The third industrial revolution


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This looks a bit like a science fiction to me. Quite different from reality as I know it. The main reason more was produced with less labour costs in the past decade is because there were massive lay offs, salary cuts, less people were forced to work more hours for less pay. This trend can not continue. After all each worker has only 24 hours in a day and he needs certain amount of time to sleep, eat, rest and care for himself, otherwise he gets sick and burned and drops out from workforce. And each worker has certain basic expenses to pay, such as food, shelter, transportation, daycare, healthcare. Those can not be 3D printed, or made and distributed from a garage, so their costs have been going up. No wonder it triggers rise in labour costs. As populations of China and the developed
world age more and more labor will be less and less available. Labor costs will continue to rise and this will trigger inflation, which in turn will trigger more increases to labor costs. To break this cycle some extreme measures may need to be introduced, such as freezing prices and wages and rationing some crucial economic outputs, such as shelter and food, as it was done during the war.

QxxFeYpZCm in reply to b5aCjtwJEF

Annual hours worked have fallen by around 25% since 1950.

From April to June 2008, average weekly hours worked in the UK was estimated to be 31.9 (Office of National Statistics) giving an annual labour input of 1,658 hours.

If you think you see people working more and more hours, you're wrong. You see a small proportion of the workforce working more and more hours, while the average hours worked is falling.

b5aCjtwJEF in reply to QxxFeYpZCm

Be careful with averages. Another problem with current economy is that there are more and more part-time workers. This is why we have the average of 31 hours instead of the normal 35-40. Also we have different kinds of workers. We have more of the older privileged laid back ones, who probably work less hours since they are semi-retired. In the industry where I work employees are doing overtime on a regular badis, but not reporting it, becauseonce reported overtime needs to be paid and whoever required to pay it gets laid off or fired. Also do not forget the recent news about Asian factory workers frequently doing 2-3 shifts witout breaks.

In many companies the working hours are not becoming longer, but they are getting more intense. For example call center agents are required to take as many as 120 calls a day! Usually they are also required to perform other rasks between calls. Just a decade ago it used to be 60 phone calls a day on a busy day. It became a practice of laying off 2 peopke and replacing with one. Doubling the work load, but shortening work hours, so that employees have to work with no washroom breaks and no lunch hour. So yes, statistically speaking management has tricks to create an impression that people work and get paid for less hours, but in reality I wave observed people doing more work, longer hours and receiving less pay for it. And it is not only my observation. In my industry there was a whole bunch of lawsuite regarding unreported and unpait overtime.

Doctor Xorile

There is still such a thing as market failure, which is where government should step in also. Example: infrastructure generally doesn't get built by the free market, because it requires so much volume to be justified, and so much capital, but once it's built and the volume has grown it's a viable business. Such opportunities are everywhere, but need government backing to shorten the time frame.


What will a human being do then, just consume ? Less labour will be employed at factories, so more welath will be concentrated in the hands of company owners, because of crony capitalism they will buy the decisions of government, policies will be designed as per the interest of one group which will be commanding the position, leading towards extinction of those who can't become great consumers because they lack resources. To which industrial revolution are we talking about - the one which brings the ugliest face of capitalism into light or, the one which will actualize lead towards advancement of human civilization ? Revolutions and inventions don't always have one glorious aspect which this article brings in, there are many darker sides which are covered and Alas! we don't even talk about that. Lets be a little honest and also discuss the negative sides of this so called third industrial revolution.


Doubt it. Most consumer growth will be in the developing world. Europe is a mature, perhaps stagnant market with an ageing population. The US is growing slowly and is now reversing its years of overconsumption. China has 1billion people that are under-consuming, 500 million yet to urbanise. India and the rest of developing Asia has similar growth potential.
Manufacturing scale economies will still be huge although as this article says will be slightly less important. Cluster effects will likely be most important. Designers, manufacturers and consumers will all be together in China. That's simply where the bulk of the supply chain lives. Any shift of manufacturing to the developed world will be at the margins. If manufacturing is moving in the direction of consumers there will be an ocean of movement towards China and a small trickle to the developed world


I will not believe this 3D printing crap until they print the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Albi Dule

It will be fun. There would be no more unique products but only photocopies. We shall produce more with few workers. We shall be happier. But then I am wandering, who shall buy these products?! Probably we would have to distribute them for free, but then there is the risk that we would become "comunists"

Charel in reply to Albi Dule

The answer to who will buy can only be answered by giving everybody an income. Redistribution based on consumption, not income comes to mind. Any such income should be payable to all and not be dependent on earnings.

