
From Poverty to Prosperity: A conversation with Bill Gates [pdf] - mikeevans
http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event-transcript_082217994272.pdf
======
tikhonj
To me, this sounds like a good case for a basic income guarantee or a negative
income tax. If we don't need people to work, why should the government bend
over backwards and "get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing
humans over algorithms"?

The whole point of automation _is_ to make less work. But in the immediate
past it hasn't meaningfully translated to less work for most people. We're
even afraid of it! I think that's a structural issue with society, which we
can only really fix with broad changes and a completely different attitude.
The broad fetishization of work and the obsession that everyone _has_ to work
is really standing in the way of progress.

We have more and more technology. It's time to start taking advantage of it.
Unemployment should be a _goal_ , not a menace.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
> To me, this sounds like a good case for a basic income guarantee

Where will the money come from? The math doesn't work.

> If we don't need people to work,

This is at the heart of the confusion. There is no "we". _Other people_ do not
need the workers. Those workers? They need to work.

~~~
parkovski
No money is going away. Say I have a factory today, and I have to pay x
workers $7/hr. If my factory is big, that's a lot of money.

Now if I replace them all with robots, aside from the upfront and maintenance
costs, I don't pay anybody anything. Now, a lot of people are going to say
that the owner deserves to pocket the difference because he was innovative or
reduced costs or whatever. But either way, notice the factory still makes the
same amount of money. It just doesn't have to pay workers anymore.

So now we have a political debate, and you get all these people saying that
those workers should just find a new job, and if they don't have the skills
they're just lazy, don't deserve handouts, etc. I think it's sad that people
think this way, but I'm not going to try to argue it because it's pointless.
But if this side wins out, you'll find in the future that our country looks
very 3rd world. A large wealth divide, lots of crime, little opportunity for
advancement if you're not already wealthy.

So how do you stop that from happening? Well, the factory owner probably
deserves something for being innovative, sure. But the people that lost their
jobs do too. If we get to the point where the population is a lot larger than
the job pool, you basically get to pick basic income or 3rd world. There's
really no other option.

You can deny this all you want now - go ahead. If you want to do this, I'm not
going to pretend I can convince you otherwise.

One more thing though - people have jobs today not because they inherently
need them, it's because some entrepreneur needs to hire people to get things
done. No business person wants to spend money to hire someone they don't have
to, so if we get to the point where most jobs can be automated, then we have a
mostly unemployed society. We can decide how we want to handle that, but we
can't really stop it from happening.

~~~
victoro
>> No business person wants to spend money to hire someone they don't have to

This.

Every time I hear an organization brag about how many jobs they "create" I
can't help but think about how much of an oxymoron that is. Any half-decent
business owner wants to get a specific job done at the lowest cost possible --
if it can be done equally well themselves without paying anybody for anything,
thats the best possible scenario. Bragging about creating jobs is basically
bragging that your costs of production have gotten higher.

------
Lendal
I'm an industrial automation engineer.

Everyone from middle-managers up to CEOs think that robots are these magical
things that just take care of everything so you can fire all your line
workers. Doesn't work that way. It's incremental, methodical and
excruciatingly slow work. You cannot simply throw money at it. It's expensive
because it requires many experienced automation engineers ($$$) to do all this
automation, but first you have to find and train those engineers.

What is automation exactly? It's learning a process so well that you know
every single possible thing that might go wrong with a machine and then have
some other machine to fix all those things automatically on the fly. Building
self-diagnosing and self-repairing machines is very complex. The end goal of
all those machines is to produce and ship a product. If the product changes,
now you have to build a machine that can automate the process of on-the-fly
SKU changes which further complicates an already complex machine.

In other words, automation is basically the flying car that futurists of a
century ago predicted we would have today. So, where is my flying car?

In a hundred years automation will definitely have made massive strides, yes.
Some jobs can be automated today, some tomorrow, but the numbers we're talking
about are not significant compared to the entire workforce of a nation and
compared to the massive capital investment it takes to accomplish that
automation. A century from now the CEO's of the world will still be asking,
"Where are the autonomous robots I was promised that can automate my entire
workforce?" It's not as simple as they think.

~~~
georgemcbay
The thing about automation as it regards to economics is that it doesn't have
to be anywhere near a complete solution to have a huge impact. You don't need
factories full of fully self-sustained robots to cause massive
underemployment.

If you can partially automate a task to the point where 1 person can do the
work that 2 people used to do, you've potentially eliminated 50% of that job's
market. People are somewhat adaptable, so some amount of this sort of change
can be absorbed (and has historically been absorbed) as people retrain for
other types of jobs, but we're quickly approaching a point where the changes
brought upon by automation are going to outpace people's ability to adapt to
the changes, IMO.

