[KaiserJeep]

Obsolete: No longer appropriate for the purpose it was obtained due either to the availability of better alternatives or change in user requirements.

Automation, artificial intelligence, and adaptable general purpose humanoid robots will replace half the human jobs that exist today by 2046. Those 80 million people and the hundreds of thousands of people that join the job market each month will all be unemployed. The ratio of employed to unemployed in 2046 will approximately reverse the present 78/22 to an estimated 25/75, three out of four people will be unemployed.

Human workers are rapidly going obsolete. The middle class is not dwindling, it is being decimated. Even if you or your kids are among the fortunate 1/4th who have employment, the value of human labor is rapidly approaching zero. Those employed will not be middle class, as each wage earner and family will have to be taxed as to support 3 other families. Nor will they earn much to begin with.

Once upon a time, high technology was thought of as a major new source of jobs. In actual truth, tech provides one job for every 8.3 jobs it automates and eliminates. Microsoft, Apple, and Google - the three largest tech companies on the planet, employ worldwide in total less people than join the job market in the USA alone in a single month.

Obsolete is a new video documentary available streaming on Amazon Prime. It is 55 minutes long and worth your time.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e're told the future doesn't need us. With the rise of technology, humans will have to be very clever - and very careful - not to be left behind, because human labor is rapidly losing its value. Is this the real motivation behind a secretive effort to reduce population and centralize control? Maybe the biggest threat we face isn't just automation, but the risk that humans are becoming obsolete.

[KaiserJeep]

You miss the point. All of those that remain employed are performing the approximately 25% of the jobs that machines cannot do, for the reasons you state. The remaining 75% of jobs have already been obsoleted by present technology, and are being lost as we speak. Within three decades, the transition will be complete.

Rather than making the wrong assumptions about this material, and engaging in a disconnected thread dialogue with me, I'd suggest you just watch the video. Then after you are up to speed, I would be happy to discuss the topic with you.

We are both obsolete, by the way. It does not take a machine with human or near-human capabilities to automate most jobs. It takes a machine that can perform the work-related tasks only - when supervised by another human familiar with such. That single human and his automata then exist where perhaps four to eight people were formerly employed.

This happened to me. During the last year of my employment, I was interacting with a variety of engineering design systems, HR systems, payroll systems, performance assessment systems, budgeting systems, etc. I lost the part time availability of the last human administrator (by then called a "Concierge Facilitator") that was working for my department and four others.

When asked about my recent career, I was fond of responding "I used to be a group of 19 people." It was gallows humor, and when they offered early retirement, plus a cash bonus and medical insurance to bridge me to Medicare, I accepted.

[KaiserJeep]

All I can say is that none of your assumptions about the nature of this material are especially accurate, and IMHO you need to see it. But it's your time, and the ideas in this video will not comfort you.

[Cog]

At least in construction, whether we are talking roads, bridges, buildings, parking lots, etc, humans will always have to be involved in the process. There are thousands of judgment calls made daily on construction sites. You never have a perfect read of preexisting condition and you have to compensate for those unknowns during the construction process. What are those buried tree trunks doing in the middle of a proposed building slab foundation? What is this drainage line doing here? Its not on the plans. In my 30 years of working in construction surveying and engineering, nothing goes to plan and I mean never. Humans judgment and ability to revise things on the fly is something machines simply can not do.

For repetitive tasks that involve the same conditions every minute, hour, and day, robots do fine. Weld a joint right here. But in the real world where the conditions are changing or unknown they are about useless.

[Subjectivist]

Right now the government 'invests' enourmous subsidies in the form of tax breaks for every bit of automation companies install. Any time they desire to do so the politicians can reverse this policy by removing subsidies for automation and instead giving tax breaks for hiring more workers instead of fewer. Ultimately this would pay at least a goid portion for itself because more workers means more income tax, more medicare/medicaid funds, more Social Security payments flowing into government coffers.

