Automation: The End of Jobs? 

WORK may be essential to human nature, JOBS are absolutely not.

Reminder: Germany may have higher automization but they also have a law forcing half of a company's board be staffed with labor so no decision can be made without support from the people at the company.

I've actually experienced losing my job to automation but it wasn't as bad as everyone thought it would be at my company. I work in a UPS warehouse and I used to be a sorter. I felt extremely invaluable because I was one of 20 people in my warehouse that knew how to do my particular job and one of maybe 3 that was quite good at it. Last year, they automated the sorting job so my particular skill set was rendered obsolete. Luckily they didn't fire any of us. They just moved us to different parts of the building. And since the automation can do the job more than twice as fast, they've needed to hire more to keep up with the flow.

I have no issue with automation. I would love a world where the back breaking labour jobs and monotonous jobs were replaced by machines. Of course UBI would have to be a requirement to offset it. It would be a utopia if people were able to choose careers based on their preference rather than being forced into them by economic need. It would also free many people up to pursue their own goals in life and have time to do that rather then focusing on simply work in the absence of everything else. As with everything, automation can be a good thing if it's done correctly and greed is taken out of the equation.

My concern is that we'll automate large portions of the economy, but we'll keep everything else as is - basically the wealth will continue to accumulate in the hands of a very very small portion of people.

There would be absolutely no problem with automation, if we did not live in a political economy that will evict you if you can’t find a job.

"These twenty hour work weeks are killing me."-George Jetson.

Hi, as an automation engineer, I can tell you from the inside how does everything look like (long text ahead). For example, automation was born out of the need to optimize resources (think of wind/watermill). To automate something, you need a repetitive task. Repetitive menial tasks (talking from a manufacturing perspective) should be under focus since that brings no development to a human being (no decision making, little to no learning, no problem solving) nor joy, tightening bolts for 8 hours a day is not fun. Now, automation is a tool, it doesn't solve problems on it's own like if it was magical. It requires proper engineering to be done properly, otherwise it'll bring more problems that it solved. For example a task could be so complex that an automated cell would need 3x the footprint and huge investment to replicate what a single operator can do. For that you need cad/cam designers, process engineers and of course, automation engineers. Then you actually have to maintain said machinery, electronic/electric/automation technicians are highly needed to keep machines working. A well designed machine would require basic problem solving/maintenance, since it could tell you in detail what's wrong (a particular sensor, the machine sequence was disturbed, etc), a poorly designed one will have little to no help and would require more experience in trouble shooting/maintenance to keep the machine running, I've run into both of these kinds. Now, outside of manufacturing, if your job has basic decision making (a process with predefined conditions or "recipes"), it will probably be automated by an AI. If your job is to analyze data, guess what? AI will take your job. If you do repetitive manual jobs (like adding the same formula to the same cell in excel on x amount of files), that can be automated. You could either worry about it OR you could use this info for your benefit and stay ahead of the curve: start learning about how to automate your job. However, that AI still needs someone with experience to tell it what to do and to have it properly trained, or if something bad happens, someone needs to trouble shoot it. Now, what should be, is that every company should reward it's employees that make their job more efficient, however, there's an article that comes to mind from years ago from a guy who automated his tasks, he did nothing te whole shift and got fired for that. I would like to say MOST, I think it's SOME companies, that don't know how to deal with that, if I have learned something from the pandemic, is that companies refuse to adapt to new ways of work (see the reluctance to adopt Home-Office), so, an employee optimizing it's processes, it's not certain if it'll have a reward or a punishment. 😬

If you're only talking about manufacturing while discussing the threats of automation, then you don't understand the threat of modern automation tools to workers. Mechanical muscles have existed for centuries, now we're making mechanical brains.

Key operating word, SHOULD. Automation SHOULD be common wealth, but instead it will be used by a ruling class

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.." -Stephen Hawking

The thing is about the naysayers about automation not really replacing jobs is that they are looking at the past and not the future to guide their trend predictions while full automation through a general purpose robot has never happened before, making their belief basically like people 2 weeks before the creation of the first car saying there will always be work for horses.

I remember CGP Grey did a video about this years ago, where he compared "workers" with modern horses. Bottom line was that the transition time between people&robots still working at the same time and only robots working will be extremely difficult to tackle and most likely the reason it could fail.

