Will Robots Take Our Jobs?

►Follow us on instagram: goodstuffshow

Special Thanks to Our Patreon Patrons!
Taylor Becker, Sam McCartney, SR Foxley, Nathan J. Reid, Margaret Hutz, Brayden Butler, Matt, Max, Joseph Hegeman, Spass Merdjanoff, Colin Young, Bryce Daifuku, Ashley Beranek, Andrew Arrabaca, Jeff Brice, Matt Altieri, Torstein, Jeremy Nauta, Chris Hicks, and Waleed Alowaiyesh

Music by:

Rob Scallon

Chris Zabriskie

Sources:

References:

[KamiInValhalla]

Unless your job involves R&D, high-tech maintenance, creativity, governance, or teaching, it is pretty safe to say that your days are numbered.

[callum]

Can you do a video on universal basic income as a follow up to this, please?

[PhingChov]

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords

[kebakent]

This was an OK episode, covering the topic fairly well. I miss the old episodes though, with interviews and company visits.

[Flossman]

I love that even though you guys are really far apart now, you're still able to make these videos. Keep up the good work guys, you need an award or something lol

[heathmccasland]

@The Good Stuff: I noticed y'all didn't go into depth about a harder-to-visualize concept: machine learning. While physical robots will definitely cause economic disruption for low-skill jobs, **software** is what will be disruptive for ALL jobs, including high-skill decision-making and consulting. Neural networks, support vector machines (SVM), decision trees, and a host of other statistical tools need only be given the right data set, computing power, and algorithm to make many office jobs disappear in a puff of smoke.

[ivanruiz]

It will give us more time to play.
It will give us more time to introspect, and learn wisdom and kindness.

[TrustEngineers]

My job is safe from robots because i'm one of those who makes them.

[bornintoacorruptsystemto]

We need to be free from all jobs immediately

[mennonis]

good summary of one of our greatest upcoming problems

[Eban]

My job is purely at a computer, so yes robots will take my job. I'm saving money for that inevitable future.

[DuluthTW]

There are so many jobs that robots cannot do so humans will simply have to learn new, advanced skills which would probably offer more job satisfaction too. Good video. Thanks for sharing!

[NicosMind]

*So if you understand ALL the reasons why better capital goods (robots in this case) have never lead to permanent unemployment before, and raised the standards of ALL of society then you understand why this automation scare is nothing to be scared off.*

1. *Amount of Work.* Work is not limited! There is no fixed amount of work to be done in the world and peoples wants are unlimited no matter how much they have. Eg. machines make house prices fall to half of today’s prices. People would not stick with what we have, but instead they would buy bigger houses, more houses such as holiday homes, and those who could not afford housing can now buy housing.

2. *Prices.* This very important point is products become much cheaper which give humans greater spending power. Food going from 80-90% of a persons wage to less than 10 freed us from farms. Allowing us to buy more stuff means we could have more of the stuff that existed, plus afford things which never existed. Cheaper goods is where the majority of improvement comes to society, some studies show that 85% to 94% of the benefit will go to consumers in lower prices, higher yields (seeds), or even quality which is immeasurable (for the same percentage of your wage you get a car which is superior to cars in the past).

3. *Leisure.* Humans dont just work for the sake of work or to live. They work for leisure as well. As they have to work less for survival they will spend more time seeking leisure activities which will create jobs there. More time on art and literature (note art and science are the types of things robots wont be needed for). And various other jobs.

4. *Hours worked.* The length of the average work week has declined massively and still has a long way to go. Its was 60-80 for the longest time, then 50, then up to quite recently it was 40 and now its under 40. But it can still be far less before mass unemployment becomes a thing, 30, 20, 10 or even 5 hours per week.

5. *Advertisement and free access.* Many services are subsidised or even exist entirely off advertisement! Sports for the longest time have made their lions share of revenue from advertisement. The internet used to have many sites which charged for access, Friends reunited etc had their monthly fees. Buses, taxis, magazines and newspapers. There are plenty of products and services which are either free or cheaper through advertisement. Other jobs and services could go the same way eg dentists can have adverts to help fund them or even offer free check ups, and offer higher levels of care for a fee. So expect advertisement to play a bigger role in the future.

6. *Improved business.* Its not just society which benefits from cheaper goods, if businesses make more money they can improve as well. They can invest in more capital and machinery, more factories, more R&D etc. All creating employment and improving society. Higher returns can mean shareholders get more profits which they can either invest or spend. Worst case scenario is they don’t know what to do with the money and just save it. Well the bank can then lend that money out for other projects.

7. *Productive workers are higher paid workers.* Wages have risen through time because capital goods have allowed the productivity of workers to rise. A man driving a tractor may have put 50 people out of work, but because he is so productive his employer can now afford to give him a higher wage.

8. *Society wide wage increase.* People who havent seen their productivity increase see higher wages. The butler and the hair dresser do as much work as before but because capital goods have raised wages of their fellow man those who use little or no capital goods benefit too.

9. *Taxes.* Governments throughout history, although in general have been a heavy burden on their citizens, have also been quite small respectively as the citizens could not afford to support a government of any respective size. The industrial revolution changed all this, and the British government being the first country to have this sudden increase in productivity happen within its shores took full advantage of this and expanded its military to take over as much of the world as it could. Taxes of course can and should be used for something much better than military. But if youre the type of person who likes government then an increased tax revenue to do good should be something you support.

All those reasons and maybe even more is why we've seen a constant improvement and not wide scale unemployment. I dont think any of us will live to see the average work week drop to 10 hours or lower (i think 5 would be perfect :P) but if we're lucky then we could see 30 hours or even 25 be the norm. Please note that government should not enforced a maximum work week. There will still be some jobs and some people who would need to work more. A maximum work week will make some jobs inviable which will ironically create unemployment, reduce jobs skills and products etc.

[forttea]

thinking about what humans would do in a world of unlimited leisure time is such perplexing idea. assuming it all get implemented properly, and things are fair, what will humans do with their time???

[FlyKiwi]

This is why I work in Early Childhood Education and make myself indispensable to the families who hire me.

[morningcoffee]

I don't like robots but not in the same way most people do..
_Plastic Memories_

[nickdeep]

I know these videos are meant to be fairly brief, but I wish there would have been some discussion on how many jobs automation will bring about. Is the loss of jobs figure mention in this video a net figure? Does it account for the shift in jobs toward engineering automated solutions? I hear so much about how automation will cause a loss of jobs. Is it possible that, like with the other revolutions, we will simply see a shift in resources (labor in this case). To me, it seems like this will open up more opportunities for our economy to grow by freeing us up from jobs in the service industry, similar to how the industrial revolution freed up labor that was previously spent farming manually rather that using machinery.

[Kamel]

I'm a software engineer, and my day job is to write software that does what humans do now. I think it's very important that people just realize that the progress is inevitable and don't try to fight it by insisting on continuing to do something computers can be doing. Instead, find out ways to increase your value, especially if what you do were to be automated - be prepared for if that day comes, and look forward to it as a way to transition to doing more meaningful work. If you're doing something that a robot/computer can do, surely that feels like very unproductive mundane work.

[PoseidonXIII]

As we shift away from manufacturing and service jobs, would we need to make secondary education much more obtainable so as to train people for more advanced careers that would be the only jobs available?

[DrToffel]

Couldn't concentrate, Rob Scallon's - Rain was way too mesmerizing