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A lot of you are forgetting that we live in a democracy. If people don't like it they will push back with their votes.
Open your eyes! Why has our economic policy for the last 35 years been one that favors the .01% and screws everyone else?
Democracy is dead in the US, which means it likely won't survive in the rest of the world. We get to choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and just in case a rogue slips in, the voting machines can be easily rigged. Not to mention the incredible success of the 24/7 propaganda to keep the public divided and confused.
Why do you assume that a much smaller percentage of people can find employment in a robotic age?
When robotics becomes sufficiently advanced (ie nearly as smart as a human), the number of tasks where a human has a competitive advantage declines. A large and growing % of the population will be functionally unemployable. There won't be any task they can perform to earn a living wage. This hasn't happen yet, but likely will be a serious issue within a couple decades.
Something the futurists of the past never thought of... for the rise of the robots to work we have to get rid of money or several billion people will have no way to thrive or even survive (since you currently need to make money to live).
Makes me extra nervous when the war drums are beating for WWIII.
But for those generations coming out the other end, they'll miss today's jobs like I miss blacksmithing, manure shoveling and shoe-shining.
Open your eyes! Why has our economic policy for the last 35 years been one that favors the .01% and screws everyone else?
Democracy is dead in the US, which means it likely won't survive in the rest of the world. We get to choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and just in case a rogue slips in, the voting machines can be easily rigged. Not to mention the incredible success of the 24/7 propaganda to keep the public divided and confused.
It takes time. We are divided on petty things and enough people are doing okay that they'll blame the masses below rather than the plutocracy above.
Like I said on another thread - the gilded age was 35 years long before things started to shift, and then not that much. It took the Great Depression to actually get people moving. Almost 80 years after industrialism ramped up.
The way you are describing it, more money is spent buying automation equipment than the manufacturing company would save in labor costs. Nope. That's not how the math works. You're replacing an army of highly skilled machine operators with 10% of that staffing level and you pay those replacements 50 cents on the dollar since they're not anywhere near as skilled and are so much easier to replace.
Have you ever heard of mass production?? It reduces cost. That little Snicker bar only cost a few stones due to mass production. You said the automation equipment would cost more than the labor, and the truth is - not always. Sometimes it does, at which case, it would not make sense to automate. Other times, it's cheaper than labor. So it's case by case and it's irrelevant - because you're not talking about having a one-for-one job replacement are we? No. You're talking about automation taking over MOST of the jobs, to the point where there is a >50% unemployment catastrophe! That's an altogether MUCH gloomier world and even if what you said above is true, it still doesn't lead to THAT world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffD
I'm a career development engineer and I've spent my career in tech startups. You grossly overestimate the number of tech jobs required to implement and do sustaining engineering for something like a CNC machine.
Then what is your estimate for the number of people needed to develop/market/sell/support a CNC machine vs. how many people it replaces?
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When robotics becomes sufficiently advanced (ie nearly as smart as a human), the number of tasks where a human has a competitive advantage declines. A large and growing % of the population will be functionally unemployable. There won't be any task they can perform to earn a living wage. This hasn't happen yet, but likely will be a serious issue within a couple decades.
In a couple decades we will have machines as smart as humans?????? Son, we can't even built a machine that can translate a complete paragraph from one language to another. Heck, we can't even built a machine that can read a complete sentence and comprehend what that sentence said. You know why? Because our technology as it exists is utterly backwards and infant-like - for example, we still rely on software. Our brains are not run on software. To make something as smart as us we will have to figure out how to run a machine without software, actually, it can't even be a machine because it has constrain - it has to be a merge of biotech and other technologies we haven't discovered yet.
And no, it will not happen in a couple decades. It's doubtful it can happen in a couple hundred decades.
What exactly is A large and growing % of the population???? 10%? 20%? 30%?
Saw this NYT opinion piece and wonder how this scenario may play out for future generations, for example, for kids who are in only in elementary school, would they have an even worse / bleak job market, or will disruption be more likely, starting with the outrageous higher education cost
Well as far as the higher education cost it'll probably go one of two ways:
1. Something will happen that forces a complete restructuring.
2. It really is a scam in the sense that it's a new method of control and costs will be passed down to future generations.
I'd personally like to see trade and apprenticeships make a comeback and real learning taking place over teaching to the test.
Just pick out a career when you're in grade school, but no pressure.
STEM classes are another issue I'm not sure anyone's really addressing. It's a good idea, but ignores the reality that not everyone is the same or skilled at something like math.
From the jobs and future generations standpoint I've noticed it seems to be more about social connections and timing.
At least in America if the jobs aren't there when you're coming out of school you seem to get stigmatized no matter how talented you are when the jobs start opening up a few years down the road.
A similar thing happened/happens with people already in jobs with a lot of experience, but without a degree. Somehow they're typically seen as less valuable to a company than a person with a handful of experience and a degree.
But that's sort of how all this mess got started -- the country/companies insisting you needed to have one even if it wasn't for a job that should require one at all.
When robotics becomes sufficiently advanced (ie nearly as smart as a human), the number of tasks where a human has a competitive advantage declines. A large and growing % of the population will be functionally unemployable. There won't be any task they can perform to earn a living wage. This hasn't happen yet, but likely will be a serious issue within a couple decades.
We are already seeing this today with many people in service industry jobs that don't pay a living wage. Eventually these jobs will be gone too. Today we see this "hybrid" system of someone working at Walmart and collecting government assistance. In the future I can imagine there being an entire class of people living totally on government benefits because of being totally unemployable.
We are already seeing this today with many people in service industry jobs that don't pay a living wage. Eventually these jobs will be gone too. Today we see this "hybrid" system of someone working at Walmart and collecting government assistance. In the future I can imagine there being an entire class of people living totally on government benefits because of being totally unemployable.
There's already an entire class of people living on government benefits, including government workers. For that class to grow larger, the employed would need to pay an extremely high tax rate. And I doubt they'll be willing to do that for very long.
Will the elite increasingly see them as 'useless eaters', taxing the environment?
That's how many people see the right-wing already. It's an easy viewpoint to understand.
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Open your eyes! Why has our economic policy for the last 35 years been one that favors the .01% and screws everyone else? 
