{"id":272,"date":"2020-10-14T00:14:26","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T00:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=272"},"modified":"2020-10-18T23:53:49","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T23:53:49","slug":"robotic-freedom","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/robotic-freedom","title":{"rendered":"Robotic Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[Part 3 of the Robotic Nation<\/a> series]
by Marshall Brain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have read the articles entitled Robotic Nation<\/a>, Robots in 2015<\/a> and Manna<\/a>, and if you have looked at the many robotic news items on this page<\/a>, then you may be coming to a new realization. We are standing right now on the threshold of the robotic era. Once robots start arriving in the job market in significant numbers — something that we will see happening within a decade or so — they have the potential to dramatically change the world economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least 50 percent of the people working in the American job market today are working in people-powered industries like fast-food restaurants (McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc.), retail stores (Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target, Toys “R” Us, etc.), delivery companies (the post office, Fedex, UPS, etc.), construction, airlines, amusement parks, hotels and motels, warehousing and so on. All of these jobs are prime targets for robotic replacement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2003 we are seeing the deployment of automated checkout lines in stores all across the U.S. This is the leading edge of the robotic revolution in retail. By 2015<\/a> we will start to see voice-recognizing robots helping customers in these stores, inventory-shelving robots putting the products out, cleaning robots sweeping the floors and the parking lots, cart robots bringing the shopping carts back into the store…. Robots will be moving in to make the completely automated retail store a reality in a 2020 time frame. [See Evidence<\/a> for details.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies like Wal-mart, K-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, BJ’s, Sam’s Club, Toys R Us, Sears, J.C. Penny’s, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Best Buy, Circuit City, Office Max, Staples, Office Depot, Kroger’s, Winn-Dixie, Pet Depot, etc. will all switch to robots at approximately the same time. They will dump 10 million or so workers onto the unemployment rolls at approximately the same time. Other industries like fast food, construction, transportation, warehousing, etc. will be automating as well, dumping millions more. The unemployment rate during this period of time could be remarkable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if you assume that the economy reconfigures rapidly and creates new jobs for all of these displaced workers, it will not do so instantaneously. There will be a year or more of turmoil for each employee as the economy invents the job and the employee retrains to fill it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More likely, the economy will not be able to absorb all of these displaced workers. The economy has been creating millions and millions of low-paying, no-benefits, service-sector jobs for the last 40 years. These jobs are perfect for robotic replacement<\/a>. There is no reason to expect that the economy will suddenly figure out a way to create high-paying, exciting, fulfilling jobs for these tens of millions of people displaced by robots. If the economy could do that, it would be doing it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jobless Recovery
<\/strong>
The “Jobless Recovery” that we are currently experiencing in the U.S. is big news. See for example The Mystery of the ‘jobless recovery’<\/a>:

“Consider these facts: Employment growth at the moment is the lowest for any recovery since the government started keeping such statistics in 1939. The labor force shrank in July as discouraged workers stopped seeking employment. The number of people employed has fallen by more than 1 million since the “recovery” began in the fall of 2001.” [ref<\/a>]

The Washington Post notes that we are now witnessing, “the longest hiring downturn since the Depression”. [ref<\/a>] The article also notes, “The vast majority of the 2.7 million job losses since the 2001 recession began were the result of permanent changes in the U.S. economy and are not coming back.”

There is no mystery — the jobless recovery is exactly what you would expect in a robotic nation. When automation and robots eliminate jobs, they are gone for good. The economy then has to invent new jobs. But it is much harder to do that now because robots can quickly fill the new jobs that get invented. See the FAQ<\/a> for additional information.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In other words, The first wave of robots has the potential to make things very uncomfortable for the American economy. In the 2020 time frame, the rate of economic change will be startling. At the very least it will be a time of intense flux and employment turmoil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question that I would like to pose in this article is a simple one: How are we, as a society, going to respond to this robotic revolution? If we handle it properly, the arrival of robots could be an incredibly beneficial event for human beings. If we do not handle it properly, we will end up with millions of unemployed people and a severe economic downturn that will benefit no one. Can we modify the American economy now to prevent this downturn? Are there things that we can do today to smooth the transition to the robotic nation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Concentration of Wealth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you look at our economy as a whole, you can understand why robots have the potential to be so disruptive if we do not handle their arrival properly. Here is a highly simplified view of a typical business, be it a fast food restaurant, a retail chain, etc.:
This diagram shows that a corporation takes in raw materials from suppliers on the left. Using its own assets (factories, stores, offices, equipment, etc.), its employees and its executives, the corporation produces a product or a service. The corporation sells its products and services either to retail customers (people), or it acts as a supplier for other corporations. It then pays its employees for the work they do and sends the profit to the shareholders.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing that you notice in this diagram is how important people are to this system. People are where all the money comes from and where all the money goes. When money comes into a corporation, its original source (even if it has passed through several corporations along the way) is a person who spent money. When money leaves a corporation, eventually it pays a person in the form of a wage, a dividend or a benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prefer the Kindle?”Robotic Freedom” is now available on the Kindle<\/a>!<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One thing that has been happening in the economy for quite some time is a concentration of wealth<\/a>. To put the concentration of wealth into perspective, you can look at a report like the Census Bureau’s Money Income in the United States<\/em>. [ref<\/a>] This report shows that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n