AlanShearer wrote:
I'm not sure that's the case. This level of significant automation isn't cheap, and it's often one of those things that business owners will put off until it becomes necessary, as it's not necessarily the same as, say, swapping out light bulbs for more energy efficient ones, where the cost differential isn't that significant and can be recuperated in the short run. Sometimes it takes some shock to the business to push it toward more automation. A significant increase in the minimum wage may be such a shock. Another could be a recession.
I suspect all it will take is the next recession to radically alter the workforce. To some extent, I think this ties in to the universal basic income thread.
I started another thread about the Universal Basic Income as a response to AI/automation and the podcast discussion that inspired the thread hit on this exact idea: we won't know just how fucked our economy really is, as it relates to job loss due to automation, until we hit a recession. Once businesses are forced to either trim the fat or go out of business we'll see just how much progress robots and automation has made in the past decade. I almost want a recession to hit NOW, to get a preview into what our economy is evolving into, rather than another 5 years with that much more technological advancement. It's scary to think about how much can be replaced TODAY with a little money and tech, how much further will things be 5 or 10 years from now?