Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
Why can't we try to find ways to give companies incentives to train their current staff into new roles before their jobs are eliminated by automation? Will that really decimate the industries?
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I should have realized I would have to hand-hold you through the hows and whys of your ideas being disastrous.
For the sake of simplicity, lets focus on the manufacturing sector:
Let us assume a factory employs 100 people to make its widgets. It already has enough HR, finance, IT people to run the business. The next innovation comes along that would allow this factory to achieve the same output with 80 workers.
In this scenario, your arguments offer two major proposals on how to move forward.
1.: The company cannot adopt this innovation because you have passed a law banning innovation. Your prices necessarily remain the same while your competitors, operating in other jurisdictions, adopt the technology and begin to significantly undercut your prices. You lose orders. You go out of business. 100 people unemployed. What do you do now?
2: The company can adopt this innovation, but must re-train the 20 surplus employees. You need only a couple to support and maintain the new equipment, but still have 16-18 employees left over and no openings. What do you retrain them to do such that they add value to the company? And keep in mind, Iggy, that if you expect them to just do make-work projects, you are burdening the company with excessive cost that undermines the value of the new innovation. End result: you fail to remain competitive with other factories in your industry. And that, much like scenario 1, ultimately results in the closure of the factory.