"The Hoarding of the American Dream"

[kevm14]

Here is a good exchange.

How do you disagree? What jobs will people do if they’re replaced. I’m not uninformed. This was the entire focus of my degree, it’s what I do for a living. I recruited for Goodyear for a year and they have just finished their first test factory that replaces all people. 82% of GY plant employees are assembly workers. The new plant will have 1/4 the managers, no floor workers and a small team of engineers to keep the plant running. That’s a downsize of something like 90%. This test factory is the model for what they want to propagate to all their factories around the world. What magical jobs will people do when —as I pointed out— not just jobs but entire labor sectors have been automated?
People keep parroting the facile mantra, “Technology in the past made more jobs.” Yes. We know that, because technology was used by individuals or teams of individuals to increase their reach. In this case, we’re not extending reach, we’re replacing the human labor pool entirely.
The US has tracked labor sectors for about two centuries. Those labor sectors are:
Farming/Fishing
Loading/Shipping
Manufacturing/Repair
Government
Service/Hospitality
Mining
Construction
Technology/Medicine
Each of these are being disrupted. Some won’t be disrupted if ever (intellectual roles) but the US cannot have an intellectual role based economy. Farming, Manufacturing, Loading, Shipping, Mining and Construction are all eminently automate-able. These aren’t dullards - Half of American jobs are at risk from automation, new study suggests

And the rebuttle

The new plant will have 1/4 the managers, no floor workers and a small team of engineers to keep the plant running. That’s a downsize of something like 90%.

And the factories who made those automated robotics/ computers and software - those are also created by completely automated robots too? Is it turtles all the way down?

Sure it will reduce the number of jobs within that floor of that factory- but it creates huge numbers of jobs outside, of all kinds.
Besides that point: all this is to make humans more efficient, and the more efficient you make humans, the more we output - not less.
The more you automate farming processes, the more we farm - NOT less.

We wiped out a complete job role once when we created ATMs. Bank Tellers became totally redundant - the ATM did their job completely for them. We don’t have zero human bank tellers - we have twice as many. The more efficient you make the banking industry, the wider its reach and capability and creativity and vision becomes.

Humans are NEVER satisfied. The job is never done. It’s not “Oh well no human tellers any more great you can all go home” - it’s “Great, this is an opportunity to expand and do more” and that is precisely what we’ve seen.

Bank tellers do a slightly different job now - but I repeat, we have twice as many of them - not none. Because ATMs made banking more productive as a whole, not less. The human potential for creating opportunities is boundless.

As for the US economy specifically, well I’m European so not really my area.

[kevm14]

And again:

I don’t understand your thinking re: turtles all the way down, it’s a paradox, clearly. You think by replacing a human with an extremely complex machine, we’ve magically taken a single job away. And not created any others. That defies logic.

I work in software, AI is miles and miles off, and even seemingly “simple” software requires huge teams of managers, testers, developers, analysts, and all the support those people require: HR, marketing, designers, salespeople, Admin, reception staff, childcare workers, cleaners, anyone remotely connected to transportation like pilots, flight attendants, train industry workers etc. etc.

You might think we can automate those things - nope, practically none of them.

Emergency services of every type, medical staff, police, armed forces. You cannot automate those jobs, either from an ethical standpoint or practically - technology is nowhere near ready yet. It may never be.

That’s just the software. The hardware is another order of magnitude more complex. You think you can replace a human mining for coal with a robot? Sure, but that robot contains thousands of elements that required sourcing or creating. You’ve solved one problem by creating 1000 others!

Again - I guess you think it’s miraculously possible to get robots to mine for their own materials and build themselves and run themselves in some fabulously flawless way - my god if that’s even possible (I suspect it isn’t) it’s a gazillion years away from right now. It’s a self-referential system that creates its own paradox.

[kevm14]

And the final reply:

Robots are already replacing humans in mines. Go back. Start again.

You need to go back, start again, and this time actually read what I wrote. You totally missed the point. I specifically state that yes you can replace a miner with a robot - BUT that only complicates matters vastly, it doesn’t solve or reduce employment levels

There’s no rule that says, “more efficiency creates more jobs."

Are you kidding? Thousands of years of history rather suggests that it’s human nature to want more, not to settle for “Ok good. This is it. We’ve got as far as we can go. We have literally got no more ideas of any kind - no more creativity, we have enough money, everything’s perfect, nothing needs doing, there are literally no problems left to solve”

You want a “rule” ? Call it Elin’s Law if you must. Like I say - this is where we fundamentally disagree and it may come down to just waiting and seeing what happens.

[kevm14]

Apropos.

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[kevm14]

International perspective.

Its a US problem, I have moved 3000km for a job. I am from India. I relocated from one end of the Country to the other and I don’t even the local language. So, I call BS on relocation as a problem in US. Some people are just lazy and want to be spoon-fed.

Lazy is harsh. More like risk and change averse.

Lazy is the correct word, however harsh it may seem. I have known guys which were offered jobs to a different location than their residence and they declined. After that, same guys were complaining about jobs.

What is more risky, staying home jobless or moving to a place where you can earn money and support yourself.

[kevm14]

So apparently this is political. Or, possibly also left vs right. Or both.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/ar ... ai/520791/

Speaking of left leaning...

As to why it is left vs right my theory is essentially this:
Liberals: We have a huge problem! We need to do something! It's different this time!
Conservatives: We don't have a huge problem. We don't need to do anything. It's not different this time.

