Is unemployment inevitable?
Now that technology is advancing to the point where we don't really need too much manual labor, is the only possibly solution to unemployment a smaller population? For instance, Redbox can manage to rent out movies for $1 per day with barely any employees considering the fact that their entire 'store' is run out of a little machine. Meanwhile Blockbuster charges ~$3 per night for a movie while they hire employees. I personally stay away from Redbox because I like companies that hire a lot of people, but that's a personal choice. Many people choose Redbox because it's so cheap, despite the lack of good movies most of the time.
Will we one day have like one person running the entire economy from a switchboard in a small room?
Brian:Will we one day have like one person running the entire economy from a switchboard in a small room?
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
"Is unemployment inevitable?"
No. A free market economy will adjust around efficiency and innovation gains in time (even if it means permanent job losses in some sectors.) In fact, the economy will be stronger. The money people save from renting a movie for $1 instead of $3 will be eventually spent elsewhere, creating jobs and opportunites in other areas.
Your same worry could have been expressed a century ago with the advent of modern farm machinery. Millions were put out of work due to the technology advances, but, of course, the economy boomed from the gains. And the jobs eventually popped up elsewhere.
For each redbox which replaces X number of workers at Blockbuster, Y amount of jobs are made available in building redbox, maintaining redbox, transporting the materials necessary to build redbox, etc.
to add to eggs response - the same concerns have been made since the first machine was built and put someone out of work. just as it used to take people working 60 hours a week to provide food and shelter it now takes much less thanks to innovation and capital improvements.
at some point in the 1800's the US was going to close the patent office, because everything had already been invented. the only thing that keep people unemployed is managed economies..
Be responsible, ease suffering; spay or neuter your pets.
We must get them to understand that government solutions are the problem!
Unemployment is inevitable in an interventionist economy. The income tax, minimum wage laws, regulations, and fiat money prevent the economy from adjusting to maximize employment. One must ask who benefits from such a system because obviously somebody does.
Henry Hazlitt did a nice job debunking the myth that machinery is the cause of unemployment in Economics in One Lesson. Nothing has changed, technology is the new machinery.
I'd say that, to use your example of rented movies, the future lies in downloads over the internet. No stores, no vending machines. In an unhampered market, capital could most efficiently and quickly move from the Blockbuster / Redbox model to where it is needed (profitable activities), but not in an interventionist system like we have. There will be prolonged unemployment and pain.
"The market is a process." - Ludwig von Mises, as related by Israel Kirzner. "Capital formation is a beautiful thing" - Chloe732.
As technology frees up labor in one area, those sectors that now require less workers will have allowed those very workers to be useful in some place else, most likely working in areas of technology that are up and coming but still require a little more manual labor to get the job done. And the cycle just repeats over and over and over and over and over...
:)