4 ms·

Somewhere around 90% of U.S. Jobs were automated out of existence in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Is this time different?

salient 13y ago
In the long run, I don't think so. You could argue change is happening much faster today, and people need to adapt to new jobs and skills faster, but on the other hand, there are also many more opportunities to choose from these days.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  More likely that change is happening much more slowly today.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  I think a difference is perhaps that the time investment required to adapt to the old automation was a lot less than that required to adapt to this one, while human lifespan hasn't categorically changed (the most dramatic shifts in life expectancy in the last century and a half have come in large part from infant mortality improvements). Working in a factory in the Industrial Revolution didn't require much training/education at all. Post-WWII, the shift in job-skills to essentially requiring literacy was dealth with by a society that tried to ensure that its citizens were educated enough, with great results. This time, starting around the 70s and 80s, we entirely failed to educate our populace to the point where the majority can be fully-productive members of the new job marketplace. It's becoming conventional wisdom that having only a high school degree (as a crude heuristic for skill level) is not enough to be productive economically, and this is becoming increasingly true of having a college degree where you don't learn anything useful. In every cycle of improved tools/higher skill bar, there are casualties that weren't able to improve their productivity fast enough; this is one of the uncommon cases where (in the US, at least), "people not keeping up" is a systemic issue instead of a transient one (I don't think the overall education system today is all that much better than 20 years ago). It's a "this-time-is-different" situation in a limited sense; that is, it's not inherent to the nature of the automation-cycle itself, but rather to the nature of our response to it. Note that this isn't some engineering-centric notion of needing immediately applicable skills from college. Studying something more academic in college has just as much value, as long as it's something that's useful (a good rule of thumb is "as long as you use the things you learned in college in the future"). I'm referring to the fact that it's long been the practice for many people to get a college degree in literally anything with the knowledge that the existence of the degree itself would be a good enough signal for intelligence/skills that you could get an okay job afterwards. This is increasingly untrue.
hyperbovine 13y ago
Interesting, that is a much higher number than I had supposed. Do you have a source / link for it? I'd love to read more.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  Mechanized farming.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  Farmers dropped from 30 million to 3 million. http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm
maxerickson 13y ago
It depends on how fast we can find new material needs. We don't seem to be doing that very quickly though (in lots of areas we are regressing, becoming more efficient with our inputs).
ck2 13y ago
Yes, it costs radically more not to be homeless in 2014.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
Is there a difference between machines designed to perform a narrow set of very specialized tasks and machines designed to perform a broad set of very generalized tasks? If it's not different this time, it will eventually be. That's the goal.
IvyMike 13y ago
I guess it feels like there were other manual labor jobs to move to back in that day and age. But if nearly every manual labor and semi-skilled labor job is going to be automated, I don't know what those people will do. The people who dig ditches or drive trucks today are not going to be happy or excel in office jobs.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
yummyfajitas 13y ago
This argument is a bit of a fallacy. See the following (schematic) graph, which illustrates the fallacy: http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/human_vs_machine_progress.html http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/human_vs_machine_prog...

salient 13y ago

In the long run, I don't think so. You could argue change is happening much faster today, and people need to adapt to new jobs and skills faster, but on the other hand, there are also many more opportunities to choose from these days.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
More likely that change is happening much more slowly today.
wutbrodo 13y ago
I think a difference is perhaps that the time investment required to adapt to the old automation was a lot less than that required to adapt to this one, while human lifespan hasn't categorically changed (the most dramatic shifts in life expectancy in the last century and a half have come in large part from infant mortality improvements). Working in a factory in the Industrial Revolution didn't require much training/education at all. Post-WWII, the shift in job-skills to essentially requiring literacy was dealth with by a society that tried to ensure that its citizens were educated enough, with great results. This time, starting around the 70s and 80s, we entirely failed to educate our populace to the point where the majority can be fully-productive members of the new job marketplace. It's becoming conventional wisdom that having only a high school degree (as a crude heuristic for skill level) is not enough to be productive economically, and this is becoming increasingly true of having a college degree where you don't learn anything useful. In every cycle of improved tools/higher skill bar, there are casualties that weren't able to improve their productivity fast enough; this is one of the uncommon cases where (in the US, at least), "people not keeping up" is a systemic issue instead of a transient one (I don't think the overall education system today is all that much better than 20 years ago). It's a "this-time-is-different" situation in a limited sense; that is, it's not inherent to the nature of the automation-cycle itself, but rather to the nature of our response to it. Note that this isn't some engineering-centric notion of needing immediately applicable skills from college. Studying something more academic in college has just as much value, as long as it's something that's useful (a good rule of thumb is "as long as you use the things you learned in college in the future"). I'm referring to the fact that it's long been the practice for many people to get a college degree in literally anything with the knowledge that the existence of the degree itself would be a good enough signal for intelligence/skills that you could get an okay job afterwards. This is increasingly untrue.

hyperbovine 13y ago

Interesting, that is a much higher number than I had supposed. Do you have a source / link for it? I'd love to read more.

maxerickson 13y ago
Mechanized farming.
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
Farmers dropped from 30 million to 3 million. http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm

maxerickson 13y ago

It depends on how fast we can find new material needs. We don't seem to be doing that very quickly though (in lots of areas we are regressing, becoming more efficient with our inputs).

ck2 13y ago

Yes, it costs radically more not to be homeless in 2014.

waterlesscloud 13y ago

Is there a difference between machines designed to perform a narrow set of very specialized tasks and machines designed to perform a broad set of very generalized tasks? If it's not different this time, it will eventually be. That's the goal.

IvyMike 13y ago

I guess it feels like there were other manual labor jobs to move to back in that day and age. But if nearly every manual labor and semi-skilled labor job is going to be automated, I don't know what those people will do. The people who dig ditches or drive trucks today are not going to be happy or excel in office jobs.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

yummyfajitas 13y ago

This argument is a bit of a fallacy. See the following (schematic) graph, which illustrates the fallacy: http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/human_vs_machine_progress.html http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/human_vs_machine_prog...