get really crazy!! technology man oh man

Terminator anyone?

Much like what the British mill workers said in Britain 200 years ago.

Yet mankind, even as it develops new technology, also adapts to new technology.

In every other industrial revolution, machines enhanced the capacity of people to do work better. Better sawmills meant better lumber and more building, so economies expanded and more people got employed and had money to spend.

Today machines are REPLACING people and concentrating wealth in the hands of people that can afford the machines. Unless there is a workable system for wealth sharing and population growth control, we will get to the point where those that can afford advanced machines will turn them on the masses that can't.

Look, I am a technologist. I work with smart machines and love the capabilities that most bring to society. But I also realize that this machine age is like no other in our history, and if we don't think about the consequences of the decisions that we are making as a society, we could well doom ourselves.

Last edited Mon Jan 22, 2018, 06:21 PM - Edit history (1)

Someone will design the hardware and create the coding. A factory will use skilled workers to operate the precision machinery to produce the components. Skilled workers will install the automated system, calibrate it, maintain it and repair it, and those will be new, high paying jobs for workers with a better education and training. Unskilled workers will still stock and clean. Customer service will still be around. It will just be different than what we are used to.

And a good quarter of the workforce out there are just not emotionally or mentally capable of handling a job that requires more advanced training or able to handle the "job of the future" - the contractor/Gig economy that's been developing over the past decade because of technocrats who think that since they were exceptional and driven enough to succeed, anyone can do that.

I'm not a Luddite, I know how technology advances - honestly there are only going to be so many stocking and cleaning jobs that won't be taken over by robots - that are already doing those jobs in many warehouses.
And only so many small businesses are willing to hire someone just to stock and clean even now.

The first job my best friend in high school back in 1976 was to work the switchboard at one of the district COs for Pacific Bell in Seattle, along with 25 other (typically women) on her 8 hour shift. This was a 24 hour switchboard.
These were the people you could contact by dialing "0" on your phone to ask for help finding a phone number or an address, or to get basic "Yellow Pages" information from.
Likewise, the six months before I went into boot camp, I worked as a minimum file clerk in Student Records at the local State University, pulling files for the secretaries to make changes to on manual typewriters, and returning them. There were about 30 people in that division.
Both these jobs - jobs that would have employed over 200 people, are gone forever due to technology.

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Unlike the ubiquitous comparison of buggy and whip makers being replaced by automobile manufacturing, there was not a 1 to 1 crossover for various labor positions. The horse carriage makers could - and did transition to upholstery and other semi-skilled assembly type labor at the various automobile and machinery plants that were popping up in their places.
The fact is that transitioning from horse and buggy to automobiles didn't create much unemployment as "their businesses went bust" - there's a family story about one of my great-grand uncle in Kansas City who easily re-tooled his buggy supply business in 1912 or so to auto supply business and ended up not only keeping his employees, but growing his business enough to sell it off for a tidy sum to a bigger manufacturer by 1926 and retiring to Florida in a nice Palm Beach estate.
And most of the larger carriage makers were already transitioning to auto, trolley and bus manufacturing by the turn of the 19th century.
Blacksmiths could go on to factory jobs in tool and die positions - and if they were more farrier than blacksmith, they could take Veterinarian positions as medical positions for both people and animals were also expanding during this period.
Coachmen, and stable hands transitioned drivers and dock loaders. They all had positions they could walk into with less training someone from the general public would need, because as a bonus, they would already have had experience working similar work.
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But from the 1980's on, the amount and type of positions available actually decreased due to advances in technology. Those jobs my friend and I had right after high school - gone forever, replaced by a computer network that could easily be run and supported by 10 people.
True, those employees could go back to college and get a Computer Engineering degree or a Software Programming or Admin certificate, but even then, Private (and Public and Public Sector) Employers who used to run 25 - 30 Admin staff and 6 - 10 Personnel staff were employing only 5 Admin staff and 2 Personnel Staff.
Likewise Financial and Insurance services that used to have 50 employees now had less than half that - and most of them were now lower-paid salesmen on commission instead of the analysts and mathematicians that used to work in the back rooms running the numbers for growth and market strategies.

