Could You Soon Lose Your Job to a Robot? [Answer: don't let fearmongers demoralize you]

Is the increasing automation of our economy a threat to American wages and jobs? Should the American worker fear the rise of the robots? No, not really.

Eighty years ago, John Maynard Keynes warned that society faced “a new disease” of “technological unemployment” in which the “means of economizing the use of labor [were] outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor.” Much more recently, Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute wrote about how “robot workers could tear America’s social fabric.” Strain worries that machines could eliminate the livelihoods of millions of less-skilled workers.

These fears are misplaced. In reality, technological advances will improve living standards and working conditions for the vast majority of Americans.

Computers have certainly automated many tasks. From travel to banking to manufacturing to retail, machines now perform formerly human tasks quickly and reliably. Technology has eliminated countless jobs in the U.S. and around the world. Even Foxconn, famous for its vast iPhone-assembly lines in Taiwan, plans to install a million robots.

But almost as quickly as technology has eliminated some jobs, it has created new ones. Like developing smartphone apps. Or shuttling Uber passengers. Or moving inventory in Amazon warehouses. Contrary to Keynes’s prediction of 15-hour workweeks, the economy has always found new uses for displaced workers.

Why? Human wants have proved insatiable. Most Americans could work 15 hours a week and make as much as the average Joe in the 1930s did. But few Americans today would accept that standard of living — in a much smaller dwelling with no TV, no air conditioning, and certainly no smartphone. All these “extras” require workers to produce them.

Indeed, automation drives growth in living standards. In order for the average American to consume more, the average worker must produce more. Automation enables businesses to make more goods with less labor, which means more output and higher living standards.

A construction worker who can operate a backhoe will make much more than one using only a shovel. An economy with backhoes will also be able to build a lot more.

In a world with more automation, not only will work still exist, it’ll be safer. Computers have automated many of the more-demanding manual-labor jobs in the economy, and workplace injuries and deaths have fallen steadily as machines took over these more physically dangerous tasks. Labor-saving technology benefits society.

Of course some people will wind up worse off than before. Some whose jobs get automated will have difficulty finding work that pays as much. And higher demand for non-routine skills will put less-skilled workers at a relative disadvantage. But the vast majority of workers will almost certainly come out ahead.

With robots labor eventually becomes infinitely available, just throw more robots at it…90% of the stuff in the new American home is printed on their 3D printer.

Seems like a pretty radical assertion - maybe someday, but I see little evidence of that happening tomorrow.

where are the jobs when the entire retail cycle has just become obsolete?

I’ve already said, somebody has to design, build, and sell these machines. Somebody has to design, build and sell the components. Somebody also has to maintain these automated entities. Entire new supply chains are created and derivative supply chains up and down as well as new markets are created.

My position is there aren’t any AND that’s OK, it’s not a bad thing because we as a people are freed to enjoy life and be creative. The age of wage slavery ends, that’s REAL freedom.

Not sure what kind of world you envision. The old supply and demand model of the free market being completely scrapped? Where, then does income come from? Who’s controlling this automation? I’ve said to you that the only known alternative to the free market is socialism and government central planning. What is your viable third alternative? I don't think there is one.

The only good, viable alternative is a hybrid of what we have now. The voluntary free market will probably look different because of greater automation, certain dynamics may be in play in a different way becasue of automation but the free market will still be free and expansive. Maybe less labor needed to accomplish the same income goals, I don't know. But you'll ALWAYS have entrepreneurs and pioneers breaking new ground and building new industries.

The distant future comes faster than you think. Remember if you have a smartphone you have more computing power in your pocket than existed on the entire planet when we landed a man on the moon. If you have a non-smartphone you have more computing power in your pocket than it TOOK to land a man on the moon. Technology is a rubberband, it just keeps moving faster. 3D printing was really neat incredibly expensive technology used by only the biggest companies as little as 10 years ago, now you can but one on Amazon for as little as $500. This tech is moving FAST, the future is coming.

And I pointed out that the designing, building and selling is a small fraction of the jobs. What about the other 90%? They’ll be gone, and they won’t come back. Maintaining these entities won’t be that big a deal, especially not if they come down in price. Look what happened to VCR repairmen, they died long before the VCR did because VCRs became too cheap to repair. When your choice is $50 to repair it or $50 to replace with a newer model with new features the repair jobs evaporate. And there won’t be entire new supply chains, there will be dramatically fewer supply chains, as I already pointed out. Raw material to parts to completed will be gone, it’ll raw material to home, except when the raw material is coming from your home. For the first time ever recycling could actually become useful to the masses.

That’s where things get interesting. There’s a new model of reality we’ll have to embrace. The job - money - stuff cycle will simply have to end, because we’ll be able to get stuff without money and we won’t be getting jobs. There will still be some room for money in this world but it won’t be the driving force because it will be so largely unnecessary. There are plenty of known alternatives to the free market, especially when scarcity disappears. It’s serious sea changing technology that has upsides and downsides, and pretending either doesn’t exist is dumb, and insisting anybody that points to the downsides is speaking from fear is pathetic. This IS the reality coming, it’s a reality with very few jobs, but it doesn’t mean mass destitution.

