It's surprising that a piece like this hasn't generated that many comments considering the number of comments similar articles create. I think that's a testament to how measured and informed the article is. However, the final paragraph stuck out to me:
The biggest challenge we face over the long term -- beyond the current depression -- isn't how to bring manufacturing back. It's how to improve the earnings of America's expanding army of low-wage workers who are doing personal service jobs in hotels, hospitals, big-box retail stores, restaurant chains, and all the other businesses that need bodies but not high skills. More on that to come.
Earlier in the article, Secretary Reich had noted that supermarket checkout clerks were being replaced with self-checkout machines. I'm not sure why one would expect big-box retail labor to fare better. In fact, we're starting to see how they won't fare better. Automation is coming to retail. Right now, it's mostly visible in self-checkouts. However, think about Amazon: I'm sure their warehouses use a very high level of automation to minimize labor. There was a posting on HN a while back about robots that went around a warehouse bringing the products all to one person which eliminates the labor of fetching products. Is it that outrageous to think that a store like Walmart or Target will be able to stock their shelves in an automated fashion in the future? How about a retail store where you can go around and look and play with things and then you just note the product numbers of the things you want and punch them into a computer at checkout. Then an automated system bags up all your stuff and delivers them to you. No labor needed at all.
Likewise, I yearn for the self-making bed. Roomba is already vacuuming floors and while one can argue that it isn't as good as a hotel might need, it's not hard to see that it will continue to get better. Is it that hard to see those service jobs seeing less labor as well?
The problem, in my mind, is that we simply don't need much unskilled labor anymore. Skilled labor can create things that do unskilled labor better than unskilled laborers can. If it isn't happening now, it's not hard to believe that it will in the future.
The question then becomes, how do we as a society deal with the fact that there might be some people who aren't able to be skilled laborers? What happens when the only jobs available require more skills and intellect than the unskilled jobs of today? Do we just let their salaries languish and let them be impoverished on the streets? I don't think that would be a good thing. Job retraining is definitely a possibility, but to what end?
It seems like the skills required in the world today are changing at a much faster rate than they have in the past. Where change might come after many lifetimes, today one might have to learn many new skills in a generation in order to stay relevant.
It's friday and I skipped lunch so I might not be so coherent, but it does seem like there might be a point at which all low-skilled work is automated and we possibly can't educate a portion of the population high enough that they can become part of the class that creates capital goods (rather than those that simply use capital goods like a cash register). How do you take a cash-register user and turn them into a cash-register designer/maintainer/troubleshooter? How do you take someone that stocks store shelves and make them someone that designs robots to do that task?
Do we just let their salaries languish and let them be impoverished on the streets?
At some point, we will not need unskilled labor. This is the point at which machines can produce everything we need at little cost, and we have more goods and services per capita than we do today.
In this post-scarcity future, socialism/welfare/etc is cheap. You want 2% of my income to prevent 100 people from starving? Eh, go ahead, I don't really care.
This is part of what I'm wondering: how much do you have to give? Simply providing for basic needs is clearly unacceptable (in my opinion). Heck, try suggesting that someone go without cable TV to balance their budget and you'll get a bad reaction. Anyway, I think it would be undesirable to have a society in which there were two clear castes of haves and havenots even if the havenots did have all of their needs (medical, shelter, food. . .).
And then the problem becomes: as we move into this new economy, how do we parcel out this socialism? Majority rule would simply be tyranny and we can't have a functional society where there are two groups and one is 100x more wealthy than the other in a caste-like fashion. Still, those who produce need some reward and incentive. So, how would we do it?
The only thing that I can think of is land: land is the one thing that we can't actually produce with labor (despite Boston's Back Bay real estate). If the cost to produce a television is essentially nothing, there's no sense in restricting who gets one even if the design has to be done by an "upper-caste" person. However, land - and land in "cool" areas like Seattle or San Francisco - is in limited supply. Only certain people can live there. So, even if all goods and services can be provided for near $0, land can't.
