The Big DebateIf you feel the need to get your teeth stuck right into a heavy debate on a subject you feel really passionate about, then this is the place to do so. Post about religion, politics, laws and all things juicy like that here.
Every year the population increases but things also get more efficient and hence take less people do the work. So is full employment even possible in the modern world?
Robotics and computing power are advancing at a relentless pace, and personally I think its only a matter of time before completely automated factories are possible. So where would the work come from?
hmm, it may seem like things ought to get more efficient to produce all the goods we need
but the efficiency of utilising manpower to produce those goods is falling due to bureaucracy etc, etc
they have been saying that about robotics for a long time. from history it seems someone has a idea that they can use robotics to do really complex tasks, however they start off simple and build up and things go really very well indeed, but by the time they get to the point where its barely beginning to do something useful the complexity has swamped them.
I think this is why progress is somewhat slow, and why I'm interested in more efficient programing languages, ie non procedural ones.
other approaches like neural nets are also promising up to a point. it seems the effort required goes up exponentially with the complexity.
there is really nothing to stop full employment except for shortage of raw materials (which is hardly likely) there will always be a small amount in order for people to switch jobs etc, and for employers to adjust, seasonal demand etc,,
inefficient economic controls is pointlessly causing much unemployment atm.
our jobs are disappearing to china for now, and wont be back for some time, until the exchange rate changes very drastically.
the other point is people who are in work complain they are overworked and have to work too long hours etc.
personally i don't see employment as a sensible target, what should be a target is quality of life. ie if we can produce and distribute all the things we need why bother about unemployment ?
In a small self sufficent society, every adult should be able to specialise in and have a job. Very few places left on the planet where that is even possible now though, besides the odd little pacific island, or mid jungle provence in the Amazon or something like that.
I think you probably have to also take into account the attitude of individuals and cultural differences. A lot of people would simply refuse to do a lot of jobs, on grounds that it was below them. Even if there was a job available for everyone, some would simply say no, don't want to, even if for no other reason than that they could.
Modern technology has also guarenteed that less people are required to do more work, which is always bad on the employment front.
So to answer the initial question, I would say the answer at least in modern, western society is a big fat no, maybe communism can force the answer to be yes, but that's a different matter, it's not exactly on a the same kind of structure.
Possibly - There will likely be a further shift in focus towards technical jobs however.
If there's one thing you can rely on with technology, it's that things will go wrong - there will always be people needed to fix and update existing systems. Whether that will compensate for the amount of jobs lost to automation is debatable.
Possibly - There will likely be a further shift in focus towards technical jobs however.
If there's one thing you can rely on with technology, it's that things will go wrong - there will always be people needed to fix and update existing systems. Whether that will compensate for the amount of jobs lost to automation is debatable.
Ye you always need someone to maintain hardware and software, maintenance is key to keeping a factory going, if someone breaks it is very costly to repair and the time the factory is down can costs a LOT of money.
But it is already happening I think, not so much factories over here, there arnt much left but look at retail, the high street is dying, no one can deny it, with sites like amazon,ebay and play offering items for less and you dont even have to mix with the riff raff of the town centre its killing high street retailers.
books, music, films -- They're all thing which work really well with on-line selling. Expect even the small number of people in the distribution chain to disappear as more of it is delivered electronically to kindles, etc.
Even the governments smart meter project is going to put thousands of people out of work, e.g. meter readers plus call centre staff (most calls are about incorrect bills).
Is full employment even possible?
Linear Mode
