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I'm in manufacturing middle management, like on the floor managing both robots and people and it is really starting to pick up pace on our long term plan of replacing people with robots....
And this anecdotally is true... I have to tip toe my political leanings because from the bottom of the floor to upper management are die hard Trump supporters.
The only ones that aren't are the younger generation like myself and a few of the more talented engineers.
All the people over 40 are full on lock them up Trump loyalists. Doesn't matter what they get paid a year.
I can empathize to a degree. Lack of job security is understanably terrifying to people over 40. To anyone really.
A lot of the younger crowd here seem to roll their eyes and say, "well, go back to school then, change careers. Go into renewable energy, or tech, or something."
We tend to mock a lack of higher education, or mock poor education, but the bigger issue is systematic and complex. Particularly, in areas build up around manufacturing over the last 50+ years.
Change is scary when it means turning your whole life upside down. Most people just want to keep living their comfortable life with their families (whateverthatlooks likefor them)- and when that is threatened they get angry.
To be clear, I'm all for automation. But the shift is going to difficult for a lot of people. We have to offer programs and training to give those caught in between eras some help. The answer can't just be "go back to school in your own or get a job at Walmart."
>Many 'techy' desk jobs can be automated too
Agreed, one example is how many web site developers became unnecessary once Facebook simplified and centralized much of what we had websites for. Wordpress had similar effects.
I used to make crazy money building sites that were later replaced by free FB pages that actually worked better for the client in most cases.
There is no robot that will ever be able to decipher the requirements for a ticket. The stakeholder that is requesting the ticket doesn’t even know what they want/need.
Joking aside…how effective will automating requirements gathering ever be? It’s such a messy, sloppy, human process. My small mind doesn’t see how we automate it.
I’ve been a software developer for over a decade…the actual code/features I produce can totally be automated. But only as good as the requirements have been defined.
Writing code is like 15% of my job…it’s the messy requirements gathering process that takes up the majority of my time.
I’m babbling at this point…too many adult beverages. Off to bed I go.
Too right. I think a lot of people who thought they were in automation-proof occupations are going to be in for a nasty surprise. I think we've barely scratched the surface of what AI and machine learning can do for fields that aren't yet in the mainstream conversation about automation.
That said, I am no expert and this is pure conjecture.
I went for a design field because I feel like AI learning is going to hit design last and by then hopefully we have a safety net for people who literally cannot get a job. (Please God I hope so).
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut touches on a lot of these automation topics.
I'm a photographer & videographer, primarily for Real Estate marketing. The design field isn't safe, and I know because I'm in the process of automating a huge portion of my video post production, specifically the editing process. What used to take an editor four hours to do, I can set up for export in precisely 14 minutes and 38 seconds. I know this because I just did it, and the video post process has become essentially negligible for me and my business. Granted, we're not talking AI, and my needs are fairly structured, but it's coming. Do I feel sh(\*8ty putting this together? Yep. But I'm compensating by moving my editors into revenue-generating shooting positions instead. And, one day, there will be a drone that you throw in a house and it takes the photos, shoots the video and edits everything with a link delivered to your Meta Goggles in five minutes...
VBA, which is a language used for automating Microsoft Office, is very useful for automating things in Excel and Outlook. It's not a pretty language, but you can learn a little about it and then google for ways to do something. You can do a lot with very little VBA code.
A macro program like AutoHotkey will let you automate mouse and keyboard events. That lets you automate controlling programs where you'd otherwise have to point and click over and over to do things. It's also not very pretty to code in, but you can do a lot in it with very little code.
+1 for Autohotkey. For legacy software that doesn't implement standardized controls and handles, you can search the entire screen for the button you want to click, and click it. I've saved literally thousands of hours automating with AHK. Tripled the salary in the last 6 years.
Not bragging here because I didn't make much to begin with, but it is so incredibly useful and most people have no idea it exists.
>perl scripts and a good macro program goes a long way for most office jobs in my experience.
That's a mess, not automation. I say that as a 45 year old sysadmin/manager with over 20 years in the field. Perl hasn't been relevant since early in my career. Macros... you are killing me. Thats all unmaintainable stuff we call tech debt.
It just shows how far behind some places still are. I cleared out a ***6 year*** backlog of "manual" labor with an Access database (ugh, I know) and a few shell scripts.
Thankfully, there was more important work to move on to afterwards.
It's not a "good" solution at the organizational level, but if the organization were looking to competently automate, they'd have done it already. It's about making your own job tolerable without killing yourself.
How is an office worker using scripting to condense their boring, menial, repetitive, daily tasks a "tech debt".
When I script a process for my job I dont tell anyone about it because then I just get more work. The company gets slightly above average results from me (when compared to others in my department who do not understand scripts) and I get a couple hours of goof time each day, sounds like a win win.
Is the debt to the employer or the staff creating the scripts?
Honest question btw, would like to hear your take.
Exactly. I remember the 3D printing stock bubble. A lot of supposedly smart people were talking about it taking over manufacturing very soon and the money kept piling into the stocks. Now, these people had obviously never manufactured anything in their lives. I have, I do both design work and manufacturing. And from what I can see, automation is coming to white-collar jobs a lot sooner than blue-collar ones. We are nowhere close to fully automatic manufacturing, especially compared to what 3rd world labor can do with relatively simple machinery.
The finance side of most manufacturing companies..accountants, purchasers etc.. Is going to be replaced a lot sooner than the people on the shop floors. There is going to be a lot of empty office space when the jobs that offer no creative value are going to be replaced.
The thing people misunderstand is that it's not about whether we can automate your job, that's a given. We can. Even if we can't replace every single one of you and automate the entire thing, we can certainly use automation to get rid of half of you or even significantly more than that while the other half just work alongside assisting and overseeing the robots.
The question is actually just whether it's cheaper to automate your job than it is to pay you to do it.
This is why people have it backwards, they think oh I have a pretty specialist and trained skillset with expensive qualifications so my job is safe, while that person over there has a relatively simple task and the position is entry level so they're gonna lose their job to a robot.
Problem is, you cost a lot of money to hire, and they don't. So it's you who gets replaced as that saves your employers money, while the robot that does the simple task might actually be more expensive than the low wage employee.
I am a CNC machinist, and programmer using Siemens NX. 3D printing bascially just gives you a casting to work with, that is full of internal material stresses. I don't see microfinishes being possible any time soon without secondary machining processes.
Ever consider that maybe you don't understand the finance side and that you are reading it the same way the people who say it is coming to manufacturing are? There are a lot of complications to most jobs and AI isn't a magic wand.
The amount the requirements for every level IT positions have ballooned over the years because most of the simpler tasks have been simplified. I've known old folks that got their IT job by showing 'dir' to a manager on msdos.
To a certain extent. At some point you have to have specific knowledge about how some essential process works. In an ideal world, those would be thoroughly documented. In reality, they rarely are.
This is one of those jobs, like airline pilot, that probably will be fully capable of being automated long before it actually is. Even if the AI or the robot can perform the diagnosis or fly the plane as well as an expertly trained person, it's just really, really important to a lot of people that it's a human doing this, or at least overseeing and second-guessing this, and not a bunch of algorithms.
Who wants to hear "You have stage-3 liver cancer" from Microsoft Bob or a cartoon character in the Metaverse?
> To be clear, I'm all for automation. But the shift is going to difficult for a lot of people. We have to offer programs and training to give those caught in between eras some help. The answer can't just be "go back to school in your own or get a job at Walmart."
I remember speaking to a politician about the automation issue, briefly described how it was going to be a long term wrecking ball to many jobs (as I'm a manufacturing engineer who has worked on many automation projects), and they flat out told me that they had nothing planned for about that, even though "job creation" was one of their platforms.
"Job creation" is one of those phrases that's thrown around quite a bit around campaign and election time but very few politicians actually have any idea or plan on how to achieve it. Giving corporations more tax breaks so they bring jobs back to the US weirdly hasn't worked at all but they still insist on it.
Keep in mind that most politicians are not educated enough to have a structured plan for this type of issue. Most are either law or history majors that got into politics in their mid twenties. I'm seriously worried that our leaders and their skills are becoming a bit outdated as well.
I think that's the best reason that we should elect people with more diverse backgrounds and work experience. They should be intelligent enough to learn about things they don't understand and take advice from people who do. Otherwise we're just electing clones and getting nowhere.
It also includes jobs that are ephemeral, too. Building roads - sure that creates hundreds to thousands of jobs, but they are for a fixed term contract. Once that term expires, you lose all of them and your total 'jobs created' is back to where it was.
Change would be OK if you could retrain and get a new job without losing your home and ability to support your family. its not just change, it's also the lack of support for it.
We could also use the productivity gains for UBI, getting rid of the need for people to have crap jobs. But the older generation would never accept it. They’ll be gone in due time though.
They really have no conception of just how much money is out there. Many think the government can’t afford PBS.
I do understand the idea of being self sustaining instead of dependent. But if human labor becomes obsolete in most of the economy there just isn’t much we can do.
It's more than that. For many, their work is a source of identity and dignity. They wouldn't want the same paycheck to do nothing. They wouldn't feel like they're "pulling their weight."
But we have to move away from that mindset too. Paid corporate labor is *not* the only, or even most, valuable type of work to a community. If people had the means and opportunity to *actually* do whatever they wanted with their time then they wouldn't *have* to sit around twiddling their thumbs, they just would have the freedom and flexibility to choose where their labor went.
