Are jobs obsolete?

[goDel]

This article has a bit too much of the ignorance is bliss approach, if you ask me.

 

First the assumption that there are less jobs because of automation. The biggest losses of jobs in the US have been, and are currently in the construction area. To my ears, that doesn't sound like a market where AI will grab jobs on the short run. And besides the construction area there's going to be lots of work in healthcare in the (near) future. Especially in western society.

 

Second, the assumption that because of automation only higher level work remains which requires less workers. Assuming there's indeed an intellectual inflation taking place on the work floor, that doesn't imply there's less workers needed. On the contrary, what you see is, there's more and more information being generated (exponentially). And on top of that there's a tendency to create more and more levels of management for governance. Yesteryear's factory workers will be tomorrow's information workers. AI is just not general enough to cover all the new information without someone observing/controlling it's work. I see the relationship between automation (AI/algorithms) as symbiotic. There's a co-dependency. And because the amount of information is already as huge as it is (and growing exponentially), i guess there's still plenty to do for all of us.

 

Disclaimer: I couldn't make it past the first 1/4 of the text. Call it my ignorance.

[Guest Rambo]

First the assumption that there are less jobs because of automation.

 

A good assumption

[SR4]

This article has a bit too much of the ignorance is bliss approach, if you ask me.

 

First the assumption that there are less jobs because of automation. The biggest losses of jobs in the US have been, and are currently in the construction area. To my ears, that doesn't sound like a market where AI will grab jobs on the short run. And besides the construction area there's going to be lots of work in healthcare in the (near) future. Especially in western society.

 

Second, the assumption that because of automation only higher level work remains which requires less workers. Assuming there's indeed an intellectual inflation taking place on the work floor, that doesn't imply there's less workers needed. On the contrary, what you see is, there's more and more information being generated (exponentially). And on top of that there's a tendency to create more and more levels of management for governance. Yesteryear's factory workers will be tomorrow's information workers. AI is just not general enough to cover all the new information without someone observing/controlling it's work. I see the relationship between automation (AI/algorithms) as symbiotic. There's a co-dependency. And because the amount of information is already as huge as it is (and growing exponentially), i guess there's still plenty to do for all of us.

 

Disclaimer: I couldn't make it past the first 1/4 of the text. Call it my ignorance.

 

I agree with your second point.

 

In regards to your first, we are talking about 10% unemployment in the US now. That's roughly 30 million jobs. What percentage of these would be construction?

 

I was wondering if you could link me to that bit about construction. (Not accusing you of lying, just genuinely curious)

[Guest Rambo]

There's a co-dependency. And because the amount of information is already as huge as it is (and growing exponentially), i guess there's still plenty to do for all of us.

 

That doesn't appear to be the case.

[SR4]

Also, i think some of the more dangerous implications of work eradication is on more of a Neo-Malthusian level.

 

Basically,More free time=more fucking

 

 

More fucking (regardless of birth control methods)=more children, not to mention religion talking about creating as many babies as you can. Easier to do that when you don't have to work to support them.

 

Eventually automation will not be able to support this overpopulation.

 

How do you deal with that?

 

I mean, we are heading towards that situation already, and that's even with people knowing they can't support them.

[GORDO]

it is kinda fucked up, while "the system" kinda forces people to be useful it also fucks people up when they're not needed.

[goDel]

First the assumption that there are less jobs because of automation.

 

A good assumption

 

The funny thing in your average business is that all projects to automate - if they indeed replace certain work - lead to even more work. An example where you could argue automation makes work obsolete are the postal services. I'd argue an analogy to the postal services would be the vinyl record industries. The market has evolved into another beast which indeed needs less workers. And although this is true, the general conclusion this applies to all markets without new markets forming and creating new jobs is a bit too easy. I don't see any serious evidence other than "opinion".

 

The biggest problem for job-growth in the US is that jobs are exported to china and whatnot (implying work is still being done, but abroad). Upon quick scanning the text, the article doesn't seem to acknowledge any of this. (again, i'm still not really arsed to put in the effort. the author jumps to million conclusions without any criticism whatsoever....horrible article)

 

There's a co-dependency. And because the amount of information is already as huge as it is (and growing exponentially), i guess there's still plenty to do for all of us.

