I don’t know exactly what you’re calling bullshit, but it’s a simple fact of our technological progress. Regardless of whether there’s a boom or bust, technological advances mean that every year human labor will be less necessary as it is replaced by technology. The automotive industry is a perfect example. It’s now running at capacity following the 2008 bust but in the meantime, it has replaced a majority of laid off workers with robots. Those manufacturing jobs will never come back. And this will happen on every sector – teachers and surgeons will largely be replaced by machines. We are this close to dispensing with computer programmers – it won’t be long before new software is written by old software. In all these sectors, you might need a handful of people to supervise, but by and large, business will no longer need human labor.
Annual GDP Growth. Notice where we are?
List of Recessions Notice how often they happen?
You may also notice they only list the most recent as being December 2007 to June 2009, when arguably we have still not recovered from this last one. Frankly, if it were not for the kinds of government intervention that we had and the massive social programs we have in place*, we would be in a full scale Depression.
- Which, for the most part, got their start during the Great Depression of the 30’s.
Every time we are in one part of a cycle, people assume it will go on forever. Hell, I remember declaring back in 2003** that we were in an absolutely ludicrous housing bubble that would sooner or later come crashing down on us (it took longer than I expected), but too many people I knew were running around declaring that housing prices would rise 10-15% per year forever. :rolleyes:
** When the barely over 800 square foot house on a 60x64 corner lot in a middlin neighborhood in Minneapolis, next door to my ex-wife’s house, sold for $258,000 in August 2003, I knew we were beyond any reasonable housing prices.
What do you do for a living? Because clearly you don’t know crap about tech.
It might be where I’m at, but there seems to be a lot of people waxing over surviving in some sort of end of days event. I guess to clarify my point was more to emphasize that if everyone took that stance, we’d devastate each other within a very short period of time. Put the guns down, let the kids play in the bunkers, it’s just not gonna happen. I think it’s sort of a rogue fantasy people have and to the level I’ve heard, it’s disturbing.
I think I heard someone really smart say we are most likely to be affected by a natural disaster rather than economic collapse. Rocks in space being the only thing to cause an ending that dramatic. But that doesn’t happen very often.
You make some very good points. I’ve always fantasized about just getting a paycheck like the natives do that are part of tribes with casinos. Eh? Eh? There are definitely some changes happening that are hard to predict the outcomes.
What you know about tech will change faster than you think. In every stage of technological development, there has been a claim that “Machines will never replace X.” It always turns out wrong in the long run. What exactly do you think will stop this from happening?
Because machines will never be able to exercise independent judgment? Don’t you believe it. Artificial intelligence is on its way and it will come faster than we’re ready for it. There are already fake people on dating websites, marketing calls, customer support lines, etc., that are very close to being undetectable as computers.
And not only is this the inevitable result of our technological progress, in some ways it’s the whole point of it.
Look, I have 20 years of experience in IT over the last 34 years. Every so often someone claims there will be programs writing programs and we won’t need programmers. This is fantasy written by people who don’t actually have a clue what goes into designing, writing and testing software. I currently do database support. There’s zero chance that I will be replaced by robots or software.
What these things do is increase productivity. They allow people to create more output, provide more and better information, manufacture better products. They eliminate the most simplistic, mindless jobs. People spending their entire lives lifting up one part and fastening to another? Mindlessly repeating this movement all day, all of their lives? Of course that labor can be replaced with a robot. Just as modern farm combines are larger and more efficient than the tractors and threshers we had 50 years ago.
There is also no chance that surgeons and teachers will be replaced by machines.
Again, people regularly predict such things, but those people are called FUTURISTS, and they aren’t particularly reality based in their ponderings. Hell, I remember reading a FUTURIST magazine back in the mid 90’s that predicted that by now, all heavy industry would be moved into space. :eek: On the face of it, this was and is patently absurd. Yet some clown got paid to write that article and a magazine actually published it with a straight face.
I have heard this every year since my childhood in the 60’s, and I’m sure people were saying it in the 50’s. Keep repeating it, just don’t bet your life on it.
It’s one thing to say that “it won’t happen in X years” or “it won’t happen in my lifetime.” What is your actual argument that it ultimately will be impossible?
What is your fact and citation backed argument that it WILL happen in mine or your lifetime? You’ve given me nothing but the same fantasy based ‘predictions’ that I’ve heard my entire life. It’s just that I know enough about the details of such things to see them for the vaporous thoughts they are.
Since I’ve made no such claim, I don’t feel obligated to support it.
That’s not really an argument either. What is your argument that it’s impossible? In the face of the fact that so many jobs have already been replaced by technology, what is the actual reason that so many more jobs absolutely cannot be?
