Talk:Technological unemployment/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Technological unemployment. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Disputed? Remove flag?

The "New Market Engineering" section is flagged "The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (July 2011)". However on this talk page I see no indication of a dispute. Can we remove the flag? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.170.237.129 (talk) 16:12, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Also I note the flag is dated after the split, so I guess it is not referring to a dispute in the old page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.170.237.129 (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be difficult for anyone but an ardent new-market supporter to avoid seeing this section as biased. The tone of this particular section seems to go further than the rest of the article - from opinion piece to blatant advocacy. The flags weren't mine but I agree with them, and would apply the essay style flag to the entire article.

InelegantSolution (talk) 12:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, I moved 'Essay-like' flag to top. BuffaloBill90 (talk) 16:19, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Propose renaming to "technological unemployment"

The term that has been used to describe workers displaced by machines and automation is technological unemployment. I recommend renaming this page because the existing title is not one that most searchers would use.Phmoreno (talk) 00:39, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Should this article be merged with Luddite fallacy? Both articles seem to cover exactly the same topic? J.D. Hooijberg (talk) 05:19, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it should. I've added the merge templates. I've suggested Luddite fallacy be merged into this article, as this one has a more neutral name and covers the topic from a broader perspective and in more detail. Robofish (talk) 15:05, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The title of the article does not suggest Luddite fallacy; however much of the content does. I suggest renaming to Technological unemployment and including a section on the Luddite fallacy with link to the main article. The Luddite fallacy is not a total fallacy. The work week is half of what it was in the days of the Luddites. The End of Work (1995) argued for shortening the work week well in advance of the current depression.Phmoreno (talk) 15:11, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I feel it should be merged the other way; the merged article should be at Luddite fallacy, as "Relationship of automation to unemployment" is pretty unwieldy and it completely fails WP:COMMONNAME. bobrayner (talk) 15:46, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

That is a reasonable approach; however, a separate article on technological unemployment is also needed. Additionally, Luddites need to be given more credit, explained through Marginalization, citing The End of Work and in more economic terms, Turning Point.^[1]

Combined response to multiple comments above. Merging this article into Luddite Fallacy, under the title "Luddite Fallacy", would be a complete failure. If one reads the content of this article, and has any reading comprehension at all, one finds out that there is room in life to ask about the relationship of automation to unemployment without declaring that the POV that all fears of eventual underemployment are a logical fallacy is the POV that "won". The very name "fallacy" announces that a POV judgment has already been passed. As for the current title allegedly failing WP:COMMONNAME, that's ridiculous, because then so would all Wikipedia article titles on the pattern of "Relationship of X to Y" and "Relationship between X and Y". Do a search for them, and see how many there are. There's nothing wrong with them; they're simply the clearest way to title such an article. — ¾-10 00:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

3/4-10: One problem with using the term automation is that it is not not well defined. Would Nasmyth's automatic machine tools be considered automation? What about the semi-automatic glass bottle blowing machine? Another problem is that automation is too narrow a term, focusing on just one part of technological unemployment. How would you label Scientific management?Phmoreno (talk) 01:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

All good questions. In general I'm finding that I would be OK with a new title of "technological unemployment". I think you may be right that it's just as good a title, and in various ways better. (Warming up to it.) I also would be OK with merging "Luddite fallacy" to here—but not merging this article to there. That topic is a subset of this topic—not a superset and not an equivalence. No doubt that this article will duly acknowledge that much technological unemployment has been, and today still is, only temporary (some jobs go away and others arise, thus, local turbulence with cosmic balance). As for drawing the limits on the definition of automation, I see exactly what you mean, but I don't feel that it creates a problem for this article's coverage. This article really can cover any displacement of human labor by improved machines. Automation is really any technology that causes machines to do aspects of the work that otherwise would require human attention (I say "attention" because it's all person-hours of payroll, whether physical labor, mental labor (including management), or even just the tedium of keeping an eye on things). Now, that of course brings up the question of differentiating mechanization from automation. Mechanization definitely belongs in this discussion. It's not really completely differentiable from automation, though; they're really parts of the same spectrum. They're both essentially "improved machines doing more of the work". One could try to differentiate them based on power versus control (that is, motive power versus control/logic/actuation), but it seems not worth the attempt, because there's such a fluid spectrum, with one machine involving both. Jacquard's looms weren't electronic in the slightest, but they can truly be said to be automated to an important degree. Same with cam-op screw machines. (In both cases, no, they weren't gee-whiz-robotic and they didn't render humans completely obsolete, but they did involve automation.) So I agree that this article needs to cover both mechanization and automation. (I wonder, though, how much it is necessary to repeat both words, "mechanization and automation", many times throughout the article. One could just say automation and be less clunky but still accurate. This is just a musing at the moment, but probably will need returning to.) Scientific management is an interesting, and good, thing to point out at this juncture. What is it in essence but a technology that gets more work out of a given system of humans and machines, in part by putting as much on the machines as possible. (On the surface it might seem academic to call industrial engineering "technology", but I'd say that in essence it is in fact a field of technology; designing better human-machine processes and systems is a form of technology.) So yes, I think you've convinced me that "technological unemployment" has much going for it as a title. One worry that I have about it, though, is that it sounds perhaps too close to an assertion—the assertion that technological unemployment exists—and people hung up on the fallacy assertion maybe will be obsessed with arguing that the article shouldn't exist because technological unemployment itself does not exist (in their model of reality). What do we do about that? Not sure at this moment—maybe nothing. Maybe given that the article fully explains that not everyone believes technological unemployment "is a real thing" will be enough. After all, Wikipedia has an article titled "Trinity"—not titled "Trinity (if it exists)". And that's OK. The article handles the fact that not everyone believes it exists. Anyway, more than enough thinking aloud here to bore you for one night. I think "technological unemployment" is a good title. — ¾-10 02:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Three-quarter-ten: I'm glad you agree. I think with a little rearranging and some rewriting we can address most of the problems that have been mentioned, while keeping a balanced discussion of labor displacement and new employment opportunities. Putting it under the title of technological unemployment makes it much easier to cite the great body of economic literature on the subject.Phmoreno (talk) 03:16, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. That page currently redirects to here; I tagged to reverse the redirect vector via move-over-redirect (with Template:db-move). Should go through shortly. — ¾-10 00:37, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

References

^ Ayres, Robert U. (1998). Turning Point: an End to the Growth Paradigm. London: Earthscan Publications.

Bob's wholesale deletions leave Brain and Ford not even mentioned once in text

There's a difference between (1) cutting it back and (2) not even acknowledging the existence of someone like Marshall Brain or Martin Ford. I don't want this article to be a mere WP:FRINGE magnet either, but there's a balance being missed between the extremes (those being fringe cruft and censorship); Bob's redactions of entire sections today/yesterday show a censoring agenda. Basically, there are scores of thousands of people in the world who don't think that the mainstream theory is complete. Maybe not a dead-end fork of theory, but at least an incomplete partially correct trunk of theory. Wikipedia has scope to cover that fact simply because it exists and scores of thousands of people are involved; it's notable. Even if those people suffer from incorrect theory, Wikipedia isn't required to censor mention of them, or the outline of their hypotheses. When I get time, I'll be adding back at least one paragraph that mentions and inline-cites Brain and Ford. As for the RBE stuff, I myself think there's a lot of fringe baggage around it, but nevertheless encyclopedia coverage of this article's topic has to mention and link it, even if only in brief WP:Summary style, because it's related, no matter how little of it is subscribed to by a would-be censor. — ¾-10 01:36, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Re-Incorporated section on RBE

In the spirit of Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative Views. A summary of the previous section on RBE, including new references that mention RBE, Zeitgeist, Venus. IjonTichyIjonTichy (talk) 22:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks OK to me at a quick glance. Will find time to read soon. Agree that end result must show neutrality and brevity. The market subsection is where Brain and Ford will be added back in truncated mention. The recent deletion tantrum showed a lack of reading comprehension. The paragraph about the Machine Age was deleted with an edit summary asking why it was there if the fallacy notion had proven still true. But it's obvious why it was there—the heading above those timeline subsections identified them as a timeline of concerns about the topic. Thus the Machine Age subsection was equally appropriate to be present as the Luddite subsection: in summary, in period X, group of people Y had concern Z, but it turned out that the concern was still a fallacy. On to the next period of the timeline.

Those edits also posited that Ford's book can't be mentioned because it's self-published and shows, allegedly, "obvious reasoning fail". Neither of those stands up as a valid reason to censor at least a one-paragraph mention outlining a sketch of what he argues, with citations. This is true simply because the topic that Ford writes about is the topic of this article. Wikipedia has coverage of notable books whether any particular person agrees with them or not.

I think what put the bee in the bonnet is that there was expository writing in this article that fully explained Ford's ideas, and the redactor doesn't want an encyclopedia to include that much detail, for fear that Wikipedia presenting and explaining the argument is the same as Wikipedia supporting/favoring it. I don't agree that Wikipedia should avoid explication to avoid it being mistaken for favoring the ideas being explicated, but I'm a WP:NOTPAPER guy, and not everyone is. When I put a paragraph back in discussing Brain and Ford, I'll make it a short statement of their biggest points, rather than anything so expository. The claims about stuff being "made up" and citations not supporting the text in the article are just more of the poor reading comprehension problem, but I know there's no solution to be had on that, so I won't take the time to do blow-by-blow rebuttals. The exposition it would take to explain blow-by-blow why it's wrong would be lost on the very audience it was presented to (goto reading comprehension), so it's futile. Fortunately the whole endeavor will be moot anyway, because the article will be revised and abridged such that the contention will be removed. Anyway, out of time for now. — ¾-10 00:17, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Basic economics and the Salter cycle

According to the Salter cycle, economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs (labour, capital, material, energy, etc.) for a given amount of product (output).^[1] Lowered cost increases demand for goods and services, which also results in capital investment to increase capacity. New capacity is more efficient because of new technology, improved methods and economies of scale. This leads to further price reductions, which further increases demand, until markets become saturated due to diminishing marginal utility.^[2]^[3]

This cycle worked well until about 1973 for developed countries. Since then real wages have stagnated, as has the introduction of technologies that could significantly lower costs. Almost all of the labor, in absolute terms, has been taken out of the production of most goods (but not so much for services). Removing the remaining labor does not significantly reduce costs but creates unemployment. Other productivity drivers, such as energy converted to work and energy used in the production of materials, are approaching thermodynamic limits.Phmoreno (talk) 14:41, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Don't be silly. Making existing production more efficient has freed up resources (including labour) to do do more new tasks which weren't previously done. Which fits the same old model. And where did this notion of a thermodynamic limit come from? And where do you suggest all the value is going to, if much more is produced but it doesn't end up in people's pockets? bobrayner (talk) 15:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Of course freeing up labor make it available for doing other work. However, the problems are: 1)unless real prices fall, or conversely, real wages increase, there is no additional buying power and 2) markets become saturated due to declining marginal utility. Around the time of WW II food took 30% of the average American's income. Today it's under 10%, but prices for food and energy are beginning to rise in real terms due to global demand, flattening crop yields and resource depletion. Phmoreno (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

