Robots will exterminate the middle-class.

[DetlefK]

http://io9.com/should-robotics-companies-help-the-workers-they-displac-1618302011

Remember those good old times, when horses pulled chariots?
A fair day's wage for a fair day's work as a coachman? Now we have cars.

Remember those good old times, when workers stood by conveyor-belts and performed the same task a thousand times each day?
A fair day's wage for a fair day's work as a low-level engineer? Now we have robots.

Remember those good old times, when you could always find a job in retail?
A fair day's wage for a fair day's work as a salesman? Now we have vending-machines and online-shops.

Remember those good old times, when you could always find a job as a burger-flipper or as a driver?
Driverless cars are about 5 years in the future.
And there's a machine that can produce 360 burgers per hour that look like this:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/robotics/industrial-robots/robotics-company-prepares-to-take-responsibility-for-displaced-workers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE+Spectrum%29



As machines/robots become more and more sophisticated, they render jobs of increasing skill-levels obsolete. This has a simple consequence:
People with a good education are pushed more and more into jobs that need a high skill-level, a job where they can't get replaced easily.
People with a bad education are pushed to compete with robots for low-wage-jobs.
The result will inevitably be an increase in income-inequality, a widening gap between upper-class and lower-class, and a disappearing middle-class.

There will always be a need for ditch-diggers? Nope.


There will always be a need for warehouse-men? Nope.


There will always be a market for hand-crafted art, but are we all supposed to become carpenters and painters and potters now?

Some propose that workers should be retrained to take on new jobs as repairmen and supervisors in a robocentric economy. But we can't all be bosses. Eventually the job-market will be saturated. The number of things people are willing to pay you for is limited.

Sure, you could boycott companies that employ robots, but if you are low on money, will you choose the pizza-delivery with human employees and the pizza costs $10, or will you choose the pizza-delivery with robots and the pizza costs $5?



This is the problem: As robots become cheaper and more competent with every year, how are humans supposed to to compete with them for a job that pays enough for a living?
"They are coming for our jobs!" Yes, they are.

There is only one upside: They work for free, but robots aren't consumers. And an economy without consumers collapses.

There are only two possibilities:
1. Force companies to employ humans instead of robots and force them to pay salaries that allow employees to be consumers.
2. Give unemployed people money for free, so they can become consumers and keep the economy running.

I think it's ironic, that the race for ever-cheaper means of production will eventually enforce socialist policies, just so that rich people can stay rich.

[muntrv]

1. An advantage with a human over a robot is when a human messes up,

you simply tell the human worker "don't do this, do that." When a robot messes up, a human needs to fix the robot, unless another robot will fix it.

[DetlefK]

3. If 1 robot out of 10 messes up, you need 1 guy to repair him.

Essentially, you replace 10 human workers with 1 human administrative supervisor and 1 human robotics-engineer. That's 8 wages the company is saving on!

[Trillo]

2. Are you sure future tense in your headline is correct?

Pretty much agree with the rest of you post.

[upaloopa]

4. There has to be a new model but I don't think

it will be giving money for free.
Why would anyone produce anything in exchange for money when others get money for free? That just doesn't make sense.
There will always be a need for special skills such as medical skills. I think the future will require new needs thus new skills to fill the needs. That is where we need to put our efforts.

[pscot]

5. I'm sure they can be programmed

to only exterminate poor people.

[underpants]

6. Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me

https://m.

[muntrv]

7. As Walter Reuther said to Henry Ford II: "Who will sell cars to the robots?"

And who will buy stuff the robots make?

[cantbeserious]

8. The Oligarchs, Corporations And Banks Are Counting On A Middle Class Die-Off

eom