I completely oppose socialism, big government, or government charity. I don't want a welfare state. However, if the machines do most of the work, then how are YOU going to get a pay check? If you don't need to work, then how are you going to put food on the table?
Once upon a time (early 1800s) the world found that it had too many farm workers -- so people moved off the farms and into cities, and they worked in factories.
Once upon a time (mid 20th century) the US found that it had too many manufacturing workers -- so people moved out to the suburbs and commuted to their jobs in cubicle-land.
At some point, there won't be anywhere to go. We will be producing "stuff" -- but there won't be an obvious justification to give you a pay check so that you can buy the "stuff".
Then what happens?
Somebody has to build the robots, at least for now, and because the robots are so lucrative, that will be a well paying trade. Now when robots can build other robots, then the world may be on the brink of being taken over by the robots.
YOU are going to become more educated and will learn to design the robots. YOU will also plan the assembly floor plan layout. YOU will program the robots. YOU will also maintain the robots. YOU will perform time studies to see how you can optimize he manufacturing process on order to increase throughput. YOU will earn more than you would have otherwise if you were putting these products together by hand.
YOU are no longer a bank teller. YOU design ATM machines and maintain them.
There are no longer people employed by cities to shovel horse manure from the streets each night due to he invention of the automobile. Oh, pity that.
Great minds and all that.
It is quite possible that capitalism and technology, like other human ideologies and practices, contains the seeds of its own destruction.
I certainly hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.
What is most interesting to me is that absolutely nobody in politics is discussing this biggest issue of our time, the loss of economic demand for less-intelligent workers.
It is radioactive, at least in this country, because certain minority groups are disproportionately concentrated in the lower IQ range, and therefore any discussion becomes about race. Which in a very real sense has little to do with it.
Try looking at the view point of abundance rather than scarcity.
Humans have shown remarkable resilience whenever industries become outmoded to invent whole new industries to improve our standard of living.
There was a time when people were truly free and could live happily off their own land. They could buy land and actually own it. The political extortionists came along and ruined it all by taxing what wasn't theirs to tax, regulating what wasn't theirs to regulate, and confiscating what wasn't theirs to confiscate.
The problem isn't the freedom to survive. The problem is the lack of freedom to survive.
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Somebody has to build the robots, somebody has to repair them, somebody has to supervise production, etc.
There will always be jobs for human beings, but a lot of the bottom line jobs (picking up a piece of wire and threading it through a hole thousands of times a day, for example) will be done by robots. The same was true when things like mechanical looms took over the cottage weaving industry.
We don’t need to be Luddites about this. It’s a fact of life and technology, like it or not, is unstoppable.
Human beings will move to other jobs where being a human being interacting with human beings is important, and technology actually frees us to do that.
I don’t think any of the Chinese semi-slave labor in the factories wants to be there and if they could find some other way to make a living, they would.
Heck, our immigrant chicken pluckers here at the Tyson plants don’t want to spend their days doing this disgusting job, so they save their pennies and go open some tiny business of their own somewhere. But the Chinese don’t have that option.
The point is time and technology moves on,we need to move with it or get left behind. I`m not going to pay thru the nose for either of the lazy idiots to sit at home mooching or needlessly assemble widgets on some assembly loser line.
I don`t know`em and I don`t owe`em!
dude
The luddites would have all of us making our own clothes and boots by hand.
Some were upset and angry with the idea of the division of labor... you know.. I make the heel, you make the laces and someone else puts the pieces together.
The jobs that robots do are probably jobs robots should be doing. Freeing up people to do more important things in an ideal economy. We need to liberate the economy from the grasps of government and set it free!
While that is true, it is still a ways off.
What these robots can do now and in the near future is replace workers who were outsourced to other countries in the last 20 years. So the jobs will come back, but they will be give to robots. People in low wage countries have the most to lose, because robots can work cheaper than they can, and with machinery the competative advantage is the local energy cost. (Which is why on nearly every energy thread I am always advocating lowering the cost of energy to compete in the global marketplace)
We also have to consider that we are in the bursting of a demographic bubble, and these robots will actually be necessary because of the enormous amount of boomers retiring.
The 'market' handled the above changes - and the changes worked. The correct change doesn't happen when control freaks like Obama or communists committees start making the call. We don't need '5 year plans'.
As long as we protect people's rights to make market choices, they'll make the right ones for themselves - and as a by product, the right choices for society.
If elites and 'know it alls' are out of the loop the solution will just happen.
When people are not needed for labor anymore, where will the demand for all these robot-made goods be?
Then what happens? Well, if everything is made by robots, I suppose we’ll all get jobs maintaining and building the robots. There’s a clue about career choices in the article.
Robotic assembly is so early 1990’s. With the advent of third world labor markets, robots aren’t worth the metal they’re made out of. Unless that is, if the third world labor build the robots. In that case, we’re all screwed. Oh! Wait a minute, we gave china all of our CNC, robotics, and manufacturing technology, so I guess we’re screwed anyway.
At some point I can see ‘working’ being much more phased out and perhaps it should be like military service. 4 years standard for most to do labor and then the smallest life allowance. Then more the longer you do, with extra ‘combat pay’ style for more dangerous or nasty jobs. Over time technology will automate away more and more jobs and humans can spend their time on education for awhile and then working on the technology for a limited time.
There are any number of goods and services that are too small or specialized to afford the kind of capital investment required for robots.
Things go on pretty much as they always have.
People get so wrapped up with the size and influence of the Fords, Toshibas, and Walmarts that they forget most of the jobs are created by Joe the Plumber and Anonymous Printing....