Alice 💋 · 7 answers · 3y
Is it problematic that people are being replaced by machines and advances in automation? Or will the new economy make up for all those displaced jobs the way it virtually always has?
Is it problematic that people are being replaced by machines and advances in automation? Or will the new economy make up for all those displaced jobs the way it virtually always has?
I'm not an economist or anything, but my fear is that on our present course there will be jobs, but they will be grossly underpaying and probably dangerous - the middle class will completely hollow out and there will be a permanent underclass of what are essentially serfs whose job it will be to come into town, fix the broken machines, and fuck off back to the slums
Funny things about my job is it largely includes automating work flows and procedures. I'm kinda helping computers take over my job! In the long run I hope that somehow the new technologies create jobs rather than largely eliminating them. Society might face serious problems when only a few people have jobs and others are left with no means to make ends meet.
It will probably make universal basic income more possible, if done slowly enough.
It is not a big problem for the economy but for the individuals. And subsequently the logic of capitalism will replace everybody but as a customer. Haha. This will not work without a change of the way we live and work.
I don't know about the economy making up for displaced jobs in the past, I figured automation will be unprecedented in that respect, but it seems to me that it could be problematic.
Ideally, everyone wins because more goods and services are being rendered for less labor. For it to be worse than it was before because of an increase in efficiency would mean the capitalistic system is hilariously, deeply flawed. Well, it's not hilarious I guess, I'm not laughing.
But it's imaginable -- getting paid for doing labor is the entire basis for money flow / distribution to the average person in a capitalistic economy. Take that away and the system could break. Hopefully it would merely have to adapt and change. We could learn to distribute wealth for free.
But would that work? If you can get everything you need or want for little to no effort, what's the incentive for those few people who would be needed and are able to design, build, maintain, power, etc. the machines to do that work? I guess they could just get paid more than the average person? If the country is still capitalistic, what's the incentive of the company to distribute profits to the masses? Would we have to switch to socialism? Maybe it's in the companies' best interest to distribute the wealth because, if the masses are broke, then there's nobody to buy their stuff? But how does that make sense, that the company would give away money just in order to get it back? Economics questions like this have always been beyond my ability to comprehend for some reason.
Incidentally I was just reading about this problem earlier today. https://www.cracked.com/article_28610_5-scary-questions-about-future-no-one-wants-to-ask.html Question #2
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