The map in there (also found here http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...) is interesting.
Truck driver is currently the most common job in the majority of the U.S. states, but interestingly, 'software developer' is on the rise and has taken the top spot in a couple of states. This happened last year.
So the software developer seems to be the truck driver of the 21st century, which kind of makes sense , since we're not just driving trucks, we're 'driving' all the machines out there.
So it begs the question - if this is the fate of truck drivers, isn't the same going to happen to the software developers in a couple of years ?
I think the difference between software dev and truck driving is that it doesn't actually require and extraordinary skill to drive a truck. You get your truck driving license, which is not hard (easy in some countries even) and that's it. For software dev you need a lot more ; most people simply cannot do it. The type of software dev that doesn't need those skills will be (and already are) obsolete; it just takes some time to mature and get to that point. But for truck drivers; with self driving trucks we need 0 truck drivers, with better processes, libraries and tools we need less programmers, but far from 0.
The self-driven car needs someone to tell it where to drive.
The self-programmable program needs someone to tell it what to program. (We already have these, they are called compilers, and they are getting better all the time.)
The question is: is deciding where to drive as hard as deciding what to program?
Guaranteed basic income. It's the only way... at least if we want a future that is actually good for more than ~10% of the human race.
The only alternatives are bloody destructive revolutions or totalitarian panopticon police states to forcibly hold the other 90% in crushing poverty. That future would look an awful lot like The Hunger Games -- small high-tech enclaves enslaving and suppressing the rest of humanity -- and even within these enclaves, you do not step out of line.
I know people said this in the past and "jobs always came back," but I am increasingly believing that there is a qualitative difference between Turing-complete automation and non-Turing-complete automation. It's different this time. Software defined systems are not like the cotton gin or even first generation industrial robotics.
In other words I agree with Marc Andressen: "software is eating the world." Absolutely everything will become software defined -- rapidly and easily reconfigurable and thus exponentially rather than linearly destructive to employment.
Absolutely, if every task a given worker can do (even higher level cognitive ones) can be accomplished more economically by a machine, it should be the only conclusion that some mechanism will be required to prevent them from marginalization, regardless of past events (in which low level tasks were automated). I'm not sure this is the case with China yet though. But given the universal availability of technology, it's bound to be a worldwide issue.
> Guaranteed basic income. It's the only way... at least if we want a future that is actually good for more than ~10% of the human race.
Basic income is one of two ways of realizing a future that is good for everyone (and those ~10% won't be happy without it because the zombies will be at their door). The other way is to make everything free (either forcefully, or through price reductions via technology and automation).
Basic income is known to work [1]. "Making everything free" forcefully is a no-go because it disrespects the realities of market dynamics (as we've learned from Communism).
It is important also to realize that there are many ways of implementing BI, and some of them are better than others. This is a debate and discussion we should be all having.
The primary ethical decision I see is whether BI is implemented in a coercive manner (i.e. taxation) or a voluntary manner. Both approaches are possible and each can be done in various different ways. I worked on something called http://groupcurrency.org [2], a voluntary cryptocurrency approach to basic income, and there are many other approaches as well, the simplest of which is simply for a "company-tribe" to guarantee its members a minimum income (backed by the fruits of their collective labor).
For those interested in Basic Income, I strongly recommend perusing the subreddit r/basicincome and related subreddits (r/CryptoUBI, etc.).
Some how I felt even the worst scenario in the story (where robots confine the jobless to reservations) seem to be lot better than the current conditions in many poor countries.
On the bright side, if they can figure this out (the solution to automation eating the world), we (advanced post-industrial economies) can benefit from their leadership in this area.
On the other hand, this means that China does not get to transition to higher value added jobs thereby passing the manual low skill labor to the next country down on the economic transition pole, i.e. India and greater Africa.... on the third hand, China approaches an aging population problem, so...
So what happens to those economies?
We'll need to figure these things out, if this speculation is borne out.
"On the bright side, if they can figure this out (the solution to automation eating the world), we (advanced post-industrial economies) can benefit from their leadership in this area."
That's a useful remark. I'd previously thought that Japan would come up with a new solution. Their housing bubble popped in 1989 and put Japan into recession. The US hit that problem in 2008. But Japan never came up with a good solution - they had a 20 year recession. What they did do is put money into infrastructure projects, and improve their safety net. So, while there's less forward progress, life for the average Japanese has not become worse.
From the article: "43 percent of Chinese workers already consider themselves to be overeducated for their current positions." Only about half of new Chinese college graduates find jobs that require a college education. As in the US, the education industry has saturated the market for educated people.
