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As someone with a bit of experience in robotics, I've always viewed these economists as "useful idiots", unknowingly doing the bidding of firms who sell us the

As someone with a bit of experience in robotics, I've always viewed these economists as "useful idiots", unknowingly doing the bidding of firms who sell us the dream of advanced automation (e.g. Tesla, Uber). The economists were clueless themselves, but the companies selling the dream profited immensely thanks to them.

CyanBird 5y ago
Oh, it is very much the case, there's a famous saying that goes something like There are two types of economists: The ones that say what rich people want to hear, and the other ones that no one puts attention to
0xy 5y ago
The vast majority of the population used to work in manual agricultural work, until it was largely automated to the point we're down to <1% in agri employment. The result of this huge wave of automation was not profit for agricultural companies and farms. The average operating margin for farms is 11%. What else happened? The resulting plummeting food prices lifted billions out of poverty, to the point where extreme poverty is at the lowest level ever. It's a little bit hard to see backroom fat cats with cigars behind this movement when automation has only ever brought massive benefits to society, including when 90% of the population worked in a vulnerable industry. Your mistake is believing that humans have a fixed set of jobs and when jobs are removed from the job pool that the pool shrinks. In reality, the size of the pool is increasing while some jobs within the pool reduce in size and scope. From my perspective, it's also hard to see how automating back-breaking laborious jobs like cleaning, burger flipping or fruit picking is a bad thing. These jobs ruin your body. Ever see a manual laborer who was over 50 and didn't have at least one body ailment?
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  I was specifically commenting about economists who predicted that millions of drivers will be out of jobs in just a couple of years, and speculated what should be done about it, what will be the wider consequences etc. Basically uninformed and irresponsible blabbering under pretense of expertise.

CyanBird 5y ago

Oh, it is very much the case, there's a famous saying that goes something like There are two types of economists: The ones that say what rich people want to hear, and the other ones that no one puts attention to

0xy 5y ago

The vast majority of the population used to work in manual agricultural work, until it was largely automated to the point we're down to <1% in agri employment. The result of this huge wave of automation was not profit for agricultural companies and farms. The average operating margin for farms is 11%. What else happened? The resulting plummeting food prices lifted billions out of poverty, to the point where extreme poverty is at the lowest level ever. It's a little bit hard to see backroom fat cats with cigars behind this movement when automation has only ever brought massive benefits to society, including when 90% of the population worked in a vulnerable industry. Your mistake is believing that humans have a fixed set of jobs and when jobs are removed from the job pool that the pool shrinks. In reality, the size of the pool is increasing while some jobs within the pool reduce in size and scope. From my perspective, it's also hard to see how automating back-breaking laborious jobs like cleaning, burger flipping or fruit picking is a bad thing. These jobs ruin your body. Ever see a manual laborer who was over 50 and didn't have at least one body ailment?

burntoutfire 5y ago
I was specifically commenting about economists who predicted that millions of drivers will be out of jobs in just a couple of years, and speculated what should be done about it, what will be the wider consequences etc. Basically uninformed and irresponsible blabbering under pretense of expertise.