Ah tangents

Lets put "free energy and matter manipulation" behind us for now and look at some things closer to home.

In the past several centuries and earlier there have been technology shifts and the general consensus is that each time the workforce and economy shifted and adapted around it and overall was better for the whole.

While not a technology shift lets look at a recent example most are familiar with.

In manufacturing a few decades ago as shipping became cheaper and the world became more connected it became cheaper to relocate simple manufacturing to other countries. As of about a decade or so ago I would venture to say the majority of non technological and military related manufacturing was relocated outside the us both simple and complex. Many thousands upon thousands lost their jobs or the jobs were phased out and not replaced when the current occupant retired.

While that is horrifying, it is no different than what has happened previously and the market shifted to compensate. While these jobs no longer existed new ones opened up in various areas to compensate.

So why are we even bothering to talk about this then? How is this related to the economical issues outlined in the previous post? Won't things will just continue to keep shifting like they have since human history began? Unfortunately not it seems by many predictions.

Within the last half century we have seen major advances in automation thanks to computers and the technologies they make possible. It was even predicted by many that at this point we would not be working or would have a very small workload at this point and devote most of our time to leisure. This has not happened for better or worse thanks to a huge increase in new fields. We however have seen several interesting things happen that have never happened before and while interesting they may not exactly be good.

Next we shall look at modern services and manufacturing.