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Technology has always been killing jobs, however in the history of man there have always been room for long-term job growth. Otherwise we would not be where we

Technology has always been killing jobs, however in the history of man there have always been room for long-term job growth. Otherwise we would not be where we are now. The article is fairly shallow in blaming only one thing for the recession and joblessness. Suddenly the massive debt is no longer a problem, the fact that there are lean manufacturing methods that can compete with mass production is overlooked, etc. The situation really is more complex than one or several journalists can hope to investigate by crunching several time series.

akiselev 14y ago
Classically, the new technology created a new class of work to operate/use it or decreased the cost of something so much that it was affordable for the middle class and required a lot more workers to handle the new demand. Now the middle class which benefited from new, cheaper, better products is shrinking with substantial (but by no means comprehensive) evidence that job growth as we've known it in the last hundred years isn't coming back. Even in software development, there may only be limited growth due to its open and exponential nature. As more developers work on software, the more tools will be developed to make their work more productive and efficient. It's a self reinforcing feedback loop that might have an equilibrium that won't be sufficient to account for all of the jobs lost as a result of software. American manufacturing, for example, is still one of the biggest sub-economies in the world and is insanely productive compared to Chinese manufacturers per person, but it doesn't create anywhere near as many jobs as we have lost overseas. At the same time, manufacturers in industries like medical, aero, and defense are complaining that they can't get the skilled workers they need to grow and as a result are forced to invest way more into automation. It's very likely that I just can't look at this period of human development without heavy bias but it seems to me that the ridiculously easy flow of information allowed by the internet has destabilized the equilibrium we've had with creative destruction and job growth.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Classically, the new technology created a new class of work to operate/use it or decreased the cost of something so much that it was affordable for the middle class and required a lot more workers to handle the new demand. So let's ask, then: what does the middle class lack today that an increase in production efficiency could make widely available?
  - akiselev 14y ago
    I can't really answer this question. The two major areas I can think of are health care and capital equipment. Health care because surgeries and even basic procedures can be really expensive, especially for the uninsured. Already we can see hair transplant robots [1] that take the cosmetic doctors almost entirely out of the picture and I'm sure surgery robots are being developed. I don't see how this kind of industry can create more jobs than it eliminates. However, better education and awareness of chronic illnesses caused by lifestyle I think would help free up hundreds of billions of dollars that would then stay with the consumers (or non-healthcare corporations which might then just hold on to it). If you decrease the cost of capital equipment by automating their production (aka, by making automation easier and cheaper), it will allow many more people to buy them and drive their price down further because of increasing volume. This could then lead to a diaspora of small time manufacturers and service providers who replace large entities, become more local, and drive down the prices of everything through competition. The consequences here would be wild and unpredictable. Maybe the sum generated economic activity would be much greater than the whole (as it often is with manufacturing industries), but we can't say that for sure because of the limited value add that these manufacturers can provide over their equipment (as it currently is with manufacturing...). The other consequence would be the devaluation of the equipment causing a devaluation of the service contracts, which would probably lead to more automation through modularity, machine learning, and data driven remote diagnostics of equipment. But honestly all that above is wild speculation. The future is damn near impossible to predict and I think the presence of economic incentives going in all different directions for all parties involved just makes it a lot more uncertain. [1] http://restorationrobotics.com/ http://restorationrobotics.com/

akiselev 14y ago

Classically, the new technology created a new class of work to operate/use it or decreased the cost of something so much that it was affordable for the middle class and required a lot more workers to handle the new demand. Now the middle class which benefited from new, cheaper, better products is shrinking with substantial (but by no means comprehensive) evidence that job growth as we've known it in the last hundred years isn't coming back. Even in software development, there may only be limited growth due to its open and exponential nature. As more developers work on software, the more tools will be developed to make their work more productive and efficient. It's a self reinforcing feedback loop that might have an equilibrium that won't be sufficient to account for all of the jobs lost as a result of software. American manufacturing, for example, is still one of the biggest sub-economies in the world and is insanely productive compared to Chinese manufacturers per person, but it doesn't create anywhere near as many jobs as we have lost overseas. At the same time, manufacturers in industries like medical, aero, and defense are complaining that they can't get the skilled workers they need to grow and as a result are forced to invest way more into automation. It's very likely that I just can't look at this period of human development without heavy bias but it seems to me that the ridiculously easy flow of information allowed by the internet has destabilized the equilibrium we've had with creative destruction and job growth.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Classically, the new technology created a new class of work to operate/use it or decreased the cost of something so much that it was affordable for the middle class and required a lot more workers to handle the new demand. So let's ask, then: what does the middle class lack today that an increase in production efficiency could make widely available?
- akiselev 14y ago
  I can't really answer this question. The two major areas I can think of are health care and capital equipment. Health care because surgeries and even basic procedures can be really expensive, especially for the uninsured. Already we can see hair transplant robots [1] that take the cosmetic doctors almost entirely out of the picture and I'm sure surgery robots are being developed. I don't see how this kind of industry can create more jobs than it eliminates. However, better education and awareness of chronic illnesses caused by lifestyle I think would help free up hundreds of billions of dollars that would then stay with the consumers (or non-healthcare corporations which might then just hold on to it). If you decrease the cost of capital equipment by automating their production (aka, by making automation easier and cheaper), it will allow many more people to buy them and drive their price down further because of increasing volume. This could then lead to a diaspora of small time manufacturers and service providers who replace large entities, become more local, and drive down the prices of everything through competition. The consequences here would be wild and unpredictable. Maybe the sum generated economic activity would be much greater than the whole (as it often is with manufacturing industries), but we can't say that for sure because of the limited value add that these manufacturers can provide over their equipment (as it currently is with manufacturing...). The other consequence would be the devaluation of the equipment causing a devaluation of the service contracts, which would probably lead to more automation through modularity, machine learning, and data driven remote diagnostics of equipment. But honestly all that above is wild speculation. The future is damn near impossible to predict and I think the presence of economic incentives going in all different directions for all parties involved just makes it a lot more uncertain. [1] http://restorationrobotics.com/ http://restorationrobotics.com/