~~~
stackcollision
Absolutely true. I think when people say that robots are going to replace low-
skilled workers only the uninformed are imagining an entirely self-sufficient
factory that only has one door that the raw materials goes into, and another
door that the product comes out of.

What we really should be imagining is a factory floor where instead of 50
people on an assembly line, or instead of 20 waitstaff at a restaurant, you
only need one or two guys who know how to replace parts on the robots

------
wcarss
Here is a link to the actual video of the talk:

[http://www.aei.org/events/2014/03/13/from-poverty-to-
prosper...](http://www.aei.org/events/2014/03/13/from-poverty-to-prosperity-a-
conversation-with-bill-gates/)

And the transcript:

[http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event-
transc...](http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event-
transcript_082217994272.pdf)

I think this might be considerably more enriching than a link to yahoo news
that got it from bgr that got it from businessinsider that reported on the
talk.

~~~
sologoub
Thank you for posting these!

Reading the transcript, Gates is really talking about a very similar concept
to what the "helicopter" reference Ben Bernanke made talks about - maintaining
demand and levels of consumption.

The idea of a universal income has been widely discussed on HN in the past.
Gates is simply proposing to start rolling this out via a larger earned income
credit, while funding it via a progressive consumption tax.

It's less controversial than the universal income, but personally, I'm not
sure that creating useless work just to make sure consumption is propped up
makes sense. If we are reaching the end of scarcity in basic needs, it seems
to be more efficient to provide a baseline and then let people truly compete
for the extra-ordinary lifestyle.

~~~
kristianp
"I'm not sure that creating useless work just to make sure consumption is
propped up makes sense.".

That's not what was suggested. What Gates suggested is to move away from
income tax, in order to encourage employment. The employment would still be
useful, it would just be less costly due to reduced income tax. His mention of
robots replacing jobs is part of that argument, to balance out areas where the
economics of jobs vs automation may tip in the future.

He suggested a progressive consumption tax as a replacement, but I'm not sure
how to make a consumption tax progressive in a practical way, except to exempt
basic foods for example.

~~~
sologoub
Interesting point. Not exactly how I read it, but this makes sense as well.

For the progressive consumption tax, to make it really meaningful and fair,
you have to have very reliable data on what price range for given type of good
is excessive. Alternatively, you could just tax classes of goods, such as
luxury cars, etc.

The one problem with such a tax is that it enables people to save a lot more
instead of spending it. If the money sits in the banking system, it at least
does some work, but if the saving happens in the form of physical goods of
perceived high value (such as gold or jewelry), it doesn't actually help the
economy beyond the initial purchase.

That said, I would love to not have to pay income tax :)

------
Kenji
"Business Insider reports that Gates gave a talk at the American Enterprise
Institute think tank in Washington, DC this week and said that both
governments and businesses need to start preparing for a future where lots of
people will be put out of work by software and robots."

We already have. It's called the 8.5h day where you're simply present in your
office, paid to be off the street, employed by the state, browsing facebook
and doing mundane jobs once in a while.

------
lukeschlather
It's funny that they pick out the part where Bill Gates says we shouldn't have
a minimum wage, but skip the parts where he says we should have a basic income
and a progressive consumption tax.

~~~
otibom
That sounds interesting. Do you have a source about him supporting basic
income?

~~~
gregschlom
The closest I found in the transcript of the talk was this piece:

MR. BROOKS: So something like a guaranteed minimum income for people who are
working full time through an expansion on the EITC or a wage subsidy seems
like the right way to go.

MR. GATES: Yeah, one of my favorite AEI papers – I didn’t get time to look it
up last night

Source: [http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event-
transc...](http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event-
transcript_082217994272.pdf)

Edit: after re-reading it, I think this has nothing to do with basic income
since it's for people who are working full time.

~~~
dragonwriter
Right, he seems to be saying that instead of a minimum wage that corporations
have to pay, there should instead be something that looks like a minimum wage
to employees, but where employers can pay _as little as they like_ and the
government will make up the difference between that and the minimum, but if
you don't have an "employer" or they don't certify that you've "worked"
sufficient hours, you don't get the subsidy, either.

