6 ms·

The idea that automation creates unemployment is ancient, and has been debunked over and over. How is it that people don't at least wonder why cars, manufacturi

by axiom 15y ago

The idea that automation creates unemployment is ancient, and has been debunked over and over. How is it that people don't at least wonder why cars, manufacturing robots, computers etc. etc, haven't lead to mass systemic unemployment, but future technologies will? The reason technology doesn't create systemic unemployment is that people don't just shrivel up and die when they lose their job. If someone is replaced with a piece of software they don't just say "oh well, I'm just gonna sit here and starve." They either find a job in a sector that requires minimal training, or they re-train. They have no choice! The basic premise is this: there is no limit on the amount of work that needs to be done - there is always room for more human labour (either in servicing other humans or creating goods for them, or whatever.) This is just another way of stating Say's Law (Wikipedia link: http://bit.ly/pvD9Hz http://bit.ly/pvD9Hz) which is that goods are paid for with other goods. If $x is saved in one area, it just gets pumped into another part of the economy, creating demand/jobs there. The net effect of technological progress is: the same number of people producing more goods and services. You don't even have to believe me - just look around! this is exactly what's been happening for thousands of years. Technology has never resulted in systemic unemployment - only temporary frictional unemployment as people re-train.

barefoot 15y ago
Your argument is the common objection to this idea and it's all well and good up to the part where you say that technology only creates frictional unemployment "as people re-train". Here's the problem as I see it. Technology is advancing, rapidly, to the point that humans are not able to compete in a general sense and in a number of fields. If you're edged out of a job as a human it's getting more and more difficult to re-train. If it were easy to re-train in a lot of cases it would be automated already.
- axiom 15y ago
  Ok let's say they don't re-train. Let's say they just go out and try to find a job as phone sales people (yes, every single person replaced by technology decides to become a sales rep. Bare with me.) What would that do? It would drive down the salaries of sales reps by 2%. That's it. That's the magic of the market economy. That money saved by replacing people with software goes back into the economy and creates demand for more goods (which needs to be pushed by sales reps, for example.) And by the way, I would argue that electrification and the industrial revolution were far more disruptive (and happened damn fast) than online shopping and bookkeeping software.
  - barefoot 15y ago
    But a lot of companies don't need phone sales representatives anymore. They can do nearly the same thing with Adwords account and a decent landing page. Both of which can be setup for less than a days pay of a phone representative. Pick another position that scales with production or demand and you'll invariably find similar automation that has been introduced in the past ten years.
  - losvedir 15y ago
    >> Technology is advancing, rapidly, to the point that humans are not able to compete in a general sense and in a number of fields. If you're edged out of a job as a human it's getting more and more difficult to re-train. > Ok let's say they don't re-train. Let's say they just go out and try to find a job as No, the point is what if: 1) The easy to do and train for jobs are all automated away. 2) The available jobs require PhD level expertise to do. If I've studied for 8 years to get my quantum physics PhD to get my job as a technician at Quantum World, then it's going to be damn hard to retrain for 8 more years to get a PhD in Natural Language Processing to work phone support at AutonomaTech. People are becoming increasingly specialized. If automation eliminates the easy to learn jobs, it gets harder to jump from one specialization to another.
    - eru 15y ago
      Jobs won't be hard to automate because they require superior abstract intelligence. The machines will have covered that pretty soon. Some will be hard to automate, because they are fuzzy and depend on interacting with human beings. It's harder for a robot to cut your hair and put on make up like you direct it to, than to play chess.
      - Zaak 15y ago
        That just moves the problem into the future. What happens when we can build a machine with the mental abilities of a human being for the price of a supercomputer? Then what happens when it falls to the price of a smartphone?
magicseth 15y ago
As I look around, I see mass, systemic unemployment taking hold. This ever increasing march of technology may result in more goods being created, but due to the nature of our capitalist society, it tends to pool the capital in those who have capital to begin with. The huge disparity between the rich and the poor in the US is not due to "technology" but it is not being helped by it either. Technology creates efficiencies, but there is no natural way for those efficiencies to benefit those whom it puts out of work.
- olalonde 15y ago
  What if traditional brick-and-mortars business eventually turn to business models we frequently see on the web? What if robots drive costs down so low that you can have free hamburgers sponsored by some luxury product? Once you cut down human labor costs entirely, all that is left is natural resources costs. I'm just throwing out some ideas, perhaps someone with a better understanding of economics can elaborate or criticize...
  - nickpinkston 15y ago
    "free hamburgers...luxury product" Noblesse Obese
- ctdonath 15y ago
  "As I look around, I see mass, systemic unemployment taking hold." Only because we are paying people to not work, and because fair pay is illegal under a certain rate. Consequence is that work worth less than minimum wage cannot, by law, be given to people - and so automation moves in. Stop paying people to not work and they'll find or make work. (There is a difference between a safety net and making lack of arbitrary wealth illegal.) And "the poor", for most practical purposes, does not exist in the US. If you are living on more - a lot more - than the world median income, if you are flushing your toilet with drinking water, if you have a TV & car & cell phone & AC & thermostat heating & >1000 sq ft housing & ..., if you have over $1/meal/person/day[1], and etc you're not poor. [1] - http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com
yummyfajitas 15y ago
How is it that people don't at least wonder why cars...haven't lead to mass systemic unemployment... They have. At one time, there were millions of horses employed in the transportation sector. As technology advanced, they were unable to retrain in other fields because no matter how bright, a horse is fundamentally not as useful as a car. This hasn't happened for humans yet. That doesn't mean it never will. Technology is improving. People are not. The fact that an increasing line has not yet crossed a flat line is not evidence it never will.
- zeteo 15y ago
  For contemporary economists (e.g. Adam Smith), transportation horses were capital, not labor.
  - Zaak 15y ago
    Your reply misses the point. Regardless of how horses were classified, there came a point where 99% of what a horse can do could be done better, faster, and cheaper by a machine. What happens when we develop technology which can do 99% of what a human can do better, faster, and cheaper? With previous innovations, there was always something else that a displaced human worker could find to do. What happens when 99% of human jobs are gone?
    - zeteo 15y ago
      >Your reply misses the point. No it doesn't. Capital becomes obsolescent, labor does not. >What happens when we develop technology which can do 99% of what a human can do better, faster, and cheaper? During 99% of recorded history, agricultural labor was the prevailing definition of "what a human can do".
      - Zaak 15y ago
        Labor has not yet become obsolete. That doesn't mean it can't. I'm not talking about the prevailing definition of what a human can do. I'm talking about the actual fact of what a human can do. You still haven't addressed the question of what will happen when nearly everything which a human being is capable of can be done better by a machine.
neutronicus 15y ago
It depends on whether the amount of work available is constrained by the demand for goods or by the supply of raw materials. In the past, we've answered automation by increasing the rate at which we produce goods and, hence, consume raw materials. Just because we've always been able to do that doesn't mean we should assume we always will.
Eliezer 15y ago
See my reply to PG saying the same thing at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2851797 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2851797
Tichy 15y ago
The history of the world is full of catastrophes, devastating wars, famines and so on. In the "first world" we seem pretty shielded from that at the moment, but I don't think we are really safe. A lot of big, cosy empires have faltered before our time. Some of those wars might well have been the result of changing economics.

