Why Robots Won't Cause Mass Unemployment

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Oh believe me I know more history than the average academic weinee. You said, "The purpose of any business is to make money not to create job." Now you are using the straw man fallacy or you missed my entire point. Companies prefer technology like automation and A.I. because then they can hire less people. Thus, it allows them make more money. I never argued that a company was not in business to make money. You said that and then argued it as if I disagreed. Haha! Technology is growing exponentially and not linear as you are implying in your 200 + year argument.

Please see chart below,

Image result for technology growth rate Then you said, "And like before new needs and jobs will be created. Why do you think that things will remain static?" It will not work that way because the technology will take over most jobs. Thus, creating a huge welfare class. We are about 13 years from that point. Me: “Yes they did, but many of their new jobs, like their previous job, are slowly and incrementally being impacted by automation and A.I.” You: "And like before new needs and jobs will be created. Why do you think that things will remain static?" I just said the new jobs would be impacted my new technology, and it's only a matter of time before the people have to migrate to another job that's also being impacted by technology. That's not Static. I can tell you are confused on what is static. If technology is changing an industry, company, etc.., then it's dynamic and not static. Static is what you see for the most part on a college campus or in government agencies. Anyway, to answer your question because this is the current trend. It the direction we are heading, and we are seeing it impacting most things. I'm following the trends. "Where do you think millions of ignorant farmers who lost their jobs to farm mechanization at the turn of last century ran off to? As I said, study a bit of history, it’ll do you good. (I’m curious, How old are you?)" There you go again comparing apples to oranges. Fighting the last war instead of the current war and living in the present. The past is nothing but a guide. It's like a reading a script when you are new to something vs. improvising, overcoming and adapting when well versed, seasoned and/or experienced. This does not mean ignore your history, but use the past as a guide. Nothing wrong with looking back, but that does not guarantee what the future will look like. Past performance does not guarantee future results or success. We live in a dynamic world. History doesn't repeat it rhymes. Finally, please do not patronize me by asking me my age. I have been around for a while. Now I understand your mindset. You are only thinking about your generation. The baby boomers are the first generation of Americans to royally screw all future American generations. The good news is the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. Hopefully, we can do it peacefully. For the record, I am generation X. Generation Z is the generation that is the most conservative since the great depression. They are just getting started. You then said, Me: “You are arguing an old debate that’s already over.” You: "Oh, settled science, I see!! How could I possibly argue against “settled opinion”." Science is never settled. This is just where the debate is at because people can see it taking over. Oh and as for the unemployment rate. That is the U-4 report which was changed from the U-6 report under Obama. This is because the real unemployment rate was a lot higher. Under Obama we had close to 100 million people out of work, but the U-4 unemployment rate still kept falling while the number of people not in the work force increased. This never happened before unle Obama switched off from the U-6 report. It was joke and conservatives like Limbaugh and Matt Drudge ridiculed it. I do like what President Trump is doing and a huge supporter of him. I think he has a lot of #NeverTrumpers and Obama left overs he needs to fire. "Are the robots going to buy their own products, or will all the unemployed people buy the products with the money they don’t have? Do you see the idiocy in that scenario?" That's another part of the debate. That's where the "livable wage" is being promoted by Mark Zuckerberg because technology is taking over. For the record, I have served the country for 8 years in the United States Marines. I have a college education, and have been working for major Global Corporation for over 20 years. I suggest reading or listening to the book, "The Pentagon's Brain" by Annie Jacobson. It will give you a better idea of where we are at technology wise.

I’m looking to go back to night school for a few classes in industrial robotics.

You might start here.

Thank you so much!

I’ve bookmarked it for reviewing.

There are two automation systems in wide use. I provided a pointer to the Rockwell-Allen Bradly/Wonderware approach popular here in the US. In Europe Siemens is dominant.

Wonderware is used for the Human Machine Interface. You can find more about it here. It is also worthy of study.

I’ve heard the engineering crowd in the other building talk about Wonderware.

They don’t care for us in the MIS department with the probable exception of me since I treat people as I would like to be.

This is a great analysis......

....right up until the very second robotic AI becomes human-level-or-above-intelligence, and self-aware.

At that very second, all standard market laws go out the window, and the game changes too drastically to know what the rules even are.

Are humans then obsolete, destined for extinction? Will there be a mutual struggle for survival? Will the AI be so alien to us that we can never predict how the outcome goes?

