Population Bubble- no good jobs because of too many people?

[iron]

Over the last century we see many people (across the globe) taking advantage of readily available paper credit and subsequently used it to 'invest'(speculate) into stock markets, tech markets, housing markets, bond markets, oil markets, ...etc. and the graph for these markets would rise dramatically eventually to a point were everyone starts to realize that it's a bubble.

 

Now do you think the same thing is also occuring with the human population?

Do you think there is a bubble in this 'market' because of too much "levaraged investing"?

People in the past taking on paper credit and borrowing their way to start family and having children?

Their "investment"(speculation) was in children instead of stocks.

 

Children were conceived and were raised thanks to the IOUs borrowed on behalf of their own future income.

 

So today when we have all the young adults complaining about how there are not many jobs, and the ones that are available are not a high paying one, technically wasn't this expected?

 

Money was borrowed from their future income in order to concieve them and raise them.

Now the birthrate of many nations is slowing down.

 

Is this a classic sign of a bubble 'market'?

 

http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/02/analysis-mega-cities-mortality-and-migration-a-snapshot-of-post-u-n-world-population/

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16472310

 

 

[MagnumPI]

There are plenty of good jobs. But there are also plenty of idiots doing the hiring.


For example:
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=controls+engineer&l=San+Francisco%2C+CA

 

Controls Engineer:

 

Jobs 1 to 10 of 2,060

 

And if you go through them, you'll likely find some obscure software as a must-have, and a salary in the Shift Leader at Starbucks range in many listings.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

No good jobs is probably due to a lack of freedom and an overabundance of government education.

[Libertus]

There would be plenty of great jobs, but government has made it to expensive (taxes) and risky (regulations) to hire people.

[utopian]

I would say there are no jobs left because existing industries have become so eloquent that they can produce a lot with little cost of business, in addition to the constant improvement of technology taking jobs. Robots are starting to do all the work, and there is not much work left for humans to do. Eventually, robots are gonna do all the work, and that will be a crazy time.

[Libertus]

Improvement of technology has not taken any jobs, all in all. Have you heard of the booming technology sector?

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

I find it really strange how this idea exists that there are a certain number of jobs in this closed system of city/state/country/world, and that if someone takes up the space of one job, whether it be machine or illegal immigrant, then the total sum of available livelihood decreases.

 

This is so antithetical to reality it baffles me. Whenever anyone works at anything, it creates MORE stuff for other people to do. The only way to "steal" a job is through the public sector, because it restricts the parameters and the output of the job through violence.

 

Even the title of this topic is eerily telling. The real question that needs to be asked here is: where are all the good entrepreneurs?

[utopian]

Improvement of technology has not taken any jobs, all in all. Have you heard of the booming technology sector?

I am aware of some kind of boom for technology. What I am more concerned about is things like this;

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/momentum-machines-burger-robot-2014-8

This machine has the potential to kill all burger flipping jobs. What are people gonna do if they cant even get a job flipping burgers?

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/01/08/ces-2015-we-ate-3d-printed-pizza

The thing is, its not just happening with burgers. I work a Pizza job, and it's already obsolete. A 3D printer can do my job for me at a fraction of the cost. What else can a 3D printer do? It can manufacture small parts, like gun parts, and all that's left for humans to do is some assembly. 

 

http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/baxter/

But that's not all robots can do, things like baxter are capable of some assembly, packaging, machine tending and more. There goes the manufacturing industry. Who knows what will be available in coming decades?

 

So considering this and more, there is never gonna be a recovery for the job sector. Only a slowly declining workforce necessity, as robots begin to do all the work for us.

[WasatchMan]

I would say there are no jobs left because existing industries have become so eloquent that they can produce a lot with little cost of business, in addition to the constant improvement of technology taking jobs. Robots are starting to do all the work, and there is not much work left for humans to do. Eventually, robots are gonna do all the work, and that will be a crazy time.

 

Wealth and resources are derived from production not jobs as such.  Technology has historically increased production, raising the wealth and prosperity of humanity.  Technology is a human tool whose purpose and scope is to serve humanity, not compete with it for jobs.

 

If robots make it so humans can no longer get jobs to get their own resources, who is paying the robots to work, and what is the purpose of their work?

[utopian]

Wealth and resources are derived from production not jobs as such.  Technology has historically increased production, raising the wealth and prosperity of humanity.  Technology is a human tool whose purpose and scope is to serve humanity, not compete with it for jobs.