Is it a fantasy that my business no longer needs employee trainers, actuaries, computers (the human kind), typesetters, printers, machinists, typists, librarians, secretaries, receptionists, telephone switchboard operators, illustrators, photographers, photo developers, and I don’t know what else that might have existed 150 years ago? Is it a fantasy that a Roomba is replacing (human) sweepers? Is it a fantasy that Google now operates driverless cars? Is it a fantasy that A large number of human resources functions—including reading resumes—is done by computers? Is it a fantasy that Amazon is soon going to be delivering packages by drones? Is it a fantasy that retail stores are getting rid of clerks and that large warehouses use robots to handle inventory? Is it a fantasy that a large number of securities transactions are now executed automatically by software?
How is teaching or surgery any different from those, except as a matter of degree? How is it any different, other than it hasn’t happened yet?
Your previous posts would seem to give the lie to that statement.
I covered all that under the ‘increased productivity’ bit above. And yeah, some of that is still ‘fantasy’ in the details. Computers can scan resumes for keywords. They cannot think about the contents or pick good people. No retail store will completely eliminate clerks, no warehouse will completely eliminate staff, and someone wrote and maintains the damned securities programs on a daily basis, as well as them being audited and monitored by actual living humans.
You’re the one making wild assed claims, and then saying you didn’t.
You said this:
You said we are this close. But now you’re indicating that when you say this close, you are not implying that it would be within our lifetimes.
So how close were you holding your fingers together when you were indicating this close? What do you mean by “it won’t be long”? What kind of distance are you talking about here, that its proximity can be indicated with italics and yet might potentially be so far away that none of us here will ever see it?
Nope. I said nothing about any specific time frame.
To some extent you’re basically confirming what I said. A small number of people will be needed to supervise, but for the vast majority of people, there will be nothing to work at. Does Redbox need clerks? How about Amazon? Beyond that, you’re still failing to make an argument about why it is impossible for the remaining jobs to eventually be replaced by technology. What are you proposing is the actual limiting factor?
Oh, and your “productivity” point. There are a lot of jobs that don’t exist now that might once have been considered merely a productivity issue. What is the hard line between productivity and non-productivity that you are proposing exists? What we know for sure is that fewer people are needed now to make any given industry operate than before. At what point do you think that trend comes to a hard stop?
Are you proposing that my finger-distance-width should be measured according to some standardized conversion system? Or do you suppose that metaphorical language doesn’t imply precise measurements? Time is relative. I’m speaking of broad trends. Why in the world would I venture to predict specific deadlines?
Because of the thread you’re currently participating in.
You chose to participate in a thread where the OP is discussing today’s inflationary trends. Not trends a hundred or a thousand years from now, but things the OP supposed might be happening right now, today, even as we type these words. The OP was mistaken, but the discussion was nevertheless the current economic situation. So when you step into this very thread and talk about how things are this close to happening, it’s natural for people to wonder what you’re talking about. Everybody else in this thread is discussing The Now. The current situation is that jobs are coming back and not going away. This is directly contrary to what you said. We can’t read your mind and figure out that unlike every single other poster here, you are speaking of trends that might not show up until after our grandchildren’s grandchildren are already dead. We are limited in our psychic abilities.
And yes, it is relative. But that’s exactly why hyu-mons rely on context. If I were to step into the office on the coldest day of the year, when the city plows just got finished pushing three feet of snow off the streets, and I started arguing with everyone that it was warm outside because, hyuk hyuk, it’s over 200 Kelvin, and that sure is a relatively high number compared to the vacuum of space, then that wouldn’t make me clever. It would make me a stupid asshole.
Eight years ago, I would have ruled out the possibility of US economic collapse. I can no longer do so. The US economy collapsed, with large sectors devoid of financial intermediation, in 1932. The recovery only began in 1933. I figured this would never happen again since we knew now how to prevent it and politicians like to cut taxes, increase spending and preside over falling interest rates anyway.
I was confused. In the US there is both motive and opportunity for minority parties to sabotage the economy. Also, while politicians like higher spending (Republicans like military hardware, Democrats like infrastructure and investment) they balk at huge programs that are perceived to benefit the other side disproportionately. Furthermore, Mitch McConnell made a discovery: bipartisanship helps the majority more than it helps the minority. So economic sabotage makes perfect sense.
Put it another way, textbook economics advocates countercyclical fiscal and monetary policy. Folk economics, of the kind espoused in the OP, points towards the opposite. There’s no assurance that policy grounded on systematic research will prevail.
Finally, I believed eight years ago that there was a greater consensus in macroeconomics than there was. I formed this belief based on a review of college level macroeconomic textbooks written by economists of the center-right, center-left and in between. I was mistaken though.
So I can’t rule out a US economic collapse. It would require an adverse development though: we are emphatically not on such a path right now.
Also global warming. That’s a problem as well, c. 2050.