2 ms·

But what happened to the people who had those blue-collar jobs? Surely they didn't all die. Did they become white-collar workers? If so, wouldn't that be a good

• wpietri 4y ago
  Sure! So far we have always found things for people to do. That's probably good. But maybe not always. We are also seeing rising inequality and increased capital concentration. So there's a risk that we might head in the direction of, say, preindustrial England, where to survive people have to labor to make the rich happy. There's also the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs As the relationship between labor and value becomes less and less direct, it becomes easier for waste to creep in. E.g., a manger who over-hires not because the new people are needed to do anything, but because their status rises with their headcount. So hopefully as all of these white-collar workers are forced to find new employment, we will find socially positive things for them to do. But I don't think it's guaranteed.