Millions of jobs to dissapear as robotics advance

Hey I feel that way too some days. Some days I feel I am expendable trash. Advancements do that. All I can say is this. When changes come, there s good and bad. Its hard to see both if the bad impacts on you immediately. This is ridiculousy stupid I guess what I am about to say but damn it I believe it-people like you, me, millions of others, yah we will find technology moving at a pace that steamrolls and dehumanizes, but you can't stop believing in yourself thinking machines are more important than you no matter how bad it gets in the days to come. You have a spirit or a soul machines don't.

No machine can replace feelings, insight, intuition, gut instinct, love, caring all that kind of stuff people like us don't like to talk about.

My heroes are the common every day hard working shmucks struggling to flip burgers to make ends meet. I know that sounds stupid but its true. For what it is worth.

One other thing, no machine can take away who you are. Only you can. Hell those words are easier to tell you than me, That is why I am saying them. I see lots of people losing jobs man. I got to believe that. I won't write off people no matter how hard it gets. Can't.

 

this has nothing to do with technology , more with 1% greed.

 

Machines at this point are only good at playing Chess, and playing Jeopardy. Organic Intelligence took Billions of years to develop. There won't be some Positronic Brain to replace a human being anytime soon. Even if we are able to create artificial intelligence, it will most likely cost too much to be mass produced, and will not be on par with any human brain.

There are plenty jobs of Computer programming, for engineering, for science research. But getting through the schools is tough.
People who graduate with such degrees often find the workplace to be a lot less demanding/challenging than school. So if you can get through the school, you can find a decent paying job.

 

Social programs don't fix anything. More government funding solves nothing. Black students in Fulton County are funded4-6k more a head than Coweta County students are. Fulton County teachers are paid 10k more. No matter how much funding gets thrown there, they fail. When Detroit auto makers took bailouts, Ford declined. They restructured and begin producing a desirable, profitable product.
Industry, business, and finance are already moving out of the US if it is advantageous to them.
Parasites don't bleed their host dry. Third world countries aren't much concern or threat, huh?

 

There are two different avenues. We can tax the wealthy and spread that revenue among the poor (wealth redistribution) or we can address income inequality so that the workers that create the wealth aren't poor (wealth distribution). I prefer wealth distribution over wealth redistribution.

 

I'd refer to this as "better mousetrap" creativity but the computers are actually becoming so "smart" that they can figure it out faster and more efficiently than a person. People don't seen to grasp how far Artificial Intelligence has come and how fast it's advancing. For example in manufacturing we've gone from "Computer Aided Design" (CAD) to "Computer Created Design" (CCD) since the 1970's. With CAD we eliminated about 80% of the mechanical engineering jobs and relied on lower paid "drafters" instead and with CCD we're eliminating the lower paying drafters jobs as well.

While I'm sure there are those thinking about this issue are they addressing the fact that the day will come where human labor required to provide for the needs of society will become basically obsolete? Stop-gap solutions don't provide the solution to the ultimate problem.

In one sense I think about this based upon several considerations. First and foremost is that I believe in the natural right of property as argued by John Locke were a person's labor provides for their support and comfort. Then I look at my personal life where I'm retired and collecting pensions from companies I worked for. No longer am I providing my labor to those companies and instead I spend my time mostly working on my yard to make it more beautiful which benefits not just my house but the neighborhood and community. I'm still "working" and being paid by private enterprise but the work has changed from being for the benefit of the enterprise to being for my personal benefit and the benefit of the community.

As jobs are eliminated by the enterprise is it possible for them to pay those, or their heirs, that made "enterprise" successful before technology eliminated the human labor required? How do we accomplish this through the private sector as opposed to relying "welfare assistance" that is dependent upon government? Is it even possible? I don't have an answer to that question but I know that it would be my preferred solution to the problem.

How does private enterprise provide for the support and comfort of the person that isn't working directly for them but that is still working everyday like I am where I'm collecting a pension?

 

Ok that was just advice that my daughter was given about the future, not what the article was talking about.

I think that article deals with that. The article is talking about a book. You have got me interested. I will try to find it but do not expect it any time soon as I have already looked and am now out probably for the day.

interesting idea. Yes I really will try and find that paper as I think it deals with things you are saying but again there is a hell of a lot to look through

 

OK Shiva_TD , I have found what I was thinking about. It does not really give the answers, though possibly reading the book would put one more in that direction but describes the current position and offers a possible route into a different way of living than capitalism which as he points out is not how we have always lived. Like I fear he sees TTIP as the final blow on democracy. This review is by Irvine Welsh. (examples tend to be British) He also questions whether neo liberalism actually is capitalism.