by axiom 15y ago

barefoot 15y ago

Your argument is the common objection to this idea and it's all well and good up to the part where you say that technology only creates frictional unemployment "as people re-train". Here's the problem as I see it. Technology is advancing, rapidly, to the point that humans are not able to compete in a general sense and in a number of fields. If you're edged out of a job as a human it's getting more and more difficult to re-train. If it were easy to re-train in a lot of cases it would be automated already.

axiom 15y ago
Ok let's say they don't re-train. Let's say they just go out and try to find a job as phone sales people (yes, every single person replaced by technology decides to become a sales rep. Bare with me.) What would that do? It would drive down the salaries of sales reps by 2%. That's it. That's the magic of the market economy. That money saved by replacing people with software goes back into the economy and creates demand for more goods (which needs to be pushed by sales reps, for example.) And by the way, I would argue that electrification and the industrial revolution were far more disruptive (and happened damn fast) than online shopping and bookkeeping software.
- barefoot 15y ago
  But a lot of companies don't need phone sales representatives anymore. They can do nearly the same thing with Adwords account and a decent landing page. Both of which can be setup for less than a days pay of a phone representative. Pick another position that scales with production or demand and you'll invariably find similar automation that has been introduced in the past ten years.
- losvedir 15y ago
  >> Technology is advancing, rapidly, to the point that humans are not able to compete in a general sense and in a number of fields. If you're edged out of a job as a human it's getting more and more difficult to re-train. > Ok let's say they don't re-train. Let's say they just go out and try to find a job as No, the point is what if: 1) The easy to do and train for jobs are all automated away. 2) The available jobs require PhD level expertise to do. If I've studied for 8 years to get my quantum physics PhD to get my job as a technician at Quantum World, then it's going to be damn hard to retrain for 8 more years to get a PhD in Natural Language Processing to work phone support at AutonomaTech. People are becoming increasingly specialized. If automation eliminates the easy to learn jobs, it gets harder to jump from one specialization to another.
  - eru 15y ago
    Jobs won't be hard to automate because they require superior abstract intelligence. The machines will have covered that pretty soon. Some will be hard to automate, because they are fuzzy and depend on interacting with human beings. It's harder for a robot to cut your hair and put on make up like you direct it to, than to play chess.
    - Zaak 15y ago
      That just moves the problem into the future. What happens when we can build a machine with the mental abilities of a human being for the price of a supercomputer? Then what happens when it falls to the price of a smartphone?

