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Comment by bsbechtel | Hacker News Reader

Employment is only a result of an individual wanting someone else to do something for them, because they don't have the time or skill to do it themselves. In exchange for someone doing this thing for them, they compensate them with something of value, normally payment in the form of currency. When you consider employment from this angle, I find it extremely hard to believe that a day will come where the majority of humans on this planet won't want help from other humans to accomplish their goals as they go about their daily lives. Yes, employment in the form of large corporations giving out biweekly paychecks may not exist anymore, but employment as a way to help your fellow human will never cease to exist.

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> I find it extremely hard to believe that a day will come where the majority of humans on this planet won't want help from other humans to accomplish their goals as they go about their daily lives.

If robots are better at helping people accomplish those goals then why would people ask other humans for help rather than robots? I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human.... For the moment I pay humans to do some things (cleaning, food preparation, art production, ...), but it seems entirely conceivable that machines could get better at all of those as well.

>I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human

It's funny you should mention this. My last job was at an OTA (online travel agent). They started out with a website to book holidays and an intent to streamline the crap out of the process catering to individuals like yourself. They hired a skeleton call center staff to deal with unforeseen problems with an intent to rely upon them as little as possible.

Over time they realized that a lot of people were calling up to do bits and pieces of the booking over the phone that they could have done online.

Initially they tried to steer them back to the website but they realized that they were mostly dropping out of the sales funnel.

It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker.

So, they changed tack and ramped up call center staffing, advertised a free phone number on the every page and let people essentially decide themselves where in the sales funnel they wanted to talk to a human - the whole way through or, like you, not at all.

This company had a really smart approach in other areas too about when to use automation and when not to.

>For the moment I pay humans to do some things like cleaning

You say that as if there has been a multitude of advances in home cleaning technology since the 1950s. I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon.

> It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker.

I'm surprised, and I wonder what the age breakdown of those people looks like.

> I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job

It must have on the margin, surely? I was on the fence about getting a cleaner for a long time; it wouldn't've taken much to push me into not doing so (and many of my friends in similar circumstances, some of whom have Roombas, don't).

> or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon.

Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst-case scenario there is pretty bad, but I read some interesting blog posts a year or two back about a robot that can pick up clothes from the floor and run a laundry cycle (with the help of a QR code sticker on the washer). I don't expect a robot to replace a human cleaner immediately, but I do expect the gradual automation of more and more domestic cleaning tasks, which will push more and more people across the line where it doesn't make sense to hire a human cleaner.

>I wonder what the age breakdown

Skewed, but not skewed towards the elderly nearly as much as you clearly think it was.

Not everybody is like us.

>It must have on the margin, surely?

Not necessarily. It might just mean that, on balance, people who were never going to employ a maid in the first place live in slightly less filthy houses.

>Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst-case scenario there is pretty bad

I can't actually see any evidence that anybody's even trying. It's not like driverless cars where we're being told every year that they're, like, 5 years away tops. Who is even working on this? As far as I can tell, nobody.

> Not necessarily. It might just mean that, on balance, people who were never going to employ a maid in the first place live in slightly less filthy houses.

But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else, with lots of people on the margin (and I'm pretty sure I was one of them), and the introduction of the Roomba shifts where that line is slightly.

> I can't actually see any evidence that anybody's even trying. It's not like driverless cars where we're being told every year that they're, like, 5 years away tops. Who is even working on this? As far as I can tell, nobody.

I'm not aware of anyone working on toilets, but I think that's the highest hanging fruit. You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot or whatever it's called; I'd expect us to progress gradually from there to things like dusting, window cleaning, oven cleaning and toilets in that order or close to it.

>But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else

Even if it was a bell curve (and I see no reason why reality ought to be that neat), there's no reason to suppose it doesn't just lead to slightly cleaner houses rather than fewer maids.

> You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot

Roombas are singularly unimpressive as a means of cleaning your house (I know of nobody who actually owns one, and the reviews on amazon are... only really impressiveif you are without stairs and have a pet hair problem). Googling laundrybot gives me some japanese thing invented in 2015 that costs $280,000 and, product-wise, doesn't seem to have gone anywhere since then.

It's almost as if the automation hype isn't matching reality.

I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years time nothing has really changed in this space either. Roombas came out in 2002 - 16 years ago. Significant potential I'll be dead by the time a robot that can clean my toilet exists and I'm not exactly old.

