Since at least 2013, many have claimed that we are entering a big automation revolution, and so should soon expect to see large trend-deviating increases in job automation levels, in related job losses, and in
Automation will utterly destroy the low skill jobs, but demand huge numbers of high skill robot wranglers. Fuck the third world places with nothing to offer but strong backs and weak minds, I hope the door to prosperity slams right on their dicks.
If automation doesn’t predict wages we already have a bad problem. The entire point of capitalism is that automation produces more widgets per hour of worker labor. Ideally that increase in efficiency is split between labor and capital so that wages and incomes track national productivity rise. And indeed that happened in the U.S. until the 80’s (roughly Reagonomics). The wages for labor then stagnated, while productivity rose on track.
We can blame globalism, or Reagan tax cuts for automation owners or both. But the point is there's a failure. If no automation dividend from automation productiveness makes it back to labor, then Marx’s criticism of automation is essentially upheld. That’s not a law of nature, as we saw before the 80s. But if it’s true now and for the next 20 years, even though fixable with taxation, that’s insufferable.
Rather than worrying that automation will destroy jobs we should be worried about whether automation will turn most jobs into pointless toil ie, the fraction of human labor that goes to traditional consumption decreases while the fraction that goes to make positional goods increases as automation spreads.
Human psychology clearly inclined us to see human labor and service as statusful. It's why we people buy handcrafted pocket watches not quartz calculator watches or hand stitched luxury clothes instead of mass produced outfits (even when the later are higher quality). Of course, automation won't eliminate jobs. Someone is earning the money and, push comes to shove, they will employee people as butlers, human chess pieces, university profs (instead of video taped lectures) for their kids to associate with and, of course, prostitutes. But we would be better off if no one was employed just to make pure positional goods.
The problem is that employing people purely to gain relative status doesn't increase total utility. Utility probably wouldn't decrease if the only modern pocket watches you could buy were quartz driven or if there was no such thing as hand made luxury clothing. Indeed, It seems plausible these mechanisms to show off differences in wealth and status make things worse. The more we automate the less valuable most human labor is to traditional consumption while the greater the demand for positional goods as people spend less of their wealth on traditional goods.
So I don't fear automation will push us off a cliff. I fear without UBI we will end up in a world where 99% of people labor 40 hours a week making artisanal mustache wax even though a coordinated choice to refuse to make artisanal mustache wax would be a utility win.
Automation will utterly destroy the low skill jobs, but demand huge numbers of high skill robot wranglers. Fuck the third world places with nothing to offer but strong backs and weak minds, I hope the door to prosperity slams right on their dicks.
If automation doesn’t predict wages we already have a bad problem. The entire point of capitalism is that automation produces more widgets per hour of worker labor. Ideally that increase in efficiency is split between labor and capital so that wages and incomes track national productivity rise. And indeed that happened in the U.S. until the 80’s (roughly Reagonomics). The wages for labor then stagnated, while productivity rose on track.
We can blame globalism, or Reagan tax cuts for automation owners or both. But the point is there's a failure. If no automation dividend from automation productiveness makes it back to labor, then Marx’s criticism of automation is essentially upheld. That’s not a law of nature, as we saw before the 80s. But if it’s true now and for the next 20 years, even though fixable with taxation, that’s insufferable.
Rather than worrying that automation will destroy jobs we should be worried about whether automation will turn most jobs into pointless toil ie, the fraction of human labor that goes to traditional consumption decreases while the fraction that goes to make positional goods increases as automation spreads.
Human psychology clearly inclined us to see human labor and service as statusful. It's why we people buy handcrafted pocket watches not quartz calculator watches or hand stitched luxury clothes instead of mass produced outfits (even when the later are higher quality). Of course, automation won't eliminate jobs. Someone is earning the money and, push comes to shove, they will employee people as butlers, human chess pieces, university profs (instead of video taped lectures) for their kids to associate with and, of course, prostitutes. But we would be better off if no one was employed just to make pure positional goods.
The problem is that employing people purely to gain relative status doesn't increase total utility. Utility probably wouldn't decrease if the only modern pocket watches you could buy were quartz driven or if there was no such thing as hand made luxury clothing. Indeed, It seems plausible these mechanisms to show off differences in wealth and status make things worse. The more we automate the less valuable most human labor is to traditional consumption while the greater the demand for positional goods as people spend less of their wealth on traditional goods.
So I don't fear automation will push us off a cliff. I fear without UBI we will end up in a world where 99% of people labor 40 hours a week making artisanal mustache wax even though a coordinated choice to refuse to make artisanal mustache wax would be a utility win.
I'm a control system/automation engineer and I concur with this conclusion.
People have comparative advantage so they are not becoming unemployed. They just move to less paying service sector jobs.
The U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI) shows what's going on in that front.