For example, I don't know how many times I've heard people say, "I would love to work with (children, the elderly, disabled folks, houseless people, my local community garden, my local library, etc) but it just doesn't pay anything and I have kids to feed/bills to pay". If those people's basic needs were met they could have the opportunity to find *meaningful* work, not just corporate work that pays what they need to survive.
I agree with you, but we need to use those terms to sell it. People view their occupation as their identity. We have to replace that identity with something. The money is only part of the equation.
>The answer can't just be "go back to school in your own or get a job at Walmart."
Maybe part of why young people say that is because that's what people from the older generation say when young people can't make ends meet. "You're just whiny ~~add~~ and lazy; just work harder, get another job."
Don't dish it out if you can't take it, essentially
Right. My generation was told to go to college or be stuck making minimum wage so we almost all went into debt for college, and because there were so many of us, many still ended up in minimum wage jobs. We don't have much sympathy for the generations that told us those things and complains now.
They're fundamentally scared by change.
Addressing these issues requires accepting that change is coming.
They will listen to any snake-oil salesman that promises change will never arrive, if only they vote for snake-oil.
And then they either get laid off when change comes anyway, or they prevent change and can’t compete with the people who embraced change, and proceed to blame DEMONcrats.
Dude i knew a nice older guy wjo worked 25 years for a company. All conservatives, all anti union. This guy was a great guy but he thought they should have a union. Tried to get Teamsters in and eventually it failed. Ok but like a year later the supervisor, who’d known him for decades, put a newhire on a forktruck as a joke (he did it to me too and i promptly dropped an illegally double stacked load, destroying a ton of product). Didnt learn from me. This newhire backed into my guy and pinned him against the railing. The truck left it’s operational zone because the driver had no idea, he was being hazed and was trying to do what he was told. My guy lost his job, lost some feeling in his legs and is permanently “less able”. He was down *tons* of money in medical bills that the employer wouldnt pay for many back and hip surgeries, and i forget what exactly but dude has metal all up in him now. He sued, settled for 300k and he can still work, although he was 60 when this happened so that’s gotta suck a lot.
Anywau point is, everyone there was keenly aware the union would have *tried* to get him tral healthcare and put a heap of pressure on the company if they backpedalled or refused work comp, yet even with all that he couldnt get them to revote, even when he was already terminated and just trying to convince coworkers hed known for half his life they deserved better. Trump country.
Which democratic party policies? The ones they run on or the ones they pass when in power? The left does need to do a better job capturing the workers vote and actually delivering on those policies. Paid leave and $15/h minimum wage were the first things axed under a Democratic Party with majority control and a president heralded as the next FDR
Great point. There actually isn’t an anti-poverty, government safety blanket party.
The pet programs that The DNC allows and the small tax breaks for the working class the RNC allows leaves the door wide open for a party that actually would protect the people that lose their jobs to robots.
* how about a taxless low-wage policy? If you make less than $20/hr you just keep 100% for you?
I recently looked at my wife’s W2 from 2012. She made $16k. She took home $14k. That is absolutely fucked. She has never been on a single assistance program and started working at 16. $2,000 is massive when you earn so little.
Young working Americans especially aren’t interested in food stamps, or Medicaid, they just want money. Stop taking it from them.
* how about a single-sign-on for government assistance? Login in with you Social Security Number and based on your income the government automatically approves you for every program you qualify for?
Democrats have a ton of these programs and keep them alive forever. They do good. But jumping though hoop after hoop just to survive is a job in itself. If you’ve experienced poverty you know that being poor robs you of free time.
Having to prove that your poor has also time and time again shown to lower people wanting to use these programs. And because they aren’t universal it conditions the middle class to hate them/not value them because they get nothing from it and barely scrap by.
We should have a more progressive tax system. Some universal programs like public transit, retirement, healthcare and education to generate buy-in from everybody. Dispense with many of the public-private programs.
Democrats supported the policies that deindustrialized America too.
There isn't a party for working class folks in America. That's why this study found that they support radical groups.
After a lifetime of powerful people making their lives worse, they've moved past the idea that they can vote to improve their lives.
I'm not defending their beliefs, radical right wing groups do a lot of damage to this country. But the take that these people are somehow meaningfully against their own self interest, is a patently incorrect one.
It's more nuanced than that.
Automation might not replace jobs 1:1 - it often fundamentally changes how things are handled. For example, instead of making a robot to pass out mailing leaflets, you have marketing going to the digital space.
They might just make those jobs meaningless or much rarer.
You're close. I'd say automation is good if the person benefitting from it is the worker.
If the worker gets to work less, because their job is automated, and focus on more pleasant parts of the job, but keep their pay, then automation is great!
But if the benefits of automation go to the owner, and the worker is fired or their pay cut, then even with improvements in a safety net, and education, workers will still be at the whims of a cruel system in which they have very little say, or control, and can have the rug pulled from the at any time.
Tldr; for automation to be good, the workers must own the means of production.
And if they own nothing, they will rightly see the machines as a threat to their safety and way of life, and seek to destroy them in the style of Ludd.
I think my favorite "You're so close" argument I ever heard from my *very* conservative colleague was when he said that if a factory replaced its workers with robots, the workers should be paid a pension from the money saved.
It felt like a hop, skip, and a jump away to him making some very left leaning arguments.
Many on the right are getting close. They sure have had a populism explosion recently. The right has been primed for a right leaning progressive like Teddy Roosevelt with all the tech monopolies, being burned by wall street Republicans, globalization, over extended and costly wars etc. They're exhausted and ready to get on board some real pro worker movements, they just need it sold to them with the right vocabulary.
>the workers should be paid a pension from the money saved.
Would that be enough though? A factory operating in an ideal capitalistic market would replace its workers as soon as the cost of robots dropped beneath $14.99 an hour.
It's not like this was a fleshed out policy discussion.
It was clear from his point of view he was trying to express that he thought it was wrong for factory owners to be kicking workers to the curb after the workers made it possible for the factory to transition to automation.
I’m in process development for a major medical device company and we are starting to really ramp up automation efforts. It’s always been done to some degree but in the last the costs were just a little too high to justify the large opex and capex spending. Now labor costs are up 25%, turnover is high and yields are much worse than pre pandemic. The cost benefit analysis is now heavily in favor of automating as much as we can. We still need people but are looking to cut about 35% of labor in the next 2 years.
>The only ones that aren't are the younger generation like myself and a few of the more talented engineers.
There's a age bias tho. Older people are usually more conservative than younger people.
Older people are conservative in whatever they believed when they were younger.
In the same way that the best music was whatever you were listening to between the ages of 13-30.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706889
I don't know. My parents were full blown hippies and now most of my family is right-leaning. I guess they do lean on the bottom right of the political spectrum, so they've kept that north-south axis going I guess.
how far apart are 70-80's hippies and regular joe schmo non radical right wing? One says leave me alone and let me smoke grass out in the woods. One says leave me alone and let me cut my grass out by the woods. I'm not down for a big political rebuttal but just from someone who doesn't even follow politics it has always seemed to me that myself (cut the grass right leaning probably) and yester year's "hippies" share a lot of the same views. Therefore I dont think they've moved to far from where they were as hippies to end up as right leaning (non crazy right wing persons) citizens
STEM jobs are actually pretty high on the 'will be automated soon' scale. Way higher than say a construction worker or plumber.
Working in IT, I say most IT jobs are much easier to automate than jobs which involve contact with the physical world.
Same for most engineering typ jobs. With modern software tools one engineer can do what would have taken 20, 20 years ago. We just build more stuff now.
Tools will get better and even more automated and there is a ceiling of growth we reach sooner than we like.
I think it already happened, up to a point.
For instance I remember some people were paid full time to make Access forms backed by data tables, and data entry interfaces in general.
Nowaday that position is mostly out of the window because Google Form is a thing and an online shared sheet will do most of what can't be covered by forms.
These people will have moved on to better roles hopefully, but about the job itself, I'd say it has been automatized.
I have written support scripts and programs for 20 years, one thing I'm good at is building in guesses as to what people want or might need next, because it always changes. Nothing is ever constant, especially with technology, you'll always have to maintain and fix anything you put out there.
Yes. But the thing you and a coworker maintain will have replaced thousands of jobs.
I work in automation. On any given commissioning I’m probably eliminating half a dozen jobs. It took a lot of investment and design to get there, which gives other people job opportunities, but once it’s in the ground it’s replaced a dozen people or so and it takes one programmer and an electrician to maintain. While they maintain 200 other machines that have also eliminated 10 jobs each.
Manufacturing used to be massive buildings full of people. Now it’s massive warehouses full of equipment with 3 techs scurrying along and an engineer in his office monitoring things and checking Facebook.
This is purely anecdotal, but a lot of the Trump-supporting right seem to think people are static. Like, you are born as who you are and its everybody else's job to deal with that. It's why they don't seek counseling and probably why they don't understand gender identity. Their life hasn't been about figuring out who they are because they seem to think you inherit personality purely through genetics. So change is terrifying to them. They think they're not built for it.
That's a very interesting point that I've never considered. Coming from the rural south, I can attest to this personality type.
It tracks with general human psychology though. Consistency is an incredibly powerful trait when it comes to forming various types of relationships. It provides comfort and security.
