilization focused effort to colonize mars, I just don't see it.
- malandrew 9y agoI honestly don't think we pay enough attention to the rising cost of living. Cost of living should go down year over year due to productivity gains, but we see at least three line items becoming more expensive over time: (1) housing, (2) healthcare, and (3) higher education. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost... https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-comments-on-cost-disease/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-co... https://howmuch.net/articles/american-spending-past-75-years https://howmuch.net/articles/american-spending-past-75-years
- cousin_it 9y agoAmusingly, these exact three things were free in the USSR. I benefited from that a lot. Though most other consumer goods were less affordable and lower quality in the USSR than in the US, and the economy was in worse shape overall. I wonder if there's a way to combine the two systems without people screaming blue murder.
- malandrew 9y agoI'm not suggesting that those should be free. I'm saying we should eliminate governmental policies that restrict consumer choice and market competition or contribute to cost disease.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rhino369 9y agoWell, it won't be sudden. But the job loss might not be sudden either. Personal computers destroyed the secretary job over about 30 years. And that used to be the most common job in America. Even Level 4 automated cars debut tomorrow, we'll need truck drivers for a long time. You need someone there to watch the goods, arrange deliveries, unload, etc. It'll probably allow truckers to drive 24 hours a day instead of 14, which will cost jobs, but it won't be a complete loss. Same goes for Ubers. You'll need full level 5 unless you want lost Ubers clogging our streets all the time. That probably means you'll need a person in the car for years to come.
- maxerickson 9y agoPeople weren't abruptly pushed out of farming jobs, they left farms for better opportunities.
- H1Supreme 9y agoThank you. I keep seeing this Agriculture jobs reference. But, no one mentions that (most of) those people left by their own will. Not because they were pushed out. My own family used to have a farm. All the boys left to go work in mills when they became of age.
- cakeface 9y agoI have seen a lot of movement back to agriculture. Friends of mine, many college educated, are working for farms or starting their own farms. Land is available and they seem to be doing pretty well.
- maxerickson 9y agoI looked for a couple minutes and didn't find it conveniently already done, but it would be interesting to see a breakdown of the US work force from 1850, showing the percentage working in agriculture (including slavery pre Civil War) and the percentage of agriculture workers that were immigrants. If there is a high proportion of immigrants working in agriculture it blows the whole theory into the sky, as that would be people answering demand for labor at pretty high personal cost, the opposite of incumbents getting pushed out.
- stevenwoo 9y agoThis has the current info and some historic info (but not a convenient table!) for California, spread out all over the writing, the percentage of immigrants depends on the crop, for crops that require manual picking the vast majority of the workers are immigrants (everyone except the person in charge most of the time), 5% (800000/16000000) of the workers in California are temporary farm workers. http://migration.ucdavis.edu/cf/more.php?id=174 http://migration.ucdavis.edu/cf/more.php?id=174
- s73ver 9y agoExcept people left agriculture because they wanted to. They also didn't need much in specialized training (and the factories were more willing to provide that). Seriously, tell us what jobs these truckers are going to go find.
- dredmorbius 9y agoAg labour was replaced by the same fundamental change which made the factory work which replaced it viable: more energy per worker. A farmer with a 15 - 30 HP Ford or John Deere tractor could do the work of a team of men or horses. Rather than 40-horse combine-harvester rigs (with swingletrees to transmit force evenly through the harness), you had a draw-harvester and PTO off the tractor. Factory productivity tracks virtually linearly with kW or HP per worker, in the form of power tools and equipment. Humans were the control elements of such systems. Now we're swapping out the control elements -- computers for people. If humans don't have either muscle or brainpower to contribute, what's left?
- chii 9y ago> don't have either muscle or brainpower to contribute, what's left? I want to see a future where most people are hyper specialists, doing one niche thing for almost the entire world. also, I want to see more people be capital owners where they make decisions for their own business rather than work for someone else. robots may replace humans, but can they replace being a business owner?
- dredmorbius 9y agoHow many hyper-specialist occupations are there? How many people are there? Which of these sets is larger? By how much?