Quiet Giant
Jul 25, 2017 · 1 min read

Talk about a flimsy argument. “Most people don’t think their jobs can be fully automated, therefore automation won’t kill jobs.” Tell that to the millions of people in transportation, manufacturing, service, data entry/discovery, etc who will soon need to look for new work if they can find it. Even if a job can’t be fully automated and needs some human input, the number of people needed for it will be greatly reduced. If machines can do the menial tasks, you need fewer employees for the rest of the work and that means fewer jobs to go around.

This is not necessarily a bad thing if we can adapt our economic systems in time and successfully transition to a postlabor economy, but we’ll be in for a world of hurt if we don’t. Several analysts have projected that as many as half the jobs in major cities could disappear within 20 years (to say nothing of skilled work becoming less skilled and lower paying). If that’s even half true, it’ll bring us right back to Great Depression levels of unemployment, if not beyond.

    Quiet Giant

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