There wasn’t a large “manufacturing” sector for agriculture workers to move into, it became a large sector as the workers moved into it. Perhaps some current small sector of the economy will become a large sector as workers move into it? At least in the U.S., there’s little evidence to support your claims of it being faster and more widespread—jobless rates are at historic lows. Unless you mean it hasn’t yet begun.
All that said, though, it is certainly the case that if you have a robot that can do anything a person can do, you don’t need to hire any more people, and there must be some kind of curve leading up to that as robots become more capable.
There is no hypothetical sector just waiting for workers to move to. Manufacturing had always existed and grown steadily so long as the food needs of the population were being met by fewer and fewer agricultural workers. The shift didn’t sneak up on anyone.
Those “historic low” jobless rates are much lower pay and skill on average than 10 years ago. Over the last 50 years people in those low-skill jobs have (when adjusting for inflation) been steadily making less money. We’ve reached market saturation on workers needed to meet the demands of the population.
I’m one of those people automating things. The really scary part is how much more quickly those of my ilk can automate processes now than even a few years ago. Expect the drop in demand for human effort to get worse exponentially.
There wasn’t a large “manufacturing” sector for agriculture workers to move into, it became a large sector as the workers moved into it. Perhaps some current small sector of the economy will become a large sector as workers move into it? At least in the U.S., there’s little evidence to support your claims of it being faster and more widespread—jobless rates are at historic lows. Unless you mean it hasn’t yet begun.
All that said, though, it is certainly the case that if you have a robot that can do anything a person can do, you don’t need to hire any more people, and there must be some kind of curve leading up to that as robots become more capable.
There is no hypothetical sector just waiting for workers to move to. Manufacturing had always existed and grown steadily so long as the food needs of the population were being met by fewer and fewer agricultural workers. The shift didn’t sneak up on anyone.
Those “historic low” jobless rates are much lower pay and skill on average than 10 years ago. Over the last 50 years people in those low-skill jobs have (when adjusting for inflation) been steadily making less money. We’ve reached market saturation on workers needed to meet the demands of the population.
I’m one of those people automating things. The really scary part is how much more quickly those of my ilk can automate processes now than even a few years ago. Expect the drop in demand for human effort to get worse exponentially.