Until recently, technology made low-paying, undesired jobs obsolete at a pace that made it possible for more jobs to be created by new industries than the industries that have been disrupted by them.

We are now entering a period in which middle and high paying jobs being replaced by machines. High-frequency trading replaced a whole profession in the financial sectors. There are now machines that are capable to analyze an x-ray image and determine the cause of the problem, leaving the doctor with "just" the job of delivering the news.

So, yes, we do have a problem. I'm not a Neo Luddite. The purpose of this is not to destroy the Internet and all the machines, but I do think that we need to have an ongoing debate about the social structures that we are dissolving as much as about those that we want to build up.

> High-frequency trading replaced a whole profession in the financial sectors.

But it also created one. Someone has to both conceive and write each algo. This looks like the old profession, except with different people because Excel is being replaced by C++.

Poor logic. The algos get shared and replicated, especially given open source. For example:

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol...

The algos can be created by fewer people. Traders are being replaced by the algos, and fewer people are required to create the algos than do the original trading. So your point does not have a 1-to-1 job creation-destruction ratio.

Ah, I should have made it clear. Yes, I agree with your line of thought. :) I think we do have a problem. I should have stated that above, hehe.