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Automation to cause 40% unemployment by 2030 leading to a housing crash?
Topic Started: 22 Dec 2016, 12:32 PM (3,621 Views)
skamy
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BuildSydney
22 Dec 2016, 12:32 PM
Hey everyone, seasons greetings! Christmas has come way too quickly once again.

I wanted your thoughts on technology making peoples occupations redundant over the next 15 years.

What will happen when these people lose their jobs in the next 10-20 years and are still stuck with 30-year loans which they would have most likely redrew from?

It is estimated that 40% of jobs will be taken over by automation which is ~5 million jobs in Australia in just 15 years time. I wrote about it in my blog https://www.buildsydney.com/technological-unemployment-cause-housing-crash/ But I wanted the communities thoughts on it.

I would think it is actually quite scary when someone purchases a property at the peak of the market, especially when their occupation could be overtaken by AI in a decades time.

What the forums consensus on this? thanks, I look forward to hearing some interesting responses.
They have been saying this since I was a child and that is a long long time ago.

There were few combine harvesters, no robots, no computers etc etc back then. Yet here we are with more jobs than ever after a phenomenal loss of ghorrible jobs. Humans will keep themselves busy - for every factory and farming job lost there was a new IT job or a new service job with better pay and better conditions. Automation has enriched the whole world, why would that process change now? Millions of people in China and India etc have been pulled out of the starvation level and in the west people live in luxury with central heating, air conditioning, TVs and cars etc etc which were considered luxury items when I was a child.


IMHO you choose a way to look at the future, you can invest with hope in a great future for our cities and share in the gains of previous generations or you can run scared with the doomsters paranoid about a future which is very very unlikely to happen.

I took the first viewpoint as I was determined to rise out of the poverty of my youth.

Dump the doomsters - they have nothing but misery to offer young people, look at all the people on here moaning and groaning because they missed out on the price recoveries in Sydney and Melbourne.
BuildSydney
22 Dec 2016, 12:55 PM
@popey TBH those are the exact responses I want, we are at a tipping point where capitalism will favour profits above all else and this will be the first time in history where the average person will really be hit hard by technology because they are coming for the jobs.

@Torjan I agree this occurred in the past however the difference this time is technology is on another level. Now machines can program themselves with machine learning meaning even creative jobs could be in danger. This will be very apparent over the next decade as the average computing power passes that of an average human brain.
Tell me which algorithms you think can facilitate any kind of advanced machine learning? Not neural networks or induction nor genetic algorithms nor information technology even the statistical modelling methods such as PCA and ITTFA are only better than humans because they can go through so much data. Humans are much better still at pattern recognition. Like Sydneyite this is a topic I know something about and IMHO it is a long way off.

Even the philosophers do not understand how humans learn how are we to build machines to do a job we cannot fully define ourselves?
BuildSydney
22 Dec 2016, 01:53 PM
Yeah I have observed myself what has happened in the rustbelt with the manufacturing jobs gone and some towns practically abandoned.

My question then is will there be enough new jobs created to compensate. The participation rate is what is worrying about America.

Also keep in mind the rust belt suffered the heaviest during the financial crisis and the fact that there were no jobs in the area due to outsourcing in china amplified the problem.

Remember this automation of current jobs will occur on top of outsourcing to other more cost efficient nations.

I understand this will be a shared problem worldwide, but technology will also make creating houses cheaper through 3d printed houses and that will impact the market as build costs have become ridiculous particularly in Sydney.

Just how much unemployment can a city like Sydney and the other major capitals absorb before prices are affected.
Look at this graph
Posted Image


How could any new technology of today wipe out as many jobs as have been wiped out since the 1950s.
Farm and construction used to empty at least 10 times more people, then we had the typists pools, the photocopy ladies, the street sweepers, the massive number of factory jobs that were there before automation.

Yet Australian house prices carry on rising - I think gambling your future on this long term trend going backwards is utter madness. I cannot understand why some young people fall for this doomster nonsense.

