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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory
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To: UncleBigs who wrote (64224)6/21/2006 11:22:00 AM
From: GraceZ  Read Replies (3) of 110194
 
It is the nature of technology to destroy some jobs while creating new ones that we can't even imagine. One of the oldest arguments against machines and automation in the work place has been what would we do if machines take over our jobs. It has been proven over and over to be a false argument. There are more job descriptions created in a single year in a technologically advanced society than existed in say, the Middle Ages in totality. The other long run trend is specialization and division of labor.

I employ robots in my biz. Well they aren't robots in the scifi sense we're used to but I employ computer automated programs to do what I could do manually but which would be a highly repetitive boring task that would take a human a lot more time. Since I happen to be the one who made the original investment in that particular piece of capital equipment I receive all the production from it. The money I receive is part wages (I have to intervene and make human judgements in some computer tasks) and part return on my capital investment in that equipment.

I think it would be difficult to find a job where robots weren't employed by the people doing the jobs that they do (sometimes they make the investment as in my case or sometimes the equipment is bought by their employer). The thing that has increased human productivity to where it is now is the high level of automation that has been incorporated in even the simplest jobs. You can see this every time you go a a grocery store. Maybe you are old enough to remember the clerks in the grocery stores adding up what you bought on the bag they would use to put your purchases in? If you told that guy he would be using a laser scanning device that was hooked into a software data base that would automatically order more of what you just bought from the supplier he'd have looked at you like you were telling him that one day he'd be out of a job completely. It turns out clerks aren't obsolete, just the duties and equipment they use is different. It is capital equipment which has made people more productive.

What gets people sitting around watching Opra (or scratching their balls) isn't automation but the willingness of society to pay them to do it. We're willing to pay the government to pay people to voluntarily take themselves out of the workforce for a pittance. We do this because there is a strong belief that no amount of capital equipment or training would make that particular person productive enough to live in our wealthy society by their own production. This socialistic urge is the root cause of inflation, the urge to pay someone in excess of what they produce.
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