Tell that tale of distorted history to the crofters of Scotland, to the tenant farmers of Ireland and to the Luddites of England.
Posted on 08/03/2014 5:04:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Is the increasing automation of our economy a threat to American wages and jobs? Should the American worker fear the rise of the robots? No, not really.
Eighty years ago, John Maynard Keynes warned that society faced “a new disease” of “technological unemployment” in which the “means of economizing the use of labor [were] outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor.” Much more recently, Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute wrote about how “robot workers could tear America’s social fabric.” Strain worries that machines could eliminate the livelihoods of millions of less-skilled workers.
These fears are misplaced. In reality, technological advances will improve living standards and working conditions for the vast majority of Americans. Computers have certainly automated many tasks. From travel to banking to manufacturing to retail, machines now perform formerly human tasks quickly and reliably.
Technology has eliminated countless jobs in the U.S. and around the world. Even Foxconn, famous for its vast iPhone-assembly lines in Taiwan, plans to install a million robots.
But almost as quickly as technology has eliminated some jobs, it has created new ones. Like developing smartphone apps. Or shuttling Uber passengers. Or moving inventory in Amazon warehouses. Contrary to Keynes’s prediction of 15-hour workweeks, the economy has always found new uses for displaced workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritage.org ...
Mr Sherk hasn’t heard there are robots who can write think tank propaganda better than people.
If lawyers did what we assume they do then robots could do it better.
But that’s not what lawyers do. The law is a rich raw material. They mine it for material to bolster their client’s claims. And there is plenty of material in the law to make ANY argument, no matter how ludicrous or illogical.
We would have a better, more prosperous country if our laws were logical. But then what would lawyers do?
I agree and struggled with where to place the quote marks. The real stratification in the labor market has already occurred, but we would rather pretend that the American workforce is a homogeneous group with the work ethic of 1950.
The entitled class (fill in your favorite group) has been trained to disrupt the entire system. They will be at the forefront of protesting this technology, though they have predicated its development.
The question is, how long can the productive side drag them along? Will America be overcome by the unreasonable, insatiable masses, or will we return to our God and our senses?
Tell that tale of distorted history to the crofters of Scotland, to the tenant farmers of Ireland and to the Luddites of England.
Umm, I think invoking the Luddites tends to weaken your argument, such as it is.
But almost as quickly as technology has eliminated some jobs, it has created new ones.
Quite true, historically, though there is often a lag between the old jobs disappearing and the new ones showing up, creating a good deal of misery. Also, while true as a generality, does not mean individuals aren't hurt badly.
Like developing smartphone apps.
Now we get to the gorilla. Only those people well over on the right side of the IQ bell curve are even potentially able to do this kind of work. They're already in demand for a host of jobs, and the vast majority of those displaced from good jobs by automation are in the middle or left side of the BC.
Or shuttling Uber passengers.
As others have pointed out, this doesn't create new jobs, it's simply a different way of providing taxi service. Displaces drivers of traditional taxis. Also, a large percentage of Uber drivers do it as a sideline, not "a job." Nothing wrong with that, but it's certainly not a solution for unemployment.
Or moving inventory in Amazon warehouses.
Mostly automated and likely to become more so.
Contrary to Keynes’s prediction of 15-hour workweeks, the economy has always found new uses for displaced workers.
Past performance does not always predict future performance. The difference today is that most of the "new" jobs in the actually vibrant segments of the economy require significant technical skills. That's not a huge problem in itself. People can be retrained.
But to be capable of being trained in the jobs actually in demand requires high intelligence, and most of those becoming technologically unemployed aren't in that group. They are not now and never will be capable of doing the "new jobs."
The present Automation Revolution is not just a new iteration and elaboration on the Industrial Revolution. It's utterly different from anything in previous human history.
That’s a great story. Immense amounts of capital invested to automate a factory that would soon itself close as a result of technological obsolescence.
They saw Fuji as their chief threat at the time.
