256-year Natural Experiment reveals that machines (& robots) don't put humans out of work
An answer to the nagging Luddites and even the pesky Malthusians
In this prior Substack, it was revealed that the purchasing power of blue collar workers is on the decline. Those pushing for a Great Reset will likely come back with the rejoinder: “Well, that’s because robots have put people out of work!”
But this claim, that machines put humans out of work, isn’t a new one. In fact, it has been a recurring claim for over 250 years — and it never comes true. A paper called The History of Technological Anxiety and the Future of Economic Growth: Is This Time Different? looks at the history of the claim.
The popular historic event that goes with that sentiment is the revolt of the Luddites.
The researchers of the paper list out the claimants, including one quote from a union boss saying that 98% of currently-existing human workers will be gone by 2025 — 30 years after the Jeremy Rifkin book in which the claim is propagated.
To check to see if any of the claims had been followed up by 30 years of job losses which approached 98% of the workforce, I went back through time. Here are the notes:
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The first “Luddite-like” claimant listed was William Mildmay in 1765. The UK population then was 8.36 million with 4.5 million employed. In 30 years from the claim, the total number of jobs had risen, though there was a slight reduction in the total share of the population holding a job.
This was a time when more people had to work than had wanted to, because they could not survive without work. This means that some of the very young, the very old, the sick, and the infirmed may have had to work in some capacity.
By 1860 in the UK, it was clear that machines didn’t put people out of work though. More people in 1860 were working than in 1830, when workers who signed threatening letters to their employers with the alias “Captain Swing” were hell-bent on preventing the adoption of new machinery in textile plants.
They got it wrong.
The same refutation of the Luddite View (that machines/robots put people out of work) happened later on in the USA. The only time that employment had dropped over 5% in the 30 years following the new Luddite claimant was in the Great Depression — involving overriding circumstances, not job loss from machines.
That’s 256 years of evidence which does not back up the claim.