The system is generally called Basic Income and many national organisations are advocating it through BIEN.

I think that the future of manufacturing in this article is based on imagination and not on fact. The future is always hard to predict and the Economist is no exception when it comes to being wrong.

Albi Dule in reply to Charel

I am afraid that all this is clearly proving the irrationality of the economic system as it currently is. We produce goods to make profits not to improve our lives. Sometimes, this leads to a life improvement, but this is not the primary purposes of the economic system. We shall end up as King Midas who was able to turn into gold everything he touched, but because of this he died from hunger

b5aCjtwJEF in reply to Albi Dule

Precisely! Somebody may need to print some tools in the middle of a desert one day, but for most of us it is well unlikely. 99% of people care about how to pay their mortgages or rents, where to get money for food, how to afford transportation, daycare, healthcare costs. The author of this article seems to be not quite on the same page. He praises industrial revolution that can produce more expensive gadgets with less labour so that more people can be put in a challenging situation with no steady income or jobs and he does not want the governments to intervene to protect those peopke in any way. Well, new gadgets sure can be fun and useful, but they are not #1 thing humans need. They represent only a small part of the economy, usually fitthe budgets of wealthier individuals. Sure if we can produce more of them at lower costs they will become available to more people and this is wonderful, but it still does not answer all the economic challenges.


The two previous revolutions had a profound effect on one of the largest sectors of our society: Education. Accounting for up to 7 percent of GDP in most developed countries (according to the OECD), the education system as such hardly existed before the first industrial revolution and was established directly as a result of the societal changes stemming from that, and the following "second", revolution.

This "third" industrial revolution which seems set to overturn not only industrial production but a vast range of service sectors as well seems to be leaving education behind in a "second-revolution stage", with a rapidly falling relavite productivity and increasing irrelevence to society and the educational consumer.

My focus is mostly on the education of children, the first 10 years of education in most developed countries. Primary education is failing miserably in preparing for the needs of "third-revolution" society. The structure of the system (schools, classes, teachers, buildings) has not changed in its 150 year history, the content is increasingly irrelevant and outdated, and its aims and effects are poorly understood and, generally, free from the scrutiny of public debate.

Having tought in primary schools at various times during the last 30 years I have seen children getting smarter and better behaved. They are also, in the last decade, beginning to lose respect for and patience with the antediluvan system they are forced to endure. Schooling, as a mediator of information and skill, is seen as increasingly irrelevant and old-fashioned by pupils. Schooling as a tool for enforcing conformity and obedience is increasingly resented and poorly understood. Schooling as a means of preparing for working life is rapidly becoming a massive waste of time, something I think the current primary-school generation will remember by the time they get to the controls of society. At least I hope so.

An industrial revolution without an educational revolution may not be possible. But unlike the prior revolutions, where the education system more or less had to be invented from scratch, this time we have a deeply ingrained system staffed by some of the staunchest resistors to change that one could ever hope to find. A revolution of the education system will not happen easily or without its bloodbaths of verbiage.


I am still one of those who value manufacturing over services "let alone finance".
In fact money does not grow on trees and we do not eat services. I doubt the 3rd industrial revolution will change this. Exciting dream though, especially for a country that lost most of its manufacturing long time ago.HPMGd

Matthew Boulton

I am a huge proponent of additive fabrication and believe it will greatly improve the quality of consumer products. It is truly exciting to imagine how such technologies will eliminate the constraints of subtractive fabrication and unleash the creative potential of our society. But, as a student of history and manufacturing, I doubt that such technologies will result in a third industrial revolution or 'rescue' western manufacturing. Your reporter has offered no analysis to support these claims---merely regurgitating numerous novel examples which have already been widely reported.

