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> "You could afford to give people a day off, you know. Afternoons off, holidays off. If you have machines behind you." What total bullshit. No advance in mech

> "You could afford to give people a day off, you know. Afternoons off, holidays off. If you have machines behind you." What total bullshit. No advance in mechanisation has ever resulted in this happening. What happens is that the workers get the days off, but it's not holidays, it's being unemployed.

jstanley 9y ago
In the short term it's unemployment, in the long term it's freeing up those people to work on something more useful than picking strawberries.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  Those out of work for the decade(s) while the economy retools wont see it as short-term. And the 'freeing' of labour in one place drives down the cost/wages elsewhere. The more useful thing in the short term will be things that previously nobody ever wanted/needed to do.
- fredley 9y ago
  The problem is that the number of jobs that a completely unskilled person can do better than a robot are rapidly diminishing, and there already aren't enough to go around. To achieve this utopia, we need to invest in much better education for everyone, and we need to do it 30 years ago at least. An unskilled labourer made unemployed at 40 or 50 has nowhere to go.
  - defertoreptar 9y ago
    > To achieve this utopia, we need to invest in much better education for everyone, and we need to do it 30 years ago at least. An unskilled labourer made unemployed at 40 or 50 has nowhere to go. In the general sense, this might not work since white collar jobs are also subject to automation. For example, we don't need as many lawyers combing through legal documents when search algorithms can do the job. If anything, it's easier for computer systems to manipulate digitalized information than work in the physical domain. In a more specific sense, if for example USA invested more in education, it would do little to help those who would be replaced by farm automation. The majority of farm workers are immigrants on temporary H2A visas or undocumented: http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/farm-workers-immigration/ http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/farm-wor...
    - fredley 9y ago
      It's true that white collar jobs are under threat too, I'm in the UK so less aware of how the US labour market operates, but in both countries we have issues with people for whom there simply are not jobs. Globally, this situation is pretty worrying. How do we share resources when input is not even required from most people? How do we keep people occupied and give them purpose in life? People without purpose in life are the ones who will happily vote/act to trash the system after all. I've thought for a while that if you really want to change the world, find a way to profit from unskilled labour in the Western world (where minimum wages, welfare systems exist) in a distributable and scalable way, that can't be replaced by robots.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    The number of employed people in the US grew from ~100 million in 1980 to about 155 million today. That happened while automation accelerated and while China and India entered the global economy. It seems that jobs on average now are "lower quality" than jobs then, but maybe the better take on that growth, given the headwinds, is that it has not been so bad?
    - smallnamespace 9y ago
      That's just because the population has been growing (yes, there are 44% more people now in the US since 1980). The employment ratio of population has steadily dropped. Economists call it the 'labor participation rate', and it has declined quite markedly since ~2000 or so: http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2018/01/05/the-reluctant-labor-force-is-reluctant-for-a-reason-and-its-not-booming-growth/ http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2018/01/05/the-reluctant-lab... See the 'Two Labor Stories' chart. "The lack of labor force growth going on nearly a decade now means that in every likelihood there remains a deep pool of American labor from among which Americans would work if there was any (at the margins) to be hired at a decent rate." Long history: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 LPR initially went up as women joined the workforce; it peaked around 1997.
      - maxerickson 9y ago
        Right, but my argument isn't that things are all gravy for people working low paying jobs, it is just to point out that many many jobs have been added. It's fairly clear that more jobs would be better for the US work force; it's less clear whether automation is the main thing driving the reduction in job "quality" and labor force participation.
  - hailk 9y ago
    Your point has validity to it. But that can't be used to stunt the growth of automation industry. My father works primarily on building various automation units in textile factories. I'm hazy on the technicalities, but one such unit he built a few years ago crushed coal and fired it into a huge furnace, the heat of which is used by the factory for various purposes. Most factories in the city use these units now. Before that however, there were men (there still are). They'd work in shifts of 10-12 hrs everyday. Shirtless, they shovelled coal into mouth of the furnace non-stop until the furnace was hot enough, take a break of 10-15 minutes, maybe less, and start again. And these weren't small kitchen furnaces, these were huge. At 20 feet away, you can feel the heat envelop and drain fluids from your body (a small 'mis-flare' nearly burnt my father's face). The city easily touches around 43 °C (109 °F) in summers, so it's not like we live in a cool place either. You should see how their bodies look. These men toil away their entire lives on extremely cheap labour, contract all kinds of diseases, and when their sons grow up, they get into the same business, because that's the only thing they know and it's "financially risk free". And there were so many of them. In short term, sure the machines take away jobs. In the long term they take the entire demand away. When pushing against automation, people forget that modern society currently stands on the back of such people. The faster we automate these, lesser number from the next generation gets into these. It should be easier to solve unemployment IMHO.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    Particularly if at the same time we are trying to achieve an egalitarian society where an unskilled worker is only financially marginally worse off than a skilled worker.
  - lurquer 9y ago