The only problem with UBI is the glass ceiling that it ultimately creates through people's belief of what capitalism should operate. There's many people that would immediately think that anyone receiving UBI should make NO MORE money because they equate it to welfare. The true test of humanity will be how they redefine and recontexualize how the resources and finances produced gets distributed amongst the participants in the economy and how much potential there is for upward mobility in such a system. When you stop and think about it, how we decide who gets money and why is completely arbitrary and the important thing is that there IS a way to make money in an economy and there IS a path to upward mobility. We simply have to decide it all over again in a future where automation does what WE used to get paid to do.

0:22 "Devaluing human labor" is an interesting idea. I'd argue the only value labor has is the value it can produce. If a machine can produce more value at a task than labor; labor has no value. I don't want people working boring, unfilling, dangerous, and hard jobs... just so they can "have jobs". If we are entering an economy that doesn't require significant labor then we just need a new system of distributing resources outside of wages

the issue with automation IMHO is simply who controls it. it could be amazing for humanity, but i fear it will just benefit the owners of companies and shareholders like everything else does these days. it *should* be a huge plus for us all and has potential, but people cant be trusted with such power!

Michael, you are definitely a worthy successor to Jared.

Very nice video, especially the second half. Great work!

i work security doing patrols around buildings.... and only one location added a camera and the camera wasn't even for security it was to look inside the security guard box and make sure we are opening and closing a gate for workers to drive inside... we didn't do any paperwork. just open and close the gate... trust me. i wish they would just automate that fucking gate.

I've noticed in conversations that I've had with people about automation there isn't much thought given to jobs that are created as old jobs are being made obsolete. Changes in technology do drive changes in job markets, but so do a lot of other factors. Economies are incredibly complex and intricate machines. I also can't help but think back to the early 1980's (or earlier) when there was tremendous talk about a "paperless economy" and a "paperless society", which hasn't remotely come to pass. Not that we don't have the technology to become paperless, but there aren't enough people who want to. People who feel powerless over their own future will certainly lament impending obsolescence of their industries, but the problem is in large part social, not economic or technological. How we take care of each other is critical to a thriving world as well as economy.

I have no issue with automation. I just want the gov to provide my needs when there are no jobs for men who are more brawn than brain like me

I have a few problems with the arguments about Flippy. First, the idea that a prototype isn't ideal at it's job means we're nowhere near where we need to be it's silly. Prototypes are how you get to that point, and their existence is a sign that the final product is on its way. Second, flipping a burger may be our lowest paid and lower skill cap job, but that doesn't make it one of the easiest to automate. Doing that properly requires sensors to determine the state of the meat, physics calculations to determine the proper movements based on meat weight and position, motor sensory information, etc. That's way more complicated for a computer than something like advanced mathematics, which we pay significantly more for people to do, but would be child's play for a computer. I'm less worried that the robots will replace burger workers (which they could also probably do more easily if they hadn't restricted themselves to using an arm the way humans do to flip burgers), and more worried about things like diagnosing illness, or data analysis that we pay very high salaries for people to do, but where we're already seeing robots outperform people in certain contexts

The first Wisecrack video I've watched since a loooooong time.

people : " robots will steal my job" Automation and robotics engineers : *sweats coolant*

0:20 I always make sure I used people check out when it’s not busy

Ow no Mr. Edison, the villagers are throwing rocks at the street lights again. 👩‍🌾👩‍🌾👩‍🌾🪨🪨🪨🔥🔥🔥💡💡💡🔥🔥🔥

I lived with Aaron for a short period in Oakland. Such a trip to see him s/o in all these Wisecrack vids.

With the self-checkout I don't have to deal with people and get to bag things the way I prefer.

This video made me smile the whole way through it

For most companies, and for now the cost of using a robot (in the physical or software sense) is higher than using a human. Human robots (low wage employees) usually make more financial sense. Specially if you have access to a global workforce that can work for much less. That said: I had several run ins with google bots calling me over the phone during my last job. They sounded human, but if I gave them an answer they didnt expect or understand, they ended on a loop until they timed out. They are getting better every passing year. But they still have a long way to go, price and capability wise to get to a good enough point and replace humans.

Ouch they must have a contract with Full Sail for X amount of videos. I actually feel bad for Michael because I am certain he knows how his audience feel about this. I actually laughed out loud when the advert showed them bragging about now having lecture halls. Lectures arent fun but think about this, what value is a degree if you didnt listen to one lecture during your entire tenure? This is not a cheap school either. Full Sail is not access to industry tools, they are just a scam.

