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The Coming Economic Crash – Part Four – Automation — 10 Comments

  1. automation requires healthy mass markets.  if automation reduces employment then how is it sustainable long-term?

    • UBI for one thing. If you don’t think it is part of the plan, you don’t know the plan.

      In the end there will be opportunities but every such shift causes a LOT of pain. A LOT.

      This is a 10 year shift being shoved into 2-3 years, it will hurt more than most can imagine.

      • “UBI for one thing”

        people will consume food and energy, produced by others, for free?

  2. “I’m starting to wonder if I really need them.”

    normalcy bias.  his workers are still operating under the old paradigms, so no, he doesn’t need his middle managers short term.  long term as people adjust he’ll need them again.  but they’ll be gone.

  3. “Consider the impact technology will inevitably have on the medical industry”

    “automated” health care presumes the presence and backing of the present medical industry.  when that industry is scaled back then “automated” health care won’t work and will be plagued by n0-recourse fraud and malpractice.

  4. “I believe the hardest hit will be the professional and white collar worker”

    decision-makers will of course exempt themselves.

  5. “China is essentially a nation of GenXers, their system is doomed by automation”

    so they’ll have tens of millions of colonist soldiers to offload everywhere.

  6. I have worked at an Amazon Sortation facility. While some of their packages are sorted by robots, they have found that humans are actually more efficient at most of the functions they need. Yes, it’s menial work, but the shift to online shopping hasn’t produced a shift to robotic workers.

    • You know what that sounds like? A guy who watched the first Wright Brothers flight and shrugged and said, “it was only 120 feet”.