Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#101

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 12:22 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #93

s73v3r wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People need an income to survive. Most people get incomes through jobs" Exactly, which makes any quibbling to my statement nothing but worthless pedantry. "Jobs being displaced through technology means output is produced more effectively without the job than it would be with the job, and someone is capturing the value of that output." Which has absolutely nothing to do with my question. "The issue becomes one of dis…

> Exactly, which makes any quibbling to my statement nothing but worthless pedantry. No, it doesn't. The job is not the need, its just the most common way of satisfying the need. The need is the income. Automation of jobs because automation is more efficient means that the economy becomes better at producing output which can be distributed through other existing means of providing income, notably, tax-funded social b…

> The job is not the need (...) The need is the income.

Or, as the 'nostromo once wrote,

"No job is the goal. No money is the problem."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8987073

(I do actually have it on a t-shirt now.)

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#102

Post by evanpw » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 12:30 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #74

evanpw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"deprive of" is not a synonym for "not provide" This distinction falls apart when you include the notion of privately owned land. If you are born into a world where all land is owned by someone else, what choice do you have but to either work for your food or steal it? What if nobody permits you to work for them?

This is exactly the kind of problem that framing your ethical system in terms of "rights" tends to obscure (I'm more of a utilitarian). I think that you are morally justified in stealing to keep yourself from starving, and at the same time, every individual land owner (if they obtained their land by legitimate means) is morally justified in not hiring you to work for them. There doesn't need to be a moral winner and moral loser in every situation.

I only support property "rights" because I think they lead to better overall welfare in the world-that-is. If in some future state of the world they turn out to be harmful on net, then I have no qualms with saying that we should scrap them.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#103

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 12:35 AM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #100

chongli wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good analogy. You've framed it in a way that makes it sound like this person has infringed my rights. But what right of mine is he infringing, specifically? The right to own property and keep it secure when I am not around? That's a positive right, not a negative one.

Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right, so you seem to be defining the concept in a non-standard way. I think the names are poorly chosen, though. A "negative" right is one for which a specific "violater" can always be identified. If you are stolen from, then someone stole from you. A "positive" right is one in which the only identifiable culprit is "everyone" or "society". If you don't have…

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#104

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 12:39 AM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #100

chongli wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good analogy. You've framed it in a way that makes it sound like this person has infringed my rights. But what right of mine is he infringing, specifically? The right to own property and keep it secure when I am not around? That's a positive right, not a negative one.

Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right, so you seem to be defining the concept in a non-standard way. I think the names are poorly chosen, though. A "negative" right is one for which a specific "violater" can always be identified. If you are stolen from, then someone stole from you. A "positive" right is one in which the only identifiable culprit is "everyone" or "society". If you don't have…

> Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right

That property rights -- which are the state-protected privilege to exercise exclusive control of some abstract or concrete thing and restrict others freedom of action with regard to that abstract or concrete thing -- are often cast as a negative right is a perfect illustration of the fact that the distinction between "positive" and "negative" rights is far less fundamental than many people try to portray it, and is in many cases purely an artifact of the language chosen in a particular description of the right.

> If you don't have enough to eat, it's because society didn't provide a way for you to feed yourself; it's not that specific person's fault because they didn't hand over their sandwich.

Conversely, if I have a right to acquire the necessities of survival, I can identify a specific violator: whoever it is that actively prevented me from acquiring the existing thing that was necessary.

The positive/negative right distinction, even recast as a "specific identifiable violator" distinction, isn't really all that useful: you still have to define which rights exist (even if you've decided which classes of descriptions of rights are acceptable, whether its "only negative" or "only those with specific identifiable violators"), and you still have to deal with the fact whichever rights you decide should exist are likely going to conflict.

> This seems to be the main point of disagreement between us. You seem to be saying that if someone doesn't have enough to eat, then it is everyone else's fault individually. My point of view is that it's possible for someone to go hungry without it being anyone's fault in particular; it's just the result of a bad system.

Unless there doesn't exist enough food to eat, the only reason somebody doesn't have enough to eat is because someone else -- either individually or collectively -- has actively taken steps that deny that person access to the food that exists.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#105

Post by chongli » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 12:40 AM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #100

chongli wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good analogy. You've framed it in a way that makes it sound like this person has infringed my rights. But what right of mine is he infringing, specifically? The right to own property and keep it secure when I am not around? That's a positive right, not a negative one.

Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right, so you seem to be defining the concept in a non-standard way. I think the names are poorly chosen, though. A "negative" right is one for which a specific "violater" can always be identified. If you are stolen from, then someone stole from you. A "positive" right is one in which the only identifiable culprit is "everyone" or "society". If you don't have…

Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right

In what way? Suppose a piece of land is unowned. How am I to obtain this land without the positive right to do so? If I decide to obtain this land and the local population ignores my decision (and attempts at enforcement) and continues making use of the land (for hunting, fishing, exploration), who is the "violator": Me or society?

