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I'm not trying to be an asshole either when I ask: what we do with all the former farmers made redundant by modern farming technology or furniture makers made r

I'm not trying to be an asshole either when I ask: what we do with all the former farmers made redundant by modern farming technology or furniture makers made redundant by the increased productivity of manufacturing processes? I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations.

i80and 1y ago
People have been talking about "education and retraining" to make up for jobs lost to technology since I was young. It's a nice idea, but I'm curious if that actually happens at scale rather than in isolated pockets. Retraining is hard, expensive, and risky. My general experience is that people tend to fall backwards into either lower-quality work or permanent semi-unemployment, but I could be mistaken about that.
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  No, you’re right. Ultimately, after large-scale technological innovation that leads to societal change like worker displacement (like happened after agricultural innovations displaced farm workers in the American South, or manufacturing innovations displaced American factory workers, or unemployment during the Great Depression) you end up with societal unrest (like organized protest and political action) that leads to increased societal safety nets and welfare benefits… temporarily and if the unrest is big enough. But eventually, as markets adjust and other types of employment opportunities pop up or as the capital class gets annoyed at rising labor costs, the welfare roles contract to encourage people back into the workforce (in American society, I’m talking about. I’m not sure how other countries handle this.) There’s a thorough and well-researched (though very dense) book called Regulating the Poor if you want to see more along those lines. But job retraining tends not to have much of an effect.
  - FeloniousHam 1y ago
    I wonder how much of "markets adjust and other types of employment opportunities pop up" is just the aging out through retirement and death of the redundant workers. Basically, the labor theory of Planck's principle: '"A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it", Planck once wrote.'
    - Esophagus4 1y ago
      Yeah, I could certainly see that being an outcome where there is just a group of displaced workers never to be employed again. I also wonder how many “new employment opportunities” are generally worse off for the displaced (gig economy etc) and what that means for society.
Braxton1980 1y ago
>I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations. How well did this work for the previous globalization of manufacturing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt
- djoldman 1y ago
  Pretty well in some ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster https://www.sitesofnj.com/Bethlehemsteel/BethlehemsteelMemorial.html https://www.sitesofnj.com/Bethlehemsteel/BethlehemsteelMemor... https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/02/State-officials-Monday-began-an-investigation-into-the-deaths/7474397108800/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/02/State-officials-Mond...
salawat 1y ago
Cool. Are you paying for it for them? Everyone loves that answer, but no one wants to pony up for the retraining, or if they do, they insist the retraining meets their sensibilities. Next time you run through that line of logic, think about that.
rurp 1y ago
What happens most often is that populations whose careers get widely disrupted by technology become relatively impoverished for generations. The parts of the US where tech replaced a lot of farming, factory, and similar jobs are basically a map of the poorest areas in the country. So just saying "do what we've done before" is an extremely unsatisfyig answer. That's how we end up with half the country happily cheerleading the destruction of countless institutions and rights.
const_cast 1y ago
We leave a lot of those people behind, forced into a life of poverty. We can educate truck drivers probably, but not all. But the concept as a whole has issues. Can we re-educate and engineer to be a 10x engineer? How many of them? So, what happens when you must be a 10x engineer? People have limits. It varies person to person, but we all have limits and as we go higher "up" the rate of hitting limits increases. We can cut out low hanging fruit like, say, literacy. But I can't be Einstein, and neither can you. So, let us both pray we won't need to become Einstein.
josh_s 1y ago
At a national and global scale, farmers moved to the cities to get work in factories operating the new machinery of industrialisation. And some were, or their children were, educated to become clerks based on a systemic development of education, ie RWr+aR. These clerks were critical to help account for all the widgets being created by industrialisation. Point being, it was not accidental what happened to farmers during industrialisation of food production. they had a path. they were not left with nothing. so back to you. what next for out of work drivers or their children?
- danaris 1y ago
  > they were not left with nothing But many of them were. It's easy, at this distance, to look back and see that a large number of former farmers were able to find work in the new industrial factories and the like, and to simply ignore the fact that many of them did not. Many of them saw their income dry up, and failed to pay back the loans they had taken out in the spring to be able to plant, and had their farms repossessed. Many died. Without some kind of comprehensive, structured program to provide jobs and/or retraining to people being put out of work by a major technological advancement, yes, some of those people are still going to do OK, but many if not most will struggle, suffer, and die. And right now, the government is actively slashing and burning structured programs to help people. So I'd say the burden of proof lies on those who posit that "something will happen" to ensure that truckers being put out of work by self-driving trucks aren't just left destitute.
  - josh_s 1y ago
    We are in agreement with the burden. Perhaps my point was not well made: At the time farmers were being made destitute by industrialization we also invented the modern education system. This was a massive societal investment to compensate for the reduced number of farmers needed. There needs to be a similar level of commitment to establishing a viable future for those displaced by AI. So see no indication that this investment will happen.

i80and 1y ago

People have been talking about "education and retraining" to make up for jobs lost to technology since I was young. It's a nice idea, but I'm curious if that actually happens at scale rather than in isolated pockets. Retraining is hard, expensive, and risky. My general experience is that people tend to fall backwards into either lower-quality work or permanent semi-unemployment, but I could be mistaken about that.

