Comment on Fears of employee displacement as Amazon brings robots into warehouses
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Fears? I’m excited that these jobs where people are treated like machines until they quit for sanity’s sake are getting automated.
What a short-sighted view. Some people sacrifice themselves to be treated like machine because that the only option for them to. earn a living. You take the job away from them, they’ll end up on the street. I fear for them.
We need to find a better ways for them not to be treated badly, not ways where they’ll end up badly.
How did we get to a place where awful jobs are the only ones available for people to take? How does holding back the use of technology to keep these awful jobs around help those who are worn out and tossed aside in the long run?
There’s a difference between being idealistic and quixotic. With the introduction of machanization, the problem is not unemployment due to not enough jobs but there won’t be any job at all. The real question is how to accommodate these people when there won’t any job for them? The seemingly scary solution is this current real capitalist world is to leave them on the street. Unless you can provide the better solution to this real world problem, I suggest to keep your utopian world in your dream.
Just head up: the future is scary for the next generation inline. Even the white collar job won’t be spared.
Oh I know!
Let them build more homes, big neighbourhoods of high-density living spaces. And give them for free to everyone.
Then focus energy on growing and distributing enough food.
While we’re at it, give everyone healthcare.
Then watch those ‘unemployed’ people generate ‘value’ like we’ve never seen.
Housed fed healthy people will have great ideas and all the time to implement them.
Automation moves our society forward.
It’s been happening since the industrial revolution.
When electricity was becoming widespread people feared for the lamp lighters. When the automobile was invented people feared for the farriers.
Jobs will be created in new spaces. That is how it has worked in the past. This is at a level that we younger folk haven’t seen. It can be scary to some. I also won’t deny this will happen at a faster pace than most other changes.
The genie is out of the bottle.
Your likely know everything I’ve said up to this point. Here’s where we differ.
Most businesses in developed countries revolve around selling things to the middle class. Those businesses that don’t directly, usually play a role to that end. Without a middle class to sell things to very few businesses will exist. If you don’t believe me, browse the fortune 500 list. The Fords, GEs, Home Depots all depends on a middle class.
Philosophically, if the middle class ceases to exist were fucked. If it gets to a point where ford is failing (again) those people with political influence will be asking for ubi. We don’t need to stress over this. I have no political influence. I can’t call in favors with senators. Over half the country is opposed to ubi. Let it play out a little. See what happens. We’ll get through this.
Any company that doesn’t automate will eventually get priced out. People are just too expensive compared to robots. We’re smack dab in the midst of a technological revolution and just like the industrial revolution the job-scape is about to change rapidly and radically.
Automation is not the point of argument. That going to happens no matter what. Inm fact I touch about it in my other comment.
The point to ponder is how to address the impact of automation. As far as I know even without full automation, the US (and many other capitalism based) don’t have a good record to address the difficulty faced by low skilled workers, e.g. depicted by Nomadland. To simply give utopian solution won’t address the issue and would be premature.
Unless we are talking about Scandinavian countries social system, that’s a whole different issue.
There are so many factors at play right now and they’re all changing so fast that it’s hard to even guess at what strategy might be beneficial. AI development and automated manufacturing could theoretically bring down the costs of making in America to the point where American companies bring manufacturing back to the States again. On the other hand it could exasperate the rust belt trend that killed many Midwest cities.
I think in the short term it’s going to be pretty bad for unskilled labor and it already has been pretty bad especially in certain areas of the country like west Virginia. The problem is all of Scandinavia has a population lower than California’s let alone the entire US. It’s amazingly easier to adapt when you have a small densely populated populous. Wyoming has a population density of 6 people per square mile.
Only time will tell but if Congress’s current misadventures is telling at all I’m not overly optimistic.
So they can make art… Oh wait, idiots already have ai doing that
HeyLow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Exactly! It seems the other people in comments here don’t understand that this is just a net positive for workers!
a4ng3l@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You already have universal basic income where you guys are living ? Failing that it’s solely less low qualification jobs and more concentration of revenues for the few above. I don’t see that as « a net positive » -although semantically, those laid off would not be workers anymore so in that you’re right. Horrifically so.
themurphy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
UBI is necessary for this to be positive, so that’s our problem. Not that machines are taking the job.
Don’t throw shit at this, throw it at politicians.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 8 months ago
And yet you cheer on the loss of jobs and hand wave away issues as someone else’s problem. That makes you part of the problem as the side cheering on the destruction of people’s lives. Seriously how do you “workless utopia” fuckwits not see this?
weeahnn@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s a net positive if those people are able to transition into other roles/ jobs.