As for thermodynamic limits, there is a relationship that shows the non-labor, non-capital or total factor productivity is highly correlated with the efficiency of conversion of energy to electricity. Whether you look at diesel ships and locomotives operating at 40-50% thermal efficiency replacing steam engines that operated at a fraction of that, or the increase in steam pressures made possible by the switch to welded steel boilers and steam turbines that could handle the high temperatures and pressures, you have annual energy conversion efficiencuies that cannot be repeated. Conversion of fuel energy to work in Newcomen's engine was less than 1%, with the steam turbine it is around 40% and the maximum theoretical is 62%. You cannot get another 50 to 60 fold increase in conversion efficiency. Steel, fertilizer, chemicals, plastics are all the same story. The processes are close to theoretical limits. See: Useful work growth theory Phmoreno (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

These arguments see the economy as if it only consists of products that was created in 1800's. That's a very strange way to look at it. --OpenFuture (talk) 21:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Useful work growth theory? Thanks for pointing out yet another fringe-economics article with serious problems. Another article to add to my to-do list... :-( bobrayner (talk) 22:18, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Bobrayner : Don't mess with Useful work growth theory unless you read the references and understand all the material. You will be treading on the work of prominent researchers with excellent credentials. I've read all the references in their entirety and have a thorough understanding and I will be watching. Wikipedia policy does not say that you have to agree with everything you read.Phmoreno (talk) 22:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding one specific thing above: Bob asks, "And where do you suggest all the value is going to, if much more is produced but it doesn't end up in people's pockets?" This question seems perfectly reasonable on the surface, to anyone who's never read Ford 2009, but there are several levels of reality beyond it that make it the wrong question to ask. It's wheels spinning in a vacuum, and the perfect logic of the spinning itself doesn't do any good for getting traction on the ground. Ford explains that productivity is wonderful, and will continue to be wonderful, but also that our current economic structure only works if people can trade, and they can only trade if they have jobs to earn income with. If you actually read and comprehend Ford's book, you catch his point that the problem with rapidly advancing automation, without any change to the current economic system, is simply that it will chuck too many people out of work too quickly with not enough new kinds of jobs developing fast enough to re-employ them, thus dampening the earn-income-then-spend-it cycle, thus inducing economic malaise. Not because the basic principle that the freed-up resources can be (have the potential to be) redirected isn't true (it is true, and will continue to be so), but only because the redirection won't happen properly in a world where economic malaise is going on. There is potential for ever greater value creation, but the economic engine that creates new value only runs if current value is being broadly recirculated throughout an economy—which lack of income interferes with, and in our current system, income can't avoid being hobbled by unemployment and underemployment. After a while it gets annoying hearing people argue about why thinkers such as Ford must logically be wrong, when they haven't even read his explanation of his argument. Go read what he has to say, and then provide specific rebuttals if you think he's wrong. Spouting the Econ 101 chestnut that freed-up resources can be redirected (which of course is true, and Ford does not dispute) is not a counterargument to people like Ford. It is only one piece of the mechanism. People who think it's an entire counterargument show that they've never read, or failed to comprehend, the book. To anyone, I would say, if you can read Ford and rebut him convincingly, your rebuttal would get a lot of attention, and it would have to be pretty smart (if it's convincing). But spouting the Econ 101 chestnut is not a rebuttal to the arguments—the only people who think it is are those who haven't read, or failed to understand, those arguments. — ¾-10 00:00, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I read Ford(2009), Rifkin(1995) and Ayres(1998) and they all give different versions of a similar theme. I distinctly remember Ayres arguments and prediction of the current crisis because I liked his presentation the best. Rifkin predicted the crisis too. Of course, no one listened we and tried to power through the stagnation with a credit boom.Phmoreno (talk) 02:05, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

And of course, another part of the economic storyline of recent decades has been the movement of blue-collar type jobs from higher-wage regions (such as the G7 countries) to lower-wage regions (such as BRIC, Indonesia, Central America, and many other places). This movement, which from the G7 side is labeled offshoring (to BRIC it's the opposite), has given those of us in the G7 regions an advance view of what it means for jobs to become (1) lower-paying and also then (2) scarcer. Automation hasn't really put us (the globe overall) in any wrenching vise grip yet in terms of job disappearance (although anecdotally for many workers the squeeze has felt like it's beginning), but it looks poised to do so (major wrenching) in coming decades, as it continually advances technologically. (Example: the FoxConn CEO said that if his Chinese assembly-line workers complain too much, no big deal, because he might just find himself buying a million robots in coming years anyway.) But meanwhile, we in the G7 regions have gotten a sneak preview of what it (job disappearance) could be like, because offshoring has been removing jobs from our regions quite strongly during the 1980s through present. So although offshoring driven merely by wage differential between regions (figuratively analogous to solution concentration gradient shifts, or electrical potential difference discharges) is not caused by automation (although IT can enhance it, as with antipodean CSRs or teleradiologists, as Ford points out), it has nevertheless provided a preview of what the economic landscape could be like as automation itself displaces humans from jobs. What happens when not even China and India have growing jobs numbers, because factories require few human workers and many trucks drive themselves? The abstract principle is summed up in a quote from a consumer products executive in The Wal-Mart Effect (Fishman 2005, p. 103): "People say, how can it be bad for [things to be inexpensive] […] How can it be bad to have a bargain […]? […] Sure, it's held inflation down, it's great to have bargains […] But you can't buy anything if you're not employed […]" The point that Ford makes as he talks about such concepts is that we "ain't seen nothin yet"—we might need to have such things as guaranteed minimum income for no other reason than simply to have trade occur at all—to have consumers buying consumer products at all. The thing I would emphasize is that this doesn't have to be a sky-is-falling calamity—we simply have to comprehend the concepts and talk reasonably about what we might do about them. There are people, like Ford or myself, who do not see any reason why private sector capitalism would have to perish—we just need to modify some parameter values to keep it from collapsing. With the right parameter values it could yet flourish. Unlike Venus/Zeitgeist fans, I myself have no ideological preference toward either corporations or government except for the guiding principle that you need some of both, and you can't let either one become too all-powerful. It's lopsided power that produces exploitation and injustices, regardless of who wields it, private or public. Checks and balances, with some amount of transparency (the more the better), are the only system calibrators in the long term. — ¾-10 15:47, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Just FYI: Explanations and discussions on the talk page aren't really that useful to improve the article. Wikipedia talk pages and wikipedia editors aren't wp:Reliable sources. --OpenFuture (talk) 17:19, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Back to the point. The basic failing of this article is that it doesn't explain, in economic terms, how the economy replaces jobs eliminated by technology. Just saying that because labor is freed up is not sufficient, nor is that in the past that workers have always been re-employed. Structural change in recent decades saw the percapita usage of steel and energy fall dramatically, along with the loss of an enormous number of manufacturing jobs. This coincided with the rise in the service sector, particularly healthcare and FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate). All of this deserves mention here, possibly along with some graphs.

The Salter cycle provides an explanation why new jobs are created (falling prices/ rising wages) and says that there are limits to demand (declining marginal utility). The other job creator, especially in recent decades, is new goods and services. However, economists point out that often new goods and services displace existing ones.

There limits to how much prices can fall. For example, automation can only eliminate 100% of labor (robots can almost entirely make circuit boards) and there are practical limits to other inputs as well, with steel, chemicals, nitrogen fertilizers and electrical generation as examples of little remaining theoretical potential.

I haven't heard much discussion on potential limits to new goods and services. Perhaps someone can supply some.

Surely there are other good economic explanations and arguments I haven't mentioned.Phmoreno (talk) 15:34, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

There are no limits to demand. There is limits to demand for a specific product, due to falling marginal utility, as you point out, but there is no limit to demand as a whole.

Anyway, to the point: If you can find a short and good explanation in a reliable source, I don't think anybody would mind that you add it. --OpenFuture (talk) 17:45, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Phmoreno mentioned, "The basic failing of this article is that it doesn't explain, in economic terms, how the economy replaces jobs eliminated by technology." That coverage would have to be multi-pronged, because one part of it (how such replacement has been happening so far) stands in contrast to how some people think those pathways might be in trouble, and how such replacement might happen in the future, if not by the exact same pathways. In fact, various prior versions of this article have included some such economic explanations and arguments, but they were removed. In contrast to that (total removal), I agree that short distillations of such things would be appropriate in this article. Striking the balance takes some strong abridgment simply because an encyclopedia article is not a textbook. A comprehensively expository work such as a textbook can devote scores of pages to such explanations, whereas an encyclopedia article can only mention a thumbnail overview (as I grudgingly came around to accepting in this article). But total absence of such content is not the right balance either, as Phmoreno's statement aptly captures. Need to evolve toward encyclopedic coverage, neither redacted (extreme 1) nor bloated (extreme 2). — ¾-10 23:47, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

IMO, what the "luddites" tend to forget is that there are infinite amounts of new products and services that will arise when the old ones get cheap. But I don't think I'll be able to find a good reliable source for that statement. --OpenFuture (talk) 02:54, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Even if there are an infinite number of new products, many times new ones replace existing ones. Cars displaced horses, cell phones displaced land lines, and the internet displaced time spent watching television and reading newspapers.Phmoreno (talk) 04:02, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Infinity minus X is still infinity. --OpenFuture (talk) 04:36, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I've been waiting for medical coverage to get cheap, but my insurance premium has tripled in 5 years. I could say the same about gasoline.Phmoreno (talk) 03:14, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

If you think that is even remotely relevant to this article, I give up. --OpenFuture (talk) 04:36, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

(outdent)

Like I said, this article needs to be stated in economic terms. A term associated with economics, and sometimes used in the definition is "the allocation of scarce resources", and I have never heard mention of an infinite supply of new goods and services, especially because it takes labor and capital (scarce resources) to produce these. You said:

"There are no limits to demand. There is limits to demand for a specific product, due to falling marginal utility, as you point out, but there is no limit to demand as a whole. "

The obvious limit to demand is purchasing power. The other limit is marginal propensity to consume. Again, I'm looking for economic arguments, not opinions.Phmoreno (talk) 13:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The "marginal propensity to consume" is with regards to increased income, not with regards to new products. If it was, nobody would ever consume anything but food. So that's not relevant here.

Demand is indeed limited by prices, so you could call that "purchasing power" if you want. The point being that there is no limit to demand itself. It can grow infinitely, if just the purchasing power grows with it. Since purchasing power goes up when productivity goes up, higher productivity leads to higher purchasing power and hence higher demand. And that's why there is no technological unemployment: The increased productivity leads to more purchasing power which leads to higher demand, which is filled by new products, which creates new jobs.

