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"Over the long run we find things for people to do." The problem with such a prediction is that we have so very little data to base it on. if computers are to

by ippisl 16y ago

"Over the long run we find things for people to do." The problem with such a prediction is that we have so very little data to base it on. if computers are to replace most of man's intellectual activities, that change compares to the industrial revolution , but it's not a very good comparison , because we will have machines and robots to replace physical labor. It's basicly a prediction by an economist , and we all know how accurate are those.

stretchwithme 16y ago
All we have is history to go on and the fact that new jobs have always replaced old ones. Whenever something is automated, the money no longer spent on salaries are spent on other things, things which people must be paid to provide. Which is why farm automation put 80% of the people out of work and there are still lots of jobs. Except, of course, when bad policy gums up the works.
- ippisl 16y ago
  Never in history was a time when machines were capable of doing everything a human could do and do it more cheaply. We might be approaching that time , and that makes predictions difficult.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    Which is why we should let life unfold as its going to unfold. Living in this time is what we should be doing.
- gwern 16y ago
  > All we have is history to go on and the fact that new jobs have always replaced old ones. I've always been a little skeptical of this. We all know that the official unemployment rate is a bit misleading as it only counts those actively looking for work, but I suspect historical comparisons show that it's even more misleading than we think. Let's go back to the 1800s, when technology hadn't yet, according to the Luddite hypothesis, put tons of people out of work. Back then, retirement didn't exist. So bam, now we've got one segment of the population who are employed. Schooling went to high school at most and higher education was only a tiny fraction of the population. So there's another large segment of the population employed, all those who would be stuck in school now. Basically everyone who is now in undergraduate or graduate school would have been out working a job. And of course, child labor was legal, so that implies an awful lot of jobs there too. And what about all those people with Downs syndrome or other forms of retardation or mental illness? They were all down on the farm helping with the baling or something. (Just counting the kids in special ed, and not all the adults, there's like 6 million of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_education_in_the_United_States#Classification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_education_in_the_United... ) Now surely some of all of that is necessary to keeping a modern economy running rather than an 1800s one. But how much of that is just killing time or keeping people out of the employment market? Thought experiment: if a fairy suddenly granted all the kids and students and retirees an education and credentials to match (all 20 or 50 million or whatever of them), how many years would it take the market to absorb them and match them up with jobs? Would it ever?
- Unseelie 16y ago
  Farm automation also put draft horses out of work. My case is brittian in the early 1800s, which had a population of about 40 million people and 4 million draft horses. A draft horse did the manual labor of about four men, making them worth about 16 million agrarian jobs, and they were also put out of work. Horses, of course, aren't horribly adaptive and don't revolt when you keep them from reproducing, and so over the century they virtually disappeared with the jobs they lost. Furthermore, if you consider the move in the early 1900s from a six day to a five day work week, that's a lot more human jobs that have never been replaced.

by ippisl 16y ago

stretchwithme 16y ago

All we have is history to go on and the fact that new jobs have always replaced old ones. Whenever something is automated, the money no longer spent on salaries are spent on other things, things which people must be paid to provide. Which is why farm automation put 80% of the people out of work and there are still lots of jobs. Except, of course, when bad policy gums up the works.

ippisl 16y ago
Never in history was a time when machines were capable of doing everything a human could do and do it more cheaply. We might be approaching that time , and that makes predictions difficult.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  Which is why we should let life unfold as its going to unfold. Living in this time is what we should be doing.
gwern 16y ago
> All we have is history to go on and the fact that new jobs have always replaced old ones. I've always been a little skeptical of this. We all know that the official unemployment rate is a bit misleading as it only counts those actively looking for work, but I suspect historical comparisons show that it's even more misleading than we think. Let's go back to the 1800s, when technology hadn't yet, according to the Luddite hypothesis, put tons of people out of work. Back then, retirement didn't exist. So bam, now we've got one segment of the population who are employed. Schooling went to high school at most and higher education was only a tiny fraction of the population. So there's another large segment of the population employed, all those who would be stuck in school now. Basically everyone who is now in undergraduate or graduate school would have been out working a job. And of course, child labor was legal, so that implies an awful lot of jobs there too. And what about all those people with Downs syndrome or other forms of retardation or mental illness? They were all down on the farm helping with the baling or something. (Just counting the kids in special ed, and not all the adults, there's like 6 million of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_education_in_the_United_States#Classification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_education_in_the_United... ) Now surely some of all of that is necessary to keeping a modern economy running rather than an 1800s one. But how much of that is just killing time or keeping people out of the employment market? Thought experiment: if a fairy suddenly granted all the kids and students and retirees an education and credentials to match (all 20 or 50 million or whatever of them), how many years would it take the market to absorb them and match them up with jobs? Would it ever?
Unseelie 16y ago
Farm automation also put draft horses out of work. My case is brittian in the early 1800s, which had a population of about 40 million people and 4 million draft horses. A draft horse did the manual labor of about four men, making them worth about 16 million agrarian jobs, and they were also put out of work. Horses, of course, aren't horribly adaptive and don't revolt when you keep them from reproducing, and so over the century they virtually disappeared with the jobs they lost. Furthermore, if you consider the move in the early 1900s from a six day to a five day work week, that's a lot more human jobs that have never been replaced.