I think I'd feel a lot better about job-taking automation if governments would require that companies adopting automation pay to retrain workers, including salary (since you still have to go on living while you're learning a new job skill). I expect this would basically kill any company's desire to automate (unless it's financially worth it in a relatively short amount of time, which I suspect wouldn't be often), so it'd probably make sense for the government to subsidize this somehow. Or maybe the government should just administer this kind of program itself, since I imagine companies would try to abuse it.
It just seems obvious to me that society benefits when people don't have to do automate-able jobs anymore, and can retrain to do something more interesting/useful without simultaneously having to deal with crippling financial insecurity. My version of utopia is one where there's so much abundance and automation that no one has to work at all if they don't want to, but can still live incredibly comfortable -- extravagant, even -- lives.
Of course, some people will still fight tooth and nail to keep doing what they're doing, regardless of how obsolete it is, and regardless of what incentives and help they're given to learn to do something new. But the least we could do would be to help those who are more forward-thinking.
Many regions offer free community college as a way to handle this. Often, community colleges will partner with local manufacturing companies to develop training plans that give those people new technical skills (win for that person) and training on the systems used at the manufacturing plant (win for the company).
I think this is the best way as its solved at the local levels which means the solution is customized for the local area instead of a one-size fits all solution that the federal government would have to create.
> My version of utopia is one where there's so much abundance and automation that no one has to work at all if they don't want to, but can still live incredibly comfortable -- extravagant, even -- lives.
Or, as we call it, Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, or FALGSC.
It just seems obvious to me that society benefits when people don't have to do automate-able jobs anymore, and can retrain to do something more interesting/useful without simultaneously having to deal with crippling financial insecurity. My version of utopia is one where there's so much abundance and automation that no one has to work at all if they don't want to, but can still live incredibly comfortable -- extravagant, even -- lives.
Of course, some people will still fight tooth and nail to keep doing what they're doing, regardless of how obsolete it is, and regardless of what incentives and help they're given to learn to do something new. But the least we could do would be to help those who are more forward-thinking.