CDZ White Collar Jobs at Risk in Robotics Revolution NOW!

[JimBowie1958]

Guess you've never been to a Five Guys then. Their kitchen is totally exposed.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Five Guys.

OK, that explains a whole lot, lol.

 

[Hiryuu]

It is hard to say the writing has not been on the wall for quite some time. Barcodes have been around for a long time [Bernard Silver investigated the idea in 1948 - The first patent was issued to Woodland/Silver in 1952]. They are just one of the many steps that have led to automating everything from clerical jobs to inventory management. I think people need to realize this is nothing new.

We are at a point where the desire to reconcile the lower overhead cost of maintaining automated processes with the ever increasing cost of hiring, training (they no longer come prepared to do the job) and supporting (employer provided healthcare/pensions and the likes) a human employee. Where automated systems may break from time to time, they don't have sick children, require vacation time, suffer from addiction/personal problems, require an Human Resources department nor make a habit of demanding family leave time.

I'm surprised it has taken this long to start making a sizable dent in the ranks of the employed.

 

[JimBowie1958]

It is hard to say the writing has not been on the wall for quite some time. Barcodes have been around for a long time [Bernard Silver investigated the idea in 1948 - The first patent was issued to Woodland/Silver in 1952]. They are just one of the many steps that have led to automating everything from clerical jobs to inventory management. I think people need to realize this is nothing new.

Well, if you dumb it down enough, nothing is new since the invention of the alphabet, lol.

What is new is the actual ubiquitousness of where the robotic tech can be applied in a completely autonomous manner. People had to scan the bar codes, set up the automated turret lathe, etc, but we are rapidly approaching a situation where human intervention of ANY kind is 100% unnecessary.

THAT is new, friend.

We are at a point where the desire to reconcile the lower overhead cost of maintaining automated processes with the ever increasing cost of hiring, training (they no longer come prepared to do the job) and supporting (employer provided healthcare/pensions and the likes) a human employee. Where automated systems may break from time to time, they don't have sick children, require vacation time, suffer from addiction/personal problems, require an Human Resources department nor make a habit of demanding family leave time.

So some people have estimated that 85% of all jobs will be taken over by robots/computers by 2040 and I think the percentage could be higher and I think it will come much quicker than that, probably 2030. If over 80% of American households will have a completely autonomous robot in their homes by 2025, the job market will be flooded with them also, and each one programmable for a completely different job, as the owner needs them.

Where will government revenues come from if we have reduced corporate tax rates to 15% and only 15% of jobs are done by human beings with taxable incomes? How will cities and states make up lost revenues from traffic fines when it is all automated for flawless driving? How will the government make up for all this shortfall? Raise taxes to confiscatory levels on the remaining 15% that are still employed? Much of that will be part time work, and higher individual taxes will drive that labor completely underground and unreported.

We need to tax jobs whether humans are employed in those jobs or robots or computers so that the government can maintain its revenue flows, obviously, but more than that is needed, and no one is talking about it.

I'm surprised it has taken this long to start making a sizable dent in the ranks of the employed.

Well that dent is going to be a totaled car wreck within the next ten years, and no one will be laughing about it then.

 

[Unkotare]

Some people just cannot seem to get through the day without pissing themselves over some damn thing or another.

 

[Hiryuu]

Well, if you dumb it down enough, nothing is new since the invention of the alphabet, lol.

What is new is the actual ubiquitousness of where the robotic tech can be applied in a completely autonomous manner. People had to scan the bar codes, set up the automated turret lathe, etc, but we are rapidly approaching a situation where human intervention of ANY kind is 100% unnecessary.

THAT is new, friend.

Yeah, I get your point. At the same time, I think that the ability to equip more advanced automated systems has been held at bay by senior management. I don't always buy into the idea that the corporations are just about profit and what is easiest to achieve. I have watched some bypass more reliable solutions in order to protect the jobs of their employees. Then you add the fact that a lot of people don't embrace change and the idea doesn't stop on the manufacturing floor. There is a whole industry built around consultants whose purpose is to help corporations figure out how to implement systems and evaluate the impact from the boardroom to the community.

So some people have estimated that 85% of all jobs will be taken over by robots/computers by 2040 and I think the percentage could be higher and I think it will come much quicker than that, probably 2030. If over 80% of American households will have a completely autonomous robot in their homes by 2025, the job market will be flooded with them also, and each one programmable for a completely different job, as the owner needs them.

