Jobs in 200 years

[Ara Pacis]

Assuming only one side does. But better weapons are not a guarantee of victory (see Vietnam), especially if there is popular support for a side.

And that is my point, I wouldn't assume a similar strategic setting that includes foreigners shipping in weapons and having a jungle to hide in and being limited to a small geographic area of operations.

True but irrelevant, as that's not the kind of desperation economy Publiusr was referring to and I was responding to.

It was relevant to nocryptic's question and your response to it, my point being that I don't think you can dismiss the possible extension to include these other models of desperation.

[Noclevername]

It was relevant to nocryptic's question and your response to it, my point being that I don't think you can dismiss the possible extension to include these other models of desperation.

I'm not dismissing it, it just wasn't the subject I was discussing. I think we're cross-talking here.

And that is my point, I wouldn't assume a similar strategic setting that includes foreigners shipping in weapons and having a jungle to hide in and being limited to a small geographic area of operations.

I can imagine many other strategic scenarios where lack of popular support could make a large difference-- for instance a very large geographic area full of people who are angry at a given socio-economic system for failing them. It doesn't matter how many helicopters you have if, say, farmers refuse to feed the troops flying them.

[Ara Pacis]

The internet has dramatically improved world productivity, enabling technological development and wealth creation at a much more rapid pace than in the past. Technology is the back story for economic growth and social stability, and is enabling further shift from production to services as the core of advanced economies. Growth actually tends to benefit all quintiles, but people's attitudes are guided by relative wealth more than by absolute wealth, producing dystopian whinging. Despite problems such as the collapse of social capital, new technology is making people's lives easier, longer, richer and more productive.

A couple disagreements here. First, the rapid pace of wealth creation may be part of the problem, because it allows some people to rapidly accumulate money and power at the expense of creating wealth. The economic system may not be a zero-sum game over time, but on short time-scales it tends to be. Second, while a rising tide may lift all boats, it also raises the absolute cost of entering the game, so that the poor in a rich country may have more than the poor of another country, but they also have more to overcome to become self-sufficient since the cost of many goods and services considered essential for success in a rich country may also cost more. Third, new technology can also make lives worse due to unanticipated consequences and side-effects, such as reduced health and loss of social cohesion.

What I think will happen is that there will actually be more fairness, such that a person who achieves a level of productivity in a poor country will receive the same reward for their effort as a person with the same productivity in a rich country. But the productivity gap will remain because the institutional frameworks of different countries enable different real levels of productivity even for similar tasks. A person doing menial services in a rich country will be paid more than one doing similar work in a poor country, because in a rich country support services are required for knowledge workers who produce the real wealth, so the rich have to pay more to get the same service.

Again I disagree. First, that which creates the potential for more fairness is the same mechanisms that can result in less fairness. Moreover, comparing rich and poor countries is invalid since some costs are absolute and market forces can reverse the comparisons of others. Second, a person doing menial work may only be paid more in one country due to market forces, such as the cost for a worker to maintain a menial job that pays enough to live on in some fashion, or unless there is government intervention such as a minimum wage. It sounds like you're suggesting market forces for menial labor in a labor scarcity environment, but the basis of the paradigm suggests that there will be a labor surplus. Rich and (middle-class?) information workers may not need to compete for menial laborers.

We now see massive growth of 'useless' industries in entertainment and sport whose only real product is fun. As production of actual wealth is automated, and continues to grow exponentially, this wealth produces surplus value whose social licence to operate requires fair distribution through bread and circuses.

So, I'm not the only one around here who has read Kagan? Cool. So, I'm assuming you're familiar with the other licenses, economic and regulatory. First, we should not confuse entertainment businesses as circuses because they are not free spectacles as in Rome. The arguable social license needs to be balanced with the commercial profitability of the ventures. The internet actually mitigates against this since people have more freedom to pursue their own entertainment instead of a single grand venue. Second, you can't even conclude that "bread and circuses" is the result of a social license to operate because the entire concept of LTO is based on individual markets and their specific requirements to balance social desires with regulations and commercial requirements. Your use suggests a level of fungibilty that cannot be assumed to exist in practice.

