How can I convince my wife technological advances are good?

Question

I took a macroeconomics class in college, but still can't justify to my wife why advances in computers and machinery are good even though they may put people out of work.

Answer 1

The key to the issue is the word "productivity". The ONLY purpose of technological advances is to enhance economic productivity. When people do lose jobs as a result of technology, it is not the technology that put them out of work, it is the improved productivity. Sometimes jobs are exported to China ... but sometimes they are just exported to the "land of productivity" (ie, eliminated as redundant).

Productivity means generating more valuable economic output with resources available, and that is the key. You are only looking at one side of the equation if you say productivity (technology) eliminates jobs. BECAUSE AT THE VERY SAME TIME IT CREATES MORE JOBS THAN IT ELIMINATES. IT CREATES WHOLE NEW INDUSTRIES.

This is not some wacky theory and it is not debatable. Compare the US in 2007 to 1977. Despite incredible technological advances and resulting productivity gains in 30 years, there have been tens of millions of new jobs created, including entire new careers and industries. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has plummeted, from chronic high unemployment in the Carter era to historically low unemployment and very tight labor markets today. The limited idea that technology merely destroys jobs cannot explain the reality of he last 30 years, nor for that matter of the last 100 years or 10,000 years.

Now if technology ONLY created more jobs as a net result and did nothing else, that would actually NOT be a good thing; that would be wasteful and unproductive. The key is that the new jobs created are much more value-creating than the old jobs eliminated -- they result in us consumers having our needs met much better. This is absolutely true, think of today's software programmers and electrical engineers and search engine mathematicians and biotech researchers compared to yesteryear's seamstresses, textile workers, sharecroppers, gas station attendants, etc.

The improved productivity frees up labor from doing low level back-breaking grunt work, to doing far more valuable things such as making iPods and computers and Internet equipment, creating the drugs that cure our diseases, flying our airlines so we can visit relatives, and all the rest.

You got to understand that in the absence of technology, nearly everyone is utterly spent just trying to grow enough food to not die -- that has been the lot of 99% of humanity from the beginning. It is ONLY with advancing productivity (enabled by technology) that gradually more and more people are able to do things with their time that are enjoyable and fulfilling and helpful to society -- like cure polio, research what things are harmful and what things are beneficial to health, create the Internet, build roads and cars, and then GPS units and hybrids, and all of the other things that your wife finds to be important and valuable.

Destroying jobs? You can bet that people of the future will view those precious common jobs of the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s as appalling, soul-sucking, inhuman grunt work, not worthy of human beings.

Answer 2

Old question. It's already been explored scholastically and in literature and movies. Most, if given the chance, would not forfeit an eye for an artificial eye even if they might be able to see better with the artificial eye. Most would not forfeit a limb for a "better" artificial limb. Men and women alike prefer their natural bodies. IF an accident or disease removed the choice, then most would accept a suitable replacement. There are some exceptions. But most see such unnecessary "augmentation" as taking away from being human. Necessary augmentation is not seen as taking away from a person. Is it reasonable? Maybe not. But that is the way most are thinking. Personally, I don't see the good in such a forfeit when a machine can be built to do the job without a person giving anything up.

Answer 3

Drop her off in the woods for a week; see how she enjoys not having a house, phone, food that was grown using agricultural advances, etc.

Your wive believes in the Luddite Falicy. The primary driver behind this is a tendency to see production as static; whereas technology allows companies to produce more using the same amount of labor. This makes things cheaper without changing labor costs ------

And you should remember from Macro that this is the only way to increase real wages!

Problem solved.

Answer 4

I'm sorry, but I have to side with your wife.
Technological advances are neither bad, nor good. The use that's made of them will determine whether they're good or not.
There may come a point where the modern capitalist system faces a real crisis from automation - if a majority of people are not needed to work, or if a majority of products produced no longer fill a real need, then the system will face a real crisis. 100% Free markets may well look good in economic theory, but you must remember that such a system has never existed, and will ever exist in the history of humanity.The needs of society at large need to be considered and in practice, pure free markets have never been shown capable of fulfilling them (The world has known extreme communist dictatorships that have pushed populations to bloody revolutions, but the same is true of extreme capitalist dictatorships - when you look at these two extremes closely, they have more similarities than differences.)

Or, to look at the problem from another angle, take the splitting of the atom. If used well, that technology can provide clean and safe energy and solve a lot of problems for mankind in general. The same technology is also used to make weapons which may prove the death of humanity. Again, I come back to my opening statement: Technology is neither good, nor bad. It's all a question of the use we make of it.
Now, if we allow the capitalist system to become automatized to the point that it no longer needs people, I don't see how these people can continue to be consumers and how the system can survive in the long term without making major concessions to a brand new kind of society, one in which most people don't need to work most of the time.

Answer 5

Ask her if she would rather live as a farmers wife in late 1800's US. Those people actually had to work for a living and if it wasn't for technological advances we would still be living that way. Or better, ask her if she would rather be a feudal age European peasant farmers wife (these people comprised over 90% of the European population back then). These peasants had it harder than almost anyone in history according to many sociologists.

Answer 6

Tech advances do not put people out of work. It shifts jobs from people who use simple machines to people who produce and program complex machines. These jobs pay better.
Because of the cost savings, more money can be spent in other area of the business.

These tech advances raise the standard of living and life spans.

Hide her Internet connection or cell phone. When she complains, tell her to do things the old way.
.

Answer 7

Buy Her something that She will find useful.