
Why Dilbert Is Doomed - ojbyrne
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/11/02/healthcare_employment/print.html
======
kalendae
My rather incoherent take on this is that wealth is really not generated by
people as much anymore. The things we use/want are really produced by machines
plus a few workers. It is not really that worker producing the products, it is
a combination of historical capital leading up to that machine and then some
time the worker is putting in. Basically, we are moving towards a system where
wealth is generated by machines but distributed by a weird combination of
factors that is heavily historical (who spent the capital on this production
to have it happen?). If you work in the stock market you get a certain share
of that distribution, if your dad owns a hotel chain you get a certain share,
if you collect aluminum cans on the streets of SF you get a certain share. It
is all a heavily artificial system of distribution that is very historically
based (more so than incentive based i think). Yes, being a successful
entrepreneur will get you are larger share percent, but for the same
effort/luck 1000 years ago (even if the political system was same as now and
favorable to startups) the same share percent would be tiny compared to today.
(kinda like bill gates added a lot of value but he got way more cuz its
amplified by all the machines in the world) But my point is it is no longer
about how much you produce directly but how much of that distribution goes to
you.

Traditionally, a humongous proportion came here to the US and its workers,
again due to historical reasons (and personally i feel deservedly so or
atleast close enough). But it basically went like the US increase the whole
pie so much that it got more of it. But as globalization happens it is
apparent that unless you are a capitalist, your share of the distribution
simply has no reason to grow but a lot of pressure to shrink so that it
equalizes more globally.

so i think short of the US coming up with more things that just dramatically
increases the whole pie again, theres only two choices to maintain your
standard of living, have capital so you have the power to get your share, or
support some form of socialism that hopefully doesn't reduce incentive to the
point of reducing the whole pie.

~~~
cwan
The reality is that technology is making capital less relevant to capitalism.
The world today is far more favorable to startups/good ideas than ever before.

If you have a great idea, it takes less money and effort to develop it and
spread it around. Capital actively looks for you. Take any of the support
services to business as examples (from printing to telecommunication - long
distance fees anyone? mobile phones? to computing power to manufacturing). Who
cares what percentage of the pie you have? It's your living standards that
matter - and that's what's risen dramatically for almost every socio economic
and demographic group with the exception of a few in places like Africa who
live under horrific despots. I can't remember who first made the comment that
the average 12 year old today gets more intellectual stimulation than Queen
Victoria might have in her day.

You can lament the fact that even if you're extraordinarily successful you
might not control as much resources as Bill Gates does as a percentage of the
pie, but look a little further back in history to those like Rockefeller, JP
Morgan, who controlled even more and wielded considerably more power. Is Bill
Gates' life better than theirs? I would suggest that with the exception of the
ability to use their power (which has declined considerably) nearly all other
metrics would suggest this is the case. This, at least for the rest of us,
seems like a good thing to me.

This idea that short term unemployment is relevant to anything at all is
somewhat silly since it doesn't even begin to explain US unemployment versus
Europe's chronically high unemployment rates. Further, while I can accept that
industries change, this fear that technology results in less employment just
doesn't track with history.

The pie grows with better ideas. With the average person increasingly being
able to contribute directly to the development ideas, I suspect we will have a
considerably brighter future than some of these pundits suggest.

------
rms
Unemployment is going to increase even more in the future. There just isn't
enough work to be done anymore. Increasingly sophisticated robots are going to
render even more workers irrelevant. Exactly what happens to these unemployed
humans is going to determine whether we are living in a dystopia or a utopia.
If the corporations have their say, it will be a dystopia.

~~~
ojbyrne
Your comment reminds me of the early 19th century. There was this group called
the "Luddites" that believed the same thing. It didn't turn out as they
predicted.

~~~
natrius
There's an important difference between the 19th century and today. We are
nearing the point when computers will be mentally equal, if not superior, to
humans. They are already physically superior in many regards. Even before that
point, there are tons of jobs that can be done by machines with minimal
intelligence. If a machine can do everything that many humans can, but for
less money, those humans will be unemployable. If machines are stronger than
you and smarter than you, then there's nothing for you to shift to that they
aren't already doing.

~~~
ars
> We are nearing the point when computers will be mentally equal, if not
> superior, to humans.

No we aren't. We are no closer now than we were 50 years ago. The hardware is
faster, but the software has not changed. (And hardware is not getting faster
anymore either.)

~~~
natrius
Seriously? We have cars that _drive themselves_. The realm of tasks that only
humans can do shrinks every year. We're not _close_ to computers equaling
humans, but we are _nearing_ it.

~~~
moe
I agree. The interesting question is not when robots will be equal or even
superior to humans. The interesting question is when they will be advanced
enough to take over a significant portion of labor for cheaper than even a
chinese slave worker could.