 

If robots make it so humans can no longer get jobs to get their own resources, who is paying the robots to work, and what is the purpose of their work?

 

Lets step 100 years into the future, and make some large assumptions about the development of technology, considering what I have already linked. If technology is facilitating every need of every human, what need is there for jobs?

 

Your second sentence assumes humans would not be getting resources without jobs. What if the robots are growing all our food? Have you heard of hydroponics? What if they can mine gold automatically? What if they can build houses? 

 

A robot would not need "pay" except maybe some electricity and materials to function. Maybe a few engineers monitoring them to make sure they work properly and repair breakdowns. The purpose of robotic work, is to make it so humans do not have to work. 

[WasatchMan]

Lets step 100 years into the future, and make some large assumptions about the development of technology, considering what I have already linked. If technology is facilitating every need of every human, what need is there for jobs?

 

Your second sentence assumes humans would not be getting resources without jobs. What if the robots are growing all our food? Have you heard of hydroponics? What if they can mine gold automatically? What if they can build houses? 

 

A robot would not need "pay" except maybe some electricity and materials to function. Maybe a few engineers monitoring them to make sure they work properly and repair breakdowns. The purpose of robotic work, is to make it so humans do not have to work. 

 

Why do you think jobs hold some intrinsic value?  If we can get our needs met without working, than that frees us up to do other stuff (which would probably be setting the scope and goals of our technology).

 

I didn't mean literally who was paying robots a wage, I meant if they are doing work I would assume it would be for the purpose of someone else getting paid.  Lets say say all fast food became automatized, this would seem like a huge loss of jobs, however if nobody was able to buy fast food anymore because nobody had money, what would be the purpose of automatizing fast food?

 

Again, technology is a tool created by humans to serve humans.  It is inanimate, and it is up to people to define its scope and goals. You started off by talking about a job bubble, not saying that technology would provide for all our needs. If your hypothesis is technology will provide for all our mundane needs that humanity does not need to be wasting its time on, I say bring it on.  Humans have tons of potential, and it is lost flipping burgers at McDonalds.

[jbass]

The industrial revolution created such a burst of population. So much more than the transition to agriculture. During the 20th century alone, population has increased from about 1.6 billion to over 6 billion by the year 2000. I just can't believe we haven't heard more on the topic of our carrying capacity as a species.

 

Are we waiting to run out of jobs to find out that our economy can't sustain this many individuals? It seems that way with the increase in outsourcing that has occurred in the last few decades.

 

Do we feel like we can maintain such a staggering population growth with technological advancements, while fighting against medical technology advances and the earth's limited resources?

 

This linked video is called Mouse Utopia, where John Calhoun conducted an experiment to observe individual behavior of mice and then rats when they are exposed to unlimited population growth. I don't want to expose much of the video, but the experiment clearly noted a term coined by Calhoun, "behavioral sink", which described the aberrant behaviors in overcrowded population density situations. Everything has its limits.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun

                               

[utopian]

 

Why do you think jobs hold some intrinsic value?  If we can get our needs met without working, than that frees us up to do other stuff (which would probably be setting the scope and goals of our technology).

 

I didn't mean literally who was paying robots a wage, I meant if they are doing work I would assume it would be for the purpose of someone else getting paid.  Lets say say all fast food became automatized, this would seem like a huge loss of jobs, however if nobody was able to buy fast food anymore because nobody had money, what would be the purpose of automatizing fast food?

 

Again, technology is a tool created by humans to serve humans.  It is inanimate, and it is up to people to define its scope and goals. You started off by talking about a job bubble, not saying that technology would provide for all our needs. If your hypothesis is technology will provide for all our mundane needs that humanity does not need to be wasting its time on, I say bring it on.  Humans have tons of potential, and it is lost flipping burgers at McDonalds.

You are speaking to the aspect of jobs developing character correct? That jobs provide a sense of self worth, of accomplishment at facing an unwanted burden of work and following through with it. That will still be there, but the reward will be much less diminished. If you create a pizza from scratch when you have a 3D printer that can do it, well good on you, you achieved a milestone in your life. It was still a lot less costly in time and energy for the robot to do it.

