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Why automation will not lead to long term unemployment

Wow. Remarkable how much you got wrong. The industrial revolution changed the world in a very short period of time.

No point in engaging beyond that, given it would appear there is some information gaps in your understanding.

The industrial revolution lasted for more than a century, ocean. Calling that a short period of time is ridiculous.
 
The industrial revolution lasted for more than a century, ocean. Calling that a short period of time is ridiculous.

I wrote it changed the world in a very short period of time. I didn't write the industrial revolution only lasted a short period of time.

Some disinfectant might take care of the stuff you stepped in.
 
Think of it this way. Despite an explosion in automation and technology there are many more jobs today than there were 100 years ago.

There are many more humans today than there were 100 years ago. Your statement adds little (if anything) to the discussion.
 
There are many more humans today than there were 100 years ago. Your statement adds little (if anything) to the discussion.

The point is that different types of jobs were created through technology and automation. There are new jobs that require designing the equipment, software, etc. Then there are the jobs requiring people to fix the equipment, etc.
 
Historically, the introduction of new technology that displaced workers has never lived up to the claims made by its critiques. Unemployment did not surge massively for decades following the mechanization of agriculture or the industrial production of clothing, among other things. We have dozens upon dozens of types of jobs that used to be ubiquitous that have become marginal or ceased to exist altogether.

Although the idea that automation putting some people out of work seems intuitive, its track record is awfully bad. Similar issues arose in the past and the prediction never panned out -- never, not even once. I suspect the idea is still limping into a public discussion because the forces that put someone out of work are very visible and easy to picture while the forces that create new jobs are considerably more remote and abstract. Mind you, automation increases productivity and income at the scale of countries. This means, among other things, that new opportunities emerge. For one thing, certain services that used to be luxuries might turn out to be affordable now for businesses. If you don't have to pay people to work cash registers as much as you used to, you can have cleaner places, more staff working on what you sell, more money left for advertisement, styling, decoration, renovation, etc. And if you don't take advantage of your new profit margins to outdo the other store across the street, they will. All those things happen everywhere on every scale -- within plants, across plants, across cities, across different types of tasks, etc. There is no reason to suspect the net effect is going to be bad for Joe Average's employment prospects.


A more problematic part of the issue is what happens during a transition and how will the spoils of that war be distributed. We love the idea of freedom and opportunity, so the last thing we need are markets where you need billions and connections to have a shot at making it. We also like the idea of personal responsibility, but it's kind of hard to blame a guy who worked in manufacturing during the 1960s for having trouble in 1980. You make investments in time and resources to acquire expertise and experience so you can be productive enough to negotiate good compensation. We'd like that to still be true going forward so that, at least approximately, people who put in the effort will be fine.

Yet, rapid changes can bring about windfall redistributions across groups of people for reasons that have nothing to do with hard work or perseverance. One group is just lucky and the other is just unlucky. Going back to a previous point, it's not nice if that game is way rigged either in favor of the well connected: some people who already are well off managing to reap the benefits and dumping the risks on all others... That's not a scenario that is peculiarly attractive.


I think that part of this discussion is slightly misplaced. The question is more how should we handle transitions? Can we provide some kind of easing procedure that would not be costly, yet would help ensure a bit all of us against structural changes we cannot control? Is it possible to move forward with these things without creating an entrenched elite that cannot be dislodged? Because I can see obvious arguments against the main point attacked by this thread, but I see no obvious reasons why these other issues could not manifest themselves.
 
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