The Pros and Cons of Destructive Innovation

Automation and job loss

Each Friday, Mike Richman and Dirk Dusharme co-host Quality Digest Live, a 30-minute web TV show. On QDL they offer up news and commentary about the issues facing quality professionals and their organizations.

Often the topics covered on the show and in our editorial content are somewhat divisive among quality professionals. (Six Sigma, anyone?) Lately we’ve found some passionate disagreement on an issue with real meaning for the future not only of the quality profession, but of workers everywhere. That issue is the ongoing revolution of automation throughout the workplace.

Surprisingly, Mike and Dirk found that they’re rather disagreeable on this issue themselves. During the Dec. 8, 2017, episode of QDL, Dirk broached the subject during our “Off Script” segment. Dirk’s point was that automation will not lead to job losses in the long term. Mike felt that it most certainly will.

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Automation and Jobs

If automation does not increase profit, it will not occur (?)

At what point does technology eliminate the need for a job (the way money does)?

Why not? What then? Over population?

Is technolgy "bad?" Is it preventable? Should we ask an Amish community?

Technology not bad

My personal thought is that tech in itself is not bad. It is a tool. Also, it isn't preventable. People will always invent and if there is a market for that invention people will use it (hopefully for good).

I don't think even Brynjolfson is saying tech is bad. His fear is that it is being adopted too quickly to be easily integrated into the economy. Which is where I disagree with him.

Dirk

not so black and white

Innovation has always changed the employment landscape and will continue to do so in the future. From early hominids discovering they could plant the food stocks to feed themselves without daily gathering in the wild, to realizing others could finance ventures for a share of the crop, to monitoring several automated machines from a central location the evolution has progressed.

The more important factor to consider is all of these actions have one purpose in mind. The purpose is survival. I may have the most technologically advanced facility with the most robots and fewest humans, but at the end of the day who is going to buy what I make? The demand side of the supply and demand curve depends upon disposable income. A scant few with lots of money simply will not support a wide spread automation of all work.

The lower middle and middle income brackets are those that create the demand for the product being offered by corporations. When that is forgotten, the corporation forgetting is dooming itself to a short lived life.

There are those that will make this mistake but luckily it is a self-fulfilling phenomena. Lower costs, with lower prices, with now clientele leads to the same bankruptcy that high costs do.