

2 Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030 - davux
http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2012/02/2-billion-jobs-to-disappear-by-2030/

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GiraffeNecktie
So here we have a man who bills himself as "Google's top-rated futurist
speaker". What the hell does that mean? According to his bio he doesn't work
for Google, nor does he list Google among his clients. Oh, I see, he's at the
top of the Google search results for "futurist speaker".

Frankly, I'm deeply suspicious of anyone making a living as a "futurist" least
of all someone who's claim to fame is to have risen to the SEO challenge. Like
all good futurists, his stock in trade is big, jaw-dropping visions of the
future that drum up some headlines and grab some attention (not to mention
that all important Google rank).

And his view of the future is simply preposterous. That teachers will
disappear because now we have computers! Lord Jesus haven't we put that one to
rest yet? We've been kicking that idea around for twenty years and we now know
for a certainty that computers can be a useful adjunct to learning but in no
way can replace the student teacher interaction. Or someday in the near
future, 3D printers will be churning out iPads and blue jeans. I'm sorry, but
this is a completely crock that defies the laws of physics and the boundaries
of common sense.

~~~
tree_of_item
> Or someday in the near future, 3D printers will be churning out iPads and
> blue jeans.

You don't think this is true? For sufficiently large values of "near future"?
100 years? 50?

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Who knows? Maybe someday we'll discover some magical way to transform atomic
structures within a reasonably small, energy efficient end user device. Some
collection of materials, tools and techniques we can't even conceive of today,
but for now it IS literally inconceivable (notwithstanding the hand waving of
self described "futurists").

------
Lazare
To put this in context:

He is predicting that around 50% of all jobs on the planet will be destroyed
in the next 18 years. This means that less than 3% of all jobs will be
destroyed per year.

Question: How many jobs are destroyed per year normally, just as part of
normal churn?

Answer: In the US, around 10%. Europe is broadly similar. Reliable data for
China is very hard to come by, but it seems that, if anything, they are
experiencing much more rapid dislocation.

In other words, his prediction is probably wildly conservative. Many parts of
the world will probably see something closer to 200% of all jobs destroyed, or
more than four times his estimate. And that's without postulating anything
more radical than what has been happening every year for decades.

(Also: Note that these are all gross job destruction numbers, not net.
Probably obvious, but worth emphasizing.)

~~~
Tichy
How can 200% of all jobs be destroyed?

~~~
jamesaguilar
Jobs are created all the time as well. New restaurants debut, new factories
come online, new houses are built. If jobs weren't also being destroyed at a
significant rate, then we would quickly have more jobs than people to work
them.

Think of it in terms of mayflies. ~100% of all the mayflies in existence are
destroyed every three days. It takes about six days to destroy 200% of the
mayflies in the world. Jobs are like that, just a little less transient.

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mc32
One of the main issues to me is that these things keep getting imagined in a
vacuum, a place where logic reigns and technology as as perfect as its
imagined.

For example this:

>Neighborhoods will be designed differently and all City planning departments
will have to rethink their jobs.

This is not much different than today. But, at the same time, you could
imagine that sentence to imply vast change. (remind me of the cold reading
article the other day)

And:

>One thing I’m not saying is that we will have 2 billion more people
unemployed. Rather we will be forced to rethink the whole process of job
creation, and we will need to do that very quickly.

How is it that this will be true in 2030 but ALSO happen very quickly?

And:

>Working closely with the inventor community, I’ve had the unusual opportunity
to see breakthrough technologies at the formative stages, and there are
several around the edges that are now reaching the boiling point.

I mean, it's great to have enthusiasm, but c'mon. We've heard these things
over and over --something could finally work out, but the odds are against
those techs being the silver bullet in Coal/Petroleum/Nuclear. Lead bullets,
yes. But those take many decades.

I mean, optimism is great, but I think he's gone overboard and kind of forgot
a bit of skepticsm.

------
fuu
There are glaring flaws in their analysis in all five cases, and no solid
connection to the sweeping claim they're baiting peoople with.

E.g. 3D printers are awesome, but they have major limitations. Anyone claiming
that they have any chance of wiping out the clothing industry in the
foreseeable future has no bloody clue about the topic, or how well people
would take to wearing 1mm resolution deposited ABS plastic instead of finely-
woven textiles.

~~~
hsmyers
"Finely-woven textiles"---this tells me you know very little about the last
150 years of weaving technology. We no longer have such a thing and have not
had since the 20th century. The last looms capable of doing that kind of work
hit the scrap heap well more than 20 years ago. Closest thing to it (and
that's not all that close) are produced on islands off of the cost of
Scotland; heavily subsidized and tightly controlled. Google Draw, Dobbie and
Jacquard looms, history of. Yes as a hand weaver you can go out and buy one,
but forget about commercial production, that day has been and gone.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Hey. What are you talking about? The poster you replied to compares 3-D
printing quality to today's textile manufacture and concluded that the latter
was too coarse. Does the existence of historical weaving techniques, which may
have been superior to modern weaving techniques for those who could afford
them, render his assertion false?

