[ennui2]

I'm not sure what the exact meaning of efficiency is in these contexts.

Cost-wise it's efficient because almost all human labor has been removed from the equation (except for select crops where hand-picking is still needed).

[dohboi]

Yeah, that was kind of my point.

"Efficiencies" whose effect is obliterating human jobs and remove people from the land are the kind of "efficiencies" we could do with a whole lot less of.

[ennui2]

"Efficiencies" whose effect is obliterating human jobs and remove people from the land are the kind of "efficiencies" we could do with a whole lot less of.

If those human jobs never paid that well in the first place, it's not something people would like to go back to having to do.

BTW, I read a statistic that farm-workers have the lowest life-expectancy. It sounds counter-intuitive but is probably related to the high degree of exposure to pesticides.

[dohboi]

Agricultural economics is truly messed up. As Wendel Berry points out (for example, in the short essay "What are people for?"), the main, overtly-stated goal of ag economists for the last half century and more has been to depopulate the countryside. In this, they have largely succeeded.

From an economist's point of view, people who live relatively self sustaining lives, mostly growing what they eat and even much of what they wear, not needing to engage much in the cash economy, are economically worthless.

It is only when you drive these people off their relatively self sufficient farms and into cities where they become pretty much totally dependent on the cash economy that they become worth anything in the eyes of these economist.

Yes, there were other dynamics driving the exodus from the country to the city, but part of it was the result of very intentional policies.

[Pops]

I read part of this at the library yesterday, it will have a big influence on the future.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... rk/395294/

[dohboi]

Thanks for sharing that piece, Pops.

On the one hand, in an energy-constrained world, I have a feeling that job loss to automation will become less of a concern.

On the other hand, the article seems to imply that colleges will become less about preparing people for work, and will again become cultural centers.

But colleges themselves are in the process of rapidly automating. Libraries are nearly obsolete.

Online courses are a step toward the outsourcing of all teaching jobs to India, the Philippines, and other places teeming with underpaid smart people with good English skills. Of course, with adjuncts already teaching about half of all courses at about minimum wage, perhaps the low-wage workers will be homegrown after all.

[ralfy]

One point to consider is that businesses that sell goods and services produced by machines can only profit if there are workers who will buy or pay for them.

[onlooker]

One point to consider is that businesses that sell goods and services produced by machines can only profit if there are workers who will buy or pay for them.

Good point Ralfy. I think the wider point here is that the pattern has been to make people/workers redundant. Cutting costs probably being the overriding motive. Just another sign of limits to growth.

[americandream]

One point to consider is that businesses that sell goods and services produced by machines can only profit if there are workers who will buy or pay for them.

Good point Ralfy. I think the wider point here is that the pattern has been to make people/workers redundant. Cutting costs probably being the overriding motive. Just another sign of limits to growth.

The clash between labour costs and the compulsion to accumulate is another of capitalisms contradictions. Astute capitalists sense this dynamic and consequently adopt Keynesianist positions in a bid to protect the greater of the two, accumulation. Less astute ones target labour costs fixatedly and in the process bring their own demise upon themselves.

FOR DOHBOI

Had a look at that documentary. Very quickly:

Objective socialism has a specific object:

1 To remove the mediating role played by objects in human relationships thus depriving resources of a commodifying value but preserving their needs value.

2 Once successfully attained in the collective consciousness, the places in which needs things are fabricated assume a democratic character.

Democraticising the commodifying process is simply shifting the deck chairs. It is not attending to the underlying disaster in the making, the objectified consciousness of man which whether in the hands of one owner or a number of democratic owners, still plays out its toxicity vis a vis our planet.

Sentimentality will simply not put an end to the culture of things. We will have to inculcate a widespread amnesia.

[Pops]

Boosters have always said tech improvements create jobs but the referenced article says that today, 95% of jobs have been around for 100 years and only 5% of new jobs since 2000 have been "high tech."

