25 ms·

‘Robots’ Are Not 'Coming for Your Job'–Management Is

44 points by ourmandave 7y ago

micheljansen 7y ago
This is a very semantic argument and ultimately it does not matter if the robots are coming for your job because management invited them to or otherwise. There is, however, a more fundamental argument to be made against the notion that this kind of technology is neutral and that you can somehow stop management from making these kinds of decisions. It's not and you can't. If technology exists to lower the operating cost of a type of business through automation, it's only a matter of time before one of the players in that business adopts that technology, to get ahead of their competition. As soon as that happens, all other players are pressured to follow or face the consequences. Often they cannot avoid adopting the technology as well. The flip side of this is that if you can be the first to create and market this kind of technology, there is a good chance it will be very lucrative, so there is a lot of pressure to do so. It's almost like the technology wants to be born. As a result, if it is possible for a robot to be created to take your job and do it cheaper, it is very likely that someone will do just that at some point. We could of course all agree to not create such technology or use or buy it (if we think this is better for everyone), but this makes it even more lucrative for some other company to come along and break that agreement (prisoner's dilemma). So far, robots are mostly taking menial jobs that most people do not enjoy a lot. I am not convinced we should prevent that. What I do believe is that we should offset the loss of income so people who lose menial jobs can be compensated and pursue another occupation that is – hopefully – more meaningful than what the robots took.
- imtringued 7y ago
  What? Robots taking jobs is definitively a net positive. The only problem is that the displaced workers get the short end of the stick because of the decisions that management made. If the job loss was somehow compensated in a way that makes people want their jobs to be automated then everyone would win.
- jeena 7y ago
  At 19 when I started working at a factory which right before my eyes replaced a brigade of humans with big machines which were all operated by one human I wondered why we're not taxing the machine work as we taxed the human work before. I still haven't found a answer to that. Don't the humans lose a lot of tax income when machines replace humans? And couldn't that money pay the replaced humans at least a decent life outside of what we call in German 'Erwerbstätigkeit'? (Google Translate calls it 'gainful employment', no idea if it's the right translation. What I mean is work for which you're getting paid money which you need to use to survive.)
  - Kalium 7y ago
    We do tax them! We tax the value of the factory, we tax the company's profits, and we tax the goods the robots when they are sold. The robots were also taxed when they were purchased. As I understand it, the human work probably wasn't directly taxed. I'm guessing that what was taxed as the incomes of the humans. This may seem like a meaningless distinction, but the humans have other opportunities to earn taxable incomes. All that said, you seem to be getting at the notion of a Universal Basic Income. It's an increasingly popular idea in some political circles.
    - rajampoc 7y ago
      Human work is taxed. It's called the income tax. There's little opportunity to earn money by working and avoid income taxes.
      - mreome 7y ago
        You can do any kind of work without pay and you don't get taxed. If you do nothing all day but are paid for it, you still get taxed. Income tax taxes income, not work. I think the point Kalium was trying to make is that it's not possible to quantify the value of human labor without pinning it to the income someone earns from doing it. A programmer's job is less physically labor intensive then a farm worker's, who obviously earns less. And there are numerous skills and fields more complex then programming that nobody will pay as much, or at all, for someone to do. For a machine, it's value is directly tied to the profits gained by it's operation relative to it's operating costs, which is the business income that is already taxed. I think the taxing of machine "work" jeena was asking for would basically just be an increase in taxes on corporate profits, perhaps with some variation based on how many people they employ relative to their profits.
dahart 7y ago
> this decision is not made by ‘robots,’ but management. It is a decision most often made with the intention of saving a company or institution money by reducing human labor costs Right. And the same is true of immigrants and outsourcing. The idea that foreigners are "stealing" jobs is a narrative that intentionally deflects from the conscious decisions company managers make to reduce costs. Ultimately, the cheaper solution will win, but why be angry at the rich people making these decisions when we can take it out on robots and poor people just trying to get by?
- conanbatt 7y ago
  I do find some perversion in the way the market tackles this issue: the market attacks the lowest paying people first, trying to automate the low-skill jobs, as opposed to attacking things like CEO compensation at 100 million, or software engineers making 200k in silicon valley. I think the market is being inefficient here, and I don't know if its a market failure (lowest paying people have the lowest bargaining power, cultural power, etc) or a regulatory challenge (you cant automate away doctors, lawyers, VC capital, management, investment votes, etc). Probably both.
  - notme77 7y ago
    It's targeting what is easiest to automate. This happens to be mostly low skilled workers. Software engineers constantly cannibalize their own jobs, but there are so many positions for software engineers available (or potentially available) that we (software engineers) don't feel the affects.
    - mbrumlow 7y ago
      Seems like CEOs could be replaced with a spread sheet. As far as I can tell most CEOs basically follow a spread sheet provided by the PE that owns the company. So I never knew why PE would ever seek to fire the 30k a year office manager, when they could fire the 7 figure CEO and half his management team -- if meetings need to be had, we can still have meetings rooms and all the spread sheets can show them self on the projectors -- automated and all.
fearai 7y ago
the software robots informing the humans will come for your repetitive job
barberousse 7y ago
Quite frankly, most of American politics is deranged by the fact there is almost a ban on class discourse, my guess a remnant of McCarthyism since there was a strong socialist discourse prior to WWII which almost disappears afterwards.
- jandrese 7y ago
  What a shock that the multi-millionaire owned media companies don't want to discuss class except to rile up hatred of poor immigrants and minorities. Something like Occupy Wall Street gets only lightly covered, and mostly to discuss how smelly and filthy the bums are.

