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Comment by charmides | Hacker News Reader

This attitude is nothing new. But I don't think people are seeing the big picture. Self-driving cars may cause a temporary spike in unemployment, but the economy and human workers benefits in the long term from the elimination of tedious work.

See how the length of the average working week has been decreasing in the USA:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8...

(Source: Univ of Gröningen and Univ of California, Davis)

This is due to technologal innovations.

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> human workers benefits in the long term from the elimination of tedious work.

Given how many humans currently work at tedious jobs, the conclusion to come to is that they prefer that over no income at all. So simply eliminating that job isn't doing them any favors unless there's some solution for how they will still be able to pay their bills.

I don't think you are looking at the big picture either. New technology is constantly creating new jobs at the cost of old ones. Just like self-driving cars may displace truck drivers, so did new machines displace 19th century factory workers. However, this is such a small problem because the long-term economic benefits are enormous.

I think people fail to see what "economic benefits" actually means for them. It means that you start spending less time fighting off tuberculosis, dying from an infection, dying from childbirth complications, lowering the cost of living, etc. These things ultimately make it easier for any given person to sustain themselves, if it benefits society.

Take GMOs. They increase crop yields, making it cheaper to buy food. Sure it may have eliminated some jobs along the way, but then those guys ended up getting cheaper food at the cost of a having to find a new job.

By eliminating tedious work, their bills would become smaller. That's the idea with progress, anyways.

And while productivity has increased constantly, wages have stagnated. Companies need to start paying their much more productive workers a lot more money, or the benefits from the increased productivity will never be realized as growth (because that money won't go back into the middle class who are the most effective economic engines of growth per dollar earned).

https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs...

At what point do we give up on the dream of companies voluntarily paying workers more?

Forced redistribution from capital to labor should have started long ago, yet we appear to be moving in the opposite direction.

I don't think the reaction should be "Let's not do this, it could hurt jobs!". I also don't think the reaction should be "This is nothing to worry about, the jobs thing will work out over time".

Right now we have the option to anticipate and act to reduce any painful shocks. later we will not have the benefit of preparation.

That says "by persons engaged". I wouldn't be surprised if that's totally driven by people going from 0 work to some work, driving the average downward.

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