The original disagreement was you saying “The concept of retirement is … fairly new” and me disagreeing. I still think that sentence is plainly false for most sane values of “retirement”.
The concept of retirement isn’t new. But the phenomenon of mass and/or purely age-based retirement is new. My original comment may have been unclear about this. I never intended to imply that the concept itself was new and retirement completely unheard-of; but it was until recently very rare and not a significant driver of social change. There wasn’t much point in talking about “retirees” as a group with particular needs or behaviors.
Only kinda because first, as your Wiki link shows, that idea in its contemporary form appeared more than a hundred years ago;
I’m counting that as “new”. (Also, in most of the world, it appeared much later, almost within living memory.) My original point in mentioning retirement was that it’s not a universal, common, or necessary feature of human societies, it might plausibly disappear again in the next century, and so it might be a bad model for deathist attitudes.
and second, because retiring after a term of service is an ancient custom, going back to the Romans (as usual :-D).
I thought Roman soldier retirement was more a change of career: they took up farming and settlement instead. But maybe they did so with a nice pension that let slaves do all the work. So I concede that yes, this is a good example of widely practiced retirement, and there may well be others. The introduction of retirement in the 19th century wasn’t a unique invention. But I don’t think this detracts from my original point, that such retirement is uncommon and likely to disappear again in the future.
Going back to the question of why contemporary retirees are… problematic, let me suggest what I think is a standard explanation—the main cause is the breakdown of the extended family and the alienating character of cities.
I don’t think this and the following passages contradict what I said. People didn’t retire in the sense of not doing anything productive; they just did other things, and maybe less of them, as they became less capable over the years. Modern retirement is a new phenomenon.
Both the Luddites and you say that automation causes unemployment and that is empirically not true.
I disagree.
Automation causes, almost tautologically, job loss. Whether there are enough other jobs, pre-existing or created, to avoid unemployment is a separate question. Until today there automation has been insufficient to cause high unemployment. I believe that in the next 50 years there is likely to come an inflection point after so many jobs will be automated away, so quickly, that the market will not be able to keep up (even if in a much longer term more jobs might be created again), and societies will have to choose some non-market answers to letting people live without earning money.
I think it’s that dreaded point in the conversation when we actually have to start defining things :-/ We probably have a different idea of what the word “retirement” means.
Let me throw in a few edge examples.
Alice has a hobby farm. She mostly lives off her savings with the farm providing occasional addtional income. Is she retired?
Bill has the last name of Gates. Is he retired?
Charlie has some money, but he spends his days day-trading the financial markets for fun and profit. He doesn’t have to do this, but he likes the excitement. Is he retired?
Dusty won a minor jackpot in Las Vegas and is enjoying life in the Caribbean. He has no idea what he’ll do when the money runs out in a few years. Is he retired?
Elon has enough money to never work another day in his life. Is he retired?
Finnegan has a disability pension which keeps him fed but poor—so on occasion he gets a temporary job as greeter at Wal-Mart. Is he retired?
Automation causes, almost tautologically, job loss.
I don’t think this is a useful way to look at things. By this measure any kind of progress or improvement causes job loss. When the first farmers got enough food surplus so that not everyone had to work the fields, that caused job loss. When some clever fellow invented the plough, that caused job loss. A water wheel was the cause of very large job loss—etc. etc.
Jobs are not static. They are not supposed to last forever. The world changes—old jobs disappear, new ones appear.
Saying that progress causes job loss is like saying that evolution causes the extinction of species. Yes, it certainly does, but are we, um, short of different species today?
I believe that in the next 50 years
Would you like to provide some arguments for your belief, estimate probabilities, maybe?
I think of “retirement” as “a person no longer working in any field, and living off a different income source”.
This has many unclear edge cases. As you point out, so does the concept of “work” itself.
The central case I want to capture is that of the person who worked to earn, and is still capable of doing so (if perhaps in a different job or reduced capacity), but decides not to (as opposed to being forced by e.g. frailty), and has enough money saved or in a pension to support them for the rest of their life.
Jobs are not static. They are not supposed to last forever. The world changes—old jobs disappear, new ones appear.
And one of the causes of particular jobs disappearing is automation. This is useful because it helps us predict whether, in the future, increased automation might quickly eliminate many jobs.
Saying that progress causes job loss is like saying that evolution causes the extinction of species. Yes, it certainly does, but are we, um, short of different species today?
There are processes driving job loss and separate processes driving job creation. They are related by market and social forces, but they don’t have to stay balanced, just as there is sometimes a mass extinction. If we have reason to think that a cause of job loss will greatly increase in the future, and don’t expect any cause of job creation to also increase greatly in the same period, then we should expect mass unemployment.
Would you like to provide some arguments for your belief, estimate probabilities, maybe?
I very much would—I want to know myself how convincing a formal argument would be; maybe I’ll change my mind while trying to build it. I hope to have the time to do so tonight or tomorrow night.
The central case I want to capture is that of the person who worked to earn, and is still capable of doing so …, but decides not to …, and has enough money saved or in a pension to support them for the rest of their life.
