Technology destroying jobs
Commenter “Tarl” provided a link to an MIT Technology Review article in which the authors explain that technology is reducing the demand for human labor, which explains why there was a large increase in “productivity” during the last decade but employment did not follow suit.
Also this:
Digital technologies tend to favor “superstars,” they point out. For example, someone who creates a computer program to automate tax preparation might earn millions or billions of dollars while eliminating the need for countless accountants.
That’s what I call a winner-take-all economy.
The authors of the article, however, have not addressed what must inevitably happen, that society has to figure out a means, other than free-market employement, for people can obtain the bounty produced by technology.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
Let’s return to the Stone Age, when everybody had to do something productive. We were all employed, and nobody suffered.
This is just another “technology has gone too far” article, representing nothing but the elite geeks’ collective ego in thinking they have finally rendered the ordinary human masses obsolete. Rubbish! Most people have always found a way to make themselves useful to their fellow man, and get compensated in return.
Blog Raju
June 17, 2013 at 6:55 PM
correct. I also think the article is bullshit. History shows that people always found ways to participate in the economy. Once upon a time, most jobs were in farming, then manufacturing… The invention of the sewing machine made textiles much much more productive (read 100x productivity) and worker unions complained with similar arguments, yet, there was nothing to be done. Still, people survived and now we have cheap clothes, together with cheap food, cheap products, and next cheap software.
Zack
June 17, 2013 at 7:46 PM
Not saying we are anywhere near it, but as we move up the technology/AI continuum where more and more humans find it cognitively or physically impossible to keep up with technology, there will come a time where we will have to address what Lion posits at the end of his post.
uatu
June 17, 2013 at 8:38 PM
Already far past it. 80% of the “work” force could be eliminated overnight, and it would be hard to tell.
Construction, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, wholesaling, and utilities, all of which include many non-productive employees (like accounting and marketing), employ about 20% of the workforce.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 5:45 PM
No, actually since the dawn of agriculture most people have been surplus to requirement. They were “useful” in the same way a draft animal or a piece of farm machinery is useful, and they were very poorly compensated for their labor. In fact sometimes they weren’t compensated at all – the Romans and the Greeks called those people “slaves.” Even a free subsistence farmer produces very little value add beyond his own survival and is not terribly useful to his fellow man. The problem with technology is that in the old days the 70-90% of humanity that is basically useless other than as brute labor could at least feed and clothe itself. Today’s useless masses don’t even have that because technology has made even their subsistence labor obsolete. Instead they rely solely on handouts from elites to survive. Even the ones that work are mostly involved in a vast circle jerk – poor people working to provide cheap food, low quality clothing, shoddy housing and subpar health care to other poor people so that more poor people can be born to continue the cycle.
Peter the Shark
June 18, 2013 at 3:52 AM
There were various kinds of slaves. Some were conquered peoples and more educated and useful than their owners. Others had committed property crimes that they had work off. Some were the offspring of conquered peoples and therefore could not rise in social class. Others were just low IQ underclass types who couldn’t manage their own lives and would just starve if someone didn’t tell them what to do and make them do it.
not too late
June 18, 2013 at 3:17 PM
Correct Peter, and the libertarian chi-mos think these people should bow down to their useful betters, simply because they score lower on an IQ test or whatever.
The ultimate, deep, problem with libertarianism is, obviously, that the earth is finite and the human ability to f— isn’t. The other one is ressentiment and meanness. Libertarians in the early 19th c. were called pushy middle class strivers, aka, vulgarians.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 5:52 PM
“The authors of the article, however, have not addressed what must inevitably happen, that society has to figure out a means, other than free-market employement, for people can obtain the bounty produced by technology.”
Isn’t the inevitable answer to this problem some kind of guaranteed income for those unfortunate Americans who lack a certain threshold of mental and social capital, as proposed for instance by Charles Murray in his book In Our Hands? Murray would ban all entitlements and replace them with a $10,000 yearly payment to all those who make less than $50,000 a year (or something like that). Of course there are all sorts of problems with Murray’s proposal, but really, does anybody have a better idea?
Jason
June 17, 2013 at 7:31 PM
End immigration, end free trade, lower the number of hours worked per employed person, give tax benefits for employing people and force people on welfare to go on birth control.
reynald
June 17, 2013 at 8:33 PM
All of reynald’s ideas are good ones.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 17, 2013 at 8:33 PM
I’m on board with ending immigration and making birth control a condition for receiving welfare — as long as no one is forced to take welfare.
I support free trade within our borders. But international free trade has created a massive trade deficit and threatens national security. In particular, China has manipulated their currency in order to steal our industry. This is a rare case where the market results in an unacceptable outcome. I like Warren Buffet’s solution.
Lowering the number of hours worked and giving tax breaks to employers would distort the market.
destructure
June 17, 2013 at 9:44 PM
Black leaders will cry the race card and Chuck Schumer will too.
JS
June 18, 2013 at 10:36 AM
Lifetime welfare for sterilization, no regrets allowed later, no one forces them, just make it a condition. You get sterilized and you’ll be taken care of for the rest of your life. People would be willing to accept this, I would bet many people would take this offer and you could still have temporary assistance for those who think they can make it in the working world.
XVO
June 18, 2013 at 11:38 AM
I’m just curious Reynald or Lion: How do you think limiting work hours would create more decent paying jobs? It seems to be that businesses would just use that as an excuse to create lots of part-time jobs with no benefits (Although to be fair maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing; perhaps rather than just having one job more individuals should have two part-time jobs).
Jason
June 18, 2013 at 7:35 PM
Lifetime welfare for sterilization, no regrets allowed later, no one forces them, just make it a condition. You get sterilized and you’ll be taken care of for the rest of your life.
Longterm welfare must be conditioned on sterilization, definitely.
