Millions of jobs to dissapear as robotics advance

They are no doubt using a trencher.

 

I'm sure some had shovels and a trencher is just another tool like a shovel. Each trencher still needs 1 human to operate I think.... I think the basis of the debate is at what point will a machine operate the trencher?

 

Beginning of the Cold War.

 

I don't care to. Anything I found would be regurgitated data.
The US housing crash forced some long overdue and healthy lending changes. The crash wasn't absolutely devastating, everybody recovered. The middle class, construction, landscaping, realtors... They felt it most.
Time is what it is taking to recover... Hiusing is moving again, builders are building again...very slowly...interest rates have remained a very constant all time low...
The point is, change happens...Things don't remain static. And that isn't a bad thing.

 

I was guessing as to what happened. I don't like to speculate or guess. I prefer to discuss my experience and observation.
Good and bad are culturally relevant terms to me...Fluid ideas always in motion... Animal sacrifice, dowries, slavery, duels, death for sport, concubines, polygamy, etc... Our ideas of right and wrong change. Change is inevitable. Embrace or fight it... You'll never stop it.
Irresponsible lending, artificially inflated appraisals, and a booming economy preceded it.
You can only operate at a deficit for a time...

 

It is estimated that 50% of current jobs will be done by automation by 2035. It is those who ignore the inevitable that are truly silly.

 

Can't remember where but my daughter, mother of three in her thirties, was told that there would be far fewer jobs in the future for the above reason and that the people who would be highly in demand would be creative people. She changed her attitude to her kids to encourage creativity, well for a day at least.

As to what will happen to people. Here in the UK I think we are beginning to see. At the Conservative Party Conference last week Ian Duncan Smith said they were going to stop addressing relative poverty - so one thing, countries in the West may well see themselves as suffering absolute poverty again. In the UK inequality is already as bad as Victorian times and social mobility is dead and it is the same in the US - I think the two of us are the worst in the developed world on this. Here the poor are blamed for being poor. They suffer the most for the depression....so the future will be more ugly, more crime, harsher punishment and less humanity and how creativity is going to shine then I do not really know.

edit: but I am remembering now reading a paper where some people having acknowledged that this may well be the future, have created ideas of using this time for liberal socialism...so who knows the creativity may just win.

 

Technology in the US has changed our world in a decade. Technology has made land lines, snail mail, maps, newspapers, cd's, books, long distance, cameras, vhs, cd's, network tv, music stores, and more obsolete.
I can't imagine what the next decade will bring.
Change is inevitable.

 

Americans are pretty comfortable.
We are pretty prosperous and resilient.
I'm not concerned about poverty in my country. What is your nationality?

 

What state?

 

You see how micro chips have become so much more powerful and so much more cheap? The pace of development of computing power and affordability has been Exponential.
As long as Creationists and Religious fundamentalists don't get a hold of our Society, Technological and Scientific will go forward, and humans will live longer / better lives.
80 - 90 years ago Automobiles were owned only by Wealthy. Now its available to all. Yes today only rich ride in Private jets, but that could change in future.
Just 40 years ago, a computer was as big as a room, today your Cell Phone has more computing power than that room size computer.

 

Cool.


Tent City, USA, 2012.

 

While a thoughtful post there are two fundamental problems.

"Creativity" really doesn't pay very well especially if people don't have money.

Socialism also relies on labor and technology eliminates the necessity for labor.

Both Capitalism and Socialism, as we know them, ultimately fail as technology replaces human labor. Capitalism has a motivational advantage over socialism because it spurs a human instinct for self-preservation where the person seeks to achieve both "support and comfort" in their life. That's why I seek to find a solution based upon capitalism as opposed to socialism but in both cases the traditional models fail to resolve the problem of technology replacing human labor.

 

Statistically about 47% of American households are not "pretty comfortable" because they don't even have enough income to meet their basic minimum mandatory expenditures much less have any income left over for comfort.

As John Locke noted in his Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapter 5, that addresses the natural (inalienable) right of property, a person should be able to secure both "support and comfort" based upon their labor but 47% of American households can't even fully provide for their basic "support" and have nothing left over for "comfort" based upon their labor.

While Adam Smith and his book The Wealth of Nations is generally considered to be the foremost authority on capitalism John Locke is considered the foremost authority on the natural right of property and I highly recommend that people read and try to understand the natural right of property when it comes to the problem of technology replacing human labor.

http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm

I find a significant disparity between our statutory laws of property and the natural right of property. For example John Locke argues against unbounded wealth accumulation.

When a person accumulates more than is necessary for their personal support and comfort they have carved too much and it was both "useless, as well as dishonest" to do so based upon the natural right of property.

 

Ah! They were not talking so much about creativity in the arts but rather that what is needed in the future will be a creative mind rather than one for instance that needs to follow the rules.

I'd go look for the article but it would take a year and a day and I don't remember that much. BellaCalledonia were doing a thing on the new alternatives to capitalism and this particular idea was about free exchange of technology and so on. I can't remember much. Some people thought it might work, others not. There are though people considering alternatives to capitalism or at least to global capitalism and hopefully something is going to come from there.

well this one was something different and I think it referenced itself around what you say there about technology.

I believe we all can be 'free conscious creative beings' and that requires that we have sufficient for our needs while also sufficient time to know and be aware of ourselves. We are nowhere near that now. Indeed in the last few decades we have moved further and further from it but who knows we may move back. Then we could be motivated by something quite different.

 

You're pecking on your techno device while globally there are people have no clean water and food lecturing me on wealth disparity. Ironic.

 

40 years ago, good jobs were plentiful and a single wage earner could support a family and buy a house. Today we are replacing those good jobs with bartenders and waitresses and burger flippers. In a few more years those menial occupations will be replaced with automations too.

 

49% of Americans receive some sort of government assistance to live. Is that prosperous? Nearly 50 million Americans rely on SNAP to eat.
Is that prosperous? The government has replaced the prosperity of the past with economic bubbles and welfare via huge amounts of deficit spending. The status quo is unsustainable. What do you think will happen to the social fabric of this country when the government finally has to eliminate the social programs that people depend on because they can no longer service an ever increasing debt? At that point, the real truth about the disparity between the classes will become crystal clear and the poor will do what ever is necessary to survive.
When you say WE are prosperous, you are only speaking for a minority of Americans, and that minority will be the focus of the majority when they can no longer support themselves.