chaqa is right. not to mention the boom you're talking about would inevitably have a pretty bad crash.

just like the auto industry right? it's the same concept.

My entire point is there is no way we're going to fully eliminate LIFE; just not going to happen. the leaps in automation will be equally (or even favorable) offset by worker support for the automation industry

"No way man. For every machine that built, there are multiple industries behind it. Raw Materials, Forming, Design. Engineering. Assembly. Freight. Accounting. Management. Operations. Quality. Supplies & sub-suppliers. Consumables. It's just a massive new market of jobs that will boom."

Except that almost all of those industries already exist, and are the very ones being taken over by machines.

Alright let's go through what's needed for me to purchase a car.

Raw materials collected mainly by robotic mining operations.

Transported to processing facilities by self-driving trucks.

Processed in an automated facility.

Constructed by robots.

Delivered by an automated tractor trailer.

Bought via a self-serve interface.

Of course there would be human overseers and intermediaries, but most processes can/will be automated.

But not all at once or in the near future. We'll have time to adapt.

Maybe you guys aren't at the working stage in your life yet or around this type of industry. I'm in manufacturing and the thought is laughable that much (let alone all) of this supporting network to build a final product can be replaced by automation. If anything it would just be basic assembly, and the point is to replace the at type of work, you'll need new workers to support that product.

We just replaced a massive manual assembly line with an automated version. I can tell you, we dropped x amount of heads as a 'savings', but we paid a ton for the machine, and the supplier's company is crawling with people. And his suppliers now. It's just how it is.

You'll never replace brains with automation.

There will always be brains, but to honestly not see that automation doesn't, in the long run, lower unemployment unless an effort is made to compensate elsewhere is silly. just look at self automated tills in supermarkets

To honestly not see that automation creates new industries and different jobs is even sillier.

For example the emergence of the automobile put a massive dent in the horse and carriage industry. But it created lots of new jobs.

All those horses were out of work though...

@SD -- automated tills in supermarkets are proof that the future will be able to auto-mine for rare earth, auto-load into trucks, auto-deliver to refining plants, auto-refine and form the material, auto-deliver to various suppliers global via land, sea, and air, auto-engineer, design, and manufacture a quality product (at a cost that is still competitive with all of this high cost automation), and then auto-deliver that product along with literally 1000's of other auto-manufactured product to auto-assemble a final main product.

So many jobs will be lost. I agree. Wow, that sounds impressive.

When we get to that state, it will be the same time that humans are being liquidated to power robots. And Neo will save us!

I never said it does not create new industries and jobs, so your point is redundant, yaleunc. And i've never said that there will be the level of automation you suggest ag, and not on the basis of tills, i'm just saying that there will be a net decrease in jobs if there is no effort made to compensate elsewhere. economically it just makes sense for their to be a higher unemployment rate.

The cotton gin was automated; eliminated 'jobs' (the type of jobs is another thread) -- but it reduced manpower.

Result? Massive fabric industry boom. Just an example. An auto-cashier till example cannot compare. The savings used for that is just reinvested into the grocery store or to be able to hire the correct amount of employees for stock and services. I've not heard of stock prices spiking for grocery stores because of labor reduction. They reinvest and grow. More stores, more employees.

Economically it makes sense for increased efficiency to generate more capital which yields more investment which ultimately yields more jobs. Can you explain why increased automation over the course of the 20th century yielded large net increases in the number of jobs but we should suddenly expect that trend to reverse itself SD?

I think the key factor here isn't the degree of automation so much as the pace--

Cynical as I am, I think that if you give the general human population time to get used to something, it adapts, and quicker than we sometimes give them credit for (case in point, smartphones--didn't even really exist in 2004 the way they do now, and today everyone from kids to business-going adults to seniors use them with ease on a daily basis, and have used them to their financial advantage.)

As long as the Robot Revolution doesn't happen overnight, and we suddenly lose tens of millions of the work force in one fell swoop, or even a couple years, I think we'll find the way to balance things out economically.

Or are you suggesting that corporations and individuals will grow sick of making money and will stop investing their profits? I guess if we increase the capital gains tax rate enough that might create a large enough disincentive to make that happen, but unlikely at current levels.

Progress shouldn't stop, but for economic reasons, tech companies like Apple sometimes stagger releases...

Perhaps that could be done with the pace of automation?

you're an idiot if you are going to keep pointing to examples like automobiles etc., because the point is these came as part of the industrial age and encourage production, workers to go with them, and huge new fields. some new technology will still have that effect, but a lot more of them are designed just to replace workers, not to increase their productivity.

and actually, no, advances in capital as a rule ultimately don't create more profit because everyone gets the advance and then we return to where we were, more production, not really an advance in profit, no extra savings to hire people (that aren't needed anyways).

a big thing also today is market saturation, there is a limit to the stores and employees you need, and replacing employess doesn't change that. i would continue but jesus christ this is so obvious to anyone with common sense or who has studied economics properly. guess you don't fall into either of those categories.

this isn't even to mention that generally the govts of uk, us etc. favour policies that allow for widespread unemployment. anyways, nice arguing with you and i'm out.

that was to ag. to yal, more capital and more investment doesn't yield more jobs if the jobs are being replaced faster than they're being created. the new capital replaces workers more than before, and we are in an environment where unemployment is not frowned upon. the increase in automation hasn't previously been in a manner than reduces the need for a job without creating a new one, new automation however acts in that way. anyways, only replied to you because i didn't see it before, but i'm out for you too, if you want, i suggest reading some books.

forgot to add, increase in capital won't really increase profit in the long run. your point about tax is stupid and ideological based, even neoliberal economists will tell you that taxes don't necessarily stop the incentive to work, sometimes higher taxes increase it.

