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Because human capital is a market of jobs, and the analogy attempts to compare that entire market to 1 job/industry within that market (horses). When horses b
by m52go 9y ago
Because human capital is a market of jobs, and the analogy attempts to compare that entire market to 1 job/industry within that market (horses).
When horses became obsolete, the car industry rose, and tens of thousands of people were needed to engineer, produce, sell, and repair cars.
So as automation takes over, the jobs it affects will disappear, but others will emerge to take their places.
- dkonofalski 9y agoExcept that automation is entirely unique from what's happened in the past because it requires far fewer people to do those tasks. You're displacing industries where the target doesn't require nearly as many people as the source industry. I mean... even in the example that you give, with the car industry rising, we're already seeing fewer and fewer jobs as all the electricians (as an example) that were once hired were replaced by a single automated machine and that machine only requires a single person to service it (or maybe a handful, at most). The issue is that your last statement is correct but vastly understated - the jobs affected will disappear, others will emerge to take their place, but not in the quantities necessary to keep the same percent of the population employed. Add to that the fact that the population and number of people requiring jobs is going to continue to increase and you're just cracking the tip of the iceberg.