Then whites only immigration and $100,000 per family member green card/citizenship buyouts for legal immigrants.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 18, 2013 at 8:32 PM
Wages are sticky so, even in a recession, they don’t go down as much as econ 101 would suggest. But you would expect a transition to lower hours in a recession to overcome that stickiness and people would end up with total compensation (pay + benefits) less than proportional to their old incomes. But that has do with being in the middle of a recession and is not inherent to switching to fewer hours. I imagine people would be substantially more productive working fewer hours so I would think compensation would actually be proportionately higher than their old incomes if the transition were done outside of a recession.
reynald
June 19, 2013 at 12:03 AM
“Lifetime welfare for sterilization, no regrets allowed later, no one forces them, just make it a condition. You get sterilized and you’ll be taken care of for the rest of your life.”
No problem, pop out your kids early and retire on welfare when you’re 40. Or 30.
I guess such a policy would also permanently fund Portland, though in a different way.
Glengarry
June 22, 2013 at 2:51 AM
Reynald’s ideas are good. The main unemployment problems are not caused by automation. They are caused by too many people living in America as a result of government policy. We’ve already been through this process before without resulting in massive poverty (the Industrial Revolution.)
There is no more paradox of automation than there is a paradox of thrift. Or, at least, the paradox is broken at a deeper level of abstraction.
map
June 17, 2013 at 10:34 PM
Isn’t the inevitable answer to this problem some kind of guaranteed income for those unfortunate Americans who lack a certain threshold of mental and social capital, as proposed for instance by Charles Murray in his book In Our Hands? Murray would ban all entitlements and replace them with a $10,000 yearly payment to all those who make less than $50,000 a year (or something like that).
I agree with this
smartandwise
June 18, 2013 at 1:12 AM
yeah, even $100k in a lump sum plus a lifetime annual allowance and free gov’t healthcare (read no appeals for denied treatments) is still a bargain for getting criminal genes out of circulation.
not too late
June 18, 2013 at 3:20 PM
Ooh! Ooh! Mr. Cotter! Mr. Cotter!
Eugenics.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 5:54 PM
RIchest man in the graveyard wins.
James McKeane
June 17, 2013 at 7:39 PM
And those who make it big are too seldom like these guys. http://money.cnn.com/gallery/magazines/fortune/2013/04/04/live-forever.fortune/index.html.
Today they’re mostly pushy strivers obsessed with class.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 17, 2013 at 9:17 PM
Yes, automation increases productivity while reducing the demand for low-skill labor. However, it’s a mistake to assume automation results in a net loss of US jobs. Had the manufacturers not automated many of them would have outsourced even more plants for cheaper overseas labor. While the automated plants still require fewer workers, at least they’re still in the US. Plus, they’re more profitable and create higher skilled, higher paying jobs for workers who build, maintain and operate the automated machinery.
As for those lower skilled workers — they should be working in construction, meatpacking, agriculture and hospitality. They may think they’re too good to work those jobs but, if they’re really too good to work those jobs, then they should have no problem finding jobs they’re not too good for.
“society has to figure out a means, other than free-market employement, for people can obtain the bounty produced by technology.”
Oh yeah? You want to set up a employment commissar and 5 year plan?
destructure
June 17, 2013 at 7:40 PM
It’s difficult to disentangle the effects of automation. immigration, and free trade on low wage and low skilled jobs. All three have positives and negatives but the last two are much more clearly negative. Automation tends to be part of broader technological advances that benefit everyone, including those put out of work while immigration and free trade tend to advantage only those with work at the expense of those put out of it.
Your advice about which jobs seems pretty clueless even for individuals (even before the immigration bill makes those jobs even worse) but you also have to keep in mind that huge numbers of people are unemployed and that if large groups of people started looking for work in a sector of the economy the availability and desirability of those jobs plummets. This means that advice that works for individuals and small groups is often near useless when directed at large groups.
reynald
June 17, 2013 at 8:43 PM
“It’s difficult to disentangle the effects of automation. immigration, and free trade on low wage and low skilled jobs.
It’s pretty straight-forward. Automation is good. Immigration is bad. And free trade is a mixed bag. See my other comment for a link to Warren Buffet’s solution to the free trade deficit.
Your advice about which jobs seems pretty clueless even for individuals
Not at all. I deliberately suggested industries that have been hiring illegals to make the implied point that without illegals unemployed Americans would have those jobs. You picked up that those industries hire illegals but you missed the point.
Also, there are about 12 million illegals so that’s an awful lot of jobs. There’s not a shortage of jobs for low-skilled workers. There’s an excess of illegals.
destructure
June 18, 2013 at 3:04 AM
You said low skilled american workers should go into these jobs and the only reason you gave as to why they wouldnt or couldn’t was that they were too stuck up. You did not mention illegal immigration so I did not misread your comment. But I definitely agree that immigration is a disaster on multiple fronts and this is one of them.
Also, as for the first sentence it should have been “It’s difficult to disentangle the effects of automation. immigration, and free trade on low wage and low skilled jobs on the job prospects of low skilled american over the last 50 years.”
reynald
June 18, 2013 at 12:42 PM
There’s a problem with the term “low-skilled”. It is possible, theoretically, to be highly skilled at something useless or something which too many others are highly skilled at. The natsci PhD market in Japan is like this.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 5:56 PM
Plus by “skilled” we often mean accredited in some way. “Skilled” employees would have a much more difficult time if employment decisions were made based on some direct test of skill rather than using accreditation as a proxy.
reynald
June 19, 2013 at 12:08 AM
Thanks for your response above concerning reducing work hours.
Jason
June 19, 2013 at 3:54 PM
You did not mention illegal immigration so I did not misread your comment.
