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You only have to go back a little over 100 years to a time when agriculture accounted for over 50% of human labor. Now it's under 2%. Yet unemployment is still

You only have to go back a little over 100 years to a time when agriculture accounted for over 50% of human labor. Now it's under 2%. Yet unemployment is still under 5%. While agriculture likely represents the largest shift in labor during the 1900s, there were a huge number of jobs automated away during that time. Assembly lines, factories, and automation have been displacing workers since the dawn of the industrial age. 75 years ago there were basically no information technology jobs, and now it represents nearly 10% of the workforce, or four times the level of agricultural employment. In summary, I agree with you; freeing people from mundane labor will lead to an explosion of jobs for which people are better suited; jobs which are more engaging and fulfilling as well. There are always people who fail to adapt and get left behind, but the rest of the world moves on. People like to work.

maxerickson 9y ago
There's not much to learn from agriculture. People left farms for better jobs in factories. That's not a story of unemployment and displacement. If a new source of jobs pops up that can employ 50% of the population at higher wages than they are currently earning, no one will complain about it (except maybe for the employers at their current jobs, but they will probably just buy the proverbial tractor).
- sp332 9y ago
  Factory jobs started out being awful, and workers had to physically fight and die to get basic protections. Eventually we got a 40-hour work week, less child labor, etc.
  - brewdad 9y ago
    And yet people lined up around the block in hope of getting one. I'm not quite sure what your point is here.
    - sp332 9y ago
      Well it's still better than watching your family starve, sure. Reshaping our society to accommodate a lot of people who don't have to work (because machines are doing the work) is going to be a long and painful process.
curun1r 9y ago
Up until now, the people displaced from the jobs automated away have always been intelligent enough to offer utility beyond what automation can provide. But there's a tipping point when automation/machine intelligence exceeds humans at which point they offer no utility to employers of any kind. We haven't hit that point for the vast majority of workers, but the early indications are that we very well might. But looking at the past as a predictor of the future is a very dangerous proposition. We saw that in 2008 when it came to the housing market. Sometimes now really is different from the past. And if we hit that tipping point, it will be much like the posited AI singularity. Vast swaths of humans will become surplus to the most efficient means of completing work. It's important to realize that the people who are talking about this issue as one we need to confront are envisioning a future that is fundamentally different from today or anything that has come before now and they're predicting that for a very specific reason. You can disagree with that reason, but you can't use previous examples of automation-displacing-jobs as a way to dismiss that thinking. Because what's being predicted is fundamentally different from what has already happened.

maxerickson 9y ago

There's not much to learn from agriculture. People left farms for better jobs in factories. That's not a story of unemployment and displacement. If a new source of jobs pops up that can employ 50% of the population at higher wages than they are currently earning, no one will complain about it (except maybe for the employers at their current jobs, but they will probably just buy the proverbial tractor).

sp332 9y ago
Factory jobs started out being awful, and workers had to physically fight and die to get basic protections. Eventually we got a 40-hour work week, less child labor, etc.
- brewdad 9y ago
  And yet people lined up around the block in hope of getting one. I'm not quite sure what your point is here.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Well it's still better than watching your family starve, sure. Reshaping our society to accommodate a lot of people who don't have to work (because machines are doing the work) is going to be a long and painful process.

curun1r 9y ago

Up until now, the people displaced from the jobs automated away have always been intelligent enough to offer utility beyond what automation can provide. But there's a tipping point when automation/machine intelligence exceeds humans at which point they offer no utility to employers of any kind. We haven't hit that point for the vast majority of workers, but the early indications are that we very well might. But looking at the past as a predictor of the future is a very dangerous proposition. We saw that in 2008 when it came to the housing market. Sometimes now really is different from the past. And if we hit that tipping point, it will be much like the posited AI singularity. Vast swaths of humans will become surplus to the most efficient means of completing work. It's important to realize that the people who are talking about this issue as one we need to confront are envisioning a future that is fundamentally different from today or anything that has come before now and they're predicting that for a very specific reason. You can disagree with that reason, but you can't use previous examples of automation-displacing-jobs as a way to dismiss that thinking. Because what's being predicted is fundamentally different from what has already happened.