> But is it a iron law of nature, or just a thing that goes on until it doesn't?
Of course it's not a law of nature. I don't understand the way of thinking that leads to considering this (or Moore's law, to bring up another particularly common example) as a law. Inductive reasoning, "it has always been like this, thus it always will be" is not science. One needs to understand casual relationships that give rise to the supposed "law" before asserting that future will look like the past.
I don't think that looking at particular industries being automated is very helpful. I'd like to propose a different model: let's put available jobs in a continuum from low-skill to high-skill (in creativity/cognitive load) jobs. In this model we see how technology continues to automate-away lower-skill jobs, climbing up the hill of difficulty.
In the past, surplussed workers could find other jobs, because the way we automated things was also low-skill; therefore for every lost trade, new ones were created in its place. But the same technological progress that allows us to automate more and more difficult jobs is upgrading the process of automation. There are less and less low-skill jobs produced per low-skill job automated, and the moment we reach the point when this ratio (automated/new) is > 1, surplussed workers will be increasingly unable to get themselves employed. (Mind you, this is not inductive reasoning, there is a good casual model underneath explaining why this is happening, but I think it's obvious enough that I don't need to elaborate on it now).
There's one type of jobs that are, and I believe will be for some time, exempt from the "march of progress" - jobs that require human element. Those are jobs like receptionists in hotels, doctors, psychologists - who we can connect with on emotional/trust based level. I'd personally bet that those jobs are safer than, say, tech sector, which will get automated away eventually if the progress continues.
"because the way we automated things was also low-skill"
When you make the low skilled unemployed, you can fill the prisons with them. Even hire some mid skilled folks to keep an eye on them.
What you do with an excess of mid to high skill level people is a mystery, we have no historical record to copy. You can put some in prison, but the prisons are already full and expensive, so need a new path. SSDI is getting too expensive.
We seem to be trying, "Let them eat cake". Hmm I wonder via historical analogy what could possibly go wrong with that?
> When you make the low skilled unemployed, you can fill the prisons with them. Even hire some mid skilled folks to keep an eye on them.
Until we realize that automated machine gun turrets are better at the job.
> We seem to be trying, "Let them eat cake". Hmm I wonder via historical analogy what could possibly go wrong with that?
Well, it's going to be a bloody mess if we let this trend continue the way it is going now.
Note that we, the "high-skill job sector" people, won't be shielded from the effects in any way. Our jobs might be safe for a long time, but there might come a point soon, when all our low-skill family members and friends are suddenly without a job and are depending on us for food and shelter. So we can't turn our backs on the issue; the worst-case scenario will hit us hard anyway.
Or maybe not. Not to drop the docs but my current employer depends on median joe 6 pack sending us a couple bucks a month and our revenues have dropped more or less in tandem with median joe 6 pack's permanently declining household income.
(edited to add, its hilarious reading the financial press doing everything they can to come up with an explanation for our declining revenue other than "Americans are becoming poorer". It must be the internet. Oh wait we actually make money off how we use it, um it must be fuel prices. Err whoops we don't actually use fuel. Well, it must be bad astrological symbols or something. Anything other than admitting failure of the economic system, J6P has less money = we have less revenue)
If you think about the likely effects of the 1% having all the money and everyone else having to barter or do without, some fields like some financial sectors wouldn't have much impact, whereas providers of entertainment, food, and medical care for J6P would be utterly annihilated. Doesn't matter how highly skilled the last employed IT worker was before he got downsized along with everyone else.
As long as a human being is able to create anything of value, jobs are not going away, and that will never stop being the case.
No need to even invent anything. Take, for example, the personal help industry: it is pretty much non-existant in most developed world right now -- yet, it has until very recently been a source of employment for millions of people, and in other places (e.g. India or Hong Kong) still very much is. The problem is not with jobs, it's with people imagining that the way the world was for the last 50 years is anything representative of its natural state.
