How do we structure society for reduced employment?
- Thread starter Angilion
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Its all going to end badly I fear. People will always resent those that are not the same as themselves and with an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor it will only deteriorate. The rich will not want to pay for the poor and the poor will complain that they are hard done by and getting screwed.
You can see how we have made a complete mess of society in the last 20 years in this country so I doubt that we will do much better in the next 20. All the areas we are advancing in socially are not advancements at all, they are pseudo advancements that ultimately will bring more problems.
Everyone is told that they should have an opinion on everything and the "average person" is held up as some sort of marker for society when the reality is that they shouldn't be responsible for anything. We are moving away from the idea that we should defer to the brightest and best and are moving towards a society where mediocrity and averageness is encouraged because we wouldn't want anyone to feel inferior.
We have stopped problem solving in favour of whinging due to the safety net society has in place and its quite obvious to see that the country is not ready for the coming decades employment wise. Everyone thinks they should have a job when they are poorly educated and lack pretty much any useful skill. As time passes, there will be less menial work and more skilled work because that is how first world economies generate money.
I am quite glad that I won't be around in 100 years to see what has become of the world. The more I think about it, the less optimistic I am.
You can see how we have made a complete mess of society in the last 20 years in this country so I doubt that we will do much better in the next 20. All the areas we are advancing in socially are not advancements at all, they are pseudo advancements that ultimately will bring more problems.
Everyone is told that they should have an opinion on everything and the "average person" is held up as some sort of marker for society when the reality is that they shouldn't be responsible for anything. We are moving away from the idea that we should defer to the brightest and best and are moving towards a society where mediocrity and averageness is encouraged because we wouldn't want anyone to feel inferior.
We have stopped problem solving in favour of whinging due to the safety net society has in place and its quite obvious to see that the country is not ready for the coming decades employment wise. Everyone thinks they should have a job when they are poorly educated and lack pretty much any useful skill. As time passes, there will be less menial work and more skilled work because that is how first world economies generate money.
I am quite glad that I won't be around in 100 years to see what has become of the world. The more I think about it, the less optimistic I am.
Combine this with a substantial decrease in living costs and it might work.
Soldato
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Well for starters i would question the importance of the five day week.
Soldato
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This reminds me of watching Tomorrow's World in the early 90s, apparently by now all housework was supposed to be eliminated by robot butlers.
You visions of staff-less shops and rubbish lorries than can drive themselves (and somehow locate and safely transport the bin and back from itself) are less an accurate picture of future and more wishful thinking.
Firstly, the use of robots can only be taken so far you'll always need some staff to maintain the robots. You also need people to build them in the first place so robots not only create jobs they don't eliminate all of the ones they replace either. And it would take a very long time of virtually no social change or invention for this to ever eliminate "most" of the jobs that currently exist.
But ultimately you make the flaw of thinking a business is only interested in replacing it's staff with machines out of some ideological mission, they don't they do whatever's cheapest. Just because you could, in theory, invent a shop that required no human intervention in it's running you wouldn't if it going to costs 10 times more than running a normal shop with staff.
Why for example hasn't my local corner shop owner just installed Tesco-styled self-service checkout and gone on holiday? Why does he still stand there all day when we have machines that could easily do it? Because he is cheaper than the machine.
The point is, it basically comes down to cost and human labour will always be cheaper in the short term than cutting edge technology and in the time it takes for that tech to become available to all, then we've had the time to change our industries and create new types of jobs.
But people arent cheaper. Once you've paid for the machine apart from electricity and occasional repairwork theirs no continual wage drain.
If the investment in the machine can be paid back in one or two years then most business would go for it. And any that dont would be at a disadvantage. Human labor will not always be cheaper. It may be cheaper over there in China but that wont even be maintained for ever.
Why do supermarkets have self service tills? Because you can have one person managing six tills.
We'll always require people do jobs but they are getting fewer, and all the while the population is getting larger.
I wouldnt be surprised if the current climate didnt accelerate these issues. Companies have money lots of money sitting their doing nothing. Instead of watching it slowly drain away into wages, they may start investing it into machines to try and maintain profits.
Their wont be many jobs for building robots, most of that will be done by robots. We dont have the time to develop new industries or to train people, its happening now.
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That was obviously an overly optimistic utopian vision of the future. People aren't suggesting that in this thread. It's more realistic.
Less staff rather than staff-less. People aren't talking about a total lack of jobs, so saying that's unrealistic is a strawman argument.
For example, in my workplace (a bingo club) staffing levels have been cut by about a third in the last 10 years as more is automated, and that's a retail/service workplace. Manufacturing has gone much further. Machines aren't as versatile as people, but they're a lot better at doing the same thing repeatedly.