Additive fabrication will drastically improve the quality of products which benefit from customization. But most of these products---medical devices, high performance auto parts, aerospace components, jewelry, high-end furniture, tailored clothing, etc---are already produced in the west and consumed by the west (actually---they are produced locally to demand---whether east or west). Thus, I suspect that the resulting impact on international trade will be minimal.

What is more, many products actually derive value from standardization. Ford's mass production was a revolution not only because it reduced the cost of purchasing an automobile---but more importantly, it reduced the cost of ownership. Standardization made it easier to obtain replacement parts for a Model T than replacement parts for a unique, hand-crafted, customized automobiles.

True---additive fabrication will allow for the rapid production of such replacement parts---but the truth is that little value is derived from the customization of a car door. As long as it opens, closes, and the window doesn't get stuck---most people are happy. The notable exceptions---F1, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti---are already manufactured in the west. While additive fabrication will certainly improve the quality of and expand the market for some high-end products, the claim of rescuing western manufacturing jobs is flawed.

Binntho in reply to Matthew Boulton

I agree with your analyzis of additive fabrication. But in defense of the article it should be pointed out that it is "digitisation of production" that may become the third industrial revolution. This involves much more than 3D printing.

There are several strands twisting together to make up the revolution that has been quietly getting under way for the last half century or so. Material physics is one of them, mostly hidden from view, but clocking up amazing developments due to advances in computing. Automatisation is another major factor whith vast potential.

The "revolution" that is surely under way is not simply "industrial", it reaches far outside what most of us thinks of as being industry. One of those is science, another finances, health care, and not least dissemination of information from the most trivial to the most mindboggling.

One of our largest economic sectors, though, is still mostly untouched by this impending revolution, to our peril: Education.

perrissimo abbas

Wow. 124 comments and TE only hit the internet a dozen hours ago.

It's good to see that the effort necessary to articulate one's viewpoint can be aroused once in a while. For that a vote of thanks to TE.

And it's good to see that a quote from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations formed the core of the comment with far the most recommendations.

Flavio Silva

How interesting is to understand that the future will focus on mass customisation. We are going back to our premises, it is the end of a time when we strongly believed the future would be Henry Ford's assembly line.
The professional of the future needs to be high skilled and focused on service, this customisation will require more from this professional who needs to understand the individual's or group's needs not manufacture a product for the whole mass.



What "Governments", are you Talking about?

The Key-Word in this Excellent-Leader, is REVOLUTION!

Peace, Love & Respect.


Yeah,it's certain that the industrial technology would be greater than ever,but it would take a long time because we couldn't even use the master's collection by Adobe themselves.

Anyway,there is no opportunity for us to prepare something in desert.

Terence Hale

The third industrial revolution. What you say is only partly true. A third digital industrial revolution is or was not a revolution as such; it’s been going on for years and feeds it’s momentum of technological development, this unlike the industrial revolution which was sudden. We should far more talk about a fourth industrial revolution this being a bio digital revolution when biotechnology combines with robotics giving an android or a synthetic organism. The only open question for economics is will these things become consumers?
Regards Terence Hale


Every company need revenues, as long as employees want salaries and capitalists want returns. If copies of designs become more widespread, piracy of them will become more widespread and undermine the earnings potential of IP products and the ability of IP companies to grow and employ more people. Resources have in this way been diverted from the software, music and film industries to the industries making the transfer and storage hardware. How many people would need a 1TB hard drive if they had had to pay the asking price for all the IP they store on it? Piracy is a great threat to the long term transfer of jobs from the sweat shop to the design desk.

I am one of those self employed artisans. My income varies wildly from month to month and I’m not entitled to unemployment or any other benefits. My situation would be unacceptable to most people, especially those trying to support a family. I also know very few people, if any, who have the kind of skills required for working this way. 3D printing might let more designers and engineers do that, but they would still need paying customers. Not people stealing their work from file sharing sites. On the margin, piracy will make it impossible for quite a few companies and individuals to utilize the full potential of this manufacturing technology.

3D printing should be a boon to the recycling industry, considering how much the paperless office reduced the amount of paper floating around...


