What seems to be the issue here? If you can get a machine to do something that a human can do then you give that human the opportunity to place his focus, time and attention elsewhere.

The issue is that the only jobs that seem to be vanishing through such "opportunities" (what a weasel word) are all unskilled labor (easiest to automate). Sure, doing work in the car instead of driving home in California freeway traffic for an hour a day is an opportunity, except that's not the problem here...

Most people that work unskilled labor jobs today aren't qualified to work alternative skilled jobs.

A large class of unemployed (and unemployable) workers is a nightmare situation and is detrimental in any economy.

There is dignity in work.

eh, if people are so much against basic income, get those unskilled hands fixing the country infrastructure.

I guess any country has plenty of fixing to do anyway.

most importantly, stop producing unskilled workers. automation isn't going to go away.

"most importantly, stop producing unskilled workers. automation isn't going to go away."

Now, we're talking about improving the education system, which has its own fair share of problems.

There are solutions, but none of them are easy to implement.

Or maybe this (fact that some humans cannot write code, etc. for a job) is a consequence of the bell curve or the human condition itself?

> If you can get a machine to do something that a human can do then you give that human the opportunity to place his focus, time and attention elsewhere.

Assuming the human was rational, what they were doing was already the thing that provided them the greatest utility of the options they had -- if putting their focus, time, and attention elsewhere was more beneficial to them, they already would have been doing it.

If you remove that option, unless there is some better new option created for that same human -- rather than merely displacing them from their best option -- then they experience a net utility loss.

Moreover, the article is touting that "Uber and Lyft Are Adding Jobs, Not Just Stealing Them" without mentioning this VERY important caveat that makes such a headline quite an inaccurate statement.

There's no issue whatsoever, just there's no point in saying "Lyft and Uber are creating jobs".

Luddites are alive and well into the 21st century

Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about self-driving cars, but the loss of jobs is a REAL issue here, and unlike the factories of yestercentury that created replacement jobs, it's not really clear to me (or even the @LoSboccaccs of HN) what the "replacement job" for a driver will look like.

That is a pretty scary situation, don't you think?

by moving from hunter-gatherer economies (where every single person was engaged in food production) to agriculture, and then from agriculture to mechanized agribusiness, we created a vast pool of unemployed humans (like 90 to 99% of the human race) who were available to do all sorts of other things, basically everything in the economy that is not food production. The REAL issue there was the availability of the jobless to do new work. To that vast list of productive economic activities we soon will be able to add jobs for newly-former drivers.

That really is how it works and it really is not an issue, other than it is what has "paved the way" for our modern high income, high nutrition, high health (by historical standards) lifestyles.

yes I agree, but I'd bet more on stop producing unskilled laborers - or the problem will never end. it was clear that automation was going to make a big mess of the low end a decade or two ago, but steps weren't made yesterday not today to plan for a solution.

now I know basic income doesn't give the same dignity as a job and not everyone can be an astronaut, but society is just keeping the head into the sand regarding this problem and it's just aggravating

what I think is that the sooner it pops the better, especially if it happens in a significant but not widespread sector, so solution could be made before all the manufacturers and most services are automated away from jobs, because there it will become really nasty.

What's the opposite of a Luddite? What do you call a person who assumes that applied technology will fix everything, and anyone hurt by it is merely a necessary sacrifice to usher the rest of us into the coming technological utopia?

Technophile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technophilia