I am sure if you look around you will find plenty of people who shared these views in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and the new millennium, you will find them renting in outer woop woop complaining still about how the world cheated them and some even believe they will still be vindicated. Utter madness.
Guest
22 Dec 2016, 05:17 PM
The reality is, we dont really know how much it will ultimately effect things. But the rapid advancements show things we once thought were safe ,are now not so safe.

The idea that these jobs will somehow be replaced elsewhere is rather unrealistic. The whole idea is to replace the inefficient, more costly human.

What can I say, the horse and the motorcar, but where we are the horse trying to compete against the machine.



Without a human earning a wage the whole system collapses. They can automate cars etc all they like but without humans with the wherewithal to use them nobody wins.

We will never return to the days of massive unemployment never - it is a doomster fantasy - if this was allowed to happen I would rather be in my own home with a good buffer than liable for next weeks rent and no wages coming in.

House prices do fall occasionally and sometimes they fall hard eg Dublin but prices in big global cities always rebound in the long term. You will get a front row seat to watch the markets as they recover from the GFC.
Edited by skamy, 23 Dec 2016, 12:07 PM.
Definition of a doom and gloomer from 1993
The last camp is made up of the doom-and-gloomers. Their slogan is "it's the end of the world as we know it". Right now they are convinced that debt is the evil responsible for all our economic woes and must be eliminated at all cost. Many doom-and-gloomers believe that unprecedented debt levels mean that we are on the precipice of a worse crisis than the Great Depression. The doom-and-gloomers hang on the latest series of negative economic data.
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Rastus2
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skamy
23 Dec 2016, 11:40 AM

We will never return to the days of massive unemployment never - it is a doomster fantasy

"Never" is a very long time to make such a call.

I have no doubt that no government ever wants to be in power when massive unemployment happens... but shit happens, and no government can prevent every possible cause of massive unemployment forever.
Quote:
 


How could any new technology of today wipe out as many jobs as have been wiped out since the 1950s.


The same claims of previous technologies being unique events that caused large numbers jobs to be not required were being made when the 1st photocopier and computer's were being proposed as possible reasons for needing less staff in the future.
Edited by Rastus2, 23 Dec 2016, 12:47 PM.
Shadow - Defrauded his Bank ? 2015 I have 9 different loans and my bank had no idea which ones were personal and which were investment. They had half of them classed incorrectly. When this change came in they asked me to tell them if any personal loans were incorrectly classed as investment, which I did, and they switched them to personal for the lower rate. They also had a couple of investment loans incorrectly classed as personal. They didn't ask me about those. So they stay on the lower rate too. Worked out pretty well. :)
Shadow - 2008 Sydney Median House Price 1.25M by 2014-2015

Shadow : I think this boom has already begun in several cities. My prediction :
Peak of boom: 2014-2015. Sydney Median Price: $1,250,000 Bottom of bust: 2017-2018. Sydney Median Price: $1,100,000

Shadow's Original 2010 House Boom and Crash prediction http://s836.photobucket.com/user/rastus22/media/shady-orig-2010-chart.png.html?sort=3&o=0

Shadow's attempt to edit his 2010 chart in 2015 and replace it with one that does not show a crash in 2013 http://s836.photobucket.com/user/rastus22/media/Screen%20Shot%202015-06-06%20at%207.12.52%20pm_1.png.html
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Trollie
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Rastus2
23 Dec 2016, 11:26 AM
I, for one, don't see all jobs disappearing through automation over the next 10 years... I do, however, see a hell of a lot, and even more over the next 15.

For any job that is repetitive, formulaic, and predictable, computers have an edge of speed and less fatigue/maintenance/OH&S/upkeep.

If you consider that a minority of the jobs that are being done these days, then fine... I suspect that while many jobs have complex aspects, the period of chaos/unpredictability in any of those jobs if a very minor part of that working day.... a human can manage the unpredictability for multiple automated tasks... that is what progress has already given us.

One person can oversee a sea of data being managed by a pool of computers, with the chaotic/unpredictable data elements being thrown into a "human" bin for them to manage... the same thing can happen with tasks.