[Ara Pacis]

I can imagine many other strategic scenarios where lack of popular support could make a large difference-- for instance a very large geographic area full of people who are angry at a given socio-economic system for failing them. It doesn't matter how many helicopters you have if, say, farmers refuse to feed the troops flying them.

When you write "popular support" are you referring to just domestic, assuming there will be people who either haven't picked a side or who are amenable to changing sides? Or are you referring to international support? Or a combination?

[Noclevername]

When you write "popular support" are you referring to just domestic, assuming there will be people who either haven't picked a side or who are amenable to changing sides? Or are you referring to international support? Or a combination?

All these questions seem to assume that only one nation will suffer the effects of desperation. In a globalized economy, I'm thinking it will be more of a house-of-cards situation, with many states falling into chaos. There may very well be a lot more than two sides, as various groups, demagogues and subsets of the former governments and militaries struggle for power.

I still can't see such a conflict remaining the staus quo for 200 years, though.

[Ara Pacis]

All these questions seem to assume that only one nation will suffer the effects of desperation. In a globalized economy, I'm thinking it will be more of a house-of-cards situation, with many states falling into chaos. There may very well be a lot more than two sides, as various groups, demagogues and subsets of the former governments and militaries struggle for power.

I still can't see such a conflict remaining the staus quo for 200 years, though.

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

[danscope]

How does that comment relate to jobs in our future? Hmmm....

[Ara Pacis]

How does that comment relate to jobs in our future? Hmmm....

Military-industrial complex in a controlled media environment... seems pretty straightforward.

[danscope]

Is it your opinion that the problem of future jobs be narrowly focused on war and the military-industrial complex, or can you envision an economy which does more good for more people without squandering our blood and treasure on such foolish errands as war, simply because we happen to be invested in it, with profit for a few at the expense for the many?

[Ara Pacis]

Is it your opinion that the problem of future jobs be narrowly focused on war and the military-industrial complex, or can you envision an economy which does more good for more people without squandering our blood and treasure on such foolish errands as war, simply because we happen to be invested in it, with profit for a few at the expense for the many?

Why would I think that? we're discussing the possibility not the probability.

[Noclevername]

Within 200 years following are likely to happen

Looked like a probablity question to me.

[Ara Pacis]

Looked like a probablity question to me.

Of jobs... of war, I don't think we got that far.

[Copernicus]

Within 200 years we will be lucky to have 50 million people on earth. It will be a mix of 20th century technology and scavengers to tribalism. Brute force will reign. Civilization is really vulnerable to many human made catastrophes that will trigger a domino affect. 2044 would be my guess for the start of rapid decline.

[Solfe]

2044 is way too close.

As for my prediction of tech support, I would like to add the following core list of professions that will still be with us in 200 years:

Doctor,
Lawyer,
Soldier,
Spy,
Politician,
Nurse,
Teacher,
Therapists,
Midwife,
Optimist,
Accountant,
Social Worker,
Veterinarian,
Architect,
Pharmacist,
Psychologist,
Librarian,
Engineer,
Scientist,
Police Officer,
Firefighter,
Pilot.

No matter how automated things become, I just don't see how all of these can be completely eliminated.

[Noclevername]

Optimist,

Is that a profession now? Maybe you mean Optometrist?

[Ara Pacis]

2044 is way too close.

As for my prediction of tech support, I would like to add the following core list of professions that will still be with us in 200 years:

Doctor,
Lawyer,
Soldier,
Spy,
Politician,
Nurse,
Teacher,
Therapists,
Midwife,
Optimist,
Accountant,
Social Worker,
Veterinarian,
Architect,
Pharmacist,
Psychologist,
Librarian,
Engineer,
Scientist,
Police Officer,
Firefighter,
Pilot.

No matter how automated things become, I just don't see how all of these can be completely eliminated.

