Technology displacing workers
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ComradeCarter
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« on: August 04, 2013, 01:53:30 AM »

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Source: http://m.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/luddites-may-be-vindicated-in-the-relentless-rise-of-the-machines-20130803-2r67i.html

Technology is steadily getting advanced enough that many jobs will become obsolete, especially low skilled work, without new alternatives. Given that large swathes of the population will not be able to find work, how do we support these people? Or, do you expect that there will always be enough work for everyone, despite technology?

For me, predictably, I believe the government will have to increase taxes on those capable of sacrifice to distribute to the.. shall we say in PC terms.. "differently useful" population. This will have to be done even just to keep the economy from standing completely due to lack of disposable income by consumers. Higher education will also need to be heavily subsidised.

Then again, there may be technology that allows anyone to learn anything nearly instantly, or any number of bizarre scenarios that could eliminate these problems.

What do you think?
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opebo
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« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2013, 12:22:38 PM »

Jobs are only created as and how the government dictates.
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traininthedistance
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« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2013, 12:42:31 PM »

Technology has been "displacing workers" since the invention of the plow.  The idea that we are headed for some sort of dystopian age of 90% unemployment and mass depravity is, really, just the flipside of those insufferable wankers who think the Singularity is going to come and solve every problem ever.  It's magical thinking, completely ignorant of history.

I don't think what is going on now is in any way unique.  Obviously it's of crucial importance to have a safety net for those people in specifically displaced industries.  But there will be new sorts of work, at least partially in areas that we can't even think of right now, and there will also be increased leisure time.  As long as we don't run out of natural/real resources and/or habitat (a BIG BIG if, mind you, and something I do feel legitimately pessimistic about- hard physical constraints to growth are a real thing), we'll find a way to muddle through.
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opebo
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« Reply #3 on: August 04, 2013, 12:46:04 PM »

I don't think what is going on now is in any way unique.

Actually what's at least somewhat unique about the present isn't technology, which is overrated, but in fact the use of Chinese and various other more-subjugated-than-in-the-West work-forces for 'industrial' jobs. 
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ag
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« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2013, 09:47:01 PM »

So far, what we see, in most developed countries, is shortage of low-skilled labor. To the best of my knowledge, they haven't invented robots that are both good at making beds, cutting grass, helping the elderly - and that are cheaper than human labor. And, of course, it is not the robots, but the Chinese that have displaced low-skilled workers in manufacturing.

Now, none of this is an argument, that government should not do redistribution - that is a completely separate question. But this particular article to be pure bullsh**t, with no trace of reasonable thought to provide any saving grace whatsoever.
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ag
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« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2013, 09:48:28 PM »

Jobs are only created as and how the government dictates.

Unfortunately, there are many sh**tholes on earth, where that is, indeed, the case.
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #6 on: August 04, 2013, 11:18:05 PM »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8zhNb8ANe8

Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It's nice and quick and clean
And gets things done

Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home

The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight

Gonna kill kill kill, kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill, kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill, kill kill the poor, tonight

Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate's gone feel free again
Oh, life's a dream with you, Miss Lily White

Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals, it's okay
So let's get dressed and dance away the night

While they, kill kill kill, kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill, kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill, kill kill the poor, tonight

Kill kill kill, kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill, kill kill the poor
Kill kill kill, kill kill the poor, tonight


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© tweed
Miamiu1027
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« Reply #7 on: August 04, 2013, 11:52:03 PM »

Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals, it's okay

best line.
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Link
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« Reply #8 on: August 05, 2013, 12:07:42 AM »

Technology is steadily getting advanced enough that many jobs will become obsolete, especially low skilled work, without new alternatives. Given that large swathes of the population will not be able to find work, how do we support these people? Or, do you expect that there will always be enough work for everyone, despite technology?

Sounds like a perfect argument for a welfare state, contraception, and a very targeted immigration policy that liberally lets in the skills we need and constrains the number of people who don't have those skills.