The Luddite fallacy is to ignore any part of this process.

And this is not opinion, this is economic fact.

If you want me to continue to explain this to you, we should find a better place. It could be email, it could be an online forum, or whatever. This is not the place. --OpenFuture (talk) 14:27, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

If you have references from reliable sources describing this economic model, by all means bring them here as this is certainly the place to report them. If there are no reliable sources then you're right that what you describe is not relevant to technological unemployment article nor is valid for explaining the luddite falacy in economic terms. Diego (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

References

^ Kendrick, John W. (1961). Productivity Trends in the United States. Princeton University Press for NBER. p. 111. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
^ Ayres, Robert U. (1998). Turning Point: an End to the Growth Paradigm. London: Earthscan Publications. pp. 193–4.
^ Two Paradigms of Production and Growth Robert Ayres & Benjamin Warr

Accurate summarization of the opposing POVs in the lead

There has been some difference of opinion of the best way to describe the opposing POVs in the lead.

In this edit, the following statement was removed: "The warning is that technology is no longer creating domestic jobs at the rate that it is making others obsolete. "

My attempt was to summarize the warning that the article described from Jeremy Rifkin and Martin Ford. The article states:

Mr Rifkin argued prophetically that society was entering a new phase—one in which fewer and fewer workers would be needed to produce all the goods and services consumed. “In the years ahead,” he wrote, “more sophisticated software technologies are going to bring civilisation ever closer to a near-workerless world.”

Regarding Martin Ford's POV:

Another implication is that technology is no longer creating new jobs at a rate that replaces old ones made obsolete elsewhere in the economy. All told, Mr Ford has identified over 50m jobs in America—nearly 40% of all employment—which, to a greater or lesser extent, could be performed by a piece of software running on a computer. Within a decade, many of them are likely to vanish.

OpenFuture stated in the edit that "That part is most definitely not in the source". I am confused about how that can be the case. It states very clearly the concern that "Technology is not creating jobs at the rate that it replaces old ones.

The clarification template was added to this sentence which OpenFuture earlier claimed was also not supported by the article: "However, some[who?] technologists[clarification needed] claim that the last two decades that modern capabilities of pattern recognition, machine learning and global networking are steadily eliminating the skilled work of large swaths of the middle income workforce." It seems to me that the lead is already long, and that a full enumeration of the technologists listed later in the article is unnecessary. The sentence shall now instead read: "However, some technologists such as David F. Noble, Jeremy Rifkin, Martin Ford, Marshall Brain, and James S. Albus claim that modern capabilities of pattern...."

Personally, I prefer it as "some technologists". If anyone sees a better way of summarizing without making it unduly unclear, then perhaps further improvements can be made. J JMesserly (talk) 17:52, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

There is no "warning" in the article whatsoever. The statement starting with "The warning is" can therefore not be supported. If you change it to "The implication is" which is what the article quote says, then this needs to be qualified with who says it, since the article as a whole does not support the claim. In fact, the article just takes up some people claiming that there is technological unemployment, but it also argues against it. The article as such can therefore *not* be used to support general statements supporting technological unemployment. --OpenFuture (talk) 18:51, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Caution: An editor involved with this article is known for making absurd statements and relentlessly harassing other editors. One of his tactics is making false, misleading or derogatory claims about sources. If you know you are correct, stick to your position and do not get involved in arguments with him.Phmoreno (talk) 18:04, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I will from now deal with your personal attacks through the incident system, I'm not tolerating them any longer. --OpenFuture (talk) 18:49, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Origin of term

What is the origin of the term technological unemployment? If it is attributed to Schumpeter, do we have the reference?

I addressed the fact that the term was being used in the 1930s according to Jerome (1934), a good source for this article, but someone deleted all of this information.Phmoreno (talk) 14:07, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

In a New York Times review of Race Against the Machine (Brynjolfsson & McAfee 2011), Steve Lohr says, "Technology has always displaced some work and jobs. Over the years, many experts have warned — mistakenly — that machines were gaining the upper hand. In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes warned of a “new disease” that he termed “technological unemployment,” the inability of the economy to create new jobs faster than jobs were lost to automation." This Wikipedia article already mentions John Maynard Keynes's prediction that a century later the "problem of leisure" would exist, but I guess (if Lohr is right) that he also predicted that first, long before that, we would have to experience and learn to circumvent technological unemployment. I haven't read Keynes so far in my life, so I can't independently confirm these things being attributed to him. But I think it's interesting that, if both of these attributions are true, then Keynes's ideas about the broad arcs of the future—first experience and learn to circumvent technological unemployment, then reap the rewards of a highly automated economy later—echo those of Brain and Ford, but came at least 80 years prematurely. The difference that I would point out is that digital IT, such as robotics and powerful hardware and software, as we know them today, did not yet exist in the 1930s, so it's no wonder that Keynes's predictions were way too premature. However, I don't think another 80 years are going to pass before humanity has to work through these transitions. Maybe 10 or 20. By the way, regarding first attestations of terms, Google Ngram Viewer is always interesting to check out, albeit not lexicographically definitive by itself. Here's my search for this term. — ¾-10 23:17, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I located the Keynes quote with the definition and included it in the lede.Phmoreno (talk) 02:36, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Intro to technological unemployment entry should be balanced

The introduction to this entry should reflect the current debate, but it should also reflect the general belief that technological unemployment does not cause systemic or structural unemployment. The following last line in the intro is questionable to misleading: "Dispersal of labor by lowering working hours and technological advancement leading to a lower cost of living has been the general direction since the industrial revolution." Additionally, the cited source material does not address the claim made and it should be revised. The cited material is a graphic of the changes in working hours per week and GDP per capita (PPP) over time. Note that the PPP does not reflect wage inequality (Gini coefficient). The cost of living as measured by the CPI has steadily risen, while real wages (CPI adjusted) have, more or less, stagnated since the mid-1970s. The claim that the cost of living has fallen since the Industrial Revolution is somewhat misleading because it is cherry picking a time period for comparison. This measure should be looked at in a context that reflects the current market realities. The point of this article is not to debate the merits of capitalism. The point is to accurately reflect the meaning and impact of technological unemployment. Technological unemployment is and has been an economic reality for some time. Economists do not debate over whether labor is displaced by productivity. The debate is over whether or not it causes systemic or structural unemployment. As this is the point of contention, the article should show both sides of the argument. Please consider a wholesale revision of this article in a way that allows both sides to "make their case." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.178.162.197 (talk) 17:07, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee do not belong in the lede

If Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee are worthy of mentioning at all it should be elsewhere than in the lede. Their work The Race Against the Machine was more of an opinion piece than a serious study and offered no proof of any "acceleration" of technology.Phmoreno (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you, but the lede should also show that there is a debate over the impact of technological unemployment. The current lede (and article for that matter) is sub-par which is probably due to the large volume of edits reflecting each author's bias on the underlying debate. Citations from credible sources for all the views given are still needed. Technological unemployment is not a "fallacy." The proximity of the terms could lead to confusion. Also, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in The Race Against the Machine were specifically talking about ICT. Although you say they offered "no proof" they cite Moore's law, among other indicators, as evidence for the growth of technology-driven productivity. Also, if you are looking for specific findings, look at their individual scholarly work. For instance, Brynjolfsson and Hitt's (2003) paper Computing Productivity: Firm-level Evidence concludes: "This paper presents direct evidence that computerization contributes to productivity and output growth as conventionally measured in a broad cross-section of large ﬁrms. Furthermore, the pattern of rising growth contributions over longer time periods suggests that computers are part of a larger system of technological and organizational change that increases ﬁrm-level productivity over time." This article could be linked to provide further evidence if need be.Dialecticalmonism (talk) 19:07, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

There is no dispute that ITC improves productivity. The problem with The Race Against the Machine is that it makes unfounded claims about technological acceleration when ICT is subject to diminishing returns. Also, they try to use examples from economic history that actually disprove some of their claims. Lastly, they minimize other causes of stagnation like globalization and resources depletion and completely ignore the Georgist concept of high land prices having a negative effect on economic growth. There are several other books that present better informed views.Phmoreno (talk) 22:06, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Rearrangement

I will be doing a little rearranging in the next few days to see if this can be better presented.Phmoreno (talk) 01:19, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Keynes

"In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes incorrectly predicted that in a century there would be a 15-hour work week as the "economic problem" would be replaced by the problem of leisure."

as he only said it 80 years ago, is it correct to call it 'incorrectly?' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.198.108.201 (talk) 13:17, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

The Zeitgeist Movement, the Venus Project, the Technocracy Movement and this article.

This article contains a information on the concept of technological unemployment, that is does in fact not exist, and and a list of various arguments for its existence throughout history.

That TZM/TVP has proposed an imaginary solution for this non-existent problem is irrelevant. First of all that is not an argument for technological unemployment. They don't argue that it exists, they falsely assume it exists, and then propose to use the word "resource.based economy" as a magic solution to this non-existent problem. They never explain why it i a problem and then never explain what resource-based economy is and how it would work, and they never explain how it would solve technological unemployment. Hence, it does not belong in this article.

In addition to this, TZM/TVP are not reliable sources on economy. Claims that systematic technological unemployment is a real problem needs to come from published papers in reliable journals on economy (or in the case of historical claims, from reliable sources on history). Nobody associated with these movements have published any such papers, for the simple reason that nobody associated with these movements have even basic understandings of economics.

--OpenFuture (talk) 10:36, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. I think the article looks much better and does function as an encyclopaedia article, namely it gives me as a noob a broad introduction to what the Luddite fallacy or technological unemployment is.

ZombiePriest (talk) 06:14, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Bobrayner wrote in his edit summary: "Removing more coatrack. No doubt there are a few people who believe this Venus Project stuff, but mentioning it at length in multiple articles is undue weight."

Bob, could you please answer the following questions:

wp:coatrack: What is the tangentially related biased subject?
At length: Wasn't it only a brief sentence? (Supported by some media coverage, such as the RT TV interviews.)
Undue weight: Didn't we hold, few weeks ago, a discussion here regarding the issue of undue weight, apparently resulting in a consensus that there was no undue weight?

Regards, IjonTichyIjonTichy (talk) 17:48, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I would appreciate a link to the relevance of both the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project in this context. Just because they propose non-market based economies, does not mean that they should enjoy attention. Are they credible sources on economics? A cursory glance at their misrepresentation of fractional reserve banking suggests that they are not. Furthermore, upon reading this article it appears that technological unemployment is a realistic concern. Therefore, it suggests two things: That Keynes was in fact right that we have a problem of leisure due to the large scale unemployment caused by technological advancements (contrary to what is claimed in the article) and that non-market based ideas are realistic solutions and critiques of this crisis. I don't think this is supported by the sources. Again, this should be an encyclopaedia article on the Luddite Fallacy and technological unemployment, not a review of an amateur student film.

