The Present.
Workers: Sir! We demand a living wage!
Management: You leave me no choice but to replace you with automation.
The FUTURE!:
Robots: Contracted Software Upgrade 2.0068b will cost you eleventy gazillion AynBucks this year.
Management: Whatever.
The Year After The FUTURE!:
Management: Beep Boop! Humanity buys nothing! It turns out that the Robot Monster was Management all along!
Cue Twilight Zone Theme
This depends.
Are the police and the army automated too?
Iām a software engineer and I see the writing the on the wall a bit more closely than most people. Computers are getting smart and cheap. Beyond just factory work and retail kiosks, self driving cars are here now and will be displacing a lot of labor very soon, toppling a lot of industries along the way, including all those smaller, but widespread services that pervade society (gas stations, mechanics, car dealerships, ect). Weāll need a whole lot less vehicles when one can be seamlessly rented from a self-driving fleet as needed. This is all good stuff, but weāll be replacing labor faster than society can adapt, leading to a lot of social issues. We need the gears to start turning for basic income now, even if it hurts a little. Itās not something that can happen fast, so if we donāt start towards it now, weāre going to have some serious trouble with high unemployment in a few years. Of course, trying to push up minimum wage will only make the automation happen sooner, but itās happening already, one way or another. We are going to reach a point where the average person cannot outperform a machine for any paying job.
Fortunately for me Iām well positioned. Someone has to program and build those machines after all. Iād rather not live like a king in a walled castle nestled in a wasteland when I could just live ya knowā¦ a normal American dream in a wonderful nation. I love dystopian fiction, but I donāt want to live in it.
Whatās truly sad, unless something drastic happens, Iāll be voting Trump in the general, and this is the one issue where he actually worries me on (Iām an independent that ignores divisive social issues and focuses on big picture economics, like TPP). Bernie seems to be the only candidate that sees this coming to some extent, or at least has ācrazyā ideas that would point us towards basic income. Establishment HRC isnāt going to much other than ramming through the TPP and sucking some money from the middle class. Trump will help bring manufacturing back to the US, but those jobs will not be on the assembly line, but rather building and maintaining the robots that work the lineā¦ itās something at least and maybe it will buy us time for another president to come along and push basic income 4 or 8 years down the road, and a lot of people will be out of work by then. Bernieās crazier ideas (like free college) would hopefully be tempered by sound advice and he could settle for pushing towards single-payer health and basic incomeā¦ but really, we donāt have anyone in the race that is ready for the rapid pace of change to come.
They vote for Trump?
Option C. Corporations sell goods and services to an ever more detached wealthy investor class and slowly stop selling to the ballooning lower class and dwindling middle class. The impoverished class, isolated from any form or material wealth, die back to numbers that can be sustained by subsistence with access to almost no resources while the wealthy, which donāt need the lower or slave classes like their forebears did, become ever more stratified and solidify their own hierarchy into literal feudalism, but with robots in place of serfs. Eventually all resources are appropriated by this feudal hierarchy and the poor, powerless to resist them from taking it, go extinct.
Option D. Synthetic intelligence takes over control of the Earth and either all humans go extinct due to being unable to compete for resources, or are actively exterminated, or become (hopefully well-cared-for) pets/senile parents.
Iām a hoot at parties.
Thereās always soup kitchens, where you can either be in line for food - or food.
Umā¦ Free college is not only not crazy, itās how Californiaās state University system worked until Reagan was governor. Itās also how Germanyās entire state university system works right now, even if an American wants to go there. Strangely, if you educate more people, life improves for all, disproportionate to the cost of the education itself.
Trump, on the other hand, will not be able to bring manufacturing back for the middle class, since the rest of his party doesnāt give a ratās ass about it (remember, HE may not like the TPP, but his party sure does, and theyāre the ones who have to accept and ratify it). Trump is the first step to Fascism in this country, and thatās not mere hyperbole. Those of us whoās parents watched the rise of Hitler can tell you, theyāre telling us the same thing: heās a know-nothing demagogue who thinks that by spouting the right slogans without the hint of a plan on how heād execute them, heāll carry the day. Unfortunately, thanks to folks like yourself, he might be right. I really donāt like Hillary, but sheās a darn sight better than Trump.
Trump is a terrible businessman and an idiot. Heās neither a fiscal conservative, nor a social conservative, and he doesnāt know what heās doing. The best we can hope for at the end of his first term is that America still functions as a democracy.
Beyond all that, youāre right. Truck drivers, cab drivers manufacturing jobs, all of it, including a lot of knowledge work will go the way of the dodo, and there wonāt be a need for a lot of existing labor, even in new fields. Weāre either Mad Max or Star Trek.
Iām expecting Mad Max.
The Twilight Zone did an episode like that, āThe Brain Center at Whippleāsā where a factory owner gradually replaces all his workers with robots, and of course at the end of the episode is replaced with a robot as well (Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet, no lessā¦)
Directed by Richard Donner, no less.
CIO President Walter Reuther was being shown through the Ford Motor plant in Cleveland recently.
A company official proudly pointed to some new automatically
controlled machines and asked Reuther: āHow are you going to collect
union dues from these guys?ā
Reuther replied: āHow are you going to get them to buy Fords?ā
UAW-CIO union report November 1954
If youāre a software engineer then you should know that one of the main reasons Silicon Valley is in California is because California used to have tuition-free public colleges and universities which provided the lionās share of the nationās tech talent.
If āletās bring back some of the things that worked really well in the 70sā qualifies as a Crazy Idea then book me a room at the asylum.
āTrump will help bring manufacturing back to the USā
Yelling about companies moving offshore wonāt bring them back. But then again, maybe he has a super-special secret plan that will save the day for workers.
I share your fear over what is happening, but am amazed that anyone could see this failure of a human as have a clue on how to lead the country forward. A real non-sequitur.
This will just end up costing more in the long run. Think how much extra itās going to cost to upgrade the nets to handle robots attempting suicide!
Are there no workhouses? And the union workhouses? Are they still in operation?
This is a good thing. Weāve all cringed considering the labor conditions for the factory workers building our phones and gadgets. When you lose employment you go and figure out how to live doing something else. Assuredly, this will be difficult for these 60,000 and the many more to come but it will be better. I see boundless opportunity for innovation as automation replaces more shit jobs and cheap robots of all sorts become readily available to the masses. The only limit will be a persons imagination.
Nothing better than a self-aggrandizing preamble to a āwhy Iām voting for stupidā statement.
Bring our robot jobs back to America!!!
