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7 comments

[–] Greenseats [OP] 3 points (+3|-0)

It is not just truck drivers and manufacturing jobs that are going to be lost to technology and automation, just about every field is going to be impacted.

[–] Boukert 3 points (+3|-0)

Except, they did.
Manual labour is way way down from where it was. And skilled trades are a much smaller portion of the population than in past.
That was fine in the past. There was new frontiers in industry, service and other sectors to absorb the surplus labour.

Automation is going to affect everything. There will be no new sectors. We will not require a significant portion of the population to put in full-time hours in order to get everything done.

[–] Boukert 1 points (+1|-0) Edited

How about the new sectors of developers, programmers, maintenance, service, marketing, accountancy etc etc for these automation companies.

My point is, we're moving up as humanity, jobs will always follow. Just look at last 75 years where machination and automation have already taken large chunks of traditional jobs.

With less people in factories and working the land, Hell... even the Female population joining in; we managed to increase desk jobs all across the board (better/healthier) , inflated our entertainment industry by an enormous ammount (Radio -> TV -> MTV -> youtube), created an incredible amount of technical progress (engineering jobs), created the internet (programmers), created an enormous market in luxury goods, Built many more buildings and structures then ever before, Tourism has skyrocketed etc etc.... progress.

In the Netherlands we knew worker shortage for about 65 of these 75 years (high unemployment was mainly during the peaks of a number of crisis), for the rest it increased our living standard almost unimaginably, made jobs healthier/better, increased our pay and vacation days and lowered our weekly working hours.

IMO it just frees us up for "better"/other things.