I didn’t have to mention immigration. Everyone knows construction, meatpacking, agriculture and hospitality are the four horsemen of the immigration apocalypse. Those are the major industries to employ low-skilled workers. That they now employ large numbers of illegals doesn’t change that. Lots of Americans used to work them. Now that they have a reputation for illegals many Americans think they’re too good to work them. But that’s still where most of the low-skilled jobs are. Do you have a better suggestion for unemployed workers with low skills– besides wealth redistribution? LOL
destructure
June 20, 2013 at 3:47 PM
Logically there should be a point where automation reaches diminishing returns for economic activity. If 100% of all jobs are done by robots and computers then there would be no economic productivity because humans would have no jobs to earn money.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 17, 2013 at 7:54 PM
Jobs will be created to service and manage the robots. Further, robots will initially be a privileged item, so only those who are wealthy will purchase them.
My hope is that robots will eliminate all the unncesssary waste with human labor and increase productivity, which means no more affirmative based menial jobs, and no more lawyers to draft unnecessary legal documents, ultimately decreasing law school enrollment and shutting down law schools. The same could be said of Finance, where robots would eliminate almost all overpaid non-value positions. As the dominos fall, the college industrial complex will too, resulting a less occupancy of the Ivory tower, and a complete shut down of many useless academic departments.
JS
June 17, 2013 at 9:01 PM
So what’s your vision, then? Ultimately we all own our own robots and “work ” at servicing them?
Samson
June 18, 2013 at 11:46 AM
Further, robots will initially be a privileged item, so only those who are wealthy will purchase them.
There are no wealthy in a 100% automated workforce because all jobs, even elite ones, are done by robots.
So what’s your vision, then? Ultimately we all own our own robots and “work ” at servicing them?
Assume the robots are maintained by other robots.
I don’t know what would happen under this scenario, but it’s a gnarly problem to consider because there is no economic activity unless humans get money in some way. Maybe we return to a barter system where we exchange goods by making things with our robot?
The Undiscovered Jew
June 18, 2013 at 8:37 PM
“So what’s your vision, then? Ultimately we all own our own robots and “work ” at servicing them?”
Mankind has made a leap forward by letting go of his petty desires. No need for status, unncessary material things and money. His life centers around hobbies, food and water to keep him alive. Just as the internet has made the younger kids today weaned off from useless toys that we all grew up with, robots could take us to the next level of human evolution.
If robots will replace human labor, we better be ready for it.
JS
June 18, 2013 at 11:33 PM
“There are no wealthy in a 100% automated workforce because all jobs, even elite ones, are done by robots”.
The robot makers and peddlers will get rich by initially selling them to the old money crowd. Remember the original PCs costing several thousands, today they are worth zilch. The price of PCs today are dirt cheap, which are a lot faster and graphic intensive.
JS
June 18, 2013 at 11:46 PM
Digital technologies tend to favor “superstars,” they point out. For example, someone who creates a computer program to automate tax preparation might earn millions or billions of dollars while eliminating the need for countless accountants.
You quote this like it’s a bad thing. If you program a computer that does the work of countless accountants, why shouldn’t you make more than all of them combined? I thought you would be happy that the computer geeks are finally getting rewarded commensurate with the value they produce.
smartandwise
June 17, 2013 at 7:57 PM
For one thing putting huge numbers of people out of work is a substantial negative externality which amounts to a market failure. Also, the development of that kind of software is the inevitable result of much broader technological advances that huge numbers of people are a part of but then the rewards go solely to a programmer who lucks into being the one writing the right piece of software at the right time.
reynald
June 17, 2013 at 8:48 PM
For one thing putting huge numbers of people out of work is a substantial negative externality which amounts to a market failure.
Not really. The innovative billionaire pays enough in taxes to pay for welfare for all the people his technology makes redundant so now those people have the luxury of not working and perhaps volunteering their accounting services for other less numerate co-welfare recipients who have trouble budgeting. And the companies who used to employ those people are way better off because they save money by using technology instead of people.
Also, the development of that kind of software is the inevitable result of much broader technological advances that huge numbers of people are a part of but then the rewards go solely to a programmer who lucks into being the one writing the right piece of software at the right time
A huge number of people advanced the technology, but if just one person thinks up a useful application, he deserves every penny he can get. If others resent his success, what’s to stop them from cutting into his profits with a better rival product. Such free market competitive entrepreneurial spirit has made America the most innovative country in the world and only inspires further technological progress.
smartandwise
June 18, 2013 at 12:13 AM
My point was just that the externalities exist. Some billionaires may pay enough in taxes to partially or totally offset the externalities, that’s debatable. A billionaire who has all his money in stock and who avoids taxes as much as human possible and leaves everything else to a non socially beneficial charity doesn’t offset much of anything. Also I think it’s incredibly out of touch and ignorant to say that being put out of work and going on welfare is a luxury.
All sectors of the economy, but the software industry especially, have barriers to entry in markets that make perfect competition impossible. I don’t know enough about the industry to say for sure what all the causes are but, for whatever reason, it seems clear that software tends towards equilibria with very limited competition and with the dominant players drawn from the small numbers of players there when a software sector began to rapidly expand. Some of the big causes specific to software are the fact that most people avoid having to learn new software, the presence of overly restrictive software patents, and the fact that de facto standards emerge and become entrenched in order to ensure compatibility (e.g. everyone ends up with Word because .doc because they want to be able to use their past files and be able to read and edit files sent by others). I’m sure Lion has insight into this area.
Assumign we even are the most innovative, nothing is that simple.
reynald
June 18, 2013 at 12:54 AM
Some of the big causes specific to software are the fact that most people avoid having to learn new software, the presence of overly restrictive software patents, and the fact that de facto standards emerge and become entrenched in order to ensure compatibility (e.g. everyone ends up with Word because .doc because they want to be able to use their past files and be able to read and edit files sent by others).