44 points by ourmandave 7y ago

This is a very semantic argument and ultimately it does not matter if the robots are coming for your job because management invited them to or otherwise. There is, however, a more fundamental argument to be made against the notion that this kind of technology is neutral and that you can somehow stop management from making these kinds of decisions. It's not and you can't. If technology exists to lower the operating cost of a type of business through automation, it's only a matter of time before one of the players in that business adopts that technology, to get ahead of their competition. As soon as that happens, all other players are pressured to follow or face the consequences. Often they cannot avoid adopting the technology as well. The flip side of this is that if you can be the first to create and market this kind of technology, there is a good chance it will be very lucrative, so there is a lot of pressure to do so. It's almost like the technology wants to be born. As a result, if it is possible for a robot to be created to take your job and do it cheaper, it is very likely that someone will do just that at some point. We could of course all agree to not create such technology or use or buy it (if we think this is better for everyone), but this makes it even more lucrative for some other company to come along and break that agreement (prisoner's dilemma). So far, robots are mostly taking menial jobs that most people do not enjoy a lot. I am not convinced we should prevent that. What I do believe is that we should offset the loss of income so people who lose menial jobs can be compensated and pursue another occupation that is – hopefully – more meaningful than what the robots took.

imtringued 7y ago
What? Robots taking jobs is definitively a net positive. The only problem is that the displaced workers get the short end of the stick because of the decisions that management made. If the job loss was somehow compensated in a way that makes people want their jobs to be automated then everyone would win.
jeena 7y ago
At 19 when I started working at a factory which right before my eyes replaced a brigade of humans with big machines which were all operated by one human I wondered why we're not taxing the machine work as we taxed the human work before. I still haven't found a answer to that. Don't the humans lose a lot of tax income when machines replace humans? And couldn't that money pay the replaced humans at least a decent life outside of what we call in German 'Erwerbstätigkeit'? (Google Translate calls it 'gainful employment', no idea if it's the right translation. What I mean is work for which you're getting paid money which you need to use to survive.)
- Kalium 7y ago
  We do tax them! We tax the value of the factory, we tax the company's profits, and we tax the goods the robots when they are sold. The robots were also taxed when they were purchased. As I understand it, the human work probably wasn't directly taxed. I'm guessing that what was taxed as the incomes of the humans. This may seem like a meaningless distinction, but the humans have other opportunities to earn taxable incomes. All that said, you seem to be getting at the notion of a Universal Basic Income. It's an increasingly popular idea in some political circles.
  - rajampoc 7y ago
    Human work is taxed. It's called the income tax. There's little opportunity to earn money by working and avoid income taxes.
    - mreome 7y ago
      You can do any kind of work without pay and you don't get taxed. If you do nothing all day but are paid for it, you still get taxed. Income tax taxes income, not work. I think the point Kalium was trying to make is that it's not possible to quantify the value of human labor without pinning it to the income someone earns from doing it. A programmer's job is less physically labor intensive then a farm worker's, who obviously earns less. And there are numerous skills and fields more complex then programming that nobody will pay as much, or at all, for someone to do. For a machine, it's value is directly tied to the profits gained by it's operation relative to it's operating costs, which is the business income that is already taxed. I think the taxing of machine "work" jeena was asking for would basically just be an increase in taxes on corporate profits, perhaps with some variation based on how many people they employ relative to their profits.

dahart 7y ago

> this decision is not made by ‘robots,’ but management. It is a decision most often made with the intention of saving a company or institution money by reducing human labor costs Right. And the same is true of immigrants and outsourcing. The idea that foreigners are "stealing" jobs is a narrative that intentionally deflects from the conscious decisions company managers make to reduce costs. Ultimately, the cheaper solution will win, but why be angry at the rich people making these decisions when we can take it out on robots and poor people just trying to get by?

conanbatt 7y ago
I do find some perversion in the way the market tackles this issue: the market attacks the lowest paying people first, trying to automate the low-skill jobs, as opposed to attacking things like CEO compensation at 100 million, or software engineers making 200k in silicon valley. I think the market is being inefficient here, and I don't know if its a market failure (lowest paying people have the lowest bargaining power, cultural power, etc) or a regulatory challenge (you cant automate away doctors, lawyers, VC capital, management, investment votes, etc). Probably both.
- notme77 7y ago
  It's targeting what is easiest to automate. This happens to be mostly low skilled workers. Software engineers constantly cannibalize their own jobs, but there are so many positions for software engineers available (or potentially available) that we (software engineers) don't feel the affects.
  - mbrumlow 7y ago
    Seems like CEOs could be replaced with a spread sheet. As far as I can tell most CEOs basically follow a spread sheet provided by the PE that owns the company. So I never knew why PE would ever seek to fire the 30k a year office manager, when they could fire the 7 figure CEO and half his management team -- if meetings need to be had, we can still have meetings rooms and all the spread sheets can show them self on the projectors -- automated and all.

fearai 7y ago

the software robots informing the humans will come for your repetitive job

barberousse 7y ago

Quite frankly, most of American politics is deranged by the fact there is almost a ban on class discourse, my guess a remnant of McCarthyism since there was a strong socialist discourse prior to WWII which almost disappears afterwards.

jandrese 7y ago
What a shock that the multi-millionaire owned media companies don't want to discuss class except to rile up hatred of poor immigrants and minorities. Something like Occupy Wall Street gets only lightly covered, and mostly to discuss how smelly and filthy the bums are.