Hacker News Reader

Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

It's only because of our crazy and short-term way of looking at things that this is even considered a problem.

People losing their jobs because robots replace menial warehouse jobs is a good thing. They can move onto doing more worthwhile tasks.

View on HN

What happens when robots can do more worthwhile tasks than a wide swath of humanity? This point doesn't seem very far away. There are tons of jobs that don't require creativity, and those don't seem long for this world.

The jobs available in the post-robotic-revolution world and the necessary skills haven't yet been thought of. Once upon a time, most people were illiterate.

Most people were illiterate in the past because they didn't go to school. I don't think it makes sense to assume that some magical force will make people useful for non-automatable tasks in the future. Unless we achieve major breakthroughs in education, a large portion of society will be less capable than cheaper robots, and will therefore be unemployable.

Its interesting to think that the Robot/Human wars could be purely political (low-income workers and unions fighting for jobs against automation).

Most people didn't go to school because they worked in agricultural jobs that didn't require education. In 1870 half the country worked on farms [1]; today it's <2% [2]. From that statistic alone you can see that half the country has been educated for new jobs over the past 140 years. Market forces aren't "magical"; they're real and they work. I don't think it makes sense to assume market forces will magically stop working in the future.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1981/11/art2full.pdf [2] http://www.csrees.usda.gov/qlinks/extension.html

What's the difference in the marginal investment required to go from illiterate to literate vs. uncreative to usefully inventive? Assuming that the market will get you what you want because it got you something else you wanted before is dangerous and wrong.

arguably humans should spend more time on art, athletics, poetry, music, literature, gardening, and the like.

Presumably if robots ever become that productive there will be no need for most people to work, since the robots will produce plenty of goods for everyone. Jobs are not an end unto themselves. Work is required to consume only because of scarcity. In the world you're imagining, that won't exist for most of the things people need to live. So it will be provided for free.

Somebody will own those robots and their output. Either robot owners will have to give away goods, or the government will have to forcibly redistribute it for your conclusion to hold. I actually don't think either of those are very unlikely, but it's still going to be a major change that makes the current political discourse about "socialism" seem quite trivial.

I'm worried about the population always growing to match (or exceed) whatever the robots (+human) output can be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com