It doesn’t happen instantly. Wages for jobs like nurses: Yes. Conversely, as the labor market adjusted and everyone’s expectations were adjusted towards shorter work weeks, people would begin going in to something like nursing for the salary, labor supply would gradually equalize in line with new work week expectations and salary.
None of this is radical, it happens on a small scale constantly. Happening at this scale this fast is going to be painful, less so if there’s a minimum of thought put into it, but still painful.
But there has to be some change in things. There is no equilibrium possible in having the world produce the same amount of stuff but half the population has zero money or everyone has half as much— and can’t afford that stuff so then it just wouldn’t be produced, but that isn’t the way the economy has ever gone either. We have a 5 day work week in part because 1) industrialization made it possible and 2) It gave people more time to themselves, which was required in order for people to have time to spend more money on all of the things being produced by industrialization. It was a somewhat deliberate process and even happened pretty quickly. Something similar should hopefully happen here.
There are alternatives! A “Covid 2.0” that ends up being much deadlier could present a much more morbid solution in the form of outright population loss. But then again, absent a little economic foresight then even without a sequel worse than the original Covid the social unrest and other upheaval might simply lead to a bunch of absurd wars and we get the same or worse population loss… sorry, I don’t want to get into the territory of bad Hollywood movie plots. But massive changes to labor force expectations on what employment means are pretty much required in some form or fashion.
>But there has to be some change in things. There is no equilibrium possible in having the world produce the same amount of stuff but half the population has zero money or everyone has half as much— and can’t afford that stuff so then it just wouldn’t be produced, but that isn’t the way the economy has ever gone either.
How is AI different than the agricultural revolution, which allowed us to make the same amount of food for 95% less labor, or recent changes in automation, which drastically reduced the amount of labor needed for manufactured goods? The outcome for both is that people got displaced to the "service industry", which meant both desk jobs and jobs like nurses. I don't see how AI is going to be any different, except with desk jobs moving to other non-automatable service jobs like nurses, plumbers or whatever.
Sure: if there are enough service industry jobs, and I’m sure there will be lots of new ones to come, but this isn’t an a or b thing, over the centuries the overall move has been both away from less skilled work and reduction in time spend working. And so unless the demand for service workers skyrockets, or nurses or wherever there is a need for non automatable work skyrockets to require so many more people, the amount of time worked will need to be reduced.
None of this is radical, it happens on a small scale constantly. Happening at this scale this fast is going to be painful, less so if there’s a minimum of thought put into it, but still painful.
But there has to be some change in things. There is no equilibrium possible in having the world produce the same amount of stuff but half the population has zero money or everyone has half as much— and can’t afford that stuff so then it just wouldn’t be produced, but that isn’t the way the economy has ever gone either. We have a 5 day work week in part because 1) industrialization made it possible and 2) It gave people more time to themselves, which was required in order for people to have time to spend more money on all of the things being produced by industrialization. It was a somewhat deliberate process and even happened pretty quickly. Something similar should hopefully happen here.
There are alternatives! A “Covid 2.0” that ends up being much deadlier could present a much more morbid solution in the form of outright population loss. But then again, absent a little economic foresight then even without a sequel worse than the original Covid the social unrest and other upheaval might simply lead to a bunch of absurd wars and we get the same or worse population loss… sorry, I don’t want to get into the territory of bad Hollywood movie plots. But massive changes to labor force expectations on what employment means are pretty much required in some form or fashion.