Robots and Software are taking all our jobs.
Driverless cars, delivery and monitoring UAVs, diagnostic and self-help software, robot soldiers, 3-D printer manufacturing, robot surgery, the sky is the limit.
Already we have seen and are seeing more the elimination of job sectors by non-humans: travel agencies, manufacturing robots, automatic storage and sorting services, automatic takeoff and landing in passenger planes, pool cleaning, even combine harvesting.
And next time you're giggling at your little robot floor cleaner, think again. He's after your job.
Now shopping check-outs. Another entire job sector is heading to oblivion. A sector that mostly employs the most vulnerable: unskilled older people, teens needing money to fund their education and start their careers and independant lives gently, people with disabilities, new immigrants.
What happens to humanity when whole employment industries are gone?
Some argue the future of employment is in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics); the labour force can simply change tack and make all this stuff: build robots, design software.
How long is that going to last before they build and design themselves?
Plus it assumes our children are all geniuses and will become scientists and technologists. They're not all that smart. A fraction of children will have the brain power or inclination to work in STEM. A smaller fraction will have money to pay for the education and training.
Governments tell us, STEM is the future of employment of future generations. Yeah right. A future of geniuses. You don't say Musical performance is the future and so all our kids just need to be talented musicians. Easy.
The future of employment is heading toward disaster: mass unemployment, unreachable higher education (by cost, talent and genius), millions of poor, bored, angry youth and the crime and desperation that follows.
At the other end of STEM are the bulk of jobs that most of us are employed in. But even that isn't immune. Even low-skilled labour will disappear with automatic rubbish collection, gardening, home construction, cleaning services, maintenance, haulage and delivery, hotel check-in, fruit picking, all being replaced by robots.
The news is covered in the checkout revolution. Coles-Myer, Woolworths and others have started replacing checkout staff with pay and go technology.
Where will the company savings on salaries and staffing costs go? In reduced grocery prices? Ha ha ha. LOL. Watch their share prices.
Have a look at the graphs of economic growth compared to employment. They used to follw each other. Now growth and employment are splitting in different directions. Economies grow, employment stagnates. GDP soars, median income falls.
We can't blame the private sector. Their ultimate goal, the aim to which all business activites strive, is profit. They are allowed by law and government to acheive this aim by almost any means. They are supported, incentivised and encouraged to achieve their aim.
Businesses are just doing what they do. Saving costs through sacking staff and replacing them with technology. Businesses have no interest in costly public policy support, such as employment and the macro economy. That's someone else's job. The government.
The government has a lot of sway in how employers employ. Many countries have quotas imposed on businesses to employ a certain percentage of people with disabilites.
The government has the only authority, power and resources to shape and influence, to direct, employers. So what is the government doing about this issue?
Who shapes and influences the government? Us. So what are we doing?
Where are the protests. Where is the public discussion. Where is the Government?
Where is the open public and policy discussion about saving our children from the future?
She'll die of poverty long before rising sea levels.
No comments:
Post a Comment