LogFAQs > #887329342

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deMEXCsB7L4

Really good take on automation vs jobs that made me make a very simple connection.

My theory has always been that more automation means existing jobs will go away, but more jobs will open up. And a separate theory is that lots of jobs will inevitably be obsoleted. And another theory is that people can educate themselves on a new career if they need to.

But I finally figured out the generalized connection between all of those - automation simply reduces the length/viability of a career.

Back in the 1400s or whatever, you had careers that spanned CENTURIES. Your father's father's father's father's father was a blacksmith, so naturally you are continuing their career as a smith. In the 1800s, careers spanned only a couple generations. Maybe it's the same farm your grandfather owned, but your kids are moving to the city. In the 1900s, your career spanned your lifetime. You go to college when you're 18, start a career at 22, retire at 65, and that's it. A steady downward trend of shortened careers due to automation.

The transition from manual blacksmithing to automated took a few generations. Some blacksmithing families struggled in the process, sure, but you had entire lives to figure it out. The transition to automated agriculture was a bit more harsh, but the kids still had the opportunity to learn some new things while they were young and start a new career elsewhere.

But then we reach the 2000s. Automation has reduced the length of a career to 10, 20 years. It is now impossible to have a career that spans your life. It has been a smooth trend in the past, but we just passed a barrier that fundamentally changes the entire foundation of society. You can no longer learn something, and then do it, and then retire. Instead, you must learn something, learn more things, keep learning things over and over, until you retire. The economy is pulling us in that direction fast, but society has not at all adjusted to this shift and is resisting. There will be massive growing pains until we are fully transitioned. We're only maybe 10-15% into that transition so far, at most.

This is where all the "millenials don't have careers anymore, just jobs" stuff comes from. This is where the simultaneous hyper-valuation and hyper-devaluation of college degrees comes from. This is where MAGA and young people desperately hanging onto traditionalism and fundamentalism comes from. This is where rabid anti-capitalism and pro-communism, the wish to freeze the economy at its current level of growth comes from. It's the old society, based on careers spanning an entire lifetime, clashing with the modern reality of a poly-career life and economy. It's raw fear.

Normally I hate theories that are based on the current time being especially interesting or exceptional, since they almost always come from the fallacy that your life is more special because you're alive during it. But you can't deny how massive and disruptive the shift in society from 50-year careers to 10-year careers is. Even the shift from family-based career to individual careers doesn't come close.

So yeah, maybe our time is kinda special after all, and it will be tumultuous and messy. But if it results in a new society where constant individual learning and growth and adaptation to new technology and careers is the standard way of life, the future will be very good.
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_foolmo_
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