I do not think anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of economics or engineering would take the Zeitgeist Movement or the Venus Project seriously. Rather, the Technocracy Movement was a legitimate movement, supported by many qualified people, that has some interesting ideas that were even tried and tested (mostly falsified, but at least it's a credible notion) - although I still don't think they are relevant to technological unemployment unless this is not a fallacy and they have either summarised the problem accurately or provided a workable solution, or both.

While it it is important to have a balanced article, it is also important to cite credible sources. Sadly, TZM and Venus Project are not credible sources, but an ideological peanut gallery with little or no relevance to the Luddite Fallacy. They would be more in place in an articles on debt and modern day armchair hipster activism, but nowhere on any article related to economics concepts.

Why not find some credible academic source that criticises the Luddite Fallacy? We are after all still in a time when Keynes was proved wrong and unemployment is not a result of technological advancements. Rather, it would appear that widespread unemployment occurs mostly in parts of the world that struggles to keep up with technological advancements.

ZombiePriest (talk) 16:43, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

What else needs fixing and when do we remove tags?

Need new how to improve comments comments?

Also, what needs to be done before we remove?:

I think we're pretty close to taking off the disputed. The article still needs cleanup.--Nogburt (talk) 01:55, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

"post market musings"

This doesn't seem like a fair title for this section, its very POV and it doesn't seem suitable for a heading in an encyclopedia. If nobody has any problem with it I'm going to change it to "post market perspective" or "post market theories". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ultan42 (talk • contribs) 18:09, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

(Note: The change was made since the above comment was posted.) Relatedly, the heading hierarchy is not great right now. Post-market and new-market are logically on the same heading level (latter is not a subhead of the former). I will go fix this. — ¾-10 22:23, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

critical pov missing

One could mention something about the relationship between the price of labour and the incentive to use or not use labour saving technology. Many have pointed out, particularly on the left, that there is no need to use more labour saving technologies when the value of labour power is so low. In Germany, when the unions demanded higher wages and the price of labour power increased dramatically, the incentive to use labour saving technologies increased. Widespread structural unemployment and underemployment (the consequence of using more labour saving technologies) also signal an aggravated possibility of political rebellion and unrest as recently witnessed in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt. Some economists have even called it a ‘social problem’ and it has become of increasing concern to governments around the world, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. So perhaps it is worth mentioning the various measures that are being taken both consciously by governments and corporations, not to displace one too many people as to threaten the legitimacy of the economic and political system.

In general, this article is heavily biased and lacks a critical perspective. A few times throughout the article, the term 'Luddite fallacy' is repeated over and over again, accompanied by a quote from some economist (with a vested interest in defending the system from criticism). As if his argument "productivity has been rising for two centuries" therefore theoretically there should be zero employment, supposedly proves the inaccuracies of labour displacing technology theories. Rubbish upon stilts.

(Note: This comment was posted by user: Ditc on 31 August 2013. ---- Ijon Tichy x2 (talk) 03:56, 9 November 2013 (UTC))

In a nutshell, you are on the right track (Ditc, above), and this article as of today is in a rather poor, overly censored/redacted, omission-riddled state. And you're right that some of the redacting has been done by people with a heated interest (if not a vested interest, in a COI sense) in defending "the system" from criticism. However, to understand the whole picture, we must also realize that this problem is not easy to counteract, because we all must keep in mind (even those of us who think it is obvious that current theory is inadequate) that *structural* technological unemployment is not accepted by current economic science (although I think this is going to evolve over the next few decades), and that not only has the idea not been accepted for two centuries and counting, but it has long been called by the standard name "Luddite fallacy". All of us who took econ 101 back in our undergraduate days will know this quite well; it's the received wisdom of the entire educated world—and for good reason: it's been true so far, for two centuries and counting. Which is why this edit summary was either very disingenuous or very ignorant. Even Paul Krugman, if I understand correctly from my armchair reading of news and blogs, thinks that the idea of *structural* technological unemployment is sadly misguided, and he's one of the sane people in the room (as well as one of the smartest and most educated) when it comes to applied economics. To sketch the big picture, I feel pretty sure (although obviously I can't "prove" it) that what's happening in the world during this decade is analogous to what happened during the 1890s regarding heavier-than-air aviation. You had Lord Kelvin, no less (in other words, of all people, one of the pillars of science) saying that heavier-than-air aircraft were going to remain a daydream, perhaps forever. Good thing a couple of bicycle mechanics from Dayton had a hunch otherwise. I took part in talk threads on this topic earlier at Talk:Automation (see Talk:Automation#Split_off_section) and earlier on this page (Talk:Technological unemployment), such as here and here. What's weird is that all of the theoretical views, which seem hopelessly disparate on the surface (after all, is *structural* technological unemployment a fallacy, or not? 1 or 0?), can probably be unified, because conceivably, {a segment of the Luddite premise}{edited} could change states in continuous-graph fashion, from completely false to partially true, depending on parameter values in the commercial environment, most specifically, the available modes of value recirculation. In this view, for two centuries it was completely false or very nearly so, because the traditional labor market provided sufficient means of value recirculation. As that fails because of advanced automation, it could enter partial influence. But if new forms of broad-based personal income came into being (for example, basic income, guaranteed minimum income, or new-style wages), it could revert back to a state of complete or near-complete falsehood again. By corollary, it is also possible that new-market engineering does not actually stand in contradistinction to the mainstream economic view that new types of jobs will always arise (which is how it seems to appear today). Instead, it may conceivably *be* the new category, whose exact nature the conventional theory did not foresee but whose inevitable arising the theory was confident of. For the end result in either case (conventional view or new-market view) is that humans could get jobs as, for example, long-term care nurses to poor people who under older economic paradigms could not afford to pay for such nursing. In both cases, the productivity created by automation shifts human workers further into the service sector than they've ever yet been (that is, into a brand new territory of that sector). The only twist, in this view, is that it took a new kind of minimum wage law to jump-start the newly arising job types into commercial viability. (This was all duly discussed in an earlier version of this article, but it was all swept away because of the problems discussed above—in other words, figuratively speaking, it was as if it were 1902 and Lord Kelvin was cleaning up the Wikipedia article on aviation. Anyway, enough for now; catch you all later. — ¾-10 21:22, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Hey everyone, by the way, I just stumbled across Tyler Cowen's blog today (Marginal Revolution) (Wikipedia article Marginal Revolution (blog)), and it looks really interesting. Check it out. I had never heard of him till this afternoon, when I was on Google News and clicked through to this interview. The "Average is Over" title strikes a chord with me, because I've been feeling an unfortunate sense of that notion about the working world for several years now (that is, that the world's squeezing out all room for anything less than hypermeritocracy, and where the heck will that leave the rest of us). Anyway, I'm going to add Marginal Revolution to the bookmarks that I skim for amusement periodically (a list that also includes Martin Ford's Econfuture). — ¾-10 21:40, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the links related to Tyler Cowen's and Martin Ford's works. Another interesting blog on issues closely related to technological unemployment is Andrew McAfee's. He is one of the authors of Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. For example, his blog post The Myth of the Myth of Technological Unemployment. He also seems to say on his blog that they'll soon publish a sequel to Race Against the Machine. Regards, Ijon Tichy x2 (talk) 20:30, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Ryan Avent, an economics correspondent for The Economist magazine, seems to offer some interesting views. Ijon Tichy x2 (talk) 04:32, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing. It's interesting to me that we are now getting to the point where at least people can speak calmly about these topics (as Ryan Avent does in his video clip) and address all the possible brainstorms (market-based ideas, non-market-based ideas) without being shouted out of the room reflexively with the "Luddite fallacy" label. As of 3 years ago, that wasn't true. Of course, there are still plenty of knee-jerkers out there shouting it (such as in the user comments sections of articles and blogs), but there's a difference when the mainstream starts to make room for at least listening before dismissing. Besides the fact that anyone who actually reads a book like Ford 2009 before dismissing it would know that its argument isn't even Luddite anyway (it confirms that ever more productivity and automation are great, as long as there's a mechanism for value to circulate). I think it's telling that Ryan Avent in his video leads off his distribution-brainstorms list with the market-based possibilities. As far as I'm aware, until the past 3 years essentially no one had ever even talked about such a concept, except James S. Albus, and essentially no one had ever heard of him. (I know *I'd* never heard of him until Wikipedia taught me, within the past 3 years.) Now we reach an era when it's just obvious that such a thought should be looked at. It doesn't have to be the plan Albus envisioned, or the plans Marshall Brain or Martin Ford envisioned; it just has to be a mashup of the best of all such ideas. And it's only a medium-term bridge. Sure, postscarcity could happen eventually. But it ain't gonna happen in the next decade. Meanwhile, stuff like this keeps everyone alive long enough to think about getting there someday. As Avent sums it up at the end, "... policy makers and economists scratch their heads and think, 'maybe we need a new system for talking about how these things work'." — ¾-10 01:12, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Further thoughts on technological unemployment

One of the best books on structural change in the economy I've read:

Bjork, Gordon J. (1999). The Way It Worked and Why It Won’t: Structural Change and the Slowdown of U.S. Economic Growth. Westport, CT; London: Praeger. p. 2. ISBN 0-275-96532-5.

Bjork explains with graphs and tables how over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries we shifted from an agricultural economy to manufacturing, which had high output per hour and was able to effectively utilize capital. Continuous growth in manufacturing productivity decreased the sector's share of output and employment. Growth occurred in government and service sectors, both of which are lower output per hour and lower productivity (actually near zero). It was the increased percentage of women, especially married women, in the labor force and the baby boomers who kept economic growth rates from collapsing, until recently. The growing percentage of women entering the labor force eventually leveled off, older men began retiring early and baby boomers are now retiring or collecting disability.

Much of the productivity growth since the 1970s came from new industries. Outstanding examples are airlines and computers. High bypass turbojets with larger bodies replaced piston aircraft, leading to lower maintenance and economies of scale, which dramatically increased productivity in air transportation. Mainframe computers also helped the 1960s airline industries and stock market clearing system. Personal computers contributed to productivity growth by creating a new industry that had high productivity growth more so than than helping other economic sectors.

There was a collapse in manufacturing employment following the dot com recession of 2000. That was more related to imported manufactured goods, especially from China, than from changes in technology. See:

McCormack, Richard (2009). Manufacturing a Better Future for America. Alliance for American Manufacturing. ISBN 978-0615288192. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Ongoing neutrality problems

Its frustrating that this article lavishes so much text on the opinions of minor commentators where they fit one particular point of view, yet any attempt to bring it in line with mainstream economic studies is reverted. Please stop. bobrayner (talk) 14:27, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Bob, look at the cover story of this week's Economist. There's nothing non-mainstream about talking about these topics. What concerns me is that under a belief of fair-and-balanced coverage, you may be trying to censor any mention at all in this article of discussions that are so mainstream that they're on the cover of the Economist. The idea that this article will cease to mention people like Brain and Ford at all is simply censorship, so that won't fly. Beyond that, the question is how long or short the paragraphs are that mention them. The answer is that they need enough sentences to explain how these people are different from Luddites, that is, how their ideas (which are pro-technology, pro-free-enterprise, and non-communist) are different from Luddism (which futilely tried to prevent technological change). — ¾-10 17:30, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed; I read the economist. It doesn't quite support that position. This article is full of barrel-scraping attempts to put together a case that the more reliable sources simply don't make. And you rush to reinsert content by a couple of IT engineers instead.