    Approximately 15% of the population have an IQ less than 85. Education isn't the solution for this group. For most in this group, picking strawberries is challenging and rewarding. (For the lower 1/3 of this group, picking strawberries is too intellectually challenging as it is.) Hand-waving and saying 'job training' and 'education' isn't a solution for about 10% of the population. I don't know what the solution is. But, the number of people who are excluded from the marketplace due to tech is increasing rapidly. Not good to have 15%+ of a poulation unemployable. Leads to breakdown and instability.
    - AndyNemmity 9y ago
      I don't believe ability is tied in 15% of the population to fundamental brain reality. It's more tied to experience. If more people are brought through the experiences, they will be able to perform the tasks. It's accumulating failures through experience, and then repeating the actions that causes skill. Not some magical IQ.
      - lurquer 9y ago
        How much time have you spent amongst the lower 15%? Ever lived in a trailer park? Every lived in the projects? I doubt it. It's not a knock on you. But, it's very easy to live one's life without encountering those with sub-85 IQ. They ain't online, you know. Most wouldn't be able to figure out how to use the Hacker News interface. You know, the U.S. military won't take someone with an IQ less than 85... they're too dumb to even learn how to clean a rifle. In any case, no amount of experience or education will enable someone who lacks mental ability to function at a tech job. There are those who will never -- even with months of hands on training -- be able to grasp opening a Word DOC. What do we do with them? It's about 15% of the population.
        AndyNemmity 9y ago
        I grew up extremely poor with gang violence, so all of my childhood until age... maybe 21? They are online by the way.
- 220V_USKettle 9y ago
  Like the outcome of Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin?
- wpdev_63 9y ago
  You do realize not everyone is cut out to be a startup coding ninja right?
sandworm101 9y ago
There are a few areas where automation made the workers life easier without replacing them. Aircraft autopilots reduced workload without eliminating pilots. Same too for many hand tools that a made carpenter's life less painful without any concept of replacing them.
ArekDymalski 9y ago
>No advance in mechanisation has ever resulted in this happening. Can you point to some source of this information? I'm asking because when I look at the data I see that for example industrial revolution was correlated with: 1. Reduced length of a work-day. 2. Increased lifetime expectancy as well as overall quality of life. 3. Elimination of child labor. And all of this happening while general population was growing. I just wonder why this could be different?
- dustinmoorenet 9y ago
  The 40 hour week was not a gift of tech. It was a hard fought labor struggle. And, if you haven't noticed, we haven't moved that needle again after introducing computers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
- ivanhoe 9y ago
  Those benefits came later, and slowly, after a lot of struggle for worker/female/child rights. Initially you had kids working 10h a day in coal mines because of the industrial revolution, steam machines needed the coal to run. Many people lost their jobs. There was of course also many great benefits, like cheaper textile making clothing much more affordable. With time the work force adapted to the new conditions, found new jobs, factories opened, and slowly the benefits outweighed the horrors of the transition.
- stult 9y ago
  Work day length actually increased dramatically during the early industrial revolution. Early factories frequently required 10-14 hour shifts, seven days per week. It was only the labor movement pushing back that resulted in a shorter work day and week. Even then, it's unlikely that the current work day or week are significantly shorter than they were in pre-industrial Europe. Meaning the labor movement really only brought us back to something resembling a reasonable baseline. Even if pre-industrial agricultural laborers worked longer days or weeks during periods of maximum activity, they did so seasonally, with long periods of relative rest between harvesting and planting seasons. Ultimately it is political conditions, rather than technological, which determine typical working period lengths. For example, despite relatively little difference in technology or economic activity, African-American agricultural workers in the US South shifted to dramatically shorter working periods following abolition. Only the political conditions of slavery enabled slave-owners to compel a longer working day than would normally be tolerated by workers. And while technology can increase the amount of surplus wealth generated, it can't change the distribution of that surplus (at least not on its own). Factory work increased the value per hour produced by laborers but it took labor organization and mass strikes to shorten the work day. It took women's suffrage and widespread moral outrage to stop child labor (which was far harsher in early factories than it ever was in agriculture). It took government intervention via social security and medicare to extend the life-expectancy of average laborers (in the US, though the equivalent programs in other developed countries had similar effects). Basically, employers aren't going to give time off or other benefits just because they want to or just because they can afford to. At least not in any great numbers. They're going to do it because political or market conditions compel it, such as when Henry Ford increased the pay of factory workers dramatically to prevent them from working for his competitors. But market conditions are stacked against the laborers getting greater benefits in this situation. Employers are substituting robots for their labor and so their labor is less in demand and thus demands a lower price (benefits + pay). So with increased mechanization and automation, the average laborer can't demand more benefits in the market while still maintaining wages. Barring political/legal pressure, employers will simply pocket the surplus from this situation rather than charitably donating it to their workers in the form of PTO or other benefits. It isn't necessarily bad that workers get laid off, because that frees them to pursue more remunerative or fulfilling activities. But we can't rely on employers to help workers transition after disruption in the labor market, just as we couldn't rely on employers to set reasonable working days or to not hire child laborers.
rsuelzer 9y ago
Thank you! Even as a Keynesian, I have to laugh when I read him talk about the leisure society.

