This is a more complicated economic problem than most people understand and/or are willing to address. The basic complaint goes like this: "I have a job involving lots of training, yet technology threatens to perform my job better than I can. Therefore, I will starve." This misses the technological solutions to problems as well as the fundamental economics of labor. Something few people consider is that 95% of any given job can be done by any given person... but the 5% of the job that can't is filled with peril and dire consequences (as well as towering opportunities for artistry and mastery). It stands to reason that 95% of any job, then, can be automated... but that supervision is necessary to cover the remaining 5%. That 95% number is straight from the department of made-up statistics, but technology has always turned laborers into supervisors. And yes: take the 95% number and theoretically you can reduce your workforce from 20 to one. But are you going to pay him 20x what he used to make? Now take those 19 people who you laid off in the name of productivity. You're producing just as much stuff as you used to - but for who? Assume every industry everywhere cut their workforce by 95%. If 95% of the population is unemployed and destitute, how are they going to buy your widgets? Jobs don't disappear, jobs change. "Tailor" went from "great job" to "shit job" to great job in 100 years. All clothes used to be hand-made; now just the "bespoke" shit is. McDonald's uses unskilled labor because it's cheaper than robots but Umami and their ilk use skilled labor because you can make a better burger if you know what you're doing, and you can charge for it. You just can't sell as many. Longer than what and for less of what? Because I had a job before the Internet or cell phones and I'm here to tell ya - a lot more work got done. You're right - you had less hours in the office and once you were free, you were legit free. But the foibles of the workplace experience aren't directly correlated with technological advancement. Technology changes everything. For every job it eliminates it creates one somewhere else. Is your job safe? No, of course not. But your continued employment has always been predicated on your ability to perform and your ability to adapt. Hasn't that always been true?From where I sit it seems like human capital keeps dropping in value. What sort of livelihood might be available to most folks when the bottom pretty much falls out?
We have often heard about how tech will increase quality of life and leisure. So far this is not bearing out. Everyone I know is working longer for less.
Great discussion. What I come to hubski.com for. It has always been true. But at the rate which change is now progressing, I wonder if that adaptation and reeducation can keep up for the multitudes. And if the new jobs will provide a living wage. And yes, a huge number of people unemployed/underemployed disrupts the economy. But I wonder if a lot of businesses now can even afford to look beyond the profits of the next couple quarters. As I understand it, most of the job growth in the US is taking place in low-wage occupations. This may relate more or less to the tech issue. As you point out, corporate policies may be contingent on other factors.
Thomas Piketty wrote a 900-page powerpoint that pretty exhaustively proves that capitalism concentrates wealth. The conservatives dismiss his arguments out-of-hand because they're ethically bound to do so... I've yet to see a substantive counterpoint to his basic discoveries. Simply put, capitalism becomes feudalism unless you add a heapin' helpin' of socialism. Piketty's argument is to allow capitalist markets with socialist regulation. So there's your low-wage growth, and there's your wealth concentration. It's definitely related to technology, but it's been related to technology since the Bronze Age. The middle class is an aberration of socialist thinking, really; we have to fight to keep it alive. Your argument, then, is that we aren't fighting for it. I'm not worried, believe it or not. Poor people buy commodities and commodities are low profit margin. Middle-class people buy luxuries... you don't need an iPhone, but if you make over $40k a year you can justify it. There will never be enough truly stinking rich people to support the economy, and no matter how many poor people there are, they can't support the high-profit-margin shit like designer shoes and tiramisu. So it comes down to what makes "middle class." There's a likelihood that "middle class" makes less money 50 years from now than they did 50 years ago. Is the quality of life going to be worse, though? 1998 is calling: I was talking with my wife last night about footie pajamas. She had them and loved them; my mother despised them so I was only grudgingly allowed to have a pair. To get them we had to look them up in the JC Penney catalog, call a 1800 number, send in a check, wait a week, then drive 60 miles to a store to pick them up. Now? Now I can have virtually every consumer product I could want at my doorstep within 48 hours. That's in my lifetime - I've gone from rotary phones to LTE Facetime in a moving car. What sort of unimaginable luxury would Skype be to someone in 1977? Make no mistake - you will be made supernumerary. And make no mistake - you will have to compete with your peers for jobs. But the market needs buyers and sellers and market forces set prices. When mass production is cheap, craftsmanship becomes expensive and craftsmen become artisans. When labor is unnecessary, laborers become managers - imagine what a dandy the average forklift operator would be to longshoremen at the turn of the century. Don't worry about the corporations. They can't look beyond the profits of the next couple quarters. They have a legal obligation to shareholders and a stock that doesn't produce is a stock that gets punished. Believe it or not, the market is going to keep right on solving this one.