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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 t

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.
- Noos 7y ago
  Look at how retail has changed in the past 30 years. I usually point out video rental stores as an example of technological disruption. Rental stores and stores that offered rentals as part of their mix made up something like 45,000 locations, and maybe about 125k jobs. They were replaced by maybe 20k jobs or less, with redbox and netflix combined only accounting for 8kish jobs. Retail changed from a career that offered full time jobs to one making use of a just in time workforce, and has suffered tremendous consolidation over that period.Like entre chains and concept stores have declined; something like Media Play is dead and no longer able to be revived. Even Gamestop suffers, as the amount of physical releases declines. I think retail shows it can be pretty dire indeed.

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.
Noos 7y ago
Look at how retail has changed in the past 30 years. I usually point out video rental stores as an example of technological disruption. Rental stores and stores that offered rentals as part of their mix made up something like 45,000 locations, and maybe about 125k jobs. They were replaced by maybe 20k jobs or less, with redbox and netflix combined only accounting for 8kish jobs. Retail changed from a career that offered full time jobs to one making use of a just in time workforce, and has suffered tremendous consolidation over that period.Like entre chains and concept stores have declined; something like Media Play is dead and no longer able to be revived. Even Gamestop suffers, as the amount of physical releases declines. I think retail shows it can be pretty dire indeed.