jstanley 9y ago

In the short term it's unemployment, in the long term it's freeing up those people to work on something more useful than picking strawberries.

sandworm101 9y ago
Those out of work for the decade(s) while the economy retools wont see it as short-term. And the 'freeing' of labour in one place drives down the cost/wages elsewhere. The more useful thing in the short term will be things that previously nobody ever wanted/needed to do.
fredley 9y ago
The problem is that the number of jobs that a completely unskilled person can do better than a robot are rapidly diminishing, and there already aren't enough to go around. To achieve this utopia, we need to invest in much better education for everyone, and we need to do it 30 years ago at least. An unskilled labourer made unemployed at 40 or 50 has nowhere to go.
- defertoreptar 9y ago
  > To achieve this utopia, we need to invest in much better education for everyone, and we need to do it 30 years ago at least. An unskilled labourer made unemployed at 40 or 50 has nowhere to go. In the general sense, this might not work since white collar jobs are also subject to automation. For example, we don't need as many lawyers combing through legal documents when search algorithms can do the job. If anything, it's easier for computer systems to manipulate digitalized information than work in the physical domain. In a more specific sense, if for example USA invested more in education, it would do little to help those who would be replaced by farm automation. The majority of farm workers are immigrants on temporary H2A visas or undocumented: http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/farm-workers-immigration/ http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/farm-wor...
  - fredley 9y ago
    It's true that white collar jobs are under threat too, I'm in the UK so less aware of how the US labour market operates, but in both countries we have issues with people for whom there simply are not jobs. Globally, this situation is pretty worrying. How do we share resources when input is not even required from most people? How do we keep people occupied and give them purpose in life? People without purpose in life are the ones who will happily vote/act to trash the system after all. I've thought for a while that if you really want to change the world, find a way to profit from unskilled labour in the Western world (where minimum wages, welfare systems exist) in a distributable and scalable way, that can't be replaced by robots.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The number of employed people in the US grew from ~100 million in 1980 to about 155 million today. That happened while automation accelerated and while China and India entered the global economy. It seems that jobs on average now are "lower quality" than jobs then, but maybe the better take on that growth, given the headwinds, is that it has not been so bad?
  - smallnamespace 9y ago
    That's just because the population has been growing (yes, there are 44% more people now in the US since 1980). The employment ratio of population has steadily dropped. Economists call it the 'labor participation rate', and it has declined quite markedly since ~2000 or so: http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2018/01/05/the-reluctant-labor-force-is-reluctant-for-a-reason-and-its-not-booming-growth/ http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2018/01/05/the-reluctant-lab... See the 'Two Labor Stories' chart. "The lack of labor force growth going on nearly a decade now means that in every likelihood there remains a deep pool of American labor from among which Americans would work if there was any (at the margins) to be hired at a decent rate." Long history: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 LPR initially went up as women joined the workforce; it peaked around 1997.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Right, but my argument isn't that things are all gravy for people working low paying jobs, it is just to point out that many many jobs have been added. It's fairly clear that more jobs would be better for the US work force; it's less clear whether automation is the main thing driving the reduction in job "quality" and labor force participation.