So, like a basic income, _except_ that you have to swear fealty to an employer
to get it. I see one of two possibilities:

(1) Either the restrictions on qualifying employment are tight enough that it
serves as a subsidy for select existing operations and a competitive
disadvantage to new business with smaller scale (because of compliance costs)
or new models (because of regulatory assumptions), or (2) The restrictions on
qualifying employment are so loose that this is basically unconditional basic
income with a whole lot more administrative costs and failure modes that exist
just to satisfy the desire to create an illusion that it has something to do
with "work".

------
withdavidli
Looking forward to mass automation. Free up a lot of time and hopefully we'll
create better things instead of doing mindless chores.

Predictions about mass automations are at opposite sides of the spectrum.
Either most of the population is poor without a job, or it's a utopia where no
one has to work (everything is provided) and concentrate on bettering
ourselves.

~~~
tachyonbeam
It has the potential to be good for humanity. All the most dangerous/degrading
jobs accomplished by robots. Allow people shorter work days and allow people
to do "less essential" jobs. More artists, more psychotherapists, more people
building affordable housing, more nannies and helpers, people working on just
improving life for everyone else out there.

But then, unrestrained capitalism isn't compatible with this. The way it's
been going in America for the past 40 years, productivity has gone up but
salaries have gone down relative to inflation and work hours have stayed the
same or gone up. Many people need 2-3 minimum wage jobs just to feed the kids
and pay the rent, no free time. The rich, the corporations, are trying to milk
the people for all that they're worth, to try and maintain the elite at
absolutely insane levels of wealth.

The predictable outcome, in the next few decades, is that we'll get worse
jobs, higher rents, smaller apartments, more cost increases on food and
electricity, longer work hours. The middle class will keep getting squeezed
until things reach some kind of breaking point. The rich will have to provide
the rest of us with enough distraction and a minimum level of comfort required
to prevent famine, disease, civil war, and revolution from happening.

We could have some kind of utopia, we have the technology, but the wealthiest
capitalist are too near-sighted, it seems, to understand that it would be in
everyone's best interest to make sure that _everyone_ is comfortable and safe.
Rampant poverty, hunger and crime aren't going to make their lives better.
Being some rich elite living in a world filled with miserable, diseased,
violent and uneducated masses doesn't sound all that fun.

~~~
yaur
Assuming that we aren't living in a Culturesque post scarcity society how do
you allocate stuff if economic output is no longer important? I don't think
that there is an easy solution to this, but my gut feeling is that the world
is going to get a whole lot uglier if we don't figure it out.

------
psbp
His recommendations seem ridiculous. Why force employment when it offers no
real return except keeping an anachronistic standard of 40 hr/week employment?

~~~
smacktoward
For the same reason we in America force people to buy private health insurance
rather than having a national health service, which all the evidence suggests
would be both more cost-effective and provide an overall better quality of
service: it allows The System to adapt to changing times without anybody
having to admit that anything has actually changed.

People fear change -- a _lot_. So proposals that start with "first, admit that
sweeping change is necessary" tend to get less support than do those that let
the old forms be preserved, even if they've become completely meaningless.

~~~
sp332
A centralized system could (on paper) be cheaper, but I don't trust the
federal government not to screw it up. I'm not even saying I like the current
system - or the pre-ACA system either - but I am not convinced that our
government is corruption-free enough to be any good at handling that much
money.

~~~
Joeri
Is the US government so much worse than governments of other countries which
have nationalized healthcare? Why would you trust them to run the biggest
military in the world, including a large military healthcare system, if they
are that incompetent?

~~~
sp332
If you haven't heard, the VA (Veterans Affairs) is in the middle of a huge
scandal involving gross inefficiency and bad care.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7800979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7800979)

Do I trust them with the biggest military? All other issues aside, in terms of
not wasting money, I think it's awful.

------
GFischer
If he thinks accountants and the like will be put out of jobs, he's not taking
into account the power of unions and luddites.

Here in Uruguay we have a lot of jobs that could be replaced by today's tech,
which will probably last for decades due to unions pushing for inefficiency
(and they introduce incredible bureaucracy and friction).

For example, to buy and sell a car in my country, you need an "escribano"
(closest US equivalent is notary), a specialized lawyer that has to "witness"
and certify that you actually own the good being sold, with a staggering
amount of paperwork, which is only legal if it's affixed with the proper
amount of seals and signatures, and the paperwork itself costs more than an
used car in the U.S. :P .

