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There's a popular notion that we will experience mass unemployment resulting from people whose jobs are replaced with software. This is false. With any revolut

by xux 12y ago

There's a popular notion that we will experience mass unemployment resulting from people whose jobs are replaced with software. This is false. With any revolutionary change in technology, jobs lost in one field will be jobs gained in another. The agricultural revolution didn't drive mass unemployment when farmers were replaced. The industrial revolution didn't drive mass unemployment when small merchants were replaced. The software revolution won't either.

Retric 12y ago
There has been a steady decline in the % of 30-40 year old males working in the US which suggests your probably wrong. It's not that there is to little work out there, the issue is are economy keeps changing so rapidly that people are unprepared for new occupations. Worse while low skilled jobs that are often easiest to automate, productivity increases also kill off some high skilled jobs. And people are both reluctant to higher workers for less than they where making especially if they have been out of work for a while.
- nashashmi 12y ago
  That is a friction that needs to be solved. For as long as that friction exists, Disruptions will be called disruptions instead of innovations.
- jkmcf 12y ago
  What time frame does this decline occur over? The number of women in the workplace has significantly increased over the last 40 years.
DenisM 12y ago
>The agricultural revolution didn't drive mass unemployment when farmers were replaced. Actually, it did. The labor oversupply crisis fueled the World War 1, which killed the bulk of the displaced agriculture workers. Had everyone been productively employed, there would be no one left to fight the war.
Implicated 12y ago
Except those revolutionary changes were quite small in scope compared to what's coming. And there's A LOT more people now...
foobarqux 12y ago
Actually there was severe unemployment during industrialization, it destroyed the lives of many families.
waterlesscloud 12y ago
There's a difference between a new cotton gin technology which does one thing well and a general purpose robot which can be trained to do lots of things well. We're moving from machines which are better than humans at specific tasks to machines which are better than humans at general categories of tasks. This is a fundamentally different situation. The new jobs that are created will also be filled by robots/software. So then what?
- nashashmi 12y ago
  For as long as the occupation or the work can be divided into routine tasks that does not require intelligence, that work can be replaced. Take for example my scenario at work: I want to move mountains and can get times more work done than I am able to do now. How do we do it? Extract the routine tasks and assign it to a computer, or to someone who can follow directions. That would free me to do more inordinate things. Maybe then I can move mountains. Also, become more managerial in my tasks with my computer serving as my subordinate. That is another way of growing. Lastly, diversify my newly found time to more ambitious projects where roads and directions have yet to be paved.
darkmighty 12y ago
Every revolution increased the tendency of wealth-gap creation by diminishing the number of "essential" workers (e.g. farmers, miners, industry workers). The additional resources made available by allocation allow other jobs to be created, but a fraction of those resources are going to stay with the large enterprises. To put it shorly, sure, living wages will probably be forever affordable to a large hypothetical company in a future where software/hardware is extremely advanced: tasks like art asset creation, customer support, advertisement, get increasingly cheaper, relatively. But it won't necessarily make sense to pay a large wage to workers on non-core activities (a few developers/designers/engineers/managers): income inequality and maybe unemployment should tend to rise. I believe the US will soon be forced to adopt increasingly European-like well-being policies to amend this trend. Possible measures that come to mind are rising minimum wage , providing incentives to hiring, increasing taxes at the high income end, providing universal services (the health care reform comes to mind).
mrec 12y ago
I disagree; I think the speed of automation this time, and the ever-rising qualifications needed to compete with that automation, make this one different. There was a comment over on Reddit a while back that put it better than I can: http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/242gea/47_of_all_jobs_will_be_automated_by_2034_and_no/ch3dyf0 http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/242gea/47_of_all_...
nashashmi 12y ago
I cannot upvote you enough. Humanity needs more things and more people to produce those things. If humans are constantly wound to mundane tasks, when will I get things that involve more intense labor? But the only problem is there is no easy transition from innovation, so much so that it is called disruption.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
xj9 12y ago
The problem is this revolution involves creating artificial minds that don't have any of the biological constraints that our minds are subject to. An intelligent machine doesn't have to sleep and can be taught to do pretty much anything a human can more quickly and more efficiently. What happens when the jobs that the new technology creates can be filled by that same technology? Thats the problem we're facing this time.

