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btw, do you ever think we'll reach a point where it will be common to have 99.9%+ automated factories? (robotic, possibly even full input/output lifecyle & dist

btw, do you ever think we'll reach a point where it will be common to have 99.9%+ automated factories? (robotic, possibly even full input/output lifecyle & distribution, etc.) I think one way to answer this is by analogy to farming. Every year, less and less of our food is touched by human hands on its way to the market. According to the USDA, in 1900 41% of the American workforce was employed in agriculture. If you went back to 1900 and told a farmer that fewer than 2% of Americans would be involved in the production of food in 100 years, would he believe you? This tectonic change has gone unnoticed by most because displaced agricultural workers have been able to find gainful employment elsewhere. The whole issue here, I think, is what we'll do when most of the productive labor across all economic sectors isn't needed anymore. So yes, in that sense, whether we use 99% automated domestic factories or whether we build 99% of our stuff overseas, I think we'll reach that point.

rbranson 16y ago
Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for.
- CamperBob 16y ago
  Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for. Exactly -- science led to technology which led to job creation. That's the whole story of the 20th century, with a couple of wars tossed in to keep things moving. Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still have to fight the Scopes monkey trial every few years, we couldn't get back to the Moon with any less time and money than it took the first time, and especially since 9/11, we're no longer a place where the world's STEM students come to study and live. That farmer from 1900 would say we're "eating our seed corn."
  - timr 16y ago
    "Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still have to fight the Scopes monkey trial every few years, we couldn't get back to the Moon with any less time and money than it took the first time, and especially since 9/11, we're no longer a place where the world's STEM students come to study and live." You're actually very wrong about foreign STEM students (every US graduate school is filled with Chinese grad students and post-docs), but that's neither here nor there. One of the main points of the article was that it gets harder to educate a new generation of high-tech workers when the industries that have all of the institutional knowledge out-source that knowledge to China. Middle-achieving Chinese students have an incentive to come to the US for higher education -- it helps them get jobs back home. What incentive to middle-achieving American kids have, when the bottom 95% of high-tech jobs are sent to China? The unspoken Myth of economics is that just because we've transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial economy in the past, we'll be forever able to use efficiency improvements to drive employment in the future. In real life, it's just plainly, obviously untrue. If nothing else, the simple fact that human intelligence follows a bell-curve should tell us that there's always going to be a large class of people who cannot function at the highest level of production. Those people need factory jobs, or farming jobs, or other lower-skill industries that pay a decent salary.
    - AlisdairO 16y ago
      "If nothing else, the simple fact that human intelligence follows a bell-curve should tell us that there's always going to be a large class of people who cannot function at the highest level of production. Those people need factory jobs, or farming jobs, or other lower-skill industries that pay a decent salary." Well said. The jobs we're creating are achievable to a progressively smaller segment of the population, and that's a huge problem. I wonder if as we run out of easily-mineable resources, we'll start creating low-skilled jobs again, in the recycling of the already-mined resources - garbage mining, effectively. If China's hold on rare earth metals, for example, continues to increase, I can imagine this being an important job area.
    - CamperBob 16y ago
      You're actually very wrong about foreign STEM students Am I? (every US graduate school is filled with Chinese grad students and post-docs), but that's neither here nor there What happens immediately after they graduate?
- adammichaelc 16y ago
  I wonder if something similar will happen in the future, except replacing "food and shelter" with "food, shelter, manufacturing, electronics, clothes, etc.". Would new industries then come out of the ashes of manual labor in these different fields?
  - Kadin 16y ago
    You still need raw materials for those factories. I suspect war will remain a popular pastime.
dasil003 16y ago
If you went back to 1900 and told a farmer that fewer than 2% of Americans would be involved in the production of food in 100 years, would he believe you? And he would be wise not to... well at least not if you add Farmville numbers in there.

rbranson 16y ago

Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for.

CamperBob 16y ago
Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for. Exactly -- science led to technology which led to job creation. That's the whole story of the 20th century, with a couple of wars tossed in to keep things moving. Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still have to fight the Scopes monkey trial every few years, we couldn't get back to the Moon with any less time and money than it took the first time, and especially since 9/11, we're no longer a place where the world's STEM students come to study and live. That farmer from 1900 would say we're "eating our seed corn."
- timr 16y ago
  "Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still have to fight the Scopes monkey trial every few years, we couldn't get back to the Moon with any less time and money than it took the first time, and especially since 9/11, we're no longer a place where the world's STEM students come to study and live." You're actually very wrong about foreign STEM students (every US graduate school is filled with Chinese grad students and post-docs), but that's neither here nor there. One of the main points of the article was that it gets harder to educate a new generation of high-tech workers when the industries that have all of the institutional knowledge out-source that knowledge to China. Middle-achieving Chinese students have an incentive to come to the US for higher education -- it helps them get jobs back home. What incentive to middle-achieving American kids have, when the bottom 95% of high-tech jobs are sent to China? The unspoken Myth of economics is that just because we've transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial economy in the past, we'll be forever able to use efficiency improvements to drive employment in the future. In real life, it's just plainly, obviously untrue. If nothing else, the simple fact that human intelligence follows a bell-curve should tell us that there's always going to be a large class of people who cannot function at the highest level of production. Those people need factory jobs, or farming jobs, or other lower-skill industries that pay a decent salary.
  - AlisdairO 16y ago
    "If nothing else, the simple fact that human intelligence follows a bell-curve should tell us that there's always going to be a large class of people who cannot function at the highest level of production. Those people need factory jobs, or farming jobs, or other lower-skill industries that pay a decent salary." Well said. The jobs we're creating are achievable to a progressively smaller segment of the population, and that's a huge problem. I wonder if as we run out of easily-mineable resources, we'll start creating low-skilled jobs again, in the recycling of the already-mined resources - garbage mining, effectively. If China's hold on rare earth metals, for example, continues to increase, I can imagine this being an important job area.
  - CamperBob 16y ago
    You're actually very wrong about foreign STEM students Am I? (every US graduate school is filled with Chinese grad students and post-docs), but that's neither here nor there What happens immediately after they graduate?
adammichaelc 16y ago
I wonder if something similar will happen in the future, except replacing "food and shelter" with "food, shelter, manufacturing, electronics, clothes, etc.". Would new industries then come out of the ashes of manual labor in these different fields?
- Kadin 16y ago
  You still need raw materials for those factories. I suspect war will remain a popular pastime.

dasil003 16y ago

If you went back to 1900 and told a farmer that fewer than 2% of Americans would be involved in the production of food in 100 years, would he believe you? And he would be wise not to... well at least not if you add Farmville numbers in there.