11–20 of 310 posts
I feel like the "infinite jobs" idea is too foundational to American culture to be completely removed. The very definition of "prosperity" includes having a job. The definition of "success" includes having a job.
1) Make it easier for new firms of all kinds to open and create job. (Less occupational licensing requirements, etc)
2) Reduce the cost/burden of employment. (If someone has the choice to hire an employee in SF and Texas, they'll choose Texas since the laws are more business-friendly)
I feel like ancient civilizations a lot of times turned to art once their societies leveled off. Large structures, pots, roads, figures, clothing, etc.. I believe art is unlimited resource and we could have an economy running purely on art. Isn't a large portion of the economy already running off of art? Movies, games, tv, media, events. I actually feel there even a lack of art right now in terms of food, furniture,…
Is the "infinite work hypothesis" finally ending?? The answer to "what happens to workers being replaced" has always been "they'll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs", what I've seen called the "infinite work hypothesis" where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.
No, the problem is misallocation of labor. There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work. It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements. They're not done because the metrics of Wall St…
And yet, this turns out to be the most succesful strategy civilization has used so far.
It seems like there are 2 things that can be done: 1) Make it easier for new firms of all kinds to open and create job. (Less occupational licensing requirements, etc) 2) Reduce the cost/burden of employment. (If someone has the choice to hire an employee in SF and Texas, they'll choose Texas since the laws are more business-friendly)
Is the "infinite work hypothesis" finally ending?? The answer to "what happens to workers being replaced" has always been "they'll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs", what I've seen called the "infinite work hypothesis" where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.
That is false on its face. If you buy a robot to replace a welder, you indirectly employ the people who design, build, and maintain that robot. True, and those are higher paid jobs than the welder. But at the end of the day, the person running the factory where said robot is used did an analysis and concluded that it was cheaper to buy the robot than to employ the guy it replaced. That means fewer total man-hours in the workforce, since those man hours are billed at a higher rate and are still lower TCO.
TL;DR - if your TCO goes down by employing higher paid people you have caused a net-loss in jobs. TCO ~= rate*man_hours so if TCO goes down while rate goes up...
I feel like ancient civilizations a lot of times turned to art once their societies leveled off. Large structures, pots, roads, figures, clothing, etc.. I believe art is unlimited resource and we could have an economy running purely on art. Isn't a large portion of the economy already running off of art? Movies, games, tv, media, events. I actually feel there even a lack of art right now in terms of food, furniture,…
Anything that people likes to do tended to be oversupplied.
Is the "infinite work hypothesis" finally ending?? The answer to "what happens to workers being replaced" has always been "they'll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs", what I've seen called the "infinite work hypothesis" where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.
No, the problem is misallocation of labor. There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work. It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements. They're not done because the metrics of Wall St…
But not the money to pay for these jobs.
> It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed.
But who pays for this training?
> Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy.
Most companies are not publicly traded. These companies are not hiring the unemployed because they either don't need them or can't afford to (negative return on investment). The bottom-line matters to Mom & Pop stores as much as it does to big Corps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the problem is misallocation of labor. There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work. It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements. They're not done because the metrics of Wall St…
> Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy. And yet, this turns out to be the most succesful strategy civilization has used so far.