 

Yes, robots doing work would be for the owners of the robot, and/or humanity in general, to benefit from. It will allow people to stop concentrating on more mundane jobs like farming, and concentrate on things like human development and space exploration. In the case of automatized fast food, consider that robots could grow, harvest, and prepare all materials necessary to create food for consumption. If that was the case, and there were enough robots, then no one would need to worry about buying any of it, they would just get it for free. The purpose being that everyone can now concentrate on more complicated endeavors.

 

We seem to be in agreement on the same sentiment. The thing is, technology has improved at such a drastic rate, it is ready to create titanic shifts in the world economy, and the world is not ready to comprehend it. 

 

 

The industrial revolution created such a burst of population. So much more than the transition to agriculture. During the 20th century alone, population has increased from about 1.6 billion to over 6 billion by the year 2000. I just can't believe we haven't heard more on the topic of our carrying capacity as a species.

 

Are we waiting to run out of jobs to find out that our economy can't sustain this many individuals? It seems that way with the increase in outsourcing that has occurred in the last few decades.

 

Do we feel like we can maintain such a staggering population growth with technological advancements, while fighting against medical technology advances and the earth's limited resources?

 

This linked video is called Mouse Utopia, where John Calhoun conducted an experiment to observe individual behavior of mice and then rats when they are exposed to unlimited population growth. I don't want to expose much of the video, but the experiment clearly noted a term coined by Calhoun, "behavioral sink", which described the aberrant behaviors in overcrowded population density situations. Everything has its limits.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z760XNy4VM

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun

                               

 

Ahaaaa! 

Ahahaaaaa!

 

Now you are thinking like a 1%er! The intelligence of the world population falls on a bell grade curve. Who has the capacity to consider such things? Only the top 20% are able to consider what is necessary to maintain, and even control the world. It takes a person of the 20th percentile to consider things like population growth and earth's limited resources. 

 

I accept this term of Calhoun's of "behavioral sink" and I wonder, have you noticed it happening to humans already? Seen the movie "Idiocracy" perhaps, and thought, hey we are just like that? One of the most notable aspects of it I think, is this breaking from traditions of religion, and the fairly recent sexual revolution of the 60s-70s. Lets save some time and accept these principles.

 

Now considering that, if you were a 1%er, and you saw these principles in action. You see the health of the earth degrading, you see behavioral sink and so on. As a 1%er, you are one of the few with power enough to really change things. And what would you do to change it?

 

How are you going to conserve the earth's resources?

Would you strive to lower the population?

How are you going to do that?

Well you can kill off a lot of people by starting wars. You can kill off a lot more by secrecy, by putting fluoride in the water and dangerous radiation in cell phones and lots of other stuff. You can create the Federal Reserve and squeeze the economy, making people homeless, subjecting them to conditions that will kill them off. 

And wait a minute, because how are you going to decide who gets to live and who should die? Do you have the right to decide that? Perhaps as a 1%er, a person of the highest intelligence, you do. After all, you are one of the few who can rise above deciding what is best for an individual, and decide what is best for the species. It will be interesting to see yourself explain to yourself, how you expect to explain to the old, or the stupid, or the infirmed, that they should die for the rest of us.

 

And did you notice, through all of this consideration, suddenly, it became necessary to maintain a state. To create a set of rules, and expect the population to live by them, so that you could remove the ones who did not play by the rules from the gene pool. 

 

Because the alternative is the destruction of the planet, and the exhaustion of its resources, and behavioral sink. That's why a state is necessary. What does the Libertarian say to that?

[LovePrevails]

there is plenty of meaningful skilled work that is still highly paid (being a plumber &c.) which makes me think that there are plenty skilled jobs just not enough unskilled jobs. If these professions were overpopulated their tariffs would have to go down.

[iron]

guys I'm the OP here

 

just wanted to clarify my first post...

 

I want to know if the population growth we had in the last few decades has more to do with the fiat monetary system and not necessarly technology advancement/ industrial revolution.

 

We know that the modern economy around the world, there is a lot of leverage "investing" going on.... it's quite prolific because of the unique feature the fiat IOU system posesses, where one can simply type numbers on keyboard and generate credit in exchange for one's "promise".

 

We've seen that the ease to create such 'credit' and have it be invested/speculated in whatever with little restrictions has let to many distortions and bubbles in many industries and markets in recent years.

 

The question is, is the same thing happening to the human population? Is there a 'bubble'?

 

Was the birth and raising of (some?/many?) people made possible ONLY because of the unique feature the fiat system posesses where 'credit' is readily available?