Well, that’s a reasonable definition. But this particular concept of retirement is not new at all and does not mention retiring in cohorts or at a particular age. I am pretty sure some Romans retired like this a couple of thousand years ago :-)
And one of the causes of particular jobs disappearing is automation.
Since we’re talking, basically, economics we might as well use the proper terminology. You are making the argument that any increase in the productivity of labor leads to job losses.
This is useful because it helps us predict whether, in the future, increased automation might quickly eliminate many jobs.
If you want to base your prediction on available evidence (aka historical data), note that other than in short term, increases in the productivity of labor have not led to massive unemployment.
There are processes driving job loss and separate processes driving job creation.
No, I don’t think they are separate processes, I think they’re much more like flip sides of the same coin. You can’t create without destroying. For someone to become a scribe, he has to be not needed as a farmhand.
In general, when thinking about jobs, you might want to think in terms of “creating value” and “(re)distributing value”. A job is not a benefit—it’s a cost (in human time and effort) of producing value.
Since we’re talking, basically, economics we might as well use the proper terminology. You are making the argument that any increase in the productivity of labor leads to job losses.
Not every increase, because the market often accommodates more production; but enough increases to cause unemployment in the longer term.
If you want to base your prediction on available evidence (aka historical data), note that other than in short term, increases in the productivity of labor have not led to massive unemployment.
This is true. I believe the future is likely to be different from the past in this regard.
No, I don’t think they are separate processes, I think they’re much more like flip sides of the same coin. You can’t create without destroying. For someone to become a scribe, he has to be not needed as a farmhand.
More precisely, his wages as a scribe must be higher than as a farmhand, to entice him to switch. It’s true that labor is finite and people who start working on something new therefore stop working on something older.
In general, when thinking about jobs, you might want to think in terms of “creating value” and “(re)distributing value”. A job is not a benefit—it’s a cost (in human time and effort) of producing value.
Yes, jobs are costs, and businesses are driven to minimize costs. So as technology improves, some or all humans become unemployable in more and more jobs, because value can be more cheaply created using machines.
There are processes driving job loss and separate processes driving job creation. They are related by market and social forces, but they don’t have to stay balanced, just as there is sometimes a mass extinction. If we have reason to think that a cause of job loss will greatly increase in the future, and don’t expect any cause of job creation to also increase greatly in the same period, then we should expect mass unemployment.
Job destruction isn’t a mystery to you—you’ve identified the central cause as automation (there are other causes, but let’s not get hung up on them too much). Is it fair to say that job creation -is- a mystery to you—given that you haven’t identified a central cause of job creation?
It’s true: I don’t know how to predict job creation. Some new kinds of jobs are obviously enabled or required by new technology. But many (most?) changes are either socially or politically driven and so very hard to predict.
So it might be that enough jobs for everyone will be created for non-technological processes. But I still think it likely that job automation eventually won’t leave enough room for this “jobs for everyone” scenario.
Require human interaction skills where the hard part is understanding the customer’s problem or explaining to them what they must do. E.g., front desks, clerks.
Require physical dexterity and mobility. E.g., a waiter serving tables.
Legally required to employ humans, for reasons of liability (e.g. doctors), tradition (e.g. judges), or public sector make-work schemes.
Jobs where human customers will pay a premium for interacting with other humans.
A long tail of highly specialized jobs with few workers each, where the upfront cost of automation isn’t worth the resulting savings. This can also be cast in terms of automated systems having insufficient flexibility.
Probably many other reasons unique to various sectors.
Clearly this leaves a lot of room for a future society where jobs cannot be automated away.
Apologies for the late reply.
The concept of retirement isn’t new. But the phenomenon of mass and/or purely age-based retirement is new. My original comment may have been unclear about this. I never intended to imply that the concept itself was new and retirement completely unheard-of; but it was until recently very rare and not a significant driver of social change. There wasn’t much point in talking about “retirees” as a group with particular needs or behaviors.
I’m counting that as “new”. (Also, in most of the world, it appeared much later, almost within living memory.) My original point in mentioning retirement was that it’s not a universal, common, or necessary feature of human societies, it might plausibly disappear again in the next century, and so it might be a bad model for deathist attitudes.
I thought Roman soldier retirement was more a change of career: they took up farming and settlement instead. But maybe they did so with a nice pension that let slaves do all the work. So I concede that yes, this is a good example of widely practiced retirement, and there may well be others. The introduction of retirement in the 19th century wasn’t a unique invention. But I don’t think this detracts from my original point, that such retirement is uncommon and likely to disappear again in the future.
I don’t think this and the following passages contradict what I said. People didn’t retire in the sense of not doing anything productive; they just did other things, and maybe less of them, as they became less capable over the years. Modern retirement is a new phenomenon.
I disagree.
Automation causes, almost tautologically, job loss. Whether there are enough other jobs, pre-existing or created, to avoid unemployment is a separate question. Until today there automation has been insufficient to cause high unemployment. I believe that in the next 50 years there is likely to come an inflection point after so many jobs will be automated away, so quickly, that the market will not be able to keep up (even if in a much longer term more jobs might be created again), and societies will have to choose some non-market answers to letting people live without earning money.
