It appears McDonalds is beginning the replacement of human beings with automated cashiers. Up to 5000 people will lose their jobs to machines by 2018. Many see this as a response to rises in the minimum wage. Some are even crowing that this is what happens when the government forces companies to pay too much for low-skilled, often temporary labour. They may be right, but what happens to these people now?
I'm not a socialist, nor am I a Luddite. However, in the past the low-skilled have been able to migrate to new jobs opened up by advancing technology. Weavers became textile machine operators, horse and cart drivers became taxi drivers and bass players became DJs (Okay the last one is a musician's joke but you get the point).
But what happens when there's no low-skilled jobs for them left to migrate to?
It seems to me that "if you can't find a job create one" only works if you are intelligent and abnormally hard working and even then you may fail. Running a business is hard. How do we expect people with a sub-90 I.Q to be able to run a successful small enterprise?
And low-skilled, self-employed jobs such as; gardener, window cleaner and house painter will probably be lost to automation too. We're even now seeing 3D-printed houses.
Not my problem...
You think so? There are an awful lot of these low-skilled workers, maybe even the majority of workers fall into this category. What happens when a charismatic and authoritarian leader convinces them that the people who didn't lose their jobs are to blame. We could see a culling of anyone perceived to be intelligent and wealthy not seen since Pol Pot's Cambodia. In Maoist China some people were even hung for wearing glasses.
Automation is inevitable...
...so it's scary that so few prominent people are seriously talking about it. People seem to be viewing this problem through an ideological lens. If you're on the left you probably see automation as a chance to have a perfect Star Trek style utopia where mankind has eliminated hunger and toil and we devote our time to leisure, we will get our income from the government and life is great. If you're an AnCap you may think "let the chips fall where they may" and that anyone who can't keep up are not your problem.
But it seems to me we need a new paradigm, a new way of thinking.
This is a 21st century problem. We've never faced this before, at least not on this scale. It won't be solved by 19th and 20th century thinking. It's coming and it's coming soon. I'm not smart enough to know the answers, but we need to start taking this very seriously. This is not a Sci-fi movie set in the distant future, this is happening now.
Bass players become DJs... LOL!
People need to take responsibility and their future into their own hands!
This post received a 1.7% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @purpleprose! For more information, click here!
They need to start their own business! Get the fuck on Steemit! Drop out of corporate culture it sucks & it's entirely for suckers. Remember when Kramer got fired?
Like I said in the blog though, a lot of people are not intelligent enough to run a business. A scary amount of people have an I.Q under 90. It's not their fault, it's just the way it is. These people might be easily seduced by envy politics. This is dangerous and it's already happening. Here in Britain the man who almost became Prime Minister is seriously talking about confiscating the houses of the wealthy.
Future won't be that scary. Automation will let less skilled workers do more advanced jobs. Interfaces are getting much better. Soon, someone without skills will be able to print whole house. I'm sure new branches of industry will appear just like it happened with the internet. Some will be shrink, like farming (where in old days majority of population was working). Prices of products will go down for sure. I don't think universal basic income is the solution here.
Think about it this way, how many people does it usually take to build a house? A dozen seems about right when I look at building sites. How many people will it take to assemble a printed house? 2 maybe 3 and in 1/20 of the time, that's far fewer hourly wages. I'm not sure new branches of work will appear this time.
And builders are quite skilled, some are very intelligent. Who would have need for a less-intelligent, semi-literate person who can't perform anything but very simple manual tasks well? These people do exist and no amount of training will make them more employable. Then what about later, what if A.I becomes so good that it's not economical to employ highly-skilled people like doctors or engineers either?
Yes, these days you don't need that many workers to build a house. This should move house prices down. Of course it's not happening due to unfair monetary policy where printed money is causing bubbles and majority of people can't afford buying a house.
New branches will appear. 20 years ago it was hard to imagine services like steemit, technologies like bitcoin etc. The fact is that we will be doing more work with our brains.
Advanced technology is a great chance for less skilled people. I will give you an example. We have these days AI technology that is better now in analyzing MRI images than humans. It means you can use software and analyze image on your own. Later you can use software that will give you diagnose. This is something that can be done by unskilled person. No doctor is required. The whole thing with automation is to do job once and simplify/reduce amount of work you repeat. In this example you train your neural network with medical data and diagnoses prepared by experts. It should move health care prices down, which is a good thing. Doctors will be more busy with research than with prescribing paracetamol.
The future is coming and it will be hard :) Your post is amazing :) Keep it going :)
Thank you, glad you liked it. It's been troubling me for some time.
its hard out here for those of us who want to work...if I'm lucky I have 10 years before I'm going to be replaced by a robot...then what?
Exactly. We cant all become scientists, poets and movie directors. Most people aren't built that way and even those who are, few are lucky to be able to make a living out of it. Not just the unskilled will suffer, but the semi-skilled too. Where do the carpenters, truckers and fisherman go if they're replaced by robots?
hopefully in the future a way will be developed so that everyone will be able to easily afford lifes essentials. Robots will take over many jobs and there hopefully will be some way to get those workers income back. More things like Steemit and other advances might just be the answer :) upvoted your post and started following. Very good post loved the info here.
Thank you. That would probably be the best case scenario, but it will be very difficult to get there.
But seriously. Great article as always. Thanks purpleprose. I think you are right. There are a lot of changes coming. One thing that will remain the same is companies increasing their profits by any means available. I think the changes coming sooner than later will be quite drastic, hopefully big enough to see a major reshuffle of wealth distribution. Im hoping things become decentralised with a fairer distribution of wealth. I'm hoping blockchain will help that to happen.
Yes, hopefully blockchain-based careers can step up to fill the void. It's not so outrageous when you look at Steemit. A social media platform where some people are earning a serious living writing 100 words or less and getting paid in magic internet money. Who would have saw that coming 20 years ago?
I sure didn't
This is why some are talking about introducing Guaranteed Living Wage - minimum payment even if you do nothing and contribute nothing to society. It is being tried as an experiment in Finland. It has theoretical support from Libertarians. My first reaction to the idea is standard conservative view - this is BS, no way, bad idea. But the problem is real and a solution will be needed.
STEEM On !!
Dave
I'm the same. I fall into no particular ideology, but if I was to take one of those political compass tests I'd probably be a centrist libertarian. I have a distaste for a universal, state distributed income, but perhaps that's what needs to happen because this problem is so unique. It's not really solved by any existing ideology, so perhaps we need to do away with politics and just do what works.
That is why I am a socialist. Automating work and effeciency should be beneficial to society not as a danger.
I think we faced very similar thing in the industrial revolution (assembly line work) and with franchising (death of many small businesses)
"I think we faced very similar thing in the industrial revolution (assembly line work) and with franchising (death of many small businesses)"
Because we don't live very long, we often miss the bigger picture. You're right that mass automation has been going on for 200 years, it's only now it's boiling over to the point where jobs can't be so easily replaced and new industries are all but inaccessible to the lower-skilled that we're starting to see that billions of people may not have a way to put food on the table.
Actually world hunger has been drastically reduced with China becoming more wealthy and investing in Africa, but I agree that we need to think about a radical change of our economic and political system to face the possibilities our technology gives us.
Sorry, didn't have time to respond the other day, had to go to a wedding. "Putting food on the table" is a British phrase meaning to earn a wage. It doesn't litterally mean buying food. Perhaps it's a poor choice of a phrase as I can see it might not travel well.