China's government has more options than the US does. The government has built over 100 new large cities, for example. Some of them were empty at first, but they're getting better at starting them up. Now they do the construction, finish that, stock and staff the retail stores, start up the transportation system and services, and then, with all the services available and underutilized, get people and businesses to move in. This seems inefficient but turns out to work better than trying to do it in profitable stages. It's a communist system, remember; it doesn't have to make money immediately.
China's government will probably not ignore the problem. The US has a sizable lobby that takes the position that the free market somehow makes the decisions about how things work, how much things cost, and who gets paid how much. China does not have that. It's a directed economy.
There are probably papers being published about what to do about this in China. Anyone know of any good ones?
The economic challenges are pretty real, given that consumers, wages, and GDP are all entangled in an interdependent way, when things are out of balance for a long time it leads to sometimes rather abrupt corrections.
I find it hard to imagine abrupt corrections happening in the western world. Everyone is just so very controlled. But then maybe people thought the same thing leading up to the French revolution 'only' 200 years ago? From my limited knowledge, the French had a stable aristocracy with a controlled populace. And then just a few years later the new powers were executing tens of thousands of citizens. That's crazy.
This article is similar to what you would have read in the late 19th century when looms were being mechanized. Hopefully the future will continue to match the historical precedents of mass mechanization (i.e. Industrial Revolution, 20th century manufacturing, ...). Yes there will be disruption, workers will lose their jobs, and there may even be riots. However in the end we still had progress and we still created jobs; the old jobs were gone but there's always a new need.
I read a lot about that but I don't see how that will work this time. In the previous revolutions very specific jobs were replaced and you could kind of see there were still jobs to be done outside it. I come from a loom family; my grandfather was replaced by machines and he became a department head; the rest (family, friends, ...) got forced out and most never got jobs again. But of course next generations managed to do other things unrelated to this line of work my family did for generations. This time I simply don't see what will be 'in the end' as we are replacing all but highly skilled (mostly thinker) jobs and by far most people, no matter how you train them (and most don't want to), are simply not that skilled. The jobs we train people for who cannot get jobs are college graduates, but in something non-tech; we train them for coding & digital marketing. Most (90%) don't get beyond basic coding skills (html/css + copy/paste of js from stackoverflow) and both that and digital marketing skills (keyword search for seo/ads etc) can already be mostly replaced, but it's too expensive to build the software to do it. Someone will do and then these people have nothing; they simply cannot do much of which is in demand. I don't want to say software is the only place ofcourse, but they come to us via the state unemployment bureau after have been there for as much as 7 years for some after graduating; they tried other things. And this is the top % of society that actually went to uni. I really don't see how this will work for anyone with only a high school degree.
Wasn't there an article a week or so ago about China's one child policy, and how there wouldn't be enough workers to take care of the older generation?
Well... which is is? Too many workers or not enough workers?
They have ~500 million farmers, with nothing else to do than pretend to be farmers, held in a form of land slavery because there's nothing else for them to do and nowhere else for them to go (and they're not allowed to own the farming land). So China intentionally retards the progress in farming, keeping their productivity extraordinarily low. If they changed course on farming productivity, China would rapidly find itself with hundreds of millions of unemployed farmers (the US needs 3 million farmers / farm workers to feed 400 to 500 million people; China is using ~500 million farmers to feed 1 billion people). This issue likely terrifies the central government.
"Strengthening the health care, retirement and unemployment insurance systems, so that workers feel more secure, might help lower the savings rate somewhat."
Translation:
We need to get 'em all on the dole but quick, because as innovation increases output per worker how can they possibly make the transition to higher paying jobs, what with all that dang savings to worry about. Wait...what?
China's high household savings rate is largely due to the smashing of the iron rice bowl and the increase in income uncertainty. It's a vastly inefficient form of self-insurance driven by the lack of welfare.
Worse, this enormous savings surplus is largely being recycled into enormous infrastructure construction projects which will never show any ROI and apartments which nobody will ever live in.
All that construction does provide a lot of opportunity for graft, though.
"OVER the last decade, China has become, in the eyes of much of the world, a job-eating monster, consuming entire industries with its seemingly limitless supply of low-wage workers. But the reality is that China is now shifting its appetite to robots."
Translation:
We know that you know that the Chinese are really doing most of the manufacturing jobs that not-so-mysteriously disappeared the United States over the last 30 years.
We also know that you know that we did this on purpose, because taking advantage of Chinese currency repression, wage repression and loose environment controls meant higher profits for us.