Seems to me there is going to be a convergence of automation and energy slave decline. Increased automation of valuable work seems to point to cheaper labor overall. Fewer energy slaves then points to a return of low value, small scale, effort intensive work; mop floors, hoe weeds.

Small scale [s]killed trades, varied in specifics and especially location seem to be a good direction for the person not in the top couple of percent of their class; think electrician and plumber.

[hvacman]

NO job is immune to the efficiencies of technology. Besides HVAC, I've designed commercial building plumbing systems since 1978. What changes there have been!

Ways technology have changing plumbing:

40 years ago - PVC and ABS plastic drain piping changed the materials cost and skill formerly required to connect cast iron bell-spigot drain pipe. Labor cut to 1/3 the time per lineal foot.

40 years ago ditto PVC water pipe - changing from threaded galvanized or soldered copper. Materials costs down, skill level lower, man-hrs/lineal foot way lower.

35 years ago - no-hub cast iron piping systems evolve. Where plastic could not be used and cast iron was required by code, no-hub eliminated the complicated traditional way of joining cast iron, with melted lead and oakum packing. Just tighten two nuts on the connector's stainless steel pipe bands (larger versions of the pipe clamps used on radiator hose or poly pipe with barbed fittings.)

20 years ago - PEX pipe makes more in-roads into water pipe materials/labor costs. Snake it like Romex cable. Fewer fittings. No solvent joints - just machine-made-up press-fit joints. Labor per lineal foot continues to drop, and skill level drops another notch. The "skill" is in the joint-making equipment.

10 years ago - Then Shark Bite came out and even simplified PEX joining more. Just push to fit. Simple tools. No major tool-up cost. Now even fewer plumbers, with lower skills and cheaper tools, are required to plumb a building. And DYI plumbing becomes even easier - fewer calls to the "pros".

20 years ago - in-pipe camera and pipe tracing systems come out - no more digging up pipe to find out where the plug is and guessing where to dig. One guy can find the plug or failure, locate the pipe, and dig it up in a fraction of time of the old way.

20 years ago - directional horizontal drilling. Not the type for drilling for oil in shale. This is the type that can drill under roadways to make a 6" hole to pull a 4" water main through it without tearing up the road. Takes two guys 4 hours to put in 100 feet of buried pipe. No other trades involved. No major excavations. No road patching. No shutting down the road - no flaggers, no pavement cutting, trenching, major excavations and big backhoes. A bobcat can handle the initial digging to set up either side. You see it everywhere now. Gas mains. Data cables. Water lines.

There are a dozen other examples I could cite. The bottom line - man-hours per lineal foot of pipe have plummeted over my career, thanks to materials and technology advances. And the skill level required to do the work also has plummeted.

There is no safe-haven for labor-intensive jobs, regardless of arena. As long as man has an engineering bone left is his/her collective body, there will always a better mouse-trap in the works, ready to put yet another mouser out of work.

Admit it - all of you, even you Wendell Berry types - how many of you will reach for a brace and bit if there is a nice variable-speed cordless drill and a set of speed bore bits handy? How many even have a brace and bit, just in case TSHTF and you have no power for weeks or months on end?

[Pops]

Thanks H

[Timo]

Admit it - all of you, even you Wendell Berry types - how many of you will reach for a brace and bit if there is a nice variable-speed cordless drill and a set of speed bore bits handy? How many even have a brace and bit, just in case TSHTF and you have no power for weeks or months on end?

Well, i'm not disagreeing with your larger point, but i don't have any cordless power tools. None. Unless you count my electric lawn mower. I have an electric table saw, and an electric chop saw, but other than that, all of my other tools are hand tools.

Needless to say, i inherited almost all of those hand tools, and i don't get down to the shop very often, mostly because doing much of anything requires a boatload of work, all by hand. When i was a kid, i did all kinds of stuff with those same tools, all by hand. Now, as an adult, my only genuine excuse is that i'm lazy.