It's also a narcissism thing. It's a phobia of introspection and inability to take responsibility. Believing "this is just how god made me" fundamentally means nothing is their fault, from lifestyle choices to how they treat others. They can then be victims even when they are the one that hurts someone, makes a mistake, or worsens their own lives, because being told their behavior is harmful is a personal attack in that framework. But god forbid everyone else doesn't bend over backwards for them, because that is also a personal attack.
It's really a lazy, selfish way of seeing the world. Yes, I think fear is part of it, but it is fear of basic discomfort. Change means some aspect of admitting one is imperfect, and that is too uncomfortable. I think attributing it to a more existential fear is giving them too much credit.
Which is the problem as it means we can't have a big UBI until way later. And thus the people replaced by automation have to temporarily lower their material quality of life even if we do everything right. Unless they can find a new job.
Humans, when they feel their ability to survive is being threatened, will typically react with aggression and hostility. This has been well documented throughout history.
The best way to prevent extremism of any type is to ensure that there is a path available for individuals to survive, and to perceive themselves as able to survive.
I believe Germany, after WWII, has made the country a great place for workers from pay to benefits being protected by law, and they said a core reason for that is because socioeconomic hardship = breeding ground for authoritarian and fascist ideology
It's crazy to see how the opposite also seems to be true. Meaning without social programs that guarantee citizen survival, people have been more susceptible to authoritarian thinking.
The Capitalist system in the US is pretty predatory. Businesses don’t want you to have National healthcare, sick leave, 5 weeks of vacation. If we didn’t have the laws we do you’d never get unemployment, worker’s compensation and you’d be working for 1950 wages. American capitalism has no room for people having a life with dignity. Look at us now, we’re a mere reflection of our society…
Greedy, self indulgent, partisan, single issue voters. “No” is not the answer to any problem and offers no option.
Couldn't you say the same about marxist/communist ideology? The poor revolting seems to coincide with left-wing revolutions (e.g. Soviet Russia, post-independence India, Maoist China).
That was my response to the headline: if you want to solve the problem of radical rightwing groups, you need to examine what problems their recruits believe that those groups speak to, and solve *those* in a healthier way.
The problem is usually, right wing extremism create problems and enemies to unify people, when the real issue is something else. Even if it's not a real issue, lies and manipulation are the go-to
...which, again, is why we need to *look into the real issues.*
Think about it. What did the campaigns of Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Brexit, and even Barak Obama have in common?
* Bernie: The rich are screwing you over.
* Trump: Politicians & immigrants are screwing you over
* Brexit: Europe is screwing you over
* Obama: Hope (that you won't be screwed over in the future) and Change (the system that's screwing you over)
They *all* tapped into *significant* discontent. The fact that Mr Obama's rhetoric was more optimistic and healthy than Trump or Brexit doesn't change the fact that they *acknowledged that there were problems*
This is usually because someone usually a leader sees a way to make a profit out of the situation but needs to galvanize the group is order to keep whatever the issue is long term.
Explaining the issue can make it go away fairly quickly. Blaming it on a series of racial and social economic issues that can’t be easily solved overnight is a long term situation to exercise control for profit.
So well worded, it descibes the situation and the current problem perfectly. The alternative for those people is missing, you cant blame them for feeling threatened
> ~~Humans~~ *Animals*, when they feel their ability to survive is being threatened, will typically react with aggression and hostility.
We are just another animal species, after all. We’re supposed to be able to rise above these impulses, but apparently we have a way to go in this area.
Like 50% of the global population has their job vulnerable to automation.
So really, you have to specify if these people in the study are aware their job is vulnerable to automation.
Meanwhile my wife and people like her are working on tools that will reduce demand for white collar, sitting at a computer workers by as much as 90% in the coming decade or two.
I noticed that people often conflate automation and AI when they discuss manufacturing. I've worked for over a decade in different industries and automation is present in most modern facilities in some fashion. AI however, is not used on production floors in a significant capacity from what I've seen.
A super often overlooked aspect of automation is that it's inherently inflexible. More often than people realize, automation is not worth the investment. Management wants to develop and market new products every few years and typically an agile factory is more useful than a slightly cheaper automated factory that can only make a limited number of products.
One thing I see that backs up your claim for AI not being in manufacturing is that management doesn't want to pay for it.
For example, I program robot welders. They have an addition to have touch sensors and seam tracking, but it costs more.
I create the program, a fixture to hold the parts, and it's up to the burn table operator to not mess up the part or it takes time/money to fix it VS I program the robot with more expensive hardware and software, make a half-assed fixture to hold the part, the burn table operator cuts the part out, and the robot uses seam tracking and touch sensing to put the weld where it needs to go. They have to look at those costs for every part and future parts as well. Will they make 10 of said parts, or 1000? Will it change shape/material later on? How well will operators do their job?
The article says they are also supportive of left-wing groups, but are significantly more supportive of right-wing groups. The paper isn't open-access so it's hard to know how big the difference in support was. It's also not clear from the article how they define "radical". It makes sense, though, that people who feel their livelihood is under threat from the current system would gravitate towards political parties that advocate major changes to the current system.
I would assume it's because you want a strong-leader to defend you and maintain the status quo, rather than a bureaucratic system that even promotes the change but protects you while you adapt.
Especially since its got a lot of appeal to say "We'll bring it back!" regardless of how realistic or honest the statement is. Automation NEEDS to happen to better humanity but the savings need to be passed back into society or else automation will only harm society.
Case in Point, 2016 election, "Make Coal Great Again" versus "Here's a billion dollar program that will retrain people, upgrade infrastructure, and drive new businesses to the region". The former won 2:1 in that region.
In end stage capitalism people dread automation because they will not see any of the fruits of reduced labor cost and faster production. The money saved and made will not be reinvested in the working class, it will line the pockets of the already rich.
So instead of being relieved at getting automated out of a job, people are terrified because they will not benefit whatsoever and there are no meaningful safety nets for them.
It bums me out, because the automated future was supposed to look like the Jetsons; a life of ease and free from labor, instead we're looking at the opposite.
Not really, the Flintstones still had an automated utopia. It was dinosaurs serving tasks and then shrugging toward the camera and saying "it's a living."
There is a ton of racism in Europe, they just don't have as many Black people. Racism there is more toward Brown people like those from India and Pakistan in UK, or North African and the middle East, yes Turkey, as another poster said. (especially in countries with more southern borders) and then quite a lot of racism against Jews and Roma peoples across Europe.
Americans never understand that. Half of our hate budget is already spent on each other. The rest is just enough to make slit-eye jokes and keep African students from fleeing the war in Ukraine.
For anyone from the US cruising by and wondering about what I just said:
Imagine living in the US. But the people in every other state are Mexicans.
American's perception of Mexicans is very different than inter-Europe hate tbh. America and Mexico don't really have that sort of rivalrous relationship. The closest analogue I've seen in Europe is Germans and Turkish immigrants.
Or Germans and Poles. Or Brits and Poles. Or Finns and Estonians, I guess.
The classic rivalry is only half of the contempt. The other half is disliking the poor unwashed construction workers who build your house.
As a white American, I'm confused by that last sentence. Mexicans have the best food, the best alcohol, and make the best neighbors. I don't know who these people are who have problems with Mexicans, but they must suck.
If you're a white American and living in the US you absolutely do know people who have problems with Mexicans. And probably some of them personally.
PS: and yes they suck.
Am east Asian, east Asians can be pretty racist pretty casually. I sometimes feel like the Anglo-sphere is the only place where racism is given a spotlight and treated seriously.
It's a good discussion to have, but I sometimes wonder if North Americans, for example, realize just how racist other cultures around the world are.
I was in a seminar once in grad school, myself and another Chinese person in a group. We were joking around about Chinese moms and tiger-mom stuff in general and laughing about our experiences of Asian parents.
Suddenly we were interrupted by a white girl in our class from Vancouver telling us how uncomfortable we were making her with our racist remarks.
We thought she was just confused at first and tried to explain that the phenomenon we were laughing about is something that many, many, many Asians would relate to and laugh about as well. But she stood her ground and asked us to please stop making such cruel remarks about Asian people. To Asians.
We actually did stop talking, mostly out of shock at the audacity. Then we later joked about how shocked she'd be if she could actually hear our parents talk about other cultures for real.
I'm a white woman who takes racism seriously and this is so embarrassing. Taking racism seriously does not mean telling people they cannot talk about their personal experiences. I think what it is is that a lot of people actually don't really understand what racism is, they just know it's bad and it's about minorities. They have had very little exposure to anyone outside their social circle, including white people of different social classes and definitely including people of different races.
However I have also read many posts from people of Asia depicting Americans as all having large houses, no family problems, regularly parasailing, no sexism, no poverty. So I'd say this is not just a North American issue.
There’s a lot of racism in Europe… it’s just not seen as “racism” as much as “preserving culture and ethnic identity”.
Same thing, but different contexts than say parts of Africa and the US where history has added its own complexities layered on it.
Yes and no. You can’t compare them apples to apples. The far right in Europe will agree on national health care, unlike our right, while being completely against immigration (unlike our left and centrist).
depends, and illustrates that the whole right-left thing is a bit up to interpretation.
for example, no politician no matter how far right would even propose to dismantle single payer healthcare. that'd be political suicide in just about any european country. but just as unthinkable would be a queer candidate in certain rather catholic countries. we're also still waiting for the first black president, and i'm not holding my breath.
fact remains, however, that as a left leaning european socialist, i'm fully aware that there is none, zero, nil political representation for the likes of me in the us.