There are lots of incredibly useless paperwork, one of my former teachers was
put in charge of the IT department of the Judiciary Branch, and he was
thwarted at every corner by unions and obsolete laws, he was unable to
automate anythign and ended up resigning.

The real estate agents' experience is also very bad, I've had some that
actually removed value, I hope something puts them out of work soon.

Commercial pilots might be a concern, but I worry about truck and bus
drivers... those have very powerful unions - see in Argentina where the most
powerful lobby is the truck drivers' union led by Hugo Moyano, same here in
Uruguay, some truck drivers make the same money as a software developer (at
least the same or better than I do).

~~~
coldtea
> _Here in Uruguay we have a lot of jobs that could be replaced by today 's
> tech, which will probably last for decades due to unions pushing for
> inefficiency (and they introduce incredible bureaucracy and friction)._

Yeah, same for those people wanting jobs to feed their families...

If you didn't understand the gist of what Jobs said, here it is: new jobs WONT
replace the majority of the old automated jobs. People would literally have NO
jobs.

~~~
sup
*Gates

~~~
coldtea
Damn, yes! I typo-ed it by focusing on "jobs"!

------
Symmetry
If we really do get to the point where society doesn't need low skilled
workers we ought to start giving out a guaranteed minimum income. If we don't
care about the potential disemployment effect the case for it becomes a lot
stronger.

~~~
johnward
I saw a post in the past that suggested a minimum income where the amount of
assistance reduce as you got paid more. So if the minimum was $40k a year and
you made $20k working some job you'd get $20k in subsidies. This help give
some incentive to people to get jobs. In some cases if you stay on welfare
you'll make more money than if you get a minimum wage job. If you made $60k
you'd get no subsidy. We're definitely going to have to change the model we
have now once we get to a point where a large number of people don't need to
work. I'd say we're close to that now. If everyone in the US wanted to work
would we have enough jobs to support that?

~~~
dragonwriter
> I saw a post in the past that suggested a minimum income where the amount of
> assistance reduce as you got paid more. So if the minimum was $40k a year
> and you made $20k working some job you'd get $20k in subsidies. This help
> give some incentive to people to get jobs.

No, a dollar for dollar reduction in benefits for outside income does not
"give some incentive to people to get jobs", its gives a _disincentive_ to
people to get jobs. Working has a disutility -- otherwise everyone would do it
for free -- so if you have a choice of $X from a minimum guarantee with no
work or $Y from work and $min((X-Y),0) in subsidies with work -- you have a
net disincentive to work for any Y not greater than X by an amount sufficient
to account for the disutility of work.

Benefits that reduce with income are how a lot of current programs work (and
have worked for some time), which is why various complicated measures to try
to combat the disincentives that structure can create have also been built
into them (which further increase the administrative costs), and one of the
key motivations for unconditional basic income is eliminating the problems
that that causes.

~~~
johnward
I don't think it was exactly dollar per dollar but it was some type of
decrease as you made more and stop at a point.

------
DasIch
Actually I don't think low paying jobs will be replaced at all, they are
actually often fairly difficult to replace.

All those middle class people working in offices though whose jobs in some way
exist merely as a way to outsource tasks software isn't good at or can't
really do? These jobs are going to be eliminated with better AI etc. pretty
much entirely.

If anything software in the 21st century might reproduce the social effects of
the industrial revolution. It won't necessarily harm the people who are
already poor, it will simply create a lot more of them, shifting power to the
people with the means to get a significant stake in the companies that will
survive before that happens.

~~~
stormbrew
Do you have some examples of low paying jobs you think are hard to replace?
There are definitely some service jobs that aren't paid a very high wage, but
are in some intangible way preferred to be performed by a human, but they tend
to just be the customer facing tip of a business that employs a lot of low
wage people behind the scenes as well.

Ie. the person on the till at McD's might last longer than the person who
listens for a beep and then raises the burger griller (they don't even flip
burgers anymore, they just cook both sides at the same time in a contraption)
and moves them to the warming tray, but that's only about 3 people in a 10
person shift.

~~~
altcognito
Oh man, you couldn't be any more wrong. They are already moving kiosks and
mobile purchasing into fast food restaurants.