What I am trying to say is that technology isn't the totality of the obstacles. The "leaner-meaner workforce" was born in the 80's and had run its course by the millennia. During that period, senior management learned that better processes produced much better profit margins. Unfortunately, they didn't really evaluate the cost it produced in employee loyalty and morale. That gave birth to the Human Resources industry (by industry, I mean all the training and resources that employs). In that resides the core of the problem; the human. Our wants and needs are never really in balance with what is the most optimal setting, it is an inherent flaw.

Where will government revenues come from if we have reduced corporate tax rates to 15% and only 15% of jobs are done by human beings with taxable incomes? How will cities and states make up lost revenues from traffic fines when it is all automated for flawless driving? How will the government make up for all this shortfall? Raise taxes to confiscatory levels on the remaining 15% that are still employed? Much of that will be part time work, and higher individual taxes will drive that labor completely underground and unreported.

We need to tax jobs whether humans are employed in those jobs or robots or computers so that the government can maintain its revenue flows, obviously, but more than that is needed, and no one is talking about it.

I think that is what pretty much makes it a matter of survival. Taxes are revenue for the government. In business you have to decide whether you spend revenues supporting and maintaining systems/processes that work and provide you with the level of performance you need, or waste revenue attempting to maintain programs/processes that are failing and provide you with an inferior product. If we streamline the workplace, and its impact on the community, then the same focus should apply to the government and our national interests.

I cannot say that I am as worried as some people may be. There is a time and place where the rubber meets the road, and what you do is more important than what you want. Desires can be handled if the you manage your expectations and activity to match the ever-changing landscape. If the price of gasoline goes up, you can worry about how you are going to pay for it, or you can figure out how you are going to earn more money. They both may be reasonable, but one will get you through to the next day.

Well that dent is going to be a totaled car wreck within the next ten years, and no one will be laughing about it then.

In the next ten years, I will be fine. I will be laughing and having a great time, although I cannot say the same for everyone. I am not denying your assumption that another house of cards will fall. I am simply stating that those who have always relied on that house of cards for shelter, are going to be sol.

 

[JimBowie1958]

A world without work is coming – it could be utopia or it could be hell | Ryan Avent

Most of us have wondered what we might do if we didn’t need to work – if we woke up one morning to discover we had won the lottery, say. We entertain ourselves with visions of multiple homes, trips around the world or the players we would sign after buying Arsenal. For many of us, the most tantalising aspect of such visions is the freedom it would bring: to do what one wants, when one wants and how one wants.

But imagine how that vision might change if such freedom were extended to everyone. Some day, probably not in our lifetimes but perhaps not long after,machines will be able to do most of the tasks that people can. At that point, a truly workless world should be possible. If everyone, not just the rich, had robots at their beck and call, then such powerful technology would free them from the need to submit to the realities of the market to put food on the table.

Of course, we then have to figure out what to do not only with ourselves but with one another. Just as a lottery cheque does not free the winner from the shackles of the human condition, all-purpose machine intelligence will not magically allow us all to get along. And what is especially tricky about a world without work is that we must begin building the social institutions to survive it long before the technological obsolescence of human workers actually arrives.


Despite impressive progress in robotics and machine intelligence, those of us alive today can expect to keep on labouring until retirement. But while Star Trek-style replicators and robot nannies remain generations away, the digital revolution is nonetheless beginning to wreak havoc. Economists and politicians have puzzled over the struggles workers have experienced in recent decades: thepitiful rate of growth in wages, rising inequality, and the growing flow of national income to profits and rents rather than pay cheques. The primary culprit is technology. The digital revolution has helped supercharge globalisation, automated routine jobs, and allowed small teams of highly skilled workers to manage tasks that once required scores of people. The result has been a glut of labour that economies have struggled to digest.

Labour markets have coped the only way they are able: workers needing jobs have little option but to accept dismally low wages. Bosses shrug and use people to do jobs that could, if necessary, be done by machines. Big retailers and delivery firms feel less pressure to turn their warehouses over to robots when there are long queues of people willing to move boxes around for low pay. Law offices put off plans to invest in sophisticated document scanning and analysis technology because legal assistants are a dime a dozen. People continue to staff checkout counters when machines would often, if not always, be just as good. Ironically, the first symptoms of a dawning era of technological abundance are to be found in the growth of low-wage, low-productivity employment. And this mess starts to reveal just how tricky the construction of a workless world will be. The most difficult challenge posed by an economic revolution is not how to come up with the magical new technologies in the first place; it is how to reshape society so that the technologies can be put to good use while also keeping the great mass of workers satisfied with their lot in life. So far, we are failing.