Bonus benefit.. the company dodges taxes paid for hiring citizens.

When anybody says, "There's nothing to be afraid of," it's time to at least consider why you should be afraid.

When somebody says, "It will all balance out in the end," you ought to at least consider that it won't.

Other people (or robots) have come up with some excellent objections to your article.

I've had enough experience with mises.org to know enough not to bother with that site, and just wanted to point out to those who haven't run across them before, that they aren't the most reliable source out there.

“When anybody says, “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” it’s time to at least consider why you should be afraid.
When somebody says, “It will all balance out in the end,” you ought to at least consider that it won’t.”

Granted. And when Chicken Little or Algore says the sky is falling you might want to look up and see for yourself - maybe you’re being taken for a ride... or worse.

“I’ve had enough experience with mises.org to know enough not to bother with that site,”

I’m venturing to guess that because of your bias against that site you didn’t bother to read the article and thus don’t know what it said. In other words you’re not following your own advice, i.e to consider the arguments of someone making an assertion, positive or negative, and not to dismiss it out of hand, as you seem to be doing.

In this case the guy that wrote the article did exactly what you suggest - look into the merits of the arguments that “robotistas” are making, and he found them wanting.

You may or may not agree with him, but as you yourself say, you should at least consider them.

You’re turning this into a job! :)

“Now you are using the straw man fallacy or you missed my entire point.”

Neither. You’re point was that advance in technology cause companies to use less human workers and thus unemployment would inevitably go up.

What I pointed out was that technology has been advancing forever, yet unemployment hasn’t changed that much.

Regarding your graph I have several questions and observations...

1. What are the unit on the Y-axis? There’s nothing there. Which leads me to think it is a subjective curve someone made up to promote his point. How does one measure technological advance? What’s more of an advance the invention of the wheel or the transistor, fire or the iphone?

2. The person that fabricated that curve ASSUMED an exponential function to create that steep rise at the end which is the present. But what you need to realize is that that curve would have looked identical regardless of what point in time one chooses as “the present”. Someone in the 1850’s would have come up with the same exact curve with the steep rise corresponding to HIS present, if he had assumed the same exponential technological growth.

3. For the sake of argument, let’s even say that that curve does represent reasonably well technological advances. The really steep part started in 1950. Now, the point of this discussion we’re having is trying to predict the impact of technological advances on human jobs.

4. Your contention (and that of the robots scaremongering) is that technology destroys human jobs and that there aren’t enough new jobs created to keep these people employed. If that is true the unemployment rate from the 50’s onwards should have skyrocketed today, like the technology line on your graph. In other words the rate of unemployment and technology advance should track very closely. We should have 90% or more unemployment today.

5. But, as we all know, that is absolutely not true. The unemployment today is roughly the same as it was in the 50”s and has been around that same level, plus or minus 5% throughout that time. So the correlation between technological advances and unemployment is nonexistent. And one can make the case that the opposite is true, which is that the higher the level of technology the higher the employment, because since the 50’s the US population has doubled so a lot more jobs must have been created to keep the unemployment rate about the same, despite all the jobs destroyed by advancing technology.

One final point about the people whose opinion you regard so highly Joy, Musk, Gates etc. These have all accomplished great things in their specific fields of interest and I respect them for those specific accomplishments.

But these same people whose prediction of the future regarding robots taking all the jobs away and human unemployment skyrocketing, you believe, also buy into Algore’s vision of the world - that the world is going to literally go to hell temperature wise.

Yet I gather from your comments that you don’t buy into this global warming alarmism of theirs. So what makes you so sure that they’re so wise on the impact of robotics on unemployment and such fools on global warming?

(My reason for not believing them on either case is because both are outside their areas of expertise. Unemployment is the realm of economics and human nature, which as far as I know none of them are experts in those areas, and climate is also outside their fields of expertise. There’s one more thing to consider - their motivations, since as far as I know they’re all liberals, that might very well taint their “predictions” in order to advance leftist policies that are dear to them, such as government control of energy, as well as “guaranteed income”)

One last thing. I appreciate you telling me a bit about your background, and I thank you for your service. As for me I’m retired, enjoy discussing philosophy, science, politics, economics... I have graduate degrees in Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Software Engineering. Worked for GE designing Nuclear Reactors, and worked in high tech in Silicon Valley in the area of CAD, printing and scanning, and image processing, where we actually did some rudimentary AI in image recognition.

