Technology Has Changed Everything
This is off-topic from metals/mining, but the more I look at the issues facing the Western world, the more I see a complete destruction of demand for labor....
Everything we do every day just compounds the problem of technology killing jobs, jobs that are never coming back. The world is changing, and for some things it is great; I would put a plug for copper in here, but let’s focus on what has changed.
Ask yourself some questions about the last time you:
- Got paper/snail mail for something important?
- Did your high-value shopping at the mall instead of online?
- Rented a DVD with the help of movie store employee instead of a machine?
- Used the express lane instead of self checkout at the grocery store?
- Bought the local paper to look for something in the classified ads?
- Met a real journalist that was covering a beat?
- Had a travel agent find airplane tickets and/or travel accommodations for you?
- Talked to a full-service broker to trade a share?
- Drove in a car that had a tape deck instead of a CD player or auxiliary outputs?
We have to understand that we are going through a second Industrial Revolution that has completely changed the world. We cannot start to address our core issues until we admit we cannot put the jobs back; we cannot roll back the clock.
We have lost the post office, brokers, travel agents, journalists, factory workers, and everything else, while replacing those jobs with McDonald’s jobs, and other similar jobs that will never provide a living wage....
What do we do with all these workers we really do not need?
Comments
Excellent observation and commentary. You might want to think about the number of employees working at Amazon, Google, Facebook, et al.
Craigslist has 30 employees and has cost newspapers $16 billion in classified revenue. Think about that... 30 people destroyed the economic engine that supported 50k journalists + marketing people + drivers + printers...
Someone bought the Boston Globe for a negative value after pension costs....
Every digital job seems to destroy at least 10 if not 100 old line jobs. Mind you, Oreninc is also in that business. Small banks are no longer hiring data monkey's...
http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/newspapers-essay/data-page-6/