{"id":8906,"date":"2021-03-11T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8906"},"modified":"2021-06-23T08:16:29","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T12:16:29","slug":"progress-or-peril-for-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8906","title":{"rendered":"Progress or Peril for Workers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Warning: This is a post that may well fall into the category of free-association or, less kindly, half-baked. Three magazine articles I\u2019ve caught up on this past week had something to say about the world of work, which seems headed for a collision with the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First up was a rather breathless article in the January\/February issue of Metropolis<\/em> (link to article here<\/a>), about the rapid advances in 3D printing that extrudes cement to create entire buildings. \u201cCompanies worldwide are automating the construction of homes, offices, and other structures through techniques like 3D printing, robotic finishing, and automated bricklaying,\u201d which lays down brick three times faster than a human. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe possibility of automation soon becoming the norm in construction is not so far-fetched.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benefits the author cites are: improving construction efficiency, sustainability, and worker safety, while increasing the housing supply and even remedying labor shortages<\/a>. Still, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, 7.2 million Americans had construction jobs in July 2018\u2014\u201cthe highest employment level for the construction industry in a decade, with 7.5 million jobs projected by 2026. (The prognosticators must not read Metropolis<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to one builder, its automated processes can produce housing units in two or three weeks at about 40 percent lower cost than conventional construction and with \u201calmost zero construction waste\u201d (a good thing).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sounds great, right? But who\u2019ll look out for the people who want relatively good-paying construction jobs, enjoy building things where they can see the results, and don\u2019t want to sit at a desk day in and day out writing software code? \u201cSaving labor costs,\u201d which is an argument implicit in the article but tactfully unstated, means lost jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impact on Workers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Wired,<\/a> <\/em>a story reported on a 25-year-old bet on the future of technology that pitted one man\u2019s rosy view against another\u2019s dire outlook (both were half-right). A concern of the anti-tech guy (Kirkpatrick Sale, who had just written a book extolling the Luddites) was that technology \u201cstole decent labor from people.\u201d I hope Sale doesn\u2019t read the Metropolis<\/em> article; he\u2019ll have a stroke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, historian Jill Lepore\u2019s New Yorker<\/em><\/a> article, \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong with the Way We Work,\u201d unearths some even earlier predictions. No less a personage than economist John Maynard Keynes said that, a hundred years in the future (starting date unstated), people would work no more than 15 hours a week, and everyone would suffer from boredom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a fearful problem for the ordinary person,\u201d Keynes said, \u201cwith no special talents, to occupy himself.\u201d Being confined to home during the pandemic has shown that even people with <\/em>special talents can enter the realms of ennui and discontent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, we know whose playthings those idle hands are. It\u2019s worth remembering that the majority of people arrested after the January 6 insurrection have a record of serious financial troubles<\/a>. It\u2019s probably not too much of a stretch to wonder how many of those arise, at least in part, from a lack of good-paying jobs. In construction, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know whether there\u2019s anything worth thinking about here, or if these are just disconnected ramblings. If you have thoughts, I\u2019d love to read them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warning: This is a post that may well fall into the category of free-association or, less kindly, half-baked. Three magazine articles I\u2019ve caught up on this past week had something to say about the world of work, which seems headed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Progress or Peril for Workers? - another industry of good-paying jobs bites the dust. Really?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[267,35,186,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-fiction","category-real-life","category-technology","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2jE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8908,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8906\/revisions\/8908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}