> there's no reason to suppose it doesn't just lead to slightly cleaner houses rather than fewer maids.

If we assume people's willingness to hire a cleaner is a function of how dirty their house is (and how could it not be?) then the two are equivalent. The only way roombas could not be putting people out of work on the margin is if there's some sort of mysterious discontinuity, and why would we assume such a thing?

>If we assume people's willingness to hire a cleaner is a function of how dirty their house is (and how could it not be?)

Because:

a) lots and lots and lots of people clean their own house and maybe they're the ones buying the vast majority of the roombas, not people with maids.

b) just because your roomba cleans up your pet hair really well upstairs doesn't necessarily mean you will want your cleaner to stop coming on tuesdays.

c) tolerance for dirt to me seems like a textbook example of something that has a high demand elasticity

> lots and lots and lots of people clean their own house and maybe they're the ones buying the vast majority of the roombas, not people with maids

Surely the one substitutes for the other. The thought "I'm spending longer than I want to cleaning, and my house still isn't as clean as I'd like, and I've had more money lately, I can afford to..." could be completed "hire a cleaner" or "buy a roomba".

> tolerance for dirt to me seems like a textbook example of something that has a high demand elasticity

What do you mean? Different people will have their threshold in different places, certainly, and the amount they're willing to pay will vary, but I don't see how that changes anything.

I'm generally struggling to understand what your model is here. Are you saying people make the decision about whether to hire a cleaner when they're born and then never change it?

>Surely the one substitutes for the other.

If a roomba approximated a maid, perhaps. It very much does not.

>I'm generally struggling to understand what your model is here. Are you saying people make the decision about whether to hire a cleaner when they're born and then never change it?

No, I'm saying that:

A) building a neoclassical economic model on this at all is pointless because of the assumptions you'd have to make. You've just tried to make about four assumptions in order to build your model and they weren't just poor assumptions, they were cringeworthy assumptions.

B) the total number of people who actually own roombas or roomba like devices suggests to me that the effect on cleaner employment is likely, in any case, to be < noise.

> If a roomba approximated a maid, perhaps. It very much does not.

It fulfils some of the same functions, some of what some buyers are buying for. A milkshake is not a close approximation to a muffin, but McDonalds found that they did substitute for each other in terms of what people bought for breakfast.

> A) building a neoclassical economic model on this at all is pointless because of the assumptions you'd have to make. You've just tried to make about four assumptions in order to build your model and they weren't just poor assumptions, they were cringeworthy assumptions.

You're essentially saying "give up trying to understand the world", to which I can only respond "no" (compare the opening quote on http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/24/probabilities-without-m... ). I think all the assumptions I gave were true and reasonable; if you can actually make a case for why any of them is wrong I will listen, but just dismissing them is not constructive.

>A milkshake is not a close approximation to a muffin

I would say it is. They have similar calorific content, they are similarly portable and they are similarly stuffed full of sugar.

>You're essentially saying "give up trying to understand the world"

...and now you're using a cringeworthy straw man.

I'm saying "if you're going to make a claim like "roombas are killing jobs", it probably shouldn't be based on a model that makes 4 really reaching assumptions, each of which are completely unproven and quite likely wrong.

Oh, but the New York Times and a few economists thinks robot kills jobs, so this fits in with everybody's groupthink, so that's ok, right?

>I think all the assumptions I gave were true and reasonable; if you can actually make a case for why any of them is wrong

This is reminding me of the conversation I had with my vicar who asked me to disprove god's existence if I thought I was so smart.

>just dismissing them is not constructive.

I disagree. I think it's very constructive to dismiss unproven assumptions that are probably wrong, but neatly fit into some kind of groupthink. It's how a lot of science is advanced.

> I would say it is. They have similar calorific content, they are similarly portable and they are similarly stuffed full of sugar.

Exactly - they're superficially very different, but what they provide to the buyer is very similar. Just as with Roombas and cleaners.

> it probably shouldn't be based on a model that makes 4 really reaching assumptions, each of which are completely unproven and quite likely wrong

So put up or shut up: which assumption do you think is wrong, and what do you think the appropriate replacement is?

> This is reminding me of the conversation I had with my vicar who asked me to disprove god's existence if I thought I was so smart.

It's reminding me of the tortoise who denies modus ponens - if you deny the ability to make inferences then where do we even go from there?

