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Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

Some jobs are always being automated away (looms taking away weaver's jobs, etc.). This can be very painful for the affected, but often benefits the society in the long term. We could use more teachers instead of conveyor belt workers and janitors (to train for new skills). And more custom builders, physical therapists and nurses (aging population), etc.

IMO instead of lament automation taking jobs (at least those that we would not want our own kids to do) we should improve the learning and training options to make those affected employable elsewhere. Not BS 1-day clinics "how to write your resume", but longer full time technical or human skills classes and workshops to improve on skills in demand today.

And maybe beef up the safety net, especially on the medical side. Do not fight progress, leverage it for good causes.

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Two points:

1) Not everyone has the aptitude, desire, or willingness to get a highly technical job. Those people should not suffer.

2) The pay of all positions are based off of supply and demand. If everyone has a degree in radiology, the pay for being a radiologist would drop a lot. This can be seen in tech. Tech support positions in rural areas require bachelors degrees, yet pay less and less per year($12/hr in my city).

Your first point rubs me the wrong way. The implicit assumption is "there exists some lesser class of humans incapable of doing the work we do".

All of my experience, every success of outreach programs bringing new people to tech, everything we know about the distribution of IQ suggests that it's not the case. There is plenty of room in the future economy for more knowledge workers and we shouldn't be making the assumption that people should let their mind rot doing work better suited for machines.

To his point, if they don't have the desire or willingness...that's an issue. Just because he called out that some people aren't going to work out in tech doesnt mean he is assigning them to a lesser class. I certainly dont have the aptitude, desire, or willingness to be many things. Doesnt mean I think I'm less of a person for it.

There is plenty of room in the future economy for more knowledge workers...

Maybe not. About half of new US college graduates take jobs that don't require a college degree.

We may need fewer "knowledge workers" as AI picks up. We need far fewer paper-pushers and middle managers than were needed in the 1970s. Sales once seemed safe, but consider Amazon and Esurance. That's what the decline of the middle class is all about.

The fact that you think that people without "the aptitude, desire, or willingness to get a highly technical job" are a "lesser class of humans" says more about you than it does about those people.

Umm. What? You can't just hand-wave that without any evidence.

All of your experience and every success? What about the failures? What about coding bootcamps that result in failures?

You're going to need to cite at least some sources when you say that it's possible to teach _everyone_ a highly technical skill.

I'm skeptical that the majority of "conveyor belt workers and janitors" (or the people who would have wound up being such workers if we're talking long-term) are going to otherwise be trainable as "teachers, custom builders, physical therapists and nurses".

Maybe. But maybe not, and the effects of the more qualified people retraining into those 'in demand' skills en masse isn't going to be that pretty in terms of its effects on wages and employment of those areas either... and this doesn't even reflect the fact that there will be a 'continued crisis' of automation in other areas, so you might retrain into the wrong area and find that job has gone before you even get started (spilling even more qualified people into the hunt for the next viable job category).

I think you have some good points, but I think the tone of optimism is probably misguided.

If this were true all the manufacturing jobs losses from the 80's onwards would long have translated into a happy new world.

This fantasy advocated by globalization advocates has never actually panned out in the real world in any affected region even once. Yet it keeps on getting wheeled out in these discussions without any evidence supporting it.

The problem with software engineers advocating 'overall efficiencies', hand waving away other's jobs and 'temporary pain' in this dis-passioned view makes itself scarce when it comes to H1B and outsourcing.

How many software engineers are advocating removing H1B caps, increasing outsourcing and retraining affected engineers to be therapists, teachers, nurses in the interests of efficiency and societal benefit?

It all seems a bit too self serving and self absorbed.

> we should improve the learning and training options to make those affected employable elsewhere

I think that is a mistake in thinking. It may not be a popular view, but I believe there are a large percentage of the population that don't want to do "thinking labor". They express their utility with their hands — they get a sense of satisfaction and self-worth from manual labor.

You are not going to "train" these people. Their being resists it. Rather, perhaps like Germany, the U.S. should keep enough manufacturing jobs to employ these people in construction or other manual labor jobs.

I am not limiting new jobs to "thinking labor". Elementary school teachers and teaching assistants need to be good with kids. Being good with technology is a very distant second.

For hands-on, as an example, there is a big unmet need for people to do home improvement projects. Good contractors are fully booked for months out at least where I live. The real problem, IMO, is guarantees: uneven income and no benefits as a home improvement contractor is a major roadblock for many people. It is great as a side project, but not as primary occupation. Providing safety net, at least in health care, can help with this.

I don't lament automation in itself. I lament the mass loss of jobs, and the inability for people to feed their families. And unfortunately, those that have been hardest hit by automation just voted in a government that does not give a flying fuck about helping them get that retraining.

What did the previous administration do in that regard?

As an outside observer, initives such as Obamacare at least give a perception that's those less fortunate can get decent care. It's not dealing with automation, but it's dealing with a problem faced by those in a low socioeconomic bracket.

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