Honestly I think this is why unemployment is so high. At first they had to let people go during the recession, and then they were like, "oh hey, we didn't need a lot of those people in the first place.."
I wouldn't call myself a marxist, but I do think we're entering an era where something like a universal basic income might make sense. Nothing against people getting wealthy off their labor, but it seems apparent to me that the job market will continue to shrink as things become more and more automated, and shaming people that don't have some distinct skill-set that can't be automated doesn't sound like a recipe for a great society...
The problem with this argument is, that the same argument has existed for 200 years. Its exactly the same argument, replace 'maschine' with 'robot' and you could reprint a 200 year old opinion piece on this in the NYT and nobody would notitce.
What has changed now that was not the case 200 years ago. New maschines replace people and those people have to do something else.
The problem is not that there is not enougth work to be done, there are tons of industries and tons of places where people are needed. The problem is far more institutional, why are people not effectivly switching?
There might still by some cyclical unemployment but some of it is structural and blaming robots is the cheap way out.
There are a lot of jobs that have very obviously been automated though. For example: secretaries. Sure the job still kind of exists, although they give them weird fake names so that people aren't insulted (executive assistant!), but it's a lot smaller than it was. It's just not that important when you have email and text messages.
Same thing with factory work. Yeah, you still need people.. but you need less people. Do we really think that all the people that got displaced from their factory jobs are suddenly going to become robot mechanics or something? Sure some of them, but I just don't buy this argument that technology always creates new jobs when it destroys the old ones.
There are also a lot of jobs that currently exist that I suspect are not particularly necessary, they're just convenient. You see this all the time: a manager will hire someone to do something that they just don't like to do themselves. A convenience hire, basically. As long as the budget is there, everyone feels good.
For instance: "project managers" (Different places call them different things). I'd define this role as people that don't actually have any hiring or firing authority, or significant design role, but rather, they're mostly in charge of client relationships. Useful? Sure. But mostly that role exists so that the people doing the actual work have a buffer between them and the client/customer. If the economy fell of a cliff again, we'd probably not have that many project managers.
I just think different economic systems make sense in different contexts. Capitalism was a pretty good idea when growth was the most important factor, but now the US Government literally sets extra wheat on fire to keep prices at a certain level. I mean if you're literally burning food and employing people in jobs that aren't that useful, maybe the whole "growth" thing has stopped making sense.
Part of the reason we have a vast and highly paid entertainment industry, for example, is because automation eliminated a large number of jobs.
Productivity gains enable all sorts of industries to exist that couldn't have previously, such as people who clean dinosaur bones, get paid to play baseball, do interior decorating, restore classic cars, organize your closets, etc.
> There are a lot of jobs that have very obviously been automated though.
I think you have not understood my argument. My argument is that this happens ALL THE TIME. Do yourself a favor and go back and read the discussion going on 150 years ago. Its the same thing you are saying now.
Blablabl the basket makers are unemployed because of plastic bags. The barrelmaker because of plastic barrels and so on and so on.
The point is that this happens constantly and the market is the exact tool to deal with this. People get insentivised to move into the next best thing humans can still do. This has lead to more and more investment in human capital and it has been a good thing.
Capitalism is the best if you want to give people as much freedom and choices as possible, it is also the best if you want to get BILLIONS of people out of poverty and since there are still BILLIONS of people in poverty turing away from it to some sort of 'lets just leave everything as it is' policy is simply madness.
> I mean if you're literally burning food and employing people in jobs that aren't that useful, maybe the whole "growth" thing has stopped making sense.
Thats that terrible thing. It is done to please special intrest groupes and has nothing todo with acutal markets. I would suggest reading about the politcal economy of farm subsidisment and protectionsim.
Its a terrible thing and helps make us all poorer, and it worse because it makes it harder for BILLIONS of people to move out of poverty.
Just because it has been true up until now does not mean that it still is true and will continue to be true indefinitely.
Indeed historically, rapid technological development did often lead to many years of immense economic suffering for large groups of people - it just eventually got better. I don't think it's wrong to ask if now it's possible it will never get better because we're on the verge of technology replacing so many jobs.
> Just because it has been true up until now does not mean that it still is true and will continue to be true indefinitely.
My argument is not that it will go on for ever, my argument is that we can not predict when its going to stop and without some groundbreaking new line of argumentation I see no reason why I should expect it to change very soon.
