The future of work in America

http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-future-of-work-in-america

by robdoherty2 • 14 years ago

26 39 14 years ago

rayiner3• 14 years ago

I think it's interesting to look at the limit case: a Star Trek-like future in which everything is automated and individual labor is mostly unnecessary.

What happens in such a world? Under a pure free-market system, there is a real possibility that such a future would end up quite horrific. A few people would own the capital that implemented the automation, while the majority of the population would have nothing. It would be, in a way, very similar to feudal times, when a few owned the important capital of the time (land).

bartonfink• 14 years ago

Manna [1] is a short story which deals with this exact scenario.

[1] http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

philwelch2• 14 years ago

Albeit in a very tendentious way.

CamperBob22• 14 years ago

However, just as the importance of owning huge tracts of land for the sake of social status and financial security has diminished over the last few hundred years, so may the importance of owning anything. Don't assume that the axioms of our current scarcity-based economy will survive a change as revolutionary as what's being discussed.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

As I've said before, economic value is derived from two things- natural resources and human labor.

Even if we completely abolish the need for human labor, we are still constrained in terms of resources, so it's still a scarcity-based economy.

yourapostasy2• 14 years ago

I doubt that "owning large tracts of land for the sake of social status and financial security has diminished over the last few hundred years". Look at the lists of billionaires, hectomillionaires, and decamillionaires: a large proportion of them derive their wealth from real estate, certainly enough to make it a top 5 means of capturing wealth in our current system. [1] Perhaps over the next few hundred years what you assert may happen, but much of the world population is still subject to an economic system that richly rewards the original literal rent-seeking behavior on land.

I find it ironic that even in intelligent circles like HN, no one really discusses ways to factor out land and shelter expenses. If your payroll is your #1 expense, and the #1 expense of your employees is shelter, then why has so little attention been paid to this lowest of low hanging fruit of expenses? Individuals are generally speaking not rational actors, and I think we might all be surprised at what happens if a post-scarcity reality became feasible.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2012/03/13/how-ameri...

philwelch2• 14 years ago

You'd have to work out the few remaining things that do require work from human beings, fundamentally, even to exist.

Art is one of them (speaking broadly enough to include things like music and literature). The entire value of art is that it's an expression of an artist's point of view. Recorded art is obviously on its way out, but live or commissioned art wouldn't necessarily be, and we already know how to croudsource commissioning.

Academic study would certainly be another, at least in some forms.

Interpersonal services of various forms would also be important. These might include various forms of counseling and prostitution.

There would still be a market for handmade things, if only for the status involved.

The people who owned the capital that implemented the automation would have to find a way to tell the robots what to make and how, and would likely require assistance in doing so. There's a lot of essential, un-automatable difficulty in merely expressing requirements clearly.

I'm even assuming most of the actual design and engineering (post-requirements stage) can be done by computers, though I highly suspect it cannot.

This might seem very bleak, but consider that with all this automation around, everything would become exceedingly cheap. In the past it's only been cost-effective to make a living off of, say, music with thousands or millions of fans per individual musician. Perhaps it would be possible to make a living off an audience of hundreds or maybe less since it would cost a pittance to satisfy all your basic needs.

taskstrike• 14 years ago

Actually, in a automatic production economy, design becomes king and whoever can design the best product becomes the most important person.

This already happened in the case of the internet. Cost of labor is almost zero upon scaling, and the people who make the most valuable and well thought out websites gains the most market shares. It is not the people who owns the capital that profited the most on the internet, but great individual and team of designers and makers.

It is also not assumed that the automation would be owned by the few instead of owned by everyone. Personal 3d printers are on the rise, and I foresee a future where we print our products and 3d printers spreads like the personal computer.

chokolad• 14 years ago

And how many of those displaced workers will be able to design?

drudru112• 14 years ago

very few designers are the majority shareholders of the powerful and profitable companies.

thronemonkey• 14 years ago

Its also interesting to think about totally post-scarcity societies, as in Iain M. Banks' Culture novels.

ryanmolden2• 14 years ago

The concept of ownership is predicated on a party with the power of enforcement of law. If a few people ended up with everything I doubt the vast, vast majority with nothing would just say "well, sucks to be us". All the money in the world only protects you from armed mobs as long as there are people willing to accept money for said protection duties and enough deterrent from an authority to discourage the mob from simply overpowering the rich and their guards. Dystopian futures where a small number of people "have everything" seem highly unlikely if for no other reason than people can be beaten to death with stones.

Evbn3• 14 years ago

Stones are ineffective against guns. Hence, 2nd amendment.

