The Core

They are racing to automate their own work forces to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers.

You beat me to the post. 

I think most everyone knows that businesses aren't going to be altruistic on this.  At the most, they'll allow a few humans to drift away by attrition.  The shift will be similar to the off-shoring movement in the past.

>Tradeschools

The problem there is they teach the types of jobs that are going to be the most challenged by automation & AI.

#PopulationControl

https://www.indeed.com/cmp/iFixRobot-LLC/jobs/Robot-Repair-Technician-181182a0c0b5e105?sjdu=QwrRXKrqZ3CNX5W-O9jEvZl6VUjJk2iOPhXNaASRoq48MoxqHTqZQfAmUAbIXsNykiIXn4julDfSRy-OMalv6TLqyjsoNnh9Cxk6mMlPoNg&tk=1d2cp6a7o0g7i003&adid=225138004&vjs=3

PLUS:
What LM said

Isn't population decline mostly among the more educated populace?

I think wealthy more than educated (globally)

It is worth spending a little time on this link to get a picture of global birth rate trends:
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

Birth rates are falling more rapidly in the developing world than it did in Western Europe and North America. Fertility rates are tanking all over the world.  I don't think it is about education alone, but more as places move away from manual agrarian economies -- children shift from being assets to a liabilities.

But back to the original topic and why LM introduced it....

Population is expected to peak at some point around 2100. All our economic models are based on growth. It's an open question what happens when population starts to decline. It's possible in the long run that the economic productivity enabled by robots will make up for the drop in population and we will all live in paradise.

The problem, like LM said, is the timing. It seems that the robots will precede the population drop by several decades. In 1900, 38% of Americans worked in agriculture. In 1500, probably about 90% of Europeans worked in ag. Now it's 1.5% in the US. Obviously, we found other work for people.

Will we do that again? If we do, can we grow the economy and save the planet? I think the double challenge of automation ending jobs and the pressing need to avoid the worst effects of climate change and the economic contraction that entails (and the unwillingness of most people to accept any sort of contraction in the economy) is a recipe for bad things for most workers

Economic contraction seems inevitable to me

Why?

We agree that
 - population will begin to decline
 - demand for labor will fall faster than supply
 - high levels of consumption are killing the planet and must be curtailed if we are to survive

All of those things indicate that economic contraction is in our future.

But on some level the economy is increasingly "resource independent" and that's where my head starts to get tripped up.

What I mean by that (getting tripped up) is that on the one hand, we have the possibility of creating renewable energy sources that far outstrip current energy capacity. But those windmills and solar panels nevertheless require resources extracted from the ground.

Does automation + renewable tech (energy, materials) = continued rise in output or does population contraction + fewer jobs + resource depletion lead inevitably to decreased output?

And I guess that's your point - we are at a crossroads and we still may have the ability to choose either future. Unfortunately, based on everything I've seen so far, we're going to choose the negative one. For example, record numbers of people think global warming is a serious or imminent threat, but that is not translating to people being willing to take action. In fact, according to one study I saw, the more concerned people are about global warming, the *less* willing they are to make changes in their personal lives.

So as the Group of Rome put it in 1972, just what are the limits of growth? Unfortunately, their recent (2012?) retrospective on the question found that despite new challenges and new data, if we don't get our sh## together ASAP, the seams start to come apart on the global system around 2040 to 2050. And since we don't seem to be getting our sh## together...