Technological unemployment is (almost) here

[pawel7777]

People who own the machines will reap the rewards just as people who "own" the labor reap the rewards now. This is unacceptable except for the owners.

It's a bit different. You can 'reap the rewards of labour' for generations, but when TU kicks in, it'll be dead-end for all. As the 'owner of machines' you'll need consumers (with income) to buy from you. And the risk of angry mob raiding your house and taking over your goods and your power grows in line with the number of unemployed with no income.

So when TU becomes real issue, there should be mutual willingness to come up with some sort of solution. The biggest problem is whether the political elites (and those who pull their strings) have any long-term strategy rather than focusing only on the next few years.

[1715235825]

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[ThEmporium]

Yes. Even bitcoin will replace many existing jobs if it ever become mainstream.

Do you mean unemployment will grow as Bitcoin became more familiar in the financial market ? I think bitcoin has nothing do with those jobs factors, since the invention of bitcoin according to satoshi is "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

[muhrohmat]

what i still figure out as vision of man its far more intelegent than robots robots do simple tasks but not substitute the vision of market that human as if only you install a need for money in less nervouse matters and human consience  you could find a machine robt that is able to negociate porper in thet matter the machines will substitute humans into the digital nervouse central system but thats very unlikable still for now soo inovation comes from man not machines.

[Furio]

Unconditional income doesn't have to lead to extreme tax. A recent study confirmed that all the money that now goes into the infrastructure and institutions who manage the social security system, far exceeds the costs of providing everybody a base income.

The same goes for charity work. If all the money that goes into thirld world development (read filling the pockets of corrupt governments) would go to the people directly, every citizin would have about 1500 to 2000 dollars!!

Closing thought, if all the money/value in the world gets evenly distributed, we all would have 70 million per citizin!!! Let that sink in, we all could be millionaires.....

[evenlydistributingfuture]

Which of the developed countries is most likely to try once again to deal with the ramifications of a guaranteed minimal income--either to implement it or just seriously consider it? I recall Switzerland voting against it via popular vote about two years ago.



Did anyone's perception of Richard Nixon change when they found out he wanted to put in place a similar negative income tax while he was president?

[marcus_of_augustus]

People who own the machines automobiles will reap the rewards just as people who "own" the labor reap the rewards now. This is unacceptable except for the owners.

It's time for the rest of the people to collectively own the machines automobiles to eliminate the advantage of the few over the many. Only then will the true capability of machines automobiles be realized for all. Until then, it will be the same good ol elite exploiting the rest of the population scam.

ftfy. the government should own all the cars, trucks, tractors, bulldozers and factories by that logic ... ask the soviets how that turned before spouting nonsense to the world perhaps?

[marcus_of_augustus]

All this panic about jobs disappearing is non-sense to me. Lets make robots do ALL the work, and let us humans live lives of leisure.

The economy used to have businesses provide goods and services by paying employees for their labour. Those employees were then able use those wages to consume the goods and services the businesses created. Today, the production of goods gets cheaper and cheaper, largely because robot are replacing workers. This, however, is destroying the consumer base that's supposed to buy those goods in the first place. How can anyone consume goods, however cheap, if no one has any money?

The solution? A Universal Basic Income. Businesses can still automate all they like with no fear of killing off their customers. It's a win-win solution for everyone. I've never been a socialist but I simply don't see any other outcome for this dead end.

No. A Universal Basic Income is just another communistic fix to a deeper communistic caused problem. You need to first let people keep the money they can earn before you think about taking it off them to give back to others ... if governments stopped ripping off people and facilitating powerful people to rip off economically weaker people you start to go in a good direction again.

The governments are causing the problems, why look to more government solutions to problems they are creating? That's insanity defined.

[neurotypical]

People who own the machines automobiles will reap the rewards just as people who "own" the labor reap the rewards now. This is unacceptable except for the owners.

It's time for the rest of the people to collectively own the machines automobiles to eliminate the advantage of the few over the many. Only then will the true capability of machines automobiles be realized for all. Until then, it will be the same good ol elite exploiting the rest of the population scam.

ftfy. the government should own all the cars, trucks, tractors, bulldozers and factories by that logic ... ask the soviets how that turned before spouting nonsense to the world perhaps?

Yeah, because the technology was exactly the same 50+ years ago than it is now. Now that's some nonsense.
Thats what people like you don't get. You always think humanity will keep reinventing itself to generate more jobs than what machines automate, when if you look at the objective data is exactly the opposite: machines are replacing more jobs than what new jobs are being generated, try to get that one through your thick skull for once please.

