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My local supermarket has self checkouts and there is always a line of people waiting to use them. I avoid those self checkouts whenever possible they suck. "please remove the item" "please wait for an attendant" is all you ever hear from those things. I can wait in line for 5 minutes in line i don't have an entitled attitude. Often times i'm out the door before the self checkout line even moves.
If jobs become automated and i (the customer) have to do the work then I'm logging my hours on a time card and turning it in to the business. Lol
There are some other things to think about when robots do most of the work. Robots don't have human emotion. They aren't afraid to get damaged or even to die. They would make ideal suicide bombers, or infantry soldiers. They can be manufactured very cheap. Most of the cost is in inventing them, but once they're invented, we can make trillions of them. Not only can they do all of our work, but they can do many times more work than the human race was every able to do. Projects that seem too ambitious now, because they would take too much work, will be much easier. You could buy 100 million acres of cheap land in the middle of nowhere, and get some robots to build a big city there. City land is worth 100 times as much per acre, so you could get a hundred-fold return on your investment, not counting the cost of construction, which would be low because done by robots.
When robots replace human soldiers, are there going to be more wars or fewer? Will wars become a contest to see which country can build the best robot soldiers?
What if some wealthy people decide to turn the whole of planet Earth into one big city, with themselves as overlords? That city could be populated by a trillion humans and 100 trillion robots. Including robot cops to keep the humans from getting uppity. What if someone doesn't like them, and has some religious reasons for wanting to destroy that city, and the human race, and all the robots? They could manufacture a trillion suicide bomber robots. The rest is history. Or would be if any history survived.
Whenever innovative technology is the topic of conversation we can expect the term Luddite to appear as a vague reference to those who opposed, not the technology, but it's lack of humane consideration. This is still the main debating point of most techno advances. No society has fully grasped the importance of an all inclusive industrial policy. Here in the US we see the economically marginalized as a populace of losers, lazy, incompetent, and thus deserving of their collective plight. As this group grows we will have to acknowledge the truth of what techno-labor brings to a society, besides it's obvious benefit.
We are a society before we are individuals, why? Because we all have some connection to each other, that connection has been a contentious one at times but most thinking people can connect the dots between our need to have a level of social decency in society while simultaneously taking full advantage of technology solutions. Mechanization will continue for the simple reason that machine technology is now an appendage of ourselves, not human, but human designed, human controlled, and far more liberating than our prior laboring constructs.
Jeremy Rifkin, in his book, The End of Work calls for a reasonable view of our techno-advances as a challenge for us as humans dealing with change. He posits the emerging machine labor paradigm as a thing to be reckoned with, we have a choice according to Rifkin, allow for the unrealistic view of things to prevail, that's to say we know the inevitability of mass unemployment, and do nothing to address this situation, or worse, blame the displaced worker--or, we can face these truths of mechanization and include a national policy to ameliorate the social cost of a huge army of the permanently unemployed.
An overview of that book is on Amazon:
Global unemployment is now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. Rifkin (Biosphere Politics, LJ 5/15/91) argues that the Information Age is the third great Industrial Revolution. A consequence of these technological advances is the rapid decline in employment and purchasing power that could lead to a worldwide economic collapse. Rifkin foresees two possible outcomes: a near workerless world in which people are free, for the first time in history, to pursue a utopian life of leisure; or a world in which unemployment leads to an even further polarization of the economic classes and a decline in living conditions for millions of people. Rifkin presents a highly detailed analysis of the technological developments that have led to the current situation, as well as intriguing, yet alarming, theories of what is to come. Highly recommended for both general and business collections.
Within a very short time all vehicles will drive themselves. It is expected that they will be safer and the rate of motor vehicle accidents will dramatically go down. This create massive unemployment among taxi and truck drivers. In Vancouver the city subway system has no human drivers. And do not forget the self checkout registers in most stores.
Will there be a universal salary for people whether they work or not?
That's what the Luddites said - that the new machines making the textile industry more efficient would result in there not being enough work for people.
Before the large-scale mechanization of agriculture, half the workforce of the United States was employed in agriculture. Now it's less than 2%. That's not just a percentage drop, that's a major drop in sheer number of workers. And yet in the meantime, many other professions have sprung up to provide jobs.
That's how a market economy functions. There is no limit to things and services that people desire. If needs for people to make X drop through automation, it frees those workers to do other things, which will be dependent on market demands. Simply put, increased efficiency in certain sectors merely frees up labor for other sectors. And in market economies, entrepreneurs invent new sectors all the time.
That's why the Luddites were wrong. That's why that shrinking of the agricultural labor force hasn't resulted in a bunch of former farmers who can't find anything else to do. And it's why we're not on the precipice of a no-more-work-to-do problem now.
Although the idea of a very low employment economy is interesting it has not worked out in the real world. If robots and automated factories could replace humans to just hangout and drink beer why are the European countries importing so many people to run their factories. Why haven't robots made up for the declining European birth rates and the decline in working age people. Just look at the social and political problems being faced by the Europeans because they imported workers from the wrong culture. Instead of the Middle East they should have imported workers from South and Central America.
I am not a good example of continuous ambition because, as I am now retired, I am permanently unemployed. There are lots of presently unemployed people that have always been unemployed. They were pejoratively called "annuity hippies" as they had plenty of money but did not care to follow Dad into a corporate cubical hell. I wondered what it would be like not to have to give up a third of my life to make enough money to stay alive. Now I know and wonder why I didn't get raised by sane, sober and rich parents. Annuity Hippydome would have been a great way to live.
If the economy becomes sufficiently automated and the government sees fit to provide the permanently unemployed with an "Annuity Hippy" level of income I expect most people will be quite pleased and docile. Just consider how many of our real permanently unemployed are quite content to sit around and watch daytime TV while staying slightly drunk on cheap beer.
Every 15 - 20 years the Luddites find their voice. They've been wrong for 200 years and apparently want to be for 200 more.
There will always be jobs because people will always have time. The hours between sunrise and sunset have always been occupied by people trying to improve their situation. That desire will never go away. Even millionaires who don't have to work another day in their lives still do.
If those who don't need more still work to get more, surely those who have less will also.
You can only automate jobs that have a majority of repetitive tasks. I'm an electrician a machine could never replace what we do same with a ton of other professions. Sure they can replace a cashier or jobs in warehouses, factories etc.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Subway trains run on rails in subterranean tunnels to predetermined locations on predetermined routes at predetermined times - and their passengers load and discharge themselves.
Trucks will never go away completely. Not ever.
Not the trucks. The truckers.
Daimler is already testing self-driving trucks in Nevada.
Every 15 - 20 years the Luddites find their voice. They've been wrong for 200 years and apparently want to be for 200 more.
There will always be jobs because people will always have time. The hours between sunrise and sunset have always been occupied by people trying to improve their situation. That desire will never go away. Even millionaires who don't have to work another day in their lives still do.
If those who don't need more still work to get more, surely those who have less will also.
A job and an interest in doing something are two completely different things. A job requires that someone wants to pay you to do something.
New tech in the past has always spawned new jobs and industries. This is different because bots and other techs will be able to do every imaginable thing you can think of.
You can only automate jobs that have a majority of repetitive tasks.
Not anymore, the machines are becoming intelligent. This is what you will be up against in the future. A robot electrician with the collective knowledge of every electric engineer on the planet that can precisely manipulate any tool and doesn't forget to do anything. When it's done fixing the outlet it will cook you dinner.
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