While I'm not against eliminating toil, this article does not seem to consider the negative aspects of automation, such as the deskilling that happens naturally.
"This plant basically runs itself, but we do have a human present for if something goes wrong".. 50 years down the line, something goes wrong and nobody has the kind of insight and familiarity with the system that they'd have had it had been manually operated.
Most certainly.
Depending on the type of world we're in, it might also have freed people to pursue more fulfilling calls.
On the flipside, it might have removed multiple jobs for people who may have had entirely satisfactory lives.
It might have been a important plant and the damages done when it breaks down and the surrounding society discovers they both cannot do without it nor rebuild/recover from it may be far worse than the "cost" of running it at a higher degree of manual operation.
> Depending on the type of world we're in, it might also have freed people to pursue more fulfilling calls. On the flipside, it might have removed multiple jobs for people who may have had entirely satisfactory lives.
I feel like the fetishization of the "job" is detrimental to society and individuals. I've been in a situation where I could really quickly develop automation that would replace a team of 15 people hammering on spreadsheets all day. The project was canned because we didn't want to put 15 people out of work. The way I see it, there were some distinct outcomes for possible decisions:
1: The automation project is canned. Nothing changes.
2: I get the automation done, 15 people are out of jobs. They have to seek new employment, or otherwise find out what to do with their lives. They are displaced in an unpleasant way, and the lives of many of them may be heavily damaged for at least the short term. The company saves over a million dollars a year.
3: I get the automation done, the company re-tasks the workers to other parts of the company. They aren't out of jobs, but they have to adjust and re-train and learn new things. Some are happy, most are annoyed, but nobody is seriously hurt. Some people are unable to adjust and maybe eventually get let go.
4: The automation is done, and the company continues paying the employees who now are being paid to do nothing at all. They can relax, or work on hobbies, or whatever they like.
The interesting part for me is that 2 has the greatest advantage for the company, 3 is a good compromise, 4 is the best scenario for the employees without even harming the company more than the cost of my time (which isn't really all that expensive in the big term; less than a day's pay for all the employees together), and 1 is the worst case scenario for everybody, but they chose 1 because the "job" is sacred. 1 and 4 are nearly the same from the perspective of the company, so rather than improving anything, they choose to be inefficient, wasteful welfare.
People want welfare to exist, but they don't like the idea of "freeloaders", so they force people to do useless, Sisyphean work. It's extraordinarily wasteful.
Maybe life could be better for everybody if losing your job couldn't completely destroy your life. We could automate things and improve things faster without having to hold back progress because "people could lose their jobs", we could dismantle destructive industries that currently are kept afloat because "Hey, that's 80 thousand jobs!" People could leave jobs that they feel are ethically wrong, rather than being trapped into doing something they think is evil because they need to feed their families.
>4: The automation is done, and the company continues paying the employees who now are being paid to do nothing at all. They can relax, or work on hobbies, or whatever they like.
I'm not sure this is a great outcome. It soft-locks them into their current position without any great motivation to better themselves. It also creates resentment in those around them. When the company does eventually let them go, only the most forward-thinking will still have useful job skills and can find another job.
Sure, they could quit or request a different job, but how many people can recognize those mental problems coming ahead of time and avoid it? Most people are going to be fat and happy and do nothing to get ahead. I don't even blame them. It'd be incredibly tempting for me, too. In fact, since I've been at this company so long and basically stopped growing, I kind of already have fallen into that trap. It's a pretty comfy trap since I like my work and I get paid pretty well for it. It's just not forward-looking at all.
Tangential: It looks to me like you've got some impostor syndrome creeping up on you. IMO you should do some game modding or addon development. It's a piece of cake, you'll look like a genius to your gaming buddies, and you'll have fun in the process
I mean this is the idea of Universal Basic Income, but with that also comes it's own set of problems.
[1] Who, then, programs and builds the next generation of automation... innovation would have to continue. These people would still go in for the grind, I guess it would be for more money but at some point would the tiered tax rates make it worth it?
[2] This would only be for certain sectors of jobs. Waitstaff is still going to exist, and a whole realm of the service industry. This would just lead to an exploited workforce, or striated (more striated) population filled in by immigrant labor and other "invisible" labor groups.
[3] Our dependence on machine infrastructure becomes ultimately vulnerable to attack from foreign intelligence and private actors and we are far from able to defend against it.
EDIT:
for the record, I have argued for UBI and am not against it in the past. I am still for it but not on a huge scale. The UBI that I have argued for would be a $1000/month UBI. This would be a replacement/supplement for SSI, disability, childcare tax credit, school supplies, food stamps, etc. It is not enough to live on but a support system for emergencies and savings.
A big problem is that most people don't know how to handle that kind of freedom. The social world most people exist in won't accept it. I don't know your life but I think a lot of people who suggest things like your [4] imagine a sort of extended vacation, and maybe for three or six months or so, it can be. For the long or indefinite term a better analogy would be prison.
Company B does the automation project. They can offer their services for a million dollars a year less than Company A. Company A is eventually outcompeted.
I think this is a good scenario to consider especially now that we're running into this issue just from trying to build passenger rail networks in California where the expertise for it isn't domestic at all.
I mean, maybe they should have been? Just comparing apples to apples (it takes X amount of COBOL code to the same thing that Y office jobs would have done), maintaining the office job over a long period of time might be easier than finding and retaining COBOL engineers, because you get more active practice at it—people naturally want to streamline their work, new people always have to be onboarded, etc. I don't think things are ever so clear-cut apples-to-apples though—there are things you can do with COBOL that you couldn't feasibly do with any number of office workers, and there are things you can do with office workers that even the best COBOL probably isn't going to handle well.
No no no you can’t replace the COBOL because then the COBOL programmers won’t have jobs. Perhaps the government should offer a basic amount of support for its citizens so that this isn’t a problem.
"This plant basically runs itself, but we do have a human present for if something goes wrong".. 50 years down the line, something goes wrong and nobody has the kind of insight and familiarity with the system that they'd have had it had been manually operated.