by xux 12y ago

Retric 12y ago

There has been a steady decline in the % of 30-40 year old males working in the US which suggests your probably wrong. It's not that there is to little work out there, the issue is are economy keeps changing so rapidly that people are unprepared for new occupations. Worse while low skilled jobs that are often easiest to automate, productivity increases also kill off some high skilled jobs. And people are both reluctant to higher workers for less than they where making especially if they have been out of work for a while.

nashashmi 12y ago
That is a friction that needs to be solved. For as long as that friction exists, Disruptions will be called disruptions instead of innovations.
jkmcf 12y ago
What time frame does this decline occur over? The number of women in the workplace has significantly increased over the last 40 years.

DenisM 12y ago

>The agricultural revolution didn't drive mass unemployment when farmers were replaced. Actually, it did. The labor oversupply crisis fueled the World War 1, which killed the bulk of the displaced agriculture workers. Had everyone been productively employed, there would be no one left to fight the war.

Implicated 12y ago

Except those revolutionary changes were quite small in scope compared to what's coming. And there's A LOT more people now...

foobarqux 12y ago

Actually there was severe unemployment during industrialization, it destroyed the lives of many families.

waterlesscloud 12y ago

There's a difference between a new cotton gin technology which does one thing well and a general purpose robot which can be trained to do lots of things well. We're moving from machines which are better than humans at specific tasks to machines which are better than humans at general categories of tasks. This is a fundamentally different situation. The new jobs that are created will also be filled by robots/software. So then what?

nashashmi 12y ago
For as long as the occupation or the work can be divided into routine tasks that does not require intelligence, that work can be replaced. Take for example my scenario at work: I want to move mountains and can get times more work done than I am able to do now. How do we do it? Extract the routine tasks and assign it to a computer, or to someone who can follow directions. That would free me to do more inordinate things. Maybe then I can move mountains. Also, become more managerial in my tasks with my computer serving as my subordinate. That is another way of growing. Lastly, diversify my newly found time to more ambitious projects where roads and directions have yet to be paved.

darkmighty 12y ago

Every revolution increased the tendency of wealth-gap creation by diminishing the number of "essential" workers (e.g. farmers, miners, industry workers). The additional resources made available by allocation allow other jobs to be created, but a fraction of those resources are going to stay with the large enterprises. To put it shorly, sure, living wages will probably be forever affordable to a large hypothetical company in a future where software/hardware is extremely advanced: tasks like art asset creation, customer support, advertisement, get increasingly cheaper, relatively. But it won't necessarily make sense to pay a large wage to workers on non-core activities (a few developers/designers/engineers/managers): income inequality and maybe unemployment should tend to rise. I believe the US will soon be forced to adopt increasingly European-like well-being policies to amend this trend. Possible measures that come to mind are rising minimum wage , providing incentives to hiring, increasing taxes at the high income end, providing universal services (the health care reform comes to mind).

mrec 12y ago

I disagree; I think the speed of automation this time, and the ever-rising qualifications needed to compete with that automation, make this one different. There was a comment over on Reddit a while back that put it better than I can: http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/242gea/47_of_all_jobs_will_be_automated_by_2034_and_no/ch3dyf0 http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/242gea/47_of_all_...

nashashmi 12y ago

I cannot upvote you enough. Humanity needs more things and more people to produce those things. If humans are constantly wound to mundane tasks, when will I get things that involve more intense labor? But the only problem is there is no easy transition from innovation, so much so that it is called disruption.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

xj9 12y ago

The problem is this revolution involves creating artificial minds that don't have any of the biological constraints that our minds are subject to. An intelligent machine doesn't have to sleep and can be taught to do pretty much anything a human can more quickly and more efficiently. What happens when the jobs that the new technology creates can be filled by that same technology? Thats the problem we're facing this time.