The pace of technological change is accelerating almost geometrically. New materials are coming on the scene with new medicines and new computer constructed robots. The impact of these changes can be very great and very sudden. How long has it taken the Internet to make snail mail and the post office system virtually obsolete? How long has it taken the Internet to make our telephone system archaic? Libraries irrelevant? These were the great institutions forming the backbone of our American society and they are on the verge of consignment to the museum
My point is that we may find that change will be somewhat ameliorated by leftist nostrums which temporarily postpone the pain, such as unemployment insurance or even minimum-wage raises, but which do not solve the problem and might indeed aggravate it.
We cannot anticipate the pace or the nature of the change which is coming except we can be sure that it will be radical. Your admonition, TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL, should not be ignored by anyone. But what to teach them? I am a reasonably educated man was seven years of higher education but I can do little more than superficially work with my computer which has been made dummy proof for me by Windows. My teenage kids have solemnly instructed me not to try to fix my computer and despair over my fumblings with at my smart phone, for which they insist I am too dumb.
What to teach them? We can only teach them how to learn. And that our school system most assuredly is not doing.
Actually conditions were utterly miserable for “the crofters of Scotland and tenant farmers of Ireland.”
The crofters were in most cases quite literally forced off their farms by landlords who wanted to use the land more profitably.
The Irish were in many cases forced to leave when unable to pay their rents due to the Famine. (Although it’s not widely known that Scotland had a Potato Famine of its own.)
Both groups (or the survivors and descendants thereof) were in the long run MUCH better off. But that didn’t ease the misery of those directly affected.
Should also be noted that, in England anyway, a great many of those who migrated from the farms to the factories were landless farm laborers. For most of them, doing so was a considerable step up.
Rural poverty is dispersed and less in-your-face than urban poverty. But it’s no more fun for the poor themselves. City life offers at least the illusion of possibility of improvement. Life as a farm laborer does not. As can be seen by the continued migration to cities around the world.
IOW, it’s complicated, and to my mind you’re both partly right and partly wrong
I’m sure they did. Boy, did that industry disappear in a hurry!
Racist! You can’t say there are statistical differences between people. Do you want to be sent to the camps?
Automation will not replace all menial labor for some time. It is not economically feasible for many reasons—that is why we still have many menial jobs. The cost of replacing that smelly warm body with a nice composite one doesn’t always pay.
And it’s not a zero sum game, except for the zeros. Most people could find employment if the market were free.
Those who want to work generally do; those who don’t want to work vote Democrat.
The industrial revolution was disruptive, and there were winners and losers, but absolutely no one alive in an industrialized country today would be better off living the life of a landless farm laborer in the early 19th Century.
When I was growing up, it was get an eduction and find a job, problem solved.
Why would any motivated person not be able to overcome most obstacles they are facing?
Willing workers will always have jobs. Hopefully they have a supportive culture, not some I am victim, and can’t get up ideology.
1. The coming Robot Age is not going to be a step function. It will come for sure but it wii come gradually and that in itself will ease the transition.
Google “singularity” or “transhuman” or watch Ray Kurzweil videos on YouTube to see where all this robot jive might be headed. What happens when robots become smarter than us?
1.No one was “forced off the farms”, people flocked to factories because the wages and working conditions were so vastly preferable.
And
2.OMG, you swallowed the Marxist interpretation of the Industrial Revolution whole!
The second is as thoughtless as the first.
The 1988 Award Winning Cartoon, Technological Threat. Done with a strong nod to the great cartoonist Tex Avery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiTgoRR3tbk
Whatever.
Google “singularity” or “transhuman” or watch Ray Kurzweil videos on YouTube to see where all this robot jive might be headed. What happens when robots become smarter than us?
++++
I’m addicted to Kurzwell and agree with his basic premise that technological change is exponential. But we all adapted to email, Facebook, Google, Free Republic, vending machines, Boeing 707s, frozen food and the like and we just need to keep doing that.
But, as you point out, we are going to have to do it faster and faster.
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