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Fears of employee displacement as Amazon brings robots into warehouses
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Fears? I'm excited that these jobs where people are treated like machines until they quit for sanity's sake are getting automated.
Exactly! It seems the other people in comments here don't understand that this is just a net positive for workers!
You already have universal basic income where you guys are living ? Failing that it’s solely less low qualification jobs and more concentration of revenues for the few above. I don’t see that as « a net positive » -although semantically, those laid off would not be workers anymore so in that you’re right. Horrifically so.
UBI is necessary for this to be positive, so that's our problem. Not the machines taking the job.
Don't throw shit at this, throw it at politicians.
And yet you cheer on the loss of jobs and hand wave away issues as someone else's problem. That makes you part of the problem as the side cheering on the destruction of people's lives. Seriously how do you "workless utopia" fuckwits not see this?
I know how actually: you don't work these jobs and it will make you feel better about your demand for more and excessive consumption because "well at least it didn't hurt a human" but it does and will. You speak from an ivory tower and say it will be good when you hear less screams from below without caring for how the screaming stops.
I actually just want UBI so every single working class can get the basic needs instead of the rich getting richer.
I'm pretty sure I'm in the ground, and not in a tower with this opinion.
Sure but right now that isn't happening and robotics dismantling jobs destroying income is real. We are focusing on idealism and not reality.
Wanting it is fine but advocating that it's the only solution right now is not.
B-but the billionaires will get angry you have your basic needs met despite it not hurting them whatsoever! You might actually not be a slave for a few seconds!
The pandemic showed us that people shouldn't have their income tied to the government.
The corporations should be required to fund public housing. No one pays more then 10% of their income.
Yeah, until it hits them and it will.
I have really mixed feelings about automated UBI societies. UBI needs to be tied to some form of "adulting" otherwise you're just going to end up enabling people. The idea of tying people's income to performing certain tasks is also very scary for the potential of abuse. Letting people sit at home and be slobs all day will get us Brave New World.
I think the way to help people is to drastically lower the cost of housing and other essential costs. A government allowance just makes people slaves to the government.
I feel like UBI only works out when people have very strong religious morals that give them discipline and will stop them from becoming fat slobs if they don't need to work.
Dude what.
You sir have earned my rare use of the downvote button.
It's a net positive if those people are able to transition into other roles/ jobs.
What a short-sighted view. Some people sacrifice themselves to be treated like machine because that's the only option for them to. earn a living. You take the job away from them, they'll end up on the street. I fear for them.
We need to find a better ways for them not to be treated badly, not ways where they'll end up badly.
How did we get to a place where awful jobs are the only ones available for people to take? How does holding back the use of technology to keep these awful jobs around help those who are worn out and tossed aside in the long run?
There's a difference between being idealistic and quixotic. With the introduction of machanization, the problem is not unemployment due to not enough jobs but there won't be any job at all. The real question is how to accommodate these people when there won't any job for them? The seemingly scary solution is this current real capitalist world is to leave them on the street. Unless you can provide the better solution to this real world problem, I suggest to keep your utopian world in your dream.
Just head up: the future is scary for the next generation inline. Even the white collar job won't be spared.
Oh I know!
Let them build more homes, big neighbourhoods of high-density living spaces. And give them for free to everyone.
Then focus energy on growing and distributing enough food.
While we're at it, give everyone healthcare.
Then watch those 'unemployed' people generate 'value' like we've never seen.
Housed fed healthy people will have great ideas and all the time to implement them.
The kind of answer I've already expected. Keep dreaming, dear Don Quixote.
It's not like there is any other answer that's going to amount to anything workable.
You get this situation in 50 shades of bad, but never solve the real issue any other way.
Automation moves our society forward.
It's been happening since the industrial revolution.
When electricity was becoming widespread people feared for the lamp lighters. When the automobile was invented people feared for the farriers.
Jobs will be created in new spaces. That is how it has worked in the past. This is at a level that we younger folk haven't seen. It can be scary to some. I also won't deny this will happen at a faster pace than most other changes.
The genie is out of the bottle.
Your likely know everything I've said up to this point. Here's where we differ.
Most businesses in developed countries revolve around selling things to the middle class. Those businesses that don't directly, usually play a role to that end. Without a middle class to sell things to very few businesses will exist. If you don't believe me, browse the fortune 500 list. The Fords, GEs, Home Depots all depends on a middle class.
Philosophically, if the middle class ceases to exist were fucked. If it gets to a point where ford is failing (again) those people with political influence will be asking for ubi. We don't need to stress over this. I have no political influence. I can't call in favors with senators. Over half the country is opposed to ubi. Let it play out a little. See what happens. We'll get through this.
Not a word that you wrote I didn't agree upon. In fact that leads to whay I am very cautious about in the future.
What you pointed above covers my last sentence.
The way the world is moving right now is roughly: agriculture -> industrial -> service. Now, when the service sector is dominating the market, agriculture and industrial sectors still play big roles but with a different twist - the utilisation of automation. So now we have drones, GPS-equipped agriculture machinaries, big fully automated factories to do the works more efficiently that require less and less workers. The more. automation we get, the less low-skill workers we are going to need. So the job markets will shrink and we will need less and less people for a particular work. Thus, we are going to need new kind of jobs to cater for workers where previously their jobs has become obselete. Just imagine that a container tanker that is the size of a football field will need the same amount of. crew members (around 30) as compare to very small ship decades before.
