There were no doubt quite a few nail makers pre-industrial revolution that took pride in making consistent, quality nails. That work was utterly and completely obliterated by the industrial revolution. There may be a few remaining nail makers, producing nails with an extremely niche design, but not many. So goes those jobs our lifetime as well
To complete this idea, old nails are better at holding than modern nails in at least some applications and are required for some restoration work. I remember reading (but can't find) a church-restoration project report mentioning it, but more can be read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30421682
What's the solution when so much knowledge work is upended at once? When manufacturing jobs were lost, we callously told people to go to college to learn to learn IT. Whether it's art, code, marketing, or other applied knowledge work, there's a mad dash to reshape all of those. And the sales pitch isn't that it's going to let us work less and equitably reap the rewards of productivity (well, I suppose if you lose your job you get to work less). It's that as a business you can do more with less to increase profitability. Quality might take a hit, but there's an inflection point for that. If sales drop but you reduce your labor costs enough, you still come out ahead.
What field are all of these nail makers supposed to switch to this time?
This is what I wonder as well. We are told to "prepare" for the reality of AI taking our jobs soon, but how? What is the alternative field that will be a) safe from automation for a while and b) pay similarly to a CS/IT career? I haven't found the answer to this. We were told to get a higher education and go into "white collar" fields, and now we're told we were stupid for believing that these jobs would have a future. Seems very cynical.
Universal basic income is always the answer. Since progress bringsuch unpredictability to labor market we need to detach survival from labor so people can survive while they are figuring the stuff out.
universal basic income is not sustainable in the same way minimum wage was not sustainable, looking as how even $15/hr isn't enough to cover rent basically anywhere where they actually pay $15/hr.
> looking as how even $15/hr isn't enough to cover rent basically anywhere where they actually pay $15/hr
That's a bit different problem. What UBI could do is let people migrate away from very expensive places because they would no longer fear they'll become destitute if they risk not being able to get a job in cheaper place.
Minimum wage is sustainable because it is usually set based on economic reality of each country to a value that affects just a small percentage of laborers.
In theory yes, in practice that'd require some way to channel the profits from the tech back to society, which has proven tough nut to crack. Notoriously Keynes predicted 15 hour workweeks due the productivity improvements of 20th century. Well, the improvements happened but work weeks didn't get shorter
They got shorter in practice. Especially post-lockdowns lots of people are phoning it in to well paid jobs whilst working from home with Netflix on, taking long lunches, playing with the kids and then doing unchallenging work like meetings with other people who are also phoning it in. Yes they "work" 40 hours a week in theory but this sort of work would have seemed completely alien to someone in Keynes' era.
Another thing to note is the length of retirement has increased significantly since Keynes' time. So if you look at a person's whole life, the amount of time at work certainly has decreased.
Which scenario are you referring to? The one where everything is cheap because of ai or because the acidic oceans?
Various sea organisms rely on calcium carbonate for the formation of their shells and bones. If the water is too acidic there less calcium carbonate in the water…
Oh and what Im getting at is that things like food don’t necessarily have to be cheap because “ai” produces goods. Ecological collapse can make essentials expensive regardless of who produces the goods.
I think a better analogy is that pre-photography there were many portrait drawers who took pride in drawing good portraits for their clients. Then photography came, and the entire industry died a sudden and miserable death.
Portraits still get drawn, but not many, and certainly not for the sake of preserving what somebody looks like.
There are still companies which provides you consistent, quality nails. Just ordinary nails without niche design. They still have to use manual labour to check and investigate each nail one-by-one. Of course, you won’t get those in your local hardware shop, and they are terribly expensive. The difference compared to old times is, that they still sell the cheap Chinese nails, they just add a layer of very expensive quality control.
The Unabomber was notable for manufacturing his own screws, so I'm not sure how many artisanal nail makers remain. In those days nails were re-used, it was such a pain to make them.
.png){kind=link}