Courtesy of Mish.
Moments ago, I responded to a reader James from the UK regarding automation on farms. James commented that he only need one laborer where decades ago it took 25 men to do the same job.
James asked “If we displace 90% of the workforce in the next 100 years – and we could well exceed this, given rapidly increasing levels of automation (with humanoid robots becoming commonplace in this time-frame) – how will the aggregate consumer afford to consume the average product? The level of work loss seems likely to exceed the level of new product development.“
My Reply to James
History suggests innovation will at some point create more jobs.
We have lost jobs on farms but we gained them on the assembly line. We lost jobs on the assembly line and gained them on the internet. We lost jobs on the internet and ….
And I don’t know what’s next.
I suspect something with energy but I do not know.
If nothing comes, I expect war.
Dark Vision For Jobs
Just as soon as I replied to James, I noticed another email on the same subject. Reader Andrew asked me to comment on the ComputerWorld article Gartner’s Dark Vision for Tech, Jobs.
Science fiction writers have long told of great upheaval as machines replace people. Now, so is research firm Gartner. The difference is that Gartner, which provides technology advice to many of the world’s largest companies, is putting in dates and recommending immediate courses of action.
The job impacts from innovation are arriving rapidly, according to Gartner. Unemployment, now at about 8%, will get worse. Occupy Wall Street-type protests will arrive as early as next year as machines increasingly replace middle-class workers in high cost, specialized jobs. In businesses, CIOs in particular, will face quandaries as they confront the social impact of their actions.
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