History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Oh believe me I know more history than the average academic weinee. You said, "The purpose of any business is to make money not to create job." Now you are using the straw man fallacy or you missed my entire point. Companies prefer technology like automation and A.I. because then they can hire less people. Thus, it allows them make more money. I never argued that a company was not in business to make money. You said that and then argued it as if I disagreed. Haha! Technology is growing exponentially and not linear as you are implying in your 200 + year argument.
Please see chart below,
Then you said, "And like before new needs and jobs will be created. Why do you think that things will remain static?" It will not work that way because the technology will take over most jobs. Thus, creating a huge welfare class. We are about 13 years from that point. Me: “Yes they did, but many of their new jobs, like their previous job, are slowly and incrementally being impacted by automation and A.I.” You: "And like before new needs and jobs will be created. Why do you think that things will remain static?" I just said the new jobs would be impacted my new technology, and it's only a matter of time before the people have to migrate to another job that's also being impacted by technology. That's not Static. I can tell you are confused on what is static. If technology is changing an industry, company, etc.., then it's dynamic and not static. Static is what you see for the most part on a college campus or in government agencies. Anyway, to answer your question because this is the current trend. It the direction we are heading, and we are seeing it impacting most things. I'm following the trends. "Where do you think millions of ignorant farmers who lost their jobs to farm mechanization at the turn of last century ran off to? As I said, study a bit of history, it’ll do you good. (I’m curious, How old are you?)" There you go again comparing apples to oranges. Fighting the last war instead of the current war and living in the present. The past is nothing but a guide. It's like a reading a script when you are new to something vs. improvising, overcoming and adapting when well versed, seasoned and/or experienced. This does not mean ignore your history, but use the past as a guide. Nothing wrong with looking back, but that does not guarantee what the future will look like. Past performance does not guarantee future results or success. We live in a dynamic world. History doesn't repeat it rhymes. Finally, please do not patronize me by asking me my age. I have been around for a while. Now I understand your mindset. You are only thinking about your generation. The baby boomers are the first generation of Americans to royally screw all future American generations. The good news is the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. Hopefully, we can do it peacefully. For the record, I am generation X. Generation Z is the generation that is the most conservative since the great depression. They are just getting started. You then said, Me: “You are arguing an old debate that’s already over.” You: "Oh, settled science, I see!! How could I possibly argue against “settled opinion”." Science is never settled. This is just where the debate is at because people can see it taking over. Oh and as for the unemployment rate. That is the U-4 report which was changed from the U-6 report under Obama. This is because the real unemployment rate was a lot higher. Under Obama we had close to 100 million people out of work, but the U-4 unemployment rate still kept falling while the number of people not in the work force increased. This never happened before unle Obama switched off from the U-6 report. It was joke and conservatives like Limbaugh and Matt Drudge ridiculed it. I do like what President Trump is doing and a huge supporter of him. I think he has a lot of #NeverTrumpers and Obama left overs he needs to fire. "Are the robots going to buy their own products, or will all the unemployed people buy the products with the money they don’t have? Do you see the idiocy in that scenario?" That's another part of the debate. That's where the "livable wage" is being promoted by Mark Zuckerberg because technology is taking over. For the record, I have served the country for 8 years in the United States Marines. I have a college education, and have been working for major Global Corporation for over 20 years. I suggest reading or listening to the book, "The Pentagon's Brain" by Annie Jacobson. It will give you a better idea of where we are at technology wise.
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.