The problem with the "automation is a long way off" argument is that it probably isn't. It only _looks_ like it's a long way off because we're at the lowest part of exponential growth and are extrapolating linearly, with an added bias for protecting the status quo. Once we cross a certain inflection point of AI and robotics, we could quite literally go from a world familiar to the present with limited, crappy robots and barely-functional AIs to fully-automated luxury gay space communism in the span of three to five years. As in perhaps there's a forward-thinking high school senior reading neoliberal rags about how the robots aren't coming and artificial general intelligence is impossible and thus planning on a 4-year college degree with a comfortable expectation of a good 30 to 50 years of labor without any fear of automation... who then graduates five years from now into a world where their field has been almost completely automated and their degree is worthless. Can't say that would make for a very stable society....

Around 7:05 reminded me that I read this book titled Reality is Broken which talks about games being work which was desired.

The fear of losing jobs hints at a bigger issue in the system: "Everybody needs to work", rather than "These things must be done so everyone is happy." Why should the caveman work when he has all the food he needs and the fire plenty of wood? During the Soviet occupation of East Germany, work was both a duty and a priviledge. If you refused to work you got arrested, but an employer wasn't allowed to turn you down and sometimes even had to come up with some nonesense jobs with no real purpose.

I am a massage therapist I feel like it's going to be one of the last things that's going to replace because it is strictly human to human connection

A big part of all of this is just how dumb people are about labor and how much they over-value it. To a lot of people in America, someone below retirement age that doesn't work enough or at all is worthless, more so the younger they are, and especially so for men. Someone that's 35 and doesn't work, for example, is presumed to be a bum, even if they have plenty of money (so long as they're not stupid rich). There's a big stigma against stay-at-home dads or men as home makers, where they're presumed to be lazy. Even conversing with strangers, small talk always starts with "what do you do?" (as in, for a living) and if your answer is "nothing, I'm too disabled" or "nothing, I'm independently wealthy" or even "I do odd jobs", they often look for an exit and don't know anything else to talk about, or the entire conversation shifts to them trying to "fix" your status of not working. I know this first-hand as a 35 year old male who has some of his own money (brokerage stuff) that is a "home maker" due to being too disabled to work (a combination of schizophrenia, delayed sleep phase disorder, and neuroleptic-induced parkinsonism). Often times, the minute it comes out that I don't work, people run for the door. They don't shift to asking about my hobbies or what I do with my time or try to learn any more about me. I've even once had a situation where a barista at this coffee place I go to every day at 2 in the afternoon made a bet with her coworker that I was a drug dealer (because how could I afford to ride a Harley every day and get coffee). Never mind that there was no presumption that maybe I had a night job, or maybe I was a rich trust fund kid that preferred "regular people clothes" to suits or anything else. And look further at all the articles about how during the pandemic, when people were allowed to work remotely, productivity actually increased and yet, managers are still forcing people back to working in-person in the office, in part because of a belief that workers will be lazy and unproductive and not get their work done if they aren't watched over for their 8-hour shift, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

A robot flipping the burgers in the way a human would seems entirely inefficient. Have the meat drop into big George foreman grill and sit there for a few moments before being mechanically scraped onto a conveyor that takes it to its destination

love self-checkout because I have a bagging preference 😅

The skeptic's argument is that technology doesn't work that well yet. Does anyone here want to explain what a bell curve is? Because there are a lot of technologies that for a long time didn't look like they were gonna work until they did and exploded onto the market. Like solar panels, personal computers, and smartphones. Lastly, when it comes to the book downplaying automation I saw the interview, and there was a lot of detail which is kind of a common theme when it comes to books and documentaries downplaying economic, technological, societal, and environmental shifts. Mainly because they're focusing only on one or two data sets and not all the correlating data sets. Just why my bullshit meter goes on as soon as I start hearing gaps in conclusion, and aspects of data that are explained thoroughly enough.

A point thats missed and is perhaps the real paradigm shift. Its not low level essential work like service industry thats at high risk, its low level skilled labor. Truck drivers, middle managers, accountants, etc. This wont be unemployed poor people, this will be a significant chunk of the middle class suddenly being out of work.

Seeing this video as I'm learning UiPath to automate my reports and presentations to save time and effort.

