Here’s a fun little (1 min) video demonstrating quality and consistency and throughput that human operators simply can’t match.
Moderator Action
This thread has drifted pretty far into IMHO territory. I think the topic has been addressed pretty well factually, so the thread will probably do better from this point in IMHO.
Any factual information is of course still welcome.
Moving from FQ to IMHO.
Good points.
The market crashes of various types over the years all rely on the herd mentality and greed overriding common sense. Until we can figure a way around that, they will repeat. (Perhaps AI will figure it out - but I’m pessimistically inclined to see AI as “riding the wave” of human stupidity in the market, but being smart enough to get out in time…)
We’re approaching the view of income, jobs and money the wrong way. Instead of thinking of it as “how can the average worker afford X?” think of it this way - the average worker will have an income of $X. With production being cheap enough, they can afford A,B, C and D instead of just A. This is because ultimately, if it only takes one human to make a thousand of item A, then a thousand humans can enjoy an A. (“but what about the materials?” Materials are only a cost because a human had to extract them, so the cost of A reflects the wages to those humans too. The only exception is if there is an ingredient sufficiently in short supply - gold, rare earths, etc. - to drive up the price,)
Similarly, there are always some more jobs. A few years (decades?) ago we transitioned to a service economy. It used to be the majority of jobs were in agriculture. With mechanization, the majority of jobs switched to industry. Then, with factory automation, they have now switched to service.
Factory jobs now seem to be mainly tending the robots. I’ve visited a steel plant - robot is what they are, even though they are rolling mills twice the length of a football field, or extruders 20 feet across. The human sits in a booth and watches to make sure the machine does the job properly, rather than hammering on things or pulling levers. A handful of humans make rolls of steel at the rate of tons per minute. This is why cars are so cheap. (The thing that costs the most today - housing - is still made mainly by swarms of skilled humans). I anticipate there will be a time when all the cheap junk you buy at the dollar store will be replaced by a 3D printer; there will be one in each house, and if you need something, you find a design online and print it. When it’s junk, feed it into the recycler.
The biggest impediments to a real market iMHO are two - natural monopolies and time. A chip shortage does not resolve itself in a matter of weeks or months because a fabrication facility takes years to build, is a massive investment, and who knows what the market for chips will be like in 5 or 10 years, especially if everyone else has the same idea. Time provides market inertia.
Similarly, monopolies limit growth. The iPhone is not the moneymaker for Apple - iOS is. By contrast, Android can be licensed by anyone, the phones are effectively commodities. IBM made the )fortunate for us) mistake of not making the operating system for their new PC exclusive. (Nor the physical components). There were a limited number of clone competitors for their mainframes, and AFAIK none for the System 3x/AS400. Everyone makes PC’s, and it does not require a licensing fee to IBM. (Just Microsoft, but their terms are a relatively less onerous). But the more logical monopolies are the logical ones. Facebook is useless if there are 20 different ones, and only 5% of your friends are on the same one. Interconnect them all, and it becomes a commodity game with no real profits. (Phone companies today, for example, only make money through inertia and government fiddling) The value of FB to advertisers is how it can reach all of a target audience. Having to find and negotiate with 20 different players to reach all the cat lovers or vegans is less appealing -less valuable - to advertisers.
OTOH, monopolies are a result of government intervention in the market to protect inventors. Without them, we’d see a far different landscape I’m sure. The need for patents had been recognized centuries ago, Copyright, well over a century ago.
but to reply to the OP, experience with the real world seems to show that despite automation replacing the lower levels of jobs, there is plenty of work to go around - even if we replace phone operators, typists, store cashiers, bank tellers, and soon - taxi drivers.
It doesn’t have to be illegal, it’s just riskier. Same for corporate raids, leveraged buy-outs, and short selling. It’s more of a “financial instrument” where companies are pawns in the game rather than the raison d’être.
But that doesn’t mean they pay as well as the old jobs did. When those are the only jobs available anymore, there’s a lot of potential employees which depresses wages. Then you get back to the problem of having enough people who can afford those services.
Yes and no. The point is automation has produced such a flood of goods that even the “poor” today have some things better than 70 years ago.
As for the number of jobs - we’ve gone from the 1950’s when a lot of women did not work outside the home, to today when almost all do work outside the home. Which means a lot of families have 2 cars as a matter of course (a rarity in the 50’s) not to mention washing machines and dryers, freezers, microwaves, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, multiple TV’s and all associated accessories, cable TV and cellphones, etc. etc. etc. (automation having made housework easier…theoretically)
Despite adding that many extra workers, and losing jobs to automation or overseas, unemployment today (and historically) has remained relatively constant, and the toys we mostly all can afford have also remained available. Things may fluctuate from one year to the next, but generally they remain the same. Was an average blue-collar worker in 1955 really better off than the average worker today?
