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Read this interesting essay written by DEREK THOMPSON
For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing ?
The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.
For much of the 20th century, Youngstown's steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a home ownership rate that were among the nation's highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout: regional depression.
Youngstown was transformed not only by an economic disruption but also by a psychological and cultural breakdown. Depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more prevalent; the caseload of the area's mental-health center tripled within a decade. The city built four prisons in the mid-1990s—a rare growth industry. One of the few downtown construction projects of that period was a museum dedicated to the defunct steel industry.
The future will tell us whether or not this pans out as he envisions. What does SN think will happen ?
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:23PM
What some people fail to realize is the economy of scale in today's world, and the ever-declining ratios of people required to do _anything_ to support life.
Somebody has to grow/gather the food, if you do this like Homo sapiens did 10,000 years ago, it's about a 1:2 ratio of food workers to food consumers. Today, it's better than 1:10 - even including the ridiculous costs of transport that we are paying for global shipping. As automation increases, that number could quickly rocket to 1:100 or more.
Same could be said of shelter/plumbing/electricity, etc. When robots can "3D print" a fully functional home, and other robots can tear an old one down to recycle its materials, there will be precious few people required to build and maintain the robots. Instead of an average home costing 3-5 man-years of work, that ratio could fall to a couple of weeks. People will spend more time deciding how they want their home to look than they will in the actual building of it.
Roads are big, they actually take more work than homes, especially in the US where everything is so spread out and everybody drives so far every day. Taking the morons off the road for their 60 mile daily grind and letting them travel for pleasure instead of mindless work will probably decrease the need for roads, slightly, at least for the inner-metro twice daily gridlock loops we have today. Roads are another place where automation can make serious reductions in labor costs, it already has if you compare today's man-hours per lane-mile to Roman times, but there's a lot of potential for improvement, especially in the maintenance side of things after a road has already been designed and built.
I agree with the prediction in Manna that there will be enough people interested in improving things that they will continue innovation. There will be _some_ people required to work in education, production, maintenance, design, security, administration, etc. for a long time, but that number is nowhere near 90% today and could fall to as little as 10% very quickly.
I took the kids to a shopping mall last night, first time in over a year. When I was their age, the shop keepers were vital, essential players in the process of delivering goods to the customers. Today, they're optional, barely relevant in the world of goods, and they're even losing ground in the services sector. Meanwhile, the infrastructure behind them is also getting more and more efficient - needing fewer people to make the system work.
We could all devolve into lawyers, agents, security guards and spies - I hope the future is brighter than that.
(Score: 3, Funny) by curunir_wolf on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:32PM
Roads are big, they actually take more work than homes, especially in the US where everything is so spread out and everybody drives so far every day.
Well, they certainly require more people. That's clear, because from my observations you obviously need about 12 highway workers for each task: 1 to supervise, 10 to watch, and 1 to perform the task.
I am a crackpot