The article is interesting and I am glad to see some contrarian point to the main "automation will destroy jobs" narrative but...
But I think that they are comparing apples to oranges here.
The engravers have not been "automated away" - in their case technology augments them, so it's not like "I used to be an engraver but now I have lost my job to a robot" but - as the article says "I am an engraver and thanks to technology I have to say sorry but I can't do that ten time less often than before".
Same goes for office automation in general. Technology have augmented human-unassisted output (well, in case of office automation a lot of that has been wasted on futzing around with fonts and so on, but still...).
But I wonder what would happen if self-service engraving (via web interface, at a fraction of the cost and with your item delivered by drone or automated van in case of larger packages) entered the market, and if they would keep the same level of enthusiasm about automation.
If demand for engraving remained constant, then a 10X improvement in productivity for an engraver would actually eliminate far more engraver jobs than the final switch to full automation.
It's possible demand could increase, but there's no reason it has to, or it doesn't have to increase proportionally enough to make up for the lost jobs.
I mean, engraving went from a super-special thing that only happens on 30-year service watches and gravestones, to a minimum requirement for children's baseball participation trophies. The market did get larger.
Sure. Just like farming over the last 150 years. Far fewer jobs, more food, and that's great for essentially everybody.
I just don't believe there's some cliff of automation effectiveness where it goes from a good thing to a bad thing. Greater productivity always means making more for less.
>I just don't believe there's some cliff of automation effectiveness where it goes from a good thing to a bad thing. Greater productivity always means making more for less.
Only if we think if only in first-order effects. But there are always second and third order effects.
Environmental costs is one of these.
The desirability (from a societal standpoint) of having more of X (whatever X is, e.g. cheaper more plenty fast food for a controversial example) is also another matter.
The impact of the jobs that replaced the deprecated ones is another issue (a third order effect).
It's always a good thing, plus the additional "bad" side-effect of less work for the populace to do, driving down the price of labor.
As the price of labor trends downwards, some cohorts are going to have a harder time selling their labor to pay for necessities: food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
A good amount of these problems could be mitigated by a strong welfare system and/or basic income.
> It's always a good thing, plus the additional "bad" side-effect of less work for the populace to do, driving down the price of labor.
The price of labor tends to be lowest in the lowest-productivity areas. And there are good theoretical reasons for that to be the case -- high labor prices tend to cause productivity increases as a way to avoid paying them, and productivity increases increase the value of labor, which would tend to lead to higher labor prices.
When everybody was a pitiful subsistence farmer, barely producing more than they needed to eat themselves, the price of labor was very low. And where that's still true... the price of labor is still very low.
Can you point to a current or historical example of the price of labor going down as productivity rises?
Fast food, if you look at the output in meals or revinue at peak times they can have extreme productivity, but they make less than a short order cook. There are many similar areas where productivity is economically less valuable than flexibility.
> productivity increases increase the value of labor
We might be using terms in a different way here. This statement is true in one sense, and untrue in another sense.
When there is higher productivity, an hour of labor accomplishes more work. Employers are getting more bang for their buck - an hour of laborer pay accomplishes more work for the employer. (i.e. the employer is getting more value)
On the other hand, because it's possible to accomplish more work with less labor, the demand for that type of labor drops. This leads to depressed wages (i.e. the employee is getting less value). A good historical example of this was at the beginning of the industrial revolution, when power-looms caused weaver-labor to become nearly worthless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_loom#Social_and_economic...
Many of the displaced workers became Luddites who wanted to smash the machines which put them out of work. You would think that being relieved from working would be a blessing, but not in their circumstance. Because the weavers' labor was so sharply devalued, they found it extremely difficult to sell their labor for enough money to eat.
The short-term effect isn't the whole story, of course. Textiles were incredibly cheap which did increase demand, and eventually led to the creation of (low-paying) jobs in textile factories. But even where things turn out fine in the long-term, the short-term disruption is not to be underestimated. Widespread unemployment due to power-looms caused riots.
> When everybody was a pitiful subsistence farmer, barely producing more than they needed to eat themselves, the price of labor was very low.
To the contrary, the price of labor then was incredibly high. As you say, serfs spent the majority of their time simply generating their own subsistence. Feudal lords were entitled to a portion of the serfs' labor, but it only amounted to a day or two out of the week. Consider the legions of subsistence farmers it would take to support specialized full-time jobs.
Once industrial agriculture started taking off, food was suddenly cheap and plentiful. This made sustenance much less expensive and freed up labor for other non-farming purposes.
> high labor prices tend to cause productivity increases as a way to avoid paying them
This I agree with! In fact I believe it expresses the same point that I'm trying to convey: increasing productivity means employers pay less for labor.
Witness the rise of self-checkout stations at grocery stores, as well as kiosks and automatic-burger flippers at fast food restaurants. The whole point of these innovations is to decrease the demand for such labor.
Shares in the economy could be how everyone gets money to live on. Like Alaska oil funds, every corporation that draws profits from a locale through sales may be required in the future to issue shares or dividends to the locale.
Isn't that basically already done as a taxable nexus?
The problem is what to do about people who live in locales where there aren't a lot of sales? So they don't get much money and don't increase sales. A catch-22.
Same goes for office automation in general. Technology have augmented human-unassisted output (well, in case of office automation a lot of that has been wasted on futzing around with fonts and so on, but still...).
That's one issue that crops up in office automation, but not necessarily the biggest one. General tools like word processors and speaadsheets remain just that: tools. But once office functions gain special purpose software, it often locks in strong assumptions about workflows that translate into more, rather than less, "sorry but I can't do that."