I have thought about this often. In 1955 he had one car per family, a tv and radio, one phone, a washing machine, a toaster, a vacuum cleaner and a set of Encyclopedias. And usually an 800 sg ft house.
Some things yes. But as I said upthread “housing, healthcare, education, transportation, energy, and even food have not. You know, the things that make up 90% of most people’s expenses.”
If they were lucky, We had no car, one black and white TV (no cable - we got three channels with rabbit ears, often poor quality) a washing machine but no dryer - all apartments in our area had rotating clotheslines outside beside the front steps.
We could not afford a set of encyclopedias. Homework that required any research meant taking the bus to the public library, or staying in the school library when school was out. Libraries used to be crowded with kids after school for that reason.
Three of us lived in an apartment of about 900 sq feet. I didn’t know anyone who had air conditioning. Not even my middle class friends.
This was back in the dark ages of the early 1970’s. And we thought we had it good compared to the previous generation. I remember when my grandma got her first wringer washer. She was so excited! Before that it was wash tubs, scrbbing boards and soap. And the wringer meant clothes dried so much faster on the line!
Wall-to-wall carpet wasn’t a thing, because not everyone could afford a vacuum. You needed to be able to take the rug outside and beat it. The flooring in our apartment was 100% cheap lino, and we had painted cinderblock walls. We eventually moved to a duplex and my mom got a vacuum and a dryer, and she was in heaven.
We never did get a microwave before I moved out in the 80’s.
today the snackroom tomorrow the world!
Housing? I suspect housing is all in all a lot better than back when… My parents had a window mount air conditioner for one room in 1968. None before that. Today, a large number have air conditioners, forced air heat, better insulation, etc. Plus, have you seen houses from the 1950’s or earlier - so many are TINY!
Healthcare? There was the old joke…
“Mommy, mommy, what’s Santa doing here in September?”
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Sheldon - you’ve got leukemia!”
The changes since 1950 in healthcare are incremental. Maybe people back then could afford the hospital, but much of that was because they could only do limited things for you. Polio killed thousands a year until the vaccine was developed. (BTW, do you think they spent several years being sure it was safe, or rolled it out ASAP like the COVID vaccine?) People with leukemia, heart attacks, or cancer, just… died.
Where we fail in healthcare today is the number of homeless people who are obviously have mental challenges. But… in 1950 they were simply locked up in asylums. Which is worse?
Transportation? I remember taking the Greyhound everywhere in the 1970’s, even across the USA, because airlines were unaffordable. Cars today don’t even come with spare tires, years ago flats were a regular occurrence. There are more interstates and expressways. If we include communication - back then, calling long distance was a huge expense; today, we can call anywhere in the world for pennies. there were 3 channels on your TV, and only AM radio. Today, your choices are unlimited and stream on demand.
Energy? I don’t see how that’s worse than 1950. If anything, with computers and TV and so many other devices, not to mention long commutes and vacations by airline, we use a lot more. The effect on the environment may not be good, but the energy is there.
Food - we enjoy an enormous variety of foods from all over the world; “organic food” did not exist back then. So many more people eat prepared meals from restaurants, and even there there is a massive variety of different options. For the world as a whole - India and China used to have famines. Today - they are more than adequate producers of food. The USSR used to be a major importer of western grain - today (well, until this year) Russia and Ukraine were major exporters of grain. Even in Africa, the horrific famines we used to hear about are far less widespread, and mostly due to war more than climate.
This is not to say things are fine. The climate is headed for catastrophe. But the basic economy and people’s average standard of living has grown tremendously, particularly in North America. the connected society has made anonymity and the ability to fade into the background or leave the past behind almost impossible.
Despite certain levels of pessimism, the world has changed a lot and for the better.
Mechanization and automation causes pessimism because most people can’t envision a world different from the one they currently live in. Automating farming and manufacturing and other tasks frees labor to work in other areas of the economy. Some which may not exist yet.
Now that said, when entire industries are disrupted (say, something on the scale of a steel mill or auto plant), it can be challenging to find meaningful work for thousands of skilled laborers. They all probably can’t become software developers or social media influencers or Uber drivers. Certainly not within their local economy which may have been disproportionately represented by a few large factories.
You’re bringing up the quality of those things but not the cost. Those tiny houses from the 1950s cost $1 million in many cities now, let alone new construction. Healthcare is the #1 reason people go bankrupt in the US. Many people are going broke trying to maintain multiple automobile households because they have to commute so far away from their job to be able to afford housing. Energy, including heating fuel and gasoline, keep going up so they’re taking a bigger chunk out of people’s limited paychecks. Same for food, it’s simply getting more expensive, especially so in the last few years, than it used to be. All these things are routinely excluded from price indexes and inflation statistics to make it look like things are a-ok.
Well, no. They aren’t excluded to artificially make things look ok. Things like food and energy are typically excluded because they are very volatile and can really skew the underlying picture.
