"Automation is stealing jobs!" "Thousands left unemployed after being replaced by bots!" "Businesses leaving hundreds unemployed!" What's going on with automation? Isn't it awful how many people are being unemployed?
Now although this may not be the typical sustainability content that you'd expect, automation and the workforce is something that I am passionate about and do believe is worth learning about. After researching a lot about automation and it's impact on businesses, even creating an ebook and multiple articles on it for my internship, I've been able to see past a lot of these headlines that try and make us fear the impending automation revolution. I've given it lots of thought on what is actually happening with automation and how it relates to our changing world.
The essay below is from an assignment in my Business Ethics class. I think that it's really important to understand what automation means and what we should do about it. Our understanding affects our voting on official as well as the businesses we shop at. Therefore, although this topic isn't directly related to sustainability and the earth in the way we may think, business is a large factor in sustainability and there are many ties to how employment and sustainability intertwine.
If you're interested in robots, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), or Artificial Intelligence (AI) or what jobs are going to look like in the future, below is some of my insight. I'm by no means an expert and you very well may have different thoughts on the subject but below is my evaluation on what should we ethically do as jobs are lost to innovation and trade as of Spring 2019.
Businesses are a large part of our society. They provide people with the goods that they could otherwise not produce by themselves. Since trade and business has been around, there has been competition in order to provide the best good. Businesses do so by innovating new products and finding better ways to deliver value at a lower cost. Customers are becoming more and more selective with the businesses that they shop from and the value that they desire, so in response businesses are evermore becoming more innovative in order to remain competitive. With the rise of technology, this innovation leads to jobs previously done by human workers being replaced by machines and more recently by technology like artificial intelligence. When these jobs are replaced, we are torn by feeling bad for the workers who will be losing their jobs but also on the other side benefit from faster production times and lower costs. Despite many people’s efforts to save these jobs for people, the most ethical thing to do in this situation is let innovation take over and instead create other jobs for these people that are equally meaningful and impactful.
Jobs are constantly taken from people because of innovation. Positions are constantly being recreated or eliminated due to the changing needs of businesses. Human workers are being replaced by full-service kiosks in food chains such as McDonalds. Checkout cashiers are being replaced by scanners shoppers can use as they shop. Many people protest these types of replacements, especially within the service sectors, because it is taking away jobs from people. Many people believe that this would bring up unemployment rates and these people would have to fight with others for jobs that have more requirements to them. This simply isn’t the case.
Technology has made changes within the workforce many times in the past and it will continue to be the case. Byron Reese reminds us that “technology has progressed nonstop for 250 years, and in the U.S. unemployment has stayed between 5 to 10 percent for almost all that time, even when radical new technologies like steam power and electricity came on the scene.” Throughout history each of these new technologies has radically changed efficiency in businesses, costs for both businesses and consumers, and the jobs that made up the workforce.
Business has adapted to these changes in a way that also benefits human workers. For example, as Reese recounts when the ATM machine was invented many people thought that bank tellers would become irrelevant. However, this was instead the opposite. ATM machines allowed for the cost for banks to decrease dramatically, allowing them to hire more bank tellers, while allowing bank tellers to do more meaningful work (Reese). Despite finding past examples of innovation and how jobs were created in spite of these changes, some people will still argue that the changes in technology are only greater today and that it will cause greater ripples into the workforce. Even, if this was true it does not mean that we should work on protecting these jobs so that unemployment can stay down.
In order to keep these jobs available, we would either have to stifle innovation or give companies a subsidy in order to keep the existing employees. For example, say the government gave a subsidy to Blockbusters so that they could remain in the marketplace against Netflix. By having this subsidy Blockbusters would be able to continue to operate as a business despite the decline in customers and would still be able to keep its workforce. At its peak in 2004, Blockbusters employed 58,500 people (“Blockbusters Inc.: Form 10-K"). Without the subsidy all of these jobs are lost and the people who worked them will find themselves unemployed. On the surface a subsidy sounds like a good solution to allow for these 58,500 people to maintain a job.
However, the large fault with this idea of using a subsidy is that these methods could only be done through government coercion. In order to collect this money to use for the subsidy, the government would force other people and companies to pay taxes so that the government could fund the subsidies for the struggling companies. People may think that this extraction of money is justified because of the jobs that would be saved.