[KaiserJeep]

Without disagreeing with the last two posts, there still will exist a situation where one out of four is employed. Note that there are simply not going to be many construction projects in a world where 3/4ths of the population is unemployed.

Employment in this new technological economy will not ever increase again, absent a war. It will only decrease.

I'm not understanding the resistance here. After all, peak (conventional) oil happened years ago, and we are now in Kunstler's "Long Emergency" which is a centuries-long process and not an event. From here on out, we celebrate de-growth rather than growth. With very few exceptions, you are as well off today as you will ever be, and as time passes, you will be increasingly uncomfortable, and your kids will surpass that and be in mild distress in the second half of their lives.

We talked about it for years, but oil did peak and now is in decline. The world is in the economic doldrums and yet still we are reproducing and there will be 8 billion humans on the planet by 2020, and the environment will be dying faster than ever.

Enjoy the crash, as it has been happening for years. I never expected that there would be people who did not notice when it happened.

[Ibon]

This obsolescence can not be blamed on muslims or mexican immigrants. Cannot be blamed on off shoring factory jobs either. Cannot be blamed on failed trade agreements.

Let's look forward to a time when our government stops scapegoating and addresses a major social problem of dislocated workers due to automation.

So how would a government cope with a reverse in the employed / unemployed as KJ pointed out if we are looking at 75% unemployment in the next 30-40 years.

How do we engage the unemployed besides military engagements and incarceration?

Welfare will take on a whole new meaning.

[Shaved Monkey]

Build a wall to keep the robots out

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shaved Monkey', 'B')uild a wall to keep the robots out

[vtsnowedin]

We must change the tax laws so that the robots pay the taxes that used to be paid by the humans they have displaced.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'T')his obsolescence can not be blamed on muslims or mexican immigrants. Cannot be blamed on off shoring factory jobs either. Cannot be blamed on failed trade agreements.

Let's look forward to a time when our government stops scapegoating and addresses a major social problem of dislocated workers due to automation.

So how would a government cope with a reverse in the employed / unemployed as KJ pointed out if we are looking at 75% unemployment in the next 30-40 years.

How do we engage the unemployed besides military engagements and incarceration?

Welfare will take on a whole new meaning.

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada, I have rarely read a post of yours with such heartfelt emotion. However, I think you made a few errors.

Firstly, TPTB are NOT encouraging automation. Automation is occurring because the technology is now available, robots can work virtually 24X7, the work product is more precise, labor unrest is zip, and the profits are greater with robots rather than humans doing jobs robots can do. There is an unbroken evolutionary line back to the automated looms and the weavers that chucked their "sabots" into the water-powered machinery. The last enabling technology was digital electronics, and it is a huge enabler. I remember my parents working for months to afford a giant screen 21" B&W TV set full of tubes - so many tubes that the orange glow lit up the wall behind it. A few months back, I spent so little on a 55" HDTV that I was even astonished - technology marches on is the message.

Nor can you blame the "elites" for policies that encourage automation. The stockholders of a corporation set the goals, and those Middle Class folks are savage in their pursuit of profits for their 401K's and IRA's, so that they too can quit working, collect SS benefits and government healthcare.

Those same folks are the ones who decide to buy and eat the products of corporate farms and "food technologists" rather healthy and organic produce. I'm guilty of that myself even if I shop at the local Farmer's Market. There is no denying that packaged food is cheaper, quicker to prepare, and leaves you more time and money for other things - which is why the average American now spends less than 6% of their income to eat, aside from restaurants.

The consumer decides everything. The stockholders set the corporate goals. The most anybody in government ever does is decide to invade a Middle Eastern country rather than face angry voters, or a Congress intent on exposing sex in the Oval Office, or covert arms sales. We forever and a day blame our problems on others, when our own desires and appetites and greed are the underlying causes.

Believe me, these are problems that government is powerless to solve, and we caused them ourselves, by doing what comes natural in order to satisfy our own desires. We brought about our own obsolescence.