Basically, since the Reagan era, those semi-skilled who lost jobs to technology improvements and, for whatever reason, couldn't make it back to college had to find something else that was considered "semi-skilled" - generally retail, service or light manufacturing - putting stress and driving down wages in those positions. I remember hearing the grousing about "high school graduates" having to compete with a couple dozen 35 -50 year olds who had been laid off and were applying for the same (union) cashier's position at the local Safeway.

Or these former workers just quit looking for work and hoped to have a spouse that could support them - or went into contracted sink or swim type work like long-haul trucking, real estate, home/caretaking, or MLM to hope to manage the house payment they used to be able to make on their previous job. There were times I considered those types of jobs when the economy was contracting, and I was in the supposedly booming technical field!

The fact that the US is considered to be at full employment - that there are enough people working that most of the jobs available are filled - but there is still a significant number of people who are can be considered under employed or "temporarily employed" is very worrisome to anyone who has done a study of economics and history. Especially since employers - especially those in manufacturers and retail (the most reliable "last jobs available to the average person&quot - are embracing more technology/less labor.

This hadn't been a problem before, as the "Baby Bust / GenXers" who replaced the Boomers didn't need as many jobs to maintain their standard of living. However, the Millenials are a significantly larger population, and they are looking for meaningful paying work now, in a current job market is still struggling to support tail end Boomers as well as everyone else. Replace more multiple positions with technology as was done in the 1980's, and you end up with not enough jobs and too many applicants.

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Less Jobs = More welfare. Or Revolution, if there isn't a way to subsidize the extra available labor and encourage a more flexible workplace - maybe where the average workweek is only 3 days, and all paid tasking is shared between "shift" teams, and people are encouraged to work at art, hobbies and common volunteer work for subsidies if there aren't any jobs available.
Me, I don't kid myself about how this nation's "Small World Conservatives" view social economics - most of them would be perfectly happy if 1/2 the population of this country disappeared - so long as it consisted of people they didn't know and anyone else who might be currently under-employed or is needing any sort of assistance.
They are rooting for the Malthusian "lifeboat society" - toss out anyone who will be a burden so they can get on with their quest for comfort.

Haele

Abbie Hoffman. All I need now is an unattended airline counter so's I can grab a ticket to Seattle.

I sometimes use the self-pay at Wal-Mart, and at the grocery store called Pick and Save here in Sheboygan.

And I don't have a credit card.

And we've had those in my office for years.

Actually in the building I'm in now they have big coolers and racks full of stuff all with credit card pay on the honor system. It certainly isn't anything new Amazon is doing here, just bigger.

I'm very picky about the food I buy, and that takes more time, but that isn't my main complaint. It's that after I put the items in my cart, at the checkout I have to take them out of the cart again to be scanned, then wait for the clerk to put them in the bags I bring, then lift up the heavy bags and put the food back in the cart one more time.

If an item is charged when I pick it up, then I could sort products in the bags as I shop and just leave when I'm done. That would eliminate a lot of redundancy and make shopping much easier for me. How would that system would work if I picked up an item to read the label or look at it more closely, or later I decided I didn't want it?

Unfortunately, or not, we'd better get used seeing these unskilled, redundant jobs being phased out to automation. The skill sets needed in the 21st century are going to be much different than the menial labor jobs we're accustomed to.

Trust me; that area is absolutely dominated by Amazon and the service industries that support and largely depend on it. If you don't work there and your car isn't already parked in one of their lots or your bus stop isn't right nearby there is NO reason to go anywhere near the place.

The potential for it to spread countrywide is, I think, relatively low. Self checkout is in most of the major stores here and frankly it doesn't seem to have shut down any cashier positions. I think people like people to be involved. You get to abdicate the responsibility of working the machinery and loading the bags. You get to say hello and chit-chat, even if it's just a polite exchange. You get to ask questions. You see someone familiar. Psychologically those things are more important than they're given credit for being.

Last edited Mon Jan 22, 2018, 10:43 PM - Edit history (1)

So I'm somewhat familiar with that area and you're right it's gotten totally crazy. I wanted to go to the Downtown REI a couple of weeks ago and couldn't find any on street parking. I figured I would be there less than an hour so I didn't want to pay the ridiculous cost of parking in one of the garages in the area.

There's a left turn onto Mercer that will make you weep.