I have no problem with labor-saving devices, but I do wonder how all the labor that has been saved is supposed to enjoy their new, work-free lifestyle when they have no jobs and cannot afford to retrain for the exciting new high-tech opportunities that present themselves.

Mechanization of agriculture went a long way towards freeing the slaves, but neither they nor their descendants made what I would describe as a smooth transition into prosperous harmony with the land-owning class.

I have no doubt that the moment a Honda robot becomes a cost-effective replacement for a pesky union worker, there will be a lot of people living in cast-off robot shipping crates.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/terriblesecret

But, the robot (published this year) that can fold towels means we’re really obsolete. Shit, fabric was our last bastion.

my parents first house had 3 bedrooms and cost the equivalent of 2 years of my dad’s salary. Mine has 2 bedrooms and costs 8 years of my salary.

As for automation creating more jobs: well, if it created as many jobs as it displaced, there would be no economic incentive to automate, would there? It’s only decent paying jobs that get automated; replacing McDonald’s employees with robots isn’t cost-effective so long as they get paid minimum wage, unless robots get *really* cheap.

Automation and outsourcing both spring from the same impulse- capitalism’s drive to reduce production costs. The system doesn’t care that it has eliminated the very employees that are buying the goods in both cases. It’s only when the tipping point is reached and the demand for the goods disappears that Capitalism responds to the situation. (See the role of reduced consumer spending in the Great Depression.) One can argue whether this has happened in our economy now, due to outsourcing.

Something people forget about the Luddites: they were completely fucking correct. There was all sorts of Utopian bullshit rhetoric about automation at the time; they correctly recognized that automation would replace skilled jobs with low-paying unskilled ones (that benefited no one but factory owners) and de-stabilize society. Maybe people should remember them for being right, rather than being ‘irrationally anti-technology.’ (The RIAA aren’t Luddites, they’re factory owners who are seeing their ability to exploit their workers being eroded.)

Then the “you know what” will really hit the fan.

As with conversations about the environment, fear of technology is a red herring. It’s about economy and politics, and the nexus between the two.

And the idea that we’ll all then have spare time to pursue our artistic dreams and hobbies is ludicrous. Fun and good-spirited maybe, but ludicrous.

And by robots, I mean very large, long, complex, assembly lines that would make your jaw drop. Ironically, my business is growing to the point where each customer I get, where that company removes about 50-100 people, I add one person to my company… if you split the difference 75-1 is about right.

You mean how we currently have hundreds of millions more people employed today than a hundred years ago, despite enormous advances in automation and efficiency of manufacturing and other markets? (Look it up – in 1910 we had 92 million people in the U.S. and in 2010 we had 308 million. Even with the current economic malaise, we’re way ahead in terms of raw numbers of employed people.) Far from “elbowing people out of the workforce”, these increases in production efficiency make us rich, keep us comfortable, help the environment, and allow us to do all kinds of interesting and varied things that we could never do before.

What’s killing the middle class in America is not technology, but rather our government’s propensity to protect their friends at the expense of the everyday taxpayer. The stimulus, the bailout, and our endless wars all remove wealth from the middle class and transfer it to the politically connected.

Who says we can’t automate yard work? Robotic lawnmowers already exist. They are working on robotic construction. Those are the alpha and omega of physical labor, and once those are accomplished, everything in between is gravy.

And anyone who reads Dilbert can tell you that most managers are pretty much robots already.

First technology empowers and then it enslaves.

Bah

Low-end jobs will go offshore (except the ones that need physical presence)
Others that can be automated will be automated.
There will be plentiful of other jobs.

The real question is “What will happen to the non-working population?”.