I do not think we can completely automate out physical labour. Because that machine you program will break. Because we need to do physical work — even though it hurts us (and I will need to see a physical therapist today: I managed to tear muscles yesterday).

THe question of the correct size of a city is that it can be a lot smaller than you think. A city of 100 000 will have most htings you would like: I miss the Opera in Auckland, and the variety of shops, but I do not miss the one hour commute. My academic town is 120 000: we have must cultural assets.

And if you move 40 minutes out, the housing becomes cheaper. Many very poor or retired people do just that. If you don’t need to be in an office to meet people — or be on call — then living further out is a little safer and has a lot less stress.

Educated people are shifting more toward cities (partially contradicting the first article I think). My guess is the educated are driving up housing costs while, at the same time, jobs for less educated are getting automated out of existence. So the poor are moving out to cheaper places to live. This is probably much more the case for the most educated than the least educated cities. The cities with high concentrations of brain power, especially workers with STEM skills, have industries that pay better and their employees can outbid the lower classes for housing (think San Francisco).

Leonid Bershidsky argues that a leisure deficit is killing suburbia as people move closer to their jobs to save time. He says the most skilled people are working longer hours and therefore have less time to commute. So they live closer to work. If the rise in incomes for the highest performers is disproportionate to the number of hours worked then the lower classes are getting pushed out of cities by the rising value of elite cognitive workers.

Well, lets jump ahead 10-15 years and assume fully autonomous vehicles are widely available and working well. What will that do to willingness to commute longer distances? Will knowledge workers let the car do the driving and work on their software, spreadsheets, presentations, and sales calls while they commute to outer suburbs? Or will they still live as close to work as possible, at least on week nights, and only go to second homes further away on weekends?

Also, will video conferencing and virtual reality ever reduce how often people work from the office? So far it is amazing how much people stay anchored to physical offices. Is that ever going to change?

Another question: will automation reduce the size of the optimal city? Suppose cities no longer need humans to work as tax drivers, bus drivers, trash collectors, cooks, and assorted other blue collar workers

The Blue collar workers are the ones a city needs. Yesterday my power doors broke in the garage: fitting them is a job for a technician. Maintaining those robots is a job for a technician. So is fixing plumbing. You cannot export these jobs to Bangalore: as you can programming, or to Vietnam, as you can manufacturing.

And credentials wisdom makes not.

Let me state clearly what should be obvious to longtime readers: I don’t like it when kids at elite colleges claim to be victims of oppression.

Self-pity as a basis for political activism is a very bad idea and should be discouraged. Generally speaking, young people are ignorant and foolish. Being highly intelligent is not a substitute for experience, and youthful enthusiasm should never be confused with actual knowledge. Do not tell me you are a victim of oppression if your Daddy is rich enough to send you to a school where tuition is $50,586 a year

No university is worth 50K a year. Local universities will charge 20K a year for overseas students: professional courses such as medicine excepted.

And unless you can get into one of the competative courses with clear careers that follow, get a trade. You will have less debt, be happier, and your job cannot be oursourced. You will be antifragile.