4 ms·

Well yeah, but we reach a point where we don't have a job available to say, 30% of the potential workforce. I don't think robot maintenance will be the next ret

Well yeah, but we reach a point where we don't have a job available to say, 30% of the potential workforce. I don't think robot maintenance will be the next retail or warehouse employee.

greglindahl 9y ago
We made the transition from subsistence agriculture to now. 90%+ of the population used to tend crops.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Exactly. Funny how most people seem to completely forget that little detail of recent history.
  - mbaha 9y ago
    That's mainly because the rate of change is far greater. Will need to get used to it though.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    What matters is if there is anything to transition to. A strong argument is made that the options for new jobs are rapidly diminishing, as automation eliminates jobs by skill level, while at the same time the economy is not giving people time to retrain (people most imperilled by automation are usually those living paycheck-to-paycheck). Those two things were not simultaneously true in the past.
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      > What matters is if there is anything to transition to. There will always be something to transition to. It's not because we cannot imagine it that it means there is nothing ahead of us. Like 75% of the jobs people have nowadays did not exist 100 years ago, and nobody at that time could have imagined them.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Eventually, maybe. That still doesn't solve the immediate problem: jobs are beginning to disappear now, there's no replacement in sight, and the economy doesn't allow for the need to retrain mass amounts of people. This is a recipe for disaster (the bloody kind).
  - ben_w 9y ago
    The massively disruptive translation that completely overthrew the existing social orders worldwide, allowing a few small European nations to conquer most of the world and force an unwanted drugs trade on what had, for several thousand years previously, been the world superpower? The transition which directly to the rise of both communism and capitalism as viable nation-scale forms of government? Sure, humans will go on (unless we nuke outselves), but that doesn’t mean it will be easy or fun to live through if we just presume it’ll all be fine.

Well yeah, but we reach a point where we don't have a job available to say, 30% of the potential workforce. I don't think robot maintenance will be the next retail or warehouse employee.

greglindahl 9y ago

We made the transition from subsistence agriculture to now. 90%+ of the population used to tend crops.

ekianjo 9y ago
Exactly. Funny how most people seem to completely forget that little detail of recent history.
- mbaha 9y ago
  That's mainly because the rate of change is far greater. Will need to get used to it though.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  What matters is if there is anything to transition to. A strong argument is made that the options for new jobs are rapidly diminishing, as automation eliminates jobs by skill level, while at the same time the economy is not giving people time to retrain (people most imperilled by automation are usually those living paycheck-to-paycheck). Those two things were not simultaneously true in the past.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > What matters is if there is anything to transition to. There will always be something to transition to. It's not because we cannot imagine it that it means there is nothing ahead of us. Like 75% of the jobs people have nowadays did not exist 100 years ago, and nobody at that time could have imagined them.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Eventually, maybe. That still doesn't solve the immediate problem: jobs are beginning to disappear now, there's no replacement in sight, and the economy doesn't allow for the need to retrain mass amounts of people. This is a recipe for disaster (the bloody kind).
- ben_w 9y ago
  The massively disruptive translation that completely overthrew the existing social orders worldwide, allowing a few small European nations to conquer most of the world and force an unwanted drugs trade on what had, for several thousand years previously, been the world superpower? The transition which directly to the rise of both communism and capitalism as viable nation-scale forms of government? Sure, humans will go on (unless we nuke outselves), but that doesn’t mean it will be easy or fun to live through if we just presume it’ll all be fine.