[http://www.neowin.net/news/mcdonalds-
orders-7000-touchscreen...](http://www.neowin.net/news/mcdonalds-
orders-7000-touchscreen-kiosks-to-replace-cashiers)

This is from 2011, so it doesn't seem like it's going terribly well.

It's difficult to automate the remaining steps in food prep (though it's
possible and they are working on it) for a host of reasons. Food prep involves
insuring that the food is properly loaded, set at the right temperature. There
is a visual inspection of the food itself by the line cooks that probably
would still need to be done.

It's cooked on no less than 2 grills, and 3 vats (fries, fish, nuggets are all
usually kept separate), an oven, a microwave, bun toaster and pancake grill.
That doesn't get into the host of drink machines, salads and non-grill items
being made. Now theoretically, you can get rid of the warmers as there won't
be a need to queue things (even this is not certain as margins are tight to be
wasting money on idle machines just to handle peak hours). Also all of this
equipment must be completely cleaned top to bottom -- in particular between
the switchover from breakfast to lunch and vice versa. Vats of oil and grease
must be dealt with.

Right now, minimum wage employees are pretty cheap compared to design and
implementation of machines that can handle the breadth of most fast food
restaurants. Most of the work of automation of cooking has been to do the work
prior to sending it to the restaurant (precooked fries is one example). Lots
of that simply can't be done without seriously sacrificing quality. I realize
people think that McDonalds doesn't care, but they know boundaries they can
push, and things like precooking meats apparently hasn't taken off much
because it makes a terrible product and they lose sales.

It will be a while until you say goodbye to the two (maybe three!) cooks
working for 9 or 10 dollars an hour making food. It will happen, but it's more
likely to happen first at restaurants that offer a much, much smaller menu
than the big fast food restaurants have right now.

------
jqm
I agree with Bill Gates on what will happen.

I disagree very strongly with his solution. Governments begging corporations
to employ people doing very little and paying the minimum wage (oh wait,
minimum wage gets eliminated...so presumably paying them less than minimum
wage)? When have corporations responded to begging? Why is this good for
anyone?

Who is going to buy the stuff produced when people are bringing home less than
minimum wage huh Bill? You? How many plastic spaghetti strainers do you need
in all your many houses? Hmm?

No, the answer is not corporations in full control and paying whatever they
wish. That will never work. The system will break down all together. It must
stay balanced. The balance can be achieved by corporations and individuals
paying their fair share. My opinion is that land/resource taxes are the way to
achieve this. Not payroll or corporate taxes which serve to punish innovation
and hard work.

------
_pferreir_
Am I the only one thinking that begging business to keep employing people
will, if anything, only worsen the social issues caused by this change?
Scraping the minimum wage? Cheap labour? Is that what we're developing
machines for? Is that civilisational progress? What next?

I hope Bill Gates is as right about this as he was about the "famous"[1]
640KB, but can't we, as a civilisation, think of better solutions? Like e.g.
not working and using automated means in order to provide a minimum of
food/resources to everyone? Am I dreaming,does this idea seem as unreasonable
as a self-driving car did a century ago?

[1]: and possibly apocryphal

------
forinti
I don't think governments will have to beg for anything. The less people
businesses employ, the less power they will have. So either they'll employ
people or they'll have to put up with whatever solution governments come up
with (higher taxes, guaranteed minimum income, etc.). Either way, they'll
still need customers, right?

This reminds me of a story about a new Ford factory full of robots. The
manager invites the union boss for a guided tour then asks him if he can
convince the robots to join the union. The union guy then asks if the manager
can get the robots to buy Fords.

~~~
mtbcoder
Did the manager reply, "Does not compute." to the last question?

------
bequanna
I personally enjoy work.

I wouldn't say that what I do from 9-5, M-F defines me as a person, but I
enjoy solving problems and exerting myself.

If software 'eats' my job, I'm not going to simply stop working, I am going to
learn how to be good at something else. I can't imagine my life without some
challenges and struggles.

