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A solution to your employee problem

1/12/16       
Pat Gilbert

A solution to your employee problems

Employee solution

1/12/16       #2: A solution to your employee problem ...
TonyF

Pat Gilbert:

Great video. I'm glad that I am as old as I am, so that I can just wither and die when the thrashers come for me. I worry about what my children will do as the future becomes the present.

As with anything replaced by automation, the more highly skilled endeavors are the last to go. In our business, standardization by the building industry has made custom less necessary (the "builder's kitchens" from the 1960's, windows and doors), and CNC machinery is doing much of the labor that I did when I first started in this line of work.

One of the first real skills I learned was the hand grinding of shaper and molder knives. It took a while to learn, and I was proud that I could do that.

Today, I can send off a jpg of the profile, and a company will send me a knife ground much better than I could ever do, in three days, at a cost that is almost less than I would pay for just the steel.

You could not have impressed that future on me at the time, and certainly not on the person who taught me how to grind knives. The list of replaceable skills grows ever longer.

Are humans even necessary anymore? Perhaps when the smart robots want custom furniture, they will regret my demise. Assuming they can't do what I do by themselves.

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" is coming to a terminal near you.

TonyF

1/12/16       #3: A solution to your employee problem ...
Pat Gilbert

In the past new technology has always created more jobs. As with the industrial revolution and then the computer revolution. The market simply expanded because the price lowered to where more people could afford the product. Who doesn't use CNC these days? this no doubt replaced quite a few workers, OTOH who would want to trade in their CNC? Farmers moved to factory work in early the 20th century.

These guys are saying that that mechanism will not apply to the robotic revolution.

I'm not sure I agree with them. The future is determined by the market place with it's millions of computations every day. All determined by people following their self interest.

This is possible when the market does what it does. The last couple of decades that has been molested creating bubbles and scarcities and preventing the market from determining true values. (think the Big Short)

It wouldn't surprise me if the next thing is nano engineering and bio engineering. I.E. skipping over robotics.

1/12/16       #4: A solution to your employee problem ...
Pat Gilbert

This from this:

https://mises.org/blog/bylund-robots-will-take-many-our-jobs-%E2%80%93-an
d-thats-good

Fear of the changes innovation brings is nothing new, and the reality is that robots will eventually replace us in many or most of today’s jobs and that’s, in fact, a glorious thing.

Yes, jobs will be destroyed by innovation, as they’ve always been, but it doesn’t mean we’ll run out of jobs. New ones will be created as new technologies are developed, engineered and maintained. And, overall, these will be better, more high-skilled jobs. The agriculture industry provides a case in point.

Farming used to employ plenty of manual labor to do very physical work. But today, technological innovation – from basic tractors to complex irrigation systems – has not only eliminated backbreaking tasks but has also created new, more-skilled jobs. In fact, there are so many jobs in agriculture due to the increasing intricacy of the industry that approximately 60,000 positions remain vacant. Much of the work has moved out of the fields and into labs, where microbiologists, meteorologists and veterinarians all play an important role in getting safe foods to tables across the country. And these jobs requiring higher skills also pay higher salaries.

Source of this article

1/12/16       #5: A solution to your employee problem ...
TonyF

Pat Gilbert:

Say what you will about old-school farming, yes it is hard work but it would keep people employed and fed. The problem with the 60,000 vacant jobs is that not everybody who used to farm has the wherewithal to perform the technological tasks associated with the new farming.

This will be true of all professions, as not everybody is a rocket surgeon, and those who are will probably be at the top of their fields already, and be the last to be replaced by the new technologies because they would most likely be the most skilled.

The argument for NAFTA was that all the outsourced manufacturing jobs would be replaced by the advanced technology jobs, except that not everybody that lost a manufacturing job could do an advanced technology job.

What does someone, whose intellectual limits necessitate his doing manual labor, do for a job once the technology has replaced the need for his services?

As the technology advances and the more specialized human labor becomes obsolete, what will all these people do?

Market forces work well for the few, and while there is an abundance of food, there are nonetheless many starving people, because of market forces and the need to make a profit, versus a more humanitarian need to recognize the inequalities involved in the distribution of a surplus of food.

