why are people so against automation in factories if it makes things safer and produces more goods? is it just that people are losing jobs? but there are different jobs that open up.
In: Technology
The world is moving faster and faster but people can’t or refuse to adapt as fast. As lower end jobs are gone, you can’t expect the same amount of people to learn a higher end job like computer programming within a year or even five years. I lost my job due to outsourcing to India. I was lucky to find another career 12 months later.
[Here’s a great video that covers a lot of the issues.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk)
There is only 1 job according to the BLS to have been completely replaced by automation . That is elevator attendant ; literally the job of pulling a level or pushing a button in an elevator . If you look back at census data from like to 1800s you will find plenty of jobs that don’t exist today. That being said nobody grew up wanting to be a software engineer in 1850. The problem is the jobs that automation tends to replace tend to be repetitive with very little critical thought needed to do the job , and the jobs that take its place require a new skillset.
If you are a 55 year old factory worker who has been bolting in the same 4 bolts for 35 years , you probably wont be able to re-skill to do something different before you retire. You also need less people . A Factory in the US needs far fewer people today to run than back 50 years ago. A factory may have supplied jobs to 5 towns full of people before, suddenly they only need 30% as many people.
In the developing world automation is also feared. Fully mechanizing farming in India is banned , because if they fully mechanized all farms there would be 20% unemployment . So many people are employed doing less efficient work because the alternative would cause many people to not have a job.
There are more jobs but not in the same sector. People struggle to adapt when the change is so sharp.
Simple answer is that machines are much better at doing relatively simple work, so much better that they can outwork several people.
So even if only 10% of the manual labour jobs are mechanized the human workforce looses a lot more than 10% of it’s jobs. Also someone who’s only held low skilled mechanical jobs for most of their life it’s not easy to adapt and learn new skills to compete in that job market.
Shortsightedness. Human resources are the one limiting factor of everything. By freeing up human resources with automation, they can be invested in things that still require humans.
The problem is that this hurts the particular human in the short term, but benefits every other human in the long term.
It’s largely based on the “lump of labor” fallacy, that if you get rid of a particular job that the same number of people will be unemployed, as opposed to having alternatives now/eventually become available.
There are fewer jobs that open up that automation eliminates.
You only need a handful of technicians where you previously needed a couple dozen workers.
Capitalism doesn’t care if the work you would have been doing is now being done by a machine. If you’re automated out of a job, then you’re out on the street, you’re dying of starvation or exposure.
This is for the same reason that capitalism allows ANYONE to die on the street, whether or not their job got automated.
People really aren’t against it. It’s been happening for thousands of years and will continue to happen.
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