On the micro level that's my experience too. Though I suspect at the macro level competitors with more flexibleautomation will win more business. Assuming a competitive market.
The people buying the automation are generally not the users. Those with purchasing authority probably already have a somewhat stereotyped view of the workflow in question, so selling them a rigid version may be pretty easy. And taking autonomy away from the individual users might actually seem like a feature, not a bug.
> But once office functions gain special purpose software, it often locks in strong assumptions about workflows that translate into more, rather than less, "sorry but I can't do that."
Which just solidifies the demand for people to build more such software for other use cases.
Right, and one of the engravers interviewed in the article says as much:
> “I’m just really surprised that anyone would say that this is the most automated industry,” says Rader. If someone orders a plaque from his company, a machine engraves it. But a human lays out the appropriate design using a computer, selects the materials, lays the metal in the machine, assembles the plaque, and packages the plaque when it’s done.
"using a computer" are the operative words. The engraver is only thinking physical automation. But the computer handles most of the work they used to do before automation. The "engraver" only makes a few easy design choices, hits Enter, and mails it from what he himself describes. That also seems less of a "profession" and more of a trade, if anything.
> But I wonder what would happen if self-service engraving ... entered the market...
To me that would be the final nail in the coffin. But then again, maybe the powers would be shifted from the person who runs the machines to the person who orders the engravings or the person who consults with promotion companies or to the one who opens up the possibilities of more complex engravings.
Well great article however two noteworthy things to point out. Over the last 10 years the hourly wage has stayed the same meaning the workers have lost purchasing power due to inflation.
If the prices of the product have gone up with inflation this just means a bigger part of the pie has gone to the owners of the business. Pretty much what one would expect with automation.
This is not a sunshine story, even if they attempt to paint it as one, and that's before one contemplates full automation where no workers are involved.
> If the prices of the product have gone up with inflation this just means a bigger part of the pie has gone to the owners of the business
Labor costs are not the only costs. In most cases there is also material involved and less tangible costs like rent, IT, external accounting, VAT increase that could not be forwarded (a common problem in Europe), etc.
Running a business is not simple. For most companies its a struggle. One day you win some, the next day you loose some. I have done well in the end, but I know many that did not.
Lord...the pie analogy. The OP thinks there's a limited amount of pie, which is a novice error. The pie itself can grow while remaining proportional, which is another scenario he didn't consider.
And the thing your example doesn't consider is that in human societies wealth is relative. We don't think a family living in a trailer is doing great just because the average house in 1860 used to be worse and have less amenities (no electricity for one).
Hence, it's not the volume of the slice one gets that matters but its relation to the overall size of the pie (e.g. whether your share grew, not whether the slice grew).
And the situation we have is that while the pie is getting larger, the common people's slices are getting either only slightly larger (not as much as the change in the pie size), and they need to work a lot than they did in the 50s and 60s to get a basic slice.
In other words, the society produces e.g. 2x or even 10x more wealth, but they only get, say, 2x larger share of that or worse, despite working harder than ever.
> “It’s not like you’re employing fewer people,” says Rader, who has about 10 employees, including his bookkeeper. “I can just do more things. I can tell fewer people, ‘sorry, I can’t do that.’”
That was refreshing to hear.
There was another more detailed treatment of automation's impact in the Economist a while back, which mentioned graphic design, a similar profession, where human jobs weren't replaced, tasks simply became redefined as designers started using more computer aids to let them perform more complex work:
David Autor had a long academic survey of the topic, it's detailed and in-depth, but a good read if you're interested in this area, with a fascinating discussion of how we quadrupled the number of bank tellers after the invention of the ATM, and the role of good governance in mitigating labor shocks due to sudden increases in roboticization.
Automation is doing no manual labor. Technical improvement's mentioned in the article is not automation. It's the same as a accountant who uses software. He can do more in less time
This seems absurdity polyannaish. Surely it's obvious that the parts that are currently done by people - laying out the design, and handling handling awkward shaped objects - can and will be automated. Developing such technology specifically for the engraving industry probably isn't cost effective and so for now humans remain employable in this industry, but those jobs exist so commonly across industries that it's inevitable that they will be automated away in due course.
As a music engraver, someone who creates scores on computer, no longer on metal sheets, I feel like my niche industry dodged a bullet here. But alas, it is less about the literal engraving part and more about the design of the graphics involved and new software like Dorico is a big step forward for increasing the output of the average engraver leading to more scores in general.
Massive survivorship bias here. They only interviewed engravers who haven't lost their job so of course they're not hurt by it. What about those 6 guys he didn't need to hire because of the machine? What about businesses which shut down since the advent of machines?
Taking a job from 2 hours to 20 minutes is ... impressive, but, as someone else pointed out, it's augmentation, not really completely automated.
I will not be surprised if Amazon offers drone-based engraving in 10 years; you'll just have someone drop the headstone, and their drone will do the rest.
But I think that they are comparing apples to oranges here. The engravers have not been "automated away" - in their case technology augments them, so it's not like "I used to be an engraver but now I have lost my job to a robot" but - as the article says "I am an engraver and thanks to technology I have to say sorry but I can't do that ten time less often than before".
Same goes for office automation in general. Technology have augmented human-unassisted output (well, in case of office automation a lot of that has been wasted on futzing around with fonts and so on, but still...).
But I wonder what would happen if self-service engraving (via web interface, at a fraction of the cost and with your item delivered by drone or automated van in case of larger packages) entered the market, and if they would keep the same level of enthusiasm about automation.
I wonder what would they say