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Originally Posted by woj
Things change and will continue to change... I used to make easy money too, I made $1000s to create scripts that basically do what wordpress does now for free... it sucks, but I'm not sitting here claiming the sky is falling, I've moved on, I've adapted, as should everyone else... those that don't will fall behind, and they have only themselves to blame...
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I hate to be the one to break this important news to you... YOU aren't the average person. If 50% of people are unemployed, you would still be likely to find a job somewhere... as would I and most of the people in this conversation. That doesn't change the fact that an increasingly large number of people will become unemployed, it only means you aren't one of them. When 10% of the people are unemployed we deal with it by incarcerating many of them, having a small rash of homeless people, and some welfare recipients. When 50% of the people are unemployed that becomes an insufficient method of dealing with the problem - whether you personally are employed or not.
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the point is not that we will need "car mechanics" in the future, I could have used "widget repairmen" instead, the point is that people are capable of performing more advanced work, but they choose not to... and why are we theorizing about the future, when the problem has existed for a while now? Why are minimum wage workers bitching and whining, instead of getting trained to become "car mechanics" at least tripling their income in the process? we are in a "recession" now, so I don't think it's appropriate to generalize what the labor market is now, to how things will play out in the future...
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Pick any profession.... and it is subject to automation. Doctors, Lawyers, software developers, financiers, hair dressers, farm workers, pornstars... pick any profession you like and intelligent people can find ways to get the job done with less workers, cheaper workers, or eventually 0 workers. The only thing that can not be automated (yet) is innovation. So far only humans can come up with good ideas... and only a small number of humans have that ability on a marketable scale. As we move forward the pace of automation accelerates and the amount of man hours needed decreases while production increases. Eventually you have more production than you need with less man hours required than ever before - displacing many people (eventually a majority of people) and what we do with them will be a very important decision.