 

That doesn't appear to be the case.

Thank you for the insight.

[Braintree]

I think a lot of the problem would be fixed if large corporations didn't drive out small businesses.

 

So instead of having these mega markets like Wal-Mart that basically have many stores in one [with many people do several jobs], you would have many stores, spread out over a region that has one person doing one job in the store. Prices will go up, but more people will have money to spend, and I think the economy would be better for it. Even you extend this idea to farms and the distribution of products, it's also healthy for the environment.

 

Re: population, SR4, do you actually believe that people fuck because they have free time? That is ridiculous. It's been documented that population is a direct result of the availability of food.

[Braintree]

This is worth noting:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

[goDel]

In regards to your first, we are talking about 10% unemployment in the US now. That's roughly 30 million jobs. What percentage of these would be construction?

 

I was wondering if you could link me to that bit about construction. (Not accusing you of lying, just genuinely curious)

 

I thought I picked it up somewhere in this clip:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11833

 

But I could be wrong. Nevertheless a well spent half hour if you ask me. Better than the jobless article, but that's just me.

Could also be Ray Lahood in a white house meeting. I'm just a sucker for Ray. Ray is cool.

[Guest Coalbucket PI]

Yes I've often wondered this. I don't really know how it would work, I couldn't follow this article on the last few paragraphs.

 

I think the concept of having the majority of the population with nothing to do all day is quite scary though, we'd all end up fucking our sisters in lifts and shooting up shopping centres. Personally I feel the need to have a job anyway to keep some sense of achievement or something, but I've probably just been brought up with that belief. Some sort of Brave New World type of drug and sex regimen would have to be encouraged to stop everyone wanking themselves into schizophrenia.

 

lol, do you not have any 'hobbies' or anything you really like to do in your spare time when you're not working, (besides wanking)?

jesus, i hardly ever find myself bored or with nothing to do these days. but when i was a kid/teenager, yeah... bored quite a lot of the time. but there's not enough hours in the day anymore to do all the things i want to do now... days go WAY too quickly for me!

Not sure why you are wording this so antagonistically but thats your prerogative and I'll deftly sidestep it if I may. I have infinite things to do in my free time but that feeling tends to dissipate as you acquire infinite free time in my experience. My closest point of reference for this is nearly every retired person I know, who claim to look forward to doing whatever and end up sleeping late, going to the shops when they don't need anything and then falling asleep watching the fishing channel and waking up to go to bed at 9. Given this is old people but you could look up what a lot of young lottery winners do. The things you want to do are all relative to the things you have to do that you don't want to. I think there is a balance to be found, and for most people a 40hr week is tipped a little bit in the wrong direction.

 

I have to categorically disagree with SR4's "free time=increased creative output/innovation" (unless that slash means division in which case I'm confused), I think a lot of people work better under some pressure, whether they realise it or not.

 

To respond to Bread, I have thought about what I'd do if I won a trillion moneys and I can't imagine just living it up in a mansion for ever. After spaffing money about for a while I'd want to do something that could broadly be called a job.

[SR4]

I think a lot of the problem would be fixed if large corporations didn't drive out small businesses.

 

So instead of having these mega markets like Wal-Mart that basically have many stores in one [with many people do several jobs], you would have many stores, spread out over a region that has one person doing one job in the store. Prices will go up, but more people will have money to spend, and I think the economy would be better for it. Even you extend this idea to farms and the distribution of products, it's also healthy for the environment.

 

Re: population, SR4, do you actually believe that people fuck because they have free time? That is ridiculous. It's been documented that population is a direct result of the availability of food.

 

 

How is that ridiculous? Malthus (who I am guessing you are referring to as the "documented" part) has plenty of dissenters in terms of population theory, including Marx, Engels, Godwin, Carey, Simon, and Henry George, among others.

 

Do you have sex during work? Or do you have sex when there is no work at the moment?