Nah- we will always have new job fields as time goes on. Everything changes and we will adapt to those changes. We can't just superimpose one thing on top of how we live now and think we won't adapt in that time.

An excellent video - as always. My only disappointment is not looking into the limits of technology vs perceived limits of technology. It always amazes me that the public perception of technology and its abilities far outstrips the reality. In my own profession (eyecare) we have elements of technology that have promised obsolesence to clinicians only to find it not only doesnt meet basic requirements but is excessively deficient. Like your example of outsourcing labour under the pretence of technology - we often utilise the tool (often for the wow factor, and that its become expected) and then re-measure manually - relying upon the more repeatable manual method. I am sure this exists across many (if not most) sectors - so given this deficiency why are we so eager to press the benefits of technology? chronological snobbery? or is ist something else? It would have been good to see this explored

0:47 oh the nostalgia. I’ve seen many presentations in this room.

As someone who's worked in several factories with different lvls and types of automation it's still got a long way to go, also there's times that humans will do it faster then a robot

So on the subject of Flippy.... It's almost like these "low skilled entry level jobs" actually require skill and actual labor when you have to cook a burger at a consistent level of quality while coordinating with a team to plate the food in an efficient manner while also being the team that maintains the whole damn kitchen from the equipment to sanitation. I have worked in restaurants most of my life and most people can't make the cut due to the ever present stress, the shit pay, and having your dignity as a human being constantly under assault by pull yourself up by your bootstraps assholes whose daddy's car dealership paid their way through school. The people that stay do it because they love what they do, they're passionate about cooking and for them being told the meal they prepared was fantastic brings a high greater than the cocaine we're sniffing of the head of the employee restroom

In some supermarkets they are putting cameras on each automatic checkout big brother is watching lol

Replacing human labor is the best thing that can happen. Most people shouldn't have to work, and covering labor costs are a huge percentage of costs.

There's a great observation of Orwell's in his "The Road to Wigan Pier", where he argues about incoming automatization era and what it means for mining industry. It perfectly applies to our current situation, and goes in favor of this theory that this process lasts for already more than a 100 years

One of the major problems with automation is that companies want to make machines to replace human jobs instead of the machine jobs done by humans. Basically make the variable cost of the company into a fixed cost and automated. It is the race to the bottom of cost not realizing it lowers everything else with it. Amazon has 5 locations in America that are 99% automatic but the company doesn’t like to admit that they are also the least productive locations in the company. The machines may not need breaks, healthcare, time off or rest but they are limited to their programs. The one automatic facility in Idaho is 25% as productive to the human location 100 miles away. Amazon try to make these locations faster and more productive but it made cost go up everywhere especially in maintenance cost. Basically they have to close a location down for a week to a month to fix all the machines if they have the machines working as fast and productive as humans for a week. One of the box arm transfer machines costs in 2016 was $17.25 an hour for 5 years straight. However that cost doesn’t account for speed, Energy consumption, maintenance, and updates. The true price for one of these machines is $57.44 an hour for 5 years straight and that is for the Chinese ones. The ones made in Europe or America cost $101.73 an hour for 5 years straight but have a better yield on investments if the facility decided to go 100% wind and solar powered.

I for one, welcome our robot and cow overlords. Lord Bender is great, and all hail Megatron! My Pinzgauer-Charolais herd is at their command.

This may be a niche angle to tackle this from, but I feel its relevant because of the fact that higher automation is associated with yet higher labor rates. Basically, I propose that labor and technology works like a trophic pyramid in ecology, where the existence of a predator at the tip can only be supported by the existence of many more prey, itself supported by many, many more plants at the bottom. Likewise, maybe technology is stuff that exists higher up on our labor-trophic pyramid, needing the support of a wider base of "compositional" labor and smaller technologies. Think how robots need computers to program them with, which need programmers to use them, who need farmers to feed them, and so on. Each 'stage' of the trophic pyramid represents a wider and wider base of primary-source energy in the ecological trophic pyramid; likewise, further technological elaboration requires an ever-wider base of labor. And like how grass becomes threatened when deer over-graze, and wolves chase and prey on deer, allowing the grass enough relief to maintain themselves, the heights of the labor-trophic pyramid increase (as represented by "productivity") while the actual time spent working has only ever increased. Meanwhile, output falls for the same reason deer cant eat all the grass away. If grass is our time and labor-capacity, and if deer are jobs eating into our time, then wolves are technologies that eliminate some jobs, but still require their own jobs to exist -- like in the trophic pyramid, there has to be a critical number of deer (jobs) for wolves (tech) to exist. More lifeforms have been created, more energy is going through the system, more grass is growing over a wider area, but the grass is always being eaten. If for some reason the grass were not being eaten, everything but the grass would die. A labor-free society has no technology -- this makes impossible the vision of a labor-free techno-automated world. The idea that a robot means you don't have to work is motivated by an illusion of separation from that robot. Really, what the existence of the robot implies is that you must pitch in to take care of and steward this thing. Which is something we should be doing with things we actually need directly, like plants and soil bacteria and whatnot (consider that nature is already fully automated, and self-regulating to boot).