If people are too lazy or dumb to learn new software, then they deserve to lose the competition and the free market is working. As for de facto standards, can’t people create new software that can interact with existing software or is that prohibited by overly restrictive patent laws? If so, those laws are the problem, and libertarians might be justified in telling the government to back off and let the market work its magic. Ayn Rand claimed all monopolies are caused by government interference.
smartandwise
June 18, 2013 at 12:32 PM
In patents per head the US is behind Japan and S Korea.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:03 PM
The people too lazy to learn new software are the users. Which I can personally understand, especially the older I get.
And file formats like .doc are not open so they have to be reverse engineered, which is inherently hard to do and made more so when the company behind them doesn’t want people to and intentionally makes it difficult. Word and Excel file formats are probably the most prominent closed file formats out there and non microsoft products like open office still have issues reading and writing them because the reverse engineering they use is so imperfect.
And then compatibility problem also exists in other, even more intractable, forms such as on the OS level (e.g. people have all of this windows software that won’t work if they switch OSes) and for websites (e.g everyone is on facebook so switching to a new site means not being able to talk to the people you want). The facebook is an example of a site that was successful in getting large numbers of people off of other sites (mostly myspace) but it was hardly a frictionless process and definitely represented a barrier to entry.
As for software patents I do not know much about them but it seems like every person who writes software for a living thinks they need serious reform.
reynald
June 18, 2013 at 11:54 PM
This is not economically efficient. Since the prize is so large, armies of geeks devote too many resources trying to land-grab the entire tax preparation software market, and then trying to displace whoever wins.
Ian
June 17, 2013 at 9:08 PM
It’s extremely efficient because all the competition will create the most efficient tax preparation software possible and all the millions of hours all those bright accountants used to devote to people’s taxes can then be put to more productive causes. And all the extra money people spent hiring a human accountant can now be spent on more desirable pursuits.
smartandwise
June 18, 2013 at 12:19 AM
What will people do when the light bulb eliminates the need for whaling, candling, and street gas light lighting!?
-> Consume more energy. Create new jobs in electronics, maintenance of electrical girds (electricians), power plants, and oil extraction (to burn in power plants)
What will people do when cars eliminate the need for horse carriages, eliminating a whole host occupations related to horses!?
-> People and good now travel a lot more. This has created directly and indirectly a whole host of new occupations and contributed to economic growth.
AsianDude
June 17, 2013 at 8:20 PM
Yes, people that lose their jobs are now free to work in new industries, or just create new industries (like it happened many times in the past) Long term, this works out well, but short term people are not capable nor willing to learn new skills, in spite of community colleges and free online education. So, some people will be hurt, but long term is will just increase production and consumption which will increase the standard of living for everybody.
Zack
June 18, 2013 at 12:01 AM
This assumes that human intelligence is increasing in a linear 1 to 1 factor with technological complexity. If technological complexity outstrips innate human intelligence then indeed the unemployed worker won’t get a new job or create a new industry because he is incapable of doing so. Is it not possible to believe that the human mind was capable of retooling from candles to light bulbs, but won’t be able to retool from more recent and future changes?
More and more of the bell curve simply can’t keep up with their own society.
asdf
June 18, 2013 at 8:22 AM
Not exactly. There are some high IQ technophobes, but eventually the earth will be rules by clones of Elon Musk, and even LotB will be useless.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:05 PM
And, as I’ve pointed out before, CS majors are near the bottom in SAT scores, near education majors. It’s surprising but true. Engineering majors score much higher.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:06 PM
Also the loss of their job is only part of a larger technological change that benefits them in other ways.
reynald
June 18, 2013 at 12:55 AM
You’re ignoring human nature. Happiness isn’t determined by where one is absolutely, but where one is relative to where he wants (or needs) to be realtive to other men. There are miserable centi-millionaires and happy headhunters.
As Zizek said commenting on Rawls, Rawls ignores ressentiment.
And as been found in the few studies on the subject, the most “successful” are not just characterized by high IQ scores but also by an irrational fear of failure or not meeting their potential.
Ted K had an IQ higher than anyone on this blog and was a Cynic.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:11 PM
I think this article proves that our only salvation is mass importing of low skilled third world immigrants to do menial jobs.
Seriously, what happens in a decade or so when there’s a lot of tasks that are automated. Right now, in Germany, 6% of lawnmower sales are for automatic lawn mowers (i.e., robotic). They’ll get better and cheaper as time goes on, and in a decade, should be good for most applications. So how many people are going to get one of those instead of hiring a bunch of Mexicans to do their yard work? Sure, there’ll be other lawn work that’s harder to automate, but my guess is you’ll need many fewer manual yard workers. In Europe, the automatic machines will make bigger inroads than here at first, because we have cheaper labor, but eventually, there’ll be a tipping point that makes it worthwhile here. If automatic lawn mowers became $400 and were as good as some dude mowing his lawn, then the automatic lawn mowers will start to gain serious market share…
GMR
June 17, 2013 at 8:22 PM
The robot lawnmower still requires a human to empty it, take out the garbage bag… a lot of the work. In the future, I hope that there will be robots to do all of the tasks, with a Robot butler or foreman to oversee the other robots.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 17, 2013 at 8:30 PM
The automatic mowers don’t bag grass, but since they cut much more frequently, the grass clippings are smaller and decompose faster. I’ve got hills, fenced areas, rocks, and I still am skeptical that these mowers are useful for anything but flat square lawns. But they’re coming…
GMR
June 17, 2013 at 8:48 PM
Mmmm. Butler.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 17, 2013 at 9:18 PM
How about a holographic butler.
islandmommy
June 17, 2013 at 10:34 PM
How about a holographic butler.
Mmmm. Holographic.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 18, 2013 at 8:38 PM
People always “found” ways to participate in the economy? The owners of capital preferred that the populace work for wages in their factories and not be self-sufficient on (common, unenclosed) land, and caused laws to be enacted that made this come about. The invisible hand, with help from the State, became the invisible fist.
