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Comment by arrrg | Hacker News Reader

That is (very likely) true in the long run, but it would be foolish to overlook the short-term effects that can be devastating for many individuals.

The weavers faced real problems, had a real existential crisis and struggled with real poverty and hunger for many decades. Yes, the industrial revolution brought a tremendous increase in wealth and living standards to everyone, but only eventually to everyone.

It is tremendously important to take care of the people who are cast by the wayside by those changes.

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These short term effects are exactly what the Luddites were against.[1] They may have gotten a bad reputation, but they had real problems.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

I agree with this. Not sure how viable, but it'd be nice to see some kind of federal program which allowed for a 5-year transition program for people where their industries collapse precipitously (by some definition) and are guaranteed 100% their wages but must study/prepare for a new career.

Not sure how to avoid the occasional dilly-dallier who thought they'd make a good chef, but maybe we'd just have to put up with that fact.

To address the dilly dally issue you would more than likely have to only give the transitional aid to someone involved in Science, Engineering, and Math fields, much like current STEM¹ scholarships.

¹https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5257

How is it true in the long run when we have robots that can walk talk and think as well as our bottom 40% but take one tenth the cost in food / shelter?

To be honest, I’m probably not as sure about the long term effects as I might have sounded. Looking into the past I see almost universally massively positive long-term effects. A few centuries ago almost everyone worked in farming, now almost nobody does, all those jobs have been automated away – but it didn’t matter in the long run because more people could work first in industry, then in services.

Maybe future transformations will work out similarly. However, even if they don’t many solutions for the short-term problems can easily be made to work as solutions for possible long-term problems.

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