http://robotland.blogspot.com/2009/09/warehouse-robots-on-mo...
To work your way up at Amazon, you'd need to enter at the base level in either engineering or marketing. And that's no bad thing.
All of society benefits when mundane tasks are automated. Sure, those warehouse workers never get that job, but there are jobs at the robot makers, robot technicians, systems designers. The freeing up of this labour enables it to be deployed elsewhere, making everyones lives better. I don't see anyone complaining about cheaper books.
Your examples of mechanics and checkout operators are just red herrings. There are always better ways to do your job, even if a computer talks to the engine. There's being better organised, better communicating, harder working, faster and better. It's complete nonsense to say that a mechanic can't make it to supervisor or service manager because a computer does all the diagnostics, or to use the reverse and say the only way a mechanic was able to be promoted was by being a whiz at using a timing light, even if they were lazy, sloppy and uncommunicative. And you're forgetting the improvement for the customer, whose car is serviced quickly and accurately for an ever-decreasing cost in real terms.
Much of your thinking seems dangerously close to the broken window fallacy. Improvements in technology drive productivity, and increasing productivity is what underpins real improvement in living standards.
Where we differ is about where the benefits go. Of course, we can all benefit as customers from cheaper books or more reliable vehicles and so forth; indeed, Walmart exemplifies the benefits of scale and modern supply chains in a way that substantially lowers the cost of living for a very large number of people. But it is not true that all of society benefits evenly when dull jobs are eliminated by automation.
Sure, those warehouse workers never get that job, but there are jobs at the robot makers, robot technicians, systems designers. The freeing up of this labour enables it to be deployed elsewhere, making everyones lives better.
See, if we had low unemployment and steady growth I'd agree, because industrial policy props up inefficient businesses and labor shortages drive up wages and act as a brake on growth. But what we have now is unusually high unemployment following a long period of wage stagnation, even though we had a period of record GDP growth at the same time. Between technology, outsourcing, and a shift towards services, it's not clear where less skilled labor can be efficiently deployed in the US at the moment. Youth unemployment is something like 40% because there's just not much demand for the inexperienced. One approach might be to abolish the minimum wage so that people could be busy doing something, even if only for $1/hour - but that's not a realistic policy, and would probably lead to riots.
It's no good being able to deploy your labor elsewhere if you lack skills that are in demand or the place demanding them is far away. Of course, you can up and move. I've done it myself, on several occasions - but I was young, free and single, and more importantly I had portable skills that were in high demand. The sad fact is that a lot of people aren't very entrepreneurial or smart - half the population is on the left side of the IQ distribution. A cheerful distribution and a good work ethic are important for anyone, but absent the skills most in demand, or the knowledge of what those even are, the opportunities are limited. We can easily come up with suggestions for a given individual but it's much harder to do across a population. And part of the reason for this is that neither government nor the economy as a whole operates like a business. We don't have the option of just firing 10 or 20% of the least productive citizens.
There's plenty of capital sitting unused in the private sector right now, but not enough new demand to invest it in new equipment or hiring. The ~30 million unemployed and the bottom 50% of earners don't have enough money to do much shopping, so it's not going to come from them. Europe and Japan are in a similar situation. Where is the demand going to come from?
Youth unemployment - well I have a lot of opinions about this - and your answer is correct - you up and leave and chase the work, you don't sit around and complain. Part of the problem is that we tell everyone that they're going to have a wonderful career when that is plainly not an option for every school leaver. What should be taught is self reliance and basic financial literacy and let people make their own decisions from there.
As for that unemployed capital - there's plenty of scope to put it to work, but the regulatory environment closes off a lot of options, minimum wages being just one of the factors. It just takes some creative destruction and some new ideas to get it moving again. I don't have any of those ideas (nor any of the capital, for that matter) but I'm sure there are plenty of new things just around the corner.
Ever read the Penny Arcade cartoon "Automata"? There's a scene where automata are banned, and the chief of police goes, "It's about time someone got rid of those damned autos! Those jobs should go to hard-working American men!" To which the robot character, Carl, responds, "Actually, sir, hundreds of American workers were involved in my construction..."
It made me smile. Especially as an employee of a robotics company.
I think history shows that we will have a structural realignment of our society. For better or worse, California will be at the front of it.
This is not just a matter of politics, public v. private sector, and the competing vested interests in California. Those socioeconomic factors are all important, but the elephant in the room is that a very high proportion of our wealth derives from computers and software. We have automated away a great deal of what the labor force used to do, so successfully that many industries have pushed unit labor costs down to the level where only developing nations can compete.
Outsourcing is generally blamed for the decline in US manufacturing jobs, but I think that's a symptom rather than a cause. If there wasn't a large pool of cheap labor in Asia, then we'd just be seeing more robots in the US, as is the case in Japan to a large extent.
Of course the internet has brought all kinds of wonderful new opportunities. But because the key economic benefits are disintermediation and delocalization, the rewards are distributed very differently. Take Amazon - hugely successful company, clear benefit to the consumer, and a good advert for capitalism generally. Jobs at Amazon: warehouse drone, middle manager, engineer, senior manager. I simplify, of course, but what do you think are the chances for a warehouse drone to 'learn the business' and rise up the ranks? Virtually zero unless they study at home, because the warehouse job consists of picking up order slips, scanning things taken off shelves, and putting them in boxes. The inventory management, purchasing, accounting, and analysis aspects are entirely automated, so you're not going to pick up many skills on the job.
This isn't just an internet problem. In my supermarket the checkout is not staffed mainly by people whose job is recite scripts written by the marketing department and to make sure I'm not stealing anything. They wave barcoded products over a laser scanner and announce a total. All the price-checking, calculation and cash dispensing is carried out by a computer, and the job doesn't even require accurate data entry. The job requires so little that it doesn't pay much, and there's no real room for improvement, skill development, or competition. There's no opportunity to become the most efficient and accurate checkout operator; and it demands so little competence that getting fired is nearly impossible. So if you're tired of stacking shelves, don't hold your breath waiting for a chance to try life as a checkout clerk. You could occupy your thoughts with examining what goods sell best in which shelf positions, but display management is largely automated these days as well. You just scan the wholesale box and your scanning wand tells you which shelf section to put the inventory on today.
Work as a mechanic? Well, a lot of modern engines are just black boxes now, and your job is about running diagnostics and then either resetting the firmware or ordering whatever the manufacturer's website says you need. Clerical work/bookkeeping? Greatly reduced - spreadsheets take care of all the arithmetic, and even the data entry is increasingly automated. As we all know, writing is a good deal easier with a computer than a typewriter, and there's been a corresponding decline in the importance of writing ability, accuracy in spelling and grammar, and handwriting. For many people now, the most complex tasks they perform at home are operating the microwave and assembling Ikea furniture. Earning a living now requires either long hours in low paying jobs or long hours of study and professional commitment for well-paying ones, so for a lot of people housework and DIY are necessities to be minimized - there isn't the same time or economic freedom to develop ancillary skills for their own sake.
So it's not just how we divide the income or the taxes. It's how we divide the work too.