magicseth 15y ago

As I look around, I see mass, systemic unemployment taking hold. This ever increasing march of technology may result in more goods being created, but due to the nature of our capitalist society, it tends to pool the capital in those who have capital to begin with. The huge disparity between the rich and the poor in the US is not due to "technology" but it is not being helped by it either. Technology creates efficiencies, but there is no natural way for those efficiencies to benefit those whom it puts out of work.

olalonde 15y ago
What if traditional brick-and-mortars business eventually turn to business models we frequently see on the web? What if robots drive costs down so low that you can have free hamburgers sponsored by some luxury product? Once you cut down human labor costs entirely, all that is left is natural resources costs. I'm just throwing out some ideas, perhaps someone with a better understanding of economics can elaborate or criticize...
- nickpinkston 15y ago
  "free hamburgers...luxury product" Noblesse Obese
ctdonath 15y ago
"As I look around, I see mass, systemic unemployment taking hold." Only because we are paying people to not work, and because fair pay is illegal under a certain rate. Consequence is that work worth less than minimum wage cannot, by law, be given to people - and so automation moves in. Stop paying people to not work and they'll find or make work. (There is a difference between a safety net and making lack of arbitrary wealth illegal.) And "the poor", for most practical purposes, does not exist in the US. If you are living on more - a lot more - than the world median income, if you are flushing your toilet with drinking water, if you have a TV & car & cell phone & AC & thermostat heating & >1000 sq ft housing & ..., if you have over $1/meal/person/day[1], and etc you're not poor. [1] - http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com

yummyfajitas 15y ago

How is it that people don't at least wonder why cars...haven't lead to mass systemic unemployment... They have. At one time, there were millions of horses employed in the transportation sector. As technology advanced, they were unable to retrain in other fields because no matter how bright, a horse is fundamentally not as useful as a car. This hasn't happened for humans yet. That doesn't mean it never will. Technology is improving. People are not. The fact that an increasing line has not yet crossed a flat line is not evidence it never will.

zeteo 15y ago
For contemporary economists (e.g. Adam Smith), transportation horses were capital, not labor.
- Zaak 15y ago
  Your reply misses the point. Regardless of how horses were classified, there came a point where 99% of what a horse can do could be done better, faster, and cheaper by a machine. What happens when we develop technology which can do 99% of what a human can do better, faster, and cheaper? With previous innovations, there was always something else that a displaced human worker could find to do. What happens when 99% of human jobs are gone?
  - zeteo 15y ago
    >Your reply misses the point. No it doesn't. Capital becomes obsolescent, labor does not. >What happens when we develop technology which can do 99% of what a human can do better, faster, and cheaper? During 99% of recorded history, agricultural labor was the prevailing definition of "what a human can do".
    - Zaak 15y ago
      Labor has not yet become obsolete. That doesn't mean it can't. I'm not talking about the prevailing definition of what a human can do. I'm talking about the actual fact of what a human can do. You still haven't addressed the question of what will happen when nearly everything which a human being is capable of can be done better by a machine.

neutronicus 15y ago

It depends on whether the amount of work available is constrained by the demand for goods or by the supply of raw materials. In the past, we've answered automation by increasing the rate at which we produce goods and, hence, consume raw materials. Just because we've always been able to do that doesn't mean we should assume we always will.

Eliezer 15y ago

See my reply to PG saying the same thing at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2851797 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2851797

Tichy 15y ago

The history of the world is full of catastrophes, devastating wars, famines and so on. In the "first world" we seem pretty shielded from that at the moment, but I don't think we are really safe. A lot of big, cosy empires have faltered before our time. Some of those wars might well have been the result of changing economics.