[ineedasername]

That seems like reasonable advice until you realize you have no idea what will and will not scale in a few years, and there's only so many tailors/plumbers/welders/etc.

What it really comes down to is these options as more work gets automated:

1) New jobs doing different things that weren't done before

2) Same jobs but shorter hours so "full time" with a salary to match starts to look more like 4 days, or 5 hours/day, or something.

3) Lots of unemployment

These can happen in a lot of different combinations, they can come wrapped up in different ways, and unequally for different segments of the workforce, but there's limited elasticity in most areas where additional people piling into the field would create more demand rather than glut the supply to the supplier's detriment.

[throwaway-11-1]

I keep hearing about the potential of "new jobs" coming from ai but can anyone actually describe one? My gut says they will be something similar to converting middle class knowledge workers to do DoorDash drivers or trained artists becoming dog groomers. What a cool future, at least my parent's can watch racist ai slop videos on their iPads.

[Ntrails]

It's simply a case of looking back and deciding this technical revolution is identical to the ones preceding it. Thus jobs destroyed will be replaced with new jobs, it always happens that way.

Of course past performance is no guarantee of future success...

[scoofy]

The point of doing something non-scalable is that you can enter and exit the market fairly easily. You don't need to be a tailor your whole life. You can make a living as a barber, electrician, teacher, or nurse.

I'm not saying it's easy! It's hard as hell. It sucks when your job gets automated. I'm just saying that aiming for something non-scalable means you're not always tilting at windmills, and the game can't be rigged against you.

[noosphr]

Switching jobs from electrician to teacher to nurse will take around 3 to 5 years of education or apprenticeship in most countries. It also requires new licenses or certificates if you ever move country.

[XorNot]

All of those professions you've listed require about half a decade of dedicated training to be legally allowed to practice. For example an electrician takes like 7 years to become qualified, that's a full time apprenticeship, and it pays badly in the meantime.

A fact endlessly annoying to electrical engineers who legally can design their houses power system but not work on it.

(I mean I think a barber is quicker, but one of that list is also not like the others)