Surprised to find so many modern Luddites in comments. History lessons says that new professions will appear.
Very few people are actually suggesting that automation is bad, per se; the concern many people have is that the rate of change needs to be managed such that significant numbers of people aren't left behind. People can only retrain so fast, and some people will never be able to effectively retrain. Automation that suddenly puts them out of work needs to account for what they're supposed to do, and hopefully it's something better than "sit at home and drink themselves to death / overdose on opiates / engage in crime".
I'd rather intentionally put the brakes on automation, even though it's a hit to efficiency (and depresses the value of labor -- automation makes human labor more valuable over time), if the alternative you get with unlimited automation is a massive disenfranchisement of working people and consequent destabilization of society.
Better to keep some technologically-unnecessary jobs around than to live in a society constantly teetering on the brink of a violent populist uprising. All the efficiency gains of that automation are going to pale in comparison to the damage and loss that will happen during one night of rioting by the now-unemployed proletariat.
Is there any evidence that the United States is "teetering on the bring of a violent populist uprising."? Your entire comment is hyperbolic.
Lol, and this is response to "Luddites". Good luck with riots :)
Right now almost everywhere in the world we're heading for longer work week and increased retirement age. So much for "automation will deliver us from work" we've heard over and over again for the last 60 years.
We should but that would put a decent dent in corporate profits. Germany actually followed this for a long time - since the aftermath of WW2 up until the collapse of the UdSSR we had the "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" which is basically what you described. Then after communism fell, neoliberalism took over.
I grew up in a country where communism has won - I know for sure that it's an utopia. I really hate communists, socialists and other imbeciles who believe that people/business should give their money to lazy people just to make everybody "equal". No, people are not equal - somebody is smarter, somebody works more, somebody is a great artist, somebody is just a lazy alcoholic.
So no, we should not think about "spreading" wealth, we should think how to train people for new skills/professions, required by the market.
I don't think communism is the answer either.
> I really hate communists, socialists and other imbeciles who believe that people/business should give their money to lazy people just to make everybody "equal".
That's a very individualistic point of view, I used to hold a similar one a few years ago but traveling made me change my mind. Look at the US for example, people are dying of diabetes, in 2019, because they can't afford insulin. That's in the #1 country in the world according to "the market".
It might be lazy people, it might also be disabled people, people born in the wrong place / at the wrong time, people who didn't get the opportunity to develop, &c. The question isn't even "why are these people failing?", but "how do we handle them humanely?". It's life, shit happens, your parents die prematurely, you get sick, your company declares bankruptcy and you get fire out of nowhere.
The day you'll have kids or, hopefully not, a car accident, a cancer or other high impact disease, you'll be happy that all these "imbeciles" paid a bit of your hundred thousand dollar bills you'll owe to the hospital / schools.
> just to make everybody "equal". No, people are not equal
Sure they're not, nothing is. It's not about making people equal, it's about not letting people go down too far. You can shift the blame on people all you want ("somebody is just a lazy alcoholic"), but in the end we're products of our environment. Individuals shape society, society shapes individuals. There are people having full time jobs who won't be able to live when they retire without public pensions, what do you tell to these people ? "Too bad you were too lazy, go die somewhere else" ?
When I'm talking about spreading wealth I'm not talking about the average worker giving even more of his money, I'm talking about the top 10%, the people who game the system going through every loophole available to avoid paying tax.
> we should think how to train people for new skills/professions, required by the market.
We're already doing that, and in a perfect world yeah, it might work. But I don't see that happening, we'll always have people less capable than others, people who chose or get pushed on different paths.
Also, idk where you live but (moderate) socialism brought us weekends (yeah before workers started to unionize in europe we were workin 10 hours a day 7/7), vacation days, sick days, health insurance, social security, work insurances, maternity/paternity leave, unemployment benefits, <40hrs work week, &c. so it's not all bad. I care much more about what I and my close community requires than what "the market" requires. By the way, isn't "the market" supposed to serve the people and not the other way around ?
This doesn't mean we should stop automation. It does mean that we need to figure out a real solution to give these people a secure future. Companies are already innovating on how to not need employees. As a society, we need to innovate on how to give these people that aren't need to pack Amazon boxes a productive and fulfilling life.
(My answer is basic income, paid for by the government. It seems that other people's answer, though, is that Amazon should have to pay for not needing employees. I don't foresee that working out. You can't put the security of the collective in the hands of a profit-seeking entity.)
I don't think any of the comments here are anti-progress. But we do need a social and political plan to handle the automation of a large number of low skill jobs. Failure to plan for this future will result in large numbers of displaced and disaffected people.
They will be fired, yes. This cruel world, where people should care about competitiveness of their skills. It starts right after the school.
I'd argue that the competition start before the child is even born in the modern world. Wealth of one's family, their connections play a major role in the success of the child (admission scandals come to mind)
> Wealth of one's family, their connections play a major role in the success of the child
And it's perfectly fine. Somebody's parents were working hard or smart and created some legacy - it is absolutely, 100% fine that their offsprings have some advantage - it was the goal of their parents' life.