Economics question: Theory of Increasing Uselessness

[HFWR]

Re: Increasing uselessness, not sure I can get much more useless...

 

[photoguy]

We are slowly automating ourselves out of a job. We kept ahead of the game until now by increasing education and getting people to use their brains instead of muscles (thankfully). But that road is coming to an end, and pretty fast.

Just to throw one statistic out there: there are 3 million truck drivers in the united states. Likely all of these jobs are going to disappear in the next 30 years or so.

Most of that demographic will not be mentally capable of the new jobs that will be available by then (data scientists, software developers, logistics planners, healthcare professionals ..).

+1

So ... what will you do?

I think owners of capital will capture most of these productivity gains. So as someone who is fired with decent nest egg, I don't think I need to do anything special (unless it gets to the point where people are rioting with pitchforks).

 

[M Paquette]

Dedicated specialist AI systems are continuously improving, and are already pretty good at tasks as divers as data mining, legal document searches, logistics scheduling, and some software development. Avoiding meatware obsolescence is going to be as difficult over the next 20 years as avoiding manual labor obsolescence has been.

 

[NW-Bound]

Fred wrote:

... Swollen bureaucracies popped up to provide the appearance of work while the purported workers did little that would not better have been left undone. Military enterprise soaked up more people doing nothing that should be done. Exotic fighter planes that would never do anything to justify their existence but bomb remote goat-herds absorbed thousands of engineers and hundreds of billions of dollars. The engineers could as well have been paid for digging holes and filling them in, but this was judged unduly candid.

... College graduates began living with their parents and lining up for jobs a Starbucks because there was no need for them anywhere else. Resort was had to outright charity. Thus food stamps, Section Eight housing, free lunches at school, AFDC, and all the other disbursements of free money. Those receiving the free money no longer had any incentive to work even if the opportunity offered. In the cities generation after generation now lived on charity, largely illiterate and in what is never called custodial care. They are simply unnecessary. There is nothing for them to do. So they don’t do anything.

It is getting more difficult to say which jobs are productive and which are make work. A friend of mine believed that the closer one gets to the government, the more superfluous one's job content is. He meant that direct work for the government is the worse, followed by government contractors such as the aerospace industry as Fred talked about above. On the other hand, a small businessman or an independent worker such as a plumber, a gardener, a roofer has very little slack in his work. He has to justify his keep with his direct customers. He cannot twiddle thumb at his desk and gets paid for 8 hours a day. So, the smaller and more private the business, the more productive one has to be.

But looking at things more philosophically, I often wonder what is really meaningful work anymore. As an earlier poster has pointed out, so few people are involved in production of essential goods today, and most of the workers are doing ancillary work at best, and inessential or unneeded work at worst.

Here's an example. My son is a mechanical engineer working at a microelectronic firm. We often talk about his work, and I learn a lot about the state-of-the-art chip production at his place. As a former EE aerospace engineer, I see that what I worked with a few years ago are now so obsolete and what they are doing now is mind-boggling. Yet, my son is involved with just one step in the design and production of the extremely small chips that go into our smart phones. I pointed out to him that it takes many more specialized workers like him to design and produce just that chip, and a smartphone requires many more components.

Engineers like my son are well rewarded for their work, and they like their job. The end product arguably enhances the quality of life of people, but how much is enough? They turn out cheaper and better gadgets for the Joe and Jane Blows, who are glued to the devices, and text while driving. Just a few days ago, there was a story in the news about a woman being charged with homicide for doing Facebook while driving and plowing head-on into a truck, killing 2 or 3 of her passengers.

In the name of progress, we keep producing more and more with advanced technology. The book I just read, The Omnivore's Dilemma, describes how our corn monoculture produces so much that farmers barely keep afloat, yet we have more starch, more corn syrup, more ethanol, more meat due to cheaper feed, than we need. So, food is cheap and people get fat. And my son's industry turns out better, lighter, longer-operating gadgets and people throw away perfectly working devices to get the best and latest.

What else can we do?

 

[daylatedollarshort]

What else can we do?

I am choosing leisure, Keynes door number 2, and partially funding it by buying the recycled goods of those choosing door number one.

Yesterday's project was planting a pretty succulent garden in a nice planter I bought for $1 at a garage sale.

 

[NW-Bound]

Sounds good to me.

I have been goofing off too, because I can. Whether my past work was useful to society or not, I have paid my dues.

 

[braumeister]

A lot of the upper class people enjoyed themselves with natural philosophy

Yes.
I think there was really a considerable amount of this. Basically laying the groundwork for what we call science today.

I see the same thing playing out among groups like hams expanding the frontiers of communications with amateur radio satellites and cutting edge communications modes, talented amateurs dabbling in various internet technologies, etc.

 

[ejman]

I think we'll become a world where most people just putz around, as I currently do. Very satisfying work this putzing business. And if it is accompanied by all of ones material needs thanks to out of control automation. What's not to like? Heck, Calvinists can keep on working on their spaceship and go find their own work work planet for all I care.

 

[Live Free]

On my commute home today I was thinking how great it would be if there were lots of road crews that could fill in all the 1,000 potholes the size of texas that have suddenly exploded with the recent thaw. I was also thinking of how crappy Interstate 95 has become - a major east coast artery. There are some jobs!

I spent a few weeks in NYC recently for work and was overall pretty disheartened to see how run-down the city looks. Yes, it is winter time so things in general look a little gloomier, but the infrastructure looks worn out.

I think there are a lot of jobs if we invested more in our infrastructure. Wouldn't it be great if tax dollars were spent on something more tangible like better roads or bridges? Instead of the many, many things that just keep the masses busy?

 

[NW-Bound]

... Wouldn't it be great if tax dollars were spent on something more tangible like better roads or bridges? Instead of the many, many things that just keep the masses busy?

Oh, there's always work to be done. But the masses like to be desk jockeys, in the comfort of their air-conditioned cubicles. Who wants to be out in the cold or the heat fixing up roads? Dilbert complains about his job all the time, but the sad truth is that he likes the alternatives even less.

 

[audreyh1]

Riding horses, hunting things, smoking things, reading things, eating fancy food, and throwing fancy parties.

Probably what a lot of us of small but independent means do today.

Don't forget gambling, lots and lots of gambling. Buying horses. Racing. Betting on racing. Drinking. The occasional duel. Betting on those too.