With current technology, my workplace could be run with as few as 2 employees working at any given time - one for security and one for dealing with any issues customers might have. We have about 15 working at any given time solely because that's more profitable at the moment and that's due to social norms - people are used to using cash for bingo directly and customers expect to be served by people. There are no technological barriers to be overcome - a bingo club could be mostly automated self-service tomorrow. All you'd need is some machines that customers could use to either add cash to their account or take cash out of it. They could use their membership cards and a PIN to do so, same as using an ATM. It's partially done already - many customers play that way with tablets they rent from the club. They hand us cash and we hand them a tablet PC loaded with the books they've bought, but that's only because of the social norm of people expecting to be served by a person. They could just as easily press a screen to choose which package of bingo books they want, use their membership card to pay from their account and pull a tablet from the rack themselves. Fruit machines likewise - the modern ones pay a printed slip for the cashing out machine and have card readers ready for going completely cashless.
Or, of course, you could do away with bingo clubs entirely and have bingo websites instead. Sure, that still requires some employees, but you can serve x000 customers on a website with far fewer employers than would be required to serve the same number of customers in clubs. That's already happening - far fewer people go to bingo clubs nowadays but online bingo is increasingly popular.
But far, far fewer people than were required to do the work that is being done by the robots. Less staff, not staff-less.
Robots can be built by robots. Manufacturing is very well suited to automation, since it's the same task done repeatedly. So only a very few jobs are created and they will be skilled jobs. Also, please stop talking about all jobs being eliminated. You've beaten that strawman to bist already.
Pretty much the opposite - it would take considerable social change. Which is happening - many people are shopping for many things online and self-service is becoming increasingly normal. When was the last time you went to a bank employee to take a small amount of cash from your account, rather than using an ATM? Can you even do that any more?
Which, of course, it won't. Machines don't get paid wages and aren't entitled to holidays and don't get sick pay and don't take maternity leave and can't sue if they're damaged by negligence...etc. Also, many businesses do have some degree of an ideological mission to reduce the wages bill. But that's a side point - it is mainly about whatever's cheapest. For low-skill work, that's a machine in an ever-increasing number of circumstances. As machines become more advanced at a cheaper price, replacement of people rises up the skill level.
How many people does he employ in comparison with Tesco? Less staff, not staff-less. He's cheaper than the machine when he has to be there anyway. There has to be someone there for security at least - a self-service checkout wouldn't stop people stealing from a completely unattended shop.
What new types of jobs? Unskilled and low-skilled ones, remember. We're talking about mass employment, not employment for the minority of people able to do highly skilled jobs. The issue is less people being employed, not everyone being unemployed.
Also, it is already true that for many areas of work machines are cheaper than people. Your point is simply wrong.
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I don't see how a (future) fully automated society can function, if the majority are unemployed.
Someone has to pay for the machines to run and for their maintenance.
The general populace being unemployed can't pay it. The government, collecting no taxes, can't pay it. The people who end up controlling the money/resources could pay for it, but there would be no return on investment. They aren't going to run their operations for free.
Machines involved with producing new items are always going to be loss making. Nobody can pay for the items produced.
A fully automated future is totally incompatible with our current capitalistic society, isn't it??
Someone has to pay for the machines to run and for their maintenance.
The general populace being unemployed can't pay it. The government, collecting no taxes, can't pay it. The people who end up controlling the money/resources could pay for it, but there would be no return on investment. They aren't going to run their operations for free.
Machines involved with producing new items are always going to be loss making. Nobody can pay for the items produced.
A fully automated future is totally incompatible with our current capitalistic society, isn't it??
Soldato
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That would be the idea behind this thread, yes.
Then why is it I've seen so many stores have power cuts, telling the customers to leave the goods and they have to close the shop(s)?
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=24053672&postcount=44
^^
Heh, in 1989 I thought there would be flying DeLorean's in 2015.
The only thing that looks like 2015 from Back to the Future is New York with all the video screens as you look around.
After seeing that video, American's must think UK is a joke. UK looks so puny. Sometimes it looks like the UK hasn't came into the 21st century yet.
1) A company is tasked to build one android for every human.
2) Each human owns an android, which is then sent out to work for the human.
3) The human gets the money the android earns.
4) The company that built the android gets a small percentage of it's earnings until the cost of building it is paid off.
2) Each human owns an android, which is then sent out to work for the human.
3) The human gets the money the android earns.
4) The company that built the android gets a small percentage of it's earnings until the cost of building it is paid off.
What occurs when these androids become partly/completely sapient?
No amount of regulation or rational countermeasures will stop someone from making them sapient, so it is rather pointless to argue for our own sakes, i am in fact a supporter of changing our human rights to also include the possibility of synthetic creations.
It may seem rather silly, but we all realise it, so why tempt fate?