How long till and what do we do once human labor is irrelevant???

Ever since we sharpened the first stick we have been on the path to making human labor irrelevant..

The spear meant it no longer took 10 men to take down a deer.. now it only took 5.. then the invention of the bow meant it only took one man.

It’s the same with early farming techniques..

It used to take hundreds of people to plow a field, the hoe made it take less and domestication and the plow even less.

Now one or 2 guys and a combine can handle a thousand acres..


So what do we do next??

THIS DECADE self driving cars will enter the market, and with it every job driving a vehicle will vanish..

Kiosks will replace almost all the servers and cashiers..

So how do we run an economy and circulate money when there are no labor positions???

Once automation decimated the industrial jobs, the service industry expanded to fill that void. Good paying factory work was replaced by low wage service work, but atleast it was replaced!

With the demise of the service industry, what comes next??

The only expansion I can think of is in content creators and computer programming, but that almost inherently can’t fill that void:. BEFORE automation those jobs are already minimal labor jobs (employee count wise)..

So what new field takes their place??

What do we do economicly to keep the money circulating and us peasants from burning it all down??

google Wolfmann coding language

Maintaining our robot overlords , of course.

I would like to watch a machine make a pair of boots, put a wiring loom into a car, pick strawberries, or any fruit, assemble anything from Ikea, fine tune a car engine, manufacture a twenty person five course china plate set, lay a carpet, tend to a flower garden, prepare a meal for the above china plate set, trim a hedge, build a wooden sailing boat, assemble a tin shed (one of those that takes half a day but takes two people two days), cut and style a ladies hair ready for the oskars, do an autopsy, make a dining table and six chairs, wood, metal, and leather.
Visit a car factory, see how many people it needs.

Do you really think that replacing humans with machines will benefit the humans being replaced?
Only the machine owners will gain.

But with no labor, there are no customers.

Balance baby

a reply to: JoshuaCox

eventually the government will put a ban on automation. or a semi ban allowing so many robots to people. otherwise the government will stop getting tax money. then everyone else not working will get a national wage paid for by those still working, a new social security.

originally posted by: JoshuaCox

So what new field takes their place??

Culture is the answer. The Olympics are a good example of economy based culture. Who cares how stuff is manufactured. Pay people to create more culture. Pay people make art. Pay people to sing and play music. Pay people to do scientific research. Pay people to attend college courses. Pay people to hang out with old people. Pay to have more teachers in public classrooms. There's no end to what money can be spent on culture. All you have to do is convince the billionaires to part with their money.

This question might be relevant in the US, Russia, China and Dubai, you got the rest of the world living subsistence in mud and straw and recycled lumber huts. For them, no time soon, if ever.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

What’s next is the funerary industry will have a great amount of business for a time, when they start to kill most of is, and then I don't know what.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Kiosks have replaced cashiers in grocery stores to some extent since the early 200's and they have not been popular options. I doubt fast food kiosks will face any better future. McDonald's in Austin, TX have had kiosks for several years now, but the same number of cashiers on duty.

As for self driving cars, you'll play hell getting me into one of them.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Automation is happening fast in some areas but there are a lot of areas that need help! For example, we have driverless cars, we have drones for delivery, we have nanobots that scope for cancer etc. When you look inside the house things that are traditionally "women's work" not a lot has changed. The washer, dryer, fridge, oven, sink have all pretty much stayed the same. Seriously, can someone invent something that sorts, washes, dries and fold clothing? How about a robot that has dinner ready for you when you come home, microwave is close but the quality isn't the same. I always thought it was silly that we put dishes into the dishwasher just to take them out and put in a separate cabinet, how about the dishwasher as the cabinet? The sink, how old is that sucker? Sure they make them pretty now, but nothing has changed. How about a sink with a built in composting system instead of disposal, or one that sanitizes without water. How about one that analyzes your water quality, or adds carbonation. Sigh, a girl can dream..

originally posted by: JoshuaCox

So what new field takes their place??

What do we do economicly to keep the money circulating and us peasants from burning it all down??

IDEALLY it would lead to some kind of Living Wage paid to everyone. And people would be free to live their lives as they see fit, exploring the world, going to school, expanding themselves without worrying about daily bills.

In Reality, I'm sure we'd find a way to make ourselves useful. We are humans after all, and if there were no jobs, there would be no point to automation, as no one would have money to buy the products. Things would even out, either via some type of living wage, or different jobs that we aren't even able to understand yet.

On a positive note, if we end up living in a truly automated society, almost anyone would be able to start their own business. That could be the wave of the future. Everyone has a 3d printer, self driving car, and we all start making our own personal businesses.

