

Robots and the Future of Unemployment - msluyter
http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/08/robots_and_the_future_of_unemployment.php

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kiba
When there's scarcity, there's alway work. The only issue is what prices you
are willing to accept or is allowed to accept for your labor.

If there are no scarcity, then there are no need for the existence of jobs and
we all live happily in a utopian society.

~~~
msluyter
The problem, however, is that somewhere along the way to that utopian society,
there's a point where our traditional economy collapses because too many
people are structurally unemployed. How do we handle that? What replaces our
traditional economy? That's the interesting question, IMHO.

~~~
timwiseman
Good question. One possible, partial answer is through making it easier to
gain the new skills needed. The unskilled labor market can die relatively
peacefully so long as there is a proper glid path to skilled labor for those
people being displaced.

~~~
yalurker
There is a limit to how many people can be trained to do skilled labor though.
We may like to imagine that everyone could, given the opportunity, do "skilled
labor", but reality will be that automation will continue to slide the bar up
as to how talented a person needs to be to be better than their automated
replacement.

Right now, maybe less than 1 percent of the population can't do something
better than a machine could. Fast forward 50 or 100 years, and maybe half the
population genuinely cannot do anything that a machine couldn't do better.

~~~
timwiseman
I both hope and sincerely think you are wrong. People improve with practice.
Give them enough training to get that practice and they will improve.

Yes, the bar of what the machines can do is high, and rising, but there are a
lot of things they will not be able to do for the forseeable future such as
program, write, do most repairs, or pick heads of lettuce. At least for the
immediate future, anything that is not repetitive and fixed in task will be
hard to automate, but relatively easy to train a normal person for.

~~~
moe
_do most repairs, or pick heads of lettuce_

These are purely rule-based, mechnical tasks. I would say those are among the
first to go into robot hands.

 _At least for the immediate future, anything that is not repetitive and fixed
in task will be hard to automate, but relatively easy to train a normal person
for._

Well, immediate future is a relative term. Looking at what Asimo and other
robotics projects can do _today_ I very much expect the robots of 2050 to be
capable of performing around 90% of all jobs better than a human.

There simply isn't much creativity or "humanity" involved in most jobs.

~~~
kiba
Sometime the only way to beat the machine is to join them.

So that mean becoming a cyborg and improving our brain with mechanical brain
cells and exploiting our natural parallel computing capacity.

We just need a programming language and interface/translation machinery and
firmware to take advantage of these natural CPUs.

~~~
extension
In order to beat machines at being employed, the special cybernetic ability
you would need is "working for free".

------
modeless
I don't expect this to be a problem within my lifetime. As we get more
efficient we can easily reverse the trend toward 2-income families, and then
start shortening the work week. Who could say no to a 32 hour week, or even
shorter?

At some point we may have to switch to an alternative economic system not
based on labor (perhaps Cory Doctorow's "Whuffie", and I recommend "Down and
Out in the Magic Kingdom" for anyone interested), but that will be a long time
from now and I suspect by then the choices will be more obvious and
incremental.

~~~
natrius
The problem is that today's unskilled workers aren't going to be the robot
owners of the future. Increases in productivity will allow us to produce more
with less work, but access to those gains won't be equal. You can't just start
making everyone work less and have the numbers magically work out to support
everyone. You would have to force those who own the means of production to
share their wealth with those who don't.

How old are you? If you're less than 40, I wouldn't be so sure about this not
being a problem in your lifetime.

~~~
modeless
"today's unskilled workers aren't going to be the robot owners of the future"

Careful with your crystal ball there; you might end up sounding like the
people who predicted similar things about computers. Robots will become very
cheap in the future; they won't be exclusive to the "bourgeoisie".

"You can't just start making everyone work less"

Who said anything about making? That's far too authoritarian for my liking.
People will choose to work less when they can achieve the lifestyle they want
with less work. It will take a while for this to become socially acceptable,
but I think it will happen.

I am less than 40, and I would be happy indeed if this became a problem during
my lifetime, but I'm still skeptical.

~~~
pyre
The 'price' of robots as well as computers could be greatly affected by
increased scarcity in materials. A lot of the base materials in today's
electronics aren't exactly abundant.

I think this is one of the problems with a lot of technological 'forward-
thinking'. Issues like this tend to be swept under the rug as if supplies of
crucial building materials were not a concern at all. I would say it's a very
real possibility that we could run out of a particular material with no
replacement/alternative, especially as the march of progress causes us to
consume more and more and more of these source materials.

~~~
modeless
As nanotech advances we will gain the ability to replace more and more rare
elements with common ones. In the far future there's no reason why our
technology couldn't be based entirely on nanoscale structures made of only the
cheapest, most abundant elements. After all, nature does it just fine.

