Interesting speech given by Carney today

mystic_trev

When I started work in London in 1972, all the talk was about people working a four day week.This would entail working and extra hour on the four days you worked. At the time it wasn't a case of if, but when it was going to happen,and of course it never happened! The irony was a lot of the Country was on a three day week a couple of years later, but for totally different reasons!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

As for me? My working day got longer and longer until I jacked it all in 20 years ago, at the age of 42

kabayiri

Sapphire wrote: »

Too little too late, I fear, but he is right. Globalisation has hurt a lot of people, hence the current unrest among those whose wages have fallen dramatically (a majority), and who do not have proper jobs or the prospects of any means to better themselves, with very many of the jobs that used to exist now gone to those who do them at a much cheaper rate.
...

We might worry about the next wave of automation here in little old UK, but in some respects the impact will be dented.

Imagine what mass automation would do to the industrial heartlands of China?

There has been immense industrial change over there.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/dec/05/google-timelapse-satellite-pictures-earth-climate-change

It's sobering when you watch it from above.

What do the 0.5 million workers of somewhere like FoxConn do when you can 3D print an iPhone14 from a gloopy liquid; on demand; in front of the customer; in Washington or Delaware or Tottenham Court Road etc?

I could easily see China adopt protectionist policy.

[Deleted User]

westernpromise wrote: »

This is the Luddite mentality though.

Sapphire wrote: »

SF of the 1950s naively envisaged a time when we would all have loads of time for leisure due to robots taking over our jobs, and we would be living in a utopia. The reality will be quite different.

The reason the Luddites were wrong is that mechanisation frees up labour to produce other things and increase wealth (we wouldn't have cars, washing machines, computers etc if 58% of the population were still needed to grow food).

The reason that the SF programs were wrong is that consumption trumps leisure time as a means of competing for status.

Since the industrial revolution we have been taking the benefits of productivity improvements as an increase in consumption rather than leisure, and now we're wrecking the environment by consuming more than is sustainable. We can benefit ourselves and the environment if we find an alternative to consumption as a means of status competition, and start using productivity to increase leisure time instead. That won't happen unless we can find a way to share the unemployment fairly so that everyone reduces working hours rather than some having a job and others not.

The big problem is that it's not just individuals who compete, countries do it as well, so without some sort of supranational body to organise things, one country can't act unilaterally without putting it's citizens at a disadvantage relative to the rest of the world. For all its faults, the EU was a step in the direction of more international co-operation, but we've just taken a huge leap the other way.

[Deleted User]

Michael Sandel (Professor of Political Philosophy at Harvard) is debating this on Radio 4 next Tuesday.

Crashy_Time

Sapphire wrote: »

Too little too late, I fear, but he is right. Globalisation has hurt a lot of people, hence the current unrest among those whose wages have fallen dramatically (a majority), and who do not have proper jobs or the prospects of any means to better themselves, with very many of the jobs that used to exist now gone to those who do them at a much cheaper rate.

I was just talking to my sister the other day, who was complaining that paying-in machines had just been installed in her local post office in Richmond, and that someone on the staff had said that 'only' two jobs had been lost as a result. I can see that with rises in technology, many jobs will no longer exist before long – this has already been happening for a long time, but there are more developments, such as 3D printing, that will accelerate the process.

We'll still need people who do specialised jobs and who are innovative thinkers, but I fear that jobs that can be done by rote, which used to be done by a majority of people, will go. The corporation owners will benefit, but what will happen to the growing population of the world, with huge numbers of children being born in the Middle East and Africa, to families that cannot afford to support them? Even the middle classes will disappear…

SF of the 1950s naively envisaged a time when we would all have loads of time for leisure due to robots taking over our jobs, and we would be living in a utopia. The reality will be quite different.

Perhaps there is a need for the financial global 'elites' that hold the majority of the world's wealth to spread it around – but this would take the agreement of all of them, and I fear they are too greedy to go for such an option.

The PC 'thinkers' have completely ignored these questions. Instead of considering how to achieve solutions to these difficulties, they live in a metropolitan bubble spouting forth their ideologies, which have nothing to do with the real needs of the people in most of the country, who are rejecting the PC politicians as these politicians have rejected them.

What do people think is the answer to all this?

Well if no one has a job, then who is going to buy all the big corps products, and with what? They are struggling against the forces of deflation as it is, what they need is MORE humans working and earning, not less.

kabayiri

jack_pott wrote: »

The reason the Luddites were wrong is that mechanisation frees up labour to produce other things and increase wealth (we wouldn't have cars, washing machines, computers etc if 58% of the population were still needed to grow food).
...

Imagine if you developed a flexible robot to build things, then why wouldn't one of it's first tasks to be to build other robots?

We have never really had the capacity for machines to make other machines on a widespread scale before, which is why the Luddite comparison becomes stretched.

The robot factory owner may increase wealth, but where does it go; to a select few or the displaced?

kabayiri

Sapphire wrote: »

...
What do people think is the answer to all this?

I've just put this question to my boss.

The response I got back was definitive I thought. If I can summarise it was on the lines of

"Beep beep whirr clunk click click beep click scrunch."

Crashy_Time

mystic_trev wrote: »

When I started work in London in 1972, all the talk was about people working a four day week.This would entail working and extra hour on the four days you worked. At the time it wasn't a case of if, but when it was going to happen,and of course it never happened! The irony was a lot of the Country was on a three day week a couple of years later, but for totally different reasons!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

As for me? My working day got longer and longer until I jacked it all in 20 years ago, at the age of 42

When I started using the internet in about 1995/96 they said by 2016 we would all be working from home, so why do I see hordes of people, often just them in the car, gnashing their teeth as they crawl through Edinburgh traffic every day, probably doing some nonsense office role just to pay their loans? :rotfl: If they had said back then "By 2016 we will all be debt free, and young people will easily be able to afford a home", now THAT would have been a sensible way for the world to move, no? (Of course no debt = less jobs, just like bringing in robots)

wotsthat

kabayiri wrote: »

We have never really had the capacity for machines to make other machines on a widespread scale before, which is why the Luddite comparison becomes stretched.

I don't think it's stretched. It's the arrogance of living in the present - we always think the next game changer is THE game changer - it's not.

It's just progress as usual.

Sapphire

I also think a major concern is the ever-increasing global population, and not enough resources to sustain it. There are no checks on population increases like there used to be. For instance, until 1666 there was a severe plague in London roughly every generation, and there were other horrible diseases like cholera that continued to take out the human population. These have now been largely eliminated. With people in certain parts of the world refusing to use birth control and having huge numbers of children, the increases in the world's population are unsustainable, particularly with those who are unable to contribute wishing to receive, often for free, the same standard of living as those living in the West (even the relatively poor people there). If the population explosion is not checked, there will be more and wars, which will eventually restore the population to a level the planet can sustain (a pretty grim outlook).

The PC leftards pursuing their own ideological agenda (involving things like breaking glass ceilings, gender reassignment for children and other self-indulgences), while being completely divorced from their traditional base and the massive, growing problems it faces, remind me of Nero 'fiddling while Rome burnt'.

China, with its enormous population, is continuing its aggressive expansion, which has had a huge impact on jobs in this country…

The current situation is obviously becoming increasingly explosive in the West, and there doesn't seem to be a will by the establishment to change it. However, I do think that countries will in the end be forced to be more protectionist and look after their own first. Globalisation does not work in the long term.