Blue Collar Workers Getting Replaced With Machines

I think it actually becomes better and better as less and less people are needed to keep the machine running.

Which isn't what's happening. Less people needed to run things? Fine, we create new things people will run.

Socialism rocks!

Why? If it doesn't have a purpose, there's no point in building it.

Sometimes the building of it is the purpose.

The main problem being that most of the existing career paths that would remain viable after this shift is completed suffer from one or both of a pair of issues. They are 1) perceived as not very interesting (like accounting, or office work), and/or 2) have a high entry barrier (like many academia jobs, or the creative jobs like being an author or musician).

If we could automate ALL labor, we've pretty much achieved post-scarcity. If we could, we should abolish work.

How would we eat, then? If work is not needed, capitalism is pointless. Mechanized socialism FTW!

Thread Hop: It's always the same thing. Technological advancement makes some jobs obsolete and creates some new ones, requiring different skills. It won't happen overnight though so don't panic, there won't be mass unemployment now, especially because new technologies tend to be very expensive

Yes, but the problem is that those poor buggers who get "left behind" aren't contributing.

And at the moment I've heard some stats that around about 20% of Americans are effectivly unemployed (I think it was in the independent, so don't quote me on this as I can't provide a source).

edited 10th Jun '11 1:29:18 PM by JosefBugman

It's what happens when you look at the theoretically work-eligible population, versus the published unemployment figures, which is just people actively looking for work.

I'm all for a move to post-scarcity, but you do run into some serious issues with becoming a Terminally Dependent Society. You also become even more likely to be dominated by the few people who run the system.

edited 10th Jun '11 1:33:25 PM by Fighteer

I know people who insist it's impossible to learn to grow corn and/or walk to Alaska.

I don't think we're moving in that direction, I think we're just lazy.

Growing corn in Alaska would be pretty tricky.

Not really, but it would be quite wasteful, as there are much better choices for foodcrops in that environment.

edited 10th Jun '11 1:58:30 PM by blueharp

It was the possiblity of doing either, not both that I was bringing up.

But that's beside the point. I think the coolest thing to do with our surplus population would be interstellar colonization, but that's a little ways off...

But really that's my point is that when you free up labour from doing other tasks, you open up their use to do other things.

But the counter to that is what if there's not enough to do for which that labor is suitable?

Retraining only has so much effectiveness.

edited 10th Jun '11 2:41:46 PM by blueharp

@Tzetze:

Basically, once humans manage to develop an environment were you don't even need to try anymore to survive, there's no longer a need to develop or evolve to become more intelligent or whatever. We're essentially stuck in a state of "Woopie do, what now?", and that any progress from then on is going to have to be derived from artificial competition, otherwise, why bother?

Did that clear that up?

Well it certainly sucked for those buggy whip makers when those horseless carriages were taking over the market. Some jobs will never come back, and that's when you diversify your skills and adapt it to another job.

When the Samurai were abolished, sword makers went into the tool-making business, and their products are among the highest of quality.

I think, in this economy the only way retraining people will work is if it involved teaching higher skills than those of the "blue collar" jobs. Tech is getting more complex. And factories will need an army of people to not only operate complex machinery, but to maintain them and upgrade them as well.

edited 10th Jun '11 5:41:49 PM by victorinox243

The problem with office work is that it's busy work in many cases, and thus easily gotten rid of even without automation. I'm best at secretarial work, but in hard times it's the secretary that goes first, because in the end everyone else in the office can take on a share of the organizing/customer handling/word processing/research/etc. the secretary was doing. (No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask?)

And as for those people saying "Well, horse breeders/buggy whip people managed to find new jobs in the end", the difference is in those cases the technologies that made them obsolete also opened new jobs to do, and it was only a few careers at a time being obsoleted. With these new advances coming up, they don't open up new job possibilities to replace the old, and they're poised to obsolete large swaths of career types. It's simply not comparable.

edited 10th Jun '11 5:42:13 PM by Jeysie

Well, I'm incredibly sorry that your skills in management, organization, and communicating with many people and getting things done on schedule are not applicable to any other job. Maybe you should use your time off to take classes for skills that will make you more valuable to a company.

edited 10th Jun '11 5:47:20 PM by victorinox243

Oh, does that mean you're offering to pay the thousands of dollars for me to go to college? How thoughtful of you. Plus my point was, office work is no panacea for displaced workers either.

edited 10th Jun '11 5:54:23 PM by Jeysie

Survival is practically possible without working in first world countries as it is, and the vast majority of employed people aren't working to progress humanity anyway.

No, I'm saying you should go do something about your obsolescence if you are so worried about it. It's the animals who give up running that fall prey to the predators first.

Some people can't run that fast. It's futile of them to try.

So perhaps they should pick another solution. Or perhaps they should have another choice besides dying.

Yeah. I'm never going to be an engineer, or a doctor, or a scientist, or any other high-tier intellectual work; I don't possess that kind of raw talent. Nor are most people smart/skilled enough for that. And right now, those are the only types of jobs that are "safe", at least in the mid-term.