So if you want people to do more than spit on us as we pass, we should put effort into ensuring a safety net for them when the work we domtskes their livliehood away. Right now that doesn’t happen, the wealth just accumulates at the top while we suckle drops of it when it “trickles down” on us. It’s easy to talk about how machines will give us more free time, because we can afford it.
Far more than that, coal workers take pride in their work, it's part of their identity and it commands a certain degree of respect as being "hard labor". If it was just about "bringing home the bacon" they might as well take any other job.
This is in contrast to working for Wal-Mart or McDonalds, there's no pride in it, it's not part of people's identity. People want to move on from these jobs, but there are less and less opportunities to move on to.
> So if you want people to do more than spit on us as we pass, we should put effort into ensuring a safety net for them when the work we domtskes their livliehood away.
A safety net is well and good, but if people lose their jobs and get stuck in the net, it destroys them. Again, it's about pride and identity.
Since pride in one’s work tends to tie with the value that broader communities put on the work, would a broad-based ongoing PR campaign by well-resourced organizations (incl. local and federal governments) help with that? Perhaps we can put the DeBeers experience with creating a shared cross-generation myth of diamonds representing true love to good use.
Elderly care, for example, would be hard to automate cost effectively over the next couple of decades and possibly longer. If society puts more value and gives more prestige to the job, more people would be willing to train to do it.
(Obviously, the society should help people transition to their new roles as well for example by covering the costs of living and training for a substantial period.)
[1] Lump of labor fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
As concrete examples:
- Has every piece of potentially useful land well-developed as a magnificent public or private space?
- Has all public infrastructure needed been built and well-maintained to the best quality possible?
- Does every person, adult and child, have access to world-class education/training they want or need, including private tutoring if they wish?
The well-resourced organizations seem to be backing broad-based ongoing PR and political campaigns to do exactly the opposite of providing people with a good education:
This seems more like the Industrial Revolution + Twitter. Just like all the studies that the world is technically better off in every modern metric of improvement (poverty, starvation, mobility..etc, but things feel shitty because you are forced to read about the one dude kidnapping and eating children one state over, I think it's probably just amplified fears (and ultimately seperation of teams) than it was during other large periods of change.
It's also worth noting that people dont die, jobs just shift unexpectedly. Sure it can crush a generation (see the american midwest from 1960-2020), but most people move to where the work is geographically and intellectually or just die out.
> Sure it can crush a generation (see the american midwest from 1960-2020), but most people move to where the work is geographically and intellectually or just die out.
That is possibly the most heartless thing I have read on this site. I imagine your perspective would change markedly if it were you that were stuck, unable to afford to move, in a dead town whose industry left, while you contemplate your time until you die out.
And yes, of course our response to these facts are even more important. Do we just short steel mill stocks and Pittsburgh bonds or advocate for retraining, for subsidizing emerging industry establishments in the affected areas, etc.
Some of the affected people feel it as elitism, socialism, etc. Usually because outsiders are blind to and ignorant of the local complexities, and also because good fashioned bias and denialism. It's easier to simply deny climate change and hate green liberals than accepting that coal is out. And that software has a much higher ROI due to the marginally aomost zero cost of adding new users/customers than hard labour jobs, etc.
For instance, I remember the wave of de-industrialisation of the 80s. While I wasn't personally affected, I knew plenty who were. For many tens of thousands it wasn't a simple case of just move to where the work is.
How do you do that when your house is worth a quarter or tenth of of what you paid, but the mortgage debt remains? When almost everyone else locally is trying to move to get work too. Who is going to buy the house? In a town with no work. They may lose the dozen ship builders or steel works, but also lose the hundreds of businesses that serviced, supplied and depended on the products of those major works, then everything that depended on the money flowing from those - the takeaways, supermarkets, cinema, garages etc. The whole supply chain breaks. You may as well ask them to flap arms and fly out of the ghost town.
If one of the lucky few that were able to get out, carry a debt that can never be paid off, whilst earning half or less of the former skilled wage. They can't all move to the outskirts of London to work in banking or retrain in age discriminating IT in their mid 50s. Who's going to employ that junior? It ruins more than just one generation. The kids deprived of education and other life chances, or just the consequences of having parents from whom the hope has been sucked, perhaps on anti-depressants long term. Little wonder most of those places gained a huge drug and crime problem in the aftermath. Some places have still not come close to recovering.
Clearly we can't artificially keep every rural pit village viable, but we could, and should try not to lose whole towns, cities and regions, unless we want more civil unrest and more extremists elected. That history even goes some way to explaining Brexit. So yes, from what I've seen over those 40 years in the UK, we should and probably must subsidise through tax and incentives new industries and services establishing in deprived areas until they can sustain once again. Ignoring whole regions as acceptable losses in a "free" market was a huge, unforgivable mistake. Adequate regeneration help is probably far cheaper for the state once you consider all consequences anyway. Particularly in a future where it appears likely many more will lose their work, much more quickly, than in the past.
edit: some words
Nobody really cared as the blacksmith, farm hand, or the secretary lost jobs. Coal mining is a celebrated profession for some reason.