- hailk 9y ago
  Your point has validity to it. But that can't be used to stunt the growth of automation industry. My father works primarily on building various automation units in textile factories. I'm hazy on the technicalities, but one such unit he built a few years ago crushed coal and fired it into a huge furnace, the heat of which is used by the factory for various purposes. Most factories in the city use these units now. Before that however, there were men (there still are). They'd work in shifts of 10-12 hrs everyday. Shirtless, they shovelled coal into mouth of the furnace non-stop until the furnace was hot enough, take a break of 10-15 minutes, maybe less, and start again. And these weren't small kitchen furnaces, these were huge. At 20 feet away, you can feel the heat envelop and drain fluids from your body (a small 'mis-flare' nearly burnt my father's face). The city easily touches around 43 °C (109 °F) in summers, so it's not like we live in a cool place either. You should see how their bodies look. These men toil away their entire lives on extremely cheap labour, contract all kinds of diseases, and when their sons grow up, they get into the same business, because that's the only thing they know and it's "financially risk free". And there were so many of them. In short term, sure the machines take away jobs. In the long term they take the entire demand away. When pushing against automation, people forget that modern society currently stands on the back of such people. The faster we automate these, lesser number from the next generation gets into these. It should be easier to solve unemployment IMHO.
- cm2187 9y ago
  Particularly if at the same time we are trying to achieve an egalitarian society where an unskilled worker is only financially marginally worse off than a skilled worker.
- lurquer 9y ago
  Approximately 15% of the population have an IQ less than 85. Education isn't the solution for this group. For most in this group, picking strawberries is challenging and rewarding. (For the lower 1/3 of this group, picking strawberries is too intellectually challenging as it is.) Hand-waving and saying 'job training' and 'education' isn't a solution for about 10% of the population. I don't know what the solution is. But, the number of people who are excluded from the marketplace due to tech is increasing rapidly. Not good to have 15%+ of a poulation unemployable. Leads to breakdown and instability.
  - AndyNemmity 9y ago
    I don't believe ability is tied in 15% of the population to fundamental brain reality. It's more tied to experience. If more people are brought through the experiences, they will be able to perform the tasks. It's accumulating failures through experience, and then repeating the actions that causes skill. Not some magical IQ.
    - lurquer 9y ago
      How much time have you spent amongst the lower 15%? Ever lived in a trailer park? Every lived in the projects? I doubt it. It's not a knock on you. But, it's very easy to live one's life without encountering those with sub-85 IQ. They ain't online, you know. Most wouldn't be able to figure out how to use the Hacker News interface. You know, the U.S. military won't take someone with an IQ less than 85... they're too dumb to even learn how to clean a rifle. In any case, no amount of experience or education will enable someone who lacks mental ability to function at a tech job. There are those who will never -- even with months of hands on training -- be able to grasp opening a Word DOC. What do we do with them? It's about 15% of the population.
      - AndyNemmity 9y ago
        I grew up extremely poor with gang violence, so all of my childhood until age... maybe 21? They are online by the way.
220V_USKettle 9y ago
Like the outcome of Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin?
wpdev_63 9y ago
You do realize not everyone is cut out to be a startup coding ninja right?