No doubt there are big changes coming in manufacturing, but I think TE is hyperventilating on 3D printing. It might work for simple products made of one or two materials, but it's nowhere near ready for a complex product like a car or a computer, which might involve hundreds or thousands of different materials, all of which must be spatially arranged in a precise and complex configuration.

Binntho in reply to boydogtruck

This is excactly wrong - 3D printing handles complex, multi-material production better than current methods. Moving parts, electronics, housing can all be printed (and has been) in one go from complex designs. Size is another matter, but car-sized or even house-sized printers are surely possible.

Rafael Centenera

As a Neoconservative,I do not forget the most important factor that most people tend to forget with regards to technology which is SECURITY. The US/NATO/Israel Order is currently running things because it understands TECHNOLOGY RELEASE SCHEDULING.When to release the proper kind of technology to who, where,why and how.Do not forget that the US/NATO/Israel Order did not defeat the USSR and all its other rivals for nothing.The enemies' intel realised that the US/NATO/Israel Order was in possesion of some magical tech spewing magician's hat tucked away somewhere simmilar to what is described in this article.They simply realised they could not keep up and decided to play along for now.DO YOU SEE NOW?If not i will continue to clarify briefly.The US/NATO/Israel Order has possesion of very very advanced production technologies and has had them since even before the 20th century.The problem now was not creation of products.The problem at hand for the US/NATO/Israel Order this whole time was SECURITY SENSITIVE TECHNOLOGY TRICKLE DOWN LOGISTICS.And this next sentence of mine will segway into a whole new range of subjects but let me end this comment with the clarification to you that the US/NATO/Israel Order does not need the Arab oil and the chinese labor.These were merely the created economical systems put in place as the best logistical geo political/economic methods in order to create GLOBAL SECURITY by ceating a product/service for them to produce/serve. ^_^

Red Scare

Ahh yes, The Economist still has a disdain for industrial policy. How quaint.

skullz291 in reply to Red Scare

That's putting it mildly.

Half the time I think they're only a step away from quoting Objectivist literature.

In this article, in particular, they just flat out ignore that this destroys the classic "working consumer/profiting manufacturer" model.

Who's gonna buy all of this new stuff if there's no more jobs? How do you determine the price of something which is practically post-scarcity?

It's the piracy issue all over again, except in the real world with real products instead of entertainment goods.


Wow, lots to think about here. Big pros and big cons. Long post ahead.

Anyone ever heard of Bertrand Russel and his book "Progress and Poverty?" As old as that book is, its core claim is still basically true.

In that sense, The Economist seems a little too cheery about this considering it's the death knell of how modern economies work.

The sad fact is, if this happens, a huge chunk of the population will essentially have nowhere to work. Obviously, if manufacturing is on its way out, so too is a good chunk of the service industry. If you can tell a machine to build whatever you want, it isn't that hard to interface with a machine, instead of a cashier, to get that product.

Not everyone can be an engineer or a programmer or a mechanic or a robotics expert. And I don't mean that in the sense that people aren't smart enough. I mean that in this new world, you won't need more than maybe 10-15% of the population to create and maintain this stuff.

Finance is even more screwed. Throw out the PC garbage this magazine levels on their parasitic role(symbiotic a good portion of the time, but still), if this article's claim is right and you won't need large chunks of capital to start up a new business, then they're going to need to find a new con-job to keep themselves relevant (especially if government gets back on the education train, as this article recommends, and they'll have to give up their one trillion in student loans in the U.S. alone).

But the absolute worst part of this is, as The Economist and other Libertarians regularly ignore, you can't *have* a bunch of business start-ups if there aren't any consumers. Consumer demand drives business, not capital. Duh. And there's clearly an inverse relationship between how advanced technology like this gets and how many jobs there are. Which means there's an inverse relationship between how advanced these products gets and how affordable they are 90% of people!

In short, it's good that these products will be cheap, because no one's gonna have any money.

Ok, I'll stop beating around the bush now, you all know where I'm going with this.

Capitalism relies on scarcity, it's the only metric by which that system makes sense.

This kind of system makes the economy practically *post-scarcity*. So how does Capitalism survive in a system in which the market price is whatever you can get away with and most of your consumers can't work?

