

Ask HN: Socioeconomic implications of automation? - uhlenhuthm

For my senior thesis, I'm doing a project on the implications of pervasive automation of almost all production.  My current thinking on the matter is that we're going to see a continuation of rising unemployment in the US and a further divide between a very small number of rich (that own/invent the automated means of production) and the masses of poor unemployed.  It's already happening today (Redbox/Netflix?  Amazon?  Kiva?).  My guess is that we'll see upwards of 30-40% unemployment in the US in the next 30 years.  This clearly isn't a sustainable or desirable (for most) outcome and it seems as though we need a fundamental socioeconomic restructuring in order to avoid total collapse.  Martin Ford's "Lights in the Tunnel" addresses this issue, but there seems to be hardly any other discussion of this topic.  Is the technology just a long way off?  Do most economists just think that the economy will always have a use for all human labor?  What do you guys think?
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Mz
I read once that France has way too many highly educated people. The result is
that a person can have a Master's degree and be waiting tables. People need to
work, regardless of what the larger context is with regards to such things.
Yes, context can and does change individual opportunities but people still
make choices. Increased automation doesn't necessarily lead to a specific
outcome. That is one possibility. Another is that we adapt as a culture and
come up with a means to use the freed-up labor of actual thinking human beings
for more complex labor, thus allowing society to create something of value
which could not exist without freeing up so many people from drudgery.

It's been said that the Chinese word for "crisis" is written with a
combination of symbols meaning "danger" and "opportunity". Great change always
involves danger. But that doesn't mean that stasis is superior.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22>