Lets just look at driver less cars:

It is early days... however I can see them being given special treatment (possibly allowed into bus/taxi lanes) and having a major impact on how we work and live.
You seem to both acknowledge and dismiss self driving cars at the same time... face it, even if 20% of the cars on the road become self driving, it will greatly alter our world, and the workforce. A pool of self driving cars that are running, say, 20 hours a day and have a well managed control system would make a hell of a dent in the taix/uber workforce, and, to be frank, would reduce the desire for many people to drive themselves.

Humans are better than robots when system failure happens... yup... That same argument was used during the industrial revolution to claim that factories should not introduce the heavy machines... however progress has seen that if it's faster, cheaper, and safer to go with a robot, it will be seriously considered, and progressed. The system failures still happen, but progress marches on.

The major weakness I see is systemwide vulnerabilities... efficiencies collapse when the brains or neural network is compromised, and they will be seriously tested with accidents and intentional sabotage. Wish I had perused an early interest into hacking systems when I was young... very good money in being a White hat these days, and you get to sleep nights not worrying about being arrested.



I agree with most of this, however it's surprising just how unpredictable some jobs are. I've seen it before where boffins will look at a job and proclaim it's easy to automate, but really it's a classic case of dunning kruger. The reality is it's got a lot of subtleties that a person on the job allows for leaving a robot floundering.
popey
22 Dec 2016, 08:46 PM
you're that old? No wonder your skills are no longer relevant, my condolences...<br />no, I don't remember, wasn't born yet... r u sure computers are supposed to take over jobs in the 80s? or are you just making things up?
<br />
My apologies, you're just wet behind the ears.
Edited by Trollie, 23 Dec 2016, 06:31 PM.
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Rastus2
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Trollie
23 Dec 2016, 06:30 PM
I agree with most of this, however it's surprising just how unpredictable some jobs are. I've seen it before where boffins will look at a job and proclaim it's easy to automate, but really it's a classic case of dunning kruger. The reality is it's got a lot of subtleties that a person on the job allows for leaving a robot floundering.


agreed... the jobs that seem the easiest to automate are only "easy" because they are not well understood.

As for dunning kruger effect.. I would have thought the people that suffer that are often the people who do menial, easily mechanized/automated tasks, and have no idea how simple that would be... we have a lot of them around, often throwing up "Complex" tasks that prevent any automation... most of which have been intentionally made complex to justify their "complex" job.

Robots would flounder at doing most of the scope of many jobs... however they could do a large part of many jobs... when 80% of a human's job is done by a robot, and the remaining 20% which is too complex for a robot is left for the human... they can take on 4 other "complex" parts of other worker's jobs and make them redundant.



Shadow - Defrauded his Bank ? 2015 I have 9 different loans and my bank had no idea which ones were personal and which were investment. They had half of them classed incorrectly. When this change came in they asked me to tell them if any personal loans were incorrectly classed as investment, which I did, and they switched them to personal for the lower rate. They also had a couple of investment loans incorrectly classed as personal. They didn't ask me about those. So they stay on the lower rate too. Worked out pretty well. :)
Shadow - 2008 Sydney Median House Price 1.25M by 2014-2015

Shadow : I think this boom has already begun in several cities. My prediction :
Peak of boom: 2014-2015. Sydney Median Price: $1,250,000 Bottom of bust: 2017-2018. Sydney Median Price: $1,100,000

Shadow's Original 2010 House Boom and Crash prediction http://s836.photobucket.com/user/rastus22/media/shady-orig-2010-chart.png.html?sort=3&o=0

Shadow's attempt to edit his 2010 chart in 2015 and replace it with one that does not show a crash in 2013 http://s836.photobucket.com/user/rastus22/media/Screen%20Shot%202015-06-06%20at%207.12.52%20pm_1.png.html
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Trollie
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Rastus2
23 Dec 2016, 09:29 PM
Robots would flounder at doing most of the scope of many jobs... however they could do a large part of many jobs... when 80% of a human's job is done by a robot, and the remaining 20% which is too complex for a robot is left for the human... they can take on 4 other "complex" parts of other worker's jobs and make them redundant.