Anthony
June 17, 2013 at 9:02 PM
OT
Jay Cost just discovered the Cathedral.
Even more evidence the GOP smart fraction is coming over to HBD (Now that they have no other choice, hahahaha!):
Our Masters, the Bureaucrats
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/our-masters-bureaucrats_735245.html
But rotation in office soon became the corrupt “spoils system,” facilitating the graft and mismanagement that characterized the federal government during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Reformers of this period began calling for an educated, professional bureaucratic class free of political interference. After the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881 by a man rejected for a diplomatic post, the public outcry led Congress to respond with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, the first major stab at improvement.
More reforms would follow over the years, giving rise to the (supposedly) apolitical bureaucracy that we have today. Indeed, the professionalization and autonomy of the bureaucracy was a prerequisite for the modern liberal state, which claims moral legitimacy through the disinterested application of “scientific” principles of management. It wouldn’t have been possible if the percentage of political appointees had not been scaled drastically downwards between the Civil War and the Great Depression.
That is how America ultimately addressed the principal-agent problem of the bureaucracy: We would hire only qualified people, free them almost entirely from politics, and insist they employ this new “science” of administration.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 17, 2013 at 9:06 PM
When the mainstreamers integrate HBD and we are finally ensconsed within the smart fraction country club Republican set we are going to mop the floor with the *regressives.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 17, 2013 at 9:08 PM
So what other mainstream conservative pundits have we co-opted.
We definitely have Coulter and James Taranto in our clutches. There’s David Frum, Ross Douthat, and maybe some others.
We also need to sneak Richwine back into a mainstream GOP think tank or magazine soon.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 17, 2013 at 9:12 PM
We’ve now entered the territory of “dog bites man” Lion. As the other commenters have pointed out, the basic “man invents machine, machine does the job of 100 men, inventor prospers, replaced workers starve” storyline is nothing new.
Eventually the displaced workers will end up doing something else or if they end up idle and hopeless they’ll revolt and destabilize society in the absence of gov’t bread and circuses. Done and done.
Unfortunately, nobody is addressing the 800 pound gorilla in the room which is that all of these productivity gains are dependent upon cheap energy. Fossil fuels are a finite resource and robotic lawn mowers make a lot less sense when electricity costs $50 a kwh.
High Prole & Proud
June 17, 2013 at 9:38 PM
There’s enough uranium to make electricity for the next thousand years.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 17, 2013 at 10:15 PM
Although I will concede that the prospect of running out of uranium is less of an issue than running out of oil, (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last) nuclear power in its present form is hardly a panacea for our energy woes. Accidents at coal power plants kill a couple of workers; nuclear accidents have the potential to wipe out cities and contaminate vast swaths of land.
OUR NUCLEAR BEST BET: Let the US Navy run the world’s nuclear power plants. Their safety record is flawless.
High Prole & Proud
June 17, 2013 at 11:24 PM
The article explains that if we switch to breeder reactors, the current known uranium supply would lost for 30,000 years, and if we can extract uranium from seawater, then we are looking at millions of years.
There will always be electricity as long as there is advanced civilization.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 18, 2013 at 12:14 AM
Indeed it does Lion, based on current consumption trends.
My whole issue with nuclear power has more to do with safety concerns than anything else.
FYI, the French generate most of their power from nuclear sources. As a consequence, they use absurd amounts of electric home heating and have issues satisfying peak demand because nuclear power for peaking plants makes no sense at all from an economic standpoint.
High Prole & Proud
June 18, 2013 at 1:16 AM
Fussel points out that the high prole doesn’t suffer from status-anxiety and thinks of his supposed betters as ridiculous, because the high prole knows he earns what he makes based on his expertise and not on his ability to schmooze or fool.
There were participants in the TERMITES study who in adulthood retained their high IQ but worked as cops, pool cleaners, factory workers, and the correlation between father’s and son’s income has gone UP in the US since then, despite the apparent degeneration of the proles into fat, bewhiskered, tatooed retards. Why?
Silva and Tretheway of This Old House never attended college but inherited their Dads’ businesses. Are these high proles are petite bourgeoisie?
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:22 PM
The article explains that if we switch to breeder reactors, the current known uranium supply would lost for 30,000 years, and if we can extract uranium from seawater, then we are looking at millions of years.
Peak Oil has been debunked, salt has been proven safe to eat, low fat diets have been a disaster, florescent light bulbs contain toxic mercury, and Global Warming is growing more doubtful as the planet refuses to warm. And then, of course, there’s “human evolution doesn’t apply to the human brain”.
But remember, liberals are the most science literate.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 18, 2013 at 8:43 PM
Peak oil is real.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 18, 2013 at 11:16 PM
There’s plenty of oil, but at the right price. Oil wells never run dry they just become uneconomic.
Jan Smuts
June 19, 2013 at 5:43 PM
“that society has to figure out a means, other than free-market employement, for people can obtain the bounty produced by technology.”
Karl Marx found one for you: COMMUNISM (He defined as final stage of human society: you get what you want without working)
anonymous
June 17, 2013 at 9:40 PM
Hardly. Have you read Capital? Have you read The German Ideology? Have you understood them?
Marx’s problem wasn’t his philosophy. Understood correctly most free-market fundamentalists are also Marxists. Marx was a great CRITIC, but a bad PROPHET. But if “prophet” is defined as Soloveitchik defined it, he was a great prophet too, just not a great soothsayer.
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAD HIM!
Jan Smuts
June 19, 2013 at 5:49 PM
“For example, someone who creates a computer program to automate tax preparation might earn millions or billions of dollars while eliminating the need for countless accountants. ”
Actually TurboTax is a good example of value transference. It is simple software and the IRS would like to make its own version and give it away for free. It would reduce errors, increase compliance, and easily pay for itself. But the tax preparation companies like Intuit keep lobbying for little legislature riders that block the IRS from doing this.