On the contrary, I can see most of these becoming automated -and probably much improved- if we ever make useable robots and some level of interactive and portable AI, even if it's not sapient. Look at all the mistakes and misuses of power that happen when humans do those jobs. I'd have probably had less problems with a robotic doctor --or using webMD-- than the problems I had with a doc who insisted that all I had was a bad stomach flu. The only ones that might not be are spy (Humint, not Sigint, which is already highly automated), Politician (although it might be better if it were, and... current events joke successfully restrained), and maybe architect, although I suspect theories of art and aesthetics may make it possible to have a computer to it. I know there might be arguments that robots and AI won't have the human touch, but I think that's kinda the point: people are growing antisocial these days and would prefer robots and AI.

[Solfe]

Is that a profession now? Maybe you mean Optometrist?

Yes, optometrist is what I meant.

Now I would like to add proofreader to my list.

[Solfe]

On the contrary, I can see most of these becoming automated -and probably much improved- if we ever make useable robots and some level of interactive and portable AI, even if it's not sapient. Look at all the mistakes and misuses of power that happen when humans do those jobs. I'd have probably had less problems with a robotic doctor --or using webMD-- than the problems I had with a doc who insisted that all I had was a bad stomach flu. The only ones that might not be are spy (Humint, not Sigint, which is already highly automated), Politician (although it might be better if it were, and... current events joke successfully restrained), and maybe architect, although I suspect theories of art and aesthetics may make it possible to have a computer to it. I know there might be arguments that robots and AI won't have the human touch, but I think that's kinda the point: people are growing antisocial these days and would prefer robots and AI.

I would argue against the robots. When a robot operate exactly as humans do, "they", the robot, is "someone" performing the profession. They just happen to be plastic and metal. On the other hand, I don't see AI's as appearing in the next 200 years, so even if robots were involved, they would have a trained human behind the scenes tell them what to do.

WebMD kind of bothers me. See this quote:

"Victims usually die seven to 10 days after infection, although symptoms may not appear for up to 14 days."

Hum... that might be the reason that the TOS and every page carries the disclaimer of: "The Site Does Not Provide Medical Advice".

[Drunk Vegan]

I would argue against the robots. When a robot operate exactly as humans do, "they", the robot, is "someone" performing the profession. They just happen to be plastic and metal. On the other hand, I don't see AI's as appearing in the next 200 years, so even if robots were involved, they would have a trained human behind the scenes tell them what to do.

WebMD kind of bothers me. See this quote:

"Victims usually die seven to 10 days after infection, although symptoms may not appear for up to 14 days."

Hum... that might be the reason that the TOS and every page carries the disclaimer of: "The Site Does Not Provide Medical Advice".

Sometimes I look at WedMD and I think that there must have been an ER doctor somewhere who had two bad slices of pizza and a beer and woke up in the middle of the night and shouted "Finally! I know how I can make money from all of these hypochondriacs I see every day!"

[danscope]

Your view is a little narrow. What are you going to eat? You had better put farmers and fishermen in that line-up , because you will need them sooner than you may expect.
You have to see the big picture,son...I say BIG.

[Noclevername]

Your view is a little narrow. What are you going to eat? You had better put farmers and fishermen in that line-up , because you will need them sooner than you may expect.
You have to see the big picture,son...I say BIG.

Why can't those things be automated?

[publiusr]

I'm not so sure. The situation seems to be worsening, not improving.
Isn't any economy/society that's substantially relying on slavery, serfdom and debt bondage, a desperation economy? Was that not the situation during the Middle Ages? It lasted more than 200 years. Which would cause quite a bit of desperation for many people, for who knows how long a stretch of time.

That was my point. If anything, it was only in the mid 1900s that workers had any rights at all--and those are under assault.

Serfdom and slavery lasted longer than 200 years. It was the 1930-1970s that the working poor had any voice. That is vanishing. Take a lot of places where appointed city managers have reduced publicly elected officials into puppets with no say. Look for more of this before things get better. Take the lifeguard fired for saving someones life. As people want taxes lowered, infrastructure still needs be had--and the privatizers if anything make things worse. I gave an example of this in another thread here on the VLJ debacle and how the attempt to break up large institutions failed from withing due to stingy behavior and the desire to have profits without products to reduce overhead.

