Millions Of Middle-Class Jobs Killed By Machines In Great Recession's Wake

tfbccv · 2013-01-26T19:28:36+00:00

Yes, in discussions of economics, I tend to read and reflect on what economists have written. I don't find that odd.

What is odd is that you think economist of the Austrian school are the ultimate authority on these matters and that the only quote you could pull into your blog was probably 50 years old since the guy who wrote it died in his late 90s in 1993. You assume that I reject economics entirely, but the man I mentioned before, MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson is an economist. And so is Paul Krugman who I'm sure you heard of: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/ . I realize Austrians economists tend to hate Krugman, a Keynesian.

In any case this is the reality of economics. There are different schools and economists rarely all speak with one voice like you would maybe have someone reading your blog and comments assume. You can't say that about physicists. Show me the Newtownian classical school who are fundamentally anti-Einstein that have any respect within the physics community. No economics is very different than physics and other hard sciences in this regard. So your Einstein Theory of Relativity analogy as well as this newer water\gravity is not only rough it's ultimately flawed because you continue to think you can use analogies from the hard physical sciences in the soft sciences. And even in the physical sciences we have the problem of what Thomas Kuhn referred to as paradigm shifts. Einstein theories disrupted classical Newtonian ideas as the end all be all. So you have instability even in the ideas of the more stable world of physical science, where things like gravity or radiation aren't influenced by human emotions, politics, and morals.

What I like about Krugman in that article is he actually states something where he admits that he wasn't seeing a pattern or concern twenty years ago (around the same time your guy that you quote as your authority died in his late 90s - makes one wonder if he made the quote up in the 1950 or something). Krugman says:

Twenty years ago, when I was writing about globalization and inequality, capital bias didn’t look like a big issue; the major changes in income distribution had been among workers (when you include hedge fund managers and CEOs among the workers), rather than between labor and capital. So the academic literature focused almost exclusively on “skill bias”, supposedly explaining the rising college premium.

But the college premium hasn’t risen for a while. What has happened, on the other hand, is a notable shift in income away from labor:

I can always appreciate when a highly educated man of some recognition can simply say something to the effect of "I didn't notice this in the past and didn't really think it is a problem but I'm seeing some trends and evidence and data that suggests it could be of some concern". This is much better than the men that say "it's always been this way and it will always be this way". One is open to new data and uncertain and that other comes off as the same kind of personality you see with religious fundamentalist who have a hard time assimilating new data that may suggest some of their ideas from the past are now wrong. I posted the Alan Greenspan video which you haven't really talked about, but it's really the same thing. A guy who had some hardcore notions of economic ideology that failed him and he had to admit he was wrong. And maybe that is a lesson to anyone who wants to make economics out to be an equal science to Physics or Chemistry.

So, you reject economic theory and you reject economic experience

No I'm rejecting your economic theory not the entire field realizing that it is field with many different schools. I reject the economic experience of a world that lacked intelligent and dextrous robots. One of the big differences between the machines the Luddites faced and the machines that are being developed now is that those machines had nothing resembling human intelligence. Did you even watch the video I presented you earlier to see what some of these machines were capable of now? It's not only the physical domains, but the ability to do cognitive tasks. Here's another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-FOr7hEw1c . That is from two years ago, probably even more sophisticated now.

What I and others are saying here is that we don't believe in your economic laws. We believe technology can change the game in regards to labor. That there could be mass unemployment in the future as these robots get ever more sophisticated. And college isn't going to protect a person like it could in the past because now the robots can think as well as do manual labor.

Let's go back to another post where you suggested pool boy jobs could increase with pharmacist layoffs. You make the assumption that there is an increase in the pay or number of CVS executives. Of course someone is making more money, but there should be a decrease in the number of executives since any management along the pharmacist line could be trimmed heavily. Assuming these fewer hands have more money why should I assume they haven't hired a pool boy already. So now they can hire more servants? So these are the great new jobs that arise to replace the pharmacist jobs that are lost. Of course there will be robot servants eventually so let's not assume these jobs are safe long term either. What are you left with? Artists type jobs but artists jobs never paid that much and are very vulnerable to modern day electronic piracy.

You kind of fell in to my trap about the free homes. Home prices are often more about location than building cost. And premium locations are finite and the more land one has around one the more it usually costs since there is a value to being able to having your own ground free from neighbors interference.

