On Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 9:35:26 PM UTC-5, Don Y wrote:
On 3/9/2016 3:06 PM, wrote:
No, those people that have been replaced by a machine and loose thir jobs
are not benefiting.

I don't think many people are being replaced by machines as compared to
being replaced by "cheaper people".


Well, that's just wrong. There is a long history of automation
radically decreasing the number of man hours it takes to do a job.
Look at a modern 1000 acre farm for example. How many workers,
how many hours did that take at the turn of the last century,
compared to now? Digging ditches by hand before the backhoe?
Building cars before robots assembled them, painted them, etc?



Also, a fair bit of stuff simply isn't getting done -- things that we
were accustomed to having done in decades past (witness IVR systems
that push the cost of customer support onto the customer;

That is getting done and it's an excellent example of automation.
How many telephone operators were put out of jobs by the Strowger switch?
How many phone receptionists at companies were replaced by the PBX?
IVR is the latest example. Some of them work extremely well. The
electric company here for example, I can call to report an outage,
give them a voice or text number to notify me back when power is
restored, it gives me an estimate of when the power will be back
on, all by machine. Decades ago, you spoke to someone, all they
did was take the info.

It's the most basic process that has given us our high standard
of living.