Strictly playing devil's advocate, but is the lifelong employment of their staff uniqlo's problem?

If you found a cheaper supplier of milk, would you feel obligated to reimburse your milk man? (may be a misplaced cultural reference, but in the UK 20+ years ago a chap delivering you milk to your door every morning on a rolling contract basis was the norm - generally they do other stuff now)

When I read a story like this, I'm not faulting a Uniqlo for choosing progress. It's logical and extremely profitable. I think the alarm is precisely because of how much sense it makes.

Enough incremental progress has been made for us to arrive at this threshold, after which a company like Uniqlo can lay off 90% of their workforce by investing an amount which is, if I'm not mistaken[0], considerably less than what they profit in one year.

That's not incremental. It's unprecedented.

[0] https://www.fastretailing.com/eng/ir/financial/summary.html

Absolutely, if I were in a position where my job were easily automated I would be terrified.

I suspect the majority of HN readers are in a less precarious position, so we have the privilege of a little detachment in our horror at the prospect of huge swathes of automation.

What to do though? There is very little we can do to stymie the inevitable unemplocalyspe without ripping up society's rulebook altogether.

I fear unionization may have been the answer 30+ years ago but that particular horse has well and truly bolted. Universal basic income failed in Finland as far as I can remember (I could be wrong on all counts there, it's still early!), and let's be honest - any government legislation would just lead to a global race-to-the-bottom as nations prostitute their labour laws to attract companies priced out of traditional locations by taxation and fines. Trade tariffs would only drive companies to diversify into new markets and if consumer demand was there, a thriving grey market would emerge...

Perhaps 'hand packed' will just join 'organic' 'sustainable' and 'free range' as desirable things to have on your packaging? Check out these hand-picked shoes!

Uniqlo are an interesting example, they compete primarily on price anyway (Heck, I'm wearing a pair of their cheapo selvage jeans) so they will absolutely push this as far as they can.

Well worth keeping an eye on them over the next couple of years to see how it plays out - will likely form the template.

It's one of those things where it doesn't make much sense when you look at it case-by-case, but the aggregate of them becomes a real problem, and somebody has to pay for it. Ideally, since it's a common problem, everybody does - i.e. we tax productivity more, and use that money to support people whose wages are driven down or whose jobs are lost.

Companies as a group should be aware that they are just a polite fiction that exists only because actual people allow them to exist. If they continue down the path of externalizing all costs while internalizing all revenues, people may one day decide that they're tired of humouring the fiction. If we somehow got to a point where 90% of workers were laid off due to automation, with no adjustments to the social safety net, then I think we would be long past that point already. In that sense, Uniqlo is effectively freeloading off the fact that other companies haven't similarly automated, because if they had, Uniqlo would not be able to exist. Nobody would be able to afford its clothing, and there would be massive societal unrest to the point that people would probably not even respect the "right" of a company to do things like hold private property.

> If you found a cheaper supplier of milk, would you feel obligated to reimburse your milk man?

According to the TWU, yes - the MTA is required to pay the TWU $450,000 whenever it uses a machine to bore tunnels, because forty years ago, that job would have been performed by a human instead.

Well that's just dumb. Taxpayers are subsidizing TWU -- actually paying for absolutely nothing in return.

> Well that's just dumb. Taxpayers are subsidizing TWU -- actually paying for absolutely nothing in return.

I agree that it is a terrible idea. Unfortunately, NY government (and the elections) are so corrupt that there's literally nothing we can do about it.

I see the /s, but these workers are well educated, as any average Japanese is, relatively speaking.

It’s not that of an ordeal for them to move to another job.

>move to another job

And when that job gets automated?

We used to be 90%+ farmers. We'll find a way.

Then give some examples. The "well, we've always found a way before" is just hand waving without specifics. Importantly, if you consider a model where the rate of technological progress steadily increases, it's very possible that rate at one point will overtake the rate at which new jobs are created. When/if that happens, the calamity will come quite suddenly, even if decades and centuries prior we always found more jobs for the ones that technology destroyed.

I do find it hilarious that as people we generally hate going to work, but at the same time we also fear losing our jobs.

Jobs/careers are a relatively new idea as far as I know, I think we can figure out something to do without them.

> I do find it hilarious that as people we generally hate going to work, but at the same time we also fear losing our jobs.

People also like eating, and buying Netflix subscriptions. There are plenty of people in places like Africa and Asia that have lots of time on their hands without jobs, and I don't think they think it's a plus.

> as people we generally hate going to work, but at the same time we also fear losing our incomes

In that changeover, farmers remained farmers, while their children trained to work other jobs. The attrition happened on a generational scale. There are only so many times you can ask a single individual to change careers during their lifetime.

Our ancestors, all the way up to our grandparents, changed careers zero times. Our parents changed careers once. In the acceleration of technological development, we may be required to consider changing two or more times, even as the market cost of retraining and education increases. Nobody will have time to become an expert, because the domains old enough to have any of them will become obsolete too quickly.

Between there and here are several violent revolutions where millions died. It would be nice to find a safer way.

If we can't find a way conventionally, at least there's always the option of becoming desperate, voting for populists and going to war sometime. After the war is over, there will also be more work because we've destroyed a shitload of infrastructure that now has to be rebuilt. Problem solved!

Young people can't afford to buy farmland anymore and we're losing topsoil at a concerning rate.

Yes, and now farming is mostly automated... and manufacturing... and soon service sector jobs. What's left after that?

Yes, we plan on finding a way. That's why we're discussing alternatives. We can find a way by accident.

So, the first shift was manual labour being automated during the industrial revolution. Now slowly intellectual jobs are being replaced. The only unique aspect a human has after this are emotional jobs (psychiatrist, etc).

There are not enough emotional jobs that can be created to fulfill 7 billion people (a quickly rising number). I think we're going to need a shift in the mindset of people. Jobs aren't required, we should instead look at increasing recreational activities available to people and try to enjoy our lives.

>There are not enough emotional jobs that can be created to fulfill 7 billion people

I hope the number of emotive-based jobs increase in the future, because mental health is an under-served problem. But the number of emotive-based jobs will never be enough for everyone because those jobs require a certain kind of sensitive, agreeable, or sociable personality.

Then a ton of jobs will have been automated, and as a society we’ll take a hard look at the situation to find a solution. The only limit is what we accept as a compromise.

But otherwise we could take any of these workers and move them to a developping country, they would have a great impact. It just won’t happen as that’s not how most of them view their future.