If robots are doing all the work, how come people work ever longer hours?

Question

Back in the 1970s a famous politician once declared "By 2010 we will have a 3 day week, because machines will do many of the jobs humans do today" (I can't remember who it was).

The second part of the prediction has more or less come true. Technological progress, automation and the IT revolution has meant that less labor is required to make stuff. In the 1970s a factory with 1000 workers had a lower output than a factory with 100 workers does today. Even service jobs are slowly being replaced by machines. My local supermarket, for example, has introduced self-service check-out tills and fired half of the staff.

But what about the first part of the prediction? If it takes less and less people to make more and more stuff, why do people need to work ever longer hours? It doesn't add up. What are all these people actually DOING in their job, if machines do most of the work anyhow? Could it be that most "service economy" jobs just move wealth from A to B, rather than actually create it?

Answer 1

People still engineer the machines. The machines are not self reliant.

People must still design the machines. People are constantly improving them and developing more efficient machines. They are constantly adding to and removing from the machines to improve performance and cut costs.

People must still repair the machines. When a machine malfunctions, it cannot fix itself. People must repair the machines in order to keep them working. This also includes preventive maintenance to keep it running smoothly.

People must monitor the machines. If something happens with the machines and no one is there to fix it or report it to someone who can fix it, a company could really lose profit. Therefor, they hire people to monitor the systems in order to maintain working machines.

Machines themselves have opened jobs. Building the machines, creating software for use in them, updating them, building new hardware, etc. all must be done by humans.

Aside from that, there are many jobs machines cannot do. Machines, at this point in time, cannot reason or use even the most basic comprehension. Machines must be programmed to do what they do, they will not do more or less. Customer service is a good example of that. You can call a support line that utilizes voice recognition and is 100% automated. What happens when that machine is not programmed for your specific needs? It cannot give any different answers because it was not programmed to do it. Most people prefer to speak with a live customer support representative as well. It's easier to speak to someone with empathy and understanding rather than a machine.

There are SOME machines that can reason and use comprehension. Those machines are not mass produced, and to do so would cost more than any company would want to spend. They are for testing/development purposes only right now.

Answer 2

Work is infinite because people's demands and desires are unlimited. There is always more that can be done. It has always been foolish to expect that machines will allow people to no longer work -- that statement was as stupid in the 1920s or 1970s as we realize it to be today.

Machines DON'T do most of the work -- people do. If machines do one thing, humans can now do something else.

As machines (capital equipment) and productive processes make certain work more efficient, that just allows humans to move upscale and do something else the machines cannot do. This will always be the case: today, 10 years from now, 1000 years from now. Humans are extremely flexible and can rapidly learn to do new things; machines are not and can not.

And they will, because there will always be ambitious entrepreneurs and managers and workers who figure they can make a buck by going a step further. Idiots who thought people would embrace a life of leisure and not work never counted on Bill Gates working 7 days a week and sleeping under his desk to become a billionaire.

As for what new work people do, I can't give you a laundry list -- there are 145 million workers in the U.S. alone doing a million different things. Look around, see for yourself.

Answer 3

Machines replace people when the marginal product of capital is greater than the marginal product of labor, but that does not mean those people do not wish to have employment and avoid starvation. So they either improve their marginal product through education or lower their offered wage. You see machines replace people where people are the scarce commodity and people replace machines where capital is the scarce commodity. For example, in rural Illinois there are few people so you see giant combines working on the farms, but in India where people are plentiful and capital scarce you see labor intensive farming.

People selling machines sell them near the price that they become equal to people, otherwise the demand would overwhelm their capacity to supply machines. So for a machine to replace a $10 per hour worker, the price of the machine needs amortize out at less than $10 per hour, but not an inordinately large difference.

Since people do not want to starve, they compete against the machines or they own the machines and live off the value added.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

Machines don't get paid.The increased profits go to the corporations and people at the low end have to scramble around to find work since they are not needed in the factories anymore.Machines devalue humans.It becomes a simple equation of speed and economics,and human interaction become the aberration .It is a sad nihilistic devolution,that ,unfortunately,many people are buying into in a big way.mea culpa.

Answer 6

Humans are still highly necessary to (as new inventions and technologies are discovered) cement the ticking of machine labor, and the tocking of technological revolution, as new "jobs" and "needs" for computers and the like appear.

Answer 7

there are a lot more products and services out there, so yes productivity has gone up quite a bit and machines have replaced a lot of jobs but new jobs are constantly created in other areas

Answer 8

Machines break down. That certainly includes, computers, monitors, fax machines, copy machines, ATM machines, vending machines..etc. etc. etc... There are more people out there fixing them and making replacements so much for less work!