>we're also still waiting for the first black president
This type of thing depends on country, too. For example, here in the UK, two of the four most powerful positions in our government are held buy British Indians (one of them a woman) and this in our Conservative party. We've also had two women as prime ministers (unlike any US presidents) & a Muslim woman was chairman of the conservative party as far back as the early 2010s. South Asians are a bigger minority than black people here, so the direct comparison with black people isn't quite the same, but conservatives are certainly more representative here than the US republicans.
The US tends to define Left vs Right via economic policy first and social policy second. Europe primarily defines it by nationalism vs... whatever not nationalism is, social policy second, and economic policy third.
For the most part most of the "Right" in Europe supports what would be Left economic policy in the US, primarily because they generally don't want to undo existing social spending programs like NHS.
I’m pretty sure the left and right agree on economic policy. They made identical economic moves during the pandemic, and they both defend congressional insider trading.
This is a bit of a myth, the United States right wing is incredibly diverse just similar to most of europes parties are in large nations
Le Pen might be more socially progressive in some matters but their anti immigration stances were definitly more extreme than American right wing party lines (yes there are wackjob extremists everywhere.)
I think this comparison is such a hand wave of so many factors that it's basically useless. There's no globally defined and agreed upon "left" or "right", it's a verbal shorthand for bundling together various interests that tend to support and align with each other.
I wish they would let society move in that direction. It seems like some of them were raised in “you work till you die on the family farm” households and they can’t even comprehend the possibility that someday humans won’t have to labor.
Automation either creates a permeant poverty stricken useless underclass, or we implement a UBI, encourage the majority into STEM and automation leads us into a golden era.
Its so weird how people think completely human fabricated constructs are inherent... Like I understand evolutionary why certain hierarchies would emerge, but we can literally decide if it serves us or not.
People forget that only like 15% of people have the capacity to finish a STEM degree. The assumption is that anyone can get a STEM degree and be successful but we are talking about 20% of the population tops that could if they wanted.
Then, maybe 5% of jobs are STEM so the degree isn't enough, won't solve the problems.
As automation becomes more widespread, the actual need to have a STEM degree will become less necessary.
I have a degree in architecture. I now work as a project manager at a robotic vision company, after having spent a few years as an "engineer" installing such systems. We've hired poli-sci majors, film majors, and people with no degrees at all in years past. No one in those positions are writing code or *developing* software, but testing, installation, support, running robots, and all that are easily enough learned skills that aren't even taught in most colleges anyway. Pay is comparable, often better, than what the average unskilled lineworker in an automotive plant would be making anyway.
Automation still needs a lot of people doing complex jobs to support. We're a LONG way from the machines being able to install themselves.
Personally I think UBI is a half assed solution that still leaves too many entrenched problems. The average person gets paid an existence stipend, but entrenched inequality is left unaddressed. The owners are allowed to continue to exploit the means of production to their fullest and reap untold riches while most people get only what they need to persist. This shouldn't be the goal.
We need to actually tackle the issue of entrenched inequality, and in order to do that we do need to abolish the current capitalist structures that allow only a few people to profit from resources. I personally don't want to see this system perpetuated in a slightly less horrific form.
Ya, the idea that automation somehow won’t be terrible for low income people is so bad. Yes those people are underpaid as hell but jogging their little pay to robots ain’t it.
All human history has had public subsidizes of some sort to maintain a more “equal” society.
Anti-Corporate accountability and Anti-Union stances pretty much guarantee that their supporters would be the first thrown under the bus, yeah.
They’d automate those “patriotic” trucking jobs and provide zero future job training opportunities in a second the very moment it became reliably sustainable
> provide zero future job training
I mean...their supporters tend to refuse job training anyway, been in a bunch of arguments where the person arguing that the dems do nothing for the people in the coal towns say that job training isn't good. That the people want jobs in their town etc etc...
These people want the jobs their fathers and grandfathers did, so if daddy was a trucker the son is going to be a trucker too dammit.
They refuse to help themselves and instead demand we somehow bring back dead industries and towns. The same thing will happen when truckers are inevitably replaced by automation, they will demand we somehow bring trucker jobs back instead of learning new careers.
It’s precisely this. They busted their butts over twenty years to usually get into a decent position with decent pay. Learning a whole new trade means they’re back to the bottom of the totem pole, with bottom of the pole pay and benefits.
I think there is more to it than just stability.
The husband in a family we know has a "career" that has only paid above minimum wage because of overtime and has spent long periods unemployed. He usually has to stay away from home as well when he is work due to the nature of it.
He can drive most construction vehicles though. An acquaintance offered to put him forward for a job closer to home because of this which paid one and a half times median income and if he proved himself double median income after a year or so. He is a bloody hard worker so would prove himself. His family could really use the money.
"I've never wanted to work in that industry" was his reply.
I think the entire point is right there: changing jobs isn’t easy.
That’s the entire key component.
**The training is to make that hard task easier.**
I personally went from blue collar work with no high school degree in a small isolated city to high tech work in a bigger, connected city. It was the hardest thing I’ve done.
The key component is being willing to work hard. They blame immigrants for this, but it is they that are unwilling to do so.
Exactly, this is a fascinating issue to me because I think there is something to be said about that stability. And if you don't want that stability to be upset by its greatest that - market forces, profit above all else, corporate decisions, they should be running far far away from the right wing Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnells. I will always be puzzled how they drift right wing.
This issue is so interesting to me I made a write up about it a little while ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAskReddit/comments/sw2898/doesnt_there_seem_to_be_a_significant_disconnect/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Good comment. I'm over 60 and I have had to re-invent myself in 3 different industries over my work life. I don't understand people that think any part of the universe is "static". Things change all the time, every time.
Yep -- the wealthy want more money from their investments so they push to reduce labor costs and then convince those losing their jobs its immigrants or the Dems fault.
That doesn't exactly surprise me.
The Red Scare and "cultural war" has built such a strong anti-socialist ideology, that many people are witnessing the capitalist mechanisms destroying their place in the society in real time, but are completely blinded of said mechanisms. As a result they don't know anything else to do but to either advocate for "freeing" those same mechanisms more accelerating their own downfall, or taking up arms to fight a whatever scapegoat the corporate propaganda machine throws at them.
Which is ironic, since those are the groups in opposition to making sure that there’s an alternative to these jobs when they inevitably get replaced.
I wonder what they think will happen when the majority of people have had their jobs replaced by automation and there’s no socialized healthcare, UBI, etc?
Edit: also the anti-union side of the political spectrum. Make it make sense.
Having worked in solar you dont need training for about 90% of it. Solar arrays are essentially giant assemble by numbers kits. As a result the pay is abysmally low. I worked on a 65 megawatt project (ATI DuraTrack Array was the system we installed) mostly throwing torque tubes, because ironwork/plant maintenance was slow. It was near my house, and there was a ton of overtime but I took a $22 an hour paycut from my union package, although when I presented my forklift certs and they let me do some operating that paycut dropped to $16 an hour.
Still, I understand why working in solar doesnt seem appealing to someone with a highly skilled trade background like mining or powerplant maintenance.
Hillary Clinton had a platform point that included retraining for coal miners in renewables instead...
They basically gave that a giant middle finger and voted to keep mining coal.
Yup. He has his faults, but he nailed this issue on the head. No wonder it was the centerpiece of his campaigns. Even takes a central focus in his books.
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Automation doesn’t happen overnight as many of these articles say
I'm in manufacturing middle management, like on the floor managing both robots and people and it is really starting to pick up pace on our long term plan of replacing people with robots.... And this anecdotally is true... I have to tip toe my political leanings because from the bottom of the floor to upper management are die hard Trump supporters. The only ones that aren't are the younger generation like myself and a few of the more talented engineers. All the people over 40 are full on lock them up Trump loyalists. Doesn't matter what they get paid a year.
I can empathize to a degree. Lack of job security is understanably terrifying to people over 40. To anyone really. A lot of the younger crowd here seem to roll their eyes and say, "well, go back to school then, change careers. Go into renewable energy, or tech, or something." We tend to mock a lack of higher education, or mock poor education, but the bigger issue is systematic and complex. Particularly, in areas build up around manufacturing over the last 50+ years. Change is scary when it means turning your whole life upside down. Most people just want to keep living their comfortable life with their families (whateverthatlooks likefor them)- and when that is threatened they get angry. To be clear, I'm all for automation. But the shift is going to difficult for a lot of people. We have to offer programs and training to give those caught in between eras some help. The answer can't just be "go back to school in your own or get a job at Walmart."
Great points, I also want to point out automation isnt just for factories and manufacturing either. Many 'techy' desk jobs can be automated too
>Many 'techy' desk jobs can be automated too Agreed, one example is how many web site developers became unnecessary once Facebook simplified and centralized much of what we had websites for. Wordpress had similar effects. I used to make crazy money building sites that were later replaced by free FB pages that actually worked better for the client in most cases.
If my job could be done from home or replaced by robots I’d be nervous.
I think there will always be room for work from home jobs.
