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Yet another example of the "all labor is manufacturing" fallacy. A future where machines displace most of what we currently think of as blue collar workers is

Yet another example of the "all labor is manufacturing" fallacy. A future where machines displace most of what we currently think of as blue collar workers is a future where most of the things blue collar workers currently produce are much, much, cheaper than they are now. This author worries whether blue collar jobs will pay "subsistence" wages. They will, because the cost of subsistence [and indeed, the cost of a fairly satisfied life] will be lower. As machines become better at manufacturing and hard labor, unskilled "work" will shift from physical to service industries. That's good! It's been happening for the past century. Unskilled physical labor is hard, especially as you get older and banged up. A mechanized future is one where physical resources are plentiful. People will figure out a reason to trade them. Humanity will be fine.

moultano 14y ago
Food, housing, transportation, and medical care may not get any cheaper. Food is already highly mechanized. Housing is saturated in the places where people want to live. In the US at least we lack the political will to make transformative investments in transportation, and gas production is already as mechanized as it is going to get. Medical care is likely to remain labor intensive using very expensive labor. Sure, the average worker may be able to buy more things at Walmart than they can today, but that has less of an effect on quality of life.
- pchristensen 14y ago
  Housing is politically saturated. There's plenty of room and technology to vastly increase the number of housing units and lower cost in desirable cities, but current zoning and planning regulations make them illegal to build.
  - Surio 14y ago
    Regardless of how semantically we phrase it, the bottomline that the parent made is valid... (Housing is saturated in the places where people want to live) i.e., it is as saturated as it can be, with no immediately conceivable resolution to the status quo.
    - justincormack 14y ago
      If remote working was normal there would be potentially huge shifts in demand for housing. People don't necessarily want to live where they do but that's where jobs are.
- acslater00 14y ago
  Could not disagree more. Education -- especially the University variety -- is clearly at the top of a multi-decade cost cycle, and will become much cheaper as it becomes more digital. Health care will absolutely be much cheaper in 30 years than it is now. We can provide 1960s-style health care to most people for literally hundreds of dollars / year. The fact that we choose not to because technology has improved quality faster than it has reduced costs is irrelevant. At some point that trend will reverse, and when it does costs will drop dramatically. Construction costs are mostly driven by labor costs these days, and as construction is mechanized those will trend towards the cost of raw materials. Obviously there's a sort of theoretical floor there, but even the cost of extracting metal ores from the earth has dropped substantially as technology has improved. All of these things trends are pointing in the same direction; they are just moving at different speeds.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
A future where machines displace most of what we currently think of as blue collar workers is a future where most of the things blue collar workers currently produce are much, much, cheaper than they are now. This author worries whether blue collar jobs will pay "subsistence" wages. They will, because the cost of subsistence [and indeed, the cost of a fairly satisfied life] will be lower. This was the entire thesis of the neoliberal project. Over 30 years of implementation, it has never once come true for basic subsistence goods. Rent is not cheaper. Health-care is not cheaper. Energy is not cheaper. Food is only slightly cheaper. The primary good that has become massively cheaper is electronics.
- learc83 14y ago
  >Health-care is not cheaper. That's not a fair comparison. Modern healthcare is not cheaper, but healthcare equivalent to what was available a generation or 2 ago is. >Food is only slightly cheaper. Food has pretty steadily been declining as a fraction of disposable income. It would be declining even more dramatically if it weren't being offset by an increase in eating outside the home.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    Well, yes, but that itself is an example of how the theory fails - it assumes that the bar for "subsistence" never moves. By all measures we are much better off than the average peasant in the Middle Ages, and their lifestyle is now incomprehensibly cheap. But that's not where the bar is at. Ditto energy - the amount of energy a poor person can consume is astronomical compared to that of a poor person even 100 years ago - but that bar hasn't stayed still either. You don't take a horse-drawn buggy to work, and most people have an expectation of keeping warm in the winters without huddling around the stove. I will agree on the food part - we have shown consistently that food cost, as a proportion of income, is at some of the lowest it's ever been, and a massive improvement over a century ago. This has been a clear win - but if you think about it, this is hardly a surprise. The bar for "eats well, not hungry" doesn't move very much over the decades.
    - 14y ago
brianchu 14y ago
This assumes service industries will remain untouched, which is most certainly not true. Service industries are probably the next industry right after manufacturing to be decimated by automation (the time scale is unpredictable, though). For example, a company called Momentum Machines is making a burger-producing machine (http://momentummachines.com/ http://momentummachines.com/) that produces fresher, customizable burgers at a rapid pace. Obviously there are cost issues to be worked out over time, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. EDIT: Reading the website would make clear that this replaces the people who make burgers in fast food restaurants. That's not manufacturing, that's service (in this case, food preparation / cooking).
- justincormack 14y ago
  Making burgers is manufacturing. There are better examples though.
- Someone 14y ago
  Better example: automated cars. http://www.truckline.com/About/Industry/Pages/ProfessionalTruckDrivers.aspx http://www.truckline.com/About/Industry/Pages/ProfessionalTr... claims 3.5 million truck drivers in the USA. Add in the zillions of vans distributing stuff to smaller shops and taxi drivers,and one could see a huge impact on employment. Of course, not all of this will go (making deliveries probably will require the presence of a human), but firms will find ways to decrease driver's hours. For example, a truck driver could drive his car to the neighborhood where his truck makes deliveries instead of to the warehouse. More likely, companies would seek part time 'delivery assistants' that live in the neighborhood. As a second example, large multi-truck deliveries would need only one driver for handling the paperwork.
  - Joeri 14y ago
    Making deliveries without a human is easy with custom-designed delivery vehicles and ahead of time warning about the exact hour of delivery, combined with personal passwords sent by email that unlock a compartment. People will probably even prefer it that way. I don't see a reason why humans need to be involved in the actual rounds once the driver automation aspect is solved.

