Quote from: freeyourmind on July 31, 2017, 10:52:56 PM

Quote from: deisik on July 31, 2017, 07:44:46 PM

Quote from: Hydrogen on July 31, 2017, 06:57:58 PM

On the topic of jobs & automation.

Automation kills many more jobs than it creates.

No one wants to admit that but it is true

Can you prove that?

So far I haven't yet seen anyone coming up with strong facts actually supporting this claim. On the other hand, automation itself requires higher division of labor and that directly supports the opposite claim, i.e. it contributes to creation of more jobs. Basically, you can't have it both ways. Either you accept that automation as such requires more advanced technology itself (but that necessarily means more people are required to support it) or this is not actually an improvement or advancement in technology (since it destroys more jobs than creates). With your other claims I basically agree

I didn't search the web to get you proof, but just logically, if we look at a modern production facility or factory, many stages of production are automated, using programmable robots to do repetitive tasks. Sure there's a team that needs to program and maintain those robots, and although it's a much more intelligent team, the number of general labour jobs that are replaced are much greater.

For example, you could replace 500 general labour jobs with robots and maybe a team of 20 engineers

This is what people typically say

They innocently assume that all this automation appears out of thin air like banks are creating money. But industrial production is not banking. All these robots have to be first designed and then manufactured somewhere, and I promise you that somewhere deep down the line there will always be quite a lot of human labor involved. To get an idea, look at the history of automotive industry. It seems like it destroyed quite a few jobs in some sectors but it created many more jobs in other sectors as well as created entirely new ones. It's the same with automation and robotics, they just move human labor to other fields, and since they are more complex technologies, this necessarily means that more human labor is required in other fields. In other words, you can't escape the complexity loop