What will happen when all the low skill jobs are gone?

As a Libertarian, I am extremely fearful of the idea of machines taking over everyone's jobs. I remember a scene from the movie Dr. Zhivago, in the Soviet era when Yuri's still-living brother goes to visit some hydroelectric construction project or another, ostensibly to discuss something with the project director (but really to find his long lost niece and tell her the story of her father) during the initial coversation with the project director, he reveals that he asked Moscow for a whole load of machinery (which didn't exist as Moscow's production figures were fiction). Infused with wonderful Marxist revolutionary ideology, this director considered it immoral to use the proletariat to do a hard/dangerous construction job by hand when all those machines could be doing the job faster and the people benefiting from getting the job done faster and safer. Seems like a good idea until you realise this was the Soviet ****ing Union. A place so messed up you had to queue for days outside some warehouse to buy a loaf of bread, where famines were the norm as collectivised systems of agriculture fell apart, where society was dominated by a Politburo whose every statement was ridiculous propoganda totally disconnected from reality, where everything they touched turned into an omnishambles. They even managed to take a safe and beneficial force, nuclear electricity, and cause a massive catastrophe that contaminated half a country despite clear evidence at every point for years leading up to the event that they were on the road to making a spectacular omnishambles of absolutely epic proportions. Yet that seems to have been the last time anyone seriously thought that automation was a great thing because it would serve all of humanity, rather than mainly those at the top.

By contrast, the Western world became great because it provided room for all of its people, at all wealth and education levels, to find a productive role for themselves, a rising tide always lifted all boats. Up until the 1950s perhaps, mechanisation normally created more jobs than it destroyed, and many of those new jobs required very little. For example, the Industrial Revolution destroyed jobs on farms and in artisan workshops, but provided many more jobs, often well paid, in the new factories, not to mention masses of goods that were much cheaper because of mass production. Little or no education was required for the first factory jobs and that continued well into the 20th century. Steam engines again might have displaced some jobs, but created vast numbers of them in railroads and shipping, to say nothing of vastly better transportation service to society as a whole. For much of modern history, most types of large organisation require huge armies of filing clerks, operators, secretaries and so on. These jobs might have required a second level qualification, if even that.

A person could easily find a place for themselves in this kind of environment.

Permabear wrote: »

That said, automation is a great thing. Too many people spend their lives doing mindless, repetitive tasks -- and if those jobs can be automated, it frees up people to do more rewarding and challenging work.

I'd like to think so, but I fear this is fanciful. Work must be productive first, "rewarding" and "challenging" are luxuries that are subordinate to the first. Modern work requires a much higher level of education than that of the past and jobs are more scarce generally, this I think is because the level of automation has reached a "tipping point" where it is out of control. Not everyone has a good enough education because of circumstance, and some people simply aren't bright enough to get the education to get them onto the modern ladder, let alone a future ladder most of the rungs have been knocked out. I worry that large numbers of people are simply going to be left behind, and that will cause all kinds of social ills.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

A guaranteed income for everyone paid by the state is inevitable at some point in the future. As food and goods become easier to produce.

The Randy Riverbeast wrote: »

New jobs will be created. Eventually we may get to a point where basic income is introduced so people can afford to become qualified in an area or help the homeless.

The idea that this may be (considered) necessary also terrifies me even more because I have zero faith in governments, and human nature along side this, to believe that a "universal basic income" or any related concept could work.

It has been truthfully said that "a government big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take everything you have". Even in democracies, to say nothing of hellholes like North Korea, China, ISIS etc, strong governments are always at the behest of the dominant power blocks in society and will always do their bidding, wheter such block is a vested interest or an ideological group. I do not believe that objectively good government is possible in any but a small number of areas so I believe that we should aim for a "night watchman" state. Human nature is also one of competition, less so of sharing, societies have only ever been built by rewarding individuals for productive work. The opportunities for which are now (as above) shrinking.

The real question here is whether education systems can keep pace with these changes. There's a need for schools to begin focusing more on problem-solving skills, STEM skills, analytic thinking -- which raises the question, why, in 2016, are our schoolchildren spending so much time on religion and Irish? So they can be unemployed?

That's a question for any last straggling political candidate who might come knocking at the door tonight.

I agree with this, but I fear that even if we introduced more 21st century subjects and abolished Irish, religion etc, that it would be at best, running to stand still, at worst, too little too late.

I hope to be proven wrong.