All this panic about jobs disappearing is non-sense to me. Lets make robots do ALL the work, and let us humans live lives of leisure.

The economy used to have businesses provide goods and services by paying employees for their labour. Those employees were then able use those wages to consume the goods and services the businesses created. Today, the production of goods gets cheaper and cheaper, largely because robot are replacing workers. This, however, is destroying the consumer base that's supposed to buy those goods in the first place. How can anyone consume goods, however cheap, if no one has any money?

The solution? A Universal Basic Income. Businesses can still automate all they like with no fear of killing off their customers. It's a win-win solution for everyone. I've never been a socialist but I simply don't see any other outcome for this dead end.

No. A Universal Basic Income is just another communistic fix to a deeper communistic caused problem. You need to first let people keep the money they can earn before you think about taking it off them to give back to others ... if governments stopped ripping off people and facilitating powerful people to rip off economically weaker people you start to go in a good direction again.

The governments are causing the problems, why look to more government solutions to problems they are creating? That's insanity defined.

Again, "communism this soviet that". Cut the bullshit. We are in 2015, technology today does things that we could only have dreamed about in soviet ages. Again: tons of jobs getting automated by machines, few new jobs being created to try to stop the perpetual unemployment. Therefore: dead end. How do you change this? everyone becomes a programmer and a technician that fixes the robots? lol.

I had always believed that eventually humans would not longer be doing the work but replaced by robots with the same capability. A persons job would be maintaining the robot. So instead of flipping burgers for a living, one will be maintaining the robot(s) that flips the burgers.
The main problem is the people that will have the brains to take care of the machines will be the 1% compared to the rest, specially someone that has been doing the same thing for decades and suddenly finds out what he does is deprecated by a machine.

[Erdogan]

Robots taking over all work is economically impossible. You will see in the coming years that productivity is coming down due to zero interest rate policy over many years and therefore a seriously distorted capital structure.

In such a world, automation will cost more than it tastes, and business will go more and more low tech.

[Erdogan]

What could happen in an imagined peaceful, let it bloom econony, is that productivity increases, prosperity increases, people might want to work less (you never know, it is up to each individual), and if so, price of labour would increase and signal that more robots are necessary.

[Erdogan]

If there is an increase in the forced minimum wage, expect to say goodbye to the macdonalds clerks that take your order and payment and collect the food on a tablet. The higher labour price will signal that more automation is needed. You will have to press the buttons yourself, pay with a card to the machine, and the food is assembled in an automated mega hamburger maker. It's machine voice will call you when the tray is ready.

You see, the market works always, also in a trade distorted by violent force. You can call it the general market.

If they do this automation unforced, it means that the wages have already increased enough to spur it.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Again, "communism this soviet that". Cut the bullshit. We are in 2015, technology today does things that we could only have dreamed about in soviet ages. Again: tons of jobs getting automated by machines, few new jobs being created to try to stop the perpetual unemployment. Therefore: dead end. How do you change this? everyone becomes a programmer and a technician that fixes the robots? lol.

I had always believed that eventually humans would not longer be doing the work but replaced by robots with the same capability. A persons job would be maintaining the robot. So instead of flipping burgers for a living, one will be maintaining the robot(s) that flips the burgers.
The main problem is the people that will have the brains to take care of the machines will be the 1% compared to the rest, specially someone that has been doing the same thing for decades and suddenly finds out what he does is deprecated by a machine.

"We need communism because ... robots."

That's your argument right?

Have some faith in humanity and the power of the emergent good of motivated individuals to keep solving societies toughest challenges, as they have done already for millenia.

[Erdogan]

Say you have a going concern with 10 workers on minimum wages at 10 USD/hr.

If you increase the minimum wage 50% from 10 to 15, what happens?

There is not enough income to cover that, so you might think that to keep expenses at the same level,  3 workers will be fired.

But no, 7 workers can not produce the same as 10, so productivity for the remaining 7 must be increased.

But wait, to increase productivity, the owner has to invest in equipment and maintain it. There is no extra income to cover that, so what he must do, is to fire more workers, and find the right balance between labour and investment.

So he may have to go to 5 remaining workers, invest in equipment to increase productivity so output is the same as before.