In California you can do your state income taxes entirely online on the state tax website for free.
Zoink
June 17, 2013 at 10:09 PM
Knowing what I know about software, it’s probably for the best that there are two companies, H&R Block and Turbo Tax, competing against each other. Once there’s a monopoly, the software would turn to crap.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 17, 2013 at 10:17 PM
In other countries the government is able to prefill in the forms with information that only they have access to.
reynald
June 18, 2013 at 12:57 AM
The US is exceptional. It is, given its natural resources, ridiculously shitty. As Chomsky has noted the US should be at least 10x as rich as it is.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:26 PM
In Japan, the average worker has no concept of “doing one’s taxes”. It’s so straightforward that your employer does it for you and any over- or under-payment is rectified with the last paycheck of the tax year. Dividends and savings account interest are deducted by the broker or bank before you ever see it. For the average middle-class person, it’s amazingly hassle-free. And the tax rates are lower!
Kyo
June 18, 2013 at 10:27 AM
Income taxes for wage earners can and should be vastly simplified. The current system is definitely unfair to the poor and stupid; making them pay $100 to some bozo at H&R block is cruel when they have so little money in the first place.
However, this won’t do much to simplify business taxes which are a whole different animal.
Note: I use H&R Block home software for $40 to do my taxes. But I don’t know if someone with an IQ of 95 or below would be able to use it. And $40 is still a lot of money for a minimum wage employee.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 18, 2013 at 10:46 AM
Indeed. When I was filing one of my first tax returns I had lots of cap gains and poker winnings to report. Very complicated. I figured it was worth it to pay the H&R block person to do it. Walked in, got a black lady, she wasted 2 hours of my time and accomplished nothing before I went home and plowed through doing it myself.
asdf
June 18, 2013 at 4:43 PM
I’ve been doing my own state & federal income tax returns by hand since I was fourteen. Last year it took me about one hour to complete the 1040 and a bunch of schedules, proof it, make copies, and write a check to the US Treasury for three grand. I’ve never used tax prep software, but I hear it’s amazingly quick, easy, and error-proof.
E. Rekshun
June 18, 2013 at 6:56 PM
I did it by hand until I moved to NY… the NY State return is even more complicated than the federal return, so that’s when I switched to software and I haven’t looked back.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 18, 2013 at 11:13 PM
“I’ve been doing my own state & federal income tax returns by hand since I was fourteen. Last year it took me about one hour to complete the 1040 and a bunch of schedules, proof it, make copies, and write a check to the US Treasury for three grand. I’ve never used tax prep software, but I hear it’s amazingly quick, easy, and error-proof.”
taxes can quickly become complicated once you have disposable income and investments. If you’re in a partnership, filing K1’s is no fun. Plus, you have to file taxes every quarter. For most people taxes are easy, because the company does it automatically for wages (so that they don’t have to do it quarterly).
Zack
June 18, 2013 at 11:30 PM
@asdf It is amazing how Atlanta has the highest living standards in the country as measured by median household income vs median price of a single family home despite it’s large black population.
My experience with blacks is they’re all a net drag with that one exception of the light skinned black guy who beat me on the Wonderlich He had been a Navy Seal and his degree was in mech eng. First he was the co’s webmwaster. Now he leads govt sales. An Obama.
Jan Smuts
June 19, 2013 at 5:54 PM
Intuit, the company that owns TurboTax, also sells tax accounting software for accountants. Not everyone is comfortable preparing their own taxes.
JS
June 18, 2013 at 10:38 AM
The federal government has a program that lets households with $58K households is the gift to H&R, Jackson-Hewitt, turboTax etc.
aki (@DSGNTD_PLYR)
June 18, 2013 at 1:19 PM
Is it possible that instead of being replaced by robots we will become cyborgs ourselves?
islandmommy
June 17, 2013 at 10:31 PM
Not Robots. Simulations. We will live on as computer programs ourselves, our consciousness running on some server somewhere.
According to Lion, a nuclear fission powered server, preferably a breeder reactor. 😉
Buzzcut
June 18, 2013 at 1:06 PM
Obviously there will eventually be some sort of brain silicon mind meld. This prospect for immortality is has never been touched on by LotB, because for him status is salvation.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:28 PM
From a long term perspective the automation argument is wrong. Here’s how it goes: automation replaces jobs, say Apple will create iPhones with fewer people and more computers, people would be jobless, and now afford Apple’s products, then Apple produces only for the rich few. Ofc, if we get into this state, there is room for Android to hire people and make cheap products. Or, alternatively Apple will decrease the prices to see to poor people too. In both cases, the economic production and consumption goes up, and there’s only 1 thing that’s relevant to the standard of living and that is economic consumption.
People forget that money is just a promise between people, and if you have more poor people automatically you have deflation. In other words, money is relative: it doesn’t matter how much you have, but rather how much you have in relation to others. If there’s a lot of poor people, and there’s production then automatically the prices go down for the people to buy the products.
Deflation won’t happen, because it makes people sit on the money, and the Fed will counter it at any cost. They will print money and redistribute it into the economy — here, poor people are at the advantage, since they are the beneficiaries of entitlements.
From a short term perspective, things are bleak, and this is because most people aren’t capable and aren’t willing to retrain or learn others skills. Note that we do offer this retraining: lots of community colleges, and now free online education. Here I agree, that a lot of people will be hurt and this hurt will last the rest of their life.
Zack
June 17, 2013 at 11:49 PM
People don’t learn any valuable skills in a community college.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 18, 2013 at 12:15 AM
I don’t know about that.