Preparing for a world without work means grappling with the roles work plays in society, and finding potential substitutes. First and foremost, we rely on work to distribute purchasing power: to give us the dough to buy our bread. Eventually, in our distant Star Trek future, we might get rid of money and prices altogether, as soaring productivity allows society to provide people with all they need at near-zero cost.

 

[jasonnfree]

A world without work is coming – it could be utopia or it could be hell | Ryan Avent

Most of us have wondered what we might do if we didn’t need to work – if we woke up one morning to discover we had won the lottery, say. We entertain ourselves with visions of multiple homes, trips around the world or the players we would sign after buying Arsenal. For many of us, the most tantalising aspect of such visions is the freedom it would bring: to do what one wants, when one wants and how one wants.

But imagine how that vision might change if such freedom were extended to everyone. Some day, probably not in our lifetimes but perhaps not long after,machines will be able to do most of the tasks that people can. At that point, a truly workless world should be possible. If everyone, not just the rich, had robots at their beck and call, then such powerful technology would free them from the need to submit to the realities of the market to put food on the table.

Of course, we then have to figure out what to do not only with ourselves but with one another. Just as a lottery cheque does not free the winner from the shackles of the human condition, all-purpose machine intelligence will not magically allow us all to get along. And what is especially tricky about a world without work is that we must begin building the social institutions to survive it long before the technological obsolescence of human workers actually arrives.


Despite impressive progress in robotics and machine intelligence, those of us alive today can expect to keep on labouring until retirement. But while Star Trek-style replicators and robot nannies remain generations away, the digital revolution is nonetheless beginning to wreak havoc. Economists and politicians have puzzled over the struggles workers have experienced in recent decades: thepitiful rate of growth in wages, rising inequality, and the growing flow of national income to profits and rents rather than pay cheques. The primary culprit is technology. The digital revolution has helped supercharge globalisation, automated routine jobs, and allowed small teams of highly skilled workers to manage tasks that once required scores of people. The result has been a glut of labour that economies have struggled to digest.

Labour markets have coped the only way they are able: workers needing jobs have little option but to accept dismally low wages. Bosses shrug and use people to do jobs that could, if necessary, be done by machines. Big retailers and delivery firms feel less pressure to turn their warehouses over to robots when there are long queues of people willing to move boxes around for low pay. Law offices put off plans to invest in sophisticated document scanning and analysis technology because legal assistants are a dime a dozen. People continue to staff checkout counters when machines would often, if not always, be just as good. Ironically, the first symptoms of a dawning era of technological abundance are to be found in the growth of low-wage, low-productivity employment. And this mess starts to reveal just how tricky the construction of a workless world will be. The most difficult challenge posed by an economic revolution is not how to come up with the magical new technologies in the first place; it is how to reshape society so that the technologies can be put to good use while also keeping the great mass of workers satisfied with their lot in life. So far, we are failing.

Preparing for a world without work means grappling with the roles work plays in society, and finding potential substitutes. First and foremost, we rely on work to distribute purchasing power: to give us the dough to buy our bread. Eventually, in our distant Star Trek future, we might get rid of money and prices altogether, as soaring productivity allows society to provide people with all they need at near-zero cost.

A world without work is coming – it could be utopia or it could be hell | Ryan Avent

Most of us have wondered what we might do if we didn’t need to work – if we woke up one morning to discover we had won the lottery, say. We entertain ourselves with visions of multiple homes, trips around the world or the players we would sign after buying Arsenal. For many of us, the most tantalising aspect of such visions is the freedom it would bring: to do what one wants, when one wants and how one wants.

But imagine how that vision might change if such freedom were extended to everyone. Some day, probably not in our lifetimes but perhaps not long after,machines will be able to do most of the tasks that people can. At that point, a truly workless world should be possible. If everyone, not just the rich, had robots at their beck and call, then such powerful technology would free them from the need to submit to the realities of the market to put food on the table.