 

***

 

Those who say no, population growth of 1B to 7B in 20th century is only because of technology/industrial revolution...

 

How do you know that growth of 7-fold increase in the human population is solely because of technology and medical advancements?

 

What if, all things being equal, technology and medical advancement would naturally increase the human population by 1B over the last centruy and the other 5B was because of readily available credit (fiat-unit/IOU borrowed from the future)?

 

***

 

Also, I know some of you here argue that human ingenuity can create wealth to pay off these kinds of debt.

 

But what if the rate of "wealth" created by human ingenuity is not enough to cover the rate of "credit" being created for population growth?

 

 

I mean, today there's a large segment of the population who do have jobs, complain that they can barely make ends meet.  Is it because the extra wealth they would've normally earned a few generations ago... has already been used up to pay back for the credit that was created and borrowed on their behalf by their parents in order to have them be borned and raised up in the first place?

[Libertus]

utopian, the washing machine has killed millions of washer jobs. Are you saying that is not a good thing? Jobs are a not an end, they are a means. When you eliminate a job by eliminating the need for a job, everybody is better off. If you don't believe that, then you would have to be in favor of eliminating all machines. We'd have full employment now, in the whole world, and nothing to eat.

[labmath2]

I don't think its that simple. Just because we can produce a surplus of food, does not mean everyone gets to eat. Untill the buyers are willing to pay what the producers are willing to take, there will be no exchange of goods. The problem with effeciency in production is that diminishingly small percent of the population can produce most of the goods everyone else needs. Everyone else has to produce what other people want, making their jobs less secure.

[utopian]

utopian, the washing machine has killed millions of washer jobs. Are you saying that is not a good thing? Jobs are a not an end, they are a means. When you eliminate a job by eliminating the need for a job, everybody is better off. If you don't believe that, then you would have to be in favor of eliminating all machines. We'd have full employment now, in the whole world, and nothing to eat.

Mmm, not exactly. It is a bad thing if it comes before the economy is ready for it. Better than just shoving the proverbial washing machine into society, you would rather introduce it slowly over time, so those who used to be clothes washers have time to develop skills to get a different job. 

 

I am for installing all machines to where they can provide resources. It will free up human resources for application in other more complex and useful areas. But we have to consider as well, what this will mean for the human condition in the long run. Most of human history up until now is humans working out of necessity, and having a life of meaning for it. What kind of philosophical catastrophe will we have on our hands, when we begin to find most of human life does not need to work, and is unnecessary? How long can you go playing all day, before people start to get tired of it? Part of the human experience, I think, is overcoming problems that come up in every day life, and being proud for doing it. Technology has the capability to remove that from us. 

I want to know if the population growth we had in the last few decades has more to do with the fiat monetary system and not necessarly technology advancement/ industrial revolution.

 

The question is, is the same thing happening to the human population? Is there a 'bubble'?

 

Was the birth and raising of (some?/many?) people made possible ONLY because of the unique feature the fiat system posesses where 'credit' is readily available?

I would say it is not possible for the population bubble to have been sustained by the fiat currency issue alone. Fiat currency may have contributed, because of the illusion of more wealth when there is none. But no matter how much extra money you print, there is never gonna be more bread for people to eat, until someone makes more. That, therefore, had to be developed by the industrial revolution.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

A few weeks ago I was doing a detailing job for my cousin's friend. I drove over to this friend's house to find my cousin there pressure washing the driveway. We chatted a bit and he told me that the friend's parents were paying him to do the work.

 

Several days later I met my cousin again and we talked about work. I mentioned the pressure washing and he said, "Yeah! Now whenever I look at dirty driveways, all I see is money!"

 

But they're stealing our jobs...

[Susana]

I doubt there could ever be too many people.

[LovePrevails]

are there too many nurses? too many people taking care of the environment and replanting our forests? too many great role models for children? 

Too many people looking after the elderly and reading stories for the blind? the proposition is really very silly

[Guest Gee]

More people all else equil means more good jobs as the is greater opertunity for diversification of labour so greater specialisation so greater producitivity so greater pay.

[tasmlab]

 

 

So today when we have all the young adults complaining about how there are not many jobs, and the ones that are available are not a high paying one, technically wasn't this expected?

 

 

 

Being young and low paying jobs pretty much go hand in hand.  Young people haven't developed the marketable skills that a high paying job requires because they haven't had the time/experience.