I think too many people miss the real problem of automation. Robots don't slide into the spot of a human and take it's place and job. Automation changes the fundamentals of business so they need less workers. Here are some examples: 1. Robots and ATMs did not replace tellers, Online Banking eliminates the need for physical transactions and therefore eliminates the need for as many workers in the banking industry. 2. In a similar way, the threat to cashiers isn't self checkout. It's Amazon. Amazon has made brick and motor stores obsolete. 3. Journalism is now digital and far less journalist are needed as well as the many other jobs supporting the print industry. 4. I speculate that the next major occupation to see rapid decline are janitors and environmental service workers. Why? As more people work remote, less people will be needed to clean public spaces. They will still be needed, but a lot of work will be gone when business no long need commercial real estate. Now there is no doubt some jobs are being gained here. Amazon hires people for distribution, Banks hire software engineers, and there might be a slight pick up in home cleaning services. But, as the world gets more digital and there is less need for physical work, there will be less jobs. In other words, robots don't take our jobs, they eliminate the need for them.

What, no mention of RU-vidr CGP Grey's "Humans need not apply" video?

All hail labor-less economy!!!

I find so much value in my work. I work in school kitchens all around my city and really feel like I'm contributing to my community. I feel a connection with society and other people that is taking part in this societies division of labor that is producing the means of our collective survival and advancement. Imperfectly and unfairly fore sure. And it's that unfairness and faulty parts of society that drives my motivation for political involvement for a betterment of society.

Saying that full automation is far off has many of the same issues that discussion around climate change has, in that it means we'll likely be slow to act and unprepared for when it does suddenly become very relevant to our lives.

as someone who is currently in a position that may be automated by next year and genuinely unsure if I'll have a job soon. I have big concerns in automation persuits

Wow wasn’t expecting to see my alma mater lol

Happy Earth Day to everyone

The worst part of automation for me is not the automation itself, but the automation inside of a late-stage capitalist society. Automation is removing jobs but that wouldn't be a problem if we lived in a society with an universal wage automation, it would be a gift, not a threat. Look at Star Trek. If we didn't depend on having a job to feed and house ourselves, automation would just free our times to more have fulfilling experiences in our daily lives and do more things that give us more meaningful lives instead of wasting away in a menial job. But that's not the society we live in, and therefore automation is plain and simply a threat to the lower classes of our society because we depend on having a job to be able to live.

This relates to what someone in the global elite said 2 years ago during a meeting of the World Economic Forum when he talked about the 'great reset'... a world driven by A.I. (singularity) and robot/automation, with 40% of the population out of work, Universal Basic Income, introduction of technologies that have not yet been introduced to the public. The well-promoted robot, Sophie, who has legal citizenship in Saudi Arabia, has been working in a pc-hub field there and is analysing every bit of financial data in existence in order to create a new plan for a new global financial system. These changes will be introduced by A.I. at a reasonable pace. In other words, our world is going to change much faster than most of us would be ready for. This leads to the question: what will we do with all our free time?! This presumes a significant change in how we define ourselves. Especially when A.I. will be sharing its own analysis of what a human is!

good that frees us up to garden the planet and create art and innovation

I sure hope so

Yes!

That is a good point about self-checkouts. I refuse to use them unless a company would promise a discount. None have done it so far ;)

I think a customer should get a discount for using automated checkers!

Watching Wisecrack is work.