~~~
JetSpiegel
Quotin Calvin (the Bill Watterson one), work is what someone else makes you
do.

~~~
bequanna
And I think that is OK.

I have worked on (other people's) projects, and been pulled into
learning/doing something I otherwise would have shied away from.

It doesn't always work out this way, but sometimes having someone else push
you out of your comfort zone can be ultimately beneficial.

------
curlyquote
I think a little bit of wisdom from one of my favorite writers might be
appreciated here:

"""We have created a lifestyle that makes injustice permanent and inescapable.

We have created a world where robots produce robots. Where capital breeds
capital with very little need for the Eastenders of the world.

Tell me what will happen when the majority of mankind has become
technologically superfluous.

At the same time rebellious with hunger and economically unimportant.

What will then stop a final solution of the world problem?

In People of the Abyss the Eastenders already saw it coming.

They are, Jack London wrote, “encumbrances”, of no use to anyone, not even to
themselves. “They clutter the earth with their presence and are better out of
the way”."""

Taken from
[http://www.svenlindqvist.net/text_only.asp?cat=1&lang=2&id=2...](http://www.svenlindqvist.net/text_only.asp?cat=1&lang=2&id=241)

~~~
brightsize
I can't recommend People of the Abyss highly enough. Read it for free on
Gutenberg:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1688](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1688)

"The Day of Judgment! More than he want it. From all the land rises the hunger
wail, from Ghetto and countryside, from prison and casual ward, from asylum
and workhouse—the cry of the people who have not enough to eat. Millions of
people, men, women, children, little babes, the blind, the deaf, the halt, the
sick, vagabonds and toilers, prisoners and paupers, the people of Ireland,
England, Scotland, Wales, who have not enough to eat. And this, in face of the
fact that five men can produce bread for a thousand; that one workman can
produce cotton cloth for 250 people, woollens for 300, and boots and shoes for
1000."

------
tboyd47
The need for employers in society overstated here. Anyone can buy and sell for
a living without being employed, and now with the internet it's even easier to
do that.

True, you may not be able to fulfill all of your needs by buying and selling.
People who do that usually experience some level of poverty. But it is and
always will be an option available to unemployed people.

How many stories are there of people starting at flea markets and yard sales
and ending up with investments worth thousands of dollars?

Folks got along fine without corporations and 9 to 5 jobs for many centuries.
Individuals and families still became as rich as Gates is, relatively
speaking, or even richer. I'm confused that he doesn't seem to know this.

But I think he's mostly right in what he says about automation, and he of all
people certainly would know.

------
parfe
What does an economy that deprecates most of humanity look like? What happens
when the economy doesn't demand people?

I do not see a future like Star Trek with its Utopian ideal of every person
choosing to follow their dream pursuit. Large parts of society already receive
no access to opportunity ensuring a lifetime sentence of poverty. When robots
prepare meals, drive cars, pave roads, fix power lines, haul cargo, process
paperwork, educate students, harvest crops, and enforce peace you may think
you have a uniqueness to prosper. Perhaps, and good luck.

------
yodsanklai
> And it’s not just “low-skilled” workers who will have to worry about
> automation.

If it weren't for some political ideology, automation would be a blessing for
every one and not something to worry about.

------
rdmcfee
People fear change. This revolution will require adaption and there will be
pain involved, but mass automation will create vast wealth.

Prehistorically we spent our entire lives simply collecting enough food to
survive. Since then we've gradually been able to devote a smaller and smaller
portion of our lives to fulfilling the requirements of survival. Mass
automation will continue to reduce this. There will be growing pains but the
trend certainly continues in the right direction.

------
DigitalSea
Who maintains the machines? Who produces the replacement parts and sources the
materials for the machines? What happens when the power goes out? So many
flaws in the plan of a completely or even almost robot/algorithm based job
future I don't know if it'll really happen. We've had automation in the
automotive industry for how long now and look at the amount of people required
to ensure the process works along the way?

Having said that, I am all for automating things. As a developer, I've seen a
dramatic shift in the last 5 years alone with tools for handling tasks and
automating things are a dime a doze. Automation definitely has a place, but I
think it's too far to suggest that robots will take everyone's jobs, just a
few. You're not going to be served coffee from a Starbucks robot barista any
time soon.