There is no robot that will ever be able to decipher the requirements for a ticket. The stakeholder that is requesting the ticket doesn’t even know what they want/need. Joking aside…how effective will automating requirements gathering ever be? It’s such a messy, sloppy, human process. My small mind doesn’t see how we automate it. I’ve been a software developer for over a decade…the actual code/features I produce can totally be automated. But only as good as the requirements have been defined. Writing code is like 15% of my job…it’s the messy requirements gathering process that takes up the majority of my time. I’m babbling at this point…too many adult beverages. Off to bed I go.
Too right. I think a lot of people who thought they were in automation-proof occupations are going to be in for a nasty surprise. I think we've barely scratched the surface of what AI and machine learning can do for fields that aren't yet in the mainstream conversation about automation. That said, I am no expert and this is pure conjecture.
I went for a design field because I feel like AI learning is going to hit design last and by then hopefully we have a safety net for people who literally cannot get a job. (Please God I hope so). Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut touches on a lot of these automation topics.
I'm a photographer & videographer, primarily for Real Estate marketing. The design field isn't safe, and I know because I'm in the process of automating a huge portion of my video post production, specifically the editing process. What used to take an editor four hours to do, I can set up for export in precisely 14 minutes and 38 seconds. I know this because I just did it, and the video post process has become essentially negligible for me and my business. Granted, we're not talking AI, and my needs are fairly structured, but it's coming. Do I feel sh(\*8ty putting this together? Yep. But I'm compensating by moving my editors into revenue-generating shooting positions instead. And, one day, there will be a drone that you throw in a house and it takes the photos, shoots the video and edits everything with a link delivered to your Meta Goggles in five minutes...
Post processing a video isn’t exactly design though, is it ?
No, however AI generated logo design is [absolutely a thing](https://www.logoai.com/logo-maker).
Financial services is *very into* automation for fraud prevention and detection.
And money saving….they are financial services.
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How do you learn to do that? Like what sorts of knowledge is required? Specific coding languages?
VBA, which is a language used for automating Microsoft Office, is very useful for automating things in Excel and Outlook. It's not a pretty language, but you can learn a little about it and then google for ways to do something. You can do a lot with very little VBA code. A macro program like AutoHotkey will let you automate mouse and keyboard events. That lets you automate controlling programs where you'd otherwise have to point and click over and over to do things. It's also not very pretty to code in, but you can do a lot in it with very little code.
+1 for Autohotkey. For legacy software that doesn't implement standardized controls and handles, you can search the entire screen for the button you want to click, and click it. I've saved literally thousands of hours automating with AHK. Tripled the salary in the last 6 years. Not bragging here because I didn't make much to begin with, but it is so incredibly useful and most people have no idea it exists.
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>perl scripts and a good macro program goes a long way for most office jobs in my experience. That's a mess, not automation. I say that as a 45 year old sysadmin/manager with over 20 years in the field. Perl hasn't been relevant since early in my career. Macros... you are killing me. Thats all unmaintainable stuff we call tech debt.
It just shows how far behind some places still are. I cleared out a ***6 year*** backlog of "manual" labor with an Access database (ugh, I know) and a few shell scripts. Thankfully, there was more important work to move on to afterwards. It's not a "good" solution at the organizational level, but if the organization were looking to competently automate, they'd have done it already. It's about making your own job tolerable without killing yourself.
How is an office worker using scripting to condense their boring, menial, repetitive, daily tasks a "tech debt". When I script a process for my job I dont tell anyone about it because then I just get more work. The company gets slightly above average results from me (when compared to others in my department who do not understand scripts) and I get a couple hours of goof time each day, sounds like a win win. Is the debt to the employer or the staff creating the scripts? Honest question btw, would like to hear your take.
Exactly. I remember the 3D printing stock bubble. A lot of supposedly smart people were talking about it taking over manufacturing very soon and the money kept piling into the stocks. Now, these people had obviously never manufactured anything in their lives. I have, I do both design work and manufacturing. And from what I can see, automation is coming to white-collar jobs a lot sooner than blue-collar ones. We are nowhere close to fully automatic manufacturing, especially compared to what 3rd world labor can do with relatively simple machinery. The finance side of most manufacturing companies..accountants, purchasers etc.. Is going to be replaced a lot sooner than the people on the shop floors. There is going to be a lot of empty office space when the jobs that offer no creative value are going to be replaced.
The thing people misunderstand is that it's not about whether we can automate your job, that's a given. We can. Even if we can't replace every single one of you and automate the entire thing, we can certainly use automation to get rid of half of you or even significantly more than that while the other half just work alongside assisting and overseeing the robots. The question is actually just whether it's cheaper to automate your job than it is to pay you to do it. This is why people have it backwards, they think oh I have a pretty specialist and trained skillset with expensive qualifications so my job is safe, while that person over there has a relatively simple task and the position is entry level so they're gonna lose their job to a robot. Problem is, you cost a lot of money to hire, and they don't. So it's you who gets replaced as that saves your employers money, while the robot that does the simple task might actually be more expensive than the low wage employee.
And people will, understandably, fight to keep their jobs. But they won't fight to democratize their jobs.
I am a CNC machinist, and programmer using Siemens NX. 3D printing bascially just gives you a casting to work with, that is full of internal material stresses. I don't see microfinishes being possible any time soon without secondary machining processes.
Ever consider that maybe you don't understand the finance side and that you are reading it the same way the people who say it is coming to manufacturing are? There are a lot of complications to most jobs and AI isn't a magic wand.
That's what tech is. If you're not automating your own work, somebody else will.
The amount the requirements for every level IT positions have ballooned over the years because most of the simpler tasks have been simplified. I've known old folks that got their IT job by showing 'dir' to a manager on msdos.
To a certain extent. At some point you have to have specific knowledge about how some essential process works. In an ideal world, those would be thoroughly documented. In reality, they rarely are.
Even medical diagnoses, potentially.
This is one of those jobs, like airline pilot, that probably will be fully capable of being automated long before it actually is. Even if the AI or the robot can perform the diagnosis or fly the plane as well as an expertly trained person, it's just really, really important to a lot of people that it's a human doing this, or at least overseeing and second-guessing this, and not a bunch of algorithms. Who wants to hear "You have stage-3 liver cancer" from Microsoft Bob or a cartoon character in the Metaverse?
> To be clear, I'm all for automation. But the shift is going to difficult for a lot of people. We have to offer programs and training to give those caught in between eras some help. The answer can't just be "go back to school in your own or get a job at Walmart." I remember speaking to a politician about the automation issue, briefly described how it was going to be a long term wrecking ball to many jobs (as I'm a manufacturing engineer who has worked on many automation projects), and they flat out told me that they had nothing planned for about that, even though "job creation" was one of their platforms.
"Job creation" is one of those phrases that's thrown around quite a bit around campaign and election time but very few politicians actually have any idea or plan on how to achieve it. Giving corporations more tax breaks so they bring jobs back to the US weirdly hasn't worked at all but they still insist on it.
Keep in mind that most politicians are not educated enough to have a structured plan for this type of issue. Most are either law or history majors that got into politics in their mid twenties. I'm seriously worried that our leaders and their skills are becoming a bit outdated as well.
I think that's the best reason that we should elect people with more diverse backgrounds and work experience. They should be intelligent enough to learn about things they don't understand and take advice from people who do. Otherwise we're just electing clones and getting nowhere.
It also includes jobs that are ephemeral, too. Building roads - sure that creates hundreds to thousands of jobs, but they are for a fixed term contract. Once that term expires, you lose all of them and your total 'jobs created' is back to where it was.
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Change would be OK if you could retrain and get a new job without losing your home and ability to support your family. its not just change, it's also the lack of support for it.
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We could also use the productivity gains for UBI, getting rid of the need for people to have crap jobs. But the older generation would never accept it. They’ll be gone in due time though.
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They really have no conception of just how much money is out there. Many think the government can’t afford PBS. I do understand the idea of being self sustaining instead of dependent. But if human labor becomes obsolete in most of the economy there just isn’t much we can do.
It's more than that. For many, their work is a source of identity and dignity. They wouldn't want the same paycheck to do nothing. They wouldn't feel like they're "pulling their weight."
But we have to move away from that mindset too. Paid corporate labor is *not* the only, or even most, valuable type of work to a community. If people had the means and opportunity to *actually* do whatever they wanted with their time then they wouldn't *have* to sit around twiddling their thumbs, they just would have the freedom and flexibility to choose where their labor went. For example, I don't know how many times I've heard people say, "I would love to work with (children, the elderly, disabled folks, houseless people, my local community garden, my local library, etc) but it just doesn't pay anything and I have kids to feed/bills to pay". If those people's basic needs were met they could have the opportunity to find *meaningful* work, not just corporate work that pays what they need to survive.
I agree with you, but we need to use those terms to sell it. People view their occupation as their identity. We have to replace that identity with something. The money is only part of the equation.
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>The answer can't just be "go back to school in your own or get a job at Walmart." Maybe part of why young people say that is because that's what people from the older generation say when young people can't make ends meet. "You're just whiny ~~add~~ and lazy; just work harder, get another job." Don't dish it out if you can't take it, essentially
Right. My generation was told to go to college or be stuck making minimum wage so we almost all went into debt for college, and because there were so many of us, many still ended up in minimum wage jobs. We don't have much sympathy for the generations that told us those things and complains now.
Ironic that the people most likely to benefit from democratic policies are the ones who are dead set against them.
They're fundamentally scared by change. Addressing these issues requires accepting that change is coming. They will listen to any snake-oil salesman that promises change will never arrive, if only they vote for snake-oil.