What’s wrong with doing two years in a CC then transferring into some sort of 4-year program? Plenty of people (nurses, engineers, scientists, accountants, etc.) do it this way. If you’re too unlucky or not smart enough to get into a prestigious school (one worth actually paying for), then this might be a good way to save some money while studying a “vocational” subject.
Renault
June 18, 2013 at 12:39 AM
You can get credentialed in a community college, like lower level medical jobs, so it’s still probably beneficial for some people to go. Heck, it’d be better if more people went for lower-level clerical job paths than going to some stupid college and running up debt in the mid five figures.
GMR
June 18, 2013 at 12:39 AM
The comments bring up a very subtle point. There are always ways, so to speak, which are possible, theoretically, but impossible socially. Given my background and SAT scores, etc. I’d avoid a CC even if it meant seriously diminished prospects. Some things are “socially” impossible.
BUT, LotB is wrong. Machinists are qualified by two years at a CC. In the US today machinists are gross, but what they do is the foundation of the industrial world.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:32 PM
Dental Hygienists, RNs, Electronic Technicians, need only a 2-year degree to quickly make over $30 per hour.
A relative of mine did an AS in Computer Science then transferred to a 4-year college for his BS. He’s now become a millionaire in his late 40s merely by working as a programmer for large defense contractors.
E. Rekshun
June 18, 2013 at 7:03 PM
Cops and firewhiners get their easy-bake 2-year criminal justice and fire science degrees (taught by other cops and firewhiners, so everyone is a summa cum laude grad w/o much work), then quickly earn over $100K per year and retire at 50. Then go get a second job at some other government agency and earn a second pension.
E. Rekshun
June 18, 2013 at 7:08 PM
Both jobs require you to spend all day with proles.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 18, 2013 at 11:14 PM
Many prole jobs will require college degrees.
High proles are perhaps the most balanced and pragmatic people around. They’re educated, productive, and don’t need status to feed their egos. Low – middle proles and Bobos seem to be more enamored with status, the first group is about gaudy and the other is of condescension.
JS
June 19, 2013 at 12:11 AM
There is a glut of employees in every profession except for doctors. Tons of unemployed engineers out there.
chris p.
June 18, 2013 at 8:19 PM
Electrical and mechanical eng jobs are projected to grow at 2% or so and chemical is projected to shrink IIRC from the BLS. Civil was projected to grow by> 20% before the collapse. Now the structural people need a masters for entry, or so I’ve read.
CS degrees are and will be hot, but CS people are dumb relative to engineers in my experience and from what I’ve read. Half of them go to work for Walmart, Citibank, etc. rather than software cos.
Jan Smuts
June 19, 2013 at 6:04 PM
Dear Lion:
I agree with the tonality of your post.
However, the particular example of people who help preparing tax returns is not the best one.
The very need in such people is the consequence of absolutely artificial tax code,
People with somewhat higher IQ exploit it (and support its existence) exactly to earn their living,
instead of doing something productive.
Your F.r.
Florida resident
June 18, 2013 at 6:28 AM
Perhaps in the future, we will have software that will generate contracts and other legal documents, ultimately replacing lawyers.
JS
June 18, 2013 at 11:02 AM
Absolutumundo, artificially un-ecomomic laws and regs disguise the real level of unemployment. Lawyering and tax advice is un-productive.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:35 PM
How about this idea? A market-based guaranteed employment?
http://www.morganwarstler.com/post/44789487956/guaranteed-income-choose-your-boss-the-market-based
Vypuero
June 18, 2013 at 8:35 AM
That assumes that everyone has some postive value to an employer; as an employer I could imagine many people who just aren’t worth the effort to have around, and who i’d actully pay to not have to hire.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 18, 2013 at 10:41 AM
And this is accounted to these people as an absolute vice by employers, but the employer-employee relationship is new in human history and has no counterpart in the natural world. In the ancient world the employer and employee were called master and slave. The more things change the more they stay the same.
The only solution which agrees with human nature and still has the benefits of the large organization is that everyone be a slave (proletarian) and that the antagonisms from biological differences be forcibly erased via eugenics.
The IN-evitable consequence of serious eugenics is socialism.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:41 PM
Job interview for the one eyed-man:
Employer: “I can’t risk employing a man with only one good eye. Thank you very much.”
Social service: “You won’t get money. You’ve one good eye, so you can work.”
Solution: guaranteed minimum income. This is financed by offering euthanasia to people who cost society more than the gmi, like the severely crippled. They(or their legal guardians) of course have the option of starving to death, we don’t want a bureaucracy deciding over life and death.
oogenhand
June 18, 2013 at 9:34 AM
Ahh you can’t euthanize people. No one will ever support that unless they are in severe pain. Here’s what you need to spread around instead. Voluntary lifetime welfare for sterilization. The people who can’t cut it will select themselves, you will reduce the birth rate of the less able by a considerable amount and within a few generations the problem will be mostly solved or at the least much more manageable. Even this would be very hard to promote to most of the public.
XVO
June 18, 2013 at 11:59 AM
We Dutch have very different taboos. In the thirties of the twentieth century, the Netherlands were one of the few countries in the West WITHOUT sterilization laws. But in the nineties of the twentieth century, the Netherlands openly discussed euthanasia. Also, who is going to care for all these sterilzed people when they are old?
oogenhand
June 19, 2013 at 3:44 AM
Oogenhand, this is just about exactly what happens for such people, except that the employer’s line is more like “We’re moving our headquarters to an office park accessible only by car. Since you can’t see well enough to drive, you have no way of getting there, so you have to quit.”
If I may extol another virtue of Japan’s tax system, it’s that there’s a small tax credit for these people. It’s only Y270,000, so if you’re in the 10% bracket you save about $270, but it’s a fine gesture compared to what happens in America. In American the guaranteed minimum income would solve all kinds of problems for people with disabilities that affect their ability to get hired and get to work more than their ability to actually do their work.
