automation could also do the opposite....liberalize and spread technology. Imagine a world where owning an "advanced" production robot costs $500-$1,000. Right now people view automation technology as being very expensive but if you look at trends in automation technology the price of that technology is actually declining so even small businesses can utilize the same technology as the mega corporations of the world.
> Right now people view automation technology as being very expensive but if you look at trends in automation technology the price of that technology is actually declining so even small businesses can utilize the same technology as the mega corporations of the world.
The computer is the greatest automation tool for office work, and that scenario is obviously not the case if you look at what happened to the PC revolution. Local area networks with various file and application servers were a huge market for small and medium sized businesses, and there was lots of hype similar to what you are describing. Now everyone is back to centralizing on virtualized remotely leased computers, just like small and medium sized businesses used leased time-shared (and for IBM 370 series, virtualized) remote mainframes in the 1970s.
Same thing happened with the centralization of the automobile industry in the 1910s, and is happening today in the centralization of agriculture: better combines, tractors, Round-Up pesticides etc. are all available to family farmers, which are all being bankrupted by large factory farms.
This is a really good point. Prices for new tech always go down over time, and it's unlikely automation tech will be any different here. It won't just be big companies automating jobs, it'll be people using similar tech for a ton of things.
Of course, there's also an interesting worry that's not connected to jobs here, namely, whether we may end up in a new age of SaaS companies selling automation to small and medium sized businesses as their main business model. Imagine if instead of large companies using tech alone, or people buying these machines alone, the likes of Google/Amazon/Microsoft/whatever started leasing them through an AWS esque service for X amount of dollars a month. We've already got Maker Labs and what not, this could be the future for that.
I agree, that's a good point, and the way that I really hope it goes. I think it depends on how we use the tech; it's a huge opportunity for decentralization and good things for the little guys. It's kind of what Aristotle said about wealth, it isn't good or bad in itself, but how it is used is what makes it good or bad.
