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Robots aren't capable of doing everything people can do yet, but as they become more capable, what and how are displaced unskilled workers supposed to do if the

Robots aren't capable of doing everything people can do yet, but as they become more capable, what and how are displaced unskilled workers supposed to do if they can't get any job at all? Starve to death under a bridge? Not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor. I think this is why UBI is essential: prevent riots and meet people's basic needs so they're not pennyless and sleeping rough.

lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
Your statement "not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor" is a larger sociological problem. If we insist that the only people allowed to participate in the labor market are college educated white guys, maybe; I don't see that statusquo continuing. The hoops some members of this forum will jump through to convince themselves that building CRUD apps is some zenith of intellectual might just continues to astound me.
- glhaynes 9y ago
  Seems a strange complaint when janitorial positions (which aren’t often held by college educated white guys) are under discussion. Presuming we want people to have good lives who aren’t able or inclined to do jobs requiring much higher intellectual demands than janitorial ones (and I certainly do want us to presume that!), we need to figure out how to in the short term allow people doing those jobs to have good lives and in the long term allow them to have good lives while robots do those jobs. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your comment.
  - posguy 9y ago
    There are massive economic upheavals occurring right now, and we as a society have decided that most people get to live a hardscrabble existence where an unexpected $500 expense will ruin a person or family financially. This economic system isn't working for the vast majority of Americans, hence the support for Bernie and Trump.
  - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
    I mean that's the point. The difference between someone that ends up as a janitor and someone that ends up as a software engineer has a lot more to do with their parent's money and the color of their skin than any variation in intelligence. Pretending differently just leads you to the comforting arms of the "just world fallacy".
    - dsacco 9y ago
      I think your position needs to be defended just as much as the position you're arguing against, and right now you're not doing a convincing job of defending it.
    - monktastic1 9y ago
      As someone above asked: have you spent significant time teaching / tutoring? There are enormous differences in how quickly people learn mathematical concepts, even given varied teaching methods. Becoming a software engineer requires both intelligence and luck (though one might also argue that intelligence, being the result of genes and environment, is also primarily luck).
      - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
        I'm not a professional educator no. And I do think there's a whole separate discussion to be had about how generally awful most software education is that Im not going to get into. However, small sample size notwithstanding, I have been involved with mentoring in an outreach program targeted at people with little to no CS experience. And these students were coding circles around "CS" grads in under 6 weeks. Sure the theoretical foundations aren't there yet, but, do you really need that much math to stand up an app, build a website, or do any of the work expected of a junior dev? I 100% agree with you in that most people don't have the aptitude to become the next John Carmack, but, at least in my experience, that's not where the jobs are anyway. You don't need to be Linus to generate business value using Linux, and you don't need to be James Gosling to working Java enterprise apps. The jobs of the future need an army of people to modernize infrastructure and build using existing tools. These are the middle class anchors of the 21st century; I'd say look no farther than the "analyst" pipelines of the American finance industry to see this happening.
- weirdstuff 9y ago
  I'm inclined to agree with that. Maybe if jobs for all skill-sets were still growing (in availability and compensation) it'd be easier to write off a good portion of the population as mentally inferior, but now that knowledge jobs are gaining a monopoly on living wages/salaries I don't think it's as easy to be that glib. We need to do better as a society. We're not that glib when it comes to children and early education, and I don't think we should change attitude just because a person has reached adulthood. Laziness and/or the attribution fallacy seems to get the better of a lot of us on HN.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  >Your statement "not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor" is a larger sociological problem. Have you ever been in any kind of teaching role, or observed some students at tutoring labs? Some people are just unteachable/not cut out for it.
posguy 9y ago
UBI is a bad attempt to patch a broken capitalist system that has no regard for the humans within it. It may delay riots, but people's basic needs still won't be met.
- gremlinsinc 9y ago
  What would you suggest as an alternative if there were only enough jobs to support 20-30% of people .. including professional jobs like doctors/radiologists/lawyers being displaced?
  - posguy 9y ago
    Sounds like it could be great, terrible, or somewhere in between in the future you describe. I'm a socialist by upbringing, hopefully we would be smart enough to organize our society such that we take care of those most vulnerable among us. Currently we make a modicum of effort towards this, and vilify the working poor as lazy, no good scum, despite how they often work much more than those who earn more than them.
    - surge 9y ago
      Why do people who call out capitalism for being a broken system, fail to acknowledge socialism (in all of its purest forms tried so far) is also broken and doesn't work when you have non-altruistic self interested humans in the mix or at least people who will look out for others but mostly people in their social proximity. I'm all happy for an alternative, and something better than capitalism. but at least suggest a working alternative. Capitalism for all its faults seems to have the highest chance of success, especially when you hybridize it with some socialist policies which is more or less what most western countries have done and even then there are basic issues, but neither extreme capitalism or socialism works. Both have a tendency to encourage different forms of corruption and different levels of inequality, or just short lived gains.
    - gremlinsinc 9y ago
      Honestly, I look beyond socialism/capitalism/consumerism to something more like the Venus Project or Resource based economy as something we should attain to, though it's a bit utopian to think we'll ever get their in the current political climate...maybe someday... I voted for Bernie personally -- not a full out socialist... but I do think single payer + ubi + free college makes sense -- take the stress out of living paycheck to paycheck... at least somewhat... Not saying make everyone a millionaire and inflate the crap out of thnigs...but there needs to be some equilibrium... One good policy might be capped CEO pay at say 200 * average employee salary. In this way - for CEO to get a raise, average salary must go up -- this can happen either by raising across the board or by moving more people to management and increasing upward mobility. Any money the CEO makes over 200* from that company is taxed at 100% including benefits, stocks, etc...
pasquinelli 9y ago
"Not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor." then they can become janitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox but you're right, ubi is essential. not everyone can handle janitorial work. ;)
- foxhop 9y ago
  Its not just janitors, this happened to me in a highly technical call center.
  - pasquinelli 9y ago
    that's kind of what i'm getting at. there's a presumption that the future will be for tech workers, and everyone else will have to starve or, preferably, be supported. i think that's optimistic. i think the future will be for janitors, and everyone else will have to starve or be supported. manufacturing went away, agriculture went away, mining went away, all through automation. coincidently, this corresponded to growth in the people working in tech and other intellectual labor. but it's sloppy thinking to say that automation causes growth in intellectual labor, which seems to be the presumption. automation causes whatever it automates to shrink. intellectual labor will be automated-- possibly before janitorial work.