If the poor had far fewer children and we allowed more college and graduate school immigrants into our country things would improve dramatically.  Why Republicans are against contraception and abortion I will never understand.
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Leftbehind
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« Reply #9 on: August 05, 2013, 02:28:09 AM »

If the proceeds weren't concentrated in few hands we could all benefit from mechanisation and the consequent increased production. As it stands, automating is plainly a direct threat to workers.


But there will be new sorts of work, at least partially in areas that we can't even think of right now, and there will also be increased leisure time. As long as we don't run out of natural/real resources and/or habitat (a BIG BIG if, mind you, and something I do feel legitimately pessimistic about- hard physical constraints to growth are a real thing), we'll find a way to muddle through.

What on earth makes you think that?
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opebo
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« Reply #10 on: August 05, 2013, 06:34:08 AM »

So far, what we see, in most developed countries, is shortage of low-skilled labor. To the best of my knowledge, they haven't invented robots that are both good at making beds, cutting grass, helping the elderly - and that are cheaper than human labor.

Shortage? I think you must be confused - the government policy ('the market') in developed countries has been to have a great dearth of low-skilled jobs - hence the very high unemployment rate among the less skilled citizens of those countries.  In addition wages for this class of worker have been set by the government ('the market') at a very low rate which presents some problems as well.

And, of course, it is not the robots, but the Chinese that have displaced low-skilled workers in manufacturing.

This is precisely what I said in the post just above yours.  The deleterious innovation is of course political, not technological.

Jobs are only created as and how the government dictates.

Unfortunately, there are many sh**tholes on earth, where that is, indeed, the case.

State policy sets all aspects of life the world over.  The existence of ostensibly 'private' fiefdoms as we see in the West doesn't alter this fact.
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t_host1
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« Reply #11 on: August 05, 2013, 08:13:29 AM »

 
What is en abundance, and, all around us?

Answer X capitalization = ?
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traininthedistance
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« Reply #12 on: August 05, 2013, 03:50:14 PM »

If the proceeds weren't concentrated in few hands we could all benefit from mechanisation and the consequent increased production. As it stands, automating is plainly a direct threat to workers.


But there will be new sorts of work, at least partially in areas that we can't even think of right now, and there will also be increased leisure time. As long as we don't run out of natural/real resources and/or habitat (a BIG BIG if, mind you, and something I do feel legitimately pessimistic about- hard physical constraints to growth are a real thing), we'll find a way to muddle through.

What on earth makes you think that?

Well, that has generally been the trend over time- toiling as a shelf-stacker in WalMart for 29 hours a week (because any more and they'd have to give you health insurance) is less work than a 40-hour factory job is less work than constant tilling of the fields centuries prior.  Mind you this is not to say, at all, that the shelf stacker is better off than the factory worker*, in relative terms of course they're very much not, just that they have more free time.

And, also, a lot of this increase in time off is hidden in trends like people going to college, or even just finishing high school, and entering the work force later, which doesn't necessarily seem like leisure time but counts when viewed from the simplistic econobot lens of "non-productive time".  And, and, the numbers that say we've had increased labor force participation over the past few decades from women entering the workforce, ergo less time off, conveniently forgets that the old expectation of "mother and housewife" was itself one long, underappreciated toil.  The actual supposed decrease in overall leisure time from that trend is very much illusory.  (Yes, I'm aware that entering the workforce doesn't mean that mothers can shed their parenting toils- but various technological advances, chief among them washing machines and contraception, have indeed lessened that toil greatly.)

* Though I'd personally take a nice hefty pay cut to live today as opposed to 1960, with the Internet, and better advances in medicine, and less deadly soot and crime, as well as various other societal advances.
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Franknburger
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« Reply #13 on: August 06, 2013, 03:06:45 AM »

So far, what we see, in most developed countries, is shortage of low-skilled labor. To the best of my knowledge, they haven't invented robots that are both good at making beds, cutting grass, helping the elderly - and that are cheaper than human labor.

