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.