From Lee Travis of Defiant Thinking
We all know that automation takes jobs. Historically, this has produced more new jobs than were made obsolete; however, going forward, that may no longer be the case. Oxford University (2013) predicts that in the US, 47% of jobs are at risk due to computerization, and it’s hard to imagine that we’ll find productive employment for those displaced adults in that time.
The National Academies of Science says that “The education system will need to adapt to prepare individuals for the changing labor market.” But that’s either disingenuous or shallow-minded. The reality, as Dr. Jordan Peterson points out in the video below, is that automation is eating the job market from the bottom up, taking jobs that require the lowest IQs:
If someone with a lower IQ loses their job to automation, there’s not enough education or job retraining in the world to make them capable of a higher-IQ job – it’s a matter of intellectual capacity, not knowledge. I’m not saying they couldn’t eventually learn the skills, but rather that they wouldn’t be able to compete with people who have the same skills and a higher IQ. If you’ve got someone intellectually suited to be a warehouse worker, you may be able to train him to code (eventually), but there’s no way he could hold his own against others more intellectually capable of working in the field. You’re setting him up to fail, and ultimately wasting everyone’s time and money in the process.
As Dr. Peterson notes, the way this has played out so far is with an epic wave of opioid addiction, both legal and illegal, among those who have been displaced. Hopefully people will figure out better options as automation continues to consume more and more jobs.
I hope we’re going to need more male prostitutes.
Once younger folks realize they have no future, it is drugs and death. Mr. Travis is correct, IMO.
So, what is the point of bringing in 70 IQ Musloids that will not assimilate nor will they typically find jobs in the American community. If the lower level jobs are being roboticized, what is the point?
Kokoda – average is actually 81 I believe. Eliminate African Muslims and it goes up some.
They will vote for free shit democraps right before they behead them.
What a crock!
Automation is all about productivity gains at the lowest cost while meeting all “quality” requirements. If you can automate a system to produce a product/service, intelligence, skills, work experience, and IQ are irrelevant except to program/design/build the machines. Any dolt can press the start and stop button once the system is installed and operational.
Regarding the drugs, automation is not the cause of that! People can find work in other fields or they can get on the Obama plan.. they can just collect a check and watch Oprah.. or get a government job and watch facebook/porn all day. None of that involves drug use.
The cultural and moral collapse of the society is what is causing the inexorable rise in drug use. Only a fool would attribute that to automation.
You know ((who)) is responsible for flooding the world with drugs and degenerating the society.
Oh please. What satisfaction?! Pushing “GO”. It’s not a question of values here. It’s what the heck are folks with low I.Q gonna do? I’m talkin’ about REAL jobs. THAT’S what he’s talking about.
Unfortunately, no one is asking the question of WHY automation is replacing humans at such a frantic rate. might it have something to do with the expense and risk of hiring a human these days? I used to own many businesses, and I would actually prefer to hire a human, especially in customer service. But, there are big problems with that now, that are pushing the average business to look at more automation.
Government – let me emphasize this again – Government. They make it so damn expensive to hire anyone, and inject so much risk in to hiring anyone, that they alone could be blamed for this change. If I want to hire someone, I must also hire a ‘health administrator’ an ‘HR manager’ a tax accountant, and payroll company, also, I have to make sure I have expensive workers comp insurance (even if they aren’t anywhere NEAR a hazardous site or construction area). And, of course if I don’t hire the black dude, with the sagging pants and bad grammar, I have to worry about being called a ‘racist’ and that I am discriminating against this yute. Well, I see no reason why I can’t discriminate against this upstanding citizen that can’t even pull his damn pants up and speak English. What would ever make me think HE couldn’t do the job? And don’t even get me started on this 15.00 / hr minimum wage crap. If I could actually PAY my worker what he is entitled to, instead of having to hire all of the above ‘specialists’ to keep me out of court for simply operating, I could pay a person more. And, 15.00 / hr would not even be necessary if inflation (read Fed money printing) didn’t make my employees money worthless, and force me to keep increasing prices, squeezing my customer.
See, automation is a result of a NEED being filled by the marketplace. If the Government wants to slow down the creep of automation, GET THE HELL OUT OF THE EMPLOYMENT ARENA, and STOP debasing money. I am not talking slave labor, or sweatshops here, I am just talking about making it economically viable to hire a human being again by cutting out all of the middle men and government parasites. There are plenty of qualified people out there, that would love a good steady job. And, there are plenty of employers who would love to have a competent, reliable employee instead of a robot, for many reasons, but government, like in most other cases has made it so difficult and risky, you can’t take the chance as a business owner.
Great comment Anon!
Did not the unions demand $15 dollars an hour minimum wage?
What does a rational businessman do? Evaluate the cost of humans vs machines to provide the equivalent service at lower costs.
Now there are kiosks at fast food places.
What is the purpose of “REAL jobs”?
Does not someone get a job to produce something or deliver some service? If the employer feels a machine can do something better than a human, he will employ the machine.
The current situation is the result of excessive government regulatory burdens and a litigious culture.
If there were less government burdens, there might be a rejuvenation of the entrepreneurial spirit in America which would lead to more jobs.
If you want to blame somebody, blame the rational business owners trying to maximize profits while minimizing costs (overhead, benefits, poor work performance, litigation expenses, etc) and the government for the current mess.
((WHO)) runs the government?
This is one of the many ‘matches’ that will light the fuse for WW IV (or III, if you prefer) and the release of select ethno bio weapons. TPTB will make the decision to ‘pull’ the plug and head for their bug out hideaways till it is over. Sad.
