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By 2030, Automation Will Have Made White Collar Workers Redundant On A Scale Comparable To What Blue Collar Workers Faced In The 20Th Century


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HOLA441

Automation is a perfect example of a double bind- the more we succeed in replacing waged labour with capital equipment the less demand there will be for the output that the automation creates- but at the same time the automation process can't be stopped because it represents a competitve advantage in the marketplace- so the existing system can neither assimilate large scale automation of work nor can it refrain from doing it- it's a checkmate scenario.

Even the Citizens wage solution has problem since it depends on taxing the projected profits from the automated industries, profits that will not exist since in aggregate those industries will have replaced wage earning consumers with technology.

Apparently "progress" creates new jobs to replace the automated ones. That's happened before and therefore always will, so there's nothing to worry about. You shouldn't actually think about these things, just apply some pre-defined rules to whatever situation and let them tell you how things are.

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HOLA442

Apparently "progress" creates new jobs to replace the automated ones. That's happened before and therefore always will, so there's nothing to worry about. You shouldn't actually think about these things, just apply some pre-defined rules to whatever situation and let them tell you how things are.

It's happened before, however, past performance is not an indicator of the future....

Even if it is, it doesn't look good. The well paid steel worker became a call centre worker on minimum wage.....

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HOLA443

I think it's a super interesting subject. And this is a special time in human history it really could change beyond all recognition very quickly....

but it's also interesting to note that every generation since the 1600s as thought theirs was the special generation that would by shafted by technology for the first time proper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment

Just to clarify, obviously with IT etc, I think there is a very good chance we really be the special generation. But it's interesting to look back. Marx was banging on about this!

I don't think we can rule out a renaissance in hard tech. A whole army of elon musks doing crazy things in unimaginable new industrys that maybe require manpower.

It's gonaa be interesing in any case.

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HOLA444

Even if it is, it doesn't look good. The well paid steel worker became a call centre worker on minimum wage.....

Not to worry. I'm sure that redundant call centre worker will now move on to "creative work" - churning out art, literature, music, video games, VR stuff

He won't sit at home waiting for his next handout eating beans out of a tin. Nope

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HOLA445

I don't think we can rule out a renaissance in hard tech. A whole army of elon musks doing crazy things in unimaginable new industrys that maybe require manpower.

It's gonaa be interesing in any case.

Yes, there will be all manner of entrepreneurs who will do well out of tech advances (as there always have been)

What will compel them to *share* their gains though in a world that doesn't need (or needs minimal) human labour?

Edited by EssKay
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HOLA446

Web designers, Yes. The wrongly employed graphic designers.

Web programmers. No.

I am a programmer (have been since 1982!) and I agree in that there's plenty of scope left in building your own tools to sell or use exclusively to make a living online (that's exactly what I'm doing now). A numpty calling himself a "web designer" who tweaks Word Press and Magento templates has to realise he's ten a penny.

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HOLA449

It's happened before, however, past performance is not an indicator of the future....

Even if it is, it doesn't look good. The well paid steel worker became a call centre worker on minimum wage.....

Precisely. I've said it before often enough, automation is fine when it's doing the jobs that are too dangerous, unpleasant, or tedious for anyone to want to do, or when there's a (meaningful) shortage of labour, but I really don't see us being in that situation. I also don't really see what we're gaining by development any more either. It's easy to see when you compare with the genuine hardship of pre-industrial (or mid industrial for that matter) times, but not any more. Of course people could turn around and say "Well you'd have probably said the same thing 200 years ago", which may be true. I suppose it's time that the gains were felt in the wider world, so that's where it'll have its effect, not here.

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HOLA4410

Precisely. I've said it before often enough, automation is fine when it's doing the jobs that are too dangerous, unpleasant, or tedious for anyone to want to do, or when there's a (meaningful) shortage of labour, but I really don't see us being in that situation. I also don't really see what we're gaining by development any more either. It's easy to see when you compare with the genuine hardship of pre-industrial (or mid industrial for that matter) times, but not any more. Of course people could turn around and say "Well you'd have probably said the same thing 200 years ago", which may be true. I suppose it's time that the gains were felt in the wider world, so that's where it'll have its effect, not here.

If you believe that its not a good idea and therefore shouldn't be allowed I'm sorry to say that just trying to stop it won't be enough. The forthcoming changes are inevitable, we just need to work out what the consequences will be...

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HOLA4411

Some argue that we should be working towards 100% renewables, consumer, transport, industry, everything. It's a long road there is plenty of work, both grunt and entrepreneurial, to do before we get there.

Musk would argue we need a backup earth before we can sit back and say we have enough, but perhaps he just needs an excuse.

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HOLA4412

One reason could be that if you're 30-something, the next 15 years is when your kids grow up, so you have to leverage being there and being a part of that process against how much you'd like to 'work your ass off' to pay off that mortgage. I'm a 33yo software dev and sometimes it's nice to think about all that money I could get if I put my ass into it and moved into a lead role, but one thing that always puts me off - aside from diminishing returns thanks to high-rate taxation - is that it would come at the cost of something I'd never be able to get back.

There's more to life than money & career development - blind quests for gold are a fool's errand.

Apart from it getting rid of jobs, the other problem with automation/globalization is that the jobs that do survive will end up getting crappier with longer hours, pointless metrics & politics - working your ass off is liable to come with a severe risk of playing a game that isn't worth winning.