Only works on a large enough scale to pay back.
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herbie
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I desires an automation wot can:

* Chat ta me banks 'n tell 'em I want 'n reckons I deserves a higher interest rate on me bank deposits wif 'em

* Manage me rental properties cost effectively for me without no involvement from me

* Come 'round 'n diagnose this sack of shit computer 'n tell me whether it's a sack of shit 'cause me NBN connection is crap, or I not got enough RAM or tha copper inta me house is flaky or it's a software problem (f*** Bill Gates 'n Windows 10 ... :) ) or sumthin' else - Then FIX it

* Pull tha occasional rotten fang out of me head cheap plus remove tha odd cyst 'n bit a skin cancer even in tha future maybe

* Cook some tucker for me dear ole ma 'n pa 'n delivers it to 'em - CHEAP! (plus do tha washin' up after they've et)

* Do tha mowin' 'round me joint 'n tha edges 'n wot not plus selectively poison/dig out tha shit weeds in me lawn

* Come 'round 'n fix tha rusted out gutters in me house - Plus just generally do housin' renos 'n improvements - Including chattin' ta various councils 'bout same 'n drawin' up any 'n all plans 'n gettin' approvals 'n wot not

* Keep an eye on every idiot change every idiot gubmint makes ta anything/everthing (includin' super) 'n just automatically adjust me finances ta me best advantage accordingly - Bearing in mind both my needs 'n aspirations 'n those re me future heirs

* Oh plus quite a few other things - Includin' keep all tha records required for doin' me three tax returns annually 'n automatically compile 'em 'n send 'em off ta tha ATO 'n send 'em off tha money when tha bills come back 'n wot not

But I don't want ta start soundin' like I'm hopin' for/expectin' TOO much? - So's I'll leaves it at that for now maybe (but if tha cnt could do me Chrissy shoppin' too, that just could be handy) - Like just sayin' like ... :)

So if anyone knows where I can sign up for one a them automations for a grand or less, lets me knows - 'Cause tha money's just positively burning a hole in me pocket ... :)

'Specially if a portion of it'll be tax deductible! - LOL
Edited by herbie, 23 Dec 2016, 11:58 PM.
A Professional Demographer to an amateur demographer: "negative natural increase will never outweigh the positive net migration"
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skamy
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Rastus2
23 Dec 2016, 12:45 PM

"Never" is a very long time to make such a call.

I have no doubt that no government ever wants to be in power when massive unemployment happens... but shit happens, and no government can prevent every possible cause of massive unemployment forever.



The same claims of previous technologies being unique events that caused large numbers jobs to be not required were being made when the 1st photocopier and computer's were being proposed as possible reasons for needing less staff in the future.
There are only two things that money can be spent on - the earths resources and human labour, it is in no-one's interest to have people not providing labour. Rich people will always find something to pay people to do for them - always.

People get caught up in the complexities of economics and forget the basics - I think in your heart you agree with me that it is not good to create fear in young people over very very unlikely events. We have all seen how costly this can prove to be - Sydney house prices may at some stage take a dip for a few years but over the long term the far more likely scenario is an average price gain of 9% a year.
Definition of a doom and gloomer from 1993
The last camp is made up of the doom-and-gloomers. Their slogan is "it's the end of the world as we know it". Right now they are convinced that debt is the evil responsible for all our economic woes and must be eliminated at all cost. Many doom-and-gloomers believe that unprecedented debt levels mean that we are on the precipice of a worse crisis than the Great Depression. The doom-and-gloomers hang on the latest series of negative economic data.
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Jimbo
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skamy
24 Dec 2016, 12:37 AM
There are only two things that money can be spent on - the earths resources and human labour.
But when that human labour is replaced?

it will be.