Which would not be a surprise to anyone who actually watched the video above. Believe me, it is worth 55 minutes of your time.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'W')e must change the tax laws so that the robots pay the taxes that used to be paid by the humans they have displaced.

[Cog]

People that are idle get up to no good in a short amount of time.

Now if I'm in the semi-skilled class living a higher class lifestyle because I am working all is well. But if I am one who gets a guaranteed existence check which gives me just the basics of food, entertainment, and housing, then I'm always going to want more than that. Since there will be no jobs for me, my only option to improve my lot in life is to steal it from the class who has it. Why eat Soylent green when I can knock someone in the head and eat steak?

[Tanada]

I don't believe you in the sense that I disagree with your statement of opinion as fact. In your opinion there is nothing that could be done to derail 'progress' into the super automated future where only 25 percent of the world population even has the possibility of getting a job. In my opinion there are thousands of things that could be done as a matter of government policy, the problem is the fossils in power do not see those steps as improvements.

Kaiser what is your definition of Progress?

That is the fundamental question that it all boils down too. The theory that 'you can't stop Progress' has been beat into our culture for at least the last 50 years but nobody in power is considering what the definition of Progress is any longer. They just assume that more automation is Progress so it must be promoted and encouraged every way they can think of. The same goes with farming, up through the 1960's the government encouraged farms of all sizes with a diversified set of crops. Starting very early in the 1970's government policy switched to 'Progress' farming mono crops hedgerow to boundary line with super specialized tools and equipment based on each type of crop. If you consider it Progress to create massive fields of monocrops that are totally dependent on fossil fuel inputs of fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides based on petroleum then sure, that is progress. However that completely ignores the vulnerability of monocrop culture growing patterns. If any crop disease comes along that favors one of those monocrops, like say Soybeans, then those millions of acres of soybeans growing border to border create a perfect incubator for that new blight to spread in an unstoppable fashion. Even worse, because we have now so specialized agriculture those farmers have to grow soybeans because they do not have the equipment to plant or harvest alternatives. At the same time feed lots use a lot of soy and corn to fatten up the livestock in the last month or two before slaughter, take away the soy crop and very suddenly they have no balance product to feed along side the corn to keep the livestock healthy in those feed lots.

So I repeat, what is your definition of progress? To specialize ourselves to the point of removing all flexibility and all capacity to rapidly adapt to existential change?

Everything we know of in the physical world has a sigmoid curve of development. You start out with very small improvements, then you have a big burst of rapid change. Those water powered mechanical looms are an example of that. Then along came steam power and finally electric power. But like all sigmoid curves the law of diminishing returns kicks in. As a society as a whole we are now well past the point where additional automation benefits society. Now it only benefits that tiny percentage of people who own the system being automated, and like so many such the social expense of dumping unemployed workers into the social safety net is their way of avoiding responsibility for socializing the costs and privatizing the profits.



IOW stop peeing off your balcony and telling me its raining out. Progress has to mean improvement for the whole society, not just those in the select few who can socialize their expenses without concern.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'I') don't believe you in the sense that I disagree with your statement of opinion as fact. In your opinion there is nothing that could be done to derail 'progress' into the super automated future where only 25 percent of the world population even has the possibility of getting a job. In my opinion there are thousands of things that could be done as a matter of government policy, the problem is the fossils in power do not see those steps as improvements.

Kaiser what is your definition of Progress?

That is the fundamental question that it all boils down too. The theory that 'you can't stop Progress' has been beat into our culture for at least the last 50 years but nobody in power is considering what the definition of Progress is any longer. They just assume that more automation is Progress so it must be promoted and encouraged every way they can think of.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'Y')ou miss the point. All of those that remain employed are performing the approximately 25% of the jobs that machines cannot do, for the reasons you state. The remaining 75% of jobs have already been obsoleted by present technology, and are being lost as we speak. Within three decades, the transition will be complete.