> I disagree. I think it's very constructive to dismiss unproven assumptions that are probably wrong, but neatly fit into some kind of groupthink. It's how a lot of science is advanced.

Saying "groupthink" as a meaningless buzzword isn't constructive either. Science advances by questioning assumptions but you have to actually do the work of considering an alternative; science doesn't advance by people introducing a question like "but what if effects didn't follow causes" and then just stopping there.

>what they provide to the buyer is very similar. Just as with Roombas and cleaners.

Roombas do not deep clean carpets, cannot traverse stairs, can't clean bathrooms at all, are blocked by clothing and other heavy objects, closed doors, etc. and cannot clean anything that is not on a floor.

That is not what I would qualify as "similar to a person".

>So put up or shut up

Why? I am not the one trying to advance an agenda of "roombas are clearly putting maids out of business". I'm the skeptic.

I think it's entirely possible that all of your assumptions are wrong and probable that at least half of them are.

>if you deny the ability to make inferences then where do we even go from there?

I might start with questionnaires asking roomba owners about their cleaner hiring practices in order to confirm or deny one of the key assumptions underpinning your thesis. It'd be a good topic for research, but not one I have seen pursued.

>Saying "groupthink" as a meaningless buzzword

It is not a meaningless buzzword. The idea that robots destroy jobs is commonly accepted because it is popular. I could find 20 or so articles in a couple of minutes advancing the idea, whereas the skeptic's view - that it doesn't, is barely represented in the media.

Most of what appears in the media advancing this agenda is unsourced and the little that is sourced comes from things like that junk study from Ball State U.

I mean, does that not sound like groupthink to you? It does to me.

>Science advances by questioning assumptions but you have to actually do the work of considering an alternative

Well, if you're really interested in proving your point - why not fire off some questionnaires to roomba owners - did they have a cleaner before they bought the roomba? did they fire the cleaner after? did they cut the cleaner's hours? This seems like a more productive line of enquiry - reality is usually more accurate than shit models.

Roombas are great if you run them constantly and you have more than one in your house; but even a single one saves a ton of time and effort.

What they "shine" at is keeping up on cleaning away surface dirt and such. Instead of needing to vacuum a couple of times each week, you just run the Roomba(s) a few times a day. It takes away a dull and difficult chore.

Occasionally though, you do have to break out the vac for a deep clean (once a month or so) - and on the odd occasion the carpet cleaner for a good scrub. And you have to keep up on the cleaning/maintenance/emptying of the Roomba as well.

But overall, at least for my family's household, having our Roombas have been a plus.

re: Toilet cleaning

What's needed there is not so much a robot, but a better toilet or materials that don't get dirty or are self-cleaning.

Or maybe a chemical - what might be interesting would be something like those blue discs you drop in, but coupled with something like Rain-X (for windshields). Make it so nothing can stick to the bowl...

That of course doesn't solve the external surface cleaning process, but it would be a nice start.

I don't know about that. I'm used to thinking in terms of automation and I can easily envision a semi-automated way to clean toilets. You basically need to remove the cleaning fluids, etc. faster than you apply them. A set of conformal brushes, high pressure pump and high flow vacuum should do it.

The question is: is it faster/more cost effective than a human? If I could build a few of these things in my basement, could I get commercial toilet cleaning contracts and make more money than the traditional cleaners?

The answer is probably "not yet," but I haven't looked through any commercial cleaning publications to see what's on the market.

Sure. This kind of "employment" - or, rather, trade - is fundamental to humans as a socializing species. This can't go away without fundamentally changing what it means to be a human. But this is not the kind of "employment" people usually talk about.

What can, and should go away, is the need for employment to survive. I think we can also imagine the times in which employment isn't necessary in order not to suffer (crappy food, cold in winter, lack of healthcare), and to keep upward mobility open. The optimistic view of eliminating jobs is all about eliminating being forced to work to live a happy life, not about eliminating the entire possibility of work and trade.

Individuals are not just exchanging labor. What we want is result of combining factors of production together (capital, labor, land or natural resources).

What happens if the things people want today are 70 percent labor and 20 years from now just 40 percent labor (this is called capital deepening). Will the return of capital decrease and how much wage share decreases? Is government spending or wealth transfer increasing in the economy?

I don't know, eventually all unskilled labor will be replaced by machines, and in order to give someone else value you'll need skill.

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