On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 7:55 AM Björn Helgason <[email protected]> wrote: > What is especially interesting regarding jobs lost to automation is it > happens so gradually and everywhere.
Not everywhere. Everywhere local. At least where I am standing, "jobs lost to automation" are often "jobs moved elsewhere". There's several parts to this, including: (1) Manufacture of tools. (2) Maintenance of tools. (3) Supporting infrastructure. (4) Death of experts (war, disease, old age). (5) Availability of supplies. (6) Adequate understanding on the part of the consumer. (7) Poisoning of markets from substandard products. (8) Availability of labor. (9) Motivations of leaders. And you need people with significant time dedicated to improving things to counter entropy effects... Anyways, currently [at least in the USA] we've a shortage of people who understand how things work, and a massive surplus of people who think they know how things work. This is at least partially a consequence of laws and treaties which were interpreted as preventing taxes from being used on imports and required on domestic work. This structured our markets so that smart middle-managers pushed most labor out of the country. Net result: an absence of people with the experiences necessary to inform management. We're starting to see the fallout from that. It's a fixable problem, but not quickly fixable, and there's some grim consequences ahead of us. I don't know how things are in Europe, though. There's the stuff that makes it into the news, but the important stuff tends to be too boring to be newsworthy. But, looking at history, we have seen similar effects. Automation replaced skilled craftsmen, resulting in an relatively mediocre result being widely available to many people and a loss of expertise... But this sort of thing doesn't "just happen". We, as a general rule, like our habits and routines, and it takes tremendous pressure to get us to change our ways. Until the issues become glaring, we have trouble distinguishing them from fraud. So there's a lot of gloom and despair going on behind the scenes... Anyways, currently, we've got the internet that we're adapting to, control of the internet is closely associated with manufacture of the components used to operate it as well as control of the people willing to invest their time messing with it. And that used to be the USA but see above for where that has been going... > There is often loss of well paid jobs and if the person gets a new job it > often pays less. Which means that, for most people, pay cannot be the deciding factor in their decision making process, or they're not going to know how to prepare for the future. Fortunately, there are a lot of fallback positions here. For people with dirt available to them, there's gardening. For people with expertise, there's using and expanding that area of expertise. For people with families or networks of friends, there's maintaining those relationships to have a cushion to land on during setbacks. Etc. > This has been happening graduaĺly over decades. > > The effects are felt all over but there is no mass problem to fight. > > Often personal tragedies but noone to complain to or get assistant fron. No family, friends, church, insurance, nor local communities? Well, there's always living on the streets while trying to find a job. Construction work tends to be available where there's lots of people, if you don't mind that your clothes and muscles will take a beating. > There is no obe machine or program replacing individuals. > > More lot and lot of small instances here and there and the companies are > getting the added improvements and the owners and top brass get it all. > > We have all seen this happening and not any action against it. The missing piece to this puzzle is that the owners and top brass have power only because they are working to provide for the masses of people who need assistance. They may be doing a poor job of it, but that's the root of the issue. There are billions of people in this world, and the scale of issues is immense. This is what has been driving automation. > We happily use the machines and do not think about the people that lost > their jobs to them. That is an issue - we need to have economic niches to maintain the expertise that we need to adapt to new problems as they come along. But it's not easy. > We who had good jobs and got good retirements are not worried about our > future but are we looking at problems for future generations? https://www.census.gov/popclock/ -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