Esophagus4 1y ago
No, you’re right. Ultimately, after large-scale technological innovation that leads to societal change like worker displacement (like happened after agricultural innovations displaced farm workers in the American South, or manufacturing innovations displaced American factory workers, or unemployment during the Great Depression) you end up with societal unrest (like organized protest and political action) that leads to increased societal safety nets and welfare benefits… temporarily and if the unrest is big enough. But eventually, as markets adjust and other types of employment opportunities pop up or as the capital class gets annoyed at rising labor costs, the welfare roles contract to encourage people back into the workforce (in American society, I’m talking about. I’m not sure how other countries handle this.) There’s a thorough and well-researched (though very dense) book called Regulating the Poor if you want to see more along those lines. But job retraining tends not to have much of an effect.
- FeloniousHam 1y ago
  I wonder how much of "markets adjust and other types of employment opportunities pop up" is just the aging out through retirement and death of the redundant workers. Basically, the labor theory of Planck's principle: '"A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it", Planck once wrote.'
  - Esophagus4 1y ago
    Yeah, I could certainly see that being an outcome where there is just a group of displaced workers never to be employed again. I also wonder how many “new employment opportunities” are generally worse off for the displaced (gig economy etc) and what that means for society.

Braxton1980 1y ago

>I think the answer is and has always been education and retraining for different occupations. How well did this work for the previous globalization of manufacturing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt

djoldman 1y ago
Pretty well in some ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster https://www.sitesofnj.com/Bethlehemsteel/BethlehemsteelMemorial.html https://www.sitesofnj.com/Bethlehemsteel/BethlehemsteelMemor... https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/02/State-officials-Monday-began-an-investigation-into-the-deaths/7474397108800/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/08/02/State-officials-Mond...

salawat 1y ago

Cool. Are you paying for it for them? Everyone loves that answer, but no one wants to pony up for the retraining, or if they do, they insist the retraining meets their sensibilities. Next time you run through that line of logic, think about that.

rurp 1y ago

What happens most often is that populations whose careers get widely disrupted by technology become relatively impoverished for generations. The parts of the US where tech replaced a lot of farming, factory, and similar jobs are basically a map of the poorest areas in the country. So just saying "do what we've done before" is an extremely unsatisfyig answer. That's how we end up with half the country happily cheerleading the destruction of countless institutions and rights.

const_cast 1y ago

We leave a lot of those people behind, forced into a life of poverty. We can educate truck drivers probably, but not all. But the concept as a whole has issues. Can we re-educate and engineer to be a 10x engineer? How many of them? So, what happens when you must be a 10x engineer? People have limits. It varies person to person, but we all have limits and as we go higher "up" the rate of hitting limits increases. We can cut out low hanging fruit like, say, literacy. But I can't be Einstein, and neither can you. So, let us both pray we won't need to become Einstein.

josh_s 1y ago

At a national and global scale, farmers moved to the cities to get work in factories operating the new machinery of industrialisation. And some were, or their children were, educated to become clerks based on a systemic development of education, ie RWr+aR. These clerks were critical to help account for all the widgets being created by industrialisation. Point being, it was not accidental what happened to farmers during industrialisation of food production. they had a path. they were not left with nothing. so back to you. what next for out of work drivers or their children?

danaris 1y ago
> they were not left with nothing But many of them were. It's easy, at this distance, to look back and see that a large number of former farmers were able to find work in the new industrial factories and the like, and to simply ignore the fact that many of them did not. Many of them saw their income dry up, and failed to pay back the loans they had taken out in the spring to be able to plant, and had their farms repossessed. Many died. Without some kind of comprehensive, structured program to provide jobs and/or retraining to people being put out of work by a major technological advancement, yes, some of those people are still going to do OK, but many if not most will struggle, suffer, and die. And right now, the government is actively slashing and burning structured programs to help people. So I'd say the burden of proof lies on those who posit that "something will happen" to ensure that truckers being put out of work by self-driving trucks aren't just left destitute.
- josh_s 1y ago
  We are in agreement with the burden. Perhaps my point was not well made: At the time farmers were being made destitute by industrialization we also invented the modern education system. This was a massive societal investment to compensate for the reduced number of farmers needed. There needs to be a similar level of commitment to establishing a viable future for those displaced by AI. So see no indication that this investment will happen.