I had prepared the following diagram for this thread, but it fits here as well:

Current German data. "Cutting grass" is within the "Real Estate & Facility Management" group, and in fact one of the strongest employment generators in there, together with security.

At least at the moment, it is not the low-skilled workers that have problems in the German labour market. Pressure is mostly on lower-level white-collar workers, especially in banking & insurance, that see their jobs replaced by customers doing it themselves via the internet. Retail may follow soon (in fact, a good part of the employment gain in trade shown in the diagram has already been eaten up by the collapse of two major German retail chains). However, internet-based retail will create quite a lot of (equally poorly paid) new jobs in transport & storage. 
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Small Business Owner of Any Repute
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« Reply #14 on: August 06, 2013, 02:38:27 PM »

Workers are always being displaced by technology. It's been happening since the industrial revolution, and it's going to keep happening until the end of time. That's not the problem.

The actual problem is this: As human civilization continues to advance, technology will blaze along at exponentially faster speeds. The kind of tech advances we're going to see in the next twenty years will blow the advances of the last twenty out of the water. The velocity of change, as it were, is increasing. And since people are struggling to handle the current pace of change, that fact is worrying.
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Torie
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« Reply #15 on: August 06, 2013, 03:49:04 PM »

Assuming appropriate market mechanisms are allowed to work "properly," technology just changes the nature of jobs, and the relative pay scales between different kinds of jobs. So it is probably somewhat accurate to attribute some of the growing wealth inequality on technological innovation (heck back when most of the human species made about the same - just enough to keep barely alive and reproduce), but not the lack of jobs.
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Person Man
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« Reply #16 on: August 07, 2013, 02:40:25 PM »
« Edited: August 07, 2013, 02:46:53 PM by Indeed »

I'm less than optimistic about the chances that the owners and the "capable" will agree to support those for whom capitalism no longer has any clear purpose. It's hardly as if they have any real political power.

For the time being, we have plenty of low-level service work to go around. Technology won't be replacing hospice workers for at least several decades, for instance, and as long as this kind of labor remains dirt cheap it's unlikely that the McDonalds and Wal-Marts of the world will bother to mechanize it.

Define "decades". If you really mean "hospice" as a place you go to die, it is already a major priority to automize those workers as well. Especially in countries that have a lot of olds.

You could start seeing automated ordering counters at fast food places anytime now. Though the actual cooking probably won't start being automated until about 2025 or 2030.
My take on it is that there is a potential boom for technology positions as service positions go away. Then again, along with a higher minimium wage, this should encourage people to get into some sort of technological trade.

Perhaps as robots and computers productions can create new domestic jobs if there isn't the infrastructure in poor countries.  
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opebo
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« Reply #17 on: August 07, 2013, 04:35:53 PM »

Assuming appropriate market mechanisms are allowed to work "properly," technology just changes the nature of jobs, and the relative pay scales between different kinds of jobs. So it is probably somewhat accurate to attribute some of the growing wealth inequality on technological innovation (heck back when most of the human species made about the same - just enough to keep barely alive and reproduce), but not the lack of jobs.

Regarding the part I've underlined - what do you think the vast majority of humanity, under capitalism's heel, makes now?  Nothing has changed, Torie. 
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Torie
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« Reply #18 on: August 07, 2013, 09:43:15 PM »

Assuming appropriate market mechanisms are allowed to work "properly," technology just changes the nature of jobs, and the relative pay scales between different kinds of jobs. So it is probably somewhat accurate to attribute some of the growing wealth inequality on technological innovation (heck back when most of the human species made about the same - just enough to keep barely alive and reproduce), but not the lack of jobs.

Regarding the part I've underlined - what do you think the vast majority of humanity, under capitalism's heel, makes now?  Nothing has changed, Torie. 