First, it’s not me saying this. I am just telling you what the industry heads are saying. The people that have done amazing things to change our world.

You are quoting politicians that many like Al Gore have not innovated squat but scams on the people. There is a BIG difference. Apples to oranges comparison.

You said, “What I pointed out was that technology has been advancing forever, yet unemployment hasn’t changed that much.”

Okay but now you are assuming technology will continue to improve at a linear rate vs. exponential. A.I. will advance faster and faster. Ditto robots, automatons trucks, cars, ships, planes, etc...

Case in point.... Technology has advanced faster in the last 150 years than in the previous 5,000 years.

You can see the change in our life time every decade. For instance, the difference in technology from 1970 to 1980, 1980 to 1990, 1990 to 2000, 2000 to 2010 and 2010 to now. It kept getting faster every 10 years. Although I’ll admit it’s hard to see year from year.

There are new technologies that will be out too very soon too like 5G, Quantum Chips and graphene, Space X, etc... that are beginning to emerge that will give us the great leap.

I have gone down the rabbit hole on both subjects to quickly realize the Global Warming argument is an old scam. There are more holes in it than a strainer.

The technology growth is the real deal. We can see it, use it, etc...

It’s okay have a difference of opinion. I guess in 15 years we will all know for sure by then.

“What do ya think?”

Your exactly right. Every tool or device that makes labor simpler and easier or allows more work to be done is all in the same category as ‘robots’. Engineered devices have been changing live since forever. Many times something has come along to ‘change everything’ and well... we are still here. Horse collars drastically changed human society. So-called robots have been doing that for a long time.

Times change. People adapt. Society changes. Life goes on.

It's really remarkable how the world adapts to new methods and automation. Ralph W. Emerson had a lot to say about Wealth. One of my favorite passages...

And if you should take out of the powerful class engaged in trade a hundred good men, and put in a hundred bad, or, what is just the same thing, introduce a demoralizing institution, would not the dollar, which is not much stupider than an apple-tree, presently find it out?

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society. Every man who moves into this city, with any purchasable talent or skill in him, gives to every man's labor in the city, a new worth. If a talent is anywhere born into the world, the community of nations is enriched.

Wealth from The Conduct of Life (1860, rev. 1876)

A couple final comments...

“First, it’s not me saying this. I am just telling you what the industry heads are saying. The people that have done amazing things to change our world.

You are quoting politicians that many like Al Gore have not innovated squat but scams on the people. There is a BIG difference. Apples to oranges comparison.”

No, what I pointed out is that the same industry heads that you extol, believe in the fraud that Algore is pushing - global warming, aka climate change. So if you believe they are such far seeing Nostradamuses , shouldn’t you also believe what they believe wrt global warming?

“Okay but now you are assuming technology will continue to improve at a linear rate vs. exponential.”

No, I’m using your curve, which shows that technology has been increasing at an exponential rate forever, which by your assertion should have been a net destroyer of human jobs forever, and thus we should currently have 90%+ unemployment.

“Case in point.... Technology has advanced faster in the last 150 years than in the previous 5,000 years.”

And what has happened to human employment during those 150 years? It has skyrocketed in total numbers since there has been a population explotion in those 150 years.

“The technology growth is the real deal. We can see it, use it, etc...”

Nobody is denying that!! What we’re discussing is whether that technology growth will cause huge unemployment. And during the technological explosion of the past 150 years nothing of the sort has happened. In fact the opposite has happened - billions of jobs have been created worldwide.

“It’s okay have a difference of opinion. I guess in 15 years we will all know for sure by then.”

Of course. We’re talking about the future, and as Yogi Berra reminded us “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” And so we can all have our opinions and until the future comes we can all claim to be equally right.

But what makes this an important issue today is what the left plans to do with it. The left has glommed on to it as another crisis - a great opportunity to scare people into giving them more power to advance their agenda. You’re probably too young to remember McGovern. When he ran for president he advocated a universal guaranteed income. Back then at a saner time he was laughed out of politics. But that dream of the left has never gone away. And today they’re using the “robots are coming” scaremongering as the perfect opportunity to reintroduce the idea and to finally institutionalize it.

Don’t fall for it. If you think institutionalized welfare has been a disaster, “guaranteed income” will be a much bigger disaster - guaranteed.

OK - I’m done.