You restored the problematic text, citing WP:CENSOR, This is obviously a mistake; the wording of WP:CENSOR does nothing to stop editors trying to fix an unbalanced article; nor should it. WP:CENSOR is about offensive material. Why did you do that? bobrayner (talk) 23:17, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

To answer requires some analysis. There are several points you're incorrect or incomplete on. I used color below to show the organization, so that the reply is clearly broken into pieces. First, WP:CENSOR is primarily about offensive material, but not exclusively. Several sentences quoted from it: "Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images will always be acceptable to all readers [...] "being objectionable" is generally not sufficient grounds for removal or inclusion of content." For topics with notability, your own dislike of them isn't a basis for whether the rest of the world will banish any mention of them from Wikipedia coverage. Regarding content's "being objectionable": you find the ideas of Ford and Brain objectionable—OK, point taken, although you haven't read Ford's book, which is clear because the equating of his ideas with the Luddite fallacy is dismantled analytically therein, and let alone not counterarguing that analysis, you've indicated that you're not aware of it (such as with your edit summary "The luddite fallacy is alive and well"). Now, of course you're free not to spend your time reading his book; but that being the case, your dismissal of it thus doesn't carry definitive/deciding weight with regard to other people agreeing to delete all mention of it in Wikipedia coverage. We get that you just don't like it, aren't going to read it, and believe that it's equivalent to Luddism. But the last point is mistaken (as the book explains), and on the first two points, it has no more significance to others than any other one-man's-personal-preference. Second, you missed the point regarding the Economist article. The point wasn't that it discusses or supports the ideas of Ford or Brain; the point was that it recognizes a distinction between (1) current concerns about technological change driving employment dislocation faster than workforce reabsorption (new jobs/types of jobs) develops to erase it, as a legitimate concern that millions of people are talking about, and (2) the Luddite fallacy, as a classic hobgoblin to be dismissed without discussion. The pull quotes at the top of the Econ articles ("Previous technological innovation has always delivered more long-run employment, not less. But things can change"; "The effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs will be immense—and no country is ready for it") clearly, unequivocally make that distinction. You don't agree with it (per your edit summary "The luddite fallacy is alive and well"), but again, one person's dismissal of it doesn't carry definitive/deciding weight with regard to other people agreeing to delete all mention of it in Wikipedia coverage. You say that "This article is full of barrel-scraping attempts to put together a case that the more reliable sources simply don't make", but you didn't explain what you think that case is. If it's that items 1 and 2 are not equivalent, then it's incorrect that reliable sources simply don't make it. If it's that this article, in its current form, is full of attempts to sell Brain's or Ford's ideas, that's not correct either. All this article does, in its current form, is present a thumbnail survey of what various people have said about the concept of technological unemployment, from the Luddites (who were wrong), to later people who equated all other discussion of the topic with the Luddite fallacy (which was conventional wisdom for many decades), to people who have laid out analyses of why the latter (the equivalence of items 1 and 2) isn't always true, but rather, instead, that there's a distinction to be made between them (which is now mainstream enough that it's covered in the cited Economist cover story). And it only devotes one or two paragraphs to each segment of that survey. And the fact that it tells the reader that a distinction can be made between items 1 and 2 is not any radical, original, or fringe statement; it's a notable topic being discussed in current events ("Previous technological innovation has always delivered more long-run employment, not less. But things can change"; "The effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs will be immense—and no country is ready for it"). Third, regarding your question to me ("Why did you do that?"): If it was meant to be a rhetorical question that would point to my own opinions on the topic of this article, it leads to no indictment of my article-editing motives, because what I'm trying to defend about the current article version's coverage is not at all a long exposition of any one person's (or one school of thought's) ideas on the topic. I long ago accepted that such an exposition had to be deleted from the article, and it was. What I'm defending now is one paragraph that mentions Brain and Ford, which is a valid amount of coverage (in line with "All this article does, in its current form, is survey" above). — ¾-10 18:01, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Technological Unemployment / Luddite Fallacy

I noted in the talk page for Luddite Fallacy that I was under the impression that it is at least relatively well established that the "Luddite Fallacy" is a fallacy. The works cited which claim that there can be long-term technologically-induced unemployment demonstrate that there is a minority view, but do not seem to call into question that the majority view in the economics field is that there is generally no such thing as long-term technologically-induced unemployment.

At present, the article conveys the sense that there is no majority view or that the majority view is that the "Luddite Fallacy" isn't a fallacy. Inasmuch as the majority view is that the Luddite Fallacy is a fallacy, the article should clearly reflect that it is relatively well established and accepted by the economics profession that there is (usually?) no long-term technologically-induced unemployment.

Also, on a separate note, the article uses too many "big" words (i.e. herein) and should be revised to better suit your "average" reader. --Nogburt (talk) 06:56, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're looking at it backwards. Exceptional claims need to be sourced per Verifiability policy; that the ludditte fallacy is seen as a mainstream economic principle is an assertion that needs to be proven with sources of excellent quality, and the current article doesn't do that in any meaningful way. If it's true that this is the mainstream economic view, it shouldn't be hard to do, and we could have an article that describes precisely the views of those reliable sources.

I've reverted your deletion of a whole subsection as it was referenced to reliable sources and seems relevant to the topic of technological unemployment. If you have specific concerns about its content please explain which are those, to improve the section contents. I agree that the overall article structure needs lots of work to have a well-balanced view. Diego (talk) 09:03, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The intro revisions seem good-enough.

The sources for the article don't seem to be of particularly high quality. There's a lot of cited op-eds and advocacy books.

If it is the accepted view that "technological unemployment" (which I'm using to mean long-term/permanent unemployment caused by technological advancement) does not exist or rarely exists, the article generally and the "Proposed Solutions" section in particular should not convey the sense that "technological unemployment" is something that is widely believed to exist by economists. A quick internet search shows that a great number of economists do not believe that technology causes long-term unemployment. However, I don't generally like to cite to sources which have an apparent slant or side and most of what comes up seems to be advocacy stuff or something that is taken from Wikipedia.

Also, generally with things that are not widely accepted to exist, the number of works discussing the thing as if it exists may not reflect the "established" view. For instance, if you Google something like "Loch Ness Monster," the majority of the results will talk about the Monster as if it exists and a majority of the works written about it will say that it exists or may exist.--Nogburt (talk) 20:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Please note that the 'Proposed Solutions' section used to have much more weight. The original version of this section had been removed/ deleted, after which time it has been re-posted in a much shorter, trimmed-down version. This has been followed by a second round of significant trimming-down/ shortening, leading to the current, considerably slimmed-down, version of the 'Solutions' section. Thus, in my view, the current version of the section does not have undue weight, and I would vote to remove the 'Undue Weight?' tag.

On another note, there have been several references above to the view of mainstream economists regarding the subject of technological unemployment (TU). I do not agree with what seems to be the view that TU should be the exclusive domain of mainstream economists. In my view, mainstream economists should not be given a de-facto monopoly on determining the main parameters of the national and global discourse on the issue of (any kind of) unemployment. (In fact many convincing arguments have surfaced and re-surfaced over many decades, and especially over the last 5 years, explaining why mainstream economists should not be given a de-facto monopoly on setting the parameters on any subject, period. I could go on at length about all the shortcomings of the economics "profession", but this is not the right forum for such a discussion, and my personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong here. But I just can't resist sharing this joke: "A mainstream economist is a person who today, and every day, will provide you with a brilliant analysis on why all the predictions/ analysis he made yesterday failed miserably.")

In other words: please note that the first half of the title of this page is 'Technological'. As such, it may be a good idea to give (at least some) recognition, on this page, to the TU solutions proposed by accomplished technologists such as Dr. James S. Albus and Jacque Fresco. I, for one, am going to continue to try to find additional verifiable, published sources from other engineers/ scientists/ technologists on various aspects of TU, and continue to bring these sources to the consideration of the editors of this page. Regards, IjonTichyIjonTichy (talk) 15:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the themes above from IjonTichyIjonTichy. I've accepted now that the earlier versions of this article had too much exposition of some things and not enough on others. So, as IjonTichyIjonTichy says, the article is now moving in the correct direction for an encyclopedia article, much more trimmed down. It still bugs me, though, that not all of the deletion and snarky tagging shows much knowledge. Just because the article needed to evolve doesn't mean that the people deleting whole sections and adding snarky tags are making sound edits. For example, adding the "lopsided" tag to the sentence that states that mechanization blends by degrees into automation (rather than always being a neatly divided topic) shows to me that the person who added the tag has never even clearly thought about, much less studied or worked with, industrial technologies. What the sentence states is a simple fact of the technologies, not an opinion, as anyone who knows anything about machine tools knows just like they know without needing an appeal to authority that the sky is blue. That one tagging example is not the biggest deal in the world, but it's just an example of my point that the people hacking and whacking at others' work in this article, rather than being smarter and "righter" than the others, are sometimes merely being more dick-ish and ill-informed. There have been multiple sentences removed in such edits that are simple exposition of a fact, but they were removed on the assertion that they were opinions and speculations. It doesn't say much for the knowledgeability of the deleters (in fact it shows, to anyone knowledgeable enough to see it, just the opposite). I am quite busy at work right now—dealing every day with the technologies that some slashers of this page demonstrate that they know next to nothing about—so I might not get much time anytime soon to work on my revised, trimmed mentions of Ford and Brain, but I just wanted to support the themes that IjonTichyIjonTichy mentioned and say that this article's life and development is going to be a years-long process, so no one please suffer the delusion that any of the uninformed snarky deletion is going to be the last word on any of this. Time will tell. To anyone willing to engage in fair collaboration (rather than only censorship, snark, cluelessness, or fighting mild POV with nothing but even stronger POV in the opposite direction) I welcome future cooperation. I enjoy constructive collaboration in Wikipedia content development, and only get annoyed when pestered by dicks, so I look forward to collegial development work with plenty of you in the future. — ¾-10 17:09, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