Everything has changed opebo, and much has changed in my own lifetime. Been to Mexico lately? It is nothing like it was when I was a kid. Heck, in my gardener's little town of maybe 10,000 when he was a kid, only one family had a car and money, and to get there, you needed to drive 3 hours on dirt roads. Now about a third of the population own cars, and the place is bustling. There is a substantial middle class. Tecate on the border is the same way. When I was a kid, Tijuana had no paved roads. Now it does of course, and also has a very substantial middle class, and most of the horrible hovels and tin shacks put up by squatters with no utilities are gone. They are all gone in Tecate, which used to have about 5 miles of them strung along the road to Ensenada. Granted, a few places are still not too far away from our species' beginning. But most places are these days are. The increasing wealth of the developing world, and the standard of living of the average Joe, is simply stunning to me - and gratifying. Most of it has happened my lifetime.

And then there is Thailand, which presumably you know about, with a rapidly increasing standard of living - very rapid. 

Facts just don't get in the way of your ideology do they?
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LastVoter
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« Reply #19 on: August 07, 2013, 10:43:53 PM »

Assuming appropriate market mechanisms are allowed to work "properly," technology just changes the nature of jobs, and the relative pay scales between different kinds of jobs. So it is probably somewhat accurate to attribute some of the growing wealth inequality on technological innovation (heck back when most of the human species made about the same - just enough to keep barely alive and reproduce), but not the lack of jobs.

Regarding the part I've underlined - what do you think the vast majority of humanity, under capitalism's heel, makes now?  Nothing has changed, Torie. 

Everything has changed opebo, and much has changed in my own lifetime. Been to Mexico lately? It is nothing like it was when I was a kid. Heck, in my gardener's little town of maybe 10,000 when he was a kid, only one family had a car and money, and to get there, you needed to drive 3 hours on dirt roads. Now about a third of the population own cars, and the place is bustling. There is a substantial middle class. Tecate on the border is the same way. When I was a kid, Tijuana had no paved roads. Now it does of course, and also has a very substantial middle class, and most of the horrible hovels and tin shacks put up by squatters with no utilities are gone. They are all gone in Tecate, which used to have about 5 miles of them strung along the road to Ensenada. Granted, a few places are still not too far away from our species' beginning. But most places are these days are. The increasing wealth of the developing world, and the standard of living of the average Joe, is simply stunning to me - and gratifying. Most of it has happened my lifetime.

And then there is Thailand, which presumably you know about, with a rapidly increasing standard of living - very rapid. 

Facts just don't get in the way of your ideology do they?
This is a small subset of population in Mexico Torie, the so called middle class, or bourgeoisie, it's the Iron law of wages for the rest(and forced emigration to US and subsequent slavery that follows it because of NAFTA).
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Person Man
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« Reply #20 on: August 08, 2013, 09:03:51 AM »

Assuming appropriate market mechanisms are allowed to work "properly," technology just changes the nature of jobs, and the relative pay scales between different kinds of jobs. So it is probably somewhat accurate to attribute some of the growing wealth inequality on technological innovation (heck back when most of the human species made about the same - just enough to keep barely alive and reproduce), but not the lack of jobs.

Regarding the part I've underlined - what do you think the vast majority of humanity, under capitalism's heel, makes now?  Nothing has changed, Torie. 

Well yeah, the global South's progress has been astonishing but one must wonder if it has made live more difficult back up North. Though I will buy the argument that growth has simply shifted and that an equilbrium could be possible in a few decades, say 2050-2070ish, without causing much more pain in the good 'ol USA. 