------
greenyoda
Some of the human workers that the author sees fit to eliminate actually
provide very useful functions that machines can't.

I can envision how driverless buses and trains could work, but in cities like
New York where one hears about crime on public transit all the time, I'm not
sure I'd like to be the last passenger on an unmanned bus at midnight. It
would be a bit creepy.

How would a driverless pizza delivery truck get my pizza to me if I lived on
the 18th floor of a high-rise apartment building? If it couldn't deliver to my
door, then it would be quickly put out of business by human drivers who could.

Also:

\- Can we really envision being able to print construction materials that have
the strength of reinforced concrete at anywhere near the cost of concrete?
Could you print the foundation of a house? A road? An overpass? Can you
economically replace a wooden 2-by-4 with printed plastic? What would happen
to the price of oil if you suddenly started making lots of building materials
out of plastic?

\- Will an air conditioner-sized power generation unit that you own have the
reliability of a large power plant? What will you do if it breaks down and you
don't have the $10,000 it takes to buy a new one? Doesn't a centralized power
structure bring certain economies of scale? There may be a lot of people
working in various parts of the power distribution network, but it's not
obvious that you could do it more cheaply or with fewer people if everybody
owned their own power generation hardware.

\- Those 3-D printed shoes certainly don't look like they'd be comfortable to
wear, let alone walk in.

I'm very skeptical about these predictions, given that none of them come with
any kind of analysis that compares current and future costs. But I guess that
would be the domain of engineers, and "futurists" can't be bothered with those
pesky details.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
> How would a driverless pizza delivery truck get my pizza to me if I lived on
> the 18th floor of a high-rise apartment building?

Since we're talking far-out future anyway, it's not hard to imagine a delivery
drone-copter that flies your pizza to you right outside your window.

~~~
Lazare
More likely is that you'll be expected to pick up the pizza from the street,
instead of having it delivered to your door.

Imagine having the choice of two pizza places - both charge the same price for
the pizza, and taste just as good. One uses human drivers who drop it off at
your door - but expect to be tipped. The other uses robotic delivery trucks;
you have to pick the food up at the street, but you don't have to tip. Which
would you choose? Or rather, which would the median pizza purchaser choose?

This is analogous to how a lot of automated or "self-service" services work,
such as grocery checkouts[1], or petrol stations[2]. The automated service is
often inferior in every way but price...but that's usually enough.

[1]: This is a bit of a special case; in my experience the automated checkouts
aren't cheaper, so I only use them when they'll clearly save me time due to
shorter lines. Still, time is money, so I think it's still an example of an
inferior -but-cheaper service.

[2]: I understand that concerted lobbying has resulted in laws preventing
people from pumping their own gas in some US states. For the sake of this
post, pretend you live somewhere where self-service stations are the norm, as
the are in most of the world.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Flying drones (and thus window-level delivery) would be much easier and more
effective to implement for a few reasons:

1) Pathfinding is easier as it doesn't have to concern itself with roads or
obstacles for most of it's route. Just fly up to a reasonable altitude (just
enough to clear buildings in the way) and all the drone has to worry about is
adjusting for wind and "last-mile" (your window) navigation. Once they start
hitting critical mass we'd start seeing infrastructure to keep the drones
moving; homing beacons and landing pads on your window, and drone towers
(either standalone or grafted onto existing skyscrapers) to refuel(/charge)
drones and hoist them up to a high altitude, allowing them to rely more on
gliding vs. their own power.

2) Less of a chance to run someone over. Again; since it's not in conflict
with existing infrastructure, it's less likely to suddenly find a 6-year-old
in front of it. The flip side is that it's going to hurt if the drone fails
and drops out of the sky; this can be remedied by a fail-safe (such as a
parachute that physically breaks open at a certain velocity; independent of
the nav systems)

3) Commercial advantages: besides the general advantages of a drone-based
delivery; a flying drone doesn't get stuck in traffic as it's skipping roads
entirely. Thus, using a flying drone will give you a significant advantage
over your ground-based (be they human or drone) competition re: delivery
times. If they aren't faster; they're at least going to be far more
predictable.

~~~
leonardo54
He goes into more detail on flying drones in this post -
<http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2011/03/the-day-of-the-drone/>

------
veb
I was reading the comments and someone asked the author about the energy
invention he was talking about:

"Since I signed an NDA, I’m not able to give you details. But what I will say
is that I’ve looked at hundreds of energy related inventions over the years
and none have the potential of this one. Its quite obvious how it works, and
operates silently inside a container without the need for any external power,
water, or other inputs. There is no pollution. And the best part is that it
serves as a mass energy storage system, efficiently storing power from one day
to the next."

~~~
eande
Would be interesting to know what the wonder solution is!