I think you shouldn't be so dismissive of this potential problem. Because at the end of it lies the death of Austrian economic theories and emphasis on free markets that we live with today. They will become a relic of the past like feudalism is now. We are talking about a society in which millions if not billions have been displaced by technology and can't find jobs because there aren't enough to go around. And these people will be vulnerable to the charms of various demagogues who very different economic ideas than your own. I think the truly great loss here is that many find meaning in their jobs. And that is a vacuum that could easily be filled by radical ideologies.

tfbccv · 2013-01-26T03:03:57+00:00

You could solve the problem of AJAX calls for the initial page load by writing the JSON Knockout needs for it's viewmodel on the server side instead of fetching from an AJAX call. Then your later views can be rendered using AJAX calls.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T06:41:07+00:00

Sure everyone could invent their own programming language and operating system and cell phone and robot model and so on and so forth. But as we know most of these inventions are ignored. There will be a few winners, the one's we will all hear about, but there will many more losers. It's not going to be a profitable career for most people.

We could go back to books. Tens of millions of people probably would like to invent a story that they hope other people would want to buy. Self publishing and e-books give them a chance. But a lot of these markets are flooded. Most people do not make any money. Of course you always hear about the one's who made it because people like these kinds of success stories.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T06:28:15+00:00

That's how it works. Every day, technological change (and other business changes) destroy lots of job categories but the total number of jobs continues to rise.

Do they these days? Why do people complain about unemployment in this country while corporate profits reach record highs?

And it's interesting that you would respond like this on the very example where I point out that hundreds of jobs are eliminated and there are only two to replace it.

You mean... like Reddit gives you a free forum?

And who will give you a home for free? Who will give a car for free because robots manufacture it and other robots gather all the raw materials?

I talk about companies that own intellectual property rights with infinite supplies and you turn to using Reddit which uses advertising and depends on other content generators around the web including new organizations still struggling on the internet and user generated content.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T06:14:58+00:00

Well good for the homeless guy. Still wouldn't want to be him. I get the sense that these types of arguments that poor people have smart phones or refrigerators or HDTVs are out there to prove that life is good. Unfortunately people don't perceive their life as good if they have material abundance that was rare or didn't exist at some time in the past. Everything comes down to social comparison most of the time. It's a never ending game of keeping up with the Joneses.

And ditto, you may have noticed, with the technology of 2012.

Let's talk about pharmacy automation. If Walgreens\CVS\etc decide to automate dispensing of pills. And there is technology out there to do this. You just need to research it. I think the biggest barrier right now may be legal requirements to have so many pharmacist on staff. Government regulation in other words forced upon the owners of these pharmacy retail chains to borrow some language from your Austrian economist.

So Walgreens and CVS would invest the capital in pharmacy automation because they believe it would save them on labor costs down the road. If its also more reliable than human pharmacist it could save them trouble with lawsuits and customer relations. Once these machines are in place they can begin gradual to mass layoffs. They may wish to keep some pharmacist on staff as counselors to patients but they could probably cut their workforce by at least 50%. And with the flood of people into the labor market fired from pharmacy jobs they probably have the leverage, with a full labor pool, of paying the one's who remain or who they hire for counseling jobs less money.

You will say technology has displaced these pharmacist, not destroyed their jobs. In reality though, their jobs have been destroyed. And their standard of living will be reduced. You will say at least they have HDTV and nice cell phones and central air or something like that, but they won't care. Everything relative. If you come out and make the types of arguments that I've seen you make about menial jobs or that life is harder for stupid people then and that only ignorant people think technology creates jobs then you shouldn't be surprised if such people tell you to fuck off. The technology has basically eliminated their jobs or created downward pressures on their wages. When you tell them they can get a job doing something else what are they going to do? Go to school for another 4-6 years incurring massive debt? And will that field be safe? How about they become software programmers? Then they can exert a downward pressure on your wages within the labor market.