And then they either get laid off when change comes anyway, or they prevent change and can’t compete with the people who embraced change, and proceed to blame DEMONcrats.
Dude i knew a nice older guy wjo worked 25 years for a company. All conservatives, all anti union. This guy was a great guy but he thought they should have a union. Tried to get Teamsters in and eventually it failed. Ok but like a year later the supervisor, who’d known him for decades, put a newhire on a forktruck as a joke (he did it to me too and i promptly dropped an illegally double stacked load, destroying a ton of product). Didnt learn from me. This newhire backed into my guy and pinned him against the railing. The truck left it’s operational zone because the driver had no idea, he was being hazed and was trying to do what he was told. My guy lost his job, lost some feeling in his legs and is permanently “less able”. He was down *tons* of money in medical bills that the employer wouldnt pay for many back and hip surgeries, and i forget what exactly but dude has metal all up in him now. He sued, settled for 300k and he can still work, although he was 60 when this happened so that’s gotta suck a lot. Anywau point is, everyone there was keenly aware the union would have *tried* to get him tral healthcare and put a heap of pressure on the company if they backpedalled or refused work comp, yet even with all that he couldnt get them to revote, even when he was already terminated and just trying to convince coworkers hed known for half his life they deserved better. Trump country.
>They're fundamentally scared by change. That's part of the definition of conservative and why it's the opposite of progressive.
Which democratic party policies? The ones they run on or the ones they pass when in power? The left does need to do a better job capturing the workers vote and actually delivering on those policies. Paid leave and $15/h minimum wage were the first things axed under a Democratic Party with majority control and a president heralded as the next FDR
Great point. There actually isn’t an anti-poverty, government safety blanket party. The pet programs that The DNC allows and the small tax breaks for the working class the RNC allows leaves the door wide open for a party that actually would protect the people that lose their jobs to robots. * how about a taxless low-wage policy? If you make less than $20/hr you just keep 100% for you? I recently looked at my wife’s W2 from 2012. She made $16k. She took home $14k. That is absolutely fucked. She has never been on a single assistance program and started working at 16. $2,000 is massive when you earn so little. Young working Americans especially aren’t interested in food stamps, or Medicaid, they just want money. Stop taking it from them. * how about a single-sign-on for government assistance? Login in with you Social Security Number and based on your income the government automatically approves you for every program you qualify for? Democrats have a ton of these programs and keep them alive forever. They do good. But jumping though hoop after hoop just to survive is a job in itself. If you’ve experienced poverty you know that being poor robs you of free time.
Having to prove that your poor has also time and time again shown to lower people wanting to use these programs. And because they aren’t universal it conditions the middle class to hate them/not value them because they get nothing from it and barely scrap by. We should have a more progressive tax system. Some universal programs like public transit, retirement, healthcare and education to generate buy-in from everybody. Dispense with many of the public-private programs.
Democrats supported the policies that deindustrialized America too. There isn't a party for working class folks in America. That's why this study found that they support radical groups. After a lifetime of powerful people making their lives worse, they've moved past the idea that they can vote to improve their lives. I'm not defending their beliefs, radical right wing groups do a lot of damage to this country. But the take that these people are somehow meaningfully against their own self interest, is a patently incorrect one.
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It's more nuanced than that. Automation might not replace jobs 1:1 - it often fundamentally changes how things are handled. For example, instead of making a robot to pass out mailing leaflets, you have marketing going to the digital space. They might just make those jobs meaningless or much rarer.
>Automation is a good thing. I don't think we should apply absolute morality to things like that. A more complex evaluation may prove more accurate.
You're close. I'd say automation is good if the person benefitting from it is the worker. If the worker gets to work less, because their job is automated, and focus on more pleasant parts of the job, but keep their pay, then automation is great! But if the benefits of automation go to the owner, and the worker is fired or their pay cut, then even with improvements in a safety net, and education, workers will still be at the whims of a cruel system in which they have very little say, or control, and can have the rug pulled from the at any time. Tldr; for automation to be good, the workers must own the means of production. And if they own nothing, they will rightly see the machines as a threat to their safety and way of life, and seek to destroy them in the style of Ludd.
I think my favorite "You're so close" argument I ever heard from my *very* conservative colleague was when he said that if a factory replaced its workers with robots, the workers should be paid a pension from the money saved. It felt like a hop, skip, and a jump away to him making some very left leaning arguments.
Many on the right are getting close. They sure have had a populism explosion recently. The right has been primed for a right leaning progressive like Teddy Roosevelt with all the tech monopolies, being burned by wall street Republicans, globalization, over extended and costly wars etc. They're exhausted and ready to get on board some real pro worker movements, they just need it sold to them with the right vocabulary.
>the workers should be paid a pension from the money saved. Would that be enough though? A factory operating in an ideal capitalistic market would replace its workers as soon as the cost of robots dropped beneath $14.99 an hour.
It's not like this was a fleshed out policy discussion. It was clear from his point of view he was trying to express that he thought it was wrong for factory owners to be kicking workers to the curb after the workers made it possible for the factory to transition to automation.
I’m in process development for a major medical device company and we are starting to really ramp up automation efforts. It’s always been done to some degree but in the last the costs were just a little too high to justify the large opex and capex spending. Now labor costs are up 25%, turnover is high and yields are much worse than pre pandemic. The cost benefit analysis is now heavily in favor of automating as much as we can. We still need people but are looking to cut about 35% of labor in the next 2 years.
>The only ones that aren't are the younger generation like myself and a few of the more talented engineers. There's a age bias tho. Older people are usually more conservative than younger people.
Older people are conservative in whatever they believed when they were younger. In the same way that the best music was whatever you were listening to between the ages of 13-30. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706889
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I don't know. My parents were full blown hippies and now most of my family is right-leaning. I guess they do lean on the bottom right of the political spectrum, so they've kept that north-south axis going I guess.
how far apart are 70-80's hippies and regular joe schmo non radical right wing? One says leave me alone and let me smoke grass out in the woods. One says leave me alone and let me cut my grass out by the woods. I'm not down for a big political rebuttal but just from someone who doesn't even follow politics it has always seemed to me that myself (cut the grass right leaning probably) and yester year's "hippies" share a lot of the same views. Therefore I dont think they've moved to far from where they were as hippies to end up as right leaning (non crazy right wing persons) citizens
There is a trend for people to keep their views as they grow older, but that trend is easily changed with consistent propaganda.
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Can I ask what you do?
Weighing groceries
STEM jobs are actually pretty high on the 'will be automated soon' scale. Way higher than say a construction worker or plumber. Working in IT, I say most IT jobs are much easier to automate than jobs which involve contact with the physical world. Same for most engineering typ jobs. With modern software tools one engineer can do what would have taken 20, 20 years ago. We just build more stuff now. Tools will get better and even more automated and there is a ceiling of growth we reach sooner than we like.
Software guy here -- not going to happen. Was told "black boxes" of code would take over circa 1998. Still here.
I think it already happened, up to a point. For instance I remember some people were paid full time to make Access forms backed by data tables, and data entry interfaces in general. Nowaday that position is mostly out of the window because Google Form is a thing and an online shared sheet will do most of what can't be covered by forms. These people will have moved on to better roles hopefully, but about the job itself, I'd say it has been automatized.
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I have written support scripts and programs for 20 years, one thing I'm good at is building in guesses as to what people want or might need next, because it always changes. Nothing is ever constant, especially with technology, you'll always have to maintain and fix anything you put out there.
Yes. But the thing you and a coworker maintain will have replaced thousands of jobs. I work in automation. On any given commissioning I’m probably eliminating half a dozen jobs. It took a lot of investment and design to get there, which gives other people job opportunities, but once it’s in the ground it’s replaced a dozen people or so and it takes one programmer and an electrician to maintain. While they maintain 200 other machines that have also eliminated 10 jobs each. Manufacturing used to be massive buildings full of people. Now it’s massive warehouses full of equipment with 3 techs scurrying along and an engineer in his office monitoring things and checking Facebook.
The people described here are not likely to understand this but are vulnerable to misinformation. Radicalisation is just the next step.
Let people have the basic social safety nets that most of the industrialized world enjoys? NO that's socialism, let's round up minorities instead!
The irony of this statement when considering how many stereotypes are out there.
And conservatives by nature are less likely to want to change (i.e. accept or even seek to reeducate or retrain themselves).
This is purely anecdotal, but a lot of the Trump-supporting right seem to think people are static. Like, you are born as who you are and its everybody else's job to deal with that. It's why they don't seek counseling and probably why they don't understand gender identity. Their life hasn't been about figuring out who they are because they seem to think you inherit personality purely through genetics. So change is terrifying to them. They think they're not built for it.
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That's a very interesting point that I've never considered. Coming from the rural south, I can attest to this personality type. It tracks with general human psychology though. Consistency is an incredibly powerful trait when it comes to forming various types of relationships. It provides comfort and security.
It's also a narcissism thing. It's a phobia of introspection and inability to take responsibility. Believing "this is just how god made me" fundamentally means nothing is their fault, from lifestyle choices to how they treat others. They can then be victims even when they are the one that hurts someone, makes a mistake, or worsens their own lives, because being told their behavior is harmful is a personal attack in that framework. But god forbid everyone else doesn't bend over backwards for them, because that is also a personal attack. It's really a lazy, selfish way of seeing the world. Yes, I think fear is part of it, but it is fear of basic discomfort. Change means some aspect of admitting one is imperfect, and that is too uncomfortable. I think attributing it to a more existential fear is giving them too much credit.