What happens then?
Edited by Jimbo, 24 Dec 2016, 08:23 AM.
Matthew, 30 Jan 2016, 09:21 AM Your simplistic view is so flawed it is not worth debating. The current oversupply will be swallowed in 12 months. By the time dumb shits like you realise this prices will already be :?: rising.
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herbie
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Jimbo
24 Dec 2016, 06:54 AM
But when that human labour is replaced?

it will be.

What happens then?
I'd NEVER buy in Perth if that's ya vision for tha future Jimbo.

As one day WA's mineral resources will run out - Just maybe right about tha time all it's human resources are made redundant by technology?

'N at that point Perth will obviously make tha likes of Detroit look like some sorta thriving metropolis of human activity 'n industry.

So if that's ya vision for tha future, why tha f*** would ya ever even for a mo, consider buyin' in an obviously futuristically totally 'n inevitably irretrievably doomed shithole like Perth?

Wot tha f*** are ya thinking wantin' ta buy THERE bloke! ... :)
Edited by herbie, 24 Dec 2016, 09:27 AM.
A Professional Demographer to an amateur demographer: "negative natural increase will never outweigh the positive net migration"
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Rastus2
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Trollie
23 Dec 2016, 09:40 PM
Only works on a large enough scale to pay back.
Yes, however that does not mean the tech must have a large factory environment to be useful.

Which is why things like the fax machine and PC worked on a large scale, but operated in a small office environment.

skamy
24 Dec 2016, 12:37 AM
There are only two things that money can be spent on - the earths resources and human labour, it is in no-one's interest to have people not providing labour. Rich people will always find something to pay people to do for them - always.

People get caught up in the complexities of economics and forget the basics - I think in your heart you agree with me that it is not good to create fear in young people over very very unlikely events. We have all seen how costly this can prove to be - Sydney house prices may at some stage take a dip for a few years but over the long term the far more likely scenario is an average price gain of 9% a year.
Quote:
 
There are only two things that money can be spent on - the earths resources and human labour,

So what ?

Quote:
 
Rich people will always find something to pay people to do for them - always.

Once again.. so what.

Across the globe, anything up to 60% unemployment exists (80% if you wish to include Zimbabwe (2008).... if your claim covered all people, it would not be so.

Just because it is unwise to have large numbers of people unemployed, does not magically make it not happen in the world... it has not in the past, and it will not in the future. As an overall situation most people agree, near full employment is a good social policy, as a reality, individuals (and companies) strive to minimize their costs of production and make decisions that often cut rather than protect jobs.

Without mechanized farming, mining, and factories, one could imagine how many more people would be required to create/mine the products we currently do...


The basics are not hard to forget. History has shown us that 100 people's work can be leveraged through tech to greatly reduce that number.... luckily, new jobs have been created to offset some of that, however I would not expect that to continue forever.

Douglas Adams mocked it best when all of the phone hygienists and other pointless professions were put on a space ship and sent out to a new colony, in order to get rid of them.
Edited by Rastus2, 24 Dec 2016, 09:37 AM.
Shadow - Defrauded his Bank ? 2015 I have 9 different loans and my bank had no idea which ones were personal and which were investment. They had half of them classed incorrectly. When this change came in they asked me to tell them if any personal loans were incorrectly classed as investment, which I did, and they switched them to personal for the lower rate. They also had a couple of investment loans incorrectly classed as personal. They didn't ask me about those. So they stay on the lower rate too. Worked out pretty well. :)
Shadow - 2008 Sydney Median House Price 1.25M by 2014-2015

Shadow : I think this boom has already begun in several cities. My prediction :
Peak of boom: 2014-2015. Sydney Median Price: $1,250,000 Bottom of bust: 2017-2018. Sydney Median Price: $1,100,000

Shadow's Original 2010 House Boom and Crash prediction http://s836.photobucket.com/user/rastus22/media/shady-orig-2010-chart.png.html?sort=3&o=0

Shadow's attempt to edit his 2010 chart in 2015 and replace it with one that does not show a crash in 2013 http://s836.photobucket.com/user/rastus22/media/Screen%20Shot%202015-06-06%20at%207.12.52%20pm_1.png.html
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