It seems in the past few weeks there has been a flurry of drama-stories around automation taking away jobs. The first one I read was about how people who identify with the Republican party have jobs that are most likely to be eliminated because of automation. The title was catchy, and the article was educational to the reader on the difference between causality and correlation. Something everyone needs to learn. I think a robot takeover is the least of the GOPs problems.
The next article was about how the state of Massachusetts needs to prepare for an economic slow down. No, people are not going to buy less clam chowdah, but rather there is large section of the workforce that is entering the retirement age, and quite frankly there are not enough skilled candidates to replace the openings, thus a company can not make enough widgets.
The most thought provoking article was here. Basically we must prepare for situation in which a large percentage of jobs will be removed because of automation. Capitalism encourages companies to be efficient, and a factory of robots certainly feels more profitable than a factory of humans. The premise of the article is best described in following paragraph. However I do highly recommend reading the entire article as it gives a layman's view of where we are with automation.
We must seriously start talking about decoupling income from work. Adopting a universal basic income, aside from immunizing against the negative effects of automation, also decreases the risks inherent in entrepreneurship, and the sizes of bureaucracies otherwise necessary to boost incomes. It’s for these reasons, it has cross-partisan support, and is even now in the beginning stages of implementation in countries like Switzerland, Finland, and the Netherlands.
Interesting that not all economist agree on this. The other side is that simply jobs will shift to other fields. The example is we did not loose jobs (e.g. making horseshoes) because of the advent of the automobile, true we need fewer horses and therefore horseshoes, but we needed people to make/market/sell cars.
As usual there is star trek episode that exemplifies the end game. We will lose our physical presence and become nothing but a mind, wandering through a universe asking why we are here. Actually in the star trek episode, the minds became compulsive gamblers and spent their time betting on various activities. I can see that happening too.
As usual there is star trek episode that exemplifies the end game. We will lose our physical presence and become nothing but a mind, wandering through a universe asking why we are here. Actually in the star trek episode, the minds became compulsive gamblers and spent their time betting on various activities. I can see that happening too.