Also, walls and moats. I don't see Chinese factory laborers rising up against rich Americans.

sesteel• 14 years ago

I agree with your assessment. It this realization that encouraged me to start learning about alternative economies; binary economics is one alternative I've explored. In the end, we live in an era of increasing scarcity (especially with regards to food, water, and land) and automation will continue to erode the job prospects of humans moving forward. In the meantime, medicine is working towards increasing one's longevity. Personally, I hope we find a peaceful resolution to this mess, but it does seem to be a recipe for disaster.

People bemoan Kurzweil's vision of the future, but we may be forced to virtualize ourselves to survive peacefully. Otherwise, I want to be in the country with the strongest military.

Evbn3• 14 years ago

What if you are drafted to serve as cannon fodder in a bat military?

kamaal2• 14 years ago

The struggle in such a society won't be for food, clothing, shelter and medicine.

Just imagine if every guy in the world gets to eat, wear, live and heal himself without work, then humans will have better work to do. We will have more productive work.

May be space colonization, advanced research etc will be the aims of such a human race.

bmcleod• 14 years ago

This is the point where it's worth pointing out that the portion of the population involved in food production has collapsed massively over the last couple of centuries. People generally seem to find new things to value when their time frees up.

aresant• 14 years ago

The Kurzweilai.net blog-spam barely summarizes the article, the original is here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/labor-day-2012-the-future-of-...

paulsutter• 14 years ago

Here's the actual original:

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept12/future-of-work8-12.html

ghshephard• 14 years ago

Beware graphs not starting at 0. I'm not saying there isn't merit in the argument, but the attempt to mislead the reader by placing 57 at the bottom of the graph isn't a good start.

dmix• 14 years ago

Every. Single. Time. There's one of these in every controversial article.

muzz• 14 years ago

You can see the whole data here (and change the scales):

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PRS85006173

It only goes back to 1940, but it would be interesting to know what the labor share was before that. I'm guessing it was smaller, especially in the late 1800s.

dbecker3• 14 years ago

People told the inventor of the steam shovel that he would cause massive unemployment because "one steam shovel replaces dozens of men with conventional shovels."

He replied "Or thousands of men with teaspoons."

I'm surprised how many people still think productivity will be the source of collapse... or how many people think low productivity is the answer to all economic woes.

That view point has always been wrong in the past, and I'm skeptical anything will change to make it right in the future.

rayiner3• 14 years ago

The difference is that at that time people weren't hitting up against natural resource limits. Productivity decreases the need for labor, and society reacts by producing more overall which keeps people busy. But that only works when there are no other constraints on growing overall production.

dbecker3• 14 years ago

From an economic theory point of view, productivity increases generally increase the demand for labor.

The suggestion that there is some level of "need" for labor suggests that there is a certain "need" for produced goods, and we happen to be at it right now.

But we used to be below this level of output (which suggests our current level isn't a "need"), and consumption is still increasing... rather than leveling off.

Cushman• 14 years ago

What makes you so sure we're not witnessing it right now? During the recession, millions of people lost their jobs. If you look at the numbers, those companies are doing all right again, so why haven't those people all been hired back?

kamaal2• 14 years ago

I think they have been hired back, not in the same places but elsewhere.

drudru112• 14 years ago

What would cause you to change your mind on this?

dbecker3• 14 years ago

Great question. I thought about it this afternoon, and I'm not sure what would cause me to change my mind about this... That seems like a red flag that I'm not being open minded enough about it.

Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking question.

jk4930• 14 years ago

SPOILER: This being on kurzweilai.net means--some pages around--that the solution is the (gradual) merger of humans with machines and thus an enhancement of human physical and cognitive abilities. See the trailer on http://transcendentman.com/

The loss of jobs is part of the adaption phase, a dead time until the system reacts. People often assume that the world changes but humans stay the same, a case of improper ceteris paribus.

For a hypothesis of past human structural (genetic) change in a short time (in this case as a driver, not a reaction) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Clark_%28economist%29#A...

greenyoda• 14 years ago

"Technology and the Web are destroying far more jobs than they create."

Sorry to be skeptical, but neither this article nor the original that it links cites a single reference to support this claim. How could you even quantify how many jobs the web destroys? A business can go under for many reasons other than direct competition from web-based businesses.

"The Internet is destroying vast income streams that once supported tens of thousands of jobs in industries from finance to music."

Yeah, we've heard over and over again that the music industry is being destroyed by the internet and that draconian copyright enforcement regimes are required to prevent the industry's demise. But it doesn't seem like less new music is being produced today than in the 1980s. And for every record store owner that went out of business there's now an RIAA lawyer or lobbyist taking his place. As for the financial industry, yes, some stockbrokers have been put out of business by online trading, but that seems to be a really good thing, since I now get to pay $10 for a trade instead of $400, and I can spend that extra money to support the employment of sushi chefs.

The future of work in America

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