Of course, we then have to figure out what to do not only with ourselves but with one another. Just as a lottery cheque does not free the winner from the shackles of the human condition, all-purpose machine intelligence will not magically allow us all to get along. And what is especially tricky about a world without work is that we must begin building the social institutions to survive it long before the technological obsolescence of human workers actually arrives.


Despite impressive progress in robotics and machine intelligence, those of us alive today can expect to keep on labouring until retirement. But while Star Trek-style replicators and robot nannies remain generations away, the digital revolution is nonetheless beginning to wreak havoc. Economists and politicians have puzzled over the struggles workers have experienced in recent decades: thepitiful rate of growth in wages, rising inequality, and the growing flow of national income to profits and rents rather than pay cheques. The primary culprit is technology. The digital revolution has helped supercharge globalisation, automated routine jobs, and allowed small teams of highly skilled workers to manage tasks that once required scores of people. The result has been a glut of labour that economies have struggled to digest.

Labour markets have coped the only way they are able: workers needing jobs have little option but to accept dismally low wages. Bosses shrug and use people to do jobs that could, if necessary, be done by machines. Big retailers and delivery firms feel less pressure to turn their warehouses over to robots when there are long queues of people willing to move boxes around for low pay. Law offices put off plans to invest in sophisticated document scanning and analysis technology because legal assistants are a dime a dozen. People continue to staff checkout counters when machines would often, if not always, be just as good. Ironically, the first symptoms of a dawning era of technological abundance are to be found in the growth of low-wage, low-productivity employment. And this mess starts to reveal just how tricky the construction of a workless world will be. The most difficult challenge posed by an economic revolution is not how to come up with the magical new technologies in the first place; it is how to reshape society so that the technologies can be put to good use while also keeping the great mass of workers satisfied with their lot in life. So far, we are failing.

Preparing for a world without work means grappling with the roles work plays in society, and finding potential substitutes. First and foremost, we rely on work to distribute purchasing power: to give us the dough to buy our bread. Eventually, in our distant Star Trek future, we might get rid of money and prices altogether, as soaring productivity allows society to provide people with all they need at near-zero cost.

Vonnegutt had this all figured out in the 1950's and wrote "Player piano". Have robots do most of the work. Management and the money masters do very well, and the proles get a small stipend to live on and lead boring and dreary lives. They need the stipend to survive and they are necessary to buy the products made by the robots. And you will still need a contingency of humans to fight the corporate wars which are necessary to keep economies going. Problem is, it may not work in this present age, since the republicans would be against the stipend.

 

[JimBowie1958]

A world without work is coming – it could be utopia or it could be hell | Ryan Avent

Most of us have wondered what we might do if we didn’t need to work – if we woke up one morning to discover we had won the lottery, say. We entertain ourselves with visions of multiple homes, trips around the world or the players we would sign after buying Arsenal. For many of us, the most tantalising aspect of such visions is the freedom it would bring: to do what one wants, when one wants and how one wants.

But imagine how that vision might change if such freedom were extended to everyone. Some day, probably not in our lifetimes but perhaps not long after,machines will be able to do most of the tasks that people can. At that point, a truly workless world should be possible. If everyone, not just the rich, had robots at their beck and call, then such powerful technology would free them from the need to submit to the realities of the market to put food on the table.

Of course, we then have to figure out what to do not only with ourselves but with one another. Just as a lottery cheque does not free the winner from the shackles of the human condition, all-purpose machine intelligence will not magically allow us all to get along. And what is especially tricky about a world without work is that we must begin building the social institutions to survive it long before the technological obsolescence of human workers actually arrives.


Despite impressive progress in robotics and machine intelligence, those of us alive today can expect to keep on labouring until retirement. But while Star Trek-style replicators and robot nannies remain generations away, the digital revolution is nonetheless beginning to wreak havoc. Economists and politicians have puzzled over the struggles workers have experienced in recent decades: thepitiful rate of growth in wages, rising inequality, and the growing flow of national income to profits and rents rather than pay cheques. The primary culprit is technology. The digital revolution has helped supercharge globalisation, automated routine jobs, and allowed small teams of highly skilled workers to manage tasks that once required scores of people. The result has been a glut of labour that economies have struggled to digest.

