#141 ·
nimbleharbor10 said:The logic holds up because there is a fundamental ceiling to what a single laborer, salesperson, or driver can accomplish. A human being can only produce a finite amount of work within a given timeframe, and that specific manual or interpersonal labor isn't something you can simply replicate with technology—at least, not until the moment you actually do, which effectively renders the human element obsolete anyway.
You actually need fewer designers nowadays. Honestly, you need far fewer workers than we see today because, by the very nature of the industry, a small handful of top-tier talent will inevitably capture 99% of the market share, leaving everyone else to fight over the scraps. It is exactly what we are seeing right now with the app development market.
The demand for engineers will continue to rise, and frankly, it always has, but the reality is that most of the population lacks both the capacity and the drive to pursue that kind of work. We see an endless influx of service workers and retail clerks, yet the actual technical expertise required to sustain a modern economy remains increasingly scarce because people simply aren't willing to put in the effort.
The chef you’re talking about is essentially a food designer, whereas the role of a server or a waiter is much more questionable. When I bought my last car online, the value added by the guy at the dealership—the one I eventually paid and took delivery from—was absolutely zero; he might as well have been a robot for all the good he did. It's a similar story with servers. Unless we are discussing highly specialized, high-end hospitality, a machine could easily step in and replace them without anyone noticing.
As much as you might believe that technical expertise and specialized skill sets are the ultimate keys to success in any industry, you are fundamentally mistaken if you think new job openings in any country will ever materialize in sufficient numbers to offset the ones being lost.
The trajectory of increasing automation points toward one inevitable outcome: escalating unemployment. Only a complete fool would swap out a hundred workers for a single robot that actually ends up costing more than the human staff it replaced. When you look at the math, replacing N number of jobs through automation won't actually result in cost savings equal to the wages of those N employees. Even if there are any savings at all, that surplus isn't going to be distributed among the remaining workforce; instead, it will be concentrated into the hands of a tiny, elite minority.
This relentless drive toward task automation is essentially driving a wedge into the very heart of our capitalist economy, leading us straight toward self-cannibalization. Unless we manage to engineer a solution that breaks free from this rigid neoliberal mindset—something like a guaranteed universal basic income—we are looking at a predictable descent into widespread poverty, followed inevitably by civil unrest and violent revolutions.
Look, take Sweden for example—they have about 70% of their workforce in service roles now. I'd bet anything that the economic structure looked completely different fifty years ago, yet I don't see any bloody revolutions or massive civil unrest happening there.
I think you might be missing the bigger picture of how economics actually works. If those few remaining employees end up with more disposable income, they'll be able to afford more services and luxuries, which in turn creates even more new jobs.
By your logic, developed nations should already be drowning in high unemployment, but in reality, it's quite the opposite.