Capital, which is a scarce, will have to be drawn from other possible investments.  And there is no guarantee that the customers are happy with the change. Minimum wage is wealth destruction, not least for the ones who are fired.

Without minimum wage (ban on low wage workers), the same could happen, but only as a result of the labour market requiring 15 USD for work hours. In that case, the workers that leave are happy, because they go to higher paid places. The wealth creating, free market just advanced a notch.

[Miracal]

Unemployment is an artificially created situation used by governments to keep the employment market competitive and wages low.

wow, are you for real? There are supposedly 10,000 jobs in the market. There are 100,000 capable employees coming out. There are more capable employees in the market every year, not the jobs. Companies are expanding but not at such a rate, not every CEO is a massive job creator. There is unemployment, its a huge problem. 'Unreal'. Oh god.

[HigsonPP]

Being afraid that one day our own technology will overcome us is underestimating our own capability and overestimating theirs. With proper control and a more knowledge oriented point view, we will only grow, we wont go down.

[Mehek]

Again, are you seriously going to tell to the average 45 year old guy with a family that has been working on factories for life to "man up and become a creative entrepeneur?" Jesus fucking Christ, do you live on a bubble?

Entrepreneurship as a solution is bogus anyway. Thanks to economies of scale, we only need a handful of successful businesses for any particular good or service. That's the inevitable steady state. What will the other 99% do? Will each and every person operate successfully in a niche? No, because only a few ideas (relative to the total set of money-making ideas) are viable as a primary source of income.

I believe entrepreneurship cannot be a solution or an alternative, but it can be an aid. If a capable entrepreneur gives rise to a 1000 new jobs, it is mutually benefiting the people and the economy.

[tyz]

Each new innovation (and Bitcoin is an innovation) brings new kinds of jobs up we have not thought about before. So, if Bitcoin is getting a serious mainstream thing, then it will create new jobs for the ecosystem and businesses models around the coin.

Yes. Even bitcoin will replace many existing jobs if it ever become mainstream.

Do you mean unemployment will grow as Bitcoin became more familiar in the financial market ? I think bitcoin has nothing do with those jobs factors, since the invention of bitcoin according to satoshi is "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

[Erdogan]

Unemployment is an artificially created situation used by governments to keep the employment market competitive and wages low.

wow, are you for real? There are supposedly 10,000 jobs in the market. There are 100,000 capable employees coming out. There are more capable employees in the market every year, not the jobs. Companies are expanding but not at such a rate, not every CEO is a massive job creator. There is unemployment, its a huge problem. 'Unreal'. Oh god.

In the free market, there is exactly just enough of everything, including available manpower.

Governments instigate work prohibition in the form of minimum wages, licenses, and they prohibit you from working if they have given you a gift. Remove those prohibitions, and everyone who wants to work for the current rate, can. As saving and investment progress, the rate will increase, because people will not do anything for a low price.

[Mehek]

For the last 200 years increase in the labor productivity have leaded to higher standards of living and creating jobs in new areas. Arguments that robots can leave people out of work have been called "Luddite fallacy" and dismissed by most economist and politicians.

But look what happens now. Highly paid blue-collar jobs have been already replaced with robots or outsourced to China. Service sector is most difficult to automate, so most jobs (>80%) are concentrated here today. Professions which in the past being considered as temporarily for students and school dropouts (fastfood cooks and waiters, bartenders, janitors, taxi/truck drivers, cashiers etc) now become acceptable even for adult people with college degree, however they also start showing signs of the automation and no doubt these jobs will gone after 5..10..20 years. Skilled white-collar jobs aren't safe places anymore - software reduce demand for accountants and tax consultants, cloud computing hits IT-workers, emerging AI systems like IBM Watson will definitely shrink number of doctors/lawyers/journalists and other data-processing jobs. Personal 3D printers could break away whole supply chains (manufacturing -> shipping -> warehouses -> retail sale) leaving millions of "useless intermediaries" out of work.

Problem of the technological unemployment is well described in the book "Lights in the tunnel". Personally I don't agree with the solution offered there, however author provides strong proof about problem's seriousness.

