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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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Everyone thinks their own line of work is safe because everyone knows the nuances of their own job. But the thing that gets you is that the easier a job gets the fewer people are needed and the more replaceable they are. You might not be able to make a robot cashier, but with the scan and go mobile app you only need an employee to wave a scanner (to check that some random items in your cart are included in the barcode on your receipt) and the time per customer to do that is fast enough that you only need one person, and since anyone can wave a scanner you donβt have much leverage to negotiate a raise.
And that's a good thing, if and only if you provide pathways to other jobs or phase workers out slowly i.e. by retirement.
Or provide UBI to share the wealth generated by increased societal productivity
I have had a number of conversations with relatively reasonable conservatives, where I've brought up the dangers of so many jobs moving toward automation with no additional job creation. And steering the conversation carefully, I got them to at least consider the idea of UBI funded by taxing any and all automation. I also got them (with the "everybody should have to work, people shouldn't get life handed to them for free" mentality) to agree that the rise in automation should mean people working less hours each, so everyone still has jobs (basically, UBI and changing "full time" to 25 or 30 hours, where people get overtime past that... creating more jobs while peoples needs are still covered).
It's amazing, sometimes, how starting with some similar premises (people should have to work, which I mostly agree with) and shared threat (automation taking jobs) can lead to some more open minds for things that they would otherwise be adamantly against.
This is the lump of labor fallacy. The error you are making is assuming that there is a fixed quantity of work that needs to be performed. When you multiply the productivity of every practitioner of a trade, they can lower their prices. This enables more people to afford those services. There's a reason people don't own just 2 or 3 sets of clothes anymore.
I'm sorry, but that's some hilarious Ayn Rand thinking. Prices didn't go down in grocery stores that added self-checkout, they just made more profit. Companies these days are perfectly comfortable keeping the price the same (or raising them) and just cutting their overhead.
Don't get me wrong, if there are things they could get more profit by selling more, then they likely would. But I think those items are few and far between. Everything else they just make more money with less workers.
Are you sure self checkout is actually a labor-saving device? Does it actually save costs on net, once you factor in increased theft and shrinkage? Remember, just because companies adopt something, doesn't mean it's actually rational to do so. Executives are prone to fads and groupthink like anyone else. And moreover, this is a bit of an inappropriate example for two reasons. First, the demand for groceries is relatively fixed. Even if the price of groceries was cut in half, you probably wouldn't suddenly double the calories you consume. Second, self checkout is a small marginal cost to the cost of goods in grocery and retail stores. Self checkout doesn't improve the actual production process of the goods being sold in a store.
But I'm sorry, yes, you can cherry pick a few examples. But the general rule is and always has been that increased automation leads to lower prices. This is the entire story of the Industrial Revolution. People used to own only two or three outfits, as that's all they could afford. A "walk in closet" was an absurdity 200 years ago. The clothing industry industrialized, and the cost of clothing was driven to the floor, completely contradicting what your model predicts. The 19th century textile barons didn't mechanize production and then simply pocket the savings.
Hell, the only reason you can afford any kind of consumer electronics is because of automation. The computer, phone, or tablet you're using now? It would cost 100x as much without automation. This is why niche electronics like specialized lab instruments cost so much money. If you're only building a few of something for a tiny market, you can't invest in large scale automation to bring the cost down.
Look at how quickly and dramatically the price of LiDAR has declined. LiDAR was once the purview of specialized engineering and scientific instruments. But because of driver assistance technologies, the demand for LiDAR has exploded. This allowed LiDAR manufacturers to invest in more automated production chains. They didn't automate and keep charging the same price, as you would assume.
For an example of this in a white collar field, consider something like architecture. How many people actually hire an architect to custom design them a home? Very few. Most people buy mass produced tract homes. Tract homes benefit from a lot of automation and economies of scale, so they're cheaper than one-off custom-built homes designed by architects. Yet if an architect could rely on specialized AI systems to vastly lower the number of hours required to design a set of home plans, they could charge less. Many more people would then be able to afford the services of an architect.
Yes, you can cherry pick a few examples of industries that have little competition or fixed demand, where they automate without substantially lowering prices. But even those big box stores with their automated checkouts are examples of automation lowering prices. There's a reason the giant chains can charge less for products than small mom-and-pop shops. A giant grocery chain is big enough to invest in a lot of automation and other economies of scale that a small co-op can't afford.
In some extent this is true and correct, but when it comes to automate individual thought and creation then ethical problems arise which should be looked at and asserted carefully and with dignity, because there should be boundaries on how much automation can extent in human life, in the end humanity does not compete with anybody except itself, we are humans trying to live and most of all communicate with each other, Jobs are also a way to communicate and socialise but as we already saw they try to take that away in any way they can.