sandworm101 9y ago

There are a few areas where automation made the workers life easier without replacing them. Aircraft autopilots reduced workload without eliminating pilots. Same too for many hand tools that a made carpenter's life less painful without any concept of replacing them.

ArekDymalski 9y ago

>No advance in mechanisation has ever resulted in this happening. Can you point to some source of this information? I'm asking because when I look at the data I see that for example industrial revolution was correlated with: 1. Reduced length of a work-day. 2. Increased lifetime expectancy as well as overall quality of life. 3. Elimination of child labor. And all of this happening while general population was growing. I just wonder why this could be different?

dustinmoorenet 9y ago
The 40 hour week was not a gift of tech. It was a hard fought labor struggle. And, if you haven't noticed, we haven't moved that needle again after introducing computers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
ivanhoe 9y ago
Those benefits came later, and slowly, after a lot of struggle for worker/female/child rights. Initially you had kids working 10h a day in coal mines because of the industrial revolution, steam machines needed the coal to run. Many people lost their jobs. There was of course also many great benefits, like cheaper textile making clothing much more affordable. With time the work force adapted to the new conditions, found new jobs, factories opened, and slowly the benefits outweighed the horrors of the transition.
stult 9y ago
Work day length actually increased dramatically during the early industrial revolution. Early factories frequently required 10-14 hour shifts, seven days per week. It was only the labor movement pushing back that resulted in a shorter work day and week. Even then, it's unlikely that the current work day or week are significantly shorter than they were in pre-industrial Europe. Meaning the labor movement really only brought us back to something resembling a reasonable baseline. Even if pre-industrial agricultural laborers worked longer days or weeks during periods of maximum activity, they did so seasonally, with long periods of relative rest between harvesting and planting seasons. Ultimately it is political conditions, rather than technological, which determine typical working period lengths. For example, despite relatively little difference in technology or economic activity, African-American agricultural workers in the US South shifted to dramatically shorter working periods following abolition. Only the political conditions of slavery enabled slave-owners to compel a longer working day than would normally be tolerated by workers. And while technology can increase the amount of surplus wealth generated, it can't change the distribution of that surplus (at least not on its own). Factory work increased the value per hour produced by laborers but it took labor organization and mass strikes to shorten the work day. It took women's suffrage and widespread moral outrage to stop child labor (which was far harsher in early factories than it ever was in agriculture). It took government intervention via social security and medicare to extend the life-expectancy of average laborers (in the US, though the equivalent programs in other developed countries had similar effects). Basically, employers aren't going to give time off or other benefits just because they want to or just because they can afford to. At least not in any great numbers. They're going to do it because political or market conditions compel it, such as when Henry Ford increased the pay of factory workers dramatically to prevent them from working for his competitors. But market conditions are stacked against the laborers getting greater benefits in this situation. Employers are substituting robots for their labor and so their labor is less in demand and thus demands a lower price (benefits + pay). So with increased mechanization and automation, the average laborer can't demand more benefits in the market while still maintaining wages. Barring political/legal pressure, employers will simply pocket the surplus from this situation rather than charitably donating it to their workers in the form of PTO or other benefits. It isn't necessarily bad that workers get laid off, because that frees them to pursue more remunerative or fulfilling activities. But we can't rely on employers to help workers transition after disruption in the labor market, just as we couldn't rely on employers to set reasonable working days or to not hire child laborers.

rsuelzer 9y ago

Thank you! Even as a Keynesian, I have to laugh when I read him talk about the leisure society.