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The US still has a big manufacturing sector and it has an unemployment rate of 3.5%. It could definitely absorb a small number of displaced workers. I think th

The US still has a big manufacturing sector and it has an unemployment rate of 3.5%. It could definitely absorb a small number of displaced workers. I think the bigger problem is that folks often take wage cuts whenever they change sectors - you lose lots of your human capital and unique skills.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago
Think bigger - we are about to automate driving. That’s like 20 Million of people. Where do they go? Look at top 10 jobs by employment, all of them are 100+ years old. Name a job that was created in the last 50 years - real jobs that employ at least 1 million people, not ‘leveraged crypto-equity portfolio manager’
- charliea0 2y ago
  Home health and personal care aide is the largest employment category in the US. As other sectors become more efficient, you can direct more people into healthcare, entertainment, etc.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  > Name a job that was created in the last 50 years - real jobs that employ at least 1 million people C dates back to the early 70s, and computers weren't really ubiquitous until the 90s or so. So does computer programming in general make your cutoff? Or does it date back to Babbage in the 1800s?
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    Programming is one of the only truly new job fields in the last century. But despite growing up right alongside the automation/offshoring of manufacturing, it wasn’t able to absorb the labor coming from that sector. Labor is not a fungible thing that can easily move from one column to another, that’s a big part of the problem with any sudden massive change in the nature of labor.
- SSLy 2y ago
  plenty in digital arts, most in game dev or film making, some in music performance.
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    The fields you just listed are extremely cutthroat highly desired high-skill jobs that are currently being threatened by automation. We also don’t have jobs for the people being forced out of those fields, it’s not like there’s room in there to absorb millions of laid off laborers.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    > digital arts Art is still art, whether you paint with oil or on an iPad. Doesn’t quite count.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> The US still has a big manufacturing sector and it has an unemployment rate of 3.5%. It could definitely absorb a small number of displaced workers. If you think the skills acquired as a dockworker translate directly to being able to get a job in manufacturing, you don't know anything about either one. That there are jobs available is only one part of the problem. Where are the jobs relative to the people about to be unemployed? How many people are we about to, under the threat of starvation, tell to move possibly across the country for work? How many communities will be destroyed? How many people will be utterly severed from any and all social support systems that they now have? For that matter, how many of those jobs are themselves stable? Or will they need to repeat this traumatic process in another ten years after another industry "disruption" leads to yet more automation? This whole system was supposed to be for people, right? Because it sure seems to me that the human factors in all these discussions get shockingly lost quite quickly and we revert to treating people like rack nodes that can be moved to a different part of our server farm at a moment's notice, should the need for compute be higher over there than it is here, and there are no side effects to that, nothing lost in the transition. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you're the type of person who's comfortable moving cross country to chase a higher salary or a dream job, more power to you. I certainly was. Now ask yourself if you would be so enthusiastic if it wasn't your decision and was, in fact, imposed on you by the actions of your employer. I wonder if automation would make so much tremendous sense to you if you yourself were the one on the chopping block, who's livelihood and life was about to be upended so widgets could be made 80 cents cheaper each. I don't have a problem with automation on principle: I think any labor saving tech is unambiguously a good thing. I am however thoroughly tired of self-appointed, unelected leaders of private industry laying waste to the communities that built the companies they run so cavalierly, simply because they can now make their products either with the hands of more exploitable people overseas, or with robots.
- beaglessss 2y ago
  The reason you can move across the nation for a good wage is in part that jobs were shit canned when they become economically or technologically disadvantaged to more efficient alternatives. Your high wage was made possible due to firing lots of people. We should thank our lucky stars if a robot takes all their job. That's progress.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago

Think bigger - we are about to automate driving. That’s like 20 Million of people. Where do they go? Look at top 10 jobs by employment, all of them are 100+ years old. Name a job that was created in the last 50 years - real jobs that employ at least 1 million people, not ‘leveraged crypto-equity portfolio manager’

charliea0 2y ago
Home health and personal care aide is the largest employment category in the US. As other sectors become more efficient, you can direct more people into healthcare, entertainment, etc.
tbrownaw 2y ago
> Name a job that was created in the last 50 years - real jobs that employ at least 1 million people C dates back to the early 70s, and computers weren't really ubiquitous until the 90s or so. So does computer programming in general make your cutoff? Or does it date back to Babbage in the 1800s?
- Uehreka 2y ago
  Programming is one of the only truly new job fields in the last century. But despite growing up right alongside the automation/offshoring of manufacturing, it wasn’t able to absorb the labor coming from that sector. Labor is not a fungible thing that can easily move from one column to another, that’s a big part of the problem with any sudden massive change in the nature of labor.
SSLy 2y ago
plenty in digital arts, most in game dev or film making, some in music performance.
- Uehreka 2y ago
  The fields you just listed are extremely cutthroat highly desired high-skill jobs that are currently being threatened by automation. We also don’t have jobs for the people being forced out of those fields, it’s not like there’s room in there to absorb millions of laid off laborers.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > digital arts Art is still art, whether you paint with oil or on an iPad. Doesn’t quite count.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> The US still has a big manufacturing sector and it has an unemployment rate of 3.5%. It could definitely absorb a small number of displaced workers. If you think the skills acquired as a dockworker translate directly to being able to get a job in manufacturing, you don't know anything about either one. That there are jobs available is only one part of the problem. Where are the jobs relative to the people about to be unemployed? How many people are we about to, under the threat of starvation, tell to move possibly across the country for work? How many communities will be destroyed? How many people will be utterly severed from any and all social support systems that they now have? For that matter, how many of those jobs are themselves stable? Or will they need to repeat this traumatic process in another ten years after another industry "disruption" leads to yet more automation? This whole system was supposed to be for people, right? Because it sure seems to me that the human factors in all these discussions get shockingly lost quite quickly and we revert to treating people like rack nodes that can be moved to a different part of our server farm at a moment's notice, should the need for compute be higher over there than it is here, and there are no side effects to that, nothing lost in the transition. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you're the type of person who's comfortable moving cross country to chase a higher salary or a dream job, more power to you. I certainly was. Now ask yourself if you would be so enthusiastic if it wasn't your decision and was, in fact, imposed on you by the actions of your employer. I wonder if automation would make so much tremendous sense to you if you yourself were the one on the chopping block, who's livelihood and life was about to be upended so widgets could be made 80 cents cheaper each. I don't have a problem with automation on principle: I think any labor saving tech is unambiguously a good thing. I am however thoroughly tired of self-appointed, unelected leaders of private industry laying waste to the communities that built the companies they run so cavalierly, simply because they can now make their products either with the hands of more exploitable people overseas, or with robots.

beaglessss 2y ago
The reason you can move across the nation for a good wage is in part that jobs were shit canned when they become economically or technologically disadvantaged to more efficient alternatives. Your high wage was made possible due to firing lots of people. We should thank our lucky stars if a robot takes all their job. That's progress.