3 ms·

The problem with your example is that it assumes there is a place for him to go to. Stable hands becoming mechanics. That is the key concern with automation rep

The problem with your example is that it assumes there is a place for him to go to. Stable hands becoming mechanics. That is the key concern with automation replacing jobs is that it is a zero sum game.

colinmhayes 4y ago
Lump of labor fallacy. Automation is not a zero sum game because it creates new jobs.
- shakabrah 4y ago
  These are some bold claims. Id like to see some evidence.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    There are more bank tellers today in USA than at any other point, despite the growing number of ATM machines. https://www.aei.org/economics/what-atms-bank-tellers-rise-robots-and-jobs/ https://www.aei.org/economics/what-atms-bank-tellers-rise-ro... This doesn't always happen mind you. But it shows that your (and my) economic instincts are piss poor. We can't just assume what the future holds. ------- Another few examples: 3D animation has killed a lot of tweening artists (the people who smoothed out animations for Disney Films like 101 Dalmations or Sleeping Beauty). But 3d animation created the need of modelers, texture artists, riggers, and more. Automatic Drum machines didn't kill drummers either, but allowed for more music to be made in general. The only thing that automation "killed" recently was Lawyers, as online webpages that auto-generated common forms removed a ton of jobs that Lawyers used to do. IIRC, Lawyers are in somewhat of a decline because of this. So it just goes to show that no one really can predict these things.
    - princeb 4y ago
      > 3D animation has killed a lot of tweening artists (the people who smoothed out animations for Disney Films like 101 Dalmations or Sleeping Beauty). But 3d animation created the need of modelers, texture artists, riggers, and more. together with the previous comment on mechanics and stablehands, i wonder how many people in history grew up training and wanting to be a mechanic, only to be told, sorry we just don't have that many automobiles in the world, we need more stablehands. i wonder how many people went to do fine art in school only to be told 'look you have good skills and all but we just need more tweening artists'.
      - chii 4y ago
        the pace of technological progress is fast - but not so fast that people being trained in art must move within a year! I think retraining to an adjacent field is definitely possible - the only thing i see disagreements in is the cost, and who bears that cost.
  - zajio1am 4y ago
    The evidence is that despite constant growth of productivity since industrial revolution, unemployment is still low and not 99.99%
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kranke155 4y ago
  Evidence
- Uehreka 4y ago
  I hear this a lot, that “automation creates jobs” chestnut. Whenever people try to support this argument, they either fall into the “not thinking quantitatively” fallacy by pointing out that “sure, 25 writers got laid off, but the company used to have no programmers, and now they have 2!” Or they fall into the “not explaining the mechanism” fallacy by giving examples from the past where “stablehands retrained as mechanics” without examining why that happened, and what aspects make 20th century mechanization and 21st century automation completely different in kind.
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    How many people work on farms as a percentage of the population now as they did 100 years ago? We still eat, but now almost no one farms. Most everyone is still employed. We’ll figure something out.
    - thot_experiment 4y ago
      Ok but that's exactly the problem, the situation we've "figured out" is kinda trash. A bunch of rich people own all the farms and we gave everyone bullshit admin jobs because we can't admit to ourselves that almost nobody farms and we still all eat and maybe that means a good portion of the population could just chill out.
      - chottocharaii 4y ago
        I would much, much, rather work an Admin job than work on a farm are you aware of how taxing that work is on the body ? How isolating it is ?
        thot_experiment 4y ago
        What? I'm not comparing the two. The point is that we don't need to do the admin jobs, and we need fewer people to farm the same amount of food, so we can just split the extra free time and maybe some people don't even need to have a job.
jacobn 4y ago
The danger is less with automation and more with the speed of automation. It's hard to retrain. When the change happens between generations there's a natural progression with parent: stable hand, child: mechanic. When it happens 1-2-5 times in a person's career, then those are some really painful resets. Sure, some will swim. But the social contract with democracy isn't that "some" swim, it's that "almost everyone swims" (which we generally call "everybody", but that's a separate discussion). Long term and across society automation is absolutely positive sum. But short-to-long term for those on the short end of the stick it's clearly not.
KerrAvon 4y ago
This discussion usually ends up in "well, let's do UBI"-land, as if that's possible if Republicans get anywhere near control of congress.
chii 4y ago
> That is the key concern with automation replacing jobs is that it is a zero sum game. it's not zero sum, because the resources that used to be spent paying you now could be spent on something else. This increase in efficiency means more goods/services could be produced! Of course, that newly saved money would be spent on someone else, instead of the person being made redundant by automation. It is thus a societal responsibility to retrain/reskill that person, and the training perhaps also partially be paid for by the entity benefiting directly from the automation.