It doesn't as far as I can tell. Not without either the largest welfare state the world has ever seen or the worst kind of plutocratic, have and have-nots society since the Feudal Dark Ages of Europe.

Of course, all of that is optimistic given the state of the environment. Where is the energy and materials for all of this stuff going to come from? Space, hopefully. But barring that, this is all a pipe dream.

Assuming things somehow miraculously work out for us this century, raw materials, ingenuity and energy are clearly going to be the new currencies.

No kidding. Sadly, I am totally ignorant to such details.

But I would imagine that it's pretty intensive. From materials to the electricity powering all the robotics to the computer systems that make the whole thing work, this kind of system probably eats up a lot of juice.

This late in our industrial society, we need to be asking ourselves whether something like this is even possible without some miracle like cold fusion or space colonization. And petroleum isn't getting any easier to find.

Vladvale1 in reply to skullz291

Where in the article are you reading the notion that we would be living in a post-scarcity world? This is not going to be true not even in the manufacturing, not to mention services. What this is going to cause is a relative price change from manufactured goods to services, why do you assume then that the demad for work will fall?

zdlax in reply to skullz291

Fully agreed.

The only three ingredients of civilization are matter, energy and information. The loop will be closed this century.

Matter is fungible. MNT.
Energy is de-facto limitless. Space-based PV.
Information is a zero marginal cost public good. Already here, if not for the enforcers of artificial scarcity. Though I do understand the need. It's the discontinuity that exists between the information and physical goods economies, and it has not been bridged. Programmers need to eat. Food cannot be copied, pasted and torrented. Yet.

Strange math for 18th - 20th century notions of scarcity, rivalry, excludability.

skullz291 in reply to Vladvale1

I don't mean truly post-scarcity. Obviously, stuff like this will always be limited by the energy and materials needed to make the goods.

But it doesn't take much knowledge to realize that technological improvement is only a benefit to traditional capitalist systems to an extent.

While a car moving from, say, 100,000 dollars to produce to 10,000 dollars to produce (totally made up example) is a boon for everyone, especially the business, a car moving from 10,000 dollars to produce to 10 or 100 dollars to produce destroys the entire industry.

Suddenly, it becomes impossible to justify the prices you need just to keep your company afloat and the demand for the product isn't nearly high enough to match rate at which you could pump this stuff out.

This is why I mentioned Bertrand Russel, and it's also why so many farm industries are subsidized in America. Modern farming, especially for corn, is just far too efficient to justify the demand.

Even if that weren't true, just the fact that half the jobs in the world would no longer be necessary would not be good news for any economy. It would force governments and businesses to essentially either accept that it's impossible for some large chunk of their population to get a job or they'd just have to stop caring about them at all, which would make them pretty pissed off in a French Revolution kind of way.

That's the long version of what I meant. Although it was pretty simple to glean what I meant. No one else seemed confused. Do you seriously dispute the fact that the economy could not possibly be anywhere close to full-employment if it adopted a model like this? And, if you don't disagree with that, don't you see how badly high unemployment and low demand affect consumption and just basic economic function in general?

As for colonizing space, unless you live in a complete fact vacuum, most of the essential components our civilization relies on won't last us much longer than the next century.

Oil being the most obvious, but also coltan, helium, phosphorous, even clean water and probably a dozen other things that make the modern world work.

Those problems are only exacerbated by production systems like this since it only makes us more reliant on the things we're running out of.

If you dispute any of that, I'm not sure what to tell you. Very little of it is a matter of opinion.

Vladvale1 in reply to skullz291

The name of the doctrine you are defending is ludism. It is not new and have been proved wrong time and time again.
If a 100 dollars car does not cover production costs, then we are not going to see cars at 100 dollars. If, somehow, cars could cost 100 dollars then we would see (i) a lot more cars being produced and (ii) people spending the money that they now spend on 10000 dollars on something else (and probably something else that is less capital intensive than car making). So, of course I dispute your view of how the ecomy works. As for farms in the US, the subsidies exist because of lobbies. Otherwise if "efficiency was too high to justify demand", whatever that means, it would cause producers to stop investing in this sector untill prices justifies production again.
Let's make a mental experiment. Let's go back to England to the first IR and tell a peasant that two century later, less than 2 percent of the population would be employed on agriculture and even less so on the textile industry. He would certainly freak out, just like you are doing here. Now, if we would go and talk to Adam Smith or Davi Ricardo, they would know better...