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HOLA4413

If you believe that its not a good idea and therefore shouldn't be allowed I'm sorry to say that just trying to stop it won't be enough. The forthcoming changes are inevitable, we just need to work out what the consequences will be...

If I didn't think that they were inevitable the whole sorry spectacle wouldn't be so depressing.

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HOLA4415

Do you have a timeline for when you transport, health, science, medicine, infrastructure, will be jobless?

What's that got to do with anything (although transport seems to be heading that way)? It doesn't need to go to the furthest extreme to be an issue. To be honest the fact that some jobs will remain will make it even worse; faced with no jobs needed the necessary adjustments would at least get accepted, with some people still needing to work but a lot not doing so an even more haves and have nots society is inevitable. For a while I expect it to get taken up with increasing numbers of fundamentally pointless non-jobs.

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HOLA4416
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HOLA4417

What's that got to do with anything (although transport seems to be heading that way)? It doesn't need to go to the furthest extreme to be an issue. To be honest the fact that some jobs will remain will make it even worse; faced with no jobs needed the necessary adjustments would at least get accepted, with some people still needing to work but a lot not doing so an even more haves and have nots society is inevitable. For a while I expect it to get taken up with increasing numbers of fundamentally pointless non-jobs.

It's not a purely facetious question (maybe 50%!) It's a real question too. 5 years, 10 years, 50 years?

On the one hand AI is just around the corner. On the other hand, UK unemployment overall has been steadily trending down since the 90s.

Also the world is still a very messy and mostly underdeveloped place. It's not going to get fixed over night.

Plus can we

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HOLA4419

Unemployment might've been decreasing but that's certainly not the whole picture. The nature of the work has been changing too. Some of that's good (we don't need people to do some dangerous and unpleasant jobs any more), quite a lot isn't (jobs people didn't mind doing being replaced by, for example, call centre drones). Connection to the world being lost, real connection to other people being lost, ever more being swallowed up in the souless, impersonal, lifeless corporate abyss... The future might function very well but it really looks like being an incredibly depressing place to live in, at least for anyone who seeks more from life than an endless, effortless supply of shiny distractions. The whole goal seems to be to remove people from our lives, which is a bloody weird and silly thing to do.

I wouldn't even guess at the timescales, happening at all is the important thing, rather than how long it takes.

I think I said earlier that the rest of the world will be where it achieves something, if anything actually worth having is achieved at all.

Edited by Riedquat
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HOLA4420
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HOLA4421
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HOLA4422

Unemployment might've been decreasing but that's certainly not the whole picture. The nature of the work has been changing too. Some of that's good (we don't need people to do some dangerous and unpleasant jobs any more), quite a lot isn't (jobs people didn't mind doing being replaced by, for example, call centre drones). Connection to the world being lost, real connection to other people being lost, ever more being swallowed up in the souless, impersonal, lifeless corporate abyss... The future might function very well but it really looks like being an incredibly depressing place to live in, at least for anyone who seeks more from life than an endless, effortless supply of shiny distractions. The whole goal seems to be to remove people from our lives, which is a bloody weird and silly thing to do.

I wouldn't even guess at the timescales, happening at all is the important thing, rather than how long it takes.

I think I said earlier that the rest of the world will be where it achieves something, if anything actually worth having is achieved at all.

I'm sure the pop music the teenagers listen to, will be rubbish too ;)

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HOLA4423
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HOLA4424
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HOLA4425
Apparently "progress" creates new jobs to replace the automated ones. That's happened before and therefore always will, so there's nothing to worry about. You shouldn't actually think about these things, just apply some pre-defined rules to whatever situation and let them tell you how things are.

This idea does have a hamster wheel quality to it, after all if no matter how much automation we do the amount of work to be done by people always remains roughly constant you have to wonder if this vast planet despoiling project we call 'progress' has any real point to it.

In any case it can be quite dangerous to place too much faith in extrapolations of the future based on past experiance- the classic example being the thanksgiving Turkey's confident analyisis that human beings are benign feeders of Turkeys based on 364 days of excellent empirical data.

Another example might be the role of horses in human economies- there were thousands of years of evidence that the horse was an irreplacable component of the economy yet today very few horses are actually working in that economy, their role largely having been taken over by technological advances in internal combustion engines.

Even at the dawn of the 20th century two exeptionally smart horses might have confidently predicited that their job roles were safe forever based on those thousands of years of evidence- but they would have been mistaken. Of course horses are not humans and humans today tend not to be employed for their brawn but for their brain- and it's not as if anyone is working on ways to replace human brain power with self learning systems....oh wait- they are.

The reality is that an historical pattern is not a natural law- all history can tell us about the impact of automation is that in the past new jobs tended to be created at a fast enough rate to replace those that were lost- what it cannot tell us is that enough new jobs will be created in the future- nor can it tell us if those new roles will be undertaken by humans or robots.

And I do have a problem with the idea of some vastly advanced future society with technologies we can barely imagine that still,somehow, requires large numbers of human beings in order to make it function- so it must be true at some point that if technology continues to advance the need for human labour will one day be largely eliminated. So having established that mass unemployment is inevitable the only question that seems to remain is that of the timing- are we now approaching such a scenario or will that scenario not occur for another hundred years?

Edited by wonderpup
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