colinmhayes 4y ago

Lump of labor fallacy. Automation is not a zero sum game because it creates new jobs.

shakabrah 4y ago
These are some bold claims. Id like to see some evidence.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  There are more bank tellers today in USA than at any other point, despite the growing number of ATM machines. https://www.aei.org/economics/what-atms-bank-tellers-rise-robots-and-jobs/ https://www.aei.org/economics/what-atms-bank-tellers-rise-ro... This doesn't always happen mind you. But it shows that your (and my) economic instincts are piss poor. We can't just assume what the future holds. ------- Another few examples: 3D animation has killed a lot of tweening artists (the people who smoothed out animations for Disney Films like 101 Dalmations or Sleeping Beauty). But 3d animation created the need of modelers, texture artists, riggers, and more. Automatic Drum machines didn't kill drummers either, but allowed for more music to be made in general. The only thing that automation "killed" recently was Lawyers, as online webpages that auto-generated common forms removed a ton of jobs that Lawyers used to do. IIRC, Lawyers are in somewhat of a decline because of this. So it just goes to show that no one really can predict these things.
  - princeb 4y ago
    > 3D animation has killed a lot of tweening artists (the people who smoothed out animations for Disney Films like 101 Dalmations or Sleeping Beauty). But 3d animation created the need of modelers, texture artists, riggers, and more. together with the previous comment on mechanics and stablehands, i wonder how many people in history grew up training and wanting to be a mechanic, only to be told, sorry we just don't have that many automobiles in the world, we need more stablehands. i wonder how many people went to do fine art in school only to be told 'look you have good skills and all but we just need more tweening artists'.
    - chii 4y ago
      the pace of technological progress is fast - but not so fast that people being trained in art must move within a year! I think retraining to an adjacent field is definitely possible - the only thing i see disagreements in is the cost, and who bears that cost.
- zajio1am 4y ago
  The evidence is that despite constant growth of productivity since industrial revolution, unemployment is still low and not 99.99%
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kranke155 4y ago
Evidence
Uehreka 4y ago
I hear this a lot, that “automation creates jobs” chestnut. Whenever people try to support this argument, they either fall into the “not thinking quantitatively” fallacy by pointing out that “sure, 25 writers got laid off, but the company used to have no programmers, and now they have 2!” Or they fall into the “not explaining the mechanism” fallacy by giving examples from the past where “stablehands retrained as mechanics” without examining why that happened, and what aspects make 20th century mechanization and 21st century automation completely different in kind.
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  How many people work on farms as a percentage of the population now as they did 100 years ago? We still eat, but now almost no one farms. Most everyone is still employed. We’ll figure something out.
  - thot_experiment 4y ago
    Ok but that's exactly the problem, the situation we've "figured out" is kinda trash. A bunch of rich people own all the farms and we gave everyone bullshit admin jobs because we can't admit to ourselves that almost nobody farms and we still all eat and maybe that means a good portion of the population could just chill out.
    - chottocharaii 4y ago
      I would much, much, rather work an Admin job than work on a farm are you aware of how taxing that work is on the body ? How isolating it is ?
      - thot_experiment 4y ago
        What? I'm not comparing the two. The point is that we don't need to do the admin jobs, and we need fewer people to farm the same amount of food, so we can just split the extra free time and maybe some people don't even need to have a job.

jacobn 4y ago

The danger is less with automation and more with the speed of automation. It's hard to retrain. When the change happens between generations there's a natural progression with parent: stable hand, child: mechanic. When it happens 1-2-5 times in a person's career, then those are some really painful resets. Sure, some will swim. But the social contract with democracy isn't that "some" swim, it's that "almost everyone swims" (which we generally call "everybody", but that's a separate discussion). Long term and across society automation is absolutely positive sum. But short-to-long term for those on the short end of the stick it's clearly not.

KerrAvon 4y ago

This discussion usually ends up in "well, let's do UBI"-land, as if that's possible if Republicans get anywhere near control of congress.

chii 4y ago

> That is the key concern with automation replacing jobs is that it is a zero sum game. it's not zero sum, because the resources that used to be spent paying you now could be spent on something else. This increase in efficiency means more goods/services could be produced! Of course, that newly saved money would be spent on someone else, instead of the person being made redundant by automation. It is thus a societal responsibility to retrain/reskill that person, and the training perhaps also partially be paid for by the entity benefiting directly from the automation.