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My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

theguardian.com

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Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#61

Post by roymurdock »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #45
roymurdock wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only competitive strategy that seems to be working at the moment is having a vertical that is sufficiently different from the incumbent that you can attract existing users of the incumbent's network to use yours in parallel. How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a different vertical (sports, energy, fruit, hea…

How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? Well, I can always quaff a Pepsi, quite irrespective of what my peers chose to drink. It doesn't work quite as well to use a different, say, social media platform, when all my friends are on Facebook.

Pepsi is to Coke as Google + is to Facebook. They both have overlapping networks of drinkers/users that are not mutually exclusive. Facebook was able to get to market first and provide a tastier product. But the free market supports both products/networks. And there is more room for disruption in the Facebook/Google Plus space than the soft drinks market due to much shorter product lifecycles. Myspace lasted 5 years. Facebook will last longer due to strong tie-ins w/ businesses, schools, organizations, etc. but I, like many of my friends, have dropped it and are keeping an eye out for the next thing.

The issue w/ Uber and Lyft is one of employment laws rather than regulated trust networks. If we changed the laws/prosecuted the companies they would have to raise prices due to higher employee wages/compensation which would have the ultimate effect of weakening the network as people looked at taxis and public transport as viable alternatives.

So ultimately my point is that we should look at how attractive the service and why. In the case of Uber its because they are able to exploit an oversupply of low skill labor to bring prices down. This combined w/ advertising and promotions has created a strong network. Not sure it's the govs job to step in and weaken/nationalize that network. Perhaps regulate the employee/employer relationship, but this is nothing new.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#62

Post by amyjess »

> it seems strange to me that we would always recommend to companies that their revenue streams are diverse, yet for individuals, the smallest and most fragile economic unit, we say: you must only do one thing all your life. What a crazy way to live; 87% of people in full-time employment are not passionate about what they do. When I look at this new way of work, I think of it as opt-in. It gives people economic agency, it puts them in charge. And it gives them flexibility. People love those things.

I don't think people love these things as much as they love security, at least in the long term.

Every generation goes through this. Journalists act like Millennials are special people who won't be held to a 9-to-5 job like everyone before them, but they've made the same mistake as journalists who covered previous generations. Before these "gig economy" Millennials, we had "hippie" Baby Boomers and "slacker" Gen-Xers.

Young people of every generation are always going to say they don't want to live a traditional life like their parents, that they're going to chase their dreams and be genuinely different, and they join whatever the latest counterculture is. But, ultimately, they come back.

The hippies of the '60s and '70s became the yuppies of the '80s and the soccer moms of the '90s. Why? They want that sweet, sweet security. A boring job with a steady paycheck and loads of benefits means you don't have to worry about anything, as long as you come to work every day and don't spectacularly fuck up at your job. If you're planning to start a family, then you need the stability for your kids. If you're not, then the stability helps fund your life so you can spend the weekend enjoying your hobbies instead of worrying where your next meal is coming from.

Mark my words, in a decade the "gig economy" rumspringa will be over, and most of those people who chose to bounce from gig to gig for "flexibility" will be working in cube farms so their kids can have health insurance and go to good schools (and those of us without kids will be doing the same thing so we can indulge in expensive hobbies on evenings and weekends).

Oh, of course there will be holdouts, just like there are still hippies who live on communes well into their 60s, but by and large the gig economy will fade away once most of the original participants are out of their 20s, and pop culture will treat the "aging Millenial hipster" as a joke just like the "aging hippie" is treated now. And, of course, we'll see the beginnings of the next rumspringa as the next generation of young people decide they don't want to be like their parents... until they do.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#63

Post by mark_l_watson »

+1 for The Guardian article and this discussion thread. I see the automation and replacement of jobs as one of the central problems.

I am mostly retired now so I spend more time mentoring (mostly) young people on CS tech, job market, choosing a career path, etc. Two common lines of dialog are what tech they have a passion for and the other is what tech is least likely to be automated. I may be optimistic in that I hope that a life process/system of continuous education and keeping in mind what types of work help society the most will see the younger generations through some 'interesting' times.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#64

Post by pjc50 »

padobson wrote: post #56
pjc50 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where "r > g" and Picketty's work is relevant. The rate of return on capital matters. Centralised capital earning a return will always pull ahead of small-scale capital unless there's enough regulatory and other handicapping to the advantage of the small capital investment. Can decentralised capital get a better rate of return than centralised capital? If so, centralised capital can just invest in it. If not,…

If not, you'll end up paying your decentralised returns back and more in rent. Property is the ultimate centralised store of capital. I think this would assume that decentralized investments won't be able to afford autonomous, off-the-grid living arrangements. There's still a whole lot more land out there than we need. And it wouldn't need to support everyone, just enough so that there's an alternative to keep rents…

There's still a whole lot more land out there than we need

You can't be serious - there isn't any unowned land out there. Certainly not in the western world. Sure, in the Americas you can squat on government land for a while and hope nobody notices, but that involves being miles away from anywhere and if you're off the grid it seriously hampers your earning potential.