This is the part where we're going to be completely honest with you, because we have no vested interests here whatsoever:
Those jobs aren't ever coming home because androids that will replace all of those Chinese workers - you know, like you've seen in all those movies.
Any.
Day.
Now.
And, as soon as we're done with that, we're sure somebody will invent a robot to build those robots so we don't need to pay your wages either.
We will continue to deluge you with anecdotes of individual factories doing banal automation like they have done for the last two hundred years until you 'get the feeling' that this 'trend' is unstoppable.
Meanwhile, pay no attention to NAFTA, CAFTA, TTIP, TPP or the US goverment's unwillingness to designate China as a currency manipulator. Also, we need you to keep up the pretense that austerity is about saving taxpayer money, rather than repressing your wages.
You might be interested to know that the US congress started hearings on the threat that technology posed to workers in the US, in the early 1960's [1], reading their report you will find many of the same themes. I was reading a book about Thomas Watson Jr which also mentioned the government's concern with technology displacing jobs in the late 30's. And yet through out that time unemployment remained low because new jobs were created.
The problem with this, of course, is that if there's no-one earning wages then there's no-one buying the products.
As TFA says, China needs to rebalance its economy so it has a domestic market to speak of. That means paying people money, so it'll be interesting to see what that means in a communist regime - guaranteed national wage? state-provided jobs?
As for America... welcome to the long, slow slide into Not Being Top Nation Any More. Ask any British historian what that looks like. It's not fun.
I would't be >that< cynical. Let's see how this next presidential election turns out. If a democrat comes in and maintains (or at least doesn't entirely decimates) Obama's leftist policies, that will be a bit of a seachange. The last time we had two democrat presidents in a row with full terms was 1857 And while yes, Obama could be doing more to recognize what Technology is doing to Jobs, you have to appreciate that the electorate generally prefers evolution to revolution.
[+] [-] codeshaman|10 years ago|reply
And this is a qz article dealing with self-driving trucks which are poised to replace truck drivers:
http://qz.com/417014/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-th...
The map in there (also found here http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...) is interesting. Truck driver is currently the most common job in the majority of the U.S. states, but interestingly, 'software developer' is on the rise and has taken the top spot in a couple of states. This happened last year.
So the software developer seems to be the truck driver of the 21st century, which kind of makes sense , since we're not just driving trucks, we're 'driving' all the machines out there.
So it begs the question - if this is the fate of truck drivers, isn't the same going to happen to the software developers in a couple of years ?
[+] [-] tluyben2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamcurious|10 years ago|reply
The question is: is deciding where to drive as hard as deciding what to program?
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-mo...
[+] [-] dsfsdfd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|10 years ago|reply
The only alternatives are bloody destructive revolutions or totalitarian panopticon police states to forcibly hold the other 90% in crushing poverty. That future would look an awful lot like The Hunger Games -- small high-tech enclaves enslaving and suppressing the rest of humanity -- and even within these enclaves, you do not step out of line.
I know people said this in the past and "jobs always came back," but I am increasingly believing that there is a qualitative difference between Turing-complete automation and non-Turing-complete automation. It's different this time. Software defined systems are not like the cotton gin or even first generation industrial robotics.
In other words I agree with Marc Andressen: "software is eating the world." Absolutely everything will become software defined -- rapidly and easily reconfigurable and thus exponentially rather than linearly destructive to employment.
[+] [-] darkmighty|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itistoday2|10 years ago|reply
Basic income is one of two ways of realizing a future that is good for everyone (and those ~10% won't be happy without it because the zombies will be at their door). The other way is to make everything free (either forcefully, or through price reductions via technology and automation).
Basic income is known to work [1]. "Making everything free" forcefully is a no-go because it disrespects the realities of market dynamics (as we've learned from Communism).
It is important also to realize that there are many ways of implementing BI, and some of them are better than others. This is a debate and discussion we should be all having.
The primary ethical decision I see is whether BI is implemented in a coercive manner (i.e. taxation) or a voluntary manner. Both approaches are possible and each can be done in various different ways. I worked on something called http://groupcurrency.org [2], a voluntary cryptocurrency approach to basic income, and there are many other approaches as well, the simplest of which is simply for a "company-tribe" to guarantee its members a minimum income (backed by the fruits of their collective labor).
For those interested in Basic Income, I strongly recommend perusing the subreddit r/basicincome and related subreddits (r/CryptoUBI, etc.).
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index#wiki_that.27...