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#106

Post by chongli » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 1:07 AM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #102

chongli wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"deprive of" is not a synonym for "not provide" This distinction falls apart when you include the notion of privately owned land. If you are born into a world where all land is owned by someone else, what choice do you have but to either work for your food or steal it? What if nobody permits you to work for them?

This is exactly the kind of problem that framing your ethical system in terms of "rights" tends to obscure (I'm more of a utilitarian). I think that you are morally justified in stealing to keep yourself from starving, and at the same time, every individual land owner (if they obtained their land by legitimate means) is morally justified in not hiring you to work for them. There doesn't need to be a moral winner and…

It's not my ethical system. My original point is that the distinction between positive and negative rights is irrelevant. Throughout this whole discussion I've seen examples by different people which seem to bear that out.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#107

Post by evanpw » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 1:18 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #104

evanpw wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right, so you seem to be defining the concept in a non-standard way. I think the names are poorly chosen, though. A "negative" right is one for which a specific "violater" can always be identified. If you are stolen from, then someone stole from you. A "positive" right is one in which the only identifiable culprit is "everyone" or "society". If you don't have…

> Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right That property rights -- which are the state-protected privilege to exercise exclusive control of some abstract or concrete thing and restrict others freedom of action with regard to that abstract or concrete thing -- are often cast as a negative right is a perfect illustration of the fact that the distinction between "positive" and "negative" rights i…

Okay, you've convinced me that the distinction between positive and negative rights is not airtight. I still think it's a useful categorization, though, even if the boundaries are little fuzzy.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#108

Post by evanpw » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 1:19 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #106

evanpw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the kind of problem that framing your ethical system in terms of "rights" tends to obscure (I'm more of a utilitarian). I think that you are morally justified in stealing to keep yourself from starving, and at the same time, every individual land owner (if they obtained their land by legitimate means) is morally justified in not hiring you to work for them. There doesn't need to be a moral winner and…

It's not my ethical system. My original point is that the distinction between positive and negative rights is irrelevant. Throughout this whole discussion I've seen examples by different people which seem to bear that out.

I think "irrelevant" goes too far, but I concede that the border is fuzzier than I previously thought.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#109

Post by minimuffins » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 1:25 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #97

nickff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with this line of thinking is that it is materialistic. People get more out of their jobs than money, and just shovelling cash at the unemployed does not make them happy.[1] Most people are happier with a job that pays minimum wage than a welfare program that pays significantly more. [1] http://wol.iza.org/articles/unemployment-and-happiness.pdf

> and just shovelling cash at the unemployed does not make them happy.[1] It's worth reading the paper past the initial TL;DR bullet points. It goes into interesting discussion about what exactly it is about unemployment that makes people unhappy. Some quotes from the middle of the article: "There is plenty of evidence in support of the hypothesis that the evaluative component of well-being depends on how much one co…

> not working no longer violates the social work norm, and life satisfaction consequently increases

Yes, this is critical. There is much stigmatization of nonwork. As we automate away more jobs, (as we should!) there will be less and less work to go around, and eventually not enough work for everybody who wants it. We might already be there.

I agree that people get more out of work than money, but that's not really the question (and also what if your job sucks? I'd rather have money and no job than money and a terrible job). The question is what do we do about the people for whom there is no job? Right now what happens? There's always roaming around San Francisco panhandling I guess. Or crime. It's not a coincidence that societies with robust welfare states have far lower crime and low or no homeless.

I'm all for people working if they want, but "Get a job" isn't a real solution for a destitute person, or even for the working poor who already have a couple of jobs and are still broke. Or even really for somebody with a job he'd rather quit.

There have been some good discussions on HN around basic income, too. I think that would be an even better solution, really.

Anecdote: I've used welfare before and although having "cash shoveled at me" didn't automatically make me happier, it did make it much easier to pay for food while I was in school with a garbage side job. I certainly wouldn't have been happier without it.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#110

Post by artifaxx » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 1:44 AM UTC

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.

I don't think people should have downvoted you for this, it is a reasonable question to ask! Consider that their core application's user facing functionality is not the most complex in the world, but they deploy it for over 1.5 billion people. There are numerous complications and logistics involved with doing that. Think of it this way, how many organizations can reach billions of people with just 12,000? We already take for granted that technology can do incredible things like this that haven't been possible in the past. One other thing is that facebook has contributed to some awesome open source projects and their technology blog has some interesting insights on this https://code.facebook.com/posts/