~~~
Kluny
Probably something in between "magic" and "I made it up to make myself sound
important".

------
krosaen
Wild prediction: automated pizza delivery robots will start carrying a cat
onboard to incentivize people to not destroy said robots for fun as they whiz
by.

------
nikcub
If you went back in time 150 years ago you could find the same story in major
media - except replace 3d printing with cotton loom, AI with steam engines,
etc.

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davidvaughan
The figure of two billion could be an exaggeration, but it may also be true
that a big chunk of the employment pie is currently disappearing.

If you're a poorly educated westerner, there isn't much for you to do even
now. OECD countries all complain about households in which nobody has ever
worked. Given the falling relative and absolute standards of education, it's
hard to see opportunities for them.

To my mind, automation and low wages elsewhere in the world have had a big
impact on the labour pool. This may be difficult for highly employable folk
reading this board to grasp, but consider what folk are doing as they leave
college. Sure, lots of them are getting well-paid jobs, but a heck of a lot
are interning and struggling along with 10-dollar jobs on the freelance
auction sites.

But why is there a general panic when the possibility of the end of work
arises? For billions of people it would mean freedom from drudgery and the
prospect of doing more fulfilling things instead - looking after families,
creating things, learning new stuff and so on.

~~~
reuser
Freedom from drudgery sounds great, but who will pay for those people to eat
and do more fulfilling things?

~~~
davidvaughan
The only way I can think of to pay for this, is for the more productive people
to pay, in the form of a citizen's wage. We have the first inkling of this in
Britain, in the form of the proposed universal credit.

But it should be borne in mind that stuff is getting cheaper, thanks to
automation. The proportion of income spent on food has fallen from 33% to 15%
in fifty years.

In any case, I think we have little option. It's possible that current
employment problems are a blip, but annual hours worked per person have fallen
by around 25% since 1950. And halved since the 19th century. It looks like a
trend to me.

------
jakeonthemove
He really means 2 billion jobs to shift by 2030. Sure, a lot of people will
need to learn to adapt and learn new skills, but most of them are not going to
be out of work.

Take 3D printers - they're nowhere near as good as everyone thinks. You don't
just load metal powder, print your stuff and ship it. You still need to
prepare the stuff, treat the materials, color them, do quality control and do
other stuff - all of which requires hands (and not the robot kind, either)...

Maybe the mainstream media should be asked to report on some good stuff, too,
instead of all the doom and gloom - I'm pretty sure that's a major reason why
people are scared, desperate and start rioting in streets...

Greece is an interesting example - those people have two choices - bailout and
buy more time for making things better or be out of jobs and with no pension -
they choose the latter because they think that the "banker overlords will
screw us over" - the heck does that even mean?

~~~
fennecfoxen
"Hands, and _not_ the robot kind either?" Why not use the robot kind? You're
already investing in a fair little bit of capital. As a 3-D printing factory
scales up, why wouldn't they invest in additional automation for handling
materials that may products have in common?

~~~
jakeonthemove
True, it's possible to do it (the ABB Frida is the first thing that comes to
mind - it's pretty damn impressive, just needs a set of legs/wheels), but
setting everything up will most likely be more expensive than just hiring
people, at least by 2030...

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yehuda_lopez
Can anyone give some insight as to what magical energy solution the author is
referring to?

It sounds too good to be true.

~~~
leonardo54
Sure, he goes into much more detail in this post -
[http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2012/02/dismantling-of-our-
po...](http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2012/02/dismantling-of-our-power-
industry-infrastructure/) \- and he lists a person to contact

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gexla
Great, that means 2 billion fewer suckers get to live it up while those who
are left have to slave away to bankroll the rest.

I could see this model turning into something which looks like poor nations
such as the Philippines. Not that the global economy would go to crap and
every country would be poor, but rather that a large number of people in a
family either don't work or work very little while receiving food, money and a
place to live from the working members of the family. Even those who do work
often receive so little for that work that they need a piece of the remittance
pie to be able to afford anything more than the bare basics. Despite this (or
perhaps because of it) people here in general seem to be very happy.

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waiwai933
The major problem I have with this is with "Education". Education does not
solely consist of listening to lectures; it's a process that takes place
between the educator and the student, and sometimes, you need a faculty member
to talk to, simply because you have questions that are different from everyone
else's. Khan Academy and similar efforts only go so far—not everyone learns
best the same way. Colleges will certainly evolve and change in their
methodology, but I don't believe that jobs in academia will change and/or
disappear so drastically.

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stretchwithme
Somewhat accurate. But I don't see why we would need more emergency workers
when things go wrong with robotic transportation. We should be needing fewer.

And we'll have more automated emergency workers that can, for example,
delivered medical care to someone before they can even be removed from a
collapsed car or crushed building.

And why would we need dispatchers?