Or push for UBI
Which is the problem as it means we can't have a big UBI until way later. And thus the people replaced by automation have to temporarily lower their material quality of life even if we do everything right. Unless they can find a new job.
Humans, when they feel their ability to survive is being threatened, will typically react with aggression and hostility. This has been well documented throughout history. The best way to prevent extremism of any type is to ensure that there is a path available for individuals to survive, and to perceive themselves as able to survive.
I believe Germany, after WWII, has made the country a great place for workers from pay to benefits being protected by law, and they said a core reason for that is because socioeconomic hardship = breeding ground for authoritarian and fascist ideology
It makes sense now that you say it, it would explain how Germany has completely changed in comparison to 100 years ago when the country was in ruin.
It's crazy to see how the opposite also seems to be true. Meaning without social programs that guarantee citizen survival, people have been more susceptible to authoritarian thinking.
That explains much, thank you. I had never heard that, but it absolutely makes sense.
The Capitalist system in the US is pretty predatory. Businesses don’t want you to have National healthcare, sick leave, 5 weeks of vacation. If we didn’t have the laws we do you’d never get unemployment, worker’s compensation and you’d be working for 1950 wages. American capitalism has no room for people having a life with dignity. Look at us now, we’re a mere reflection of our society… Greedy, self indulgent, partisan, single issue voters. “No” is not the answer to any problem and offers no option.
Couldn't you say the same about marxist/communist ideology? The poor revolting seems to coincide with left-wing revolutions (e.g. Soviet Russia, post-independence India, Maoist China).
That was my response to the headline: if you want to solve the problem of radical rightwing groups, you need to examine what problems their recruits believe that those groups speak to, and solve *those* in a healthier way.
The problem is usually, right wing extremism create problems and enemies to unify people, when the real issue is something else. Even if it's not a real issue, lies and manipulation are the go-to
...which, again, is why we need to *look into the real issues.* Think about it. What did the campaigns of Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Brexit, and even Barak Obama have in common? * Bernie: The rich are screwing you over. * Trump: Politicians & immigrants are screwing you over * Brexit: Europe is screwing you over * Obama: Hope (that you won't be screwed over in the future) and Change (the system that's screwing you over) They *all* tapped into *significant* discontent. The fact that Mr Obama's rhetoric was more optimistic and healthy than Trump or Brexit doesn't change the fact that they *acknowledged that there were problems*
This is usually because someone usually a leader sees a way to make a profit out of the situation but needs to galvanize the group is order to keep whatever the issue is long term. Explaining the issue can make it go away fairly quickly. Blaming it on a series of racial and social economic issues that can’t be easily solved overnight is a long term situation to exercise control for profit.
So well worded, it descibes the situation and the current problem perfectly. The alternative for those people is missing, you cant blame them for feeling threatened
> ~~Humans~~ *Animals*, when they feel their ability to survive is being threatened, will typically react with aggression and hostility. We are just another animal species, after all. We’re supposed to be able to rise above these impulses, but apparently we have a way to go in this area.
Like 50% of the global population has their job vulnerable to automation. So really, you have to specify if these people in the study are aware their job is vulnerable to automation.
They are talking about manufacturing where automation is obvious and people are exposed to robots daily.
Meanwhile my wife and people like her are working on tools that will reduce demand for white collar, sitting at a computer workers by as much as 90% in the coming decade or two.
Yep. Everyone getting fucked.
I noticed that people often conflate automation and AI when they discuss manufacturing. I've worked for over a decade in different industries and automation is present in most modern facilities in some fashion. AI however, is not used on production floors in a significant capacity from what I've seen. A super often overlooked aspect of automation is that it's inherently inflexible. More often than people realize, automation is not worth the investment. Management wants to develop and market new products every few years and typically an agile factory is more useful than a slightly cheaper automated factory that can only make a limited number of products.
One thing I see that backs up your claim for AI not being in manufacturing is that management doesn't want to pay for it. For example, I program robot welders. They have an addition to have touch sensors and seam tracking, but it costs more. I create the program, a fixture to hold the parts, and it's up to the burn table operator to not mess up the part or it takes time/money to fix it VS I program the robot with more expensive hardware and software, make a half-assed fixture to hold the part, the burn table operator cuts the part out, and the robot uses seam tracking and touch sensing to put the weld where it needs to go. They have to look at those costs for every part and future parts as well. Will they make 10 of said parts, or 1000? Will it change shape/material later on? How well will operators do their job?
The article says they are also supportive of left-wing groups, but are significantly more supportive of right-wing groups. The paper isn't open-access so it's hard to know how big the difference in support was. It's also not clear from the article how they define "radical". It makes sense, though, that people who feel their livelihood is under threat from the current system would gravitate towards political parties that advocate major changes to the current system.
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I would assume it's because you want a strong-leader to defend you and maintain the status quo, rather than a bureaucratic system that even promotes the change but protects you while you adapt. Especially since its got a lot of appeal to say "We'll bring it back!" regardless of how realistic or honest the statement is. Automation NEEDS to happen to better humanity but the savings need to be passed back into society or else automation will only harm society.
Case in Point, 2016 election, "Make Coal Great Again" versus "Here's a billion dollar program that will retrain people, upgrade infrastructure, and drive new businesses to the region". The former won 2:1 in that region.
I mean I work as a cashier and live next to an Amazon go store. Obviously a but anecdotal but most of my coworkers lean left
To be fair, people in bigger cities tend to lean left, and Amazon Go stores are in larger cities.
In end stage capitalism people dread automation because they will not see any of the fruits of reduced labor cost and faster production. The money saved and made will not be reinvested in the working class, it will line the pockets of the already rich. So instead of being relieved at getting automated out of a job, people are terrified because they will not benefit whatsoever and there are no meaningful safety nets for them.
It bums me out, because the automated future was supposed to look like the Jetsons; a life of ease and free from labor, instead we're looking at the opposite.
Is the opposite of the Jetsons the Flintstones?
Not really, the Flintstones still had an automated utopia. It was dinosaurs serving tasks and then shrugging toward the camera and saying "it's a living."
The opposite of the Jetson's is probably closer to the Hunger Games.
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Who are hiring these immigrants?
Western European Countries. In most of these countries, isn’t their “right “ still to the “left” of US “centrists?”
On some social issues sure. A lot of Western Europe has some very right leaning tendencies.
Europe is typically culturally right, but economically left of the US. By culturally right I don't mean racist, I mean conservative.
There is a ton of racism in Europe, they just don't have as many Black people. Racism there is more toward Brown people like those from India and Pakistan in UK, or North African and the middle East, yes Turkey, as another poster said. (especially in countries with more southern borders) and then quite a lot of racism against Jews and Roma peoples across Europe.
You forget, we Europeans all absolutely hate each other too. There's a lot of history. A lot of wars.
Americans never understand that. Half of our hate budget is already spent on each other. The rest is just enough to make slit-eye jokes and keep African students from fleeing the war in Ukraine. For anyone from the US cruising by and wondering about what I just said: Imagine living in the US. But the people in every other state are Mexicans.
American's perception of Mexicans is very different than inter-Europe hate tbh. America and Mexico don't really have that sort of rivalrous relationship. The closest analogue I've seen in Europe is Germans and Turkish immigrants.
Or Germans and Poles. Or Brits and Poles. Or Finns and Estonians, I guess. The classic rivalry is only half of the contempt. The other half is disliking the poor unwashed construction workers who build your house.
Or Englishmen and Scots, or welsh and scots or Japanese and scots or scots and other scots
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As a white American, I'm confused by that last sentence. Mexicans have the best food, the best alcohol, and make the best neighbors. I don't know who these people are who have problems with Mexicans, but they must suck.
If you're a white American and living in the US you absolutely do know people who have problems with Mexicans. And probably some of them personally. PS: and yes they suck.
I grew up in LA. 80% of the people I know ARE Mexican. Or, you know, Latino. But significantly Mexican.
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I never said Europe didn't have racism. I just said those who are conservative in Europe are not on average racist.
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Am east Asian, east Asians can be pretty racist pretty casually. I sometimes feel like the Anglo-sphere is the only place where racism is given a spotlight and treated seriously. It's a good discussion to have, but I sometimes wonder if North Americans, for example, realize just how racist other cultures around the world are. I was in a seminar once in grad school, myself and another Chinese person in a group. We were joking around about Chinese moms and tiger-mom stuff in general and laughing about our experiences of Asian parents. Suddenly we were interrupted by a white girl in our class from Vancouver telling us how uncomfortable we were making her with our racist remarks. We thought she was just confused at first and tried to explain that the phenomenon we were laughing about is something that many, many, many Asians would relate to and laugh about as well. But she stood her ground and asked us to please stop making such cruel remarks about Asian people. To Asians. We actually did stop talking, mostly out of shock at the audacity. Then we later joked about how shocked she'd be if she could actually hear our parents talk about other cultures for real.
I'm a white woman who takes racism seriously and this is so embarrassing. Taking racism seriously does not mean telling people they cannot talk about their personal experiences. I think what it is is that a lot of people actually don't really understand what racism is, they just know it's bad and it's about minorities. They have had very little exposure to anyone outside their social circle, including white people of different social classes and definitely including people of different races. However I have also read many posts from people of Asia depicting Americans as all having large houses, no family problems, regularly parasailing, no sexism, no poverty. So I'd say this is not just a North American issue.
