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But I think my point still stands, of whether or not we've ever seen something like this happen before, at least in our lifetimes. That skilled labor may be the ones that are getting replaced, and unskilled labor is not. It's not like people going to college and trying to earn more than unskilled labor is some kind of new phenomenon. So if people are panicking, it's seems to me because this is something that we haven't seen before, and it's unprecedented. So it's not right to just wave away the concerns with "the statistics show everything's fine, so you must be an anti-intellectual who hates statistics and believes whatever you want regardless of the numbers". Maybe the statistics that are being cited in this thread aren't capturing exactly why this situation is different.
And is that even the case that coders and other skilled labor is being replaced? I know everyone expects chat GPT to do that, but it certainly is not doing it yet, not en masse. So where is all this replacement of skilled labor coming from, driving down the cost of skilled labor?
I'm more amused that the same kind of people who were quite happy that all was right with the world and the market was working as intended, when blue-collar labour was losing out to outsourcing, because hey the economy is booming! you can buy cheap smartphones!, are now losing their minds when it's their turn for the chopping block.
Innovation, progress, the march of science, technology makes life better, dude! Nobody wrote a guarantee that a college degree was going to be the ticket to riches for ever and ever, amen. If miners and the rest of the 'unskilled'/semi-skilled were supposed to suck it up and learn to do jobs that were in demand, then the same applies even harder for the skilled/educated. After all, they're so creative and productive and wealth-producing, right? That's why they made the big bucks. Now Fortune's wheel has turned in its inexorable rotation, and suddenly they're the ones panicking?
If manual labour is now more valuable than skilled labour, then perhaps - just perhaps - the value they earned was not down to them being superior in brains and work ethic and willingness to do what it takes, but just that they had the particular knack for what was in short supply at the time. Now, for whatever reason, a different requirement is in short supply, and hence valuable, and they don't have that knack.
That's one hypothesis. But I'm reminded of Heath Ledger's Joker's speech:
It's "part of the plan" that the unskilled workers will be having a tougher time. They are less skilled after all. They worked less to get there, and therefore everyone expects them to face more difficulties. When the skilled laborers face this, it might be an indication that there's some deeper or new problem. At the very least, it's not what's expected, and therefore can cause people to seriously freak out.
That's one hypothesis. Another would be that they have the aptitude to learn many things, and the specifically trained in one skill set for many years, applying their aptitude towards what they were told would be the most lucrative. And they spent many many years and resources on doing that. And now they feel like they've been promised something in exchange for that, and they're not getting it. They're upholding their end of the bargain, and the world failed them.
I'm wondering if, in the post-AI future, the generations after us will look back at the assumption that the "skilled workers" (who may or may not be the PMC) were just plain obviously superior to the unskilled the way we look at past generations' beliefs that aristocrats just were plain obviously superior to the common folk. Being the son of a gentleman and a gentleman yourself meant you were better than the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. You just were because of your blue blood and so forth. There was a whole slew of assumptions going along with your status as a noble or a gentleman about your innate superiority to the common herd, and naturally nobody had to provide evidence that this was so because well, everyone just knows that the viscount/skilled coder is better than the commoner/plumber, don't they?
Post-AI when you don't need any skill higher than "push the button", will our descendants think we were just worshipping a social idol?
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