And, for what it's worth, my wife quit her job today, cutting our household income nearly in half. That's going to hurt for a while, until we learn how to manage in a reduced economy. But, her reason for leaving was (very honestly!) to escape a slave-labor environment that was being pushed by a "professional" management team, brought in to ruin over 70-years worth of building and producing a viable product (organic and inorganic materials lab testing). I don't blame her a bit, leaving that management crew to stew in their own shit. The newbies they've hired over the past two years have never held a post-college job before, and do not know the 1st step to performing any test for lead, mercury, zinc, iron, or any other inorganic chemical that might be in someone's blood, or drinking water. And yes, i do live in a red state. All of the problems in that lab started when our current governor was first elected.

[americandream]

The rise of mass employment in bubble consumer industries in just a few short decades in what was previously a Cold War enemy, agrarian China, as well as the automation of non bubble services such as plumbing should give you an inkling as to where automation will come in the future.

[Timo]

The rise of mass employment in bubble consumer industries in just a few short decades in what was previously a Cold War enemy, agrarian China, as well as the automation of non bubble services such as plumbing should give you an inkling as to where automation will come in the future.

We're already in the age of self-flushing toilets!

[SeaGypsy]

NO job is immune to the efficiencies of technology. Besides HVAC, I've designed commercial building plumbing systems since 1978. What changes there have been!

Ways technology have changing plumbing:

40 years ago - PVC and ABS plastic drain piping changed the materials cost and skill formerly required to connect cast iron bell-spigot drain pipe. Labor cut to 1/3 the time per lineal foot.

40 years ago ditto PVC water pipe - changing from threaded galvanized or soldered copper. Materials costs down, skill level lower, man-hrs/lineal foot way lower.

35 years ago - no-hub cast iron piping systems evolve. Where plastic could not be used and cast iron was required by code, no-hub eliminated the complicated traditional way of joining cast iron, with melted lead and oakum packing. Just tighten two nuts on the connector's stainless steel pipe bands (larger versions of the pipe clamps used on radiator hose or poly pipe with barbed fittings.)

20 years ago - PEX pipe makes more in-roads into water pipe materials/labor costs. Snake it like Romex cable. Fewer fittings. No solvent joints - just machine-made-up press-fit joints. Labor per lineal foot continues to drop, and skill level drops another notch. The "skill" is in the joint-making equipment.

10 years ago - Then Shark Bite came out and even simplified PEX joining more. Just push to fit. Simple tools. No major tool-up cost. Now even fewer plumbers, with lower skills and cheaper tools, are required to plumb a building. And DYI plumbing becomes even easier - fewer calls to the "pros".

20 years ago - in-pipe camera and pipe tracing systems come out - no more digging up pipe to find out where the plug is and guessing where to dig. One guy can find the plug or failure, locate the pipe, and dig it up in a fraction of time of the old way.

20 years ago - directional horizontal drilling. Not the type for drilling for oil in shale. This is the type that can drill under roadways to make a 6" hole to pull a 4" water main through it without tearing up the road. Takes two guys 4 hours to put in 100 feet of buried pipe. No other trades involved. No major excavations. No road patching. No shutting down the road - no flaggers, no pavement cutting, trenching, major excavations and big backhoes. A bobcat can handle the initial digging to set up either side. You see it everywhere now. Gas mains. Data cables. Water lines.

There are a dozen other examples I could cite. The bottom line - man-hours per lineal foot of pipe have plummeted over my career, thanks to materials and technology advances. And the skill level required to do the work also has plummeted.

There is no safe-haven for labor-intensive jobs, regardless of arena. As long as man has an engineering bone left is his/her collective body, there will always a better mouse-trap in the works, ready to put yet another mouser out of work.

I have taken this threat seriously a long time, recalling the decision to have a 'scattergun' career while I was still a teen. I learned market gardening & orchard management, boatbuilding, surfboard making, glass blowing, timber renovations, arts provenance & gallery management, aboriginal community arts development, palliative & CNS disabilities support, truck driving, earth moving operations, reliability engineering (non destructive testing).

