The number of quotable quotes in this article is absolutely astounding. But this one stood out to me the most:
> "The increased possibilities for embezzlement through fraudulent accounting may attract some of the resulting unemployed, but there are ways that the computer can be deputized to police its own operation, quietly and without danger of corruption."
As it outright acknowledges increased unemployment stemming from the ease by which computers can do the same task that it would normally have taken hundreds of individuals to accomplish.
And yet, to this day, we still refuse to acknowledge this. Most of the politicians running this country (U.S.) were children (or teenagers) when this article came out. At what point did humanity decide to just ignore the impending changes a fully computational world was bringing?
In theory, automation does not ensure unemployment, but it does lower wages. In theory, so long as you have a central government that is willing to engage in enough fiscal stimulus, and a central bank that is willing to engage in enough monetary stimulus, then a society can always achieve full employment. However, automation lowers the value of unskilled labor, and certain types of automation can invalidate the value of certain types of skill, so for unskilled labor and for certain types of skills, automation lowers wages. See:
"If this is the wave of the future, it makes nonsense of just about all the conventional wisdom on reducing inequality. Better education won’t do much to reduce inequality if the big rewards simply go to those with the most assets. Creating an “opportunity society”, or whatever it is the likes of Paul Ryan etc. are selling this week, won’t do much if the most important asset you can have in life is, well, lots of assets inherited from your parents. And so on.
I think our eyes have been averted from the capital/labor dimension of inequality, for several reasons. It didn’t seem crucial back in the 1990s, and not enough people (me included!) have looked up to notice that things have changed. It has echoes of old-fashioned Marxism — which shouldn’t be a reason to ignore facts, but too often is. And it has really uncomfortable implications."
"Mechanization eventually — that is, after a couple of generations — led to a broad rise in British living standards. But it’s far from clear whether typical workers reaped any benefits during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution; many workers were clearly hurt. And often the workers hurt most were those who had, with effort, acquired valuable skills — only to find those skills suddenly devalued."
Also, the typical analysis of the Industrial Revolution only looks at workers in one country, rather than studying the impact that cheap exports from England had on nations such as India or China. The reality is that a small number of rapidly industrializing nations were able to export their unemployment overseas. The devastation caused by the Industrial Revolution lasted for centuries and some countries (India) have still not recovered even now.
> "The increased possibilities for embezzlement through fraudulent accounting may attract some of the resulting unemployed, but there are ways that the computer can be deputized to police its own operation, quietly and without danger of corruption."
As it outright acknowledges increased unemployment stemming from the ease by which computers can do the same task that it would normally have taken hundreds of individuals to accomplish.
And yet, to this day, we still refuse to acknowledge this. Most of the politicians running this country (U.S.) were children (or teenagers) when this article came out. At what point did humanity decide to just ignore the impending changes a fully computational world was bringing?