re: One other common theme from the "Democratic" debates tonight

quote:

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The same line of thinking was started in the industrial revolution. It didn't happen then and it won't happen now because automation ends up creating new jobs too. Agricultural machinery didn't put us on our asses, it paved the way for once-preoccupied humans to become computer programmers. Thus the problem is not unemployment but displacement as older jobs stop existing but much of the labor force is too old to start a new career.

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This really is different in one big respect. The creation of more efficient tools and ultimately of mass production didn't invalidate people as an economic input. Agricultural machinery didn't put people on their asses because people were still needed to work the machines. You just only needed 1 guy instead of 10. The other 9 figured out something else to do. In that respect this form of "automation" of a sort was a boon, because someone somewhere needed to hire workers, so freeing up workers to do something else was ultimately good.

The difference here is that we're not talking about the car rendering the horse carriage obsolete, we're talking about robots rendering people obsolete. Aside from a few select jobs which will always need people and which generally require some kind of above-average cognitive ability, there is no "freeing up to do something else." People are increasingly becoming economic dead weight.

That doesn't necessarily mean that paying them $12,000 a year is the answer, but I'm glad Yang is at least out there bringing attention to the issue, whatever one might think about the solution he proposes.