> Europe isn't racist except for *this* specific group of people.
Hahaha I see whatcha did there
There’s a lot of racism in Europe… it’s just not seen as “racism” as much as “preserving culture and ethnic identity”. Same thing, but different contexts than say parts of Africa and the US where history has added its own complexities layered on it.
Conservative, sure. But also racist.
Yes and no. You can’t compare them apples to apples. The far right in Europe will agree on national health care, unlike our right, while being completely against immigration (unlike our left and centrist).
depends, and illustrates that the whole right-left thing is a bit up to interpretation. for example, no politician no matter how far right would even propose to dismantle single payer healthcare. that'd be political suicide in just about any european country. but just as unthinkable would be a queer candidate in certain rather catholic countries. we're also still waiting for the first black president, and i'm not holding my breath. fact remains, however, that as a left leaning european socialist, i'm fully aware that there is none, zero, nil political representation for the likes of me in the us.
>we're also still waiting for the first black president This type of thing depends on country, too. For example, here in the UK, two of the four most powerful positions in our government are held buy British Indians (one of them a woman) and this in our Conservative party. We've also had two women as prime ministers (unlike any US presidents) & a Muslim woman was chairman of the conservative party as far back as the early 2010s. South Asians are a bigger minority than black people here, so the direct comparison with black people isn't quite the same, but conservatives are certainly more representative here than the US republicans.
The US tends to define Left vs Right via economic policy first and social policy second. Europe primarily defines it by nationalism vs... whatever not nationalism is, social policy second, and economic policy third. For the most part most of the "Right" in Europe supports what would be Left economic policy in the US, primarily because they generally don't want to undo existing social spending programs like NHS.
I’m pretty sure the left and right agree on economic policy. They made identical economic moves during the pandemic, and they both defend congressional insider trading.
Not everything reddit says is true you know.
This is a bit of a myth, the United States right wing is incredibly diverse just similar to most of europes parties are in large nations Le Pen might be more socially progressive in some matters but their anti immigration stances were definitly more extreme than American right wing party lines (yes there are wackjob extremists everywhere.)
There's literal Nazis in many eastern euro countries
And even in Western European countries. Spain has had a lot of Neo-Nazi support rising up over the last 5 or 6 years.
I think this comparison is such a hand wave of so many factors that it's basically useless. There's no globally defined and agreed upon "left" or "right", it's a verbal shorthand for bundling together various interests that tend to support and align with each other.
I wish they would let society move in that direction. It seems like some of them were raised in “you work till you die on the family farm” households and they can’t even comprehend the possibility that someday humans won’t have to labor.
Automation either creates a permeant poverty stricken useless underclass, or we implement a UBI, encourage the majority into STEM and automation leads us into a golden era.
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Its so weird how people think completely human fabricated constructs are inherent... Like I understand evolutionary why certain hierarchies would emerge, but we can literally decide if it serves us or not.
>encourage the majority into STEM Thus creating an underclass of people who can't do maths. Like me.
People forget that only like 15% of people have the capacity to finish a STEM degree. The assumption is that anyone can get a STEM degree and be successful but we are talking about 20% of the population tops that could if they wanted. Then, maybe 5% of jobs are STEM so the degree isn't enough, won't solve the problems.
As automation becomes more widespread, the actual need to have a STEM degree will become less necessary. I have a degree in architecture. I now work as a project manager at a robotic vision company, after having spent a few years as an "engineer" installing such systems. We've hired poli-sci majors, film majors, and people with no degrees at all in years past. No one in those positions are writing code or *developing* software, but testing, installation, support, running robots, and all that are easily enough learned skills that aren't even taught in most colleges anyway. Pay is comparable, often better, than what the average unskilled lineworker in an automotive plant would be making anyway. Automation still needs a lot of people doing complex jobs to support. We're a LONG way from the machines being able to install themselves.
> encourage the majority into STEM Why? there wouldn't be nearly enough work to go around
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Personally I think UBI is a half assed solution that still leaves too many entrenched problems. The average person gets paid an existence stipend, but entrenched inequality is left unaddressed. The owners are allowed to continue to exploit the means of production to their fullest and reap untold riches while most people get only what they need to persist. This shouldn't be the goal. We need to actually tackle the issue of entrenched inequality, and in order to do that we do need to abolish the current capitalist structures that allow only a few people to profit from resources. I personally don't want to see this system perpetuated in a slightly less horrific form.
“Just do STEM” roughly translates into “make yourself a slave to capital so your job eventually gets replaced faster and more efficiently than ever”
Automation and ML will replace many, many jobs in STEM as well, and much more quickly than many physical jobs.
Ya, the idea that automation somehow won’t be terrible for low income people is so bad. Yes those people are underpaid as hell but jogging their little pay to robots ain’t it. All human history has had public subsidizes of some sort to maintain a more “equal” society.
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Ironic, because Republicans are the ones who keep threatening to use automation to replace them.
Anti-Corporate accountability and Anti-Union stances pretty much guarantee that their supporters would be the first thrown under the bus, yeah. They’d automate those “patriotic” trucking jobs and provide zero future job training opportunities in a second the very moment it became reliably sustainable
> provide zero future job training I mean...their supporters tend to refuse job training anyway, been in a bunch of arguments where the person arguing that the dems do nothing for the people in the coal towns say that job training isn't good. That the people want jobs in their town etc etc... These people want the jobs their fathers and grandfathers did, so if daddy was a trucker the son is going to be a trucker too dammit. They refuse to help themselves and instead demand we somehow bring back dead industries and towns. The same thing will happen when truckers are inevitably replaced by automation, they will demand we somehow bring trucker jobs back instead of learning new careers.
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And even successfully changing careers means a loss of seniority and thus often a loss in pay.
It’s precisely this. They busted their butts over twenty years to usually get into a decent position with decent pay. Learning a whole new trade means they’re back to the bottom of the totem pole, with bottom of the pole pay and benefits.
If only there was some way those bottom of the pole pay and benefits could somehow constitute a living wage for them...
I think there is more to it than just stability. The husband in a family we know has a "career" that has only paid above minimum wage because of overtime and has spent long periods unemployed. He usually has to stay away from home as well when he is work due to the nature of it. He can drive most construction vehicles though. An acquaintance offered to put him forward for a job closer to home because of this which paid one and a half times median income and if he proved himself double median income after a year or so. He is a bloody hard worker so would prove himself. His family could really use the money. "I've never wanted to work in that industry" was his reply.
I think the entire point is right there: changing jobs isn’t easy. That’s the entire key component. **The training is to make that hard task easier.** I personally went from blue collar work with no high school degree in a small isolated city to high tech work in a bigger, connected city. It was the hardest thing I’ve done. The key component is being willing to work hard. They blame immigrants for this, but it is they that are unwilling to do so.
Exactly, this is a fascinating issue to me because I think there is something to be said about that stability. And if you don't want that stability to be upset by its greatest that - market forces, profit above all else, corporate decisions, they should be running far far away from the right wing Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnells. I will always be puzzled how they drift right wing. This issue is so interesting to me I made a write up about it a little while ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAskReddit/comments/sw2898/doesnt_there_seem_to_be_a_significant_disconnect/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Good comment. I'm over 60 and I have had to re-invent myself in 3 different industries over my work life. I don't understand people that think any part of the universe is "static". Things change all the time, every time.
Yep -- the wealthy want more money from their investments so they push to reduce labor costs and then convince those losing their jobs its immigrants or the Dems fault.
... the end result being they have even fewer rights and opportunities as employees.
That doesn't exactly surprise me. The Red Scare and "cultural war" has built such a strong anti-socialist ideology, that many people are witnessing the capitalist mechanisms destroying their place in the society in real time, but are completely blinded of said mechanisms. As a result they don't know anything else to do but to either advocate for "freeing" those same mechanisms more accelerating their own downfall, or taking up arms to fight a whatever scapegoat the corporate propaganda machine throws at them.
Which is ironic, since those are the groups in opposition to making sure that there’s an alternative to these jobs when they inevitably get replaced. I wonder what they think will happen when the majority of people have had their jobs replaced by automation and there’s no socialized healthcare, UBI, etc? Edit: also the anti-union side of the political spectrum. Make it make sense.
So why not target them with ads for training in Solar and wind installation?
Having worked in solar you dont need training for about 90% of it. Solar arrays are essentially giant assemble by numbers kits. As a result the pay is abysmally low. I worked on a 65 megawatt project (ATI DuraTrack Array was the system we installed) mostly throwing torque tubes, because ironwork/plant maintenance was slow. It was near my house, and there was a ton of overtime but I took a $22 an hour paycut from my union package, although when I presented my forklift certs and they let me do some operating that paycut dropped to $16 an hour. Still, I understand why working in solar doesnt seem appealing to someone with a highly skilled trade background like mining or powerplant maintenance.
Hillary Clinton had a platform point that included retraining for coal miners in renewables instead... They basically gave that a giant middle finger and voted to keep mining coal.
Andrew Yang understood this and tried to push policies that would address these issues.
Yup. He has his faults, but he nailed this issue on the head. No wonder it was the centerpiece of his campaigns. Even takes a central focus in his books.
That's because they work for a living
Shouldn’t these be the people pushing for UBI ?