Even if anyone automation eliminates most jobs and the gubmint starts handing out subsistence-level guaranteed income, there’d still be simple work that a person could do. I’d start with picking up trash. I’ve done some of that at exit ramps just because it disgusts me so fucking much.
I agree with Iska. The low skilled/able will have to be made to do menial work for their slice of bread. No other way I can see.
If there were any liberal voters with IQs over 83 that weren’t stoned, they’d vote to deny anyone with more than one illegal kid any more welfare. With over half of Americans getting some Welfare, we are in a death spiral.
What a load of horseshit, pardon my French.
We are at the terminal edge of our ability to develop cost neutral automation- think Peak Oil scenarios.
A robot laborer that mines coal/lays brick/harvests apples as effectively as a human being is going to cost more than a human being to manufacture, maintain and replace over the course of it’s lifetime. The biggest difference is that the machine won’t give a damn about any of those tasks, cannot possibly understand the multitude of variables involved in Natural processes and will never have a stake in the future. Not to mention the fact that as you move towards sidelining human beings as players in the workforce, you add exponential cost to human labor required to design, program, maintain and repair these investments.
Generally these days if you hear it in a the mainstream it is fiction.
“A robot laborer that mines coal/lays brick/harvests apples as effectively as a human being is going to cost more than a human being to manufacture”
Just like all the robot welders on auto assembly lines eh? They tried them back in the 80’s and said fuck it, let’s go back to humans that need sleep, vacation time, lunch breaks, pensions, worker’s comp premiums, etc..
You are probably old enough to remember when elevators had attendants, and are certainly old enough to remember when you needed an operator to make a long distance call, so if anyone should understand the threat to the labour/capital balance its you.
For the march of automation to slow, we will need a major crash like an EMP scenario.
If you don’t see the difference between a machine bolted to a floor in a climate controlled factory and a robot that must move to work sites out of doors in different types of weather, on different kinds of ground and dealing with natural systems as opposed to rigidly controlled assembly lines of identical widgets, then I wouldn’t expect you to be able to understand my position. Let me know what you think it would cost to design a machine that can navigate the boulder strewn mountain sides in three foot of snow (or no snow depending on the year) and know where to tap each maple so as not to harm the tree and attend to the multitude of tasks and skills that are required before the first pint is produced. You’d probably need at least four types as opposed to one human at a cost that would be economically unfeasible if it were even possible.
Of course we all know that answer to that question. Get used to Aunt Jemima made using chemical flavorings and HFCS in a factory for a fraction of the price.
Listen, of course there are automated processes that absolutely beat the kinds of things humans do and do it better (they should have replaced public school teachers a long, long time ago) but there are other kinds of occupations and skill sets that simply cannot be shucked off onto robotic shoulders.
HSF – you are massively underestimating the potential of automation. Massively. One of my kids is at the cutting edge of this stuff. What I am told is that what is coming seems like science fiction, but it is not. Imagine the variables that go into making a self-driving car. That is currently a reality. Tapping a maple tree? Child’s play eventually, if someone takes a mind to do it. Once the AI systems are significantly developed, the time and cost it will take to develop automation to tap maple trees, weed gardens, etc., will be so low as to make any human labor jobs potentially obsolete.
Sixty years ago no one would have thought that it would be possible to produce widgets with 1/5 the labor that was required then. But it happened. And the ability to replace human labor is rapidly accelerating. Discount this at peril.
HSF – with all due respect, you do not know what you are talking about. You said “A robot laborer that mines coal/lays brick/harvests apples as effectively as a human being is going to cost more than a human being to manufacture, maintain and replace over the course of it’s lifetime.”
That is simply incorrect. There is very significant automation available that has payback of one or two years. Beyond that it is all gross profit. Additionally, the quality achieved by robots/automation generally far exceeds what can be achieved by a human.
I would not question your knowledge and experience re farming. But on this issue you are out of your field of expertise. Indeed,this is my field of expertise. If you were correct, manufacturing would not have dropped from employing half the population to employing 10% of the population. While achieving enormous gains in quality. Automation and tech gains is why that has been possible.
You are truly incorrect re the costs and viability of automation, be it robots or other systems. You also do not understand the costs and risks associated with human employees. Employees by and large take no stake/responsibility for their actions. automation, on the other hand will not pollute or get hung-over and make bad product, or throw a monkey wrench into the gears because it gets passed over for promotion.
No one in their right minds would hire employees if there is any other cost effective option.
Greetings,
I see the next wave of automation replacing managers, doctors & lawyers. A manager tells everyone what to do based on the mission of the organization which is something that a narrow A.I. would do much better. Machines are already better at medical work with narrow A.I. doing a superior job at reading xrays or keeping track of all the possible outcomes involved in mixing medications. Lawyers are the lowest hanging fruit and I see them being replaced by an App within the next 5 years. Those guys are gonna be all but gone.
It is expensive to make a machine that can pick fruit or stock shelves but it is really cheap to, say, replace all the managers at Trader Joe’s with a program like Watson.
Preach NickelthroweR!
“Expert” systems are being developed to replace doctors, lawyers, and managers already.
With the significant improvements in telemedicine and ERP/Product/Project management software, the compounded effect will be felt on the economy within the next 10 years.
I just finished Robert Heinlein’s first novel “For Us, The Living.” He was never able to get it published in his lifetime, because it is filled with thinly disguised essays on economic, political and social themes. Heinlein apparently learned his lesson about the marketability of lectures, and expanded greatly on the themes he raised in his first novel through the wondrous stories he created throughout his prolific writing career. He has a lot to say, and humanity would be better off if we paid more attention to his ideas. At some point, I would like to expound on this…