Binntho in reply to skullz291

Yes, it's difficult to see where the jobs should come from. And apparently this is a no-go area for economists and presumably for The Economist: This "third" revolution may not shift the workforce to another sector, as the previous have done.

Counting revolutions is not easy, especially since these do not "revolve" but advance in an ever-growing exonential curve. Technological advances have lead to vast changes in employment, with jobs moving from acriculture to industry to services. So where next?

But I find you to be a bit too pessimistic about "post scarcity", as you yourself point out: Energy is still a scarce resource and will be for quite some time yet. Another scarce resource is time, and probably always will be. New, scarce, resources keep emerging, education being one and design skills another.

But one of the basic premises of our current economic models may well be under attack: Increased economic activity may not lead to increases in the workforce. Fortunately, population will be falling sharply by the end of the century so perhaps this is not such a bad thing after all?

Vaeliaro in reply to skullz291


This is just the most hilarious argument I've heard all year. It is the exact same argument that the Luddites made centuries ago when they turned to smashing up the first steam engines to 'protect their jobs'. Centuries later, virtually NONE of the jobs done during this era are even in existence anymore, yet unemployment is at a grand level of 8% (I am writing from the UK), far lower than it was when the Luddites began smashing machines up.

But what about the marketers, the salesmen, the researchers, the accountants, the lawyers, the psychologists, the doctors, the teachers... (I could go on). These professions will all be boosted by the additional money in the economy. In years to come, everyone will have their own accountant, psychologist, lawyer and every business will employ researchers, marketers, accountants. There was a time when having access to a Doctor or a Teacher or a Childcarer/ nanny (or even basic entertainment) was for a select few, now we see these services as practically a human right, with near universal access, even for the world's poorest. Not too many years ago in the history of the human race, the majority of the population were employed in agriculture, an industry that is now almost entirely automated. Are the majority therefore unemployed? Of course not, they have taken advantage of the levels of education on offer and trained to be professionals and parents are happy to see their children take better jobs than they had.

Many worry about the 'end point' for all of this - there must be a time when machines will do EVERYTHING, surely? This time is surely a long way off, when the majority of the world still lives in abject poverty and has serious unfulfilled needs. And even if such a time does come when machines can do EVERYTHING better than human beings, if the means of all economic activity were automated, the govt could just dole out the welfare cheques and let the economy survive on that. Despite having little to do (people always find something), such an automated society would have a massively higher standard of living than our own.

Economies grow and mature - a permanent loss of redundant jobs never hurts an economy for long because human nature is to always aspire for better lives, and better lives require economic co-operation.

skullz291 in reply to Vaeliaro

Your entire post here is all retroactive justification and ideology, none of it has anything to do with the reality of anything you're describing. Let's just go over it in order.

"It is the exact same argument that the Luddites made centuries ago when they turned to smashing up the first steam engines to 'protect their jobs' was when the Luddites began smashing machines up."

I'm not rallying against technology, it's an obvious fact that technological advancement can put people out of work and do serious disruption to the economy. No one disputes that, and recognizing that fact doesn't mean one doesn't support advancement.

And the Luddites weren't making an argument, they were *starving to death*. And I wonder if that's what people will say about you "centuries later" if we invent machines that automate your job and you revolt.

Peoples' ignorance/callousness to the Luddites is appalling.

What's funny is you say "centuries later." Yeah, did you study any of the centuries in-between? In which life expectancy dropped to below medieval standards for the average industrial worker? In which it wasn't unusual to have over 25% seasonal unemployment? In which little children worked and died in mines?

I'll bet you thought the Populists were a bunch of clueless farmers too, huh?

Open a history book, your ignorance on that topic is stunning, really.

"But what about the marketers, the salesmen, the researchers, the accountants, the lawyers,...have their own accountant, psychologist, lawyer and every business will employ researchers, marketers, accountants."