A future where everyone doesn't have to work sounds nice in theory, in
practice it cannot and will not work.

~~~
DanBC
Robots in the car industry have removed very many jobs! Sure, you need people
to build, sell, deliver, install, program, operate and maintain those robots
but those jobs are still fewer than the numbers of people who ised to be on
the production lines.

You still find many people in electronics factories, but surface mount pick
and place machines are throwing 30,000 components per hour onto PCBs. These
machine shave replaced benches of people stuffing components onto PCBs with
one or two people operating the machine.

Barista work is low pay low status. Social interaction is the reason we don't
see barista robots in coffee shops, although we do see them beginning to enter
supermarkets and roadside service stations. (Often with foul coffee).

And job descriptions change. "Baker" used to mean someone who used recipes to
make breads. Now it appears to mean someone who takes presupplied gloop out of
the tub, shapes it; and bales it for the time specified.

------
atmosx
In another thread a user argued that "technology is what drives society to a
more mature state". I wish that was true, but to me technology and society's
advancement at social/human level are disconnected.

I really hope that the decline of the average working hours per week in the
"western world" becomes a central point of discussion, the next decade. We
don't need to work many hours to get the essentials to live a comfortable
life.

We have all the technology we need to produce food and shelter at extremely
LOW prices.

Of course if someone wants to be Elon Musk ( I wish I was), he should be free
to pursue his interests, but average Joe who only wants to support his family
and enjoy friends and baseball, should be working a lot less when we will have
robots, not feel threatened by unemployment.

~~~
NhanH
With the full risk of generalization, average Joe also want bigger car,bigger
lawn and more bedrooms than average Bob, and that's where the problem arises.

~~~
atmosx
Hm, there is Maslow's pyramid that could be seen as a general model[1] along
with the human rights[2].

The problem is not the car. The problem (in the US and now in Europe too) is
healthcare, food and shelter (own home). These things, given the tech, should
come for almost free IMHO, for any individual who lives in a "civilized
country".

Of course, there are many problems: illegal immigration[3], health care costs,
etc. But technology should be used to do all these things cheaper for the
masses, leading to a higher average standard of life.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights)

------
31reasons
"If we don't need people to work, why should the government bend over
backwards and "get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans
over algorithms"?"

I respect Bill Gates' ideas but this one is totally wrong. His solution is
neither practical nor logical. The same solution could have been presented 100
years ago when people were being laid off due to the industrial revolution. We
would not have progressed this far if we had given people's employment
priority over power and efficiency of machines. In many cases algorithms are
simply better and faster over humans and they are just going to get even
better and faster. They will not only get things done safely but also reduce
human errors and reduce energy consumption.

------
homulilly
Oh look, more asshole libertarian scare tactics. The solution isn't to force
people to work shitty jobs for even less pay.

If our productivity is high enough people don't need to work we should provide
basic income, not artificially force people to work so they don't starve to
death.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
> If our productivity

The word "our" is misplaced in this sentence.

The companies that purchase the labor own the productivity of the labor. If
_their_ productivity is high enough, they will simply buy less labor.

Do you have anything to sell other than labor?

> we should provide basic income

No matter how you slice it, there's not enough money. You end up being able to
give each adult in the US a couple thousand a year. If you try for more, you
strangle the economy so effectively that it can't afford the robots that are
supposed to pay for everything.

~~~
JetSpiegel
How does giving money to people, no strings attached "strangles the economy"?
What do they think they will do with basic income?

They will buy things, which by definition is an economic stimulus.

------
UnethicalHacks
Good. We need to get away from this notion that x hours per day at a job =
value.

i say bring on the robots.

------
zcarter
I think a useful conversation to have is, "how quickly we can replace
politicians with robots?" A political discourse addressing the topic would
necessarily acknowledge the radical changes most technology enthousiasts
expect to take place in our lifetimes.

The most common response to hearing that a machine can do your job is
disbelief ([http://kk.org/thetechnium/2011/09/the-7-stages-
of/](http://kk.org/thetechnium/2011/09/the-7-stages-of/)). Fertile ground for
dismissing the imminently possible as science fiction.

------
jgmmo
I wrote a short essay about this the other day -- Robots are taking our jobs,
so what... [http://softwarebyjoe.com/essays/robots-are-taking-our-
jobs-s...](http://softwarebyjoe.com/essays/robots-are-taking-our-jobs-so-
what.html)

------
jqm
The solution to this problem may be a massive increase in insurance
salespeople and HR department employees. And lawyers. Stuff like that.

I can hardly wait.

------
nkozyra
Pft, I'll get concerned when robots can act as surly, smarmy and as entitled
as I can. Until then my job is safe.

------
trhway
we are at least a second time through that - first being the Industrial
Revolution - and still at loss what to do and with the same luddites and the
same other cast of characters in the show... I guess 3rd time will be a
charm... for the AI/robots that will completely replace our species.

------
lukasm
Chrome for a past few days was crashing I dunno why, but I know it's pdfs :(

------
chaostheory
Yes robots have been gradually taking away jobs since the 1970s.

