argh, double post.
All these businesses without employees. Hm. Millions of people unable to adapt, out of work.
So, who’s gonna buy their stuff?
The same ones who are buying stuff now.
Technology is making workers less and less necessary. I outlined several examples for you. Change is coming… you’re simply going to have to adapt. Extinction events happen in nature, and they’ll happen in economics, too. A lot of people will be left out. That’s not avoidable. What is avoidable is you laying down and dying because change is happening.
I am self employed. There are omly three insurance companies in my state that offer individual health insurance. The cheapest was $1400 per month for one person. My health insurance plan is to use the emergency room and become a burden on the system.
Happy?
If, in fact, businesses will need very few employees, the thing to do is not start a business, but own a stable business. Markets don’t tend to be big enough for everyone to own a business. Markets consolidate, there is only so much need for small service businesses (hairdressers, plumbers).
Don’t have a job at all. Just invest in the stock market and own someone else’s business. Because, like we all have the drive to be sucessfully self employed, all of us are sitting on enough of a nest egg to invest and live off the dividends.
I’m sorry, but that’s just ignorant. Speaking as a person who actually has some business experience, there are some things that simply cannot be offshored. Someone has to build highways. You can’t import highways from China. Someone has to build buildings. (I work with a lot of businesses that design and build steel buildings; there is no offshoring in that industry.) Someone has to mine ore, extract oil, and chop down trees. Someone has to build SOMETHING - you can’t buy everything overseas, and currently the USA still has exceptionally strong manufacturing sectors in aircraft, semiconductors, industrial equipment, and chemicals. Someone has to deliver packages. Someone has to inspect forklifts. Someone has to drive trucks, and it just isn’t practical for every truck driver to be an owner-operator. Some people have to dispatch those trucks. Some people have to be the transportation officers that inspect and weigh them. Some people have to work in government jobs and be soldiers, teachers, cops, and garbage collectors.
If you really think every single person can be self employed and not work as an employee, you can’t have ever left the house, or else your understanding of commerce is remarkably limited to just one field (probably IT; people in IT often have this curious illusion that there’s no other kind fo work.) That is not how commerce works. For some enterprises there must be some people who give orders and more people who take them.
If YOU can set up a Tim Ferriss business and be successful, that’s fantastic. I hope you get stinking rich. I say go for it; I’ve run a small business and I plan to start anotherquite soon. Our War Council - myself and my two advisors, also small business owners - are meeting January 12 to put together a business plan. But I also know that you cannot offshore everything. That will never, ever, ever happen, not as long as you live, not as long as your grandchildren live.
I will, right now, bet you one hundred thousand dollars that in 2030, the economy will be structured such that the vast majority of able-bodied Americans are still employees.
That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. A significant chunk of the job losses are the result of reduced demand/consumption. But maybe if we cut unemployment all will be fixed.
No, it’s making certain workers in certain areas less necessary. The corollary being that they make more workers in other areas more necessary. Technology that eliminates employees also tends to have the side effect of making things cheaper and thus more affordable.
With your health plan, the laying down and dying is hardly avoidable.
cite?
Could we get the government to help me beg for a job? At this point I’m too lazy to steal.
You’re way past double. Maybe tell us some more about how things are changing and that we should adapt.
The investor class is indeed higher on the food chain than the entrepreneur class. If you have cash left over from running a business, being an investor is the way to go. But it takes some smarts; typically you’ll start as a day trader. Never bet big when you’re a newb. Baby steps first.
Wow. You’re really harping on this offshoring thing, aren’t you?
Sigh Another ignorant example. The technology exists already where you can use a machine to lay out the roads. Hot rollers today need a fraction of the workers that were used to lay roads before. In the future they’ll simply be remote controlled by one operator at best. It also isn’t hard to automate the production of the materials itself.
Bridges and overpasses are next to follow.
Please, next time pick something that isn’t as classically repetitive and vulnerable to automation as highway building.
Wrong again. If you work in that industry then you know for a FACT that automation is a big part of it.
Repetitive work. Doable by machines either now or in the near future.
More examples of where you’re wrong. Simple things like pillows are automated now. I would be floored if manufacturing chemicals wasn’t. Complex things like aircraft are further down the line.
Designers are about the only people who’ll keep their jobs indefinitely.
Today, predator drones. Tomorrow…?
In any case, all of the jobs you mentioned are enjoying the benefits of leaps and bounds growth in productivity. Fewer people doing the same total amount of work.
And there’ll be far fewer of enterprises that need employees now, or at worst, in the measurable future. That includes several examples that you brought up.
WTF is it with you and offshoring? This is not just about offshoring.