This is the idea behind the "Luddite fallacy". At  present, I  suspect  that  most  economists  would probably be likely to agree with this statement and, therefore,  disagree  with  what  I  have  suggested  in this book. Here, in a nutshell, is my argument for why I think we will end up with a serious unemployment problem: As technology advances and industries automate, this improves the efficiency of production and tends to make the  products  and  services  produced  by  those  industries more  affordable.  That  leaves more  purchasing  power  in the pockets of consumers. Those consumers then go out and spend that extra money on all kinds of products and services produced by a variety of industries. Some of those industries  are  relatively  labor  intensive,  so  they  have  to hire more workers  to meet  this demand—and  so overall employment remains stable or increases. This is the reason that,  historically,  technology  has  not  led  to  sustained, widespread unemployment. My argument is that accelerating automation technology will ultimately invade many of the industries that have traditionally been labor intensive. Additionally, the process of  creative  destruction  will  destroy  old  industries  and create new ones, and very few of these new industries are likely to be labor intensive. As a result, the overall economy will become less labor intensive and ultimately reach a  "tipping point". Beyond  this point,  the  economy will no longer be able to absorb the workers who lose jobs due to automation: businesses  will  instead  invest  primarily  in more machines. I have also argued that this process will be relentless, and if it is not addressed by some type of government policy, we may ultimately see a precipitous drop in consumer spending as a substantial fraction of the population loses  confidence  in  its  future  income  continuity.  That, of course, would result in even more unemployment and a downward spiral would ensue.

Point (4) on this chart means "peak jobs" - after it number of the working positions taken by automation will start outperforming number of jobs appeared in new areas. Many evidence shows that this point was already passed in 2000s, but unemployment growth have been artificially inhibited by credit bubble. As you know it busted in 2007 starting current recession from which the economy still not recovered - some people even noticed that job growth during recovering was too weak and unemployment levels created "new normal".

If it is true and "Luddite fallacy" is no more a fallacy, sooner or later people start to understand what is happening. Governments probably cannot do anything because they don't have enough funds even now, not mentioning extra load on the welfare system from increased number unemployed and falling consumer expenditures. Desperate jobless will have no other choice than to raise civil unrest and demand solutions from the govt, most likely there will be revolutions, even civil wars - capital owners and lucky "tech elite" (programmers, scientists, 3D-model designers etc whose jobs cannot be automated) probably won't peacefully accept high taxes and/or property expropriation. To prevent this scenario governments must start thinking right now and very fast - by my expectations existence of technological unemployment will be clear for the majority of people in developed counties after less than 5 years.

Most publications about tech unemployment issue promote an idea of the unconditional income to be paid to each citizen regardless does he or she is working or not. Switzerland even decided to perform a referendum about this measure soon. Personally, I think it is not a good solution - vast majority of "useless" people will spend entire lives on watching TV, games, alcohol, drugs etc. Assumption that these people could start innovative business is false in general, may be only few percents will do so, other will just degrade to the level of monkeys. Think about "bread and circuses" in the Ancient Rome and what was the result.
Also "Useless" people will be angry living on this tiny unconditional income and seeing how do tech elite (people with jobs) lives, so there no matter will be social tension. Providing unconditional income may be impossible at all - it requires extremely high taxation which probably will result in capital flight and fast economy collapse, so it must be implemented it all countries of the world simultaneously to be successful (e.g. by United Nations resolution mandatory for all members).

Alternative solution is to reject free market capitalism entirely and switch to the planned economy. The state will own all production means and hire workers, so full employment can be achieved - by reducing working day for just 1-2 hours, developing large scientific projects like nuclear fusion and far-space exploration etc. Don't blame planned economy for the disadvantages that USSR had, by using state-wide ERP-like software systems (aka modern version of the Chilean project "Cybersyn") they can be gradually reduced.

If you have another ideas, propose them in the thread. But please don't tell me 1000th time that I have the "Luddite fallacy" - even respectful analysts like Gartner acknowledge the problem.

Yes I totally agree . And the worst part is that us humans have to  compete against our own creations of technology in order to move higher. How to tackle these issues is definitely a challenge. But since the human wants are  countless , we may  never run out of human labor. New needs and wants will emerge as soon as the old ones are fulfilled. This loophole is never going to end luckily.

[greBit]

No matter what people say, humans will always have a higher hand in the race than computers. They might be error free, smart and efficient but there is something in humans which machines fail to develop. Wisdom and emotions. And that is enough to inflict massive change.

I agree. They might program manners and ethics, but can they teach a robot to develop feelings? Even if they achieve that, what will they call it? Artificial emotions? EXACTLY. We humans crave affection and touch of each other, and no robot, regardless of how humane it might seem would be no replacement to a beating heart of your mother making you food with a smile on her face with her real affections.