[2] HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9501059
[+] [-] option_greek|10 years ago|reply
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Some how I felt even the worst scenario in the story (where robots confine the jobless to reservations) seem to be lot better than the current conditions in many poor countries.
[+] [-] mc32|10 years ago|reply
On the other hand, this means that China does not get to transition to higher value added jobs thereby passing the manual low skill labor to the next country down on the economic transition pole, i.e. India and greater Africa.... on the third hand, China approaches an aging population problem, so...
So what happens to those economies?
We'll need to figure these things out, if this speculation is borne out.
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
That's a useful remark. I'd previously thought that Japan would come up with a new solution. Their housing bubble popped in 1989 and put Japan into recession. The US hit that problem in 2008. But Japan never came up with a good solution - they had a 20 year recession. What they did do is put money into infrastructure projects, and improve their safety net. So, while there's less forward progress, life for the average Japanese has not become worse.
From the article: "43 percent of Chinese workers already consider themselves to be overeducated for their current positions." Only about half of new Chinese college graduates find jobs that require a college education. As in the US, the education industry has saturated the market for educated people.
China's government has more options than the US does. The government has built over 100 new large cities, for example. Some of them were empty at first, but they're getting better at starting them up. Now they do the construction, finish that, stock and staff the retail stores, start up the transportation system and services, and then, with all the services available and underutilized, get people and businesses to move in. This seems inefficient but turns out to work better than trying to do it in profitable stages. It's a communist system, remember; it doesn't have to make money immediately.
China's government will probably not ignore the problem. The US has a sizable lobby that takes the position that the free market somehow makes the decisions about how things work, how much things cost, and who gets paid how much. China does not have that. It's a directed economy.
There are probably papers being published about what to do about this in China. Anyone know of any good ones?
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tangled|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tluyben2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeshaman|10 years ago|reply
I hope not. Rise of communism, fascism and the two world wars isn't what any of us wants at this time.
[+] [-] jqm|10 years ago|reply
Well... which is is? Too many workers or not enough workers?
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
They have ~500 million farmers, with nothing else to do than pretend to be farmers, held in a form of land slavery because there's nothing else for them to do and nowhere else for them to go (and they're not allowed to own the farming land). So China intentionally retards the progress in farming, keeping their productivity extraordinarily low. If they changed course on farming productivity, China would rapidly find itself with hundreds of millions of unemployed farmers (the US needs 3 million farmers / farm workers to feed 400 to 500 million people; China is using ~500 million farmers to feed 1 billion people). This issue likely terrifies the central government.
[+] [-] timtas|10 years ago|reply
Translation:
We need to get 'em all on the dole but quick, because as innovation increases output per worker how can they possibly make the transition to higher paying jobs, what with all that dang savings to worry about. Wait...what?
[+] [-] crdoconnor|10 years ago|reply
Worse, this enormous savings surplus is largely being recycled into enormous infrastructure construction projects which will never show any ROI and apartments which nobody will ever live in.
All that construction does provide a lot of opportunity for graft, though.
[+] [-] crdoconnor|10 years ago|reply
Translation:
We know that you know that the Chinese are really doing most of the manufacturing jobs that not-so-mysteriously disappeared the United States over the last 30 years.
We also know that you know that we did this on purpose, because taking advantage of Chinese currency repression, wage repression and loose environment controls meant higher profits for us.
This is the part where we're going to be completely honest with you, because we have no vested interests here whatsoever:
Those jobs aren't ever coming home because androids that will replace all of those Chinese workers - you know, like you've seen in all those movies.
Any.
Day.
Now.
And, as soon as we're done with that, we're sure somebody will invent a robot to build those robots so we don't need to pay your wages either.
We will continue to deluge you with anecdotes of individual factories doing banal automation like they have done for the last two hundred years until you 'get the feeling' that this 'trend' is unstoppable.
Meanwhile, pay no attention to NAFTA, CAFTA, TTIP, TPP or the US goverment's unwillingness to designate China as a currency manipulator. Also, we need you to keep up the pretense that austerity is about saving taxpayer money, rather than repressing your wages.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED023803.pdf
[+] [-] marcus_holmes|10 years ago|reply
As TFA says, China needs to rebalance its economy so it has a domestic market to speak of. That means paying people money, so it'll be interesting to see what that means in a communist regime - guaranteed national wage? state-provided jobs?
As for America... welcome to the long, slow slide into Not Being Top Nation Any More. Ask any British historian what that looks like. It's not fun.
[+] [-] Sven7|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sideloader|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enupten|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blazespin|10 years ago|reply