Combine lack of democratic power with 'profits without products' and you will always have a desperation economy. In Alabama, we sell out workers so Airbus came here. But I'd rather have all our old textile and steel mills back and tell Airbus to take a hike. I'd rather fly on a Boeing jet where the pilots are not trained to 'not use the rudder.'

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/archiv.../t-182826.html

"If I remember correctly, it concerned an Airbus which lost most of its vertical surfaces when the pilot used the rudder as he had been used to doing in Boeing products."

There are costs to this globalization: http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/genera...=9780195116519
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.152...21100907333861

Take the sex slavery markets where a nations youth are being used up by tourists. And people wonder where resentment comes from.

[Solfe]

Your view is a little narrow. What are you going to eat? You had better put farmers and fishermen in that line-up , because you will need them sooner than you may expect.
You have to see the big picture,son...I say BIG.

Yes, they are limited and for a reason. 200 years ago, these people would have either not existed or would have actually been producing items. Now actual hands on production is becoming a rarity for these professions, they now direct or plan production. In some cases like the Social Worker, Nurse (not as we know them), Optimist (I am going to run with this gag), Firefighter (not as we know them), Police Officer (not as we know them), and Pilot, they did not exist at all 200 years ago. So out of 24-ish listed jobs, 25% are new. We can expect the same trend to continue I would imagine. 200 years ago who would of thought we would need a professional to fly?

I didn't mention farmers, teamsters, carpenters, artists, bricklayers, plumbers, singers, etc. because they have been with us for ages. For each named profession, there is a required core of people needed to support them. These went unnamed in my list because there are far too many of them.

[publiusr]

Frankly, were it in my power, I would have all the bright folks who contribute to answering questions here paid a great salary. I learn so much here. But like most folk who post on the web--you genius is hard for free. So Op-ed writers wind up being unpaid due to the internet, where writing used to be a paid art with only a few allowed to put anything to paper in select newspapers.

This site is similar. So the idea of automated labor allowing us all to be paid intellectuals isn't happening. The first thing I would like to see to deal with desparation economies is:

A global min wage.

All countries must manufacture their own products to limit shipping costs to energy consumption and CO2 emissions

wage and price controls

Now many folks will argue with these points--especially on wage and price controls with the ususal Ayn Rand answers. But here is a twist on that. Patents elapsed on certain medicines, which allowed costs to drop yet not be passed along elsewhere. So if this drop we saw in 4 dollar Wal Mart meds had been proscribed by law--the same result **should** happen, without vendetta. The problem is that any arguement against regulation talks about costs being passed on. But this is what I call the wife-beater arguement.

A battered wife calls the cops (Gov't) She seeks a place to hide (shelter) the enraged husband murders the wife, the policeman, and the shelter employees, then stands over the bodies and says "See, you just made things worse."

It's a lot like folks who take money from city centers as part of urban flight--and then become the ear of corn that dares blame the husk it leaves behind for being barren. Yet as more people follow, new infrastructure must be built--then people move farther and the inner most structures become blighted. It was the flight that caused the failure. Stay at home in infrastructure already paid for--and you pay less in taxes overall.

Imagine an ex-patriot who leaves the country to evade child support, and then blames the regulation and his wife for trying to get out of paying for his family. Yet those who make arguements against regulation in other aspects expect to be taken seriously--when these are in fact arguements used by deadbeats. Musk, for example--made his millions on the ARPANET and the servers he did not pay for. So why do we call it a private success?

[PetersCreek]

Talking about jobs 200 years down the road is one thing. Politics between now and then is another thing...another thing for which there is no exception to rule 12. Continuing in this vein has a high probability of infractions and/or thread closure. Let's not have that, please.

[danscope]

Hi, There are limits to automation, especially when it comes to agriculture, but we can do a lot more agriculture with a lot
less people. But agriculture like many other things .... requires constant observation and tinkering. The shape of our labors
may change some, but we shall always have our life's work. The question is ... " Will we have the luxury of selecting and
following our life's work by free choice ? " .

Best regards,
Dan

[JCoyote]

The shape of our labors
may change some, but we shall always have our life's work.

Well as long as we still have jobs for Optimists...