I think it’s that dreaded point in the conversation when we actually have to start defining things :-/ We probably have a different idea of what the word “retirement” means.
Let me throw in a few edge examples.
Alice has a hobby farm. She mostly lives off her savings with the farm providing occasional addtional income. Is she retired?
Bill has the last name of Gates. Is he retired?
Charlie has some money, but he spends his days day-trading the financial markets for fun and profit. He doesn’t have to do this, but he likes the excitement. Is he retired?
Dusty won a minor jackpot in Las Vegas and is enjoying life in the Caribbean. He has no idea what he’ll do when the money runs out in a few years. Is he retired?
Elon has enough money to never work another day in his life. Is he retired?
Finnegan has a disability pension which keeps him fed but poor—so on occasion he gets a temporary job as greeter at Wal-Mart. Is he retired?
I don’t think this is a useful way to look at things. By this measure any kind of progress or improvement causes job loss. When the first farmers got enough food surplus so that not everyone had to work the fields, that caused job loss. When some clever fellow invented the plough, that caused job loss. A water wheel was the cause of very large job loss—etc. etc.
Jobs are not static. They are not supposed to last forever. The world changes—old jobs disappear, new ones appear.
Saying that progress causes job loss is like saying that evolution causes the extinction of species. Yes, it certainly does, but are we, um, short of different species today?
Would you like to provide some arguments for your belief, estimate probabilities, maybe?
I think of “retirement” as “a person no longer working in any field, and living off a different income source”.
This has many unclear edge cases. As you point out, so does the concept of “work” itself.
The central case I want to capture is that of the person who worked to earn, and is still capable of doing so (if perhaps in a different job or reduced capacity), but decides not to (as opposed to being forced by e.g. frailty), and has enough money saved or in a pension to support them for the rest of their life.
And one of the causes of particular jobs disappearing is automation. This is useful because it helps us predict whether, in the future, increased automation might quickly eliminate many jobs.
There are processes driving job loss and separate processes driving job creation. They are related by market and social forces, but they don’t have to stay balanced, just as there is sometimes a mass extinction. If we have reason to think that a cause of job loss will greatly increase in the future, and don’t expect any cause of job creation to also increase greatly in the same period, then we should expect mass unemployment.
I very much would—I want to know myself how convincing a formal argument would be; maybe I’ll change my mind while trying to build it. I hope to have the time to do so tonight or tomorrow night.
Well, that’s a reasonable definition. But this particular concept of retirement is not new at all and does not mention retiring in cohorts or at a particular age. I am pretty sure some Romans retired like this a couple of thousand years ago :-)
Since we’re talking, basically, economics we might as well use the proper terminology. You are making the argument that any increase in the productivity of labor leads to job losses.
If you want to base your prediction on available evidence (aka historical data), note that other than in short term, increases in the productivity of labor have not led to massive unemployment.
No, I don’t think they are separate processes, I think they’re much more like flip sides of the same coin. You can’t create without destroying. For someone to become a scribe, he has to be not needed as a farmhand.
In general, when thinking about jobs, you might want to think in terms of “creating value” and “(re)distributing value”. A job is not a benefit—it’s a cost (in human time and effort) of producing value.
Not every increase, because the market often accommodates more production; but enough increases to cause unemployment in the longer term.
This is true. I believe the future is likely to be different from the past in this regard.
More precisely, his wages as a scribe must be higher than as a farmhand, to entice him to switch. It’s true that labor is finite and people who start working on something new therefore stop working on something older.
Yes, jobs are costs, and businesses are driven to minimize costs. So as technology improves, some or all humans become unemployable in more and more jobs, because value can be more cheaply created using machines.
Job destruction isn’t a mystery to you—you’ve identified the central cause as automation (there are other causes, but let’s not get hung up on them too much). Is it fair to say that job creation -is- a mystery to you—given that you haven’t identified a central cause of job creation?
It’s true: I don’t know how to predict job creation. Some new kinds of jobs are obviously enabled or required by new technology. But many (most?) changes are either socially or politically driven and so very hard to predict.
So it might be that enough jobs for everyone will be created for non-technological processes. But I still think it likely that job automation eventually won’t leave enough room for this “jobs for everyone” scenario.
Jobs can resist automation in many several ways:
Require domain-specific intelligence. E.g., programming.
Require human interaction skills where the hard part is understanding the customer’s problem or explaining to them what they must do. E.g., front desks, clerks.
Require physical dexterity and mobility. E.g., a waiter serving tables.
Legally required to employ humans, for reasons of liability (e.g. doctors), tradition (e.g. judges), or public sector make-work schemes.
Jobs where human customers will pay a premium for interacting with other humans.
A long tail of highly specialized jobs with few workers each, where the upfront cost of automation isn’t worth the resulting savings. This can also be cast in terms of automated systems having insufficient flexibility.
Probably many other reasons unique to various sectors.
Clearly this leaves a lot of room for a future society where jobs cannot be automated away.