Gotta go back to what we’re talking about here. My original assertion was that high tech automation isn’t a threat to the economy not to the standard of living of the average person, but quite the opposite.

Seemed like you counter that jobs will be permanently lost and I countered that there will be sub and derivative supply chains and managerial and marketing chains that will actually expand. Seem like you denied that.

It felt to me like you were one of the many who was afraid of all this stuff. That’s where the fear thing came in. Maybe you’re not afraid. That’s a good thing. But if you’re not afraid but you deny new opportunities for the average person, then what do you envision that is viable and looks good?

For example, you still haven’t explained how income will be derived and what you are going to do with the pioneers of industry who always be around to create new vista of endeavor.

They won’t need to expand, there’s no logical reason why they should. The supply chain will shrink because there’s fewer steps in the manufacturing process. And we’re already seeing how online distribution shrinks both the marketing and managerial chains. Just look at what has gone one with with media distribution thanks to the internet, as physical media goes away people aren’t consuming less media, they just aren’t buying it from Target anymore.

If 3D printing gets to the point of just being able to do clothes, especially if it’s from recycle starter, then a lot of jobs just evaporate. Just look at how much retails space, and the supply chain that feeds it, is taken up by clothes. If people move to getting clothes by having the printer recycle their own old clothes that chain, and all the jobs that go with it, is just gone.

I don’t know how it all lands out. That’s part of what makes it interesting. But we need to understand these are some serious overhauling technologies. I don’t know how income will be derived, I don’t even know if it winds up being necessary anymore. It could be we wind up landing in a mostly socialist world where there is still money used by people who have jobs but the rest of the world just doesn’t have to worry about it. And maybe those that will never get jobs spend their time doing artistic stuff, or maybe they’re just a vast unwashed mob constantly looking for entertainment.

Pioneers of industry don’t have a problem. Heck that’s a situation in which they thrive. Freed from the day to day grind of a job they can just create and invent and 3D printer will make their models. It’s a great world for entrepreneurs. The problems really come in for everybody else, what are we going to do with people who just don’t have those drives and aspirations. The people who don’t invent, and don’t make art, and really are only productive in the current world because they have to be; what are they going to do when they don’t have to be productive?

There’s a reason I pointed to Star Trek and Judge Dredd, these are both fictional worlds that revolve around technology evolving to the point where jobs are basically unnecessary (Trek never really discusses it, but if you pay attention to the back of the the world you can see that replicators have rendered their world a post job world). One is very happy, one is very not. Which way will we bounce? Don’t know. Certainly hope more Trek, there’s a lot fewer atomic wars. One way or the other though there’s no reason to fear it, fearing the basic nature of reality is a waste of time. But it’s good to understand that these are potentially very big changes, cutting down to basic definitions of how we do things.

Not impressed. This was a very one-sided video full of charged terms like “worry” and “terrifying” and “what are we going to do about it”.

The ideas expressed in this video may very well be a push for more government control of the economy which has always been and will always be a disaster. This video isn’t balanced and doesn’t show possibilities on the supply side, only dark predictions on the demand side. It is mainly conjecture based on certain one-sided assumptions.

It’s attempt to parallel humans and horses is weak, one sided, and ultimately fails. When horses were replaced by autos, horses became “unemployed” because horses are not economically adaptable. But people are very adaptable and have the intelligence to face an unknown future with imagination and resourcefulness.

There will always be entrepreneurs and trailblazers motivated by the promise of monetary gain though innovation and enterprise. The supply and demand of the free market will determine what jobs humans can do better at lower wages than “bots” as long as government stays out of things like forced minimum wage. The REAL threat to our economic future is not automation or “bots” but government interference.

Fabian Progressive Socialists have said for some time that the world needs fewer humans. Since the late 1800’s they have espoused the idea that a select intellectual “elite” should decide who may live or die. These people believe there are whole groups of people who would be better off dead and THEY are the ones to decide. This video’s dark conjecture forwards these ideas.

But this isn’t the world God created nor intended. He created man to be free and freedom in action is the free market. This film ignores the world that is possible when freedom and the free market is allowed to thrive. Throughout this dark video, they skip over many issues including government forced minimum wage, already a cause of much unemployment.

Maintenance and corollary supply and demand chains created by such automation are completely ignored. The video is conjecture meant to make you afraid and act on those fears. But that is no way to live. Freedom takes bravery and blazing frontiers of technology will open new vistas of opportunity.

More and more of what you hear about the future is conjecture based on fear. But we should live faith-based lives. Faith is substantial evidence of things hoped for that is not yet seen. Fear is also about things not yet seen but it is usually false evidence appearing real.

The future belongs to those of faith and freedom, not slavish fear and dead-end government “solutions.”

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