Laborless Society

As smart technology quickly replaces labor, how will society need to change to prevent us going Mad Max on each other?

money.cnn.com/2015/05/06/autos/self-driving-truck/
youtube.com/watch?v=UtBa9yVZBJM

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Governement can forbid the use of it if it would damage the economy.

>Using government to impede technological progress because it threatens jobs.
We're going to freeze all progress and say society is the best it can be right now to preserve poor paying jobs that people hate to do? That doesn't sound like a worthwhile solution on any front.

Oh, so you'd rather want your tax money to be spend on welfare because Kaneesha and Tyron are unable to find a job?

You talk about technological progress like it were some kind of race.

Major corporations are the first to go laborless. Kaneesha and Tyrone will be the only ones that still have traditional jobs soon due to their community having small businesses like the barber shop.

please learn economics 101

I don't like the loss of humanity these sort of machines bring, I would pay more to deal with a real person

I doubt you or anyone else is going to actually offer to pay more for human truckers.

>Tyrone
>Jobs

kek, barbershops will employ less than 1% of the black population. It is only going to get worse.

Everyone else will so you're not going to be able to find businesses that use real people except super-high-end-luxury establishments. Hope you're rich.

Poor people in majority black/immigrant communities with a tradition of small businesses are going to do far better than poor white communities which tend to not even know their neighbors.

You clearly don't know anything about white communities then. I live in a small farm-town and everyone here buys local. It is also 99% white and educated. All the money gets made off other communities and spreads within itself.

I did qualify with "poor".

45% of my town is sub-poverty line. The crime is extremely low and you only here sirens when someone from out of town didn't use their blinker or something.

I would love to see just ONE equivalent in the black """"""community""""""

>black/immigrant communities
>tradition of small businesses
I see you've never lived anywhere but with your parents in a middle class 99% white suburban neighborhood.

Seriously. All the gas-stations and liquor stores are owned by Asian/Indians. All the credit unions and banks are Jews/Whites. The only thing actually black is the barbershop. Immigrants also eat at each others restaurants but that is about it.

Side note, i literally know no black people on welfare, swriously im as surprised as you once i thought about it. I do however know atleast 4 asian families and 2 white people who are

>educated small farm town
>45% of my town is sub-poverty line.
Small farm towns are economically inefficient so the fact that everyone is apparently educated and less than 50% are below the poverty line (I assume that's the national line, not adjusted to the region or those people would have already left) tells me that as a unit your small farm town is by no means poor and are there out of choice.

>>small farm town

Yes good for you, you have work ethic

Über workaholic corporate mommy and daddy living in culdesacs in florida and los angeles. Those people dont have applicable skills. Their jobs done on computers are literaly replacable by computers and at the moment doable by computers. These people have no job once the program is designed to do what they do nonstop for free.

As much as you might not want to admit it. You fall into the same category as some minorities. Because you all buy and provide localyour community will be ok because youll sell up to the rich people who can afford your produce and provide for yourself. Likewise imigrants provide services for people outside their communities to put back into their own. Not all, but ones who do, you fall into the same category with.

My point was for rural working class communities. I understand that upper middle-class white fucks in gated communities don't know each other. I just took at as you not understanding the complexities outside of that.

It is like when the "no white american culture" thing gets thrown out there. Mine and neighboring towns have an annual event at least every month. Festivals, Music, etc... Mostly old German shit.

>the solution to minimal wage is more government regulation
I dont even know if this is bait or not.

the solution to unemployment due to minimal wage*

honestly its pretty damn simple. tge labor market wouldn't be replaced, it'd simply shift. rather than work at mickeydicks the low level workers would move either be forced to adapt and acquire the skills for slightly better sales or retail positions that are less easy to replace with robots, or move down to manual labor positions that can't yet be replaced by robots.

you can't impede advancement, it's going to happen sooner or later. its simply reducing redundancy.

As the automation progresses and more and more people will be forced to fight over less and less available jobs (like thousands of applicants to 1 job), the government and the big corporations will need additional riot police and security guards to suppress the inevitable protests.