lordCarbonFiber 9y ago

Your statement "not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor" is a larger sociological problem. If we insist that the only people allowed to participate in the labor market are college educated white guys, maybe; I don't see that statusquo continuing. The hoops some members of this forum will jump through to convince themselves that building CRUD apps is some zenith of intellectual might just continues to astound me.

glhaynes 9y ago
Seems a strange complaint when janitorial positions (which aren’t often held by college educated white guys) are under discussion. Presuming we want people to have good lives who aren’t able or inclined to do jobs requiring much higher intellectual demands than janitorial ones (and I certainly do want us to presume that!), we need to figure out how to in the short term allow people doing those jobs to have good lives and in the long term allow them to have good lives while robots do those jobs. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your comment.
- posguy 9y ago
  There are massive economic upheavals occurring right now, and we as a society have decided that most people get to live a hardscrabble existence where an unexpected $500 expense will ruin a person or family financially. This economic system isn't working for the vast majority of Americans, hence the support for Bernie and Trump.
- lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
  I mean that's the point. The difference between someone that ends up as a janitor and someone that ends up as a software engineer has a lot more to do with their parent's money and the color of their skin than any variation in intelligence. Pretending differently just leads you to the comforting arms of the "just world fallacy".
  - dsacco 9y ago
    I think your position needs to be defended just as much as the position you're arguing against, and right now you're not doing a convincing job of defending it.
  - monktastic1 9y ago
    As someone above asked: have you spent significant time teaching / tutoring? There are enormous differences in how quickly people learn mathematical concepts, even given varied teaching methods. Becoming a software engineer requires both intelligence and luck (though one might also argue that intelligence, being the result of genes and environment, is also primarily luck).
    - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
      I'm not a professional educator no. And I do think there's a whole separate discussion to be had about how generally awful most software education is that Im not going to get into. However, small sample size notwithstanding, I have been involved with mentoring in an outreach program targeted at people with little to no CS experience. And these students were coding circles around "CS" grads in under 6 weeks. Sure the theoretical foundations aren't there yet, but, do you really need that much math to stand up an app, build a website, or do any of the work expected of a junior dev? I 100% agree with you in that most people don't have the aptitude to become the next John Carmack, but, at least in my experience, that's not where the jobs are anyway. You don't need to be Linus to generate business value using Linux, and you don't need to be James Gosling to working Java enterprise apps. The jobs of the future need an army of people to modernize infrastructure and build using existing tools. These are the middle class anchors of the 21st century; I'd say look no farther than the "analyst" pipelines of the American finance industry to see this happening.
weirdstuff 9y ago
I'm inclined to agree with that. Maybe if jobs for all skill-sets were still growing (in availability and compensation) it'd be easier to write off a good portion of the population as mentally inferior, but now that knowledge jobs are gaining a monopoly on living wages/salaries I don't think it's as easy to be that glib. We need to do better as a society. We're not that glib when it comes to children and early education, and I don't think we should change attitude just because a person has reached adulthood. Laziness and/or the attribution fallacy seems to get the better of a lot of us on HN.
jimmaswell 9y ago
>Your statement "not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor" is a larger sociological problem. Have you ever been in any kind of teaching role, or observed some students at tutoring labs? Some people are just unteachable/not cut out for it.

