5 ms·

Employment is only a result of an individual wanting someone else to do something for them, because they don't have the time or skill to do it themselves. In ex

Employment is only a result of an individual wanting someone else to do something for them, because they don't have the time or skill to do it themselves. In exchange for someone doing this thing for them, they compensate them with something of value, normally payment in the form of currency. When you consider employment from this angle, I find it extremely hard to believe that a day will come where the majority of humans on this planet won't want help from other humans to accomplish their goals as they go about their daily lives. Yes, employment in the form of large corporations giving out biweekly paychecks may not exist anymore, but employment as a way to help your fellow human will never cease to exist.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fastball 9y ago
I don't know, eventually all unskilled labor will be replaced by machines, and in order to give someone else value you'll need skill.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Sure. This kind of "employment" - or, rather, trade - is fundamental to humans as a socializing species. This can't go away without fundamentally changing what it means to be a human. But this is not the kind of "employment" people usually talk about. What can, and should go away, is the need for employment to survive. I think we can also imagine the times in which employment isn't necessary in order not to suffer (crappy food, cold in winter, lack of healthcare), and to keep upward mobility open. The optimistic view of eliminating jobs is all about eliminating being forced to work to live a happy life, not about eliminating the entire possibility of work and trade.
lmm 9y ago
> I find it extremely hard to believe that a day will come where the majority of humans on this planet won't want help from other humans to accomplish their goals as they go about their daily lives. If robots are better at helping people accomplish those goals then why would people ask other humans for help rather than robots? I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human.... For the moment I pay humans to do some things (cleaning, food preparation, art production, ...), but it seems entirely conceivable that machines could get better at all of those as well.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human It's funny you should mention this. My last job was at an OTA (online travel agent). They started out with a website to book holidays and an intent to streamline the crap out of the process catering to individuals like yourself. They hired a skeleton call center staff to deal with unforeseen problems with an intent to rely upon them as little as possible. Over time they realized that a lot of people were calling up to do bits and pieces of the booking over the phone that they could have done online. Initially they tried to steer them back to the website but they realized that they were mostly dropping out of the sales funnel. It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker. So, they changed tack and ramped up call center staffing, advertised a free phone number on the every page and let people essentially decide themselves where in the sales funnel they wanted to talk to a human - the whole way through or, like you, not at all. This company had a really smart approach in other areas too about when to use automation and when not to. >For the moment I pay humans to do some things like cleaning You say that as if there has been a multitude of advances in home cleaning technology since the 1950s. I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker. I'm surprised, and I wonder what the age breakdown of those people looks like. > I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job It must have on the margin, surely? I was on the fence about getting a cleaner for a long time; it wouldn't've taken much to push me into not doing so (and many of my friends in similar circumstances, some of whom have Roombas, don't). > or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon. Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst-case scenario there is pretty bad, but I read some interesting blog posts a year or two back about a robot that can pick up clothes from the floor and run a laundry cycle (with the help of a QR code sticker on the washer). I don't expect a robot to replace a human cleaner immediately, but I do expect the gradual automation of more and more domestic cleaning tasks, which will push more and more people across the line where it doesn't make sense to hire a human cleaner.
nabla9 9y ago
Individuals are not just exchanging labor. What we want is result of combining factors of production together (capital, labor, land or natural resources). What happens if the things people want today are 70 percent labor and 20 years from now just 40 percent labor (this is called capital deepening). Will the return of capital decrease and how much wage share decreases? Is government spending or wealth transfer increasing in the economy?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

fastball 9y ago

I don't know, eventually all unskilled labor will be replaced by machines, and in order to give someone else value you'll need skill.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Sure. This kind of "employment" - or, rather, trade - is fundamental to humans as a socializing species. This can't go away without fundamentally changing what it means to be a human. But this is not the kind of "employment" people usually talk about. What can, and should go away, is the need for employment to survive. I think we can also imagine the times in which employment isn't necessary in order not to suffer (crappy food, cold in winter, lack of healthcare), and to keep upward mobility open. The optimistic view of eliminating jobs is all about eliminating being forced to work to live a happy life, not about eliminating the entire possibility of work and trade.

lmm 9y ago

> I find it extremely hard to believe that a day will come where the majority of humans on this planet won't want help from other humans to accomplish their goals as they go about their daily lives. If robots are better at helping people accomplish those goals then why would people ask other humans for help rather than robots? I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human.... For the moment I pay humans to do some things (cleaning, food preparation, art production, ...), but it seems entirely conceivable that machines could get better at all of those as well.

crdoconnor 9y ago
>I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human It's funny you should mention this. My last job was at an OTA (online travel agent). They started out with a website to book holidays and an intent to streamline the crap out of the process catering to individuals like yourself. They hired a skeleton call center staff to deal with unforeseen problems with an intent to rely upon them as little as possible. Over time they realized that a lot of people were calling up to do bits and pieces of the booking over the phone that they could have done online. Initially they tried to steer them back to the website but they realized that they were mostly dropping out of the sales funnel. It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker. So, they changed tack and ramped up call center staffing, advertised a free phone number on the every page and let people essentially decide themselves where in the sales funnel they wanted to talk to a human - the whole way through or, like you, not at all. This company had a really smart approach in other areas too about when to use automation and when not to. >For the moment I pay humans to do some things like cleaning You say that as if there has been a multitude of advances in home cleaning technology since the 1950s. I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon.
- lmm 9y ago
  > It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker. I'm surprised, and I wonder what the age breakdown of those people looks like. > I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job It must have on the margin, surely? I was on the fence about getting a cleaner for a long time; it wouldn't've taken much to push me into not doing so (and many of my friends in similar circumstances, some of whom have Roombas, don't). > or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon. Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst-case scenario there is pretty bad, but I read some interesting blog posts a year or two back about a robot that can pick up clothes from the floor and run a laundry cycle (with the help of a QR code sticker on the washer). I don't expect a robot to replace a human cleaner immediately, but I do expect the gradual automation of more and more domestic cleaning tasks, which will push more and more people across the line where it doesn't make sense to hire a human cleaner.

nabla9 9y ago

Individuals are not just exchanging labor. What we want is result of combining factors of production together (capital, labor, land or natural resources). What happens if the things people want today are 70 percent labor and 20 years from now just 40 percent labor (this is called capital deepening). Will the return of capital decrease and how much wage share decreases? Is government spending or wealth transfer increasing in the economy?