Weaponized robots aren't very good atm and it will take a long time until they will be able to fully replace human meatshields.

>manual labor positions that can't yet be replaced by robots
Those don't exist. The only manual labor positions that are not majorly replaced by automation are ones where a bean counter has decided the labor market is so saturated that the cost of human labor is not and will not for the foreseeable future rise above the preliminary costs of automation (having to actually create and test the technology themselves) but of course if someone else makes that technology for them, they'll use it if it costs less to purchase and operate than people's wages.

Nevermind that robots won't pass muster for doing unsupervised first aid for a while.

Basically, if your job requires first aid of any sort or more advanced medical knowledge, you're safe.

>Their jobs done on computers are literaly replacable by computers and at the moment doable by computers.
Are you trying to say that all tasks currently done on computers are to be automated in the near future?

You realize how wrong this is, right?

What will this mean for the average population if automation did most of everything? How would you spend your days, user?

Working in one of the many thousands of jobs that can't be automated.

Working in the field of automating the thousands of jobs doesn't think can be automated.

Most jobs, yes.

You have no idea how far programming has advanced

H-hey
What if we eliminated minimum wage?

Those machines aren't worth the capital they tie up if we can get employees willing to do the job for $5 hr.

It's almost as if the problem was caused by more government and the solution requires l-less government?.......

>let's disincentivize progress by increasing poverty
The topic is how to prevent us going Mad Max, not speeding it up.

What if we just sabotaged the robots so costs of automating would just increase?

I'm a developer for an enterprise-level company.

At the end of the day, someone has to make design decisions and implement them.

We abstract out more and more every day, so programming is now essentially duct taping 30 libraries and passing information to and from them all.

That's great.

But the vast majority of people who work on computers do shit like excel, sql and other things that are easily automatized.

Seems like your idea is aiming for roughly the same employment niche that proposed and I doubt they scale well.

>At the end of the day, someone has to make design decisions and implement them.
There are major pushes for general AI going on right now, the end result being all types of work (creative included) are under threat of heavy amounts of automation. That doesn't mean jobs will be gone but will have far fewer positions and be done in collaboration with AI Because at the end of the day, someone has to make design decisions but there's no reason you'll be making them alone and you probably won't be doing much at all in the implementation process.

That screen would have herpes and aids at the end of every day

Theyll just wxpand the welfare state to keep the poor sedated. We already have VR and soylent and were legalizing weed...

Already there are less and less general labor jobs and more tech- and personal jobs.

1. As long as labor is replaced with machines, humans will be needed to build/regulate/program machines.
2. Humans need other humans.

Society will never be truly labor-less so long as the human psyche requires labor. Rather, labor will be invented based on needs and desires. Primitive man labored to survive; modern man has luxury-professions like entertainers and thinkers that would not survive in a society that could satisfy only the bare minimum requirements of survival.

how can you forbid the use of automation?

did you even think while writing your post?

Factories already exist that can operate lights out for a month without any human interaction.

Makes you wonder why people wish for American manufacturing to make a comeback (judging from the applause at Trump rallies) when soon enough, the only steady low-skill human jobs at these places will be quality assurance at the end of the assembly line.

That isn't programming.

That's data entry, and yes, programmers like me are removing those jobs daily.

The same as I do now, NEET and leeching off my parents

No more paying hourly cashier, but prices stay the same? Fuck you I want my $1 McDouble back.

We were talking about jobs done on computers, not about jobs in programming.

What i meant when I said "You have no idea how far programming has advanced" was that it advanced so far, most of computer based jobs can and will be replaced

Oh, fair enough.

I was looking at 'jobs done on computers' through my own biased lens of a developer.

At the same time, there are some situations where you're not necessarily removing a job, but enriching one.

For example, one of our accounting/sales folks has to spend a significant amount of time doing some manual fixing of invoicing. I am working on a program to replace this manual task.

This will not remove his job, but allow him to do the more qualitative aspect of his job, which is networking and selling, hopefully benefitting our company at the sole cost of my hours of work.

it's actually much cheaper to hire some slut to punch things into excel than to create a fully automated system

That's the H1B mentality.