Glassblowing got wiped out as profitable by Chinese factory free blown repeat copy glass 10-15 years ago.

Aboriginal arts went crazy & fizzled with the GFC (as did most emerging art outside China).

There was never a lot of money in boatbuilding except for the elite, same with surfboards & farming.

So now I drive a truck while upgrading my qualifications in community services work. By end of year I will be qualified to drive the longest trucks in the world, 55 meter 4 trailer road trains. (Robots can drive pretty well on perfect roads. But changing a tyre in the dust in the middle of nowhere will remain a challenge.) Equally getting disabled people to tolerate a robot carer aside from building a robot to do all the stuff we have to do, 2 big challenges.

JIT logistics will be one of the last professions to go. When it does, just about everybody dies. A farm or a region can have a crappy year, the trucks still haul from somewhere.

In the socialist paradise I live in when the government stops paying people to look after people our economy topples.

Also I love to travel & I need to be able to write my own roster to keep sane. I try to keep 1/3-1/2 each year a work free zone, to travel & develop links & scope projects.

[Plantagenet]

I've just been traveling for a couple of weeks in Oregon, and they have a law that all gasoline must be pumped by station attendants---not by the drivers. In Oregon when you pull into the self-serve gas pump an attendant comes out and takes your credit card and sticks it in the slot for you, and then he puts the gas hose into your gas tank and pumps your gas. I liked it---you can ask them for directions and chat while the gas pumps.

This creates a heck of a lot of jobs for gas pump jockeys all across the state of Oregon.

There's no reason we can't bring back gas pump jockeys, grocery check-out clerks, bag boys, elevator operators, and all sorts of service jobs across the USA. All it takes is some progressive thinking to pass a few laws to bring back millions of service jobs.


Bring back service jobs!

[SeaGypsy]

There is a very good reason why not have pump attendants: they have exponential cancer risk.

[americandream]

The rise of mass employment in bubble consumer industries in just a few short decades in what was previously a Cold War enemy, agrarian China, as well as the automation of non bubble services such as plumbing should give you an inkling as to where automation will come in the future.

We're already in the age of self-flushing toilets!

Self flushing unwanted Western labour is possibly more on point. Unit for unit, Western labour is worth little to global capital now that most of the world is modernised and open. Thus those non bubble sectors or sectors not easy to migrate will automate.

Then the screws will be applied on Western workers to find other sources of income such as self employment, alternative therapies or the services sector and as say prostitution is legalised, that will of course boom when the commodification of women is completed.

[Pops]

(Sorry, can't pass up talking about tools. Alas my decision was to auction many things off when we sold the farm to increase mobility. All my stationary tools, and lots of old hand tools that I had collected mostly for a rainy day. I kept a good hand tool kit tho; brace & bits, hammers and saws, chisels and planes.
And the pipe threader, LoL)

---
I'm pretty sure there will be no "self-employment" if automation reduces even the need for assembly line workers. I don't see much limit to the tasks robots and computers can do and as HVACMan points out, Sharkbite tube connectors are as simple as clicking together legos, so even non-uniform, location variable skills are becoming not-so-skilled.

So what co-op or self employment opportunity is there? A Guild of Robots?

The article above points out that the decline in employment is punctuated by recessions. Employment recovers some after a downturn but not to the previous level, baristas and bus boys are in big demand now, higher paid workers not so much. Ubberization is all the rage, the whole "Sharing" economy (better name would be the "Foisting-All-Costs-Off-Onto-Society Economy.

I'm thinking if there is less work, eventually there is less profit and the virtuous circle stops circling then no one is happy. So the only real answer is we wind up with much more socialism in order to preserve any capitalism (at least until declining energy slaves and population plateau).

The current minimum wage push is the begining, Universal Medicine next (here in the US backwater anyway). Tax the Robot masters and pay a Guaranteed Basic Income then is the final answer...

Until growth stops.