The new politics when automation removes low and middle skilled jobs.

Hi all.

Just want to see what people think will happen to politics and economics when robots and automation remove a large percentage of all jobs in the world.

I am talking self driving cars (taxi's), automated crop picking machines, self service machines in shops (already prevalent in some countries), robotic medical doctors for diagnosis, et al.

The fact is, technology has a real potential to greatly reduce the need for unskilled, semi skilled and even some skilled labour.

So what solutions do we have to face such a future were the majority of people could find themselves unemployed?

BTW this could be a fact in as little as 10 years.

 

The robotics need supervision, so, there will be employees hired to take over that supervision.

 

We'll have no choice but continue toward a services economy as more and more production jobs are being done by robotics, requiring remaining needed workers to have lower sets of skills, meaning lower pay. I think the need for highly skilled and highly educated positions, such as engineers, computer scientists, medical and dental, architecture, etc. will continue to need many people, and possibly facing a continuing long-term shortage that will require bringing foreigners in to fill those gaps.

I have stated here in PF many times that capitalism is ultimately self consuming and we're living in an age where we can watch it visibly happen around us. The nature of business is to continue to strive toward greater efficiency and the need for the human worker is to strive toward higher wages as the currencies continue to devalue through inflation. Those two opposing needs ultimately harm the worker because businesses only need what they need, and only until they no longer need it, and wages over time reflect the stagnation from declining demand for labor. Add to that the number of handout generation folks just sitting around doing nothing to develop skills and knowledge to help their situation and we end up with a lot of people unable to contribute, pay taxes, etc.

Solution? Who knows. Until demand picks up globally, we're in a rut that doesn't appear to be improving. Having a strong domestic economy is great, but ultimately it won't sustain because we rely heavily on workers and demand around the world.

 

Will never happen.

 

Why not?

 

I have to disagree slightly here. More service jobs are being automated every day. See shops with self service tills, and call centres with extensive automated menus which can allow consumers to access services without human interaction.

The service economy is under threat.

 

More immigration!

 

Agreed, they're also under threat, but manufacturing already suffered the fate creeping up on the services side. Services are certainly threatened. We've seen ATM machines eat away at bank teller jobs, warehouse stores where you bag your own groceries ate away at bagger jobs and cashier jobs, almost no gas stations pump gas for you, car washes are mostly robotic, you can place your order or pay your check without human intervention at many restaurants or delis, and we're a kiosk away from eliminating the crappy service at McDonald's cash registers.

 

Which means the plan to focus on more service jobs will not work - which comes to the original point about mass unemployment of 60-80%. How will that affect the politics and economics in the future?

 

What do you do when the robots take over all the jobs?

Steal your first security bots and start your own crime syndicate !!!

 

We still require humans to do many things so we won't just end up with a massive unemployment of that scale. Machines can't service every human need, and all that equipment requires maintenance and management. Plus we have large demands in STEM fields remaining, including a huge shortfall in the medical fields.

 

Not the same number of people. A single worker could "supervise" dozens of robots.

 

And very few people who are qualified to do the work. Maintenance and construction of new machines will also be automated.

The OP is correct. We have a large pool of the unemployable already, and the pool will only increase.

Here are a few random thoughts about the situation:

the useless eaters will be housed and closed and fed by robot production supervised by an elite of stem. The children of the elite, supplemented as needed by finding the brightest among the useless eaters and training them to run the machines. Darwin will have his way and the average IQ between the two groups will increasingly diverge.

the number of useless eaters will be reduced by involuntary birth control, so as to relieve the strain on resources.

Mood enhancing drugs will be given to the useless eaters to keep them docile. A heroin addict cares only about heroin, not his surroundings. An ample supply of heroin, or the like, will make warehousing the useless eaters cheap and easy. Heroin has the added benefit of rendering the male users impotent, another way to reduce the useless eater population.

Useless eaters would be a useful supply of transplant organs for the elite.

Offhand, I can't think of a human need that can't be satisfied by machines. The Japanese are working successfully on sexbots and companion robots, for instance.

 

The only thing I agree with is the growing pool of unemployable, or at least those employable at very basic levels of skill. The rest is conspiracy theory about elites and control of human populations.

 

It has been posted hat PF many times whenever this subject comes up--without consumers, businesses have no incentive to produce anything.

 

Hahaha so people will be sedated and given basic necessities just to keep them alive enough to work on the machines suppose to service them? There should be better alternatives.

 

Not a conspiracy theory, more of a distopian vision. A sort of vision like H.G. Wells The Time Machine.

People with basic level of skills won't be needed.

What do you think will happen when 80% or 90% of the population are unemployable and can serve no useful purpose?

What is to be done with them?

 

Companies should invest on their entry level workers to raise their ability to work more responsible positions.

 

Why would they do that?

 

You don't do anything to them. I guess the rich guilty liberals will want to go slumming it every now and then to try and save a few of them, but they'll quickly run back home after having done nothing constructive.

I personally plan on setting up a business that will cater to the guilty rich lib class. Maybe jog them through a few ghettos with orders to pick up garbage and plant a few potatoes, and then charge them for the privilege of roughing it. They'll go back home with matching "I helped the poor" t-shirts feeling like they've accomplished something in their lives, and then I'll run the next batch of libs through.

 

It's not for society or government to decide what happens to individuals who have less purpose relative to business. I don't know what will become of people as we need fewer and fewer to support the economy, but we don't get to decide either.

Companies have no reason to invest in entry level workers if all the companies need are entry level skills from them. Advancing workers skills unnecessarily only increases business costs and reduces profitability. Businesses don't exist to make people's lives better. They exist to make a profit, which, along the way, happens to require people who require pay and benefits in return for their work. But benevolence is not a business requirement. It's a harsh way to think about it, but it's the reality of business. You're only wanted until you're no longer needed.

 

Machines don't require healthcare , 401K's , coffee breaks , file grievances , sue the company , demand raises , take vacations , file for unemployment , take leave of absence , report late for work , sounds like a employers dream ! And who is to blame ?

 

Who needs machines to survive? We've known how to grow potatoes for quite awhile now. Gardening tools are nice, but we've been able to make them before without robots.

Is your idea that we can achieve utopia by liberating the machines from their evil capitalist owners and then we can all enjoy the benefits of technology without working? We each have a replicator robot that can make everything we want, so all we have to do is tell Robby "make me some beer!" and robby comes over to serve us robot manufactured beer. Each one of us will be given a robby the robot, and nobody will ever have to work again.

Is that the idea?

If so, why do we have to wait? Lots of robots already exist, and there are a lot of poor people in the world. Why aren't we running around handing out 3D printers and GMO food grown and harvested by mechanical robots to the poor now?

I know the choice to do that seems obvious to you, but we can already see how that works right now. Just drive down through one of those neighborhoods where they have lots of government housing projects.

Remember the cabrini green housing projects in Chicago? Everybody that lived there was on welfare. Lots of women with children because that is the way to get an apartment with food stamps and money provided by the state. Nobody really had any jobs except selling drugs and their bodies for sex. Children grew up in those apartments and either became drug dealers for men and welfare mothers for the girls. It became such a nightmare that the police didn't go there.

So what do we do now? Give them drug manufacturing robots? Sex robots? Will that make things any better? Vending machines out in the hallways that dispense crack cocaine?

At what point do you see this reallocation of the manufacturing robots turning a cabrini green situation into a utopia?