However the only argument I hear is 'Tech X replaced Y amount of people'.
There are many things that come back again and again. Overpopulation pops up every 20 years. Resource prices will just go up (peek oil).
All these arguments have one thing in common, the stay consistanly the same and they are consistently wrong. Now once in awhile some prediction turns out to be true, and then people cry 'see I was right'. However its very unlikly that these people were actually right in the sence that they had discovered some new analysis or something, they are just luck.
So if there is a great new argument, please tell me and if its good I belive you.
> Indeed historically, rapid technological development did often lead to many years of immense economic suffering for large groups of people
True. But I dont think the last couple of years were specially revolutionary in terms of technology.
> I don't think it's wrong to ask if now it's possible it will never get better because we're on the verge of technology replacing so many jobs.
Its not wrong to ask. Belive me I spent quite some time reading about this, reading both sides but in the end, one side was consistently correct and the other never changed there argument or there position.
I understand your argument, I just disagree. (also: you don't have to be a dick about it. Sometimes reasonable people can disagree, you know?) 150 years ago was a vastly different time. I don't care if they were wrong THEN. Back then they didn't even have computers and motors were inefficient. Time and technology have changed. It's like if someone had invented facebook in 1995. It's not like social networking is a bad idea, it just wouldn't have worked in 1995.
Im sorry, I was a bit angry because I felt like you did not even read my argument.
> 150 years ago was a vastly different time. I don't care if they were wrong THEN. Back then they didn't even have computers and motors were inefficient. Time and technology have changed.
I agree. But simular argument can be made for every decade since then.
Im not arguing that it WILL go on, Im arguing that we have no reason to belive that it will stop soon. Im not hearing any new arguments and the data does not really fit the 'automation' story.
So my question is, why is it diffrent now, and 'now we have tech X' is not good enougth.
I think there is always more work that can be done.
Look around you. Is your street clean, is everything working, are old people being cared for, are children being well educated? The problem is misallocation of resources and apparently that is down to free market economics.
Education is not an example of the free market at work; it seems that the constantly increasing spending, and level (at best) results are a clear failure of government.
Free markets have allocated billions to the creator of a social network, which really doesn't provide much value to the world (ok I am sure you can argue that it has some value). Yet you complain about increased spending in education. I personally think the resources would be better spent on the things I mentioned amongst others, but the free market says otherwise. Recycling would be a perfect example, but it is far cheaper to destroy the planet than solve the problem.
People are not effectively switching because they are not evolutionarily or socially hard-wired to do so. We are going through a societal disruption on the order not never seen before in human history. To place all the blame on workers not adjusting is akin to blaming a person for not being prepared for their first cardiac arrest.
I am worried in the long run about automation, but it's true that labor participation right now is about the same relative to the number of retirees as it has always been. Unemployment is very low. The number of "discouraged" workers is 2x what it was before the recession, but we're only talking about a swing of 500k people -- less than half a percent of the labor force.
So, the robots/automation replacing jobs explanation doesn't really float for me right now. First, it's not clear that there's a phenomenon that needs to be explained at all. People have a feeling that there are fewer jobs, but that doesn't actually seem to be true. And, as you said, this has always been a go-to complaint. I'm sure it will be accurate someday, but it doesn't seem to be today.
Unemployment is actually not that high in the US. This is why I think a lot of policies people such as basic income, make work schemes, etc are really not that needed right now. The economy is generating jobs.
U.S. unemployment is ~3x higher now than in 2007. A more important statistic is underemployment, and that's still high. And this includes part-time workers who can't find full time employment. While job growth is slightly positive overall it's extremely misleading for two reasons: a.) wages are flat to negative, b.) the grow is geographically disproportionate with more than 1/2 of U.S. states seeing negative job growth. Most of the gains have come in oil fracking boom states. That's a bubble about to pop due to downward pressure in oil prices, and New York state is just one of the first likely to ban the practice. So the state of employment in the U.S. is actually dismal.
I wouldn't call myself a marxist, but I do think we're entering an era where something like a universal basic income might make sense. Nothing against people getting wealthy off their labor, but it seems apparent to me that the job market will continue to shrink as things become more and more automated, and shaming people that don't have some distinct skill-set that can't be automated doesn't sound like a recipe for a great society...