When NAFTA happened, the white collar people liked it, because they saw it as cheaper prices for goods that did not affect their jobs, only the jobs of lower-level blue collar workers, who they deemed disposable.

Now that white collar jobs are affected, it has everyone wondering what they will do when their job is outsourced or automated. They could go back to school, and learn a new field that may be obsolete by the time they are finished with their studies.

As I said earlier, I am glad that I am as old as I am. If I were 35 years old, I would be very concerned.

1/12/16       #6: A solution to your employee problem ...
Larry

The sky isn't falling. While it is true that smarter or higher educated people will do better in most fields, that isn't new. Lots of stupid, uneducated people make good money, selling drugs! New ways of doing more with less labor has been the way of the future for hundreds of years. It has resulted in a higher level of living for most people, even those on welfare. I've noticed that the homeless sitting on the sidewalk are now using their cell phones and Wi-Fi enabled computers sitting near hot spots. More power to them. Some probably were past owners of woodworking shops.

1/12/16       #7: A solution to your employee problem ...
Pat Gilbert

Farms did a poor job of keeping everyone fed, there was no shortage of work though.
IOW the good old days were not that good which is why many farmers elected to work in factories.

NAFTA and it's current relative the TPP are not about free trade consequently the benefits were dubious. What the politicians call "free trade" is about monopoly and nothing else.

New jobs have to be created, not to be confused with more of the old jobs. New jobs, e.g. try and explain today's jobs to someone in the early 1900's. How far would you get?

The point is that are less starving people while there are 7 billion people on the planet. See the graph. That is a result of technology, despite the huge increase in the population. BTW the same goes for world violence.

The jobs will be there. I think people start thinking negatively and become irrational.

I only posted the video in humor. As every one says they cannot find help. So the robots will not taking anyone's job away.


View higher quality, full size image (1276 X 542)

1/12/16       #8: A solution to your employee problem ...
Pat Gilbert

"I've noticed that the homeless sitting on the sidewalk are now using their cell phones and Wi-Fi enabled computers sitting near hot spots. More power to them. Some probably were past owners of woodworking shops. "

Yea I saw you walk buy the other day, but I was busy with my video game.

1/12/16       #9: A solution to your employee problem ...
Pat Gilbert

This seem appropriate.

Some perspective

1/13/16       #10: A solution to your employee problem ...
TonyF

I get that the “Humans Need Not Apply” video was funny, but I found it to be both funny and unnerving, much as I found the movie “Dr. Strangelove” to be both funny and unnerving.

Larry, I have always wanted to get a Depression-era photo of the breadlines and Photoshop a cell phone into everyone’s hand, but I lack the skills. Another one of the modern skill sets that I have not learned, although at one time I might have been able to “strip in” the cell phones in a darkroom, kind of old-school Photoshop.

Pat, I liked Milton Friedman, and think that by and large he was right. But it seems that whenever capitalism goes off the rails (the Great Depression, the Great Recession), it looks to government to set it right again. What would market forces have done if there were no bailouts or corrective policies, and what would this country look like right now?

For those who seem to be in perpetual search of employees, I wonder that if you were able to stand back a little bit, and use a disinterested and honest eye, you might see yourself as part of the problem.

I imagine that most, if not all, of you worked for someone else at one time, and wonder what kind of employee you were. Imagine your own attitudes, priorities, idiosyncrasies, and temperaments at that time. Given that insight, would (insert your name) the employer, even consider hiring (insert your name) the employee, and how well would that work out. You may be expecting others to do what you yourself may not have done in a similar situation.

This seems more like a Business Forum thread.

1/13/16       #11: A solution to your employee problem ...
Pat Gilbert

"But it seems that whenever capitalism goes off the rails (the Great Depression, the Great Recession), it looks to government to set it right again. What would market forces have done if there were no bailouts or corrective policies, and what would this country look like right now? "

You have that backwards. The Great Depression was caused by FDR, despite the trope that says the opposite the facts don't lie.

The Great Recession was caused by excess money being put into the economy by Alan Greenspan.

The businesses would have simply failed as God intended.


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