 

Its generalizing, sure, but its also the same to say more food=more children. How do you explain the increasing birth rate in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the end of the Depression?

 

 

Are you suggesting that the only reason the birth rate ever goes up is due to an abundance of food, and only due to that?

 

Yes I've often wondered this. I don't really know how it would work, I couldn't follow this article on the last few paragraphs.

 

I think the concept of having the majority of the population with nothing to do all day is quite scary though, we'd all end up fucking our sisters in lifts and shooting up shopping centres. Personally I feel the need to have a job anyway to keep some sense of achievement or something, but I've probably just been brought up with that belief. Some sort of Brave New World type of drug and sex regimen would have to be encouraged to stop everyone wanking themselves into schizophrenia.

 

lol, do you not have any 'hobbies' or anything you really like to do in your spare time when you're not working, (besides wanking)?

jesus, i hardly ever find myself bored or with nothing to do these days. but when i was a kid/teenager, yeah... bored quite a lot of the time. but there's not enough hours in the day anymore to do all the things i want to do now... days go WAY too quickly for me!

Not sure why you are wording this so antagonistically but thats your prerogative and I'll deftly sidestep it if I may. I have infinite things to do in my free time but that feeling tends to dissipate as you acquire infinite free time in my experience. My closest point of reference for this is nearly every retired person I know, who claim to look forward to doing whatever and end up sleeping late, going to the shops when they don't need anything and then falling asleep watching the fishing channel and waking up to go to bed at 9. Given this is old people but you could look up what a lot of young lottery winners do. The things you want to do are all relative to the things you have to do that you don't want to. I think there is a balance to be found, and for most people a 40hr week is tipped a little bit in the wrong direction.

 

I have to categorically disagree with SR4's "free time=increased creative output/innovation" (unless that slash means division in which case I'm confused), I think a lot of people work better under some pressure, whether they realise it or not.

 

To respond to Bread, I have thought about what I'd do if I won a trillion moneys and I can't imagine just living it up in a mansion for ever. After spaffing money about for a while I'd want to do something that could broadly be called a job.

 

People work better under pressure certainly, but in the sense that production efficiency increases, not necessarily the quality of the product being created.

[delet...]

mine is. i was made redundant the other day.

 

oh nos, sorry man.

[chenGOD]

mustcontrol4 - read up on what the venus project wants to do. I was responding to bread, who has clearly stated his belief in that fantasy of using technology to give away things to people. I'm down with a reduced work week though. I'm also down with wage controls (especially on CEOs), corporate taxes, socialized healthcare and a lot of other things.

 

Bread - I've already talked about the economic aspects of this with you ad infinitum - you might think there are no scarce resources, but that's simply not true. Additionally, you can't get something for nothing.

As for using automated teachers - we don't have AI capable enough to teach. We might..but not in the foreseeable future.

 

I had something else I wanted to say about how having infinite free time will devalue that free time, but can't word it concisely right now, and can't be arsed, have to go to class.

[Braintree]

I think a lot of the problem would be fixed if large corporations didn't drive out small businesses.

 

So instead of having these mega markets like Wal-Mart that basically have many stores in one [with many people do several jobs], you would have many stores, spread out over a region that has one person doing one job in the store. Prices will go up, but more people will have money to spend, and I think the economy would be better for it. Even you extend this idea to farms and the distribution of products, it's also healthy for the environment.

 

Re: population, SR4, do you actually believe that people fuck because they have free time? That is ridiculous. It's been documented that population is a direct result of the availability of food.

 

 

How is that ridiculous? Malthus (who I am guessing you are referring to as the "documented" part) has plenty of dissenters in terms of population theory, including Marx, Engels, Godwin, Carey, Simon, and Henry George, among others.

 

Do you have sex during work? Or do you have sex when there is no work at the moment?

 

Its generalizing, sure, but its also the same to say more food=more children. How do you explain the increasing birth rate in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the end of the Depression?

 

 

Are you suggesting that the only reason the birth rate ever goes up is due to an abundance of food, and only due to that?