Labour markets have coped the only way they are able: workers needing jobs have little option but to accept dismally low wages. Bosses shrug and use people to do jobs that could, if necessary, be done by machines. Big retailers and delivery firms feel less pressure to turn their warehouses over to robots when there are long queues of people willing to move boxes around for low pay. Law offices put off plans to invest in sophisticated document scanning and analysis technology because legal assistants are a dime a dozen. People continue to staff checkout counters when machines would often, if not always, be just as good. Ironically, the first symptoms of a dawning era of technological abundance are to be found in the growth of low-wage, low-productivity employment. And this mess starts to reveal just how tricky the construction of a workless world will be. The most difficult challenge posed by an economic revolution is not how to come up with the magical new technologies in the first place; it is how to reshape society so that the technologies can be put to good use while also keeping the great mass of workers satisfied with their lot in life. So far, we are failing.

Preparing for a world without work means grappling with the roles work plays in society, and finding potential substitutes. First and foremost, we rely on work to distribute purchasing power: to give us the dough to buy our bread. Eventually, in our distant Star Trek future, we might get rid of money and prices altogether, as soaring productivity allows society to provide people with all they need at near-zero cost.

A world without work is coming – it could be utopia or it could be hell | Ryan Avent

Most of us have wondered what we might do if we didn’t need to work – if we woke up one morning to discover we had won the lottery, say. We entertain ourselves with visions of multiple homes, trips around the world or the players we would sign after buying Arsenal. For many of us, the most tantalising aspect of such visions is the freedom it would bring: to do what one wants, when one wants and how one wants.

But imagine how that vision might change if such freedom were extended to everyone. Some day, probably not in our lifetimes but perhaps not long after,machines will be able to do most of the tasks that people can. At that point, a truly workless world should be possible. If everyone, not just the rich, had robots at their beck and call, then such powerful technology would free them from the need to submit to the realities of the market to put food on the table.

Of course, we then have to figure out what to do not only with ourselves but with one another. Just as a lottery cheque does not free the winner from the shackles of the human condition, all-purpose machine intelligence will not magically allow us all to get along. And what is especially tricky about a world without work is that we must begin building the social institutions to survive it long before the technological obsolescence of human workers actually arrives.


Despite impressive progress in robotics and machine intelligence, those of us alive today can expect to keep on labouring until retirement. But while Star Trek-style replicators and robot nannies remain generations away, the digital revolution is nonetheless beginning to wreak havoc. Economists and politicians have puzzled over the struggles workers have experienced in recent decades: thepitiful rate of growth in wages, rising inequality, and the growing flow of national income to profits and rents rather than pay cheques. The primary culprit is technology. The digital revolution has helped supercharge globalisation, automated routine jobs, and allowed small teams of highly skilled workers to manage tasks that once required scores of people. The result has been a glut of labour that economies have struggled to digest.

Labour markets have coped the only way they are able: workers needing jobs have little option but to accept dismally low wages. Bosses shrug and use people to do jobs that could, if necessary, be done by machines. Big retailers and delivery firms feel less pressure to turn their warehouses over to robots when there are long queues of people willing to move boxes around for low pay. Law offices put off plans to invest in sophisticated document scanning and analysis technology because legal assistants are a dime a dozen. People continue to staff checkout counters when machines would often, if not always, be just as good. Ironically, the first symptoms of a dawning era of technological abundance are to be found in the growth of low-wage, low-productivity employment. And this mess starts to reveal just how tricky the construction of a workless world will be. The most difficult challenge posed by an economic revolution is not how to come up with the magical new technologies in the first place; it is how to reshape society so that the technologies can be put to good use while also keeping the great mass of workers satisfied with their lot in life. So far, we are failing.

Preparing for a world without work means grappling with the roles work plays in society, and finding potential substitutes. First and foremost, we rely on work to distribute purchasing power: to give us the dough to buy our bread. Eventually, in our distant Star Trek future, we might get rid of money and prices altogether, as soaring productivity allows society to provide people with all they need at near-zero cost.

Vonnegutt had this all figured out in the 1950's and wrote "Player piano". Have robots do most of the work. Management and the money masters do very well, and the proles get a small stipend to live on and lead boring and dreary lives. They need the stipend to survive and they are necessary to buy the products made by the robots. And you will still need a contingency of humans to fight the corporate wars which are necessary to keep economies going. Problem is, it may not work in this present age, since the republicans would be against the stipend.

Once we get to the Technological Utopia, there will be no need for wars and no one will be bored unless so fated, but it will still be rare