Author Archives: McCoy

The Downsizing of Employment Itself

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Get a Job While Work Still Exists

NOTE: This week’s entry concludes my three-part series on the promises and perils of our new technology. The first tackled possible benefits and drawbacks of automation. The second took a long view of self-driving vehicles.

The End of Work

We've been hemorrhaging jobs from the economy for a while now. Word processing software put typesetters out of work in the 80s and 90s. As I mentioned in Part 1, tractors and other farm equipment have reduced the need for farm laborers by an order of magnitude—not just by sheer numbers, but also by population percentage. Mechanized logging equipment has replaced many loggers over the years. Self-checkout machines have reduced the number of retail workers grocery stores needed. The list goes on and on.

It's hard to call all of this a bad thing. For instance, it's really nice not to have to wait in long lines in grocery stores anymore. And the service industry has been successfully absorbing a lot of displaced workers up until now.

That's swiftly changing, though, as labor-saving technology grows faster than population growth or consumer demand. How can we know whether our jobs our safe?

There are four fundamental types of work:

Routine Manual: Physical tasks that can be accomplished through consistent procedures. They include construction, transportation, manufacturing, repair. (You don't always know what's wrong with a car, but you usually have a pretty straightforward set of checklists to figure it out.) These jobs are getting hit most heavily by automation. If you're in one of these, there's a very good chance that you'll be downsized in the next couple decades. Job growth rate in these fields has already been stagnant or dropping for decades.

Routine Cognitive: Mental tasks that can be accomplished through consistent, known procedures. These include sales jobs and many other office occupations. These jobs are also at risk. Many of them have already been lost to computer automation, and as that gets more efficient these jobs will become less and less necessary. They've been stagnating or dropping at almost the same rate as routine manual tasks and will likely drop almost as fast over the next few decades.

Non-routine Manual: These jobs include personal caretaking, fire and rescue, and other tasks that involve a lot of new situations that set procedures can't handle. Jobs in this category are by far the least common of the four, and they're actually on the rise. If you're in these fields, you're likely fine, and if not, moving in isn't a bad idea if you can handle the stress of them. Unfortunately, the job growth in these fields won't replace projected job losses in the first two.

Non-routine Cognitive: Includes doctors, scientists, lawyers, managers, etcetera. This is actually the largest field of the four, and it's on the rise. But it's also the toughest to get into. You basically need a college degree to get these jobs, and we all know how expensive tuition is these days, so it's not always a rosy prospect.

We face the prospect of the probability of losing many jobs over the next few years, without anything to replace them. Having huge segments of the population unemployed isn't good for individuals or for society.

So, we’ll need to figure out something, and quickly. We can hope that a new job market appears. (Unlikely.) We can try and create new jobs for people—huge public works projects or the like. Giving people obvious busy work isn't the best solution.

Most controversially, many people are talking about a Universal Basic Income: everyone in society would receive a check for an identical amount every month. Enough to survive, but not enough for luxuries, vacations, or much of an entertainment budget. If you want those things, you've got to get a job. There are a lot of potential problems with that one, and I don't see it working anytime soon. Frankly, there isn't a clear-cut solution to the problem.

What's my personal plan? Here at the cusp of retirement, I’m going to ponder all this…by going fishing.

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Quotable

Oh, Yard Ramp Guy—Do you see that I started this week's quotation with the letter D?

“Dare to ask questions whenever you are not clarified. Never feel too wise or too educated to learn something new from someone else or others. For, you don't know it all and you will never know it all. Yes! learning is meant to be a continuous process.”

— Emeasoba George

Going Driverless

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Or: If You Don’t Like My Driving, Press One Now

In my last entry, I wrote about labor-saving technologies and their effects on our job markets. Automation tends always to cost jobs, but for the most part they also tend to produce new jobs.

We've reached a tipping point, however. As labor-saving technologies get more and more efficient, the amount of labor one person can accomplish has begun to significantly exceed the amount of labor products that they can consume. We're about to start losing a lot of jobs, and soon.

Going Driverless

Get Behind the Wheel

One of the biggest—though by no means the only—job-killing technology on its way? Self-driving cars.           

Truck drivers fulfill a common employment segment in the United States, especially now that automation has killed an alarming number factory jobs. In 2014, there were more than 1.6 million semi-truck drivers in America. There are another 800,000 delivery truck drivers out there. Now add to that more than a million Uber drivers, tens of thousands of taxi drivers, and some half a million bus drivers. Almost all of them are likely to lose their jobs to self-driving cars.

This doesn't even bring into account the ancillary jobs that will be lost. Automated fleets of self-driving Ubers will eliminate the need for most city residents to own their own cars, meaning there will simply be far fewer cars on the road. They'll also have fewer accidents. There will be fewer car dealers, fewer repair shops, and even fewer gas stations.

Those self-driving semis? Many small towns along American highways are heavily dependent on truckers to fuel their economy. When you no longer have truckers needing rest stops, hotels, and restaurants, you're going to see a lot of these small towns folding up and withering away. 

Self-driving cars are going to cost millions of jobs, but are we likely to stop them from rolling out?

Well, no. They'll make the elderly, the young, and the chronically sick mobile again. They'll drop traffic fatalities by at least an order of magnitude. They'll be much more profitable for shipping companies, which will be able to operate around the clock. Insurance costs will drop nation-wide. Driverless cars will be more environmentally friendly. The list of benefits just goes on and on.

So how likely are you to lose your job to a robot and other labor-saving technology, and what can we do to ameliorate its effects? I'll be talking about that next time.

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Quotable

Yes, Yard Ramp Guy—Egads:

“Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."