You had me laughing hard with you Elizabeth home thing so true🤣🤣🤣🫠🫠🫠

That wasn't a flugelhorn, that was a trumpet. At least it didn't sound like one, and definitely didn't look like one. As a musician on trumpet, I had to call you out 😂

I was thinking of his eye color when he said legally stoned

The Elizabeth Holmes clip was funny! xD

I would simply automate as many jobs as possible and pay the worker who loses their job until their retirement age. For example, truck drivers. Replace him with a self driving truck and pay him until he would’ve retired. Production stays the same (or increases with truck not needing sleep) and a family doesn’t end up on the street. If he wants some extra cash he can go get another job with his new found free time without losing the benefits and pay from the truck driving job.

Could've had yang 💆🏽 #yanggang #UBI

We've gotta change the terms we're thinking in. Why do trades exist in the first place? People needed leatherwork and blacksmithing. They needed farms for food. A trade is a tool to achieve some other goal. So let's ask what goals a trade is trying to achieve,or what goal we seek to achieve by joining it. I've known streeters who could survive anything,because they distill processes down to the real goal. They always know what they're really trying to do.

Consumer labor reminds me of when restaurants leave the tails on shrimp. Like ok homie, you gonna pay me to prep my own food now?

100% I get my cut at self check outs, mostly with free bags

How is Chipotle gonna make any money if everyone is scraping pennies from sidewalks to order the bare minimum? It doesn't really make sense. They'll have to use some of the money they saved with all the automation to make the food affordable to more people so they can get a larger share of that sweet sweet burrito market.

Fear of all jobs disappearing is ridiculous. If people had no jobs there would be no consumers.

I literally just started working as an automation engineer this week lmao

When my computer crashes out of nowhere and it's fan lifts into space when I open Word, I doubt technology is going to take over for a good long while yet.

There are also some series issues with UBI.

Thank God flippy failed and we still have our burger flipping job.

give me a robot that can brew beer and let me sit on the beach all day

“The robot at 15:37 didn’t replace a job, there’s someone standing there watching it work.” 🙄 I’m sure that worker is so satisfied with their job of watching a robot until it breaks, then waiting on someone who makes Ten times his pay to come fix it so he can go back to work.

I remember an episode of _Kino's Journey_ which was about a country with advanced automation technology that was able to completely eliminate the need for its citizens to work. However, despite this, the citizens continued to work, doing the same work that the machines are able to do faster and more accurately. The reason being that although they had to technology to make a country where people don't need to work possible, they were unable to solve the social issues. Like how wealth should be distributed in a society where you can't use how much work someone does as a benchmark for how much money they should get.

figures that when it comes to automation its reach exceeds its grasp that being said 4 day work weeks should totally be a thing

if robots do everything. WHY would people need money at all... its so wierd that people think money is important.

Washing clothes used to be work. Like several hours a week. Now it's like 2-3$ (wear of the washing machine + consumables , energy , water etc) a week and an amount of work hardly worth mentioning. It turned from 3-5 hours of hard work to 1-2 hours of hardly work.

Let's get this to 100k views family!

CGP Grey's Human's Need Not Apply comes to mind.

...what the hell kind of automated checkouts are you using that you need to type in a specific code for it? all the ones i've seen and used have a barcode scanner.

Damn. Half way into the video and I already had my robo sous chef wish shot down…

"You use the WRONG CODE for produce?!" I gasped in mock horror, eager to turn attention away from my own quality of stealing produce entirely.

The problem is that the "fruits of automation" are not evenly distributed to people in the society. The profits just enrich the already rich business owners while the low-end workers face unemployment and poverty. Automation should mean shorter weeks and more paid time off, not job losses and destitution.

I like the Star Trek take on automation. They work alongside it, and don't allow themselves to be overtaken by it. They develop alongside the machines. And thus, their humanistic philosophy is even more pronounced and acted upon. People still work, Star Trek is essentially an office show in space, but their work is meant to pursue higher aims. They don't need to work to live, everyone's got a replicator. But with that taken care of, they now pursue purpose, rather than mere survival.

It'll change some labor for sure. Pretty sure restaurants and retailers will still be on the same optimisation of sales hours close to 365 days a year that they do now.

00:44 God I hope so cause we are ... mishandling the situation.

Everything depends on social and economic policy. Whether it's a hell hole or a paradise depends on those in charge. The economic stagnation experienced in the US *might* have something to do with the fact that most of us are struggling to survive, let alone consume.

This will hurt workers rights even more because the little humans that are needed for the job are gonna be in stiff competition for those positions.Causing bosses to manipulate them even more or threatening them more