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> Another part of me thinks that automation has been part of our society for a long time, and that taking it further only changes the kind of jobs everyone ha

> Another part of me thinks that automation has been part of our society for a long time, and that taking it further only changes the kind of jobs everyone has, maybe even promoting equality by eliminating the more menial tasks (and therefore making every worker's skill and experience important, instead of them being just a replaceable cog). This is the theory, but the realities of this promoting equality are really to be doubted. An increase in the supply of labour has two fairly predictable effects - it both lowers wages overall (more supply, less demand) and provides a pool of cheap workers should things pick up. When there are more unemployed there is also typically an increase in the intensity of work in the jobs that remain - people tend to work much harder for the same or less pay under the looming threat of unemployment. One prevailing myth is that the unemployed workers are simply retrained for new jobs created by automation, however even with government subsidized retraining this doesn't seem to work [1]. In reality automation seems to be a source of widespread immiseration beneficial to only a few. [1]: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ir_21.htm http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ir_21.htm

Padding 12y ago
> In reality automation seems to be a source of widespread immiseration beneficial to only a few. Are you serious? The printing press alone has benefitted humanity as a whole immensly over the last centuries. And there were piles and piles more of automation necessary for us to be able have this discussion right now - on a global scale and at virtually no cost to either of us.
- rjsw 12y ago
  I don't think printing is a good example, there were not that many scribes around who were suddenly put out of work.
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    How about the Combine Harvester? This talk about technology taking jobs from people is utter nonsense. This has happened before - the Industrialization. People are freed from unnecessary chores like harvesting or standing at the cashier, for example. Soon enough new types of jobs were in high demand - mathematicians, engineers, professors. This enabled further development in other professions - more doctors, teachers, historians, etc. Same thing will happen now. Just look at the education landscape. Data science is taught EVERYWHERE. Industrilization made humanity able to focus on exact sciences. The advancement in exact sciences will enable us to focus on social studies, philosophy, history, ecology, medicine, law, system design.
    - kaybe 12y ago
      Not everyone is happy with an intellectual job.
      - pizza234 12y ago
        It's not only about intellectual jobs; it's also about more powerful abstractions. With the same resources spent on the same amount of workers for example, a company will produce more than in the past. It's not necessarily true that in such conditions, the company would choose to keep the productivity constant employing less workers.
    - mariusz79 12y ago
      One big issue that people tend to miss when comparing current situation to the previous years is the fact that machines are making more machines. See, when combine harvester or loom was invented people were needed to build these machines, so it was fairly easy to move them from doing one manual job to another. Right now however, that one machine can be build by another machine. When I recently helped build a machine to automate some test processes at a local company it took us about 120 hours in total to do it. The machine will replace three people. All of the components that were used were either computers, software or electronics. This is not something that any of these employees will be ever able to do, as they are simply a very low skilled, uneducated workers, from impoverished neighborhood. The next machine that we may be building for this company will take us even less time, as we have everything already designed, and tested. We just need to put few components together and verify that it works. It will maybe take us 16 hours to do it. When it takes you less than a week of work to replace three people, there is no way that the jobs for these employees can be created fast enough.
- zenogais 12y ago
  You seem to be discussing net human effects and cherry picking a particularly positive example. I'm discussing the immediate effects of automation on the lives of the workers formerly employed in the automated jobs.
davidw 12y ago
> An increase in the supply of labour has two fairly predictable effects - it both lowers wages overall (more supply, less demand) and provides a pool of cheap workers should things pick up It's more complicated than that though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

Padding 12y ago

> In reality automation seems to be a source of widespread immiseration beneficial to only a few. Are you serious? The printing press alone has benefitted humanity as a whole immensly over the last centuries. And there were piles and piles more of automation necessary for us to be able have this discussion right now - on a global scale and at virtually no cost to either of us.

rjsw 12y ago
I don't think printing is a good example, there were not that many scribes around who were suddenly put out of work.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  How about the Combine Harvester? This talk about technology taking jobs from people is utter nonsense. This has happened before - the Industrialization. People are freed from unnecessary chores like harvesting or standing at the cashier, for example. Soon enough new types of jobs were in high demand - mathematicians, engineers, professors. This enabled further development in other professions - more doctors, teachers, historians, etc. Same thing will happen now. Just look at the education landscape. Data science is taught EVERYWHERE. Industrilization made humanity able to focus on exact sciences. The advancement in exact sciences will enable us to focus on social studies, philosophy, history, ecology, medicine, law, system design.
  - kaybe 12y ago
    Not everyone is happy with an intellectual job.
    - pizza234 12y ago
      It's not only about intellectual jobs; it's also about more powerful abstractions. With the same resources spent on the same amount of workers for example, a company will produce more than in the past. It's not necessarily true that in such conditions, the company would choose to keep the productivity constant employing less workers.
  - mariusz79 12y ago
    One big issue that people tend to miss when comparing current situation to the previous years is the fact that machines are making more machines. See, when combine harvester or loom was invented people were needed to build these machines, so it was fairly easy to move them from doing one manual job to another. Right now however, that one machine can be build by another machine. When I recently helped build a machine to automate some test processes at a local company it took us about 120 hours in total to do it. The machine will replace three people. All of the components that were used were either computers, software or electronics. This is not something that any of these employees will be ever able to do, as they are simply a very low skilled, uneducated workers, from impoverished neighborhood. The next machine that we may be building for this company will take us even less time, as we have everything already designed, and tested. We just need to put few components together and verify that it works. It will maybe take us 16 hours to do it. When it takes you less than a week of work to replace three people, there is no way that the jobs for these employees can be created fast enough.
zenogais 12y ago
You seem to be discussing net human effects and cherry picking a particularly positive example. I'm discussing the immediate effects of automation on the lives of the workers formerly employed in the automated jobs.

davidw 12y ago

> An increase in the supply of labour has two fairly predictable effects - it both lowers wages overall (more supply, less demand) and provides a pool of cheap workers should things pick up It's more complicated than that though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy