Automation=billionaires only ones left alive?

[oscar111]

If automation gets to where crops, iron mines, and robot assembly factories, and all other production is automated,

then the owner billionaires will not need 99% of humans. Perhaps they will sterilize us... who needs us?

Anyone see any reason why this will not happen?

Is the future a hundred billionaire Republicans and zero Democrats?

[number6]

1. or cheap Chinese slave laborers.

...If automation gets to where crops, iron mines, and robot assembly factories, and all other production is automated...

either way no middle class jobs ....

[rainy]

2. Revolution!

W'll have to storm the WH and shut it down. There are more of us than them. The discontent will grow until the crooks are thrown out.

[barbaraann]

3. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates both donated heavily to population control.

Make of that what you will.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

17. Bill Gates supports Monopolies and Warren Buffet supports Das Gropenator

Make of that what you will.

[phaseolus]

4. an engineer's view

Things break down. Some processes need human oversight for safety reasons. Automation components go in and out of production. Regulatory and legal issues force changes in automated systems for compliance. Software vendors throw new stuff at you unexpectedly. New product line introductions, and old product line obsolescence, force users of automated systems to retool production lines.

Typically, automation replaces a bunch of very low paid jobs with a smaller number of higher-paid jobs -- someone's gotta operate and maintain all of the fancy stuff. And for people like myself (elec engineer/electrical controls designer/PLC programmer/operator interface designer) there's basically lifetime employment.

So, no, if you automate something it changes things but you don't just feed in raw materials, shovel finished things out the other end, watch it run forever without attention, and cash checks.

[phaseolus]

5. And another thing --

Automated equipment is very expensive to buy and very expensive to run and maintain. There are places even in the U.S. where humans are available at wage rates low enough to keep automation from being cost-effective...

[oscar111]

8. Phase, ..

what of self-programming electrical design computers? They will put even you into the field looking for field mice to eat.

there is no solid barrier to progress in automation.. you only cited current miniobstacles to fast progress.

As to cheaper humans, that hasnt stopped car robots from tossing out cheap humans, somehow.

Also, soldier robots will be available, say in ten years.

What ought we do about this scenario? Vote bush out is a good beginning. Guaranteed jobs for all will be a full solution.
http://www.njfac.org
Advisors incl Robert Reich, Galbraith, Helen Prejean, two Nobelists, and the Archbishop of milwaukee. What more could you ask ? LOL

[foo_bar]

10. not in our lifetime(s)

you may as well pack a suitcase for the supernova. Computers will continue to make people obsolete, people will continue making babies, and the differential will slough off into horrendous wars or blissful eudaimonia or whatever. The upper bound on human population is food, not jobs. As so-called productivity approaches infinity, reality television approaches reality.

[amazona]

20. i seriously doubt that

My partner does automation for factories in the Mississippi Delta and I'm sorry, there is no lower paid worker in the U.S. than the Mississippi Delta. The computerized factory just plain does it cheaper than even minimum wage workers. His entire job for the last decade-plus has been putting people out of their jobs...

Agreeing to work for a low wage will not save your job. Even assuming you could pay your bills on $5.30 an hour which is fairly doubtful.

[foo_bar]

7. you're quite right (barring a few generations of nanotechnology)

but I enjoy the idea of "storming the WH" to evict robo-Buffett from his world headquarters cannily located in a big white house. Maybe bring pitchforks to jab the terminators in the groin.

[david_vincent]

9. Right

Am I the only DUer who works in a factory? I spend my working
hours - 8 hours a day, full time, and there's one and sometimes
2 other shifts - doing nothing but making sure the "magic" machines
run the way they're supposed to. I can tell you from experience
that these machines are incredibly complex and wildly cantankerous. There's a lot of down time when the machines are being coaxed back
into a functioning state while the rest of the crew stands around
waiting. Not to mention the constant monitoring of the product
to keep bad pieces from making it out the door.

[kcwayne]

6. Well, they will still need to keep around some humans to torture

for amusement.

[Centre_Left]

11. The US economy...

Has always created more jobs than it lost to factors such as automation. I have no reason to think that that trend will not continue well into the future. My only fear is that the US educational system will fail to provide people with the skills necessary to survive in a technology-driven, globalized economy.

[mhr]

12. Unemployed 44 Months, BSEE, MBA, Commercial Pilot, Veteran

Wrong you are, the US is losing more jobs than it is creating. I am living proof.

Go take your easy assumptions somewhere else.

[Centre_Left]

15. The US is losing more jobs.

I have never said that the US was not losing more jobs than it was creating. Without a doubt, the economy is losing jobs because it it is experiencing a mild, gradual recovery from the the turmoil of the past four years, includng the bursting of the late 90s investment bubble, the WTC attack, and the collapse of several corporations due to fraudulent accounting. However, most of the evidence indicates that the job losses are cyclical in nature and therefore temporary.

Although I sympathize with your plight, I will, for the record, I take my "easy" assumptions wherever I please.

[kalian]

13. Where's your proof?

Where is the evidence? What jobs are you talking about? :shrug:

[Centre_Left]

14. Some Proof

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871540940/qid=1078147517//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-1667203-6991363?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

In this book, the authors point out that, over the period of 1980-2002, the US experienced a 23.9% population increase as well as burstof corporate downsizing and outsourcing. Nevertheless, the number of employed Americans grew by 37.4%. They concluded that “the creation of new jobs always overwhelms the destruction of old jobs by a huge margin.” They also found that more Americans are employed now, in absolute and proportional terms, than almost any other time in American history.

Most of the new jobs will be created will be in IT, business services, and health-services as more medium-sized businesses struggle to exploit increasingly cheap software to raise their productivity. The Bureau of Labor statistics predicts that the demand for computer support specialists and software engineers will double between 2000 and 2010. The demand for database administrators will increase even more rapidly, a point I personally can attest to since I, as an IT major, I have seen how desperate companies are to find people skilled in developing databases. In fact, I would say having an Oracle certification combined with internship experience guarantees a college graduate a job.

Another reason for my skepticism about people's claims that all decent paying jobs are suddenly going to vanish is because similar claims have been made so many times in the past. Just to point out one example, in the 50s, many manufacturing jobs moved South because of the lure of low wages, prompting displaced workers to argue that the economy in the Northeast would soon collapse.
That scenario has obviously not happened. Moreover, job migration was of enormous benefit to poor people living in the South, particularly my grandfather and father who both avoided poverty by finding relatively high-paying jobs in the new manufacturing sector. Decades later, the same process is now repeating itself in the South as manufacturing jobs head overseas, and Southerners are making the exact same arguments their peers in the North once made. Yet, if history is any guide, their fears are not justified.

[mhr]

16. Ancient History - If Your Premise Is True Then Why Can't People Like Me

find jobs?

Don't give me the "more training" mantra.

I have plenty of both training and experience.

The few headhunters I have spoken with say that the Jobs are just not there for older experienced workers.

I know roughly 100 other unemployed professionals with similar experience and stories.

[amazona]

21. older people not employable

Until we get some sort of universal/socialized medicine, older people are not going to be employable -- who wants them on their company health insurance? Most of the older folks I know are well aware that they do not have the option of finding another job...it ain't gonna happen. They just have to hope they can hold the one they have until Medicare age.

[stevebreeze]

22. training and experience? sounds to employers like you might want pay?

the problem is not just lack of jobs. It is lack of well paying jobs.

from the BLS; these growth jobs....notice most of them pay like shit.


with the exception of postsecondary teachers and nurses, these are almost all very low pay gigs. Wag inequality is the result of 24 years of tax-cut-for-the-rich and wage cuts for the rest of us republican voodoo economics.
:kick:

[w4rma]

18. Automation = welfare state. (n/t)

[amazona]

19. I believe this is the future

I don't believe the super-rich will tolerate the rest of us living on the planet (or living at all) for more than a few more decades. They can easily innoculate themselves against some disease like a super-Ebola and then let it run wild. Can you blame them? Traffic is already terrible. They are already trying to kill us in slow, deniable ways like denying health care to U.S. citizens who are poor or lower middle class but I believe they will get impatient at how long it's taking for us to get out of the way.

Killing Social Security/Medicare is a way to kill several million old people but it's still a drop in the bucket when there are 6 billion of us that they want out of the way.