Fortunately, more and more people were able to access education and become the middle-class, and propel industrialization and service industries further. The middle-class during this time will be relatively safe and enjoy quite confortable lives. But, those lower skills are under threats because more and more of their jobs are taken by machines. They have nowhere to go simply because they have no education. Right now there are still safe. They can works with amazon, they can drive ubers, ride door dash etc. And the ability to have this kind of odds jobs (I forget the term) and gain easy and fast money will make them complacent and dependable on these jobs and less eager to gain education. This is the trend that we are seeing more and more happening to generation Z.
The problems is this kind of jobs will not stay static. Somewhere along the ways, automation will come in their way and grasp the jobs from them. We are still in the infancy period, but once we are able to perfect the technology, automation is going to stay. So the pioneering tech that we see happening in California like self-driving ubers, automation in amazon warehouse, self-flying drones are going to be prevalent scenes, not in the near future, but somewhere in the future. When that happens, we need a new kind of jobs to cater for the low-skill workers. What kind of jobs? I don't know. But we need to have them. Or we need a different kind of society, more social oriented. If not, they will be doomed.
However, the middle-class won't be safe at all, for the same reason that happens to the low-income class: automation. In the future, automation will complement service industry by the utilisation of AI. Certain jobs will become obselete. We are going to need less workers, analogous during the industrial period. It will be easier to write a book, writer will be less dependent to proofreader/editor, less. teachers, less lecturers, less customer-facing workers etc. It is slowly happening now. More and more we will be using automated system (e.g. bots in chat apps) and will liaise with less human. Internet itself is a great example. Those who would be safe maybe are scientists and researchers, system maintainers, or technology developers. Simply say AI will take over many jobs. It won't be happening now, as the AI technology is still in infancy but I bet will happen sometimes in the future. During that time the middle-class will be fucked up. Rent will no longer be in parity with earnings, life will become harder, in fact middle-class will cease to exist and merging with low-income class as a result of automation.
Where will automation have the greatest impact? Sorry to say, but the developed nation will first suffer the consequences due to higher level of competition, high wagers and disparity of cost of. living wrt earnings. The developing nation will slowly learn from that.
That's my take: The impact of AI if the development of technology is not in parallel with the development of societal values.
That why I really disagree with the top OP - nonchalantly trivializing the impact of automation towards the low-income workers. Automation can be a gift or a curse, depending on how it is utilised.
Any company that doesn't automate will eventually get priced out. People are just too expensive compared to robots. We're smack dab in the midst of a technological revolution and just like the industrial revolution the job-scape is about to change rapidly and radically.
Automation is not the point of argument. That going to happens no matter what. In fact I touch about it in my other comment.
The point to ponder is how to address the impact of automation. As far as I know even without full automation, the US (and many other capitalism based) don't have a good record to address the difficulty faced by low skilled workers, e.g. depicted by Nomadland. To simply give utopian solution won't address the issue and would be premature.
Unless we are talking about Scandinavian countries (socialism system), that's a whole different issue.
There are so many factors at play right now and they're all changing so fast that it's hard to even guess at what strategy might be beneficial. AI development and automated manufacturing could theoretically bring down the costs of making in America to the point where American companies bring manufacturing back to the States again. On the other hand it could exasperate the rust belt trend that killed many Midwest cities.
I think in the short term it's going to be pretty bad for unskilled labor and it already has been pretty bad especially in certain areas of the country like west Virginia. The problem is all of Scandinavia has a population lower than California's let alone the entire US. It's amazingly easier to adapt when you have a small densely populated populous. Wyoming has a population density of 6 people per square mile.
Only time will tell but if Congress's current misadventures is telling at all I'm not overly optimistic.
Finally, I get a realistic answer.
Anyway, if I am a capitalist like Bezos, I will discreetly implement the full automation system to a new factory instead of rebuilding the system in already existing factory. By doing that, the system is there by design and its introduction won't impact any prospective workers, because there won't be any (existing) worker anyway. However, its impact to the society can't be neglected, because it's a lost opportunity for low-skilled people.
If there are enough number fully automated facilties built this way and if there is no social system in place to help them, the unemployable lower skilled workers will be doomed. As a capitalist, I don't care. The politicians won't bat an eye, as they're no issues being raise as it is done discreetly. The low-skilled people will become more.and more impoverished without them ever realize.
Capitalism means different things to different people. In my opinion it's an almost meaningless term now.
Building new factories is definitely one strategy. The upside is the building's infrastructure and footprint can exactly match the system you're implementing. The downside is that it's much more expensive and time consuming. The bottom line is if you can't fulfill your orders or your projections predict you won't be able to in the short term then it might convince you to retrofit an existing building rather than build a new one.
I'm a firm believer that there will always be someone who's willing to pay someone else to do something. New technologies obliterate old jobs but tend to create new jobs in the process. It's the in-between time that's truly difficult. When you have a job force trained for a job that isn't needed anymore. Retraining is the often cited cure but I don't know how scalable that really is.
A social safety net is important but there are a lot of states that either can't or won't provide that safety net in any substantial way. Just look at the republican state that sued trying to prevent the federally subsidized Medicaid expansion. The voters in these states don't seem to care enough about it to vote politicians in who want to provide a safely net.