For example, the price of gasoline in the US is now down a considerable amount from a month ago, much less where it peaked. The price of food does similar things, especially things like eggs and milk which can be influenced by the number of animals involved.
Would you say, therefore, we were currently in a period of deflation? Or do we only include prices when they go up but not when they go down?
The price indexes including these things are calculated. They’re even routinely cited but usually by inflation hawks, typically when there’s a short run increase in those prices, but often forgotten when there’s a short run decrease in those price. Relying on a single number to tell a big picture is rather silly in the first place. Conspiracy theories that this choice is manipulated even more so.
The BLS even has all of them on its front page, i.e. 12 month index with all of these and without food and energy and food and energy separately.
But that illustrates my point. In the good old days, they just died. Which is worse? That’s a debate. But today, the option is available.
The same for other trade-offs. The $1M house of 800sf is usually that price because location, location, location - and because more people make more money, so they bid up prices based on two-income families. Energy, heating etc. do NOT “keep going up”. We’ve had a momentary jump in the last two years due to supply chain problems. Recall that 2 years ago, oil prices went negative but nobody brings that up. Oil prices dropped from 2008 to recently, and American fracking basically was bankrupting Russia and Saudi Arabia, while natural gas prices were ridiculously low until recently. Food prices fluctuate with climate.
Don’t confuse fluctuations of the last few months or last two years with global trends over decades.
Also, don’t project American disfunction on the rest of the world. My Canadian healthcare is free, it is paid out of my taxes.
I should add, another factor in house prices was low interest rates. For most long term mortgages, the first few payments are mostly interest, very little principal. The amount a couple can afford is dependent on interest rates. Half the interest rate, double the price for the same monthly payment in a bidding war. A decade of ludicrously low interest has resulted in excessive house prices. Perhaps the current climate will help bring prices closer to earth.
@md-2000 → I know this is not your intent but this statement and the context in the paragraph portrays India as technologically backward and the “White Man” saving India yet again from the jaws of death 
That is simply false
Indians knew very well the vagaries of monsoons and had figured out ways to manage crops to avoid death from famines. This is India where we had Silks and Muslin and great cotton garments at the time when west was still going around killing and skinning animals for their furs.
But then Colonialism came around. English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, … all Colonizers came and looted India. The English alone siphoned off $45 trillion USD (in 2018 dollars) from India (British Raj siphoned out $45 trillion from India: Utsa Patnaik | Mint).
A big part of the exploitation was agriculture. The British forced Indians to grow crops that they could trade - like Indigo, Cotton, etc. They did not care about Indians dying if the rains failed and the food crops did not grow. Case in point - Churchill's policies contributed to 1943 Bengal famine – study | India | The Guardian
Note that’s based on a study by Mukherjee that is, at best, considered controversial. The conclusion that Churchill’s policies exacerbated the famine is not generally accepted academically except in some circles inside India itself.
Further Note that Churchill is considered a racist killer, in most of former Colonial world - more discussion here
Previous discussion on Churchill in Straightdope here :
Lets not hijack this thread.
The argument presented was that these policies exacerbated a famine, with the implication that pre-existing labor policies and attendant technologies would have produced a different result.
It strikes to the heart of that argument if the academic backing of that conclusion is not solid, regardless of whether or not Churchill was racist or had policies that led to unnecessary or tragic deaths.
Modern mechanisation and automation have improved overall food security and reduced the laborers needed to produce that food, even in India, arguments about colonial policies or imagined historical crop yields to the contrary.
Perhaps the key here is “standard of living”. That is not a constant, it is an uncontrolled variable. And not just because cell phones are a recent invention. It is because the absolute value of things we consume changes. Yes, things like food or energy have gotten expensive… wait. Since 1960, the proportion of average income used for food has dropped from 18% to 10%. And seems stable at 10% primarily because at that level people eat out more. 100 years ago, a lower middle income family would put a quarter in the home gas meter to get enough fuel to cook dinner. Now we economically ship natural gas around the world. I need hardly point out when the inflation adjusted highest price for gasoline was (1918, though 2012 was a close second). Medical costs are ridiculous, though they do have the advantage of mostly working now which is a pleasant change. Perhaps the newly laid off factory worker will have a lower standard of living compared to peers still working at his former level, but the lower standard of living is higher than it used to be. Perhaps not enough to make any individual whole, but as a group, understanding what the standard of living is is crucial to understanding what is going on. And this is not just a western first world issue. “Poor” people in India use their cell phones to do things westerners couldn’t dream of 30 years ago. Health care in Africa or Vietnam is substantially better than 30 years ago. Women have agency in enough of the world that when we see societies where they don’t it is held up as incredibly backward and self-defeating. We need to do better for everyone, but don’t neglect the improvements that have been made for us all.