We're looking at a radical shift in society, the various theoritical social frameworks that have sprung up as a result of our communication will be challenged in new ways.

The age of automation places people in a new situation. What do we do? Philosophize as a whole on our direction as a species? enter a "golden age" in which we've shed work, now considered excess and purely focus on the sciences? Do we instead, retreat into a virtual space, bridging the digital divide fully into our lives, living out a new digital existence where we can be who we want and enforced by some new psuedo digital law that protects you from any kind of discrimination?

You're right to question and ask what will we do.

I figured America can take a route towards a new "American dream", subsidized 3D printers for citizens, obviously you'll pay it back through a form of tax. Essentially, every family can began to manufacture their own products and sell them, made by Americans, for Americans. Of course exporting them is also an option. Now, this would encompass a large amount of people going this route, that way people can still "work" in an automated age. Humans, after all still maintain the advantage of creativity and creation. Just another "what if" scenario ultimately.

a reply to: toysforadults

It's Wolfram.

And to the OP - I figured at some point TPTB will get their way. Most of the masses will be extinguished and a rough few left to care for them.

I would also think - at that point? Those who are 'lucky' enough to be left around (other than the elites of course) - will not get paid so there's no way to 'up' their status. Just have everything they 'need' 'given to them - in the off chance you're even allowed 'time off.'

We have about 10years. Then, in america, it will be like that movie Elysium.

In old sci-fi stories, people just worked a few hours per week for the same money, and spent the rest of their time studying, creating entertainment, or doing things for themselves, like gardening and home brewing, so they had a kind of micro-economy separate from the main one.

Alternatively, with sufficient mechanisation etc, everyone could live like kings.

However, speaking as a student of history, the reality is that when enough people are out of work, wages will fall to a level that many people are cheaper than one machine. I suspect at that point we will end with a 3 tier society-very rich people living like kings, advanced robots performing difficult work, and a class who are effectively slaves, working for food. Look at any slave holding society and with the exception of craftsmen rather than robots, thats what you had.

a reply to: usernameconspiracy

The self-checkout kiosks are very popular up here. I prefer them to going through a line myself. Takes far less time and no waiting in line to pay for 3 items when someone with a full cart is in front of me.

That said, there will unlikely be a time when people are superfluous in the workplace. There are still too many jobs that require the ability to make judgement calls based on various circumstances, which a logic based machine would have trouble with. Also too many jobs that require very fine manual dexterity in handling delicate items.

Without a human presence in businesses, I have to think that people will start to wish for human interaction again. The internet has created a society that's increasingly more isolated as people put a preference into texting and social media to communicate rather than meeting face to face. Cutting out humans when you go shopping, for example, just makes that isolation even more profound.

originally posted by: luke1212
a reply to: JoshuaCox

eventually the government will put a ban on automation. or a semi ban allowing so many robots to people. otherwise the government will stop getting tax money. then everyone else not working will get a national wage paid for by those still working, a new social security.

Unless it's easier and more profitable to tax robots. Robots don't complain about their tax rate.

originally posted by: Bluntone22
Do you really think that replacing humans with machines will benefit the humans being replaced?
Only the machine owners will gain.

But with no labor, there are no customers.

Balance baby

so you can imagine humans being replaced by machines yet cant imagine another method of value and services in exchange for a currency of some sort.

i wonder if its an innate flaw we have of which value and services rendered are mutually exclusive, always.
we can imagine immeasurable technologies and robotics, but we can't conceive a different concept for exchange for goods, other than what we have now. we are a strange species.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

I don't believe that Artificial Intelligence is the same as being sentient. That said, just as humans wear out and need doctors and specialists, of course robotics will need the same - mechanics, robotists, software developers and programmers. Until the day comes that robots will repair themselves if ever, people will be needed to repair, create the parts for and maintain robots and the support equipment for them.

Robots will be able to increasingly make things faster, more accurate, with better quality. A I may allow robots to diagnose themselves when trouble occurs not unlike an idiot light on your vehicle's dash. I believe it will be many, many years before we have self repairing and even self replicating robots. Processing power as well as better memory as well as super miniaturization will have to be developed to have sentient robots.

People will have to have a much better education than what is currently provided in most of the schools and colleges now. Students will have to be introduced to the engineering basics in at least the sixth grade or earlier. People are also going to have to want to learn these things to stay ahead, diplomas in electrical and mechanical engineering and computer/software engineering. There will be a deficit of these engineers in the coming years.