We actually know that automation can end jobs. It happened in American agriculture, most intensively in the 1920s-1960s. It doesn't make me optimistic.

A small subset of farmers did very well in the mechanization of American agriculture. They did so because they had more money and connections, and they had the support of the federal government. A much larger number of farmers did not do so well. They were forced to leave the land or live in what amounts to rural ghettos, with many of them or their descendants still doing so. They failed because they did not have access to the resources necessary for large-scale, mechanized agriculture: the capital for machines, the know-how to buy and use them, the support of the federal government and corporate hierarchy. Some of them found new jobs related to the transition, but most of them did not. The benefits did not land equally. Capital-intensive agriculture ran roughshod over rural culture, and we as a people lost a lot in the transition. Thousands upon thousands of marginal people - the poor, racial minorities - never got their share of the prosperity that this was supposed to provide.

So that's my concern. Without some mechanism to ensure that the benefits of economic and mechanical transitions are shared at least somewhat equally, wealth and position will further concentrate among the already wealthy and well-positioned. To make an analogy: Instead of automation ending jobs in just agriculture, it's going to be ending jobs everywhere. Where are those people going to go? Some new fields will doubtlessly pop up, but I don't know that they can be qualitatively or quantitatively enough.

The last time we had a mass movement to emphasize productivity without raising consumption, we got the Great Depression. And just saying, "there are going to be new jobs" doesn't cut it. If your business gets automated so that you have a bunch of minimum wage janitors pushing around machines which replaced skilled mechanics, sure, you've got more jobs. But replacing skilled work with low-skill and low-paying service jobs, then that's not a solution.

To emphasize something: You can't just say, automation and technological change are going to create new demands for jobs. That doesn't solve the problem. In the long run, sure, we're better off now that material goods are cheaper and easier to get than they were in 1800. But that doesn't mean that things were worse for the skilled craftsmen who made those goods, who lost their jobs to a gradual process of automation.

Look at Amazon.com or Wal-Mart. They make stuff cheaper for lots of people, but they've done so by eliminating lots of skilled labor or high-paying jobs and replacing it with worse paying unskilled jobs, or not replacing them at all. New jobs as cashiers or truck drivers don't balance things out.

@SD: "you're an idiot if you are going to keep pointing to examples like automobiles etc., because the point is these came as part of the industrial age and encourage production, workers to go with them, and huge new fields. some new technology will still have that effect, but a lot more of them are designed just to replace workers, not to increase their productivity. "


I guess I am an idiot then. /shrug. No company is going to replace a human with a robot unless there is PROFIT gain. In the industrial age, the profit gain was from output. Current age the profit gain would need to be that the cost of the robot is cheaper than the cost of an hourly unskilled laborer. A standard automated assembly line in my area of work is $5M to replace about 10 people per shift x 2 shifts = 20 people @ 15.00/hr + 50% fringe x 8hrs per shift x 220 working days in a year = ~800k/year in labor costs all in. Compared to the $5M depreciated over 7 years life span (~700k/yr) + Maintenance supply costs of 500k/yr + 2 skilled maintenance labor (24/hr)x2 shifts (200k/yr), plus downtime, etc, etc. = about 1.4M vs the 800k for the automated machine.

The costs to do this would have to go way down.

Just because the tech is available, does not mean it makes sense for a company to implement these changes.

And the more technological the Automated machine gets, the more expensive it becomes. We battle getting the automated machine as low cost as possible to justify it, and the result is we stop buying automated machines. The ones with the bells and whistles never pay off. And the re-use for different products are very expensive to convert.

This is real life, not a college theory class.

And yet whenever the workers compete against the machines, the machines win. They don't sleep, they don't eat and are much more efficient than humans. They are even getting cheaper by the moment. We will lose, economics always wins.

@Vashta, I gave you the math. The workers are on shift patters all day all week. Companies that produce literally can produce all day every day. You're completely wrong. The machine costs increases for every innovation. The cost of capital does not get cheaper. Look at the numbers. Pull any public accounting report for a large manufacturer and look at the trend in RONA. You're completely talking social book talk and not real life.

And if the machine is cheaper, the company changes footprint to a low cost country. So instead of the 800k/year, the cost is less than half of that. Why would a company pay 3x more per year in costs for 'automation'. It's just a sci-fi idea -- this thread should be considered a cool thought and discussion, but along with time travel.

Sources on the numbers. I believe you are vastly overestimating the cost of machines.
http://m.spiegel.de/international/business/a-897412.html
http://m.spiegel.de/international/business/a-897412-2.html

lol, I do it for a living. Seriously, I'm in accounting/costing - I help source the machines, and actually pay the invoices.