He asks some questions. Here are two of the four

Then he talks about the situation when Neo Liberalism is falling apart – when the few are indecently rich and the rest have assess to next to nothing

He then goes on to say that the left may think the end of neoliberalism offers hope to them but the reality is there simply are not enough jobs to go around as you said. That means that there simply will not be enough people paying taxes to support Keynsian style economics....and goes on to one of Mason's criticisms of Marxism – rather than the working class overthrowing capitalism it got itself a snug place in it. It managed well to live despite capitalism rather than overthrowing it. He believes that Informed Citizens rather than the proletariat will be at the focus of change.

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2015/08/03/postcapitalism-a-review/

here is a review by someone else

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2015/08/04/adventures-in-postcapitalism/

I put in that because I am aware that Yanis Varoufakis also believes that leftists should not at this point in time go for overthrowing the system. To him that would only leave the door open for the far right who in Greece and other places in Europe - US too I think are standing at the door. Rather as with Mason he believes that the new system should be built from within and only when it is ready produce itself. I am not pretending to understand much of how this new society is going to develop but I think the case is very strong for where we are going without such change and the bases of what he suggests sounds good and yes, a psychological change could suit humans very well as well.

 

Taxes for corporations and individuals working will have to go up. I cannot speak for Japan, but in America people will not stand for it's people starving to death due entitlement programs being sucked dry. Plus those people not working will not have the spending power to buy products, some of those products which are made by robots, so it'll have an overall negative effect on each nations economy. Just my opinion.

 

I don't believe you grasp the scope of the problem. Every single task you can think of will be better done by robotics - Artificial Intelligence and Technology (AI&T). All you propose is "busy-work" by people that will be less efficient than the robot. With only a very limited number of tasks that are "humanistic" in origin (e.g. performing arts or philosophy) all other human labor is becoming completely obsolete which means there will be no tasks for people to do that benefit society. Even the yard work I mentioned that I do now that I'm retired, which beautifies my property and benefits the community, will become obsolete because a robot will be able to do it better.

What do we do when there's nothing left for us to do?

 

The main problem is the beginning of the automation in production and other areas! Think about automotive production only and how this changed during the last 50 years! How many jobs of humans are now done by robots only? Every robot cancels human job and this is undeniable fact!

BUT … this is not always bad, because many dangerous jobs are today done by robots and this saves human lives (and sarcastic people say = reason for overpopulation). We must always consider whether it brings more advantages or more disadvantages in all developments here … and I don’t mean with it any financial things, only human!

 

If history is any indication then as machines do more and more we will find more and more to do. We have went from cottage industry to factories to post industrial society and we still do not have huge underclasses but only more and better lives for more people all the time. Our great grandparents could not even conceive of how we live today and our great grandchildren will wonder how we got by in such a benighted world. That's why I am a progressive, because we live in a world where that is now the main thing that we, as humanity, do.

 

Whatever we did not have time to do before, what pleases and enriches us and what we WANT to do, not what we MUST. If that is nothing, so be it, but I think most people will seek more

Do our "leisured classes" sit about and drool their lives away?. A very small number do, yes, and that is their right and choice. The vast majority do not, and never have, they study, they learn and they accomplish, it is largely because of THEM, not the ditchdiggers of the past, that we HAVE the situation we discuss now.

. You take what is really the end goal of everyone and everything, to have all our work DONE, and act as if we are nothing without our labor. I defy that terrible limitation, that awful consequence. You may think you are defined by your work, I see myself and all of us as infinitely more, and only hope I will live to see a world where this fact exists for everybody, and all people recognize it.

 

That's actually a misrepresentation of history. The more machines do the more we consume but the human labor does not increase or even remain the same. Individual human labor has always decreased because of machines. All this refers to is the fact that because more people exist that they consume more and not that the human labor has increased. For example:

One person carrying a pack can transport about 40 lbs about 5 miles in an hour.
One person with a horse drawn wagon can transport perhaps 400 lbs about 5 miles in an hour eliminating the labor of nine people.
One person operating a train can probably transport about 400,000 lbs perhaps 40 miles in an hour eliminating the labor of 79,999 people.