Everything has changed opebo, and much has changed in my own lifetime. Been to Mexico lately? It is nothing like it was when I was a kid. Heck, in my gardener's little town of maybe 10,000 when he was a kid, only one family had a car and money, and to get there, you needed to drive 3 hours on dirt roads. Now about a third of the population own cars, and the place is bustling. There is a substantial middle class. Tecate on the border is the same way. When I was a kid, Tijuana had no paved roads. Now it does of course, and also has a very substantial middle class, and most of the horrible hovels and tin shacks put up by squatters with no utilities are gone. They are all gone in Tecate, which used to have about 5 miles of them strung along the road to Ensenada. Granted, a few places are still not too far away from our species' beginning. But most places are these days are. The increasing wealth of the developing world, and the standard of living of the average Joe, is simply stunning to me - and gratifying. Most of it has happened my lifetime.

And then there is Thailand, which presumably you know about, with a rapidly increasing standard of living - very rapid. 

Facts just don't get in the way of your ideology do they?
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opebo
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« Reply #21 on: August 08, 2013, 03:22:11 PM »

Everything has changed opebo, and much has changed in my own lifetime. Been to Mexico lately? It is nothing like it was when I was a kid. Heck, in my gardener's little town of maybe 10,000 when he was a kid, only one family had a car and money, and to get there, you needed to drive 3 hours on dirt roads. Now about a third of the population own cars, and the place is bustling. There is a substantial middle class. Tecate on the border is the same way. When I was a kid, Tijuana had no paved roads. Now it does of course, and also has a very substantial middle class, and most of the horrible hovels and tin shacks put up by squatters with no utilities are gone. They are all gone in Tecate, which used to have about 5 miles of them strung along the road to Ensenada. Granted, a few places are still not too far away from our species' beginning. But most places are these days are. The increasing wealth of the developing world, and the standard of living of the average Joe, is simply stunning to me - and gratifying. Most of it has happened my lifetime.

And then there is Thailand, which presumably you know about, with a rapidly increasing standard of living - very rapid. 

Facts just don't get in the way of your ideology do they?

An 'increasing standard of living' is completely irrelevant to my point, Torie.  It is precisely the 'kindly master' argument. 

And anyway I'm sure you realize that any transitory 'improvement' in these servile's lives in the 'developing world' is done entirely to eliminate the political power of workers in the US, Europe, and in a larger sense everywhere.  They are quite obviously the scabs in the strike-breaking strategy of the oppressors.

(and besides, lastly, I personally don't care much about increases in standard of living anyway - it is relative inequality of power that I care about).
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Torie
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« Reply #22 on: August 08, 2013, 03:40:10 PM »

Well at least opebo I have succeeded in weaning you are off the nothing much has changed when it comes to a bare subsistence existence for almost all since the Cro-Magnon man appeared kick, and got you back to mainstream Left thinking that allowing much inequality in outcomes to exist is intolerable. I consider that quite an accomplish, given your stubborn ways. In fact, I am going to give myself a pat on the back! Smiley
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opebo
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« Reply #23 on: August 08, 2013, 03:53:55 PM »

Well at least opebo I have succeeded in weaning you are off the nothing much has changed when it comes to a bare subsistence existence for almost all since the Cro-Magnon man appeared kick, and got you back to mainstream Left thinking that allowing much inequality in outcomes to exist is intolerable. I consider that quite an accomplish, given your stubborn ways. In fact, I am going to give myself a pat on the back! Smiley

You're strawmanning, Torie.  Subsistence is in context - the context of a society.   Physically, yes, it means nutrition, shelter, and a few other things, depending on how long you want your functionaries to live.  These are gotten in different ways - in the old days they collected rats and berries, now they shop in 7-11.  Which is 'better'?  It is a matter of opinion and not very relevant as I said.
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King
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« Reply #24 on: August 09, 2013, 12:27:05 PM »

I think Marx touched on this issue and as such every Western economist for 150 years has devoted at least one paper to refute it.

Technological advancement is always a good thing as long as we embrace it properly.  In recent decades Americans have got it in their head that the arbitrary 40 hours is the only way to be a full time worker.  That needs to change.  The future of full time work is less hours at higher wages
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