— Margaret Thatcher

The Perils of Amazing Automation

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Or: Power (Sometimes) to the People

My friend Jeff (the actual “The” Yard Ramp Guy) recently sent me a video filled with new construction machines: machines that can lay brick roads, and lay train tracks automatically, and place bridge segments from above, and plant rice faster than any human.

Even though these machines are incredible labor-saving devices, there's one major concern with all of them. They'll all likely result in lost jobs.

This is nothing new, of course. A great deal of history's inventions has resulted in lost jobs. Computers killed the typesetter. Robots have killed factory manufacturing jobs. Tractors, fertilizer, and other farming equipment are, by far, the biggest job killer.

In medieval Europe, more than 90% of workers were farmers. In 1820, 72% of Americans farmed. Today, less than two percent of Americans farm. Most of the displaced workers from these industries have ended up in service industry jobs in America.

The Ramp Rules...but not over the tech world.

Whole World in Tech's Hands?

A few factors usually counteract these job losses.

First, population growth. As populations increase, so does the economy and demand for goods and, therefore, jobs. In fact, one of the central premises of most economic plans is that population will keep increasing, thereby growing the economy.

Second, not all inventions eliminate jobs. Some actually create more jobs. This isn't always a good thing, of course. One of the most impactful job-creating inventions in all of history was the cotton gin. It created countless jobs by making cotton growing much more profitable and feasible. Unfortunately, slaves took on almost all of those jobs making American slavery that much more profitable and heinous.

That said, other job-creating inventions aren't nearly so bad. The Internet is a great example of this. Unfortunately, that's all about to change. Upcoming labor-saving technologies are reaching a point where they'll actually start costing net jobs.

More on that next time.

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Quotable

Well, Yard Ramp Guy—Figure this:

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

— Mark Twain

A Truly Grand Old Ditch

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More Locks and Funiculars

The Ramp Rules & The Ditch is Cool

A Boat on the Grand Old Ditch

Construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, also known as the C&O Canal and the Grand Old Ditch, began in 1828 and finished in 1850.

It reached a final length of 184.5 miles, extending between Cumberland, MD to Washington, DC. Coal was the primary good shipped—though businesses also shipped lumber, limestone for construction, sand, flour, salt, and much more.

The canal operated until 1924, when it was finally shut down due to competition from the railroads, along with major flood damage that year.

Interestingly, the mule-drawn barges were often operated by families that lived on them, especially in the earlier years of the canal. The families would all work together to run these barges; not surprisingly, the mothers were the main figures in running everything. They steered the boats, raised the children, and did all the housework.

The men just took care of the mules and the heavy lifting.

If you've never tried to raise children while running a house, well, let's just say I'll take the heavy lifting any day. (I've never had any illusions about Maggie being the most important part of my family.)

While it operated, though, the C&O Canal contained some of the most impressive engineering designed for a canal. To aid ships in moving uphill, the canal held 74 canal locks, or enclosures: ships sailed in, the lock closed behind them, then fill slowly with water, raising the height of the ship to the next elevation level. They also built 11 aqueducts for crossing major streams and more than 240 culverts to cross smaller ones.

In addition to this was the Paw Paw tunnel, which stretched nearly a kilometer in length, the construction of which almost bankrupted the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. They were forced to end construction early, failing to get all the way to Pittsburgh.

My favorite part of the canal, though, was the C&O Boat Elevator. It served to lower boats down past Georgetown, where traffic jams tended to build up. It operated exactly like a funicular, only for boats—lowering them 600 feet on the diagonal and 40 feet in elevation.

The downward journey was entirely powered by gravity, while water powered turbines would lift the empty boat carrying caisson back to the top. It's a big step up from the Diolkos. Another great example here of human ingenuity in action.

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Quotable

So, Yard Ramp Guy—Go have yourself a happy new year:

“Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.”

— Kahlil Gibran

Exciting Tedium

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What’s in a Name

Dull & Boring?

Oh, Calm Down

There’s a town named Boring, Oregon. Though it’s not an especially exciting place, it's not really that boring either. By most accounts, Boring is a lovely little town of 7,000 people built on an extinct lava field. Things maybe got pretty exciting when the nearby and majestic volcano Mount Hood last erupted, about 200 years ago (but that only caused some mudflows and lava domes and wasn’t a major eruption and was, therefore, probably not very exciting).

I like that they didn’t name the place Less Exciting. “Go there! Take advantage of myriad hiking trails and other outdoor activities. Have a not boring time!”

There’s another place named Dull, Scotland. This is a tiny village of less than a hundred people—a pretty little hamlet, with but a single street. Oh, and this breaking news item: it has old grave stones dating back as far as the 7th century.

There's a farming community named Bland, Australia. With a population of some 6,000 residents, it covers a much larger area than the other two. Bland used to be a gold mining region, though these days it's largely a farming community. Tony Lord is the mayor of Bland.

A few years ago, a Scottish cyclist from Dull—on vacation in the States—passed through Boring. She had a fairly terrific eureka moment, and in 2012 the two towns became sister cities.

Not to miss out on all the excitement, the following year Bland joined the sister cityhood as well. Together, they’re known—self-mockingly and otherwise—as the Trinity of Tedium.

Rules and regulations dictate that the trio are not officially sister cities, due to the size differences between the three, but they definitely live up to the spirit of the Sister City.

Sister Cities: dreamed up after the Second World War, they were intended to help repair the international bonds of friendship torn by the war. The notion quickly spread in popularity, and sister cities (also called Twin Towns) are linked around the world. Residents exchange gifts, organize joint celebrations, and foster exchange students with one another.

Not on the register of Sister Cities: Inacessible Island. A dormant volcano with an area of 5.4 miles, it sits in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Oh, and its human population is pretty much zero. Because, you know, it’s hard to reach.

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Quotable

So, Yard Ramp Guy—Here you go:

“Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! The root of error.”

— Fulke Geville