To be honest, I think that this future will be kinda cool. I mean, if most/all of our material wants and needs are taken care of, we could hack away at projects we thought were interesting/fun. Our jobs could be what we find joy in - whether that be local theater or web apps. And I think that we would create value that way. Potentially not in the focused, reward-driven way that we do today, but lots of people come together around no money to do things even today. I'm not saying that we can replace our current economy like that, but at the point that we have wants and needs met for essentially $0, it seems like it would be fun. Frankly, in that kind of future, there doesn't seem to be a need to force people into things they might not like.
Yes, exactly. Very well put. But this attitude isn't widespread right now; the problem itself is barely even recognized (people still think the real threat to jobs is offshoring). People's attitudes about socialism aren't associated with any kind of economic reality, they're still tied up in Cold War propaganda and political divisions.
> In this post-scarcity future, socialism/welfare/etc is cheap. You want 2% of my income to prevent 100 people from starving? Eh, go ahead, I don't really care.
They won't be satisfied with 2% because 0.02%/person of your income is a huge income disparity.
He starts from the thesis(previously established) that money earning interest is the source of our massive wealth inequality problem - interest ultimately favors a concentration of wealth on one person, and it also favors destructive practices that make a large sum of money immediately and earn interest exceeding the value of a sustainable solution.
From there he points to multiple alternatives that might bring us towards an equal economy without top-down planning.
I agree this could become a problem. But don't forget that one of the most pressing issues we face is an aging society. In Europe it's even more severe than in the US. We will need a large number of people who care for the elderly.
Hey, and instead of noting and then punching in product numbers, couldn't we just scan the numbers using the phone camera and press OK at the checkout to have the amount appear on the next phone bill? I'm sure something like that already exists.
The biggest challenge we face over the long term -- beyond the current depression -- isn't how to bring manufacturing back. It's how to improve the earnings of America's expanding army of low-wage workers who are doing personal service jobs in hotels, hospitals, big-box retail stores, restaurant chains, and all the other businesses that need bodies but not high skills. More on that to come.
Earlier in the article, Secretary Reich had noted that supermarket checkout clerks were being replaced with self-checkout machines. I'm not sure why one would expect big-box retail labor to fare better. In fact, we're starting to see how they won't fare better. Automation is coming to retail. Right now, it's mostly visible in self-checkouts. However, think about Amazon: I'm sure their warehouses use a very high level of automation to minimize labor. There was a posting on HN a while back about robots that went around a warehouse bringing the products all to one person which eliminates the labor of fetching products. Is it that outrageous to think that a store like Walmart or Target will be able to stock their shelves in an automated fashion in the future? How about a retail store where you can go around and look and play with things and then you just note the product numbers of the things you want and punch them into a computer at checkout. Then an automated system bags up all your stuff and delivers them to you. No labor needed at all.
Likewise, I yearn for the self-making bed. Roomba is already vacuuming floors and while one can argue that it isn't as good as a hotel might need, it's not hard to see that it will continue to get better. Is it that hard to see those service jobs seeing less labor as well?
The problem, in my mind, is that we simply don't need much unskilled labor anymore. Skilled labor can create things that do unskilled labor better than unskilled laborers can. If it isn't happening now, it's not hard to believe that it will in the future.
The question then becomes, how do we as a society deal with the fact that there might be some people who aren't able to be skilled laborers? What happens when the only jobs available require more skills and intellect than the unskilled jobs of today? Do we just let their salaries languish and let them be impoverished on the streets? I don't think that would be a good thing. Job retraining is definitely a possibility, but to what end?
It seems like the skills required in the world today are changing at a much faster rate than they have in the past. Where change might come after many lifetimes, today one might have to learn many new skills in a generation in order to stay relevant.
It's friday and I skipped lunch so I might not be so coherent, but it does seem like there might be a point at which all low-skilled work is automated and we possibly can't educate a portion of the population high enough that they can become part of the class that creates capital goods (rather than those that simply use capital goods like a cash register). How do you take a cash-register user and turn them into a cash-register designer/maintainer/troubleshooter? How do you take someone that stocks store shelves and make them someone that designs robots to do that task?