Android app + machine that mixes drinks. As Paul Krugman notes in his “futurism article“, most things that symbolic analysts do can and will be automated. Add to that category (unsurprisingly) repetitive remedial tasks. This, of course, reduces the marginal product of bartenders to zero for people who eschew witty banter and simply want a drink. On the plus side, you would never have to ask a bartender if he knows how to make a particular drink (I’m not creative with drinks…).
However here is a developing point; In any society, people should be able to dream up jobs for other people to do (for example, at one point in history, ironing newspapers was someone’s job). In reality, that may require some changing mores about what is considered paid work. The second part of this point is that I think as specific human interactions become more rare, they become more premium, that is, the marginal product of simply being human and having a particular skill rises (and if economics is any guide, extremely rapidly). That doesn’t bode well for the quantity of jobs, but it does for the quality of reproduction.
Keep in mind, however, that up to this point society has seen it fit to heavily subsidize areas of the economy which have already suffered from this phenomenon (arts, music, farming).
P.S. I think that the future will see the rise of complementary currencies — money with different mechanics than legal tender — which will facilitate this type of human interaction. I think a lot of economists overlook this possibility in their futurist extrapolations. Many try and shoehorn the current rules into their interpretations…but I think that kind of brushes aside fundamental concept in economics: incentives.
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Monday ~ November 21st, 2011 at 9:56 am
Curt Doolittle
Yes.. Although lets think about why people ‘buy’ in a bar. Bartenders orchestrate an excuse for social interactions. People do not want alcohol. Alcohol is a way to pay for a nice social environment.
People pay for social contact in public places, and they pay for spatial sovereignty at home — all so they can be in control of their social environment. And while it’s expensive to be in control. that control lets them preserve their belief in their own social signals that have been acquired through purchases of goods, and by imitation of people within their local class and career niche.
Many immigrants still get their signaling the old fashioned way: close friends and family with gentle conversation, while sharing food and walking around town. But it’s only economically viable for a generation before one must make one’s signal system out of a mobile and highly specialized peer group instead of family alone or family and those with identical backgrounds.
And, isn’t the most common luxury we pay for today ‘attention’ from others? Aren’t most of us so irrelevant to those around us that we must pay for attention from service staff? And isn’t that alienation why mores, ethics and manners break down? And aren’t mores, ethics and manners just the informal codification of property rights?
Marx was right that capitalism was alienating. But the upper classes can buy social contact with their wealth.
Never extrapolate a curve into the future without also wondering about it’s equilibrating effects elsewhere. We are tribal animals. Packs of hairless ape-wolves. And people are only interested in technology for its novelty, and it’s signaling properties. In the end we want human attention.
Monday ~ November 21st, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Craig
Nine parts Bombay or Beefeater gin, room temperature.
Two parts Noilly Prat vermouth, chilled.
Shake GENTLY over lots of ice for thirty seconds.
Strain into a cocktail glass.
Pick one Ybarra lemon-stuffed olive from the jar, allowing a single drop of olive brine to drop from the olive into the cocktail before dropping the olive in.
The procedure, after all, is nothing special. Granted, it took me fifteen years or so to work out the details…but now that it’s done, why couldn’t a robot handle the grunt work?