It would be expensive if we paid an unskilled laborer a small amount to do that, considering the very negative effect a mistake can cause.

It's hard to put a price on clients not having faith in their invoices.

Lose enough goodwill and you've just lost a client that could pay for 10 of those sluts for a year.

The expense for the system is only a few days of my labor, which is infinitely cheaper than hiring some slut and paying benefits and having an extra employee to worry about.

Eh, no one's going to come up with a solution that actually helps the poor folk, so why not join them when the number of poor swells due to lost jobs?

Why would I want to be poor?

>programmers like me are removing those jobs daily.

Off to /r/futurology with you

What's the issue?

Data entry can be just silly, considering how easy it is to automate data processes these days.

Notice how you can cash checks by just taking a picture of it now.

That information is gleaned from simple image recognition, and removes the necessity for some old lady looking it over and punching that information into the computer.

Now, you just have someone who does a final approval for large amounts or edge cases, and the company is better for it.

Programming is removing jobs and making them better, and that's a good thing.

>1. As long as labor is replaced with machines, humans will be needed to build/regulate/program machines.
But far fewer of them than prior. See instagram with its 12 employees.

True. If you look at, say, a computer factory - machines building machines. Fascinating.

nothing personal, and nothing against data entry, where you're probably right, but the whole debate is usually led by people who are way too optimistic about AI development or robotics.

> thinking replacing the human service touch with machines is a good idea

It's sure worked out great with call centers.

I'm a SW tester in a multinational company and I specialize in test automation. I have been in this field for only one year and I'd like to have a career in it. At the moment I'm thinking about getting a bunch of certifications (at least partially on my dime).

This should be relatively safe investment, right? A lot of SW needs to be written, therefore a lot of it needs to be tested.

Unit tests and things like Xamarin's mobile unit farm will make testing jobs less and less needed.

Yeah, because it shouldn't be a debate, it should just be happening. People leading a debate are doing nothing except getting their own high from "being at the forefront of technology" (See: early adopters, one of the most reactionary, echochambery groups of users)

Ever since the dawn of man useless manual labor Niggers have been afraid of progress and advancement because of "muh manual labor jobs"

Don't worry. No matter how much society advances, we will always find menial, affirmative action jobs so useless Niggers have something to do.

Look at america's Unions & government jobs for example.

We CREATE inefficiency just so niggers have shit to do.

Craft beers, hipster eateries and etsy

Basic income sometime in the next 40 years

You must not like economic freedom.

Here:

>programmer here
kek. Get back to work Abinav, I mean Steve

All jobs going to robots, India or China eventually that's why the Veeky Forums endgame has to be 1 not working or 2 being the bossman who cuts the jobs and saves the bottom line.
>mfw another bonus for me for beating EPS target and there's more parking spaces today I'll use 4 spots

technology and robots will never take up jobs, at least not in the next 2000 years

the problem is that there are no jobs to begin with

tech is developing really slow now.
instead of big computers you have smaller computers and virtual reality.
nothing is gonna get replaced in this rate

I'm just gonna leave this here. Its a great 15 min watch, but the gist is that complete automation is coming. It won't be about us not wanting to work and being unemployed, it will be about being unemployABLE. youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

HOLD THE FUCK UP.

You're telling me you fired all the idiots and replaced them with a robot sending productivity to 100% at 1/3rd the cost.... and nothing on the menu is cheaper?

Chances are very good that there will still be jobs.
If there aren't, then go beg for handouts like you liberals always do.

we're in the age of kike scams.

ai can now write their own languages you fucktard

Sort of like how every failure of corporatism is used as justification of more corporatism. Hey guise, teh fwee markutz never been twied!

With all those Pajeets out there taking a huge dump in the field? You seriously overestimate technology.

Holy massive ignorance, Batman.

>when automation comes, people will just """""""""""""find new jobs""""""""""""""""
This bullshit meme gets tossed around constantly. Fucking *constantly*.

Take a look at this picture. In blue you have the US population, in green our unemployed + "non participating" (ie still unemployed) population, and in red the percent of all people out of work.

