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Comment by jjmaxwell4 | Hacker News Reader

PG brought the most important defense against this argument the last time an article like this got posted. Why this time? Technology, including automation, has been around for the past 60 years, but we have only gotten richer.

When the declaration of independence was signed, it took 19 out of every 20 people to feed America and provide and surplus for export. Today it takes 1 out of every 20 people to do the same thing. Did jobs disappear? Did we have unemployment at 10%? No. People adapted, and got jobs doing things that were useful and beneficial to the economy.

Robots will take revolutionize many industries, just like software is right now, but it won't mean the demise of the economy. In fact it will be a huge boon, and we will continue to advance as we have been for the past 500 years. By nearly any measure possible, we are better off today then 50 years ago. Technology is no small part of that.

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Of course, this is not a question of GDP, but of employment, or idleness. Machines are beautiful creatures, (as long as they don't involve deflagrants or explosives) and they make everyone richer. But people are people, and the differences between a stupid employed person, and a stupid unemployed person are tremendous. Even when their bellies are equally full. The unemployment rate of post-graduate-degree holders is about 2 percent, and the rate among high school dropouts is almost 20 percent. This will not change.

It will get worse.

There is an aristocracy emerging of the intelligent/educated and the rest. It will get worse and worse, until you have 80 percent, then 85 percent, then 90 percent of the population economically useless. These predictions have been going on for decades (see "Player Piano" by Vonnegut). They are just now coming true.

"Why this time?" Why not this time? Arguing from historical trends is a weak form of argument, especially when we are discussing something as complicated as the human economy (humans are complicated enough, it's hard to say much for certain about their economy).

Anyway there's data suggesting this transformation is already happening:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=median+wages+adjusted+for+infla...

I'm tentatively in favor of this change – I don't see how having efficient, intelligent, cheap means of production can hurt human civilization in the long run, so long as we can work out resource allocation challenges.

>arguing from historical trends is a weak form of argument.

Not really, since this exact argument was previously made in the 1800's by textile workers. We can learn from that for sure. Humans are very complicated, but it is reasonable to say that we are fundamentally not much more complicated then we were in 1800.

It's true that in the 1800s, other jobs appeared for displaced textile workers. It's not obvious that the conditions that caused those jobs to appear will persist indefinitely.

Historical trends continue except when they don't. Housing prices are a great example.

When the farming jobs left, the unskilled could get manufacturing jobs. When they left, they got service industry jobs. What happens when they leave? What will the millions upon millions of basically unskilled labourers do then?

I am tempted to say "personal servants for the rich" and I am only half joking. As you say, history repeats itself.

You keep using that word "unskilled", I do not think it means what you think it means. Whether it's farm work, factory work, or service industry work it's disingenuous to call it "unskilled". It requires a different genre of skills than office work, typically, but there are nevertheless many levels of skill and substantial differences in work quality and productivity depending on experience levels. A lot of the jobs you have put into the "unskilled" bag have extensive formal education programs, for example.

On a more personal note, I find this commonplace bigotry against the working class to be appalling and indicative of limited and closed minds. The idea that there is this huge labor pool of second class citizens, gammas or such-like, that is barely above the level of trained chimp, and their skills are so minor it's just a matter of time before the smarties of the world replace them with superior robotics, is disgusting. It is a fantasy. And worse it's a very derogatory and prejudicial fantasy.

Have you ever worked such a job? Stocking shelves or serving drinks is an unskilled job. Maybe the people doing them now would be capable of doing more complicated things but there are plenty of jobs that can be done by a trained chimp. Training chimps is really really expensive but robotics will change that.

I agree with you though that given the right incentives most people can learn new skills. I don't think they are inherently stupid at all, the mindless routine of their work just naturally limits them intellectually.

Right. People will adapt given the right incentives, just as textile workers did when the weave was invented.

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