posguy 9y ago

UBI is a bad attempt to patch a broken capitalist system that has no regard for the humans within it. It may delay riots, but people's basic needs still won't be met.

gremlinsinc 9y ago
What would you suggest as an alternative if there were only enough jobs to support 20-30% of people .. including professional jobs like doctors/radiologists/lawyers being displaced?
- posguy 9y ago
  Sounds like it could be great, terrible, or somewhere in between in the future you describe. I'm a socialist by upbringing, hopefully we would be smart enough to organize our society such that we take care of those most vulnerable among us. Currently we make a modicum of effort towards this, and vilify the working poor as lazy, no good scum, despite how they often work much more than those who earn more than them.
  - surge 9y ago
    Why do people who call out capitalism for being a broken system, fail to acknowledge socialism (in all of its purest forms tried so far) is also broken and doesn't work when you have non-altruistic self interested humans in the mix or at least people who will look out for others but mostly people in their social proximity. I'm all happy for an alternative, and something better than capitalism. but at least suggest a working alternative. Capitalism for all its faults seems to have the highest chance of success, especially when you hybridize it with some socialist policies which is more or less what most western countries have done and even then there are basic issues, but neither extreme capitalism or socialism works. Both have a tendency to encourage different forms of corruption and different levels of inequality, or just short lived gains.
  - gremlinsinc 9y ago
    Honestly, I look beyond socialism/capitalism/consumerism to something more like the Venus Project or Resource based economy as something we should attain to, though it's a bit utopian to think we'll ever get their in the current political climate...maybe someday... I voted for Bernie personally -- not a full out socialist... but I do think single payer + ubi + free college makes sense -- take the stress out of living paycheck to paycheck... at least somewhat... Not saying make everyone a millionaire and inflate the crap out of thnigs...but there needs to be some equilibrium... One good policy might be capped CEO pay at say 200 * average employee salary. In this way - for CEO to get a raise, average salary must go up -- this can happen either by raising across the board or by moving more people to management and increasing upward mobility. Any money the CEO makes over 200* from that company is taxed at 100% including benefits, stocks, etc...

pasquinelli 9y ago

"Not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor." then they can become janitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox but you're right, ubi is essential. not everyone can handle janitorial work. ;)

foxhop 9y ago
Its not just janitors, this happened to me in a highly technical call center.
- pasquinelli 9y ago
  that's kind of what i'm getting at. there's a presumption that the future will be for tech workers, and everyone else will have to starve or, preferably, be supported. i think that's optimistic. i think the future will be for janitors, and everyone else will have to starve or be supported. manufacturing went away, agriculture went away, mining went away, all through automation. coincidently, this corresponded to growth in the people working in tech and other intellectual labor. but it's sloppy thinking to say that automation causes growth in intellectual labor, which seems to be the presumption. automation causes whatever it automates to shrink. intellectual labor will be automated-- possibly before janitorial work.