What might go away to some extent are wage jobs -- i.e. jobs where wages are exchanged for labor at a fixed rate, and employees have no equity stake. Such jobs are an artifact of a modern industrial society, and if our society changes enough, I can imagine them being replaced with something else (there were no such jobs before industrial revolution, and even now in developing countries you won't see as many, e.g., fast food employees -- most of the things that are currently being done by wage employees can be done by self-employed people. There is definitely a lot of momentum going on in that direction, primarily driven by regulation. You can also imagine an increase in popular support for things like basic income.
I'm not sure I buy into low/high skilled work idea. As an active farmer and software developer, I can say that farming is the one that requires more creativity and cognitive load of the two, yet is the one in decline as far as jobs go.
What is interesting is the market demand differences. When farmers invented tools to multiply their output, the demand for food changed very little. Soon, a small group of people were able to fill the needs of the world. When software developers invented tools to multiply their output, people wanted even more software to be written. We're still trying to catch up to the demand, even though we're producing more software than ever.
I'd agree to a point, except that at its most base level farming, at least the agricultural variety, can be "dumbed down" to plant things and water them (unless you give them Brawndo cause it's got what plants crave), grow, harvest,..., Profit. Almost anyone can start from a couple seeds and grow something in a garden with about 2 minutes of instruction.
Software Development is a more 'high skilled' beast just because it can't be "dumbed down" in the same way. I mean yeah you could say 'you write some code' but that doesn't explain anything. Explaining how to program takes a bit more effort on the part of the teacher and the student. You really can't make a 5 year old understand programming (growing) code with a couple minutes of conversation in the same way you can have them understand 'farming' vegetables by telling them to plant a seed and water it enough (but not to much) each day. I know I'm super oversimplifying but that to me has always been sort of the crux behind why people tend to thing farming is a low skill occupation.
I'm not disagreeing just sort of pointing out where I think the idea of farming as a low skill job comes from.
However, a garden with a few plants is to farming as 'print "Hello World"' is to software development, and I was definitely doing the latter at 5 years of age without any trouble.
I'm too young, but older farmers have suggested to me that it was television portraying farmers in a not so intelligent light that brought on that reputation. Wikipedia hints at this as well: 'Starting with The Real McCoys, a 1957 ABC program, US television had undergone a "rural revolution", a shift towards situation comedies featuring "naïve but noble 'rubes' from deep in the American heartland"'[1].
Agreed on all counts. Was just explaining why I believe the division to be a thing. People have no real concrete concept of what programmers DO. But they can abstract farming down to growing a bean in 1st grade.
Of course it's not a law of nature. I don't understand the way of thinking that leads to considering this (or Moore's law, to bring up another particularly common example) as a law. Inductive reasoning, "it has always been like this, thus it always will be" is not science. One needs to understand casual relationships that give rise to the supposed "law" before asserting that future will look like the past.
I don't think that looking at particular industries being automated is very helpful. I'd like to propose a different model: let's put available jobs in a continuum from low-skill to high-skill (in creativity/cognitive load) jobs. In this model we see how technology continues to automate-away lower-skill jobs, climbing up the hill of difficulty.
In the past, surplussed workers could find other jobs, because the way we automated things was also low-skill; therefore for every lost trade, new ones were created in its place. But the same technological progress that allows us to automate more and more difficult jobs is upgrading the process of automation. There are less and less low-skill jobs produced per low-skill job automated, and the moment we reach the point when this ratio (automated/new) is > 1, surplussed workers will be increasingly unable to get themselves employed. (Mind you, this is not inductive reasoning, there is a good casual model underneath explaining why this is happening, but I think it's obvious enough that I don't need to elaborate on it now).
There's one type of jobs that are, and I believe will be for some time, exempt from the "march of progress" - jobs that require human element. Those are jobs like receptionists in hotels, doctors, psychologists - who we can connect with on emotional/trust based level. I'd personally bet that those jobs are safer than, say, tech sector, which will get automated away eventually if the progress continues.