moultano 14y ago

Food, housing, transportation, and medical care may not get any cheaper. Food is already highly mechanized. Housing is saturated in the places where people want to live. In the US at least we lack the political will to make transformative investments in transportation, and gas production is already as mechanized as it is going to get. Medical care is likely to remain labor intensive using very expensive labor. Sure, the average worker may be able to buy more things at Walmart than they can today, but that has less of an effect on quality of life.

pchristensen 14y ago
Housing is politically saturated. There's plenty of room and technology to vastly increase the number of housing units and lower cost in desirable cities, but current zoning and planning regulations make them illegal to build.
- Surio 14y ago
  Regardless of how semantically we phrase it, the bottomline that the parent made is valid... (Housing is saturated in the places where people want to live) i.e., it is as saturated as it can be, with no immediately conceivable resolution to the status quo.
  - justincormack 14y ago
    If remote working was normal there would be potentially huge shifts in demand for housing. People don't necessarily want to live where they do but that's where jobs are.
acslater00 14y ago
Could not disagree more. Education -- especially the University variety -- is clearly at the top of a multi-decade cost cycle, and will become much cheaper as it becomes more digital. Health care will absolutely be much cheaper in 30 years than it is now. We can provide 1960s-style health care to most people for literally hundreds of dollars / year. The fact that we choose not to because technology has improved quality faster than it has reduced costs is irrelevant. At some point that trend will reverse, and when it does costs will drop dramatically. Construction costs are mostly driven by labor costs these days, and as construction is mechanized those will trend towards the cost of raw materials. Obviously there's a sort of theoretical floor there, but even the cost of extracting metal ores from the earth has dropped substantially as technology has improved. All of these things trends are pointing in the same direction; they are just moving at different speeds.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago

A future where machines displace most of what we currently think of as blue collar workers is a future where most of the things blue collar workers currently produce are much, much, cheaper than they are now. This author worries whether blue collar jobs will pay "subsistence" wages. They will, because the cost of subsistence [and indeed, the cost of a fairly satisfied life] will be lower. This was the entire thesis of the neoliberal project. Over 30 years of implementation, it has never once come true for basic subsistence goods. Rent is not cheaper. Health-care is not cheaper. Energy is not cheaper. Food is only slightly cheaper. The primary good that has become massively cheaper is electronics.

learc83 14y ago
>Health-care is not cheaper. That's not a fair comparison. Modern healthcare is not cheaper, but healthcare equivalent to what was available a generation or 2 ago is. >Food is only slightly cheaper. Food has pretty steadily been declining as a fraction of disposable income. It would be declining even more dramatically if it weren't being offset by an increase in eating outside the home.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Well, yes, but that itself is an example of how the theory fails - it assumes that the bar for "subsistence" never moves. By all measures we are much better off than the average peasant in the Middle Ages, and their lifestyle is now incomprehensibly cheap. But that's not where the bar is at. Ditto energy - the amount of energy a poor person can consume is astronomical compared to that of a poor person even 100 years ago - but that bar hasn't stayed still either. You don't take a horse-drawn buggy to work, and most people have an expectation of keeping warm in the winters without huddling around the stove. I will agree on the food part - we have shown consistently that food cost, as a proportion of income, is at some of the lowest it's ever been, and a massive improvement over a century ago. This has been a clear win - but if you think about it, this is hardly a surprise. The bar for "eats well, not hungry" doesn't move very much over the decades.
  - 14y ago

brianchu 14y ago

This assumes service industries will remain untouched, which is most certainly not true. Service industries are probably the next industry right after manufacturing to be decimated by automation (the time scale is unpredictable, though). For example, a company called Momentum Machines is making a burger-producing machine (http://momentummachines.com/ http://momentummachines.com/) that produces fresher, customizable burgers at a rapid pace. Obviously there are cost issues to be worked out over time, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. EDIT: Reading the website would make clear that this replaces the people who make burgers in fast food restaurants. That's not manufacturing, that's service (in this case, food preparation / cooking).

justincormack 14y ago
Making burgers is manufacturing. There are better examples though.
Someone 14y ago
Better example: automated cars. http://www.truckline.com/About/Industry/Pages/ProfessionalTruckDrivers.aspx http://www.truckline.com/About/Industry/Pages/ProfessionalTr... claims 3.5 million truck drivers in the USA. Add in the zillions of vans distributing stuff to smaller shops and taxi drivers,and one could see a huge impact on employment. Of course, not all of this will go (making deliveries probably will require the presence of a human), but firms will find ways to decrease driver's hours. For example, a truck driver could drive his car to the neighborhood where his truck makes deliveries instead of to the warehouse. More likely, companies would seek part time 'delivery assistants' that live in the neighborhood. As a second example, large multi-truck deliveries would need only one driver for handling the paperwork.
- Joeri 14y ago
  Making deliveries without a human is easy with custom-designed delivery vehicles and ahead of time warning about the exact hour of delivery, combined with personal passwords sent by email that unlock a compartment. People will probably even prefer it that way. I don't see a reason why humans need to be involved in the actual rounds once the driver automation aspect is solved.