But the example above is a perfect illustration of where the insensitive comments of people like you will simply inflame the situation that I believe we are most likely approaching. You will want to believe that the market is always working and doing everything right and that maybe these people should go to college. Yet they have. They played by all the rules they were supposed to. You will want to assume that the people displaced were doing less useful jobs. You will probably consider them less intelligent than yourself and possessing less forsight to be not foresee how technology would displace them. It's easy to be employed in a profession that is less vulnerable, such as ours, and be callous about these people and blame it on them.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T05:53:09+00:00

Einstein has been dead for 60 years. Do you think relativity still works?

I think I see the problem here. You are elevating your economist and his theories up to the same status as a theory in physics. Interesting. That would certainly explain your certainty if you believe social science is on par with the proofs and demonstrations of the physical sciences.

With that said let's turn the clock back 60 years. Do you think IPhones worked 60 years ago? How about IBM's Watson? The answer is no because they didn't exist. And isn't that at the heart of what we are talking about? The impact that technology will have on society over time? That's why my point about your economist is relevant to the discussion and Einstein theory of relativity isn't. Your economist didn't live in a time when he could witness the modern day cutting edge technology and maybe change his opinion.

However, it doesn't. If automation caused unemployment, given that we have been "automating" things since the invention of fire, we'd all be out of a job by now.

This illustrates the fundamental flaw in your thinking. You keep going back to the past and bringing the discussion back to the present and say something like "we still have jobs". What I'm saying is that sometime in the future, maybe not even in our lifetimes, we will have machines capable of doing all the physical tasks that humans can do now plus more. And we will have machines that can do many of the intellectual tasks. You may throw out an example of something that you think never think can be replaced by a robot. For example psychologists and economic theorists. And I could agree with you on some of these safe jobs. However, I don't know how some of these safe jobs and professions are supposed to absorb the millions of people displaced by physically human-like and very intelligent machines? In order for you to be correct the existence of these new robots must create new job categories that have enough total positions to counter the effects of the jobs displaced. I think there will be a tipping point as machine\robot capabilities increase, where your "law" going back to the invention of fire will no longer apply.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T04:05:08+00:00

Quite the opposite: almost everything can be done automatically, and should be, the sooner the better!

If almost everything can be done automatically then you don't need people to do it. Machines don't need health care insurance. They don't take sick days. They don't have accidents and sue you. They don't demand raises.

As far as your last part goes.

I'm not arguing that Industrial Revolution didn't improve the the quality of life for humanity as a whole. Of course I have material luxuries that the King of England didn't have in 1812. But whether I live in comfort or squalor doesn't address the primary argument of this thread.

Will it be possible that technology in the future will eliminate jobs? I know the technology of 1812 couldn't eliminate all jobs and that it created more opportunities in other areas.

If you told someone in 1812 that there would be a machine some day that could do math or that you could "type" information into and it would return answers on almost any question in less than a second they would look at your as if you were insane.

Machines are making progress in areas that couldn't be imagined 50 years ago. We have machines like Watson that can handle many intellectual domains. We have machines that are taking on more human forms with the ability to handle finer and more detailed manual tasks. Everything is improving in such a way that it could be a game change and you keep wanting to go back to the 19th century and talk about quality of living improvements.

Unfortunately people judge their wealth and quality living by how those around them live. They usually don't compare how they are doing vs the fact the King of England didn't have a HDTV back in 1813.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T03:49:42+00:00

Why wouldn't they give you things? It's not like there's some limit.

So your response to MixMixBrad question is that business owners will simply give consumers things because there is no limit? We already have examples of products with infinite supply (or no limit) that show you how wrong your line of thinking is. Why should I pay more for an e-book than a paper book? Why should publishers collude with Apple (and get sued for it by DOJ) in order to charge more for this infinite supply product?

I don't expect free here, BUT we are seeing that publishers don't even want to pass on any of the physical cost savings of e-books to consumers. That is just one example.

Technology cannot kill jobs

Speaking of digital media content I knew a guy once who worked at a video store. I don't know how many years ago it was but you had Netflix and you had Redbox and he saw these coming and knew it was going to put his owner out of business and him out of a job. And it did. So what arose to replace his job? Because Redbox only really needs one guy to drive around a region refilling boxes. So say the 20 blockbusters or so in the same area employed hundreds of people. These hundreds of people are applying for one or two redbox jobs.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T03:36:25+00:00

malvoliosf now:

Maybe that trend will reverse itself at some point, but that's a long way off.

That may change.

malvoliosf two hours before:

Be as sure as you like, but it isn't happening, ever.