As to what makes this a left-leaning article....

This author is barely literate. Her attempt to elevate the Obama administration to the level of experts in machine learning is completely laughable.

Like Obama (the most economically illiterate president ever), liberals are diehard Luddites.
If the liberal fear of "machines" is valid, how is it possible that after 200 years of the ongoing Industrial/Information Revolutions, anyone, anywhere, has a job? How?

So it seems this argument is branded liberal vs conservative. Yay.

But anyway, I maintain this as my opinion on whether we are "about to be in trouble" from automation and AI.

i work in manufacturing, and I already use a LOT of automation in my job. I'm not too worried- I already run 2 or 3 machines simultaneously, some relatively simple additions (which I am already trained to use) could double that- I have developed the skill-sets i need to do all this stuff, smoothly, correctly, and without effort. You know who's gonna get beat by further automation? The temps. We have a steady flow of temps running through our floor, and the more automated we become, the less we need their labor. I'm not about to become obsolescent, at least not before my projected retirement- but, these mostly young people already are, given a little bit more capital investment. The Republicans have at least 3 1/2 more years to take away their health insurance, and 80% of them are skating on the knife-edge of going back to Taco Bell, or worse. Screw these hopeful, hardworking young Americans out of their livelihoods- only a damn fool would think that that's not going to have blowback.

(edit- in case anybody wants to idiotically blather about immigration, NONE, zip, zilch, zero, of these temps are illegal immigrants. American citizens, every last one.)

(edit- a lot of idiots in these comments actually seem to think that automation is actually going to be able to program and repair itself. Not happening. Automation reduces workforce, it does not, and cannot, eliminate it. For one thing, automation is expensive and complicated to manufacture and maintain, and has no inner directed purpose (why would a robot want to make a widget?); the human brain has insight and initiative that no machine will have for the forseeable future, and is readily mass-produced by unskilled labor.)

My stance is simple...it's NOT different this time, and the supposed "dark side" of AI is highly overplayed. And by the way, what exactly should the government do? Universal basic income is a thing but honestly we could do that without even touching the automation discussion. They shouldn't be tied together.

Everyone says the future holds that the 1% (and they mean the 0.01% as I've explained previously), will own all the resources and sell us poor non-automation-owning slobs all their stuff, to enrich them. Except that premise is logical garbage. Where do the poor slobs get money in the first place? The rich are only rich because they provide things to the economy that someone can afford to purchase. And by the way, some other genius mentioned this:

Eventually Universal Basic Income will be required, most likely funded by a tax on the output of robotics and automation.

How exactly does that work? If we have automation for everything...who is buying the output of our robotics and automation, if we take this argument to its logical conclusion? That's why this argument is silly.

I guess another way of putting it is the labor market seems to be self-regulating to me. And here's the funny thing: our high domestic cost of labor has actually spurred enormous investments into robotics and automation. Where labor is cheap, guess what they do? They pay people practically nothing, which is actually economically MORE effective than machines. It's just what naturally happens.

This is some seriously left-leaning utopia:

A massive infrastructure program, paid for by the ultra rich, will create millions of jobs. It's not just roads, bridges, trains, airports, schools, etc. It should also include beautifying America. If anyone watches all of the Rick Steves' travel videos of Europe, you'll see how much nicer European cities are. We could put every artist in the nation to work making the nation more attractive. It doesn't have to be cathedrals and sculptures on the streets as in Europe, I'm sure American artists can come up with new expressions.

Sorry that doesn't work. Thomas Sowell can explain it better than I can, but you can only live off the money of someone else for so long. Eventually YOU have to produce something of value to someone ELSE. Period. You want to talk about destined for failure, follow this guy's advice.

[kevm14]

This is pretty terse.

OMG. This is almost as bad as Malthusian theory.

EVERY time there's a new development, we hear this nonsense.

Find me all the candle-makers that Edison put out of work.

Find me all the horse ranchers and horse-poop-picker-uppers and horseshoe makers and buggy-whip makers that Ford put out of work.

You're a peddler of dis-economics.

[kevm14]

Oh, yes- that was my point re the temps- automation is definitely one of the factors rendering them disposable. Not the only one, tho- think of how many stevedores have been replaced by shipping containers- that's not properly "automation", but the paradigm that uniformly shaped and sized transport packages can be loaded anywhere in the world, transported to anywhere else in the world by ship, rail, and/or truck has eliminated a LOT of jobs (more than just stevedores, certainly). My grousing was more about the folks exaggerating the immediate effects of automation- robot cars are not going to drive themselves to the robot mechanic for a good while yet. That said, yes, the disruptive effects of automation are quite real, as you say. They have been for a long time, actually- think of how many fewer crewmen a motor vessel requires than a sailing vessel.

[kevm14]

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin' comment that automation will not be here for a very long time seems to be a comment akin to "Stay calm, don't panic!!!" When digital cameras, invented by Kodak came along, the boys in the back room discounted it claiming that beheld technology was still bringing isn the money. Now, Kodak and the money making industry of film is gone.

Yes, the whole film supply chain is gone, and there was a big industry behind it. But guess what. The DRAMATICALLY lower cost of digital still and video production has caused a flood of new production. Look at Youtube. I don't know why this always has to be such a one sided argument, with no logical follow-through on the downstream effects. Or should I say more accurately, the upside.