Will the 2nd Great Machine Age be a frightening jobless dystopia?

The London Telegraph ^ | January 25, 2014 | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

[2ndDivisionVet]

Thanks to lightning-speed advances in hi-tech, humanity (or part of it) is close to achieving its dream of prosperity without toil. We are already starting glimpse the awful consequences. As Voltaire said, work is the triple tonic for needs, vice, and boredom.

A Davos vote split 51:49 on whether "technological innovation" will keep displacing jobs – and at an accelerating rate – leaving us with a deformed world where hundreds of millions are left on the unemployment scrap-heap (205m so far).

The waters have been so muddied by the global financial crisis – and the 1930s response to it in some quarters – that it is hard to separate the chronic job wastage caused by "robots" (to use a metaphor) from the temporary effects of scarce global demand.

Phillip Jennings, head of the UNI global labour federation, said it would be a "miscarriage of justice" to blame the 32 million job losses since the Lehman-EMU crisis on the iPad or the driverless car.

"You can't put technology in the dock for 50pc youth unemployment in Greece or Spain. I blame the EU Troika. It was the economic and political decisions taken that have led to the collapse of jobs. In Greece it has gone beyond depression into a humanitarian crisis," he said at the World Economic Forum....

[Count of Monte Fisto]

If robots make all the products then no one will have money to buy the products the robots make.

[dennisw]

you have been thinking!!! (so have I)

[Vince Ferrer]

Amnesty will fix this.

[Peter Libra]

I will have to go and sort out my old paper back copy of this book.

Player Piano.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Scribners
1952

The only sobering thought is, how would the human race deal with a perfect world?

[CowboyJay]

"For one thing, even if metal men could do every such thing, who services the metal men?"

Onboard diagnostics are already streamlining the mechanic trade. I think modular design means very little tinkering will need to be done. The robot will tell the plant manager what's wrong with it. Somebody will just snap in a new module and send the old one to the robotic smelting plant for recycling.

But you're right, if we can get the gov't boot off everyone's throat, there will always be gainful employment out there for a few enterprising souls.

[HiTech RedNeck]

For as many enterprising souls as desire it, Cowboy.

And modular... bwahaha. NOT a panacea. I’ve been a high tech redneck long enough to see the clay feet of technology.

[CowboyJay]

"If robots make all the products then no one will have money to buy the products the robots make."

There's the rub.

[The Antiyuppie]

It does blow my mind, how many things that COULD be repaired aren’t repaired anymore for economic reasons. Things aren’t even designed to be repaired. This flies in the face of the recycling movement. And I’m not talking about electronics where you might say that it will be obsolete soon anyway, I’m talking about vacuum cleaners.

Electronics in particular is astounding. Hardly anyone does chip-level repair anymore. I once replaced chips in the field! On some boards that might now take a 50,000$ test fixture - it’s WAY beyond a meter, scope or logic probe/ analyzer that anyone could afford to even diagnose many problems to the chip level. If by some miracle you actually diagnose a bad part, this won’t take a $10.00 soldering iron, $3.00 of solder, and a wick anymore - it takes a hot-air gun, an oven, and fairly expensive and exotic tools and materials.

[Cronos]

the article is right — and I’m in IT, so while I am doing this stuff, it scares me what it will all lead to in a few decades

[Jimmy Valentine]

Rather a dark view. But who will design build and maintain the machines?
Human beings are not obsolete nor will they be. We are adaptable inventive and flexible. It will be the drones the layabouts who will not thrive. The future belongs to the ants not the grasshoppers

[Age of Reason]

It will be much like Ancient Rome or the South before the Civil War, except this time free men will be in competition for work with robots instead of slaves.

That sure ends well.

[Age of Reason]

But who will design build and maintain the machines?

Maybe the half of mankind with IQ's less than 100.

[Age of Reason]

If robots make all the products then no one will have money to buy the products the robots make

Simple solution will be the nationalization of manufacturing, with the government giving free products to citizens, according to their needs, of course.

[Lazamataz]

In the not-too-distant future, robots are going to be doing most physical work. Commercial interests that use robots will pay a tax on each robot, and that money will be used to pay the people who aren't working, after the politicians take a nice big chunk off the top (like 80% or so). A tiny number of very skillful people will do most of the brain-work, and use the internet to publish their work....

Yeah, and the computer was going to reduce the use of paper to nearly nil.

OOPS....

[FluffyTexan]

This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’m almost certain that we are setting it up to be a bad thing but it doesn’t have to be horrible. We will need new priorities and an almost infinitely higher respect for education along with mincome but we could take it in stride.

[Flick Lives]

This is one of these “fear technology” articles that the MSM has pushed for well over a century. One can find articles pushing fear of electricity back in the late Victorian Age.

One wonders what these utopians would prefer. Would they like to go back to the full employment offered by Ancient Egypt when thousands toiled to build the pyramids without benefit of even the wheel?

[FreedomPoster]

Subsidize what you want more of, tax what you want less of. It’s pretty simple, really.

So we subsidize unemployment in myriad ways, and tax employment and success.

[Max in Utah]

B F L

[reformedliberal]

One wonders what these utopians would prefer. Would they like to go back to the full employment offered by Ancient Egypt when thousands toiled to build the pyramids without benefit of even the wheel?

---

Only if they get to hold the whip.

[JimRed]

Part of the Agenda 21 goal of reducing human population by 85%.