Kyo
June 18, 2013 at 2:11 PM
“society” isn’t God. If you wouldn’t support these people let them support themselves. But even if they could have supported themselves as basket weavers for the tribe there is no tribe for them to join. Escaping society is impossible. Even Schneebaum couldn’t. Society is a prison which no one born into it deserves.
Nicolai Yezhov
June 18, 2013 at 6:45 PM
Oogenhand, I really hope you are simply showing extremely bad taste facetiousness.
That is exactly what Adolf Hitler did in Nazi Germany.
Michael
June 18, 2013 at 8:35 PM
“Adolf Hitler!” (=Godwin) is also used against immigration restriction and sterilization.
oogenhand
June 19, 2013 at 3:41 AM
Over the past four years, my company offered two early retirement buy-outs — really just cash bribes to go away and never come back. Some of us called it the company’s “Cash for Clunkers” plan. Several dozen non-productive, mostly older workers took advantage of the offer. It greatly trimmed payroll and health care expense, and opened up many handicap parking spots in the company parking lot.
E. Rekshun
June 19, 2013 at 4:44 AM
It is really hard to fire people…from a personal pov. One of the good reasons for managerial pay is the hard job of firing.
Jan Smuts
June 19, 2013 at 6:08 PM
More people are realizing tech is reducing human employment faster than it’s creating employment for humans.
The Atlantic: “Will the Robots Steal Your Paycheck? BREAKING: They Already Have …
A new study finds that labor’s share of the world’s income is plunging, and suggests the technology boom is to blame.” http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/will-the-robots-steal-your-paycheck-breaking-they-already-have/276935/
Megan McArdle: “What do we do with people whose livelihoods are destroyed?” http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/14/when-work-disappears.html
Paul Krugman: “Sympathy for the Luddites” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
aki (@DSGNTD_PLYR)
June 18, 2013 at 12:52 PM
You always need a frontier as a relief valve for the surplus labor. At one time, the frontier was… the frontier. Then it was factories and cities. Then, after WWII, it was the development of suburbs. Perhaps, for a time, it was digital technology.
But with Moore’s Law ending in 2005, what is the next frontier?
Buzzcut
June 18, 2013 at 1:09 PM
The 800 pound gorilla no one wants to talk about is what to do with these superfluous people who simply can’t cut it in the new economy, and I am afraid it will probably end up like what we are seeing in Egypt and Syria now. In these countries, the people are just emerging out from subsistence farming, with very few skills to survive in the modern world. It is simply impossible to provide jobs to all of these people who have no skills whatsoever.
Colmainen
June 18, 2013 at 7:06 PM
“The 800 pound gorilla no one wants to talk about is what to do with these superfluous people who simply can’t cut it in the new economy, and I am afraid it will probably end up like what we are seeing in Egypt and Syria now. In these countries, the people are just emerging out from subsistence farming, with very few skills to survive in the modern world. It is simply impossible to provide jobs to all of these people who have no skills whatsoever.”
The difference between Egypt, Syria and US is that in US people do have opportunities. They do get education, and even if most schools are not good, a smart motivated kid can pull himself out since the all schools have resources. (it just may not be cool) Most kids from Egypt and Syria would give anything to have been born in US.
Zack
June 18, 2013 at 11:34 PM
That’s the equivalent of rank and yank, like Microsoft did. It’s a 20-person race where you kill the last 5 because they’re crippled and the community can’t support then whether they’re old and weak or simply the slowest among an entire group of elite runners. The fact that some people can win is not a commentary on how just a system is when a certain number of losers are built-in.
cannibal
June 19, 2013 at 10:04 AM
Zack, I’m sure you’re a very smart man, but unemployment of Middle Eastern college grads is MUCH higher than that of the same in the US or Europe.
Jan Smuts
June 19, 2013 at 6:15 PM
“Zack, I’m sure you’re a very smart man, but unemployment of Middle Eastern college grads is MUCH higher than that of the same in the US or Europe”
Opportunity starts with college, but it doesn’t end there. You need a working set of laws, a working government both at the country level and local, access to capital and free markets. My impression is that there is no access to capital and the markets are gated. Also, government is corrupt at takes sides based on religion and nepotism.
Zack
June 19, 2013 at 11:01 PM
I agree. Many other jobs will be created, but most will be too stupid to be able to do those new tech jobs.
bobo
June 19, 2013 at 9:54 AM
The fraction which is incapable intellectually of participating (from birth) is MUCH smaller than the fraction which is incapable of participating.
Mass media destructive. The Harvard lawyer POTUS even referenced this in one of his State of the Unions.
The fraction of the population which is biologically capable of doing technical work above subsistence ag would be 10x what it is if the “culture” made engineering, CS, and natsci cool.
Jan Smuts
June 19, 2013 at 6:13 PM
Whenever people talk about technology paving the way for new industries they conveniently forget about the less pleasant reasons employment remained constant; wars, famine, disease, etc which otherwise eradicated tens of millions ensuring that labor would always remain in demand.
Conquistador
June 18, 2013 at 8:09 PM
The story is a common one. Technology exacerbates inequality.
I remember taking a women’s studies class. Yep, one of those. We read something about Native Americans trading for horses. With the new horses, excellent hunters were able to kill way more animals, which meant they were able to support more women (who could fashion the animal remainders into other goods). I think I drew the wrong lesson from the text: male inequality —–> polygamy.
Vince, the Lionhearted
June 19, 2013 at 4:52 AM
Senate Bill S. 744, the illegal immigration amnesty bill, will destroy millions of middle-class American tech jobs. Please watch and share as much as possible:
http://goanimate.com/user/0-VFCDPgmUWU
Thanks!
Anonymouse
June 20, 2013 at 12:56 AM