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computer parts posted:Robots (really machines in general) are good for repeatable tasks with low variation, but a lot of those are already covered by machines. The benefit of people is that they're incredibly adaptable for the price you pay them (or even if you paid three times as much as what you do now). It's never a binary choice between capital and labour. If totally automating janitorial work is prohibitively expensive that doesn't mean that you couldn't replace a team of janitors with one or two people directing a fleet of janitorial robots or something like that. I suspect that a lot of people in the 1960s would have been incredulous at the idea that because of computers we'd go from having basically one secretary for every office worker down to one or two secretaries for an entire office. They too would probably have said that "sure, you could automate secretarial work, but a human will always be cheaper and more flexible." Of course this is assuming that the labour market keeps functioning basically the same way it functions now and a reduced supply of labour increases costs. It's conceivable that employers will come up with some new way to depress wages in the face of rising labour scarcity. Perhaps we'll see a return to some kind of indentured servitude where you pay off your debts by agreeing to work without a wage for x number of years or something. It's hard to imagine right now but if history is any precedent then society is probably going to change over the next fifty years in ways that are simply impossible for us to currently imagine.
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Dec 7, 2014 07:49
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computer parts posted:I know it's not a binary choice, my point is that the modes of labor you want to automate (the cheap menial jobs) are quite often very very hard to do. What's more likely is that easier jobs (many white collar ones) are automated, and with labor becoming more of a rare resource, wages compensate for those "menial" jobs. I agree that white collar jobs are going to be more heavily automated - we're already seeing its happen - but plenty of menial jobs could also be substantially more automated than they are now. McDonalds and Wal Mart have both demonstrated that even with very menial jobs you can go a long way in substituting capital for labour. quote:Indentured servitude is unlikely on a company by company basis because presumably they'll be paying your debt so it's likely more expensive to do that and feed/clothe/etc you than just giving you a paycheck. Plus that would likely make high turnover a difficult thing. Perhaps the company gives you your food and clothing on 'credit' and then forces you to work unpaid hours to pay off your every increasing debt load. Arrangements like that one existed in the past and in theory there's no reason they couldn't reappear. Right now I think such an arrangement would run into legal difficulty and would generate a lot of public outrage but if inequality and general economic conditions continue to deteriorate then social norms will eventually adjust to reflect that. quote:(On a sidenote I really hate the "society will change in x decades therefore you can't argue with me" statement because why even have the thread open if you're admitting to just pissing in the wind?) Where did you get the impression I was suggesting you can't argue with me? Pointing out that society will change in unexpected ways is just a common sense observation, not me attempting to shut down debate or force everyone to agree with me. I think speculating about how trends in technology and demographics will change the economy is a valuable exercise on its own, regardless of whether it generates accurate predictions of the future. I just think we should balance that exercise against the recognition that the future is going to be influenced by events that we cannot anticipate in advance. Imagine somebody in 1900 trying to predict the world of 1920, or somebody in 1920 trying to predicted the world of 1940. We're no better off when it comes to imagining the world in 2034.
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Dec 7, 2014 20:47
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What's your evidence for white collar being easier to automate? Obviously some tasks like calculating sums or typing are easier but can you quantify how "white collar" as a generic area of activity is easier to automate than any other large sector of the economy? Factories have become ridiculously automated compared to 100 years ago and even front line retail is a lot more automated now than in the recent past.
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Dec 7, 2014 21:28
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