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I think the main problem with this argument that software is eating everything and automation is replacing jobs is that it imagines the world as it is today, wi
by dkrich 13y ago
I think the main problem with this argument that software is eating everything and automation is replacing jobs is that it imagines the world as it is today, with the current set of jobs as fixed. Lest we forget a time when all goods were physical and there were no digital goods. The extent of what can be consumed by technology does have limits. But more than that, we as a society become wealthier, not poorer, when things become faster, cheaper, and easier to produce.
There was a time when people spent nearly half their income on food because food production was an incredibly inefficient process. Eventually much of food processing became automated and advances made it much more plentiful. What had a larger impact on the economy? The millions of people no longer needing to spend valuable time producing food, or the fact that people now had much more disposable income to spend on other things?
- kokey 13y agoThat's the thing, instead of giving people a universal basic income and distorting the prices we should really keep on striving to make the essentials that people need as cheap as possible.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoWhich basically means things that do not scale will skyrocket in price. You already see this as prices of education and housing grow decade to decade. Essentials are: bad food that doesn't taste well, bad housing, bad medical care, bad transportation and bad service. That's what Soviet Union consistently delivered to every citizen and while there were vitrually no hungry, unemployed or homeless people, nobody felt happy too, everybody fought to be able to afford a tiny bit of something of quality. In short, cheap essentials are not so cool.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoAlso, we're talking about world where robots produce those cheap essentials out of soil and solar/nuclear power, leaving many more unemployed competing for ever shrinking pool of jobs that are not done by robots out of free solar/nuclear power. Basically it's not any kind of a solution, it's exactly where we are headed now.
- dkrich 13y agoI don't understand why this is a problem. A job is something you have to do to complete a task. Somebody pays you for it because it brings them some value. If they can get that task completed for a lower rate, why is that a bad thing? Sure, in the short-term you lose the paycheck you received for completing that task, but in the long-term that person who paid you is now wealthier, which enables them to spend money elsewhere. This causes the jobs to migrate to where things need to be done. I assure you we are still a very long way from accomplishing all tasks that need to be done and for which people would be willing to pay. But if we ever did reach that point, nobody would need to work because everything would be free.