The argument: “job loss” due to automation is never an argument. Over the course of human history, people gradually began to make or automate tasks more efficiently. This gives two results:
1. People have more time for other things, so that work can be used for more useful tasks. (increase wealth)
2. Some people are laid off and temporary unemployment may develop for people who have inflexible training or who find it difficult to anticipate the changing labor market. This is a temporary stage that is always resolved with time.
Trying to carry on with work that can be automated is absolutely absurd. With this argument, washing machines should also be banned, because many jobs were lost because of them.
The really difficult thing about this is that in the school system, people are inflexibly prepared for their work life. There is almost no profession that you can continue to do the same way until you retire. However, young people are not ready for this. People are taught a profession, without saying that the profession may disappear or be marginalized. Or that in the future you will need a completely different set of skills for the profession. And it’s not just about automation.
I expect we will see a significant reduction in two jobs, health care and truck driver. Attention because the older generation is going to shrink dramatically at some point, and truck drivers because I expect them to become self-driving. I’ve spoken to both health care workers and truck drivers about whether they can expect easy, long-term jobs. They both do not think at all that this will ever happen. So people obviously learn that their profession is forever, and that never happens. So I prefer people to be trained in such a way that they are aware of the timeliness of the profession, and you have to keep evolving.
People never become redundant, as skill sets do.