Re:Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation
by lm28469 on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @12:25PM
(#26636644)
> What if we did get to a point where nearly all the tedious, unskilled jobs were done by machines -- what exactly is the barrier to taking all the humans previously doing those jobs and leveling them up to do jobs machines can't do as well?
Because history repeats itself. Yesterday's factory workers are now slaves of the service/gig economy. These things have been discussed in basically any economy book since the 60s. Automation in itself just moves the problem, if there are no societal changes to assist it you're just running in circles. Politicians of the 70s were promising 5 hours work days and 3 days of work per week thanks to automation, last time I checked we work as much as back then (if not more because retirement age is going up)
> It seems the barrier is that generally it's not economically beneficial to do so
It's not economical because in today's world you need an army of cheap labor to generate big money for the sharks on top. And this is exactly why you'll always have shitty jobs paying the bare minimum for insane amount of work, it'll take a looooong time before a 7$ an hour worker gets more expensive than a robot for any task remotely difficult.
I'm not saying UBI would solve these issues, or any at all really, it's just something we should at least give a shot. But the problem is that in our societies being a worthy human being = working 8 hours a day 5 days a week, and as long as this is default we'll never get rid of shitty jobs, no matter how much we automate, we'll always have to find new occupations for people, and by definition these jobs will be more and more abstract, less and less stimulating, &c.
Because history repeats itself. Yesterday's factory workers are now slaves of the service/gig economy. These things have been discussed in basically any economy book since the 60s. Automation in itself just moves the problem, if there are no societal changes to assist it you're just running in circles. Politicians of the 70s were promising 5 hours work days and 3 days of work per week thanks to automation, last time I checked we work as much as back then (if not more because retirement age is going up)
> It seems the barrier is that generally it's not economically beneficial to do so
It's not economical because in today's world you need an army of cheap labor to generate big money for the sharks on top. And this is exactly why you'll always have shitty jobs paying the bare minimum for insane amount of work, it'll take a looooong time before a 7$ an hour worker gets more expensive than a robot for any task remotely difficult.
I'm not saying UBI would solve these issues, or any at all really, it's just something we should at least give a shot. But the problem is that in our societies being a worthy human being = working 8 hours a day 5 days a week, and as long as this is default we'll never get rid of shitty jobs, no matter how much we automate, we'll always have to find new occupations for people, and by definition these jobs will be more and more abstract, less and less stimulating, &c.