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I see an opportunity to replace certain human labor at my workplace with humanoid robots. For background, I am an equipment engineer at a Fortune 100 manufacturing company and think my job is somewhat low-risk of getting automated soon.
Pros:
Cons:
What are The Motte’s opinions on this in regards to:
The year is 2050. Everything useful has been automated, so people are employed in doing useless things. First it was, to no one's surprise, lawyers. But the public first really became aware in 2035. Tesla had just released diaper-changing robots, and a coalition of nursing home and daycare workers arrived at the Michigan state capital. They gave hours of spurious testimony as to the need for a human to do it, and the legislature voted to keep high mandatory ratios of care staff. The idea soon spread; lots of people are employed in sitting around to meet staffing minima at fully automated workplaces. There's also people whose jobs are to add the human touch; waiters, customer service call takers, etc. But a plurality of people sit in a room doing, theoretically, nothing.
Mental health issues skyrocket. Obviously, people don't literally do nothing even if they're being paid for it, but they don't do anything productive either. At the shittiest jobs drug use is rampant, slightly higher up the ladder people gossip, gamble, play video games on the clock- the same things they do off the clock, except sober. There are 'doctors' and 'engineers' who are forbidden from doing any medical or engineering work- supposedly, they watch the robot doing it, but in practice they argue about politics online, watch sports, buy cheap junk from automated factories with a cafeteria full of 'workers' playing poker and giving each other terrible advice. All of these people are self-medicating, or in therapy, or something.
Of course, for those who can't stand being paid to do nothing, they can work customer service- people will just scream at the robot until they have a person to scream at instead, after all- or sponge off of welfare. In well functioning countries there's now a UBI paid partly in kind(eg, allotments of staple foods), but in the US there's simply an expansion of existing welfare programs. All it takes to get on section 8 is a willingness to live in it now; there's vast tenement highrises with open cockfighting in the hallways. More responsible citizens can simply turn in a tax return and get a credit that's enough to live on for the year, at least in flyover, but only in a lump sum payment- those bad at budgeting need to go back to section eight and foodstamps. And of course, citizens who are quiet, clean, but not good with their money can get disability. On the whole, the latter two groups are much happier than those with fake jobs; many find alternative sources of meaning in hobbies, friends, communities- and for the majority, they can at least get baked and play videogames openly, without lying about it.
By the way, I really, truly (unfortunately) think this is the way mass automation is going to go.
You don’t think this is significant rose colored glasses? Responsible citizens having a means of separating themselves from the crackheads isn’t how welfare works in the real world.
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