What on earth are you talking about? Is this even related to the article's claims? Or is this some pipe dream you assume that's going to happen in the fictional universe where growth continues to sustain itself the way it did in the latter half of the 20th century?

"There was a time when having access to a Doctor...practically a human right, with near universal access, even for the world's poorest."

Maybe in European Social Democracies. Not in the United States.

I'm not even sure what point it is you're trying to make.

Yes, standard of living has improved vastly due to the benefits of Industrial Capitalism. No one was arguing otherwise.

"...the majority of the population were employed in agriculture, an industry that is now almost entirely automated. "

Yes, those jobs moved to manufacturing. Now manufacturing jobs are on the decline, and people move into service. Are you noticing a trend here?

"Are the majority therefore unemployed?...happy to see their children take better jobs than they had."

No, they were uplifted by public education systems or subsidized into private ones. Don't BS it by using passive language.

Moreover, most people aren't professionals. If we're talking about the United States, most people work menial service jobs of some kind.

"Many worry about the 'end point'...a time when machines will do EVERYTHING, surely?"

It seems like you're attempting to argue in favor of technology, as if I ever advocated against it.

I never did. I just pointed out the repercussions of losing an entire base of jobs when, as far as anyone can tell, they wouldn't be replaced.

Ceteris peribus, that's a huge problem for the economy.

Comparing this to the first industrial revolution is stupid, because the switch from agricultural to industrial economies necessitated a large work force for factories.

If we shift from that to automated production and robotics, how exactly does that open up jobs?

What labor markets are opened up with that advancement? Do you have any suggestions?

Again, I'm just pointing that out. That doesn't mean I'm against the change.

"This time is surely a long way...

...govt could just dole out the welfare cheques and let the economy survive on that. "

If the majority of the economy is automated, how are people making money in order to participate in the economy? Where would the tax infrastructure to support this hypothetical welfare state come from?

"...such an automated society would have a massively higher standard of living than our own."

Duh, but it couldn't be Capitalist. Or at least not as we recognize it today. That's the point I'm trying to make.

"Economies grow and mature - a permanent loss of redundant jobs ...better lives require economic co-operation."

Standard of living and the economy are not the same thing.

The mistake here is the assertion that new tech *necessarily* creates new jobs.

They are, in themselves, huge sources of wealth, happiness and progress in standards of living. But they *do not* automatically create new jobs. That's not how job creation works. It's not that simple.

What's more, your previous comment about "machines doing everything" suggests you at least partially understand this. Job creation is based on labor needs. If new labor is not needed, jobs are not created. And new tech does not automatically mean new labor needs. In the case of this new tech, it's quite the opposite.

skullz291 in reply to Vaeliaro

I'd also like to point out that you never even addressed my point about us running out of important resources.

So you made fun of my point about space (which, if mankind wishes to avoid extinction, is an inevitable goal we'll have to reach), as if it were ridiculous, and you don't even address the main reason I brought it up. Either you didn't get the point, or your purposefully ignored it.

That means both of my "arguments" (they were just observations, mostly about hard facts) that you ridiculed you didn't even understand, let alone refute.

The only thing that's ridiculous here is pretending like this hugely efficient industry which wipes out manufacturing will magically replace the jobs it destroys. Care to tell us how that will happen?

The only thing more ridiculous is pretending like growth will continue in this century like it did in the last when we know it *can't* without either space colonization or some miracle tech like cold fusion.

Vladvale1 in reply to skullz291

Prices will go up, people will have to find ways to substitue, find more or make better use of them (and in the process tons of jobs will be created). That's all your argument amounts to. And let me add, you keep going forward and backwards from a scenario were doomsday comes because all prices will fall close to zero and another one where prices will skyrocket. You can't have it bothways...

Vaeliaro in reply to skullz291

Wow, long post to reply to but I will nonetheless.
First of all, you wonder why it's relevant for me to make a point about service professions such as marketers, doctors and lawyers and then you're asking me where people are going to find work in the future. If the means of production is automated, then they will find work in the service sector which is a long way off automation.

I take your point about things not being so easy in states that are not European welfare states, but my point was that all states are moving to a more affluent lifestyle and more state entitlements (in the long term) due to technological and economic advancement (even in the US), judging by the example of the last 50 years (Africa excepted).

