5 ms·

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

by colinmhayes 4y ago

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.

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.