Technological advances do create jobs
Mr. Worstall claims that "Technological advances don't create jobs: human desires do"
I disagree. He is confusing a specific product with a technological advance.
While a specific technological product (the pin making machine in the article's example) may not create jobs, a technological advance is more than just a specific machine. The technological advances that make it possible to build a pin-making machine can also make it feasible to build machines that perform a whole range of other functions as well, many of which are entirely new and create entirely new human desires. And these are the new jobs that are created by the technological advance.
Sure, word processing systems put typesetters out of business, but the technological advances that made word processing systems possible (computers) also created entirely new products and services that did not exist before, along with corresponding new jobs. And this is in fact why you also need education: in order to create these new products and services made possible by the technological advance you need to be educated and informed about them, and to have imagination and business skills.
The part about doing something entirely different like "teaching yoga" seems bogus to me because there was nothing stopping people from teaching yoga profitably even before the technological advance. If there was a human desire for it, people didn't need to wait to be kicked out of the pin factory to do it. It is precisely the technological advance that is the driver for the new types of goods and services that didn't exist before.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
