It is said that many conservative voters are vulnerable to disinformation, which leads to election of politicians that promote regressive policies. However, if everyone was smart by the time of high school graduation (by improving the education system, getting more parents to participate in their children’s education, removing obstacles in education, etc.), would there be a problem filling jobs where tasks are repetitive instead of frequent problem solving but difficult to automate? Jobs like janitorial work, assembly line, etc. I would think smart people would have a difficult time feeling fulfilled in a job which may bore them.
Comments
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
It is said that many conservative voters are vulnerable to disinformation, which leads to election of politicians that promote regressive policies. However, if everyone was smart by the time of high school graduation (by improving the education system, getting more parents to participate in their children’s education, removing obstacles in education, etc.), would there be a problem filling jobs where tasks are repetitive instead of frequent problem solving but difficult to automate? Jobs like janitorial work, assembly line, etc. I would think smart people would have a difficult time feeling fulfilled in a job which may bore them.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
The real danger would be many of the more repetitive and menial jobs would be automated as much as possible.
And all these smartie pants would know enough to unionize and/or demand better compensation.
> would there be a problem filling jobs where tasks are repetitive instead of frequent problem solving but difficult to automate?
Yes, and that would be a good thing. People who do those jobs would have to be paid more to persuade them to do them. Income inequality would be reduced and the people who work hardest would be paid something closer to what they deserve.
And there would be more incentive to automate those jobs and more ability to do so.
> Would there be any economic downsides
Short term it would definitely shake up some industries as they wouldn’t be able to sell their products or they would have to change their products. Madison Avenue would have to drastically change its approach.
>would there be a problem filling jobs where tasks are repetitive instead of frequent problem solving but difficult to automate?
Potentially, but probably not. I would expect to see an explosion in unionization rates though, and therefore an explosion in wages and total compensation, as well as an excellent work-life balance (30hr work weeks, 8 – 12 weeks paid time off every year, something like that).
>I would think smart people would have a difficult time feeling fulfilled in a job which may bore them.
That’s just the case for everyone. People don’t feel fulfilled at jobs that bore them. This isn’t unique to the educated.
So you think all janitors lack critical thinking … or they have critical thinking and are unfulfilled. You are making a lot of assumptions here.
Critical thinking is more of a conditioned trait than a learned ability. You don’t need an entire population to be critical thinkers just a few. Some will be more prone to it than others, the same as the traditional bell curve of intelligence.
As much as we might want to automate tasks and jobs we also have to consider the implication of getting rid of the purposes of people with sub average abilities or intellectual capacities.
A big ask of the port strike was to not to automate the cranes and loaders. They did not get that when they settled.
I suppose the downsides if any is either there are going to be people who will be wasting their potential no matter what OR people losing their purpose career wise if it’s automated out.
I for one am super glad that my mundane job requires more steps than what a robot could do over the next 50 years.
You’d probably see a split between white-collar supply chain and janitorial automators and blue-collar supply chain and janitorial workers. You’d also run into Baumols cost disease much more quickly, where because people can transition to higher-paid higher-education jobs more easily, the “lower-education” (I refuse to call them low-skilled) jobs have to be paid more, which depending on which industry they’re in means the costs and prices go up (services like hospitality, education, and medical services are particularly effected, and no you can’t solve this problem by government intervention in those markets)
Nope, would be a huge win. I think one of the main dangers to society is the rampant anti-intellectualism and stupidity of the electorate right now.
First, teachers must stop passing students that have no knowledge of subjects.
Where has the accountability gone?
This isn’t a question, this is preaching to the choir with a question mark on the end.
Smart people tend to just be better at justifying their previously held beliefs. I don’t imagine this would have much of an effect on politics.
I guess the economic downsides if I were to try and come up with them is that it would cost a lot of money that could possibly be spent better elsewhere.
We have plenty of educated people in repetitive jobs now.
Being intelligent does not make one immune to disinformation. Lets just get that misconception out of the way.
I’m going to answer this hypothetical with a hypothetical. The economic downside is that things get overly bureaucratic and/or complicated because the individuals can handle it. They have a higher tolerance to complexity because of their better education. At a certain point the higher level of complexity or the granularity freezes up economic productivity. I see this all the time in workplaces that are entirely made up of those from higher tier university. They either are incapable of thinking a certain level or have been trained so badly that their “simple” solution must be a certain degree of complexity.
For example Juicero, it was a $400 Wi-Fi connected juice press that squeezed pre-packaged juice pouches. People just bought the pouch cause they can squeeze the juice out by hand.