Looking at what Asimo can do _today_ it seems to me we're not far away from
the latter; <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg>

The physical, mechanics part seems to be mostly sorted out. Robots can walk,
run, climb stairs, avoid obstacles, get up when they fall, lift heavy things
or operate at incredible precision. It won't be long until they exceed us
humans in most physical regards (with a few notable exceptions like smelling
or touch-sensitive skin, but imho even that is only a matter of time).

In my opinion the really interesting research is now going into the stuff you
see in the video above. Making robots discover and interact intelligently with
their environment. This is still a far cry from real intelligence but try to
imagine the impact when robots become able to execute simple instructions like
"Make me a coffee", "Drag the couch from A to B" or even "Repair the plumbing"
without further handholding.

That will be the tipping point for a huge shift in society, akin to the
invention of bookprinting or the internet, likely even bigger.

Looking at what we have today I would say _that_ specific vision is just a
matter of time. Whatever follows then is in the pudding.

~~~
thisrod
Last week, I heard a talk from one of the engineers doing this. He claimed
that the main thing holding back robotics is liability concerns. If someone
builds a machine that causes widespread death and destruction, the usual cop-
out is to blame the operator for losing control of it. But if a fully
autonomous robot goes postal, the manufacturer can't pass the buck to anyone.

Perhaps this will be a real issue, or perhaps robot engineers are a bit too
fond of _Terminator_ and _2001_. Fear of it is apparently causing real
effects. It would be sad if the ultimate reason to employ humans is that it
feels good to kick their arses when things go wrong.

------
DanielStraight
Out of curiosity, what constitutes the fifth (I refuse to use an even more
obscure -ary word) sector?

~~~
queensnake
Mortuary services.

More seriously, I think there are a couple of possible meanings to the '-ary'
progression: if more abstract, making use of the lower levels, the quintary
must be finance. If the progression is 'less directly crucial to life', then
it probably is the whole service sector. Entertainment would be pretty far out
there.

A 'mixed feeling' aspect to this is, that free software is greatly helping
this along.

~~~
DanielStraight
I ask primarily because I'm curious where programming lies. Programming seems
inescapably _meta_. Also, thank you for an excellent answer to a rather vague
question.

------
joe_the_user
_The most numerous and stable jobs of tomorrow will be those that cannot be
offshored, because they must be performed on U.S. soil, and also cannot be
automated, either because they require a high degree of creativity or because
they rely on the human touch in face-to-face interactions. The latter are
sometimes called "proximity services" and they include the fastest-growing
occupations, healthcare and education._

I don't think that jobs that can't be automated will in demand unless they
also add to US competitiveness on the world market. If healthcare or education
is just about bloat, it's not going to grow forever...

------
rmason
The pundits are poor at predicting future jobs. When I was a freshman in
college I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be an electrical engineer or a
journalist.

I was counseled that there would be few opportunities in electrical
engineering, four graudates to every job. But in journalism there would be
four jobs for every student.

So I chose Journalism and in four years it was exactly the reverse. You have
as much chance of these guys being right as knowing what the weather would be
like in a month.

------
msluyter
Obligatory link to Robotic Nation:

<http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm>

~~~
windsurfer
I always sigh in frustration when I read things like _"The problem is that
these systems will also eliminate jobs in massive numbers."_.

Honestly! If these jobs are eliminated, that's a wonderful thing! It increases
the average work that the average worker is doing. This increases their
average salary. This is not a problem!

The only real problem is getting these temporarily unemployed people an
education and a new job. That's not a very big problem, as markets tend to
make work when work is available. For instance, where did all the factory
workers come from at the start of the industrial revolution? Everyone was
working before then, presumably, as there was no such thing as welfare from
the government. The workers came from industries that were torn down by the
industrial revolution. We don't have cotton pickers anymore. We don't plow by
hand. We don't have many of the menial labour jobs we had a hundred years ago,
yet unemployment is less than 10% in Canada. The market equalized itself.

Where can these cashiers go? Perhaps preparing food. I wonder if we could
start seeing more healthy restaurants that are more closely approaching the
true cost of food at a grocery store. Since it costs less to have the store
open, since the cash is automated, one could easily see that there would be
more money available for food preparation.

The market _will_ find a place for these workers, and everyone on average
_will_ see a net benefit from getting rid of non-producing jobs.

~~~
moe
_The market will find a place for these workers, and everyone on average will
see a net benefit from getting rid of non-producing jobs._

You're being optimistic and I hope you'll be right.

The big question is if we will be able to adapt fast enough, without erasing
ourselves in a nuclear war or such.

Robots are just a different ballgame than the industrial revolution. The
industrial revolution was mostly confined to the production-sector. A modern
machine could replace a hundred workers with one. Robots on the other hand
could very well erase entire industries, reaching far into the service-sector.

What do you do with hundreds of millions of humans who suddenly are not needed
for productive work anymore?

------
nopinsight
Peter Drucker wrote a while back that jobs in high demand in the 21st century
will be those that combine both knowledge and manual skills.

From the article, it seems that he was as prescient as in most other cases.

