The rise of automatisation and digitalisation is a key driver for the decline in blue-collar jobs across the United States and Western Europe. Populist politicians try to blame offshoring to China or Mexico for that effect, but the truth is in the outsourcing process, companies also increased the use of robots in order to save on labour costs generally. It’s not the Mexican or Chinese worker that took the job of Joe Sixpack, it is the company that manufactured the robot used in the assembly lane of car manufacturers everywhere.
I am missing a conclusion: there is always a social cost to the disruptive advance of technologies that replace manual labour and machines that displace people. The Luddite movement of the early 19th C in which workers angry at being made redundant by the automated cotton weaving looms, smashed them. In every technological advance that I have studied, the argument that there was nowhere for the now unemployed to go was a constant. And yet there always was. Possibly not for every individual but at an aggregate level always. The single largest driver of automation (and I write this as someone who owns manufacturing businesses) is the rising cost of labour through direct and indirect taxation. The politicians who feel called on to “do something” are the ones who through their relentless increase of the total cost of labour are accelerating the drive to replace it.
On the other hand: care jobs pay better and are easier to find in an aging society. They won't be automated for long. Women get divorces or have kids on their own when they can afford it. There's nothing weird or tragic about that.
The advancements in technology are inevitable but agnostic- e.g. the invention of machine guns did not imply we need less soldiers. What really kills certain labor subsets is the shift of corporate taxes (aside from tax havens too) into employee taxes. This was sponsored by the same politicians (at least in the USA) who talk the talk but comes up with more oppressive taxation effect on lower income families. Politicians should just wear NASCAR style uniforms so at least they show who their underlying bosses are (lobbyists and benefactors).
I agree that the disruption on labor hit males first but it’s also coming into service industry (female dominated). It’s a question of when not if (I am developing my own slice of service robots). But that’s intended to help us contain situations such as pandemic where humans to humans interaction is a viral vector (if you think Covid is the last you’re not tying this up with climate change).
The solution here is just the same as years past - first, try not to depend on politicians lest you want to die faster. Second, a non-governmental initiative to get new skills beyond what is readily automated so there is a distinct value add. There is still a ways to go before generalized AI is solved. Hence there are always skill sets that specialized solution robots will not be able to do well. Foremost is the ability to imagine. And I would argue that companies whose CxOs are unimaginative about these human development and preparations for the future can be replaced by some form of automation sooner. After all, a robot will not have hubris or ego or attempt sexual harassment. The jobs of the future for all genders may not look like the jobs we knew before but so was the jobs of yore. It’s called evolution in biological terms. Or technology advances in engineering terms.
I am missing a conclusion: there is always a social cost to the disruptive advance of technologies that replace manual labour and machines that displace people. The Luddite movement of the early 19th C in which workers angry at being made redundant by the automated cotton weaving looms, smashed them. In every technological advance that I have studied, the argument that there was nowhere for the now unemployed to go was a constant. And yet there always was. Possibly not for every individual but at an aggregate level always. The single largest driver of automation (and I write this as someone who owns manufacturing businesses) is the rising cost of labour through direct and indirect taxation. The politicians who feel called on to “do something” are the ones who through their relentless increase of the total cost of labour are accelerating the drive to replace it.
On the other hand: care jobs pay better and are easier to find in an aging society. They won't be automated for long. Women get divorces or have kids on their own when they can afford it. There's nothing weird or tragic about that.
The advancements in technology are inevitable but agnostic- e.g. the invention of machine guns did not imply we need less soldiers. What really kills certain labor subsets is the shift of corporate taxes (aside from tax havens too) into employee taxes. This was sponsored by the same politicians (at least in the USA) who talk the talk but comes up with more oppressive taxation effect on lower income families. Politicians should just wear NASCAR style uniforms so at least they show who their underlying bosses are (lobbyists and benefactors).
I agree that the disruption on labor hit males first but it’s also coming into service industry (female dominated). It’s a question of when not if (I am developing my own slice of service robots). But that’s intended to help us contain situations such as pandemic where humans to humans interaction is a viral vector (if you think Covid is the last you’re not tying this up with climate change).
The solution here is just the same as years past - first, try not to depend on politicians lest you want to die faster. Second, a non-governmental initiative to get new skills beyond what is readily automated so there is a distinct value add. There is still a ways to go before generalized AI is solved. Hence there are always skill sets that specialized solution robots will not be able to do well. Foremost is the ability to imagine. And I would argue that companies whose CxOs are unimaginative about these human development and preparations for the future can be replaced by some form of automation sooner. After all, a robot will not have hubris or ego or attempt sexual harassment. The jobs of the future for all genders may not look like the jobs we knew before but so was the jobs of yore. It’s called evolution in biological terms. Or technology advances in engineering terms.