Whereas farm hands and secretaries have transformed, and were not so densely localized. (And farm hands are still needed, large industrialized farms are still rather labor intensive, just more area can be successfully managed by the same sized staff + a lot more capital/machinery.)
I am not sure where you got that impression. The loss of blacksmith (and nailmaker, etc.) and farm hand jobs in 19th century England was a huge social issue (hundreds of thousands of people starved to death after being thrown out of work in England alone; over a million if you count the displacement that lead to the Irish famines), with regular government inquiries, newspaper coverage, and many, many books written about it.
In particular, there was a very famous book, called Capital, written by Karl Marx, that, among other things, points out that popular anti-automation anxiety goes back much farther than the Luddite movement:
> In the 17th century nearly all Europe experienced revolts of the work-people against the ribbon-loom, a machine for weaving ribbons and trimmings… Abbé Launcelloti, in a work that appeared in Venice in 1636, but which was written in 1579, says as follows: "Anthony Müller of Danzig saw about 50 years ago in that town, a very ingenious machine, which weaves 4 to 6 pieces at once. But the Mayor being apprehensive that this invention might throw a large number of workmen on the streets, caused the inventor to be secretly strangled or drowned." In Leyden, this machine was not used till 1629; there the riots of the ribbon-weavers at length compelled the Town Council to prohibit it… After making various decrees more or less prohibitive against this loom in 1632, 1639, etc., the States General of Holland at length permitted it to be used, under certain conditions, by the decree of the 15th December, 1661. It was also prohibited in Cologne in 1676, at the same time that its introduction into England was causing disturbances among the work-people. By an imperial Edict of 19th Feb., 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all Germany. In Hamburg it was burnt in public by order of the Senate. The Emperor Charles VI, on 9th Feb., 1719, renewed the edict of 1685, and not till 1765 was its use openly allowed in the Electorate of Saxony. This machine [the ribbon-loom], which shook Europe to its foundations, was in fact the precursor of the mule and power-loom, and of the industrial revolution of the 18th century… About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright's scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century [19th], chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used. [footnote: In old-fashioned manufactures the revolts of the workpeople against machinery, even to this day, occasionally assume a savage character, as in the case of the Sheffield file cutters in 1865].
From chapter 15 of volume I
There are a lot important questions that will need to be answered in a very short time. Where will the future unemployed be redeployed? Will the lack of employment lead to instability and civil strife? What about social mobility and advancement? Will the inequality gap worsen?
Pay attention to which jobs currently pay well, those jobs are the most likely to get pressure from surplus labor.
There's also a big and growing demand for health care and care for the elderly.
I doubt that automation will truly replace such a massive amount of labor as some predict, but even if it does, that will cause an equally strong lowering of the cost of living, requiring less labor to live, cheapening welfare, etc.
One example from the NYTimes.
English: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/style/modern-love-how-i-m...
Spanish: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/09/28/modern-love-donador-es...
Excerpt #1
Original English:
> A couple of years ago I began seeing ads for 23andMe, a service that analyzes your saliva — you spit in a test tube and mail it off for analysis — and provides you with information about ancestry, health and DNA relatives.
Translated Spanish via DeepL:
> Hace un par de años comencé a ver anuncios de 23andMe, un servicio que analiza tu saliva - escupes en un tubo de ensayo y lo envías por correo para analizarlo - y te proporciona información sobre ascendencia, salud y parientes ADN.
Translated Spanish (professional translator):
> Hace un par de años, comencé a ver anuncios de 23andMe, un servicio que analiza tu saliva —la pones en un tubo de ensayo y lo mandas por correo para que se analice— y te da la información de tus ancestros, salud y familiares según tu ADN.
DeepL’s translation has the same faults as other services. Namely, in Spanish, object pronouns are very important. In the sentence describing how he sent a saliva sample, the DeepL translation does not use pronouns correctly like a native speaker would. Also, it stumbles on what is the most common vernacular. The DeepL translation does not use the right way to say “DNA relatives” which is “familiares según tu ADN”. “Según” is commonly used to denote authority of a source or in other words “according to”.
Sure, which is why I said over time. If you look at any isolated period you’re not going to see any trends that take place over longer periods of time. The standard of living world wide goes up over time, and has done so at a very accelerated rate since the industrial revolution. The world is generally becoming a better place, it’s much better than it was 100 years ago, and still even better than it was 10 years ago. New technology, and the progress of emerging economies makes life better for the whole world. There’s plenty of people who have an interest in selling fear, especially when it comes to technology, but that deception has been around for as long as technology itself. They said all the same things about mechanization back then as they say about automation now. The sad truth is that good news is critically dangerous to too many people with agendas, that it’ll end up getting ignored or denied with ignorant passion.