You ask what has happened since the Luddites - I used the example of the Luddites as a well-known extreme example, but people have been continuing to argue ever since that any sort of efficiency in human living will result in everyone having nothing to do. The argument has been made about the steam engine, agricultural mechanisation, computers (and more) and now it is being made about manufacturing. The evidence shows that economies always adjust, though I do accept that there are always temporary problems associated with the change. Do these problems mean that we should not change? Of course not - there is more to human needs than simply work. If it wasn't for the technological changes made by previous generations, the poor of this world would have no education, healthcare (granted a problem in some countries), sanitation, entertainment, heating, etc. - all things broadly available to even those without work, because governments can now afford to provide them due to the growth in economies.

I agree that there are resource problems and climate change will present a very serious challenge which again is only likely to be sorted out by technology (at massive cost). But renewable energy is possible and will become cost effective (just look at how the cost of wind energy has dropped incredibly over the last decade) with tech advancement. I agree that not all economic growth is beneficial but on the whole it is, so we should not seek to limit it out of fear of the future. The question of space is largely dependent on whether we can sort out poverty anytime soon, as countries with relatively high poverty are the only ones with high natural population growth. Each year, population growth rates are dropping as countries become more affluent.

And a utopian society where few worked is possible in theory - paid for by taxes on the automated companies that produce everything that is consumed. It *could* be capitalist, though Marx argued that such a society would inevitably become communist. But I believe there will always be a place for humans to work in service industries, so such a scenario is probably implausible.

The main point I am trying to make is that technology has never served to put the masses out of work for anything more than short periods, and even in these periods, the unemployed are much better off than their parents were because of technology.

And for your interest, I am from a working class home, have spent more than 2 years in the past unemployed, once worked on a production line and now am a researcher and psychologist, so I do have perspective, not just an elitist.

M. Otero. in reply to skullz291

Luckily, its is not work that produces wealth, its manufacturing. More efficient manufacturing means more wealth for all with less overall work hours needed. Now if a small group of people in key positions were allowed to capture all this excess wealth we'd have a problem, but...
Yeah, we have a problem.

Vladvale1 in reply to M. Otero.

We had our luddites and now here comes the later days fisiocrats...You just have to substitute agriculture for manufacturing and voila we get a brand new (and equaly misguided) economic doutrine. Why the hell do you think that only manufacturing produces wealth? The fisiocrats, at least, had something that looked like an argument: hey, we are all going to die of hunger without agriculture! I guess now we are all supposed to be eating chinese gadgets...

M. Otero. in reply to Vladvale1

Perhaps manufacturing is not the best word. What I meant is that what gives us our security and lifestyle choices is the creation of physical stuff. Food, houses, cars, etc.

If we can produce a lot of food we could eat a lot more varied meals and feed a lot more people. That happened in the 20th century and it was known as the agricultural revolution.

If we can cheaply produce a lot of houses then everyone can have a house. Reducing the labor cost of something means we can have more of it for the same cost. That is a net win for humanity. There is less work in that area, but houses for everyone are cheaper and better.

Sadly, our current economic system seems to have caused efficiency gains to accrue at the top of the pyramid. Houses stay at the same price, factory workers are fired and someone's bank account in Switzerland grows bigger.

Saying that technology impoverishes people because of jobs going obsolete is a fallacy. Wealth concentration is what causes (relative) poverty.


There is a taste of "forget the defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, forget income concentration in US, forget unemployment, good times are back!"

Sounds like another financial bubble being inflated.

Any 3D-print maker planning a Goldman Sachs-led IPO?

Indeed Domovoy.

None of those things are likely to get any better in a world with this revolution.

While technology like this will ultimately be a boon for humanity, it's a disaster for traditional capitalism. Fewer jobs and a lesser need for investment means less consumer power which means less consumer demand which means fewer profits and so on and so on down the chain.

That's not even considering that piracy could now become a problem for conventional goods, rather than just entertainment goods like music, movies, books and games.

Why would anyone buy a car if, with their own ingenuity, they could download the specs and essentially print it out themselves for a cost only related to the energy and materials needed?

It's going to be a very strange future.



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