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The last time my family was replaced by technology

339 points · 641 comments · megalomanu

  1. zug_zug · · focus · HN ↗
    And my great great grandpa thought horses would lose all their jobs to cars. And they all did and it was never the same again.

    There’s no quick answers, but intuitively I think we all get that the % of jobs not doable by AI and robotics approaches 0 over time.

    1. commandlinefan · · focus · HN ↗
      But the horses themselves got the better end of the deal - they spend all their time in the field eating hay rather than pulling carts.
      1. mrguyorama · · focus · HN ↗
        No. The horses were made redundant and no longer exist in such quantities

        So, uh, maybe don't dwell on that too much.

        Actually, dwell on that a lot. It's probably the only instructive example.

        The rich and powerful only suffer us because they need us. They cannot assemble every lead painted doodad by their own hands. If they could, they never would have hired anyone. So what happens when they no longer need as many people?

        Society is already far too constructed around catching some of the wealth that just spills off of the people who own it, by being in their orbit. That activity is not actually productive, but since the only people with money are the ones that have a lot of it (K shaped economy), there's just not enough wealth left in the bottom part of the market to support anything else.

        1. bluGill · · focus · HN ↗
          There are more horses today than ever... Oxen got the short end of the deal - almost nobody uses oxen even though historically they were the backbone labor of the farm, while the horse was for the right.
          1. handedness · · focus · HN ↗
            > There are more horses today than ever...

            The global horse population peaked in the 1910s.

            1. OroPla · · focus · HN ↗
              Apparently there are around 60M horses currently, while there's no world wide data for 1910.

              Horse ownership isn't what it used to be, but the horse population seems fine.

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