Right now, we're sitting at a real unemployment rate of over 30%. Some forecasts for 2016 will put it at more than 33%. That's 1 in 3 Americans, over 100,000,000 people, who won't have jobs. And that's out of the entire population. If you just consider unemployment in the population of working-age adults, that rate is just under 50%.

Yup. 50% of all Americans of working age, who should have jobs, don't. And it's not a result of them being lazy, or uneducated, or discriminated against.

There are literally not enough jobs for everyone to have one. It hasn't been this bad since we started keeping accurate records, in all likelihood since the great depression.

There are three avenues through which the job market is evaporating, and one overarching principle. That principle? Profit. If you’re losing 60% of your revenue paying wages to inefficient meat bags who mess up orders, break machinery, mispack items, and treat customers poorly, you’re going to find a way to cut them out of the equation. The avenues of trimming fat are as follows, in this order: 1) increase worker efficiency, 2) outsource labor, 3) automate. As you can see, there isn’t anything after “automate”. Once that happens, that job is gone. It’s just gone, and it’s not coming back.

You’re losing money by employing so many people, so first you increase worker efficiency. You give them better tools, put a second screen on every desk, make and distribute schedules electronically rather than on paper. This is a continuous process, but generally, this avenue has dried up.

Next, you look to outsource labor. Why pay an entitled American $25 an hour to do a job that Hemanth in India can do for $3 an hour? America is currently at the tail-end of this epoch in industrial change. Most of the jobs still exist, they’re just in India for three bucks an hour or china for 30 cents.

Finally, and this is the coup de grace of labor, you automate. Technological, robotics, and computing have advanced to the point that, with a relatively small initial investment, you can replace $3 an hour Mr. Chang with $1.20 a day Automato. The robot doesn’t get tired, it doesn’t get sick, it doesn’t have kids, it doesn’t take vacation, it doesn’t make mistakes, it doesn’t need insurance, it doesn’t get mad at customers, it doesn’t sabotage operations, it doesn’t leak secrets. It is, for its intended purpose, better than the human in every way.

Tax companies with high revenue and low employee salaries.

Basic income for everyone, regardless if you work or not.

That’s what we’re transitioning to now. Driverless cars are already a reality, and this (I believe) will be the first change in labor big enough and fast enough for the public to actually notice. Millions of people in the US work in shipping and transportation. One of the biggest expenses of anything you buy is getting it from the factory to your living room. The biggest portion of that expense? Paying someone to drive the truck. Automated driving will shake up one of the oldest industries we have, and it will not be pretty, and it will not be stopped.

Now let’s address automation, specifically. People keep insisting, absolutely insisting, that any jobs taken by automation will be replaced with white collar labor; technicians to repair the robots, specialists to design them, advanced manufacturing workers to assemble them. Yes, these jobs will come up. In fact, these job areas will grow enormously. In 10 years’ time, I guarantee that “Automation Engineer” will become as common, or more common, than “Mechanical Engineer” or “Civil Engineer”.

But, the one thing everyone is forgetting (when they say “new jobs will be created!”) is that the whole *point* of automation is to pay less in labor. Its entire purpose is to reduce the workforce. So yes, when a factory gets fully automated you’re going to have 10 robot repairers who now have jobs, but they were only given jobs because 200 other people lost theirs. Yes, we’ll probably have a highly paid “Distribution Supervisor” in charge of a convoy of 15 vehicles, but 14 other drivers just lost their jobs, permanently.

Labor is on the way out. Humans are inefficient. I am not arguing this from a technological perspective; engineering is my trade, but business is my passion. Money dictates what happens to markets. And right now, the money is saying “fuck people, buy robots”. And the one thing you absolutely have to understand: this is a one way street. You cannot reverse the wheels of innovation. As a society, we must learn to adapt to an automated world, or face an upheaval that will make the French Revolution look like a playground scuffle.

You're an idiot.

No

Typically yeah. I agree with them in how far AI will eventually go, but it'll be a while until most jobs start seriously being threatened. People claiming it's happening now in any meaningful way are idiots who for some reason usually don't think their job is automatable.