PS: Not to be too long-winded, but I needed to share a follow-on thought that's very material in guiding the content development in this article. It's this: What IjonTichyIjonTichy said about today's economists not being competent by themselves, on their own, to correctly model the reality that they aspire to model is not only correct (and depressing) but also a key fact determining that their mainstream curriculum alone, without any multidisciplinary help from other fields, is just plain not good enough to address the topic of this article. For anyone who needs more help to understand what I just said or why it's important, I offer some analogies to put it in perspective. Imagine that it's 1901, and you're writing an encyclopedia article about aviation. Which experts are you going to cite who accurately understand what's going on currently, what ideas are "in the air" right now (pardon the pun), and what's about to happen, in fact, over the next 20, 30, and 40 years? Will it be *only* the distinguished Lord Kelvin? Certainly you're not going to include any coverage of a couple of frickin bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio. After all, you argue, they have "obvious reasoning fail", whereas Lord Kelvin is a licensed Expert™ with a capital E. For those of you who don't know, you can find out here how that particular episode of life turned out. For any of you who lack the multidisciplinary experience to know it (which will include some academics who read this), that's just as likely as not to be roughly where we're at, historically speaking, on the topic of this article at this point of history. For anyone with brain enough to digest the meaning and import of what I just explained, it is, as the saying goes, "nuff said". — ¾-10 17:37, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

As requested, here are some of my comments which I inadvertently posted to IjonTichyIjonTichy's talk page instead of here. Hope this is the right spot! It is evidently the case that technological unemployment is the Luddite fallacy and that the mainstream economic view is that it is not a realistic concern. Sure, there are technologists and political air guitarists who do feel that it is a realistic concern. They somehow conveniently negate the other mainstream economic views that the main causes of [[1]] are not mechanisation, automation or process improvement, but unemployment benefits and social welfare. I feel this article should serve the purpose of an encyclopaedia entry on the Luddite fallacy (or technological unemployment) as a concept in economics. Whether economists have the last word on the issue or not, or whether they are qualified to make historical observations is immaterial. Fact remains, it is a concept that originated within the field of economics and as an encyclopaedia entry, I feel this page should reflect that.

There seems to be bias towards getting credible references from people who call themselves engineers who support the idea of technological unemployment, while not getting credible economics sources that explains the bigger picture. Nobody is disputing that technological progress could and does cause temporary unemployment in specific sectors (as it did for the original Luddites in the weaving industry), but the long term effect is that new job opportunities are created (directly and indirectly) by the accompanying advances in technology. This is what was meant with the previous version of the article that stated 'on a macroeconomic level' unemployment does not result from advances in technology, but in a specific sector, jobs may be replaced due to technological advances. A brief description, in the great wiki format, along these lines is all that is required: [2].

It is not difficult to obtain mainstream economic sources on [[ http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CreativeDestruction.html%7Ctechnological unemployment]]. The page could also reference Schumpeter directly, as he is responsible for coining the term technological unemployment. He was also of the view that short term job losses besides, in the long run, technological progress brings a higher standard of living, lower number of working hours and cannot lead to structural unemployment.

By the way, [Jacque Fresco] is not a qualified engineer and has lost his job due to engineering incompetence. I'm not sure of the legal situation over there, but where I am from Jacques Fresco can be sued for presenting himself as an engineer if he did not qualify as one. Thus, he should not be referenced as an engineer but rather as a member of the Venus Project and without any titles he does not legally hold, and it should be stated clearly what qualifies him to comment on the Luddite fallacy and what is his position on the observed phenomenon.

I do not dispute that there is a dispute regarding technological unemployment. What I dispute is that the lunatic fringe dissidents are presented as holding valid and widely accepted views on the subject. This is not the case and this article does not reflect that. This article reflects their views - very well referenced - and notes the mainstream, widely accepted views regarding technological unemployment as a footnote. This is akin to explaining evolution by means of creationism and saying besides that the mainstream view is the theory of evolution.

I believe the problems can be resolved by splitting the article into different ones, each one reflecting the view of its particular field. Thus, a technological unemployment or Luddite fallacy page merely describing the fallacy, its history and evidence that supports it as being a fallacy, with a criticism section linking to the lunatic fringe. That is all that is required. It is not required to expand on views that are not mainstream in the article that represents the mainstream view on the subject. These views may be explained in full in their own pages that are not related to the mainstream economics views. They have been removed, but could still be listed under a 'Criticism' section (as in the page on [Capitalism]).

ZombiePriest (talk) 12:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems like this article has been revised to make fringe views on technological unemployment seem even more mainstream than in previous versions. The article should be rewritten so as not to put such great weight on views that are not widely accepted. --Nogburt (talk) 17:44, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

The idea that there is technological unemployment is a belief held by a number of economists. While it may be true that technological unemployment was once considered a fallacy, this view has evolved in light of the continued gains in productivity. Job losses to productivity, especially in information and high technology sectors, could be outpacing job growth in newly created sectors. See The Economist article entitled Technological unemployment: Race against the machine for more information. Also, see the 2011 book by the same title for an expanded look. In fact, a quick search for academic articles on the subject will turn up many scholarly papers that contend that not only is technological unemployment real, but it is one of the reasons for the prolonged recession. [IP anon] 23:48, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

You're right, which is why it's annoying to me that this page has been scoured down and worn away by a few people trying to erase any sign of the trend that you mentioned. An encyclopedia article on this topic needs to get across a sense of just how many people have begun to suspect within the past 5 years that just because classical Luddism was wrong, in its pre-IT time—which by the way, yes, it admittedly and demonstrably was—doesn't necessarily mean that job creation can't lag way behind job disruption in the IT era. Or suspect that IT is becoming such a quantitatively different kind of technological change (from pre-IT technical change) as to be qualitatively different in its disruptive effects (and their amelioration). But I feel like not enough people out there, so far, have cared about this topic, or this article on it, for a truly robust many-eyes-shallow-bugs crowdsourcing authorship to strike the right balance. The article essentially so far has been added to by 2 or 3 souls, quasi-censored by 2 or 3 others (who seem to mistakenly assume that their Econ-101 textbook from 1974 or 1992 still represents the current state of the discussion today), and ignored by most of the rest of humanity. If the thousands of people out there who are part of the aforementioned development don't want this article to be owned, and stunted, by a handful of self-appointed censors, they'll need to bother to speak up against it by building on the article continually. You Talk comment here today was one more piece added toward that kind of participation. I hope that others, too, continue to take more interest. — ¾-10 01:23, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

This entry still fails to live up to expectaions, namely to provide a brief overview of what exactly the Luddite Fallacy is.

Einstein's insights on socialism are not relevant here at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZombiePriest (talk • contribs) 10:25, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Labor force participation rate 1950s to present

Should it not be mentioned in this section that the labor participation of the entire population has decreased markedly since the 1950s in the developed world (so by 1950s standards unemployment DID skyrocket afterwards)? Most people used to start working fulltime at the age of 14-18, now few people start before 18 and half go on to several years of higher education, not entering the full time workforce until they are in their 20s, the number of retired people as a percentage of the population has also risen as has the share of part time work. Many developed countries have also shortened the workweek since 1950 or did so not too long before 1950 (especially if you don't count the war years because those had artificial full employment) after they had shortened it several times before in the 19th century and early 20th century. I am not an economist but I would think such considerations are essential in a debate about whether or not automation increases unemployment. Also, shortening the workweek/reducing labor participation (longer education and/or lower retirement age) would be possible solutions to technological unemployment and therefore it is important people interested in the subject are aware of these options.89.99.122.33 (talk) 17:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

U. S. labor force participation rate actually increased significantly from 1950 until 1997-2002, then started declining and has not stopped declining. The question though is why, especially since the government is running massive deficits. Aging baby boomers retiring is a significant factor, but the labor market is extremely weak, despite the exodus. Many retirements are of course due to lack of employment opportunities [3] Bureau Labor Statistics chart Phmoreno (talk) 20:38, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Amish

May want to look at them. They seek full employment over technology as basis for social stability.Lihaas (talk) 21:23, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Non-automation

An example of non-automated industries is legal services, of the top of my head. And theres a whole horde of lawyers being trainmed every year. May want to mention this someplace.Lihaas (talk) 21:28, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

[][][]>> Technology and the Law >> Can you automate the practice of law?>> Future of legal services and the development of legal Knowledge Management >> Automated practice of law Lihaas (talk) 21:49, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

The rapid advance of automated discovery is an example of how the legal profession is not immune to automation. Traditionally many hours clocked by some kinds of lawyers and paralegals have been spent sifting through documents, skimming them, reading closely in certain areas, looking for certain information, and so on. Discovery has been greatly automated in the past decade (because text mining is a thing now, and it becomes a bigger thing every year). See CGP Grey's video "Humans Need Not Apply" for a good, quick summary of why white collar jobs are not immune. Of course, as with all concerns about the relationship of automation to unemployment, one must not conflate the lump of labour fallacy with the change-outpacing-adaptation problem. The problem is not a limit to the amount of potential work (that's the lump premise, which retains fallaciousness). The problem is simply that IT is changing all of our business processes so rapidly in the past few decades (with even more of the same coming up) that we are pushing toward not adapting fast enough in the way that full employment is achieved. Thousands of people get shaken out of their jobs rapidly, while only hundreds of new jobs crop up, many of them at lower wages. It's still true that as automation advances, new kinds of jobs can always arise, but it's also true that we are going to need them faster (for more people, sooner) than they seem to be evolving organically under conventional paradigms to date. The conventional plan so far to fix this, which is "just throw more money at retraining (for displaced workers) and better education (for students coming up who will be the next batch of workers)", is unlikely to be tenable, for about the same reason that fingers plugging a dike are unlikely to be tenable: they're outmatched by an order of magnitude. There are some good ideas for moving beyond the conventional-to-date notions. For example, the idea of mirror-image jobs bypasses the bottleneck of whether you can throw enough money at retraining and better education and whether the ROI on that is sufficient given the cognitive (and biopsychsocial) limits of humans (and their cultural systems). The idea deals with the bottleneck by bypassing it so it doesn't have to be dealt with. Such is the kind of thinking that will eventually prevent any traumatic sociopolitical cliff drops, if they get prevented in time. — ¾-10 01:04, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Interesting material

video: "Humans Need Not Apply". IjonTichy (talk) 16:30, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Slavoj Žižek offers his perspective on technologial unemployment. Part of the Project on Disposability. IjonTichy (talk) 21:08, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

ft.com, March 2015: Double digit unemployment predicted even if eurozone recovers. IjonTichy (talk) 19:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

8 Ways Robots Are Taking Over Our Jobs and Our World (May 2015). IjonTichy (talk) 14:37, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

