Comments on: The Luddite report? CAANZ and NZIER raise automation fears https://istart.co.nz/nz-news-items/the-luddite-report-caanz-and-nzier-raise-automation-fears/ iStart technology in business leading the way to smarter technology investment - A/NZ ERP, CRM, BI, HR, eCommerce software research, trends and buyer's guides. Mon, 15 Jun 2026 23:46:54 +0000 hourly 1 By: Donovan Jackson https://istart.co.nz/nz-news-items/the-luddite-report-caanz-and-nzier-raise-automation-fears/#comment-16491 Wed, 28 Oct 2015 00:36:21 +0000 https://istart.co.nz/?post_type=news-items&p=13783#comment-16491 Hi Jochen
Thanks for the comment. Automation does ‘take people’s jobs’, because those jobs are often not really that much fun anyway, and when the jobs are taken, it leaves people free to do more interesting things. Automation has always delivered benefits to humanity, in the form of lower cost products and services for all of the rest of us. While we are all familiar with the concept of making whatever we provide (skills or products) scarce, but want whatever we procure to be plentiful (so costs are high, and low, respectively), the world is bigger than the individual, or group of individuals, who/which might be displaced. Automation drives efficiency; efficiency creates volume, volume drives price down.
This doesn’t make people worthless, it is done for the benefit of people (the customers who buy goods). We see it around us every day – it wasn’t all that long ago that the technological marvel of a computer or a cellphone was the preserve of the very rich.
And of we look at employment levels in NZ in this wondrous technological age, it seems to have held out pretty well. The worst on record was 1992, with unemployment at 10.2 percent. It has since improved, despite the advances made in automation over 23 years, to 5.8 percent. Indeed, we still have to import workers from the Islands to harvest kiwifruit and perform other tasks, so it is difficult to see how automation is a bad thing.
Best regards
D

]]> By: Jochen Daum https://istart.co.nz/nz-news-items/the-luddite-report-caanz-and-nzier-raise-automation-fears/#comment-16175 Fri, 23 Oct 2015 23:06:31 +0000 https://istart.co.nz/?post_type=news-items&p=13783#comment-16175 You “re-frame” the report in challenging words, but add little to it, so it stays on as a challenged PR piece.

The difference to the 19th century is that book selling, Newspapers, Magazines, Printing and Travel already have been automated with 10% of jobs left, retail, commercial office space is in the middle of it and it will affect most other industries sooner or later. Yes, its got to be discussed, but it seems much more likely than in teh 19th century for automation to take people’s jobs.

We need to figure out how to engage all these people who have been taught that they are worthless without a job to have meaning in their lives without one.

Jochen

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