In the debate over automation, we must recognize that unemployment will not - in the long run - ever increase as a result of machines and automation. Weve already experienced these concerns during the industrial revolution when the portion of the labor market involved in agriculture was 92% in 1790 and fell to less than 2% 200 years later. People stopped farming - yes, but they instead did something else productive for society; something people previously did not have the capacity to do. We again had the same concerns in FDRs era when Eleanor Roosevelt famously declared that society had enough jobs-related machines and needed no more... Again, automation increased and people simply created new ways to add value to society. We did not run out of jobs to do. This concern has proven time and time again to be founded on a misunderstanding that the job market is static, that just because people in the 90s couldnt foresee the need for an IPad manufacturing plant, that they were correct in assuming one would never exist, that just because people in the 80s never foresaw the commercialization of the internet, that they were correct in never predicting the creation of jobs revolving around it, that just because those in the 70s never imagined personal computers existing in nearly every home, that they were correct in thinking computer jobs wouldnt revolutionize the labor market, etc. This concern that jobs - in the aggregate - will disappear, has never, ever, EVER, manifested as predicted. Thank GOD for productive advancements, including automation and robotics. If it werent for such advancements wed all still be farmers. True, almost no one among us would be unemployed, but wed also be experiencing a dramatically reduced quality of life coupled with back-breaking manual labor. In the meantime, fewer people would be available to focus on medicines, technology, and comforts; all the things that make life more pleasurable.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 14:10:48 +0000
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