Will minimum wage hikes lead to a huge boost in automation? Only if we're lucky
I think the fundamental purpose of a business is to accomplish a task, not to employ people. For example, I don&#x27;t care how many people are employed to keep hackernews running. I&#x27;m thankful for their efforts, but I don&#x27;t care if it&#x27;s one person, ten people, or one bot. Or how much any of them get paid. The only thing that consumers and businesses care about is the end result.<p>If a job can be done by a machine, that&#x27;s fine. People will find new forms of employment. Or they won&#x27;t. But we can&#x27;t expect businesses or consumers to misallocate their resources for the sake of someone&#x27;s job.<p>Fortunately, fully automating the process of driving or running a restaurant is decades away. We have time to implement a basic income. Or just come up with more ways to employ people. The number of available jobs is limited only by imagination. &quot;Instagram Photo Producer&quot;, &quot;Online Forum Discussion Facilitator&quot;, &quot;3D Printed Object Finisher&quot;. Someone can pay someone else to do any given thing, and now that&#x27;s an occupation. &quot;Potential Job Titles&quot; isn&#x27;t a finite list, and we can&#x27;t ever run out of them.