 

You're implying that if we have more free time then the world population will spiral out of control. Which will not happen. Did all of the peasants in the the European middle ages spend all their time copulating? What about the aristocracy, which definitely had more free time than they? You'll notice the former bore more children than the latter. Free time is kind of an irrelevant variable. Watch the video I posted. I think humans are motivated to do more than just sit around an fuck all day.

 

Population is a highly complicated thing, but the main variable is food. If your population can't eat, it can't survive. A couple examples are the populations before and after the little ice age, and also before and after the Irish potato famine. If your population has easy access to food, then there will definitely be a boom.

[SR4]

I think a lot of the problem would be fixed if large corporations didn't drive out small businesses.

 

So instead of having these mega markets like Wal-Mart that basically have many stores in one [with many people do several jobs], you would have many stores, spread out over a region that has one person doing one job in the store. Prices will go up, but more people will have money to spend, and I think the economy would be better for it. Even you extend this idea to farms and the distribution of products, it's also healthy for the environment.

 

Re: population, SR4, do you actually believe that people fuck because they have free time? That is ridiculous. It's been documented that population is a direct result of the availability of food.

 

 

How is that ridiculous? Malthus (who I am guessing you are referring to as the "documented" part) has plenty of dissenters in terms of population theory, including Marx, Engels, Godwin, Carey, Simon, and Henry George, among others.

 

Do you have sex during work? Or do you have sex when there is no work at the moment?

 

Its generalizing, sure, but its also the same to say more food=more children. How do you explain the increasing birth rate in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the end of the Depression?

 

 

Are you suggesting that the only reason the birth rate ever goes up is due to an abundance of food, and only due to that?

 

You're implying that if we have more free time then the world population will spiral out of control. Which will not happen. Did all of the peasants in the the European middle ages spend all their time copulating? What about the aristocracy, which definitely had more free time than they? You'll notice the former bore more children than the latter. Free time is kind of an irrelevant variable. Watch the video I posted. I think humans are motivated to do more than just sit around an fuck all day.

 

Population is a highly complicated thing, but the main variable is food. If your population can't eat, it can't survive. A couple examples are the populations before and after the little ice age, and also before and after the Irish potato famine. If your population has easy access to food, then there will definitely be a boom.

 

 

This is exactly my point though. You are talking about a period of time where depending on classes people had LESS to do, but they mostly had to do something...most aristocrats became "distinguished gentlemen" in Western Europe, meant to lead their inferiors in standards and ethics. This meant time in government or political positions. Most aristocrats that did nothing eventually phased themselves out amongst the arbiters of capitalism and the industrial revolution. We are talking about an age where work would be practically non-existent throughout class or the former class structure...that's an extreme difference.

 

 

Also, we have x amount of space in which to provide for exponentially increasing population. Unless the solution is to terraform new planets, there will have to be an end point in which our capacity to create living space and sustenance for humanity can no longer be made. Im not talking as if this is a definite conclusion in the next decade, Im talking long term. There literally will not be enough space or resources on the Earth to provide for 100 billion people and counting.

[Cazador Mod Unit]

Here is the Bertrand Russell essay, In Praise of Idleness

http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

 

 

This article has a bit too much of the ignorance is bliss approach, if you ask me.

 

First the assumption that there are less jobs because of automation. The biggest losses of jobs in the US have been, and are currently in the construction area. To my ears, that doesn't sound like a market where AI will grab jobs on the short run. And besides the construction area there's going to be lots of work in healthcare in the (near) future. Especially in western society.

 

Second, the assumption that because of automation only higher level work remains which requires less workers. Assuming there's indeed an intellectual inflation taking place on the work floor, that doesn't imply there's less workers needed. On the contrary, what you see is, there's more and more information being generated (exponentially). And on top of that there's a tendency to create more and more levels of management for governance. Yesteryear's factory workers will be tomorrow's information workers. AI is just not general enough to cover all the new information without someone observing/controlling it's work. I see the relationship between automation (AI/algorithms) as symbiotic. There's a co-dependency. And because the amount of information is already as huge as it is (and growing exponentially), i guess there's still plenty to do for all of us.