Looking at the list before, I can pretty much guarantee that Soldiers, Teachers, and likely Firefighters will be reduced to nearly negligible numbers in society. Teachers because telepresence will allow centralized schooling virtually across the internet. We will likely see fewer but better teachers, likely with some extra teachers aides for the grunt work. But overall, less teachers. This is happening RIGHT NOW.

Firefighters? Automation will make a heavy drive into that job, as the basics of putting out fires and rescuing people will be taken over by telepresence and shortly afterward limited AI needs. Immediately moving people to safe locations and putting out fires is not complex work, but it is dangerous work often beyond the limits of the human body regardless of protective gear. And the AI need not be inside the bots going into the fires, it can be handling work by remote just as well. Cheap expendable remote controlled bodies + liability constrained AI = win by most bureaucratic standards.

This is another thing missed here... the AI we are talking about for automation need not be humanlike, nor even portable. For most uses a handful of centralized AI "clouds" could handle thousands... millions of different sorts of bot workers via things like wifi. Farming could be easily handled that way... on vast scales. So could mining and lots of manufacturing. Fitting an AI inside a humanlike frame is far beyond what is needed to supplant most human workers... something moderately mobile with a couple hands and eyes and a brain somewhere else coordinating many at once are all that is needed, and not far off. At all. A local bot roughly as computationally powerful as an iPad might be capable of being the hands for all this, provided it receives updates from a centralized control every couple minutes. And initially even that centralized control would probably have a couple human experts sitting around for instances it is unprepared for... but that job will fade away in time as it learns. The more drones an AI controls, the more efficient the processing power can used managing them all especially with repetitive tasks, so a redundant AI cloud running a remote drone swarm is likely.

And Soldier... this is definitely being worked on and heavily invested in. Currently with telepresence, but ultimately? Using AI. Guaranteed. We love and support it because... it prevents us from putting people we care about in harm's way. That's good. People in centralized authority positions like it for other reasons (in some better cases for the same reasons too). Those reasons include having an entire army with... no conscientious objectors. No loose cannons following their own methods. No liability for individual discretion... and no resistance to orders no matter how horrific. You can't create an army that's built not to kill, and they won't create an AI that can refuse an order on moral or ethical grounds. This is the last piece of that puzzle that bothers me... that billions of people will have no available work, no land to sustain themselves, no food to eat or money to buy any with... the only option might be struggle... and the automated military will be ready to deal with that too. And it looks like it may just get automated first.

[Solfe]

You can't create an army that's built not to kill, and they won't create an AI that can refuse an order on moral or ethical grounds.

Why not?

Automation actually might prevent human causalities, the war machines might actually be optimized to attack war machines. People are secondary targets at that point because they are not directing the machines. Why bother? Especially if your machine can't be taken down by man portable weapons.

[Ara Pacis]

I would argue against the robots. When a robot operate exactly as humans do, "they", the robot, is "someone" performing the profession. They just happen to be plastic and metal.

I'm sensing a false equivalency here. Robots aren't people, nor do they need to be indistinguishable from people.

On the other hand, I don't see AI's as appearing in the next 200 years, so even if robots were involved, they would have a trained human behind the scenes tell them what to do.

We have AIs now, but they're not very bright. I don't expect them to be sapient and pass the Turing test and be cataloged as synthetic organisms, I just expect them to have programming that works.

[Solfe]

I'm sensing a false equivalency here. Robots aren't people, nor do they need to be indistinguishable from people.

It is a false equivalency in the real world. But if we were able to work magic and end up with AI's like C3P0 like abilities or better, then I would be placing them in the people category. It would still be false equivalency, but more logical.

Where it holds true is not in the form of the robot itself, but the robot's designer. The designer would define the operational parameters of a profession so well that the designers would be more representative of said profession that the people doing that profession today.

I have actually encountered this principal several times in the workplace in the form of "train the trainer programs". I don't know how many designers, engineers and software people I trained to answer phones. The end result was better software and products. Going the other direction was equally good for business, however I only know of a handful of cases where a phone agent became an engineer*. That is a lot harder to do.

*Many of the phone agents were college students; it was only a matter of time where an engineering student phone agent graduated and got a job with the company in that capacity.