This is consequentialist thinking and there is no way of knowing that the money would have went somewhere equally important and that the ends justify the means. This type of thinking is not ethical and is not a valid argument. For example, take two different competing companies- Company A and Company B. Say Company A starts to innovate and creates a new product that Company B is unable to replicate. In order to remain profitable, the government decides to give a subsidy to Company B. This money is collected by taxing Company A. The foregone money from Company A comes with an opportunity cost. This money could have otherwise gone towards more innovation in their respected field. This could be something as little as a new flavor of coffee or it could mean something like the cure to cancer. In this situation it is apparent that the ends do not justify the means because of the unforeseen situations that may have occurred if the money was not taken. Therefore, we should not extract money from companies in order to redistribute wealth.
If businesses should not be helped, some people will argue that the people who worked the jobs must then be helped once they lose the jobs that are replaced by innovation. This help comes in the form of being paid welfare or other different incentives. The first issue with this argument is that it goes back to using coercion in order to gather the money to give to these people. Secondly, people want to have a purpose while they work and do not want to simply slide by through life despite the opinions of some people who would argue otherwise.
Many studies have found that people are more productive when they know that what they are doing is creating meaning, regardless of money. A study by Man was done with Legos in order to prove this theory (Gross). Subjects were given the task of building Lego blocks into a predefined object and paid by how many times they did this task. There were two groups- one that would see their completed object after it was done, and the other group would have their object immediately taken apart after completing it by the facilitator. Both groups were paid equally for each completed object they created. However, it was found that the workers that could see their finished product made on average four more than the other group (Gross). This proved that workers productivity is linked to the feelings of completion and whether they thought that their item was actually going towards something. This means that by giving people money for work they have not actually done or for things that they do not believe creates meaning actually decreases their productivity and initiative to find more meaningful work. Therefore, providing welfare or different benefit plans is not as effective as some people think it is.
Finally, a last concern of people who lose their jobs is that people in specialized areas will no longer have a valuable skillset. The worry is that these people no longer have the right skillset, and that they will be unable to get other jobs. However, there will be a rush of other jobs associated with the innovation that got rid of the initial jobs. For example, the invention of the internet created jobs for web designers and marketers that have otherwise not been available previously. This allowed for people to fill these spaces who were otherwise put out jobs.
These people who have specialized talents will be eager to get back into the market because of the desire to contribute value to society. There will be an influx of jobs for these people to fill even if it is not within the person’s established skillset. As Roberts notes within the case of a pill that allows us to live until we are 120, “a whole bunch of areas are going to expand and some of those are going to soak up the time, talents and energy of former doctors, health care administrators and so on” (“The Human Side of Trade”). Additionally, education can be used in order to inspire and arouse others to take on new jobs. By redistributing the people’s time, talents and energy it allows for more innovation so that the cycle can continue on and businesses can continue to provide more value for customers.
Despite innovation getting rid of many traditional jobs, people will find new ways to assist the changing environment. Humans are very adaptable and so is the marketplace. They act as a river with a boulder in the middle. Although the river can flow just fine moving around the boulder, someone may decide to remove the boulder. Once the boulder is removed the water will flow into the place where the boulder once was and fill it up again as if nothing happened. This rushing back in is the innovation of mankind.
Innovation will continue to overtake business and continue to change the ways that businesses operate. However, human innovation will continue to create more jobs for the ones lost to the original change. The government and society must not stifle this innovation by providing companies or people with money taken through coercion. The most ethical thing to do in this situation is to allow for human innovation to continue and solutions will continue to be formed.
Works Cited
"BlockBusters Inc.: Form 10-K". www.sec.gov. 1 March 2005,
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1085734/000119312505063510/d10
k.htm
Gross, Jessica. “What Motivates Us at Work? More than Money.” Ideas.ted.com, TED, 12 Oct.
2016, ideas.ted.com/what-motivates-us-at-work-7-fascinating-studies-that-give-
insights/.
Reese, Byron. “AI Will Create Millions More Jobs Than It Will Destroy: Here’s How.” SingularityHub, 1 Jan. 2019, singularityhub.com/2019/01/01/ai-will-create-millions-more-jobs-than-it-will-destroy-heres- how/#sm.00000pxnb1hofhdoguharxqkwvvfa.
Roberts, Russell. “The Human Side of Trade.” FEE, Foundation for Economic Education, 15 Dec. 2016, fee.org/articles/the-human-side-of-trade/.
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