 

Disclaimer: I couldn't make it past the first 1/4 of the text. Call it my ignorance.

 

The article is concerned with long term changes. If you have links to studies that prove without doubt that every manufacture job is easily replaced with an equivalent worker taking care of the machine that performs the task and / or doing non trivial data mining stuff please contribute them to the thread. I have been reading that story for years but what I see is the exact opposite.

[SR4]

Thanks for the link!

[goDel]

 

The article is concerned with long term changes. If you have links to studies that prove without doubt that every manufacture job is easily replaced with an equivalent worker taking care of the machine that performs the task and / or doing non trivial data mining stuff please contribute them to the thread. I have been reading that story for years but what I see is the exact opposite.

 

 

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/51/1941679.pdf

Technology both eliminates jobs and creates jobs. Generally it destroys lower wage, lower productivity jobs, while it creates jobs that are more productive, high-skill and better paid. Historically, the income-generating effects of new technologies have proved more powerful than the labor-displacing effects: technological progress has been accompanied not only by higher output and productivity, but also by higher overall employment.

 

and

http://www.innovationpolicy.org/technology-and-automation-create-not-destroy

 

Plus you can google "does automation create jobs" if you like.

 

Also, links that prove without doubt? What? So someone can write an opinionated article which confirms peoples ideas, and the counter evidence needs to be "proven without doubt"? I'd doubt the opinionated article first. Where is the proof? A bad economy? Loss of jobs? Surely the underlying causality is a bit more complex than that. There is no proof without doubt. And yes, you have every right to ask for sources, but the same holds for the article you linked to. Most of the basic assumptions made are sourceless. It goes both ways.

[goDel]

To be more specific:

 

We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way, since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace.

 

Source? Studies?

[Guest Z_B_Z]

rushkoff is an interesting thinker, although his recent book was a bit off. 'coercion' and 'media virus' should be read in schools across the nation..

 

he always gets credit for coining the "viral" term for the internet age, but really it should go to william burroughs for being such an influence on rushkoffs thinking

 

"language is a virus" indeed..

[lumpenprol]

still trying to figure out why Steve Jobs is referred to in the plural in the header....

[goDel]

1 jobs

 

2 jobs

[Guest Coalbucket PI]

mine is.  i was made redundant the other day.

 

oh nos, sorry man.

Ye--that sucks. I hope you don't lose your hardware. That was the first to go when my shit hit the fan.

 

I've thought about this article all day. I agree that technology is not the only reason for the crisis of abundant employment but it is definitely relevant to me. I want to work in a lab in a field that used to be called medical technology but is now called clinical laboratory science. The school I've applied to only takes 8 people. In 1933, the same school took 30 people. The reason has been automation. Based on what I know about where tech. is going in medicine, I can see even more ways that well-paid technologists could be eliminated. One area is microbiology. Currently, if an organism is suspected, you culture a specimen (blood, spit, piss, whatevs) to see what grows. This can take anywhere from 2 days to weeks and is extremely expensive.

 

As high-throughput genomics and other technologies get cheaper and faster, I can see a day where you provide no more than a finger prick's worth of blood and anything diagnostic you would ever need to know could be known in about 3 hours. The lab would then be just the unskilled technicians who draw blood, etc. and the engineers who would maintain the machines and production line. The employment crisis in the lab right now only spurs this kind of progress forward. If I don't get in, I've been thinking about things I could do that defy automation and technology, which comes full circle to the question in the first place.

I can imagine you running around a perpetually dark and rainy lab complex in a trenchcoat, 'retiring' centrifuges and automated lab equipment only to be followed around by some shady character who makes elusive remarks and leaves origami micropippettes in your apartment

[encey]

My program is like that, too. With the advent of computers, especially Watson, philosophy has become largely automated. You just give it a conclusion and one or two premises, and it fills in all the other steps of the argument for you. Alternatively, you give it a full argument and it will tell you where the error in reasoning lies. I've been waiting a month for it to give me the output to Thus Spoke Zarathustra.