>technology won't take jobs

>what is a self driving car
>what is modern agriculture
>what is an automated assembly line
>what is self checkout
>what is email

Where the fuck do you live?

I work in a "cutting-edge" manufacturing plant.

Machines are still running off air compressors and malfunction all the time. In my particular field, I can say that we won't be automated for at least ten years, if even that.

In my personal opinion, they'd sooner send our jobs off to some 3rd world shithole than replace us with robuts.

AI or cheap labor are the primary threats imo. In the case of AI, everyone has something to worry about so the point is moot.

the high paying jobs that come with the sales, design, deployment, support and upgrade of these factories, robots, databases, networks, and programs will be numerous.

forgot the high skill development of these systems. millions of man hours of engineering and coding time.

>You will never see the end of wage slaving
Why even live?

The point is few people will be able to create enough products for many more people.
Automation never multiplied jobs.
It creates new jobs, sure, but the main reason it's been so popular especially with western companies is that it ultimately reduces human labor, and costs because of that.
Look at this graph. It shows how productivity per worker has risen dramatically and consistently over the decades.
The inevitable outcome is Universal Basic Income, which would allow us to eliminate all of those nasty welfare systems (along with minimum wage) and solve all of our related problems (unemployment, etc.).
Of course this is only sustainable if worker productivity reaches a certain point.
Then most people won't have a job anyway.
It won't be a choice but the only sane solution.
And even if it means raising taxes that money is coming back anyway, and will be spent in products made by companies, driving the economy.

would have to agree with the base income. i see no other way to keep things civil if we go full systems labor.

The best thing about UBI is that it can get both liberals and libertarians together.
It means less government, since the government just gives money to people who are then able to choose how to spend it.
The individual chooses.
And in truly free-market/capitalist fashion, competition determines the winner.

Everyone getting a basic income will bring many more to try their luck in the business world, opening companies or investing.
You can risk wasting your time, because you do not need a job.
You can also demand higher pay without the need for something as ridiculous as "minimum wage" simply because you do not *have* to work.

I think everyone can benefit from this system.
The rich will be the people who did work when they did not have to, and the poor will be the ones who did not.

>Right now, we're sitting at a real unemployment rate of over 30%. Some forecasts for 2016 will put it at more than 33%. That's 1 in 3 Americans, over 100,000,000 people, who won't have jobs. And that's out of the entire population. If you just consider unemployment in the population of working-age adults, that rate is just under 50%.
Wait what? 30% of ALL people are unemployed, meaning that 70% of people are employed, but 50% of WORKING AGE people are employed... so ergo the non-working-age population must have employment rates over 100% in order for that overall percentage to get up to 70%.

Or you're just a moron who can't even read and/or interpret his own charts.

thank you, i was also confused by this but did not challenge it.

Welcome to our generation where automation makes things more efficient and prices still rise while jobs are slowly cut.
Lets be real though, we aren't going to hit a point where a huge portion of the population are unemployed but certain jobs will eventually be replaced and that guy getting paid somewhat decently now who will have his job replaced by a machine will not have a fall back option that pays him the same lifestyle he had before.
If the majority are paid basic income or something, Whos going to buy cars, boats, motorcycles, etc? Where will people get money for hobbies? Basic income will only cover basic needs, no luxuries. It's going to be a sad place to be living in.

>implying you cannot just start a business

Also prices won't necessarily rise forever. If machines produce goods (making manufacturign cheaper) and people can't buy them, there is no choice but to lower prices.

>yeah everyone will just start a business
get real, you imply starting a business is easy for the avg person which is who we are talking about.
Most people only have the effort to show up and do their shitty task for 8 hours and go home, watch tv and go to bed. Rinse repeat. These people will not be starting their own businesses

Yes, they won't.
But are their lives really better now?
Entertainment is cheap in the 21st century.
If they choose to watch netflix all day let them do it.
It's not like having a boat is much better, anyway.

lower them to what point though? Do you honestly think people on UBI will have a decent car or truck and a moderately sized house what was strictly paid for with UBI? I doubt it.