External links cleanup

If there's anything here that isn't redundant or otherwise inappropriate per WP:EL, please identify it so we can discuss the merits of its inclusion. --Ronz (talk) 17:15, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Vinod Khosla (July 2014) discuss their views on the socio-economic effects of advanced intelligent systems and how advanced digital technologies may be used to create abundance (as described in Peter Diamandis' book), provide for people's needs, shorten the workweek, and mitigate any potential detrimental effects of technological unemployment. Starting at about 11:30 into the video. The audience is composed of the CEOs of the portfolio companies of Khosla Ventures.
Robots Are Us: Some Economics of Human Replacement, Seth Benzell, Laurence Kotlikoff, Guillermo LaGarda, and Jeffrey Sachs. NBER Working Paper No. 20941, February 2015. Some of the key aspects of the paper explained in lay terms, Bill Snyder, InfoWorld. "Absent appropriate fiscal policy that redistributes from winners to losers, smart machines can mean long-term misery for all," the authors conclude.
How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over, Sue Halpern (April 2015), New York Review of Books
Now machines are taking middle class jobs (July 2014), Business Spectator
Could robots replace nearly half of us in the workforce? (2014-05-28), Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite? (October 1984), By Thomas Pynchon, The New York Times
What Jobs Will the Robots Take? (2014-01-23), The Atlantic
Welcome, Robot Overlords. Please Don't Fire Us? (2013-05-01), Mother Jones
The uncertainty of our high-tech future - are computers taking our jobs? (2014-07-23), Scientific American and Salon
On caregiver robots and jobs (2014-07-22), Zeynep Tufekci, UNC iSchool
Are our jobs doomed? Report shows the potentially devastating effects of robots on the job market (August 2014), Salon
How Human-Robot Teamwork Will Upend Manufacturing (September 2014), MIT Technology Review
Paid work is never enough: we need to pay attention to the quality as well as the quantity of jobs created (April 2015), Peter Taylor-Gooby, published by the London School of Economics and Political Science
US$154 billion rise of the robots planned for Pearl River Delta manufacturing (April 2015). "Manufacturers plan to replace human labour on unprecedented scale in next three years, driven by worker shortages and government subsidies." South China Morning Post. See also: Manufacturing hub starts work on first zero-labor factory (May 2015). "The 'zero-labor factory' does not mean we will not employ any humans, but ... we will scale down the size of workers by up to 90 percent." People's Daily (China)

None of these are redundant and all of them are appropriate, and they all merit inclusion. They help improve the article. IjonTichy (talk) 17:29, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

It would really help if you picked some you feel are best and make a case based upon WP:EL.

Until then, there's no consensus so they stay out. --Ronz (talk) 18:02, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

No, you are not correct. These links help improve the article and enhance the article, and your wholesale removal of the links does not help to improve the quality of the article. Your comments on my talk page (both what you wrote and what you did not write, i.e, your failure to respond to the substance of my comments), as well as your edit warring to remove good quality content from numerous articles, and your demands that WP editors spend enormous amounts of time justifying each external link to you, appear highly bureaucratic, in my view. Since you appear enamored with formally and mechanically citing the dry, cold language of WP rules, regulations, policies and guidelines, while neglecting to carefully consider the spirit of the policies and the nuances of the bigger picture of how your edits degrade the article, you may want to read WP:Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. IjonTichy (talk) 20:54, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

These mostly appear to be just newspaper articles and the like. Looking through them, there's a lot of duplicated info and some don't expand much on this current well-cited and detailed Wikipedia article. If they contain unique, pertinent information, it should be added to the article and the appropriate links above used as cites. I don't see anything on that list that should survive as an External Link. If the reason for keeping them is to let someone use them as cites later on, post to the Talk page with a request for an editor to add the content & cites instead. Stesmo (talk) 21:09, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Severe ongoing neutrality problems: proposal for a re-write

It's not to be tolerated! Despite the good efforts of editors such as IjonTichyIjonTichy and Three-quarter-ten , much of this article, especially the lead, is promoting outdated views that are now bordering on fringe.

While it's true there are still many tenth rank economists and commentators who claim that TU is not a long term problem, as of 2014 that is no longer a mainstream view.

There have been recent studies from top tier universities predicting a worsening of TU's long term effects, such as this one from Oxford UK. Here is an Economist article reporting the "big change of heart" about TU among academic economists.

According to this FT article by Michael Ignatieff , technological unemployment is now an issue haunting governments everywhere. It was one of the leading issues at this years Davos. There are dozens of recent articles in the FT alone, including editorials and columns from their lead economics commentator, all saying that TU is now a severe problem.

The new consensus that TU is a major long term problem is now almost as strong in business as in politics and top tier journalism. While there are recent surveys showing a slim majority of directors still have outdated views, there are reports from the big consultancies like McKinsey, and Gartner predicting a drastic worsening of TU; one (admittedly maverick) Gartner report even predicts 90% unemployment developing in the 2030s.

Our article also has misleading info and omissions from a historical perspective. Central authorities were arguably providing relief for TU as far back as 5,000 years ago. The displacement of workers by machines was discussed by Aristotle. There's abundant scholarship on TU in ancient Rome, where emperors are known to have responded not just with handouts and public works programs, but by banning labor saving technology.

As for modern economics, early founding fathers like JS Mill and especially Malthus argued that TU could have major long terms effects, persuading Ricardo himself. In the 19th & 20th century, it was generally agreed that compensation effects would outweigh job destruction in the long term, but that opinion was much more heavily challenged than our article suggests.

Aside from neutrality, there are many other issues , from formatting to references not supporting the claims made.

If there are no objections from sensible editors, as soon as I have a spare half day I'll rewrite the article to produce a fair reflection of manifestations, responses and theory on TU through the ages, with a special focus on the current era. I'll try to keep as much of the existing good work as possible. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

FeydHuxtable, sounds good. Go for it.

An interesting article in The Atlantic magazine.

Report from the Australian Broadcasting Service.

IjonTichy (talk) 15:03, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

FeydHuxtable, sounds good. I would only add a caveat that this article needs to continue treating with respect and civility the many people who think that "the TU concept is just the Luddite premise, which is fallacious". If it doesn't, the article can be dismissed by them as "just the Other Side's propaganda, and not to be listened to." What the article has to continue to do is respectfully explain to them why that conflation is mistaken, and get them to think through the analysis in their own minds.
Lately I have been thinking about the conflation that these worthy people short-circuit on, and about how one can go about explaining it such that skeptical listeners can understand what is actually being said (versus what they assume is being said). For many of them, it is the conflation of the lump of labor premise (which, by itself, is indeed fallacious) with the structural unemployment premise. The definition of structural unemployment (SU) is simply the systemic mismatch between labor demand and available (real-world) labor supply. Although the labor pool is large, only a fraction of it (those people with sufficient talent and knowledge) is useful to employers. They can't use the other fraction, which therefore experiences unemployment. But meanwhile, the employers are simultaneously starving for the right people (the scarce talent).
What today's TU worriers can see is that TU is SU (it's that mismatch of "we employers are ready and eager to use good talent, but not enough of it is available"). That object right there, by itself, doesn't have anything to do with the lump of labor premise, if one does not conflate it, or want/try to conflate it, with the latter. That object right there, by itself, is already noticeably happening, and, importantly, even the most laissez-faire, free-enterprise employers recognize it—even people who are most likely to conflate TU concern with the Luddite premise (and then dismiss it) are cognizant daily of the fact that it (SU) is already happening ("I would gladly employ 5 machinists starting tomorrow, *if* they were talented setup hands who are also CAD/CAM masters. But no one who applies is one of those star people."). What the TU worriers at Davos are realizing is that that problem (TU is a form of SU), which is already annoying and depressing, is just going to keep on getting worse, and the deterioration is probably even going to accelerate because of ongoing IT advances. Even without dragging the lump of labor premise into the equation at all, TU is a form of SU (a qualitative realization); and (what's more, and quantitatively important), it's positioned to get worse at too quick a rate for conventional slow means to sufficiently counteract it. This is why going around saying that "more education and retraining are the answer to SU" is like saying that manufacturing more chewing gum to plug holes is the answer to a structurally deficient dam. Not that there's anything wrong with education and retraining (in fact, they are wonderful and necessary, and we need as much of them as we can possibly manage to pay for), but they aren't going to scale up with sufficient speed and power to keep TU (merely a form of SU, no lump of labor premise needed) from exacerbating into nontrivial SU rates. Another way to say this is that if you keep developing the world in a direction where jobs for humans all require great skill, talent, education, and training, you are running up against the constraint that most humans can't be brought up to speed on those at practical rates and cost, so most humans become unemployable, and you can't create enough schooling and training to counteract it sufficiently. And none of that has anything to do with the lump of labor premise, if you can keep yourself from conflating things. In the end, TU could end up fulfilling the Luddite premise (that machines will leave us without work to do) not because the lump of labor premise is true (it's not—it's fallacious) but simply because the SU premise (skills/talent mismatch) grows large and untenable. The problem is not that new jobs won't be created; the problem is that most humans are not sufficiently talented to do the new jobs that are created. This is what Martin Ford could see that so many people erroneously pilloried him for, because they conflated the objects involved. They thought he was saying that the lump of labor premise is true (which it's not); but what he was actually saying was simply that the SU premise (mismatches can occur) was true and that the size of the mismatch was going to grow from minor to huge.
So if more education and retraining is wonderful but is not sufficient to solve the problem (which is SU, not lump of labor), then what the hell can anyone do about it? There are answers to that, even though >99% of people have been very slow to wrap their heads around them (too much conflation and dismissal clouding up the cognition, I suspect). What you have to do is decouple value recirculation from traditionally defined jobs. You still need to incentivize people and make them work jobs for pay—human nature can't get away from that without massive ugly side effects. But you have to modify how those jobs are created, so that super talent-and-education level is not a prerequisite for most of them. And that's a challenge, given that make-work is a fallacy in the respect that it doesn't generate value (the classic textbook example being that you can create construction jobs by using spoons instead of shovels, but it's comically obvious that that's devoid of value creation). However, you have to accomplish it somehow, because IT causes SU to eat you in the end if you don't. But the pieces of the puzzle are available to be put together. Either Ford's wage recapture or the mirror-image market variants could do it.
Anyway, out of time. Later, — ¾-10 17:36, 31 May 2014 (UTC) {Update: Deconflation pursued further at User:Three-quarter-ten/Deconflation. — ¾-10 18:52, 1 June 2014 (UTC)}

Thanks IjonTichy and ¾-10. I hope you like the results. ¾-10 - I agree with pretty much all you say above. I tried to make the points you suggest in the article, as much as possible while trying to stay faithful to the top tier sources and presenting the optimistic case in their own words for neutrality. If anything I might have put optmistist case a little too strongly considering its now a minority view, especially among the sort of economists who are listed to by policy makers. Sorry not to include anything about post-scarcity being part of the solution. It's a common view, but it's been a struggle to find it expressed in many good sources. FT have listed Fords new 'Rise of the Robots' in their books of the year for 2015, hopefully once I've read it I'll be able to use that to talk about post-scarcity , if no one else adds it.

