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Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

fortune.com

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Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#51

Post by chongli »

bko wrote: post #48
jjoonathan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our current economic system holds that people don't deserve food, shelter, medical care, or dignity if they don't have a job. If you believe that we should stick with the current system then the proposition "everyone should have a job" follows from "everyone should have food, shelter, medical care, and dignity".

Well that's a disagreement between positive and negative rights: > A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group; negative rights permit or oblige inaction. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action or another person or group; positive rights permit or oblige action. You may believe in positive rights, like I have a right to food, shelter, etc. Others may belie…

It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea.

Not really, it's an irrelevant distinction. If you have the right deprive me of food, shelter, etc. then I have the right to kill you in order to take those things for myself.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#52

Post by nickff »

hwstar wrote: post #28
branchless wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To celebrate this we'd need a sharing of the common wealth. This is the polar opposite of the USA/UK. Right now we have a people taking the most (much of it through rentier activity) and the rest are given make-work too keep from idle-hands. If we had land value tax we'd be getting somewhere.

All a land value tax will do is drive up rents. A tax on wealth above 2 million USD adjusted for inflation would be better.

Encouraging rich people to fritter away their money on ephemeral objects instead of investing in technologies and equipment which would improve per captica productivity would be good?

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#53

Post by rsl7 »

evanpw wrote: post #27
bko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often forget that jobs are an expense, not a benefit. We should celebrate that society can do more with less. If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential.

Related slatestarcodex post: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-lik... "if your job can be done more cheaply without you, and the only reason you have it is because people would feel sorry for you if you didn’t, so the government forces your company to keep you on – well then, it’s not a job. It’s a welfare program that requires you to work 9 to 5 before seeing your welfare check."

so many assumptions there.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#54

Post by douche »

chongli wrote: post #51
bko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's a disagreement between positive and negative rights: > A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group; negative rights permit or oblige inaction. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action or another person or group; positive rights permit or oblige action. You may believe in positive rights, like I have a right to food, shelter, etc. Others may belie…

It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea. Not really, it's an irrelevant distinction. If you have the right deprive me of food, shelter, etc. then I have the right to kill you in order to take those things for myself.

Then I must have the right to kill and loot you after you get done killing and looting them.

This is starting to sound like Fallout. Or maybe we should get onto welding spikes all over our vehicles and wearing hockey masks and assless chaps and go for a more Mad Max vibe.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#56

Post by sbilstein »

evanpw wrote: post #27
bko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often forget that jobs are an expense, not a benefit. We should celebrate that society can do more with less. If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential.

Related slatestarcodex post: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-lik... "if your job can be done more cheaply without you, and the only reason you have it is because people would feel sorry for you if you didn’t, so the government forces your company to keep you on – well then, it’s not a job. It’s a welfare program that requires you to work 9 to 5 before seeing your welfare check."

slatestarcodex is the tech version of David Brooks.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#57

Post by evanpw »

chongli wrote: post #51
bko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's a disagreement between positive and negative rights: > A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group; negative rights permit or oblige inaction. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action or another person or group; positive rights permit or oblige action. You may believe in positive rights, like I have a right to food, shelter, etc. Others may belie…

It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea. Not really, it's an irrelevant distinction. If you have the right deprive me of food, shelter, etc. then I have the right to kill you in order to take those things for myself.

"deprive of" is not a synonym for "not provide". It's completely consistent to say that you have an obligation not to actively hinder someone someone from obtaining food/shelter/etc., but no obligation to provide it to them. Stealing someone's lunch is generally considered worse than not giving them your lunch.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#58

Post by bko »

chongli wrote: post #51
bko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's a disagreement between positive and negative rights: > A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group; negative rights permit or oblige inaction. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action or another person or group; positive rights permit or oblige action. You may believe in positive rights, like I have a right to food, shelter, etc. Others may belie…

It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea. Not really, it's an irrelevant distinction. If you have the right deprive me of food, shelter, etc. then I have the right to kill you in order to take those things for myself.

I respect your intensity, but if you were to come home one day finding your home has been broken into by a unfortunate soul demanding that you house and feed him, would you oblige? He may see you as depriving him of food and shelter by not opening your home. Would you be willing to bare this burden?

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#59

Post by jondubois »

This article resonates with my observations. I think most of the companies which have been making a lot of money are entertainment companies.

Facebook is an entertainment company, it probably delivers negative economic efficiency growth - Today it's common for employees to check their Facebook and instagram during work hours (which reduces their productivity).

People also spend more time playing games (there are so many options available; social games, virtual reality, iPhone apps...). Then there is YouTube which helps create jobs for more entertainers and at the same time it lowers productivity efficiency in the workplace - It's a tool for procrastination.

Even enterprise companies aren't delivering efficiency improvements. Docker has gotten a lot of hype but I am yet to see it deliver efficiency improvements in industry - Particularly on the deployment side. I dont see how hiding complexity inside containers actually reduces the overall complexity of the system. Maybe the real solution is to use fewer tools which have simpler boot logic?

You could argue that Docker is great for PaaS, but then you have to ask the question of whether PaaS itself delivers efficiency improvements? Maybe platforms like Amazon Lambda will deliver, but so far what I've seen is that big companies in general don't use PaaS.

I think companies which deliver real efficiency at the moment are being ignored by the market in favour of companies which have a large marketing budget.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#60

Post by [deleted] »

rwmj wrote: post #50
rattray wrote: post #31

This article doesn't actually seem to provide any evidence to support its claim - the actual factoid at the heart of the article is that Total Factor Productivity (TFP) has fallen since the 90's, which is irrelevant. The only pieces of evidence supporting the "No Jobs Growth" claim are Facebook's employee count from _2013_ (which has since grown by almost 50% to 12000 [0]), and the claim that "in 2010, only 0.5% of t…

What do 12000 people do at Facebook? Edit: (Apart from sitting around and downvoting me). Does it really take 12000 people to run a site where people write about what they're doing, and upload some photos and videos? Instagram had 13 employees when they were acquired by Facebook.

[deleted]
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