Mmmmm. I have my doubts. Sure people will be freed up, but most of what people will be freed up to do will already be getting done by robots.
As long as there is free-market capitalism, there will be jobs. Precisely because we will think of new ones.
Take away or erode free-market capitalism, all bets are off. Even without robots.
There was a big demo of a unmanned-driverless vehicle here in Germany within the past six months. They’ve already tasked the federal agency here to start reviewing the regulations and how a driverless vehicle would be ‘controlled’. The gut feeling is that it’ll happen within a decade.
So, you start to assume that truck deliveries, buses, and taxi-drivers will be replaced within three decades. What occupation do you think they will take up?
Then you start to look at grocery operations. Within three decades....a normal twenty-man employee situation with the local Piggly Wiggly? It’ll be six guys total, with automation running the normal day-to-day shelf-process and purchases.
Your local bank? Your local pharmacy? Your local gas station? By the end of this century....I would be able to lay off fifty percent of the current employee base existing today. Where exactly do you think they will be working? It’s not my job as the government to care...but there is a consequence to this path and if you have twenty million Americans who used to be employed and now they aren’t....there’s bound to be a bit of trouble arising eventually.
It’s not just anyone who is going to be able to maintain and reprogram these machines. Generally speaking, one machine needs an adjustment in its commands to change tasks, also needs checkups from time to time. But similar to solar panels, a few people can handle the maintenance on MANY robots as contractors.
So will robots free Chinese peasants or will they free the American lower class?
Well, yes. The issue now isn’t a lack of unskilled labor, but of skilled labor. How will this help...if one proposes to replace low skill positions with high skill positions?
That has been the fear ever since the Industrial Revolution. It never happened. It likely won't again.
If new jobs aren't created for humans, it will be the result of government policies that make hiring too expensive; not new forms of automation.
I can imagine where having paid human servants becomes a status symbol again, imagined as a social good because it provides employment.