I've tried to keep the vast majority of the original information and cited sources in the re-write, though some of it has been moved to footnotes. One area where I've not done this is for the "Luddite fallacy". Due to this articles size, it might be worth now splitting Luddite fallacy back into its own article, and keeping just the small sub section here. I might do this in the next few weeks if there are no objections? FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:04, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

I can see your point, but how much of what you have said do you think are a consequence of TU, and how much a product of globalization, and recent trends to shift unskilled labour into low-cost emerging economies? The standard "no TU" argument is that it is only a temporary effect, and over time it may be plausible that the economy can adapt to the changes in skill sets required. However, there has undeniably been a big shift in job creation where most new technology-enabled low-skilled jobs are not being created in the West, but rather emerging markets such as China and India. This may have exacerbated the effect, but I wouldn't call it TU per se. I think it would be worthwhile to emphasize that there may be other factors at play here. 150.203.179.56 (talk) 03:09, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

You're very right that when looking at the macro level it's hard to distinguish genuine technological unemployment from joblessness caused by macroeconomic and cyclical conditions, changes in labor market dynamics, other aspects of structural unemployment, etc. I've tried to indicate this in the article. It's worth noting that folk like McCaffe have addressed head on these claims about offshoring being the true culprit, and find that the worlwide data suggests it is actually technology that's a main driver of job losses. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:04, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Responding to today's substantial rewriting. Overall, I think it's a good effort, and I can't add value to it off the top of my head. I skimmed it. Will plan to do a close reading when more time. The article now has a lot of defensible content with a lot of credible references cited. It's reached the point of development where (1) there might possibly still be plenty of improvement opportunities but (2) they are harder to see and more subjective; we're now past the point where one could easily see at a glance, for example, "X or Y wasn't even mentioned yet". Thinking about it from a devil's-advocate position ("how could someone tear into this version"), my impression is that someone can always find a way (there's always going to be more than one possible way to write this article), but serious challengers face a due amount of entry threshold. If they want to critique it credibly, it will require the same level of circumspection and referencing that is already at work here. Not just "whine, I don't like that this topic exists, my POV-slash-economic-religion is offended". So, due regards to FeydHuxtable for putting this level of work into it. — ¾-10 22:35, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Book about Industries of the Future

The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross is a good resource for information about past and possible future developments in technology employment. --Jaldous1 (talk) 18:03, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Solutions Section Missing the Obvious Solution

The Solutions section is missing the obvious solution mentioned in Economics 101 that suppliers can sell products cheaper as labor/materials/facilities per unit declines. If Automation keeps increasing production and production speed, the need for labor will start to approach an asymptote. Now if there is competition (i.e. 3D printing), overall surplus, and substitutions, prices should plummet. The problem comes when prices drop too slowly to keep pace with peoples decreasing wages (labor glut) and businesses try to avoid a race to the bottom. In theory if there are enough overall price drops then people should be able to afford items as in the past on lower wages. To be pun-ish, an almost "free economy".Septagram (talk) 08:16, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Original research

The concept of technological progress "optimists" and "pessimists" in this article is presented as though it is a generally accepted in the field (of economics? political economy? business?), complete with definitions. It is not. It is original research. I am referring to this:

"Optimists agree that innovation may be disruptive to jobs in the short term, yet hold that various compensation effects ensure there is never a long-term negative impact on jobs. Pessimists contend that at least in some circumstances, new technologies can lead to a lasting decline in the total number of workers in employment."

The entire article needs to be cleaned up. It is very long and getting longer. Since no one can agree on whether technological progress and automation will benefit humanity in real life, I doubt that we can reach consensus here. If it were up to me, I would cut away the many massive chunks of unsourced content in this article, and get rid of a lot of the redundant references... I don't have the stamina to argue with other editors about it though... Instead, I made a few edits to the lead.--FeralOink (talk) 06:56, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

You're right the article could do with a little clean up, and a slight size reduction. The fact that there's an optimist / pessimist divide though, is one of the few things just about everyone deeply engaged in the debate agrees with, even folk with an extreme POV on either side. I do have the stamina to look into this in detail. As per talk section above, I proposed a re-write in May 2014, and while I had unanimous agreement from other editors, I didn't do the re-write until July 2015. The year + delay was partly as I was reading literally hundreds of popular books, academic papers, discussion papers from top tier consultancies & banks, participating in the debate myself on round tables with politicians and academic specialists, etc.

The optimist/pessimist divide is absolutely not original research. Of course not all discussion uses the exact same wording, I tried to use that wording consistently in the lede and body to help reader understanding. On this point, the issue discussed in this article is the impact of tech on employment, not whether it will "benefit humanity" overall, which is a related but very different subject. Accordingly, Im partially reverting your edit. I'd also like to suggest a little more care in how accusations of original research is made. Otherwise it can be de-motivating to an editor that has spent literally hundreds of hours researching all the different POVs of a complex topic, and then integrating them into an article in compliance with Wikipedia policy. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:17, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

There need to be sources cited to support the optimist/pessimist divide. I see none here. Also, you reverted my grammar corrections! Why did you do that?! There was a fragment sentence which I fixed, and you edited to be a fragment again. Also, there is use of language not consistent with an encyclopedia tone e..g "David Ricardo himself", that I corrected (I removed "himself") and you replaced it. Also, you removed the prior citation needed tags that were there prior to my edits. Those need to be replaced as well.--FeralOink (talk) 09:44, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Dozens of sources in the article mention the optimist/pessimist divide. I wasn't aware I reverted grammar corrections. Putting it another way, I wasn't disposed to give close attention to your work after reading the unwarranted declaration about original research. I did make some effort to keep the helpful parts of your edit.

As for the prior cite request, my edit summary included "& remove cite request for TU being mentioned in Aristotles time, that is cited in the body per MOS" If you search for "Aristotle", you'll easily find a cite that supports him discussing the theme - there are many other sources on TU that mention Aristole was one of the earliest to discuss it, though we don't need more than one cite for this as it's uncontroversial.

On "himself" that's an elegant, concise way to communicate to the reader that even the most respected economics of the 19th century took the pessimistic view (though most of him contemporaries did not.) I concede many active editors here might see it as unencyclopedic, so if you still feel it's helpful to remove the word, I won't reverse again. Im sorry if my partial revert was a little hasty. Hopefully if you're planning to work more on this page, we can resolve any differences in a friendly and collaborative way... FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:51, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to do a little original research on this myself. The notion that anyone can predict that exactly(!) 58.94% of the jobs in Portugal are at risk is preposterous. Four significant digits? Whatever economist gave those numbers is a fool. I went to the cited articles, though, and the figures in this wikipedia article do correspond to the numbers in the cited articles. So the fault isn't in wikipedia, it's in the source. Mcswell (talk) 03:19, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Style?

All good stuff, but (to me) it reads more like a journalistic essay than an encyclopaedic entry. Anyone else have any views? InelegantSolution (talk) 09:04, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Lead section is very long, perhaps it could be condensed. Possible alternatives are to have a pure overview in summary form. Then a new etymology section could be added to expand on the terms mentioned in the current lead. Brandondakinard (talk) 19:01, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Additional Concerns

In the concerns section there could potentially be some discussion on how this will effect communities. Will this create more condensed communities or will they be spread further? Will this push relationships within the community closer or further about? Brandondakinard (talk) 19:03, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Missing Source?

In the lead section, are there any sources on the statement, “In the second decade of the 21st century, a number of studies have been released suggesting that technological unemployment may be increasing worldwide”? Brandondakinard (talk) 19:05, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Minor TYPO (or something?) : ("Forbes" vs. "Fortune")

background

The third paragraph in the Skill levels and technological unemployment section of this specific version of the article (which was the latest version, "as of" when these comments were written), starts out by saying:

Geoff Colvin at Forbes argued that [...]

IMHO it's "Fortune", ...not "Forbes"

That does not agree with my records. I think Geoff Colvin is (and was) at "Fortune", not "Forbes".

See, for example, https://www.c-span.org/person/?geoffreycolvin

check the facts

[1] the footnote (at the end of that paragraph) points to the URL "http://fortune.com/2015/07/23/humans-are-underrated/" -- which contains the domain name "fortune.com";

Not only that, but also,

[2] doing a Plano vanilla search for the character string "Geoff Colvin" gives a search results page that -- at least, when I tried it, today -- listed "Fortune" in many of the hits (including, in the first hit -- both in the title and in the URL).

Any comments?

Are there any reasons (anyone can come up with), as to how or why this could possibly be anything other than some kind of a TYPO, or other mistake?

If there are no takers, then I might edit it (to say "Fortune", instead of "Forbes"). --Mike Schwartz (talk) 23:36, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Misuse of term "automation"

This article uses the term "automation" referring to 21st century technologies. Those are actually advanced automation, which distinguishes them from the fundamental Automation technologies developed in the 1930s (controllers) and remote control or hard wired technology eating to the early days of factory electrification.Phmoreno (talk) 02:51, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

External link: List of who does and who does not think that AI might cause mass unemployment

I think https://agreelist.org/a/artificial-intelligence-and-automation-might-cause-mass-unemployment is relevant enough to include as an external link for this article. But as I'm not sure I ask first. What do you think? HectorPerez (talk) 17:09, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Queen Elizabeth Quote about William Lee's Knitting Machine

While this might be better to be taken up on the main William Lee Article, I think this article has more attention and the quote seems of more particular importance here. The quote in question is in the History section from the 16th to 18th century and is as follows "Consider thou what the invention could do to my poor subjects. It would assuredly bring them to ruin by depriving them of employment, thus making them beggars" by Queen Elizabeth. The original source for the quote is "Acemoglu, D.; Robinson, J. (2012). Why nations fail: the origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. Random House Digital. pp. 182-." The bibliography of that book leads to a link currently hosted here: https://www.calvertonvillage.com/william-lee. It appears the quote is part of creatively told historical story, beginning with the phrase "Those of you who live in the 20th century." This beginning phrase tells you that the story is creative and not historical. Queen Elizabeth's quote is also quoted in this source, but given it is a creative story, it is likely that the quote was creatively made for the narrative. It is still possible that Queen Elizabeth said these exact words, but a better source is needed, and the original page has no citations. Ios8jailbreakpangu (talk) 00:36, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

"Technological Liberation" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Technological Liberation. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 April 10#Technological Liberation until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:06, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Morenoddestiny.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 May 2020 and 3 July 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Totent.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 10 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Wzy5092.

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Badly written article

This article is a mess and contradicts itself in several places. Is technological advancement bad for employment or not? The debate can be presented but the fact that the article comes to a conclusion then contradicts that very conclusion is the issue. BenW (talk) BenW (talk) 17:23, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

[1] Ayres, Robert U. (1998). Turning Point: an End to the Growth Paradigm. London: Earthscan Publications.

[2] Kendrick, John W. (1961). Productivity Trends in the United States. Princeton University Press for NBER. p. 111. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

[3] Ayres, Robert U. (1998). Turning Point: an End to the Growth Paradigm. London: Earthscan Publications. pp. 193–4.

[4] Two Paradigms of Production and Growth Robert Ayres & Benjamin Warr

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