All that changed was the amount of goods that can be transported for consumption while the individual labor involved has declined dramatically. The consumption of goods increased while the human labor decreased.

When we automate the train so the engineer is no longer required then no human labor is required at all but we could consume all of the goods being delivered by the train.

Yes, we invent new things to consume because we can consume more but in the future the "machine" will even do that for us and no human labor will be required for the goods and services we require. Of course we're also limited because there's a pragmatic limit to how much we can actually consume.

 

So learn to be a robot repair-person, or robot operator, or robot builder, etc......stop trying to hold on to your job manufacturing manual typewriters, jeez.

 

We're not actually in disagreement because I was only referring to what will we do when there's nothing for us to do "commercially" in society. Obviously we are what we do in life and that goes far beyond what we do for a living.

One thing I don't do is disparage the "commericial labor" of the person like many seem to do when it comes to physical v mental labor. Civilization was build by the sweat of the ditch-digger and without the ditch-digger civilization would not exist. There would be no wealthy class if it wasn't for the physical sweat of the workers. Many disparage physical human labor today believing that the ditch-digger and the burger-flipper are not as valuable to society as the Bill Gates or the Albert Einsteins but without the ditch-digger and burger-flipper there wouldn't be any Bill Gates or Albert Einsteins.

From my position I believe that a person should be able to support themselves and to secure some comfort in life based upon their labor regardless of whether it's "commercial labor" or "personal labor" such as simply helping that little old lady cross the street. As machines replace the "commericial labor" then our "personal labor" must assume a greater responsibility in providing for our needs.

Commercial labor was important when it was needed but with our advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Technology that commercial labor is becoming less and less important and our personal labor becomes more important over time. What we do "away from work" defines us more than anything else and that is where I look for value in society.

How do we make that transition from "commerical labor" that the machines can do to "personal labor" that is ultimately more important?

 

So where are all the thousands of displaced pack carriers starving next to RR tracks?

How much consumption is required to read a book, or write one? How much did Einstein consume to give us Atomic energy.

"Consumption" is a misnomer anyway. We "consume" nothing in reality, we transform it, it remains, and can be transformed into other things if and as we need them. Entropy moves in just one direction, that is true, but it has nearly endless loops back on itself as it goes. By the time all energy runs out, in about a hundred billion years, I think we will be the gods of the universe that will come next. When we are finally able to simply say "let there be light," and it happens will be our final end, and our new beginning.

 

Curious as to your source of data that backs up that statement. Suggest that from my experience an awful lot of retired people spend most of their time playing golf and/ or watching sports on television.

 

The robots will design, build, and repair the robot and the robots won't require an operator.

 

Those jobs will be automated. Try again to find any type of job that employees a large number of people that cannot or will not be automated if the cost savings justify automation.

 

Let's just go back to the days of the buggy whip, where lots and lots of jobs were available to make buggy whips.
Automation is always good. It allows, say, a new business to start up (employing thousands, possibly), because their cost of doing business is less because the products that are produced by the robots are cheaper than they would be with the human labor - sorry for THOSE job losses, but the more efficient automation creates jobs elsewhere, down the line, and society is better for it.

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Even more efficient, then. I'm going to love having robots fetch my morning paper for me, clean my house, mow my yard, feed my dog, raise my children (ok, let's not get carried away here), and make love to my lonely partner when I'm unfortunately away on business.

 

Anecdotal experience is often contrary to reality. Statistically almost 50% of American households, including a disporportionate number of retiree households, don't have enough income to meet their mandatory and necessary expenditures. Based upon Social Security Adminstration information almost 1/2 of retirees don't have enough income to be able to afford to play golf and TV is often the only luxury they have in life. A significant percentage of retirees today are forced to rely on government welfare in addition to Social Security just to survive from month to month.

That's one of my reasons for condemning Social Security today. With an average Social Security retirement benefit of only about $12,000/yr people that live in poverty their entire lives are literally forced to live in even worse poverty when they become too old to work because Social Security doesn't provide them with enough income to actually live on. It's better than "nothing" but not by much and the difference must be made up for with other government welfare programs.

 

Unfortunatly assuming that automation creates more jobs down the line is just that, an assumption not justified by experience.

And not to worry. With full automation your spouse won't be lonely because you won't be away on business.

And buggy whips disappeared because of the automobile not automation. Now automobile manufacturing jobs have disappeared due to automation and have not been replaced by any jobs " down the line"