In the UK there is simply nowhere you can do this.

Anything else you pay for can be decentralized

Microchip fabs?

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#65

Post by padobson »

pjc50 wrote: post #64
padobson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not, you'll end up paying your decentralised returns back and more in rent. Property is the ultimate centralised store of capital. I think this would assume that decentralized investments won't be able to afford autonomous, off-the-grid living arrangements. There's still a whole lot more land out there than we need. And it wouldn't need to support everyone, just enough so that there's an alternative to keep rents…

There's still a whole lot more land out there than we need You can't be serious - there isn't any unowned land out there. Certainly not in the western world. Sure, in the Americas you can squat on government land for a while and hope nobody notices, but that involves being miles away from anywhere and if you're off the grid it seriously hampers your earning potential. In the UK there is simply nowhere you can do this…

You can't be serious - there isn't any unowned land out there.

You can buy land for less than $2,000 per acre in just about every inland state in the US. A cursory glance at Zillow shows that even Rhode Island has sub-$100k/acre available[1].

But that involves being miles away from anywhere and if you're off the grid it seriously hampers your earning potential.

I'll concede that we're not there yet, but technology makes off-the-grid living and working more feasible all the time.

Microchip fabs?

You mean like Intel? A company with 1800 owners?[2]

But without getting to boiled down in the minutia, my problem with Picketty is that there's no reason that the "r" in "r > g" couldn't be distributed using crowd-funding and decentralized currencies (and whatever their successors might be) by the natural flow of capital, rather than relying on the coercive methods Picketty suggests.

[1]http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/RI/land_type/50_rid/2-_... [2]http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/intc/ownership-summary

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#66

Post by kedean »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #45
roymurdock wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only competitive strategy that seems to be working at the moment is having a vertical that is sufficiently different from the incumbent that you can attract existing users of the incumbent's network to use yours in parallel. How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a different vertical (sports, energy, fruit, hea…

How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? Well, I can always quaff a Pepsi, quite irrespective of what my peers chose to drink. It doesn't work quite as well to use a different, say, social media platform, when all my friends are on Facebook.

Not necessarily. Pepsi and Coke have both built quite legal relationships with a number of institutions like universities and fast food chains with the agreement that competitor products are not served. My university was a "pepsi campus", you couldn't buy coke products anywhere on campus. This is why people have to ask "do you serve coke or pepsi?" at restaurants. Of course this has far fewer effects that social network tie-ins, but its not a new idea.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#67

Post by laotzu »

padobson wrote: post #57
laotzu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unless, of course, they're kept alive by force. Which has increasingly been the case since the 70's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailout#Cases

Which is why I find the "base income" suggestions so prevalent in this thread somewhat disturbing. The government is more likely to exacerbate this problem than solve it.

As a proponent of a universal income, I think that's where a lot of the debate fizzles out, and rightly so. Developing a UBI within the status quo framework of centralized government and the dollar (another highly centralized social institution) would be misguided and would completely inhibit the potential of such a system. A real UBI would be a distributed network, which is incompatible with such highly centralized systems.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#68

Post by padobson »

laotzu wrote: post #67
padobson wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I find the "base income" suggestions so prevalent in this thread somewhat disturbing. The government is more likely to exacerbate this problem than solve it.

As a proponent of a universal income, I think that's where a lot of the debate fizzles out, and rightly so. Developing a UBI within the status quo framework of centralized government and the dollar (another highly centralized social institution) would be misguided and would completely inhibit the potential of such a system. A real UBI would be a distributed network, which is incompatible with such highly centralized…

Any materials out there on ways implement this? I'd love to read up on it further.

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#69

Post by charlesarthur »

kedean wrote: post #66
CaptainZapp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? Well, I can always quaff a Pepsi, quite irrespective of what my peers chose to drink. It doesn't work quite as well to use a different, say, social media platform, when all my friends are on Facebook.

Not necessarily. Pepsi and Coke have both built quite legal relationships with a number of institutions like universities and fast food chains with the agreement that competitor products are not served. My university was a "pepsi campus", you couldn't buy coke products anywhere on campus. This is why people have to ask "do you serve coke or pepsi?" at restaurants. Of course this has far fewer effects that social netw…

"This is why people have to ask "do you serve coke or pepsi?" at restaurants."

OT, but this is why news anchors have to say "the obesity rate in the US has risen to its highest level ever, scientists reported today."

Re: My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time

#70

Post by s73v3r »

padobson wrote: post #47

Capitalism is about the flow of capital. Most people don't have capital, so they have to trade their labor for a small amount with people that do have capital, who are only trading it to get more capital. Articles like this assume that everything will change - except how capital works. Bitcoin. Crowdfunding. Distributed banking. Mass market barter transactions. I can't help but think that centralized stores of capita…

They have the money. How in the hell are they going to "naturally" become obsolete?
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