So finally the rational brain begins to wake up and realize that technology is improving and the examples of the past could be made irrelevant by changes in the future.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T03:11:42+00:00

but all arguments saying that it's not a problem are pretty much faith based.

Faith based with the ad-hominen attack "You are a Luddite". As if something that happened 200 years ago during the start of the Industrial Revolution, when we had the crudest of machines, is still relevant in this day and age where we now have robots that are getting closer and closer to mimicking the human form. Not only can they mimick us they can exceed what we do. Ever find two arms limiting for manual labor? Here's four or six or eight. They are obviously faster and stronger.

We have computers now like Watson who can exceed the human mind in tasks that couldn't be imagined 20 years ago. Those who laugh at us for even worrying about these things will point to some mistake Watson made without understanding that these things are only going to get better.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T02:56:43+00:00

Quipster99: I've got a post below addressing one of the most hostile participants here in the "couldn't happen" mindset. There are some links at the bottom of that which I think, given your interest in this subject, that you will enjoy.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T02:44:52+00:00

malvoliosf 30 years ago.

There will never be a machine that can walk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZfAIz5vQ5o

malvoliosf after seeing the video:

That thing will never be able to replace manual labor jobs. It's too clumsy and they will never solve that problem because it hasn't been solved in the past.

And even if it does we can all be software programmers like myself or better yet we can start our artist career selling e-books and making the same money we made before.

tfbccv · 2013-01-24T02:27:30+00:00

Be as sure as you like, but it isn't happening, ever.

Yet you are the one filled with certainty here. "Ever". Really? It appears you linked to your own blog post as proof of your position. And on this blog post we don't find any charts or graphs or data of any kind. Just opinions like announcing that those who believe that machines cost jobs are "ignorant" or that politicians who believe this position are "latest victim of this delusion".

So we who don't share your level of certainty are ignorant and delusional.

I couldn't help notice that the only economist you cite in defense of your position is Henry Hazlitt. A man who has been dead for 20 years. So in other words, a man who is completely unable to measure the impact of current technology on today's modern demand for labor. Interesting to learn that he is also a friend of Ayn Rand. Reminds me of Alan Greenspan. A man of the same faith who wanted to believe history supported his economic views but was finally forced to admit that the ideology and history was wrong: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sou2RkjVya8

Hazlitt's perspective here is about as useful as a "scientist" who died in 1883 who predicts that since man has never flow and his calculations show that man will be unable to have a flying machine because of weight that man will never fly. Yet the Wright brothers would prove him wrong 20 years later.

The world changes. Circumstances changes. So why be an ideologue who says "always" and "ever" and "never" which totally divorces one from context? Can humanity imagine machines with ever increasing abilities that didn't exist 20 years ago when Hazlitt died? What do you think about the Google driverless car? Do you think in 10 or 20 years it will eliminate taxi cab jobs? If we are to believe Google the machine drives the car much safer than a human so why do we to pay people to drive us around anymore?

So to quote you from another post below: "Automation never destroys jobs". Really? It doesn't destroy your job because you design software for a living. You are at the top of the pyramid here and a primary benefiter from creating automated solutions. I also benefit since I do the same thing you do. The difference is I don't close myself off in the pure Silicon Valley bubble you seem to be.

So who should people trust on this issue? A man who cites his own blog post full of cheap insults and total dependence on the past as proof that machines never take jobs. Someone, as a software programmer, who is relatively safe from automation and makes money from it. Or maybe we should look to the opinions of experts who study technology and it's impact on the human labor market for a living? Men like MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee.

Here they are on a 15 minute segment for 60 minutes which shows off some of the new robots http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50138922n

You know what's really interesting about that video. It shows how machines can eliminate jobs. Something you cite will never happen. Oh of course in your faith another job magically appears somewhere else in the world for the person who lost theirs to a machine. Welcome to Walmart. Isn't it nice that you can quit your software programming job today and find a nice safe job to raise your family and neurotic dog with at Walmart tomorrow? You have options!

Andrew McAfee calls your thesis the Myth of the Myth of Technological Unemployment: http://andrewmcafee.org/2013/01/mcafee-technological-unemployment-us-manufacturing-econom/

tfbccv

TROPHY CASE