If for some reason this turns out to be true they won’t be earning nearly as much relative to inflation as they are now… and they’ve been losing ground in that regards for a while.
Job security is already a thing of the past. More changes are coming. Workers are losing even symbolic control of the means of production.
But it isn’t zero. The pie has shrunken, it hasn’t disappeared. There are still opportunities out there. There’ll be more people fighting for the pie we have now. Oh does that mean you’ll have to get along with less? Oh well. Your other alternative is to sit around begging the Government. Or starve.
It’ll get people off their asses to fend for themselves. Or maybe you just like seeing them fall prey every time unemployment benefits get hung up?
Tell me something… what do animals do when their prey move away? What does a mouse do when the cheese is moved? Can you answer that?
And as a result they create more jobs elsewhere. Good deal! So how’s that working out anyway?
Why not eat healthy and exercise?
I’m sure you’ll discount this, but here goes information on a pattern that’s been going on for years:
http://ezinearticles.com/?More-Fallout-From-Obamacare,-Fewer-Insurance-Companies-and-Less-Choice&id=5463877 (Thanks to Obamacare, 2010)
Now how about you cite your claim that “The corollary being that they make more workers in other areas more necessary”?
Ah, a witty saying instead of coming up with an actual solution that doesn’t involve badmouthing other solutions.
Why don’t you repeat for the 500th time your solution for the unemployed? Oh nevermind, all you’ve done is repeat into infinity that owning one’s business is so hard and impossible and too fraught with danger!
You go ahead and tell the jobless to keep begging the Government for help or pushing out resumes. Keep dissuading them from providing for themselves when no one else has anything for them. It’s what you’ve been raised to believe in, I suppose. Oh did I mention you’re way past double with regards to doing that?
Well ,start a health insurance company. There aren’t very many of them so you can just open one and solve the problem.
See HRoark, I get it now.
I for one look forward to you showing me a cite of highways built without someone to build them. You don’t know much about it, that’s obvious. If you think designing and building roadways is repetitive, you’ve never worked with the folks who dothis stuff. Roads LOOK simple, and I know they look the same, but they’re really not; they’re amazing feats of engineering and a road built in one place is quite often dramatically different from another in structure and design.
And if it all gets done by robots, someone’s got to fix the robots.
If what you’re postulating is a Star Wars-like future where robots do all the work, that’s great. I’m looking forward to it. Don’t hold your breath, though, bcause it’s not happening soon.
If this thread is devolving into science fiction fantasy, I guess it’s not going anywhere. But I’m still wondering if you have the balls to take my bet.
I still offer a bet of $100,000 that in 2030,
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The vast majority of the U.S. workforce will be employed in the service of a business or a government agency, and
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Wages, adjusted for inflation, will be either substantially the same as they are today or will be higher.
Um…no. Most investors do not start as daytraders - not if you are going to establish the sort of capital that allows you to live off your dividends. Most investors who do that have significant capital either all at once (silver spoon) or through regular investments, invest it wisely for both growth and income where possible.
Daytrading is a worse bet than starting your own business for risk and losing your shirt.
Where does that capital come from? Well, if you got lucky you inherited it.
So far you’ve recommended two rather risky ways for people to keep themselves afloat - starting your own business and daytrading.
I’d like to suggest a better way to keep yourself afloat. Working for a small but stable firm (not that I have, I’ve spent my career in big companies, but its worked for me - I’m the right age to have been able to take advantage of some trends), keep your skills up to date, be willing to reinvent yourself - even, if you must - moving to a different country, live beneath your means and put as much cash aside as you can. The small business owner takes the risk (gets the profit, too), but you don’t wake up with someone foreclosing on your house because when you started your business you couldn’t afford to incorporate or made a stupid mistake a formed a partnership with an idiot.
This sounds suspiciously like another Rand disciple who used to post here. Is this the libertarian party line, that health insurance can be replaced with diet and exercise? You will find it surprisingly ineffective when an uninsured driver runs a red light and T-bones your car.
You’re on.
Another horrible example. If a driver T-bones your car what are the odds that they’ll be able to drive off? Hardly any. They’ll be held liable for your injuries. And if they’re penniless… well, you shoulda got coverage for drivers that are uninsured and poor… wtf is that called… (I had to look at my card, heheheh) ah yes, uninsured motorist coverage.
Sounds like a business venture to me! Out side the box…
Its like fairy-tale stories, but instead of elves and pixies, you get magical entrepreneurship. Capitalist woo.
Private health insurance companies have employees – hundreds of them.
A corporation will, and does, pay triple for an American worker if they know that he’s the best in the world at what he does. I see it all the time.
THAT’S the way to survive the shakeup. Be far better than any Chinese or Indian person.