4 ms·

Fantastic, less human labor in one sector means new opportunities in another.

camochameleon 7y ago
Where are the new opportunities here? Does the number of people employed designing and manufacturing these machines come close to the number of people put out of work by their creation? Let's not pretend that Amazon is some benevolent force here. It's the same company that sets work targets high enough to force employees to have to pee in bottles and penalises sick and pregnant workers for taking time off or breaks. [1] [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-have-to-pee-into-bottles-2018-4?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-hav...
- throwayEngineer 7y ago
  Yes, now those workers won't have such horrible conditions. Or at least we are closer.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    >Yes, now those workers won't have such horrible conditions. Instead of working in "horrible" conditions, these workers are now simply unemployed. Do you think they see that as an improvement of their position in life?
hannasanarion 7y ago
This is a platitude that is said often, but there is no evidence to support it. There is no law of the universe that says whenever a job gets automated, a new type of work pops out of the aether to employ displaced people. It is wishful thinking at best.
- throwayEngineer 7y ago
  Is there evidence to say the contrary? I imagine instead of Amazon paying 11 dollars an hour, a small business has the opportunity to pay 11 dollars an hour. Before Amazon's size and HR department sucked up local labor.
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    I don't need evidence to the contrary, what I said is the null hypothesis. If there's proof that every job lost to automation will necessarily mean one additional job opening in a different field, you are welcome to provide it. In absence of such evidence, I'm going to stick with the default belief: a job lost means a job lost, period. And what is stopping that small business from starting up right now? Considering how terribly Amazon treats their workers, people should be lining up around the block to apply. Dollars to donuts, the answer is the small business can't afford to start up because Amazon uses its monopolistic power to crush it, and that power will only grow as they continue to automate.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Well, if you look at history it keeps happening. Imagine if you said in 1900 that almost all farm jobs would be eliminated in 100 years. The future would be almost unimaginable, but we've turned out okay. However I think the problem is we're at a point where things are churning so rapidly that many are being left behind. Your 50-year-old truck driver is not in a position to learn a new skill every 5-10 years to stay afloat, or uproot his life and move to a new city where they need workers. Furthermore, there's conceivably a point when we won't need very many unskilled workers at all -- when we finally run out of things for average people to do -- and humans don't tend to treat other humans very well when they aren't needed. However, that's further off than the churn economy we have right now.
  - glomerulus 7y ago
    Well, gee, when you put it like that, it just makes so much sense! With that in mind, I hope it happens to you!
  - tzs 7y ago
    In many of those past cases, the new way to do something involved new machines, which required new or expanded manufacturing to build, new or expanded supply chains to provide the materials to make the new machine, and created new jobs to operate and maintain the new machines. Much of the new present day automation does not involve new machines. It often instead involves just interfacing a computer to an existing machine and writing software to let that computer replace the human operator of the machine. Those computers and interfaces are commodity items, largely built in automated factories. This seems to me to be a fundamental difference.
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    It doesn't "keep happening", it's happened exactly twice, in the two industrial revolutions, in each case the new type of work that needed millions of human hands was obvious. There is no guarantee that it will happen again, especially given that new industrial inventions require no human intervention at all. To fall back on an example that is not my own, imagine a conversation in 1900 between two horses: Horse 1: I'm worried about these new automobile things, they might take our jobs Horse 2: Don't worry, every technological development that displaced horse work in the past has led to more newer and better jobs for horses, there will always be work for us. Just look at trains, we don't have to pull big loads anymore, now we just draw carts and support riders, who knows what great jobs are just around the corner. The world's horse population peaked in 1915, and is now down by 70% in the US.

Where are the new opportunities here? Does the number of people employed designing and manufacturing these machines come close to the number of people put out of work by their creation? Let's not pretend that Amazon is some benevolent force here. It's the same company that sets work targets high enough to force employees to have to pee in bottles and penalises sick and pregnant workers for taking time off or breaks. [1] [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-have-to-pee-into-bottles-2018-4?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-hav...

throwayEngineer 7y ago
Yes, now those workers won't have such horrible conditions. Or at least we are closer.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  >Yes, now those workers won't have such horrible conditions. Instead of working in "horrible" conditions, these workers are now simply unemployed. Do you think they see that as an improvement of their position in life?

hannasanarion 7y ago

This is a platitude that is said often, but there is no evidence to support it. There is no law of the universe that says whenever a job gets automated, a new type of work pops out of the aether to employ displaced people. It is wishful thinking at best.

throwayEngineer 7y ago
Is there evidence to say the contrary? I imagine instead of Amazon paying 11 dollars an hour, a small business has the opportunity to pay 11 dollars an hour. Before Amazon's size and HR department sucked up local labor.
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  I don't need evidence to the contrary, what I said is the null hypothesis. If there's proof that every job lost to automation will necessarily mean one additional job opening in a different field, you are welcome to provide it. In absence of such evidence, I'm going to stick with the default belief: a job lost means a job lost, period. And what is stopping that small business from starting up right now? Considering how terribly Amazon treats their workers, people should be lining up around the block to apply. Dollars to donuts, the answer is the small business can't afford to start up because Amazon uses its monopolistic power to crush it, and that power will only grow as they continue to automate.
asdfman123 7y ago
Well, if you look at history it keeps happening. Imagine if you said in 1900 that almost all farm jobs would be eliminated in 100 years. The future would be almost unimaginable, but we've turned out okay. However I think the problem is we're at a point where things are churning so rapidly that many are being left behind. Your 50-year-old truck driver is not in a position to learn a new skill every 5-10 years to stay afloat, or uproot his life and move to a new city where they need workers. Furthermore, there's conceivably a point when we won't need very many unskilled workers at all -- when we finally run out of things for average people to do -- and humans don't tend to treat other humans very well when they aren't needed. However, that's further off than the churn economy we have right now.
- glomerulus 7y ago
  Well, gee, when you put it like that, it just makes so much sense! With that in mind, I hope it happens to you!
- tzs 7y ago
  In many of those past cases, the new way to do something involved new machines, which required new or expanded manufacturing to build, new or expanded supply chains to provide the materials to make the new machine, and created new jobs to operate and maintain the new machines. Much of the new present day automation does not involve new machines. It often instead involves just interfacing a computer to an existing machine and writing software to let that computer replace the human operator of the machine. Those computers and interfaces are commodity items, largely built in automated factories. This seems to me to be a fundamental difference.
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  It doesn't "keep happening", it's happened exactly twice, in the two industrial revolutions, in each case the new type of work that needed millions of human hands was obvious. There is no guarantee that it will happen again, especially given that new industrial inventions require no human intervention at all. To fall back on an example that is not my own, imagine a conversation in 1900 between two horses: Horse 1: I'm worried about these new automobile things, they might take our jobs Horse 2: Don't worry, every technological development that displaced horse work in the past has led to more newer and better jobs for horses, there will always be work for us. Just look at trains, we don't have to pull big loads anymore, now we just draw carts and support riders, who knows what great jobs are just around the corner. The world's horse population peaked in 1915, and is now down by 70% in the US.