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Comment by eitaporra | Hacker News Reader

The Next Industrial Revolution Could Put Millions Out of Work ... Just as every other ones

I don't think this time is the same because of the scale and the cost accounting pressures that were not present last times.

First: Drivers obviously: 10 million people. Fast food: 3 million. Walmart: 1.4 million. Etc.

Secondly: offshoring (NAFTA and TPP) was never happening at the scale those treaties are indented to impart.

These two things could decimate the US workforce if they're not contained.

"I don't think this time is the same" its another big moto for industrial revolutions

What comes after automated knowledge work?

Relatively dumb human nodes in an AI mesh. We're already seeing this with captcha-crunching porn surfers. So not exactly batteries for the matrix but rather the soft organic bits that come factory equipped with some excellent bio-hardware [& -software].

Interestingly enough, that was sort of the original plot of the Matrix: using humans as a giant supercomputer. It was scrapped in favor of batteries because at the time, it was a more understandable concept for most people despite being less plausible.

I hope it does. I don't want to have to work. I'd be much happier if I could take next summer off and go tour Scotland and Ireland or spend this winter skiing in Vermont.

Uh-huh and who's gonna pay for that. :)

The people who went from being filthy rich to insanely rich from making all of those jobs unnecessary? Assuming we maintain our democratic system and people vote in their best interests (I know, big assumptions), then there WILL eventually be a political solution if we continue down the road we're on.

And it's called Communism. Marx is right in this general sense.

Now we'll see what happens when the consumer base is decimated too. Capitalist might have all of the infrastructure but no one can buy.

The problem with stealing other people's stuff and redistributing it is you eventually run out of people that have stuff to steal.

Show me the society that ran out of rich people because of taxes.

Having the fruits of our economy distributed equitably is a problem? Keep in mind, I was talking about a future where robots and machines have taken over doing virtually everything we pay people to do now.

Pay for what? I'm going to get in a robot car that was designed, programmed, built and maintained by other robots. It will take me to the airport on roads that are built and maintained by robots. I'll get on a robotic plane that was also developed by other machines and fly to Scotland. I get off the plane and stop in a cafe that was built and run by machines to eat food that was grown, harvested, and distributed by machines.

Um, ACTUALLY the Industrial Revolution is what gave birth to... Giving birth to a lot, to work in a factory.

the luddites never learn

The Luddites were highly skilled workers.

If computer systems do most of the thinking, and users don't understand how they work, I'm concerned that people will lose those cognitive skills. We're already seeing this happen with calculators (mental arithmetic) and satellite navigation systems (orienteering/navigation). Driving a car and learning a foreign language might be next.

Some, probably most, people will give up, while the rest will pursue the gradually dwindling number of things computers can't do.

So it could well be that most people, rather than the new Luddites who will try to keep the old skills alive, might never learn, because they don't need to.

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