What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around? • Hacker News Board

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#31

Post by merpnderp » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

mordocai wrote: post #20

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't know if the data is there to make that claim.

Just the Chinese and Indian cases seem more than enough data to make this case. Both economies stagnate behind the world trend until they open up free markets, at which point their economies explode and a billion people are lifted out of abject poverty nearly overnight. There is an arguable case for strong welfare states, but true socialism has literal mountains of evidence against it.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#32

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #17

criley2 wrote: post #4

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.

>> every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs 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…

[deleted]

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#33

Post by chrisbennet » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:51 PM UTC

For anyone who has a theory that involves making new jobs and retraining people, consider these cases:

A) 50 something factory worker whos job along with the other 100 folks he works with, have been eliminated by automation or some other sort of efficiency.

B) 30 something software engineer who's field (except for research) has been eliminated by AI.

"A" is something most of us have the luxury of had waving away with "retrain them to be surgeons and leave their homes behind and move to someplace else for work".

"B" hasn't happened (yet) but what would you do if it does? It's not so easy easy to dismiss is it?

Lack of work is a structural problem. The landed gentry of our time don't even need the surfs anymore so it's even worse in some ways.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#34

Post by chrisbennet » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:51 PM UTC

For anyone who has a theory that involves making new jobs and retraining people, consider these cases:

A) 50 something factory worker whos job along with the other 100 folks he works with, have been eliminated by automation or some other sort of efficiency.

B) 30 something software engineer who's field (except for research) has been eliminated by AI.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#35

Post by savanaly » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #17

criley2 wrote: post #4

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.

>> every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs 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…

I don't think anyone claimed that the new jobs would be replaced one to one with jobs maintaining the new technology, just that some of the new jobs would be in maintaining the new technology and some would be in new industries that we haven't even thought of. For a big historical example of this, look at the decrease in labor usage for farming over the last couple centuries. Where did all the people who used to work in agriculture go to? Like 1% of them now remain on the farms, maintaining the technology that displaced the other 99%, who are now dispersed across whatever other modern industry that we didn't used to have (and, we'll note, the pundits at the time highly doubted that most of the 99% being displaced on farms would find be able to find alternative positions).

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#36

Post by asimjalis » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #14

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #6

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.

This argument was true for every civilizational strategy until it was not successful. “Why build pyramids? Because it is the most successful civilizational strategy used so far.”

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#37

Post by lastyearman » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:53 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #6

criley2 wrote: post #4

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…

No, we would need to retrain them to do something that is valued. For which services/products do you think you're missing and would be ready to pay for if we were to retrain the unemployed?

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#38

Post by noarchy » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:53 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #15

Then the government should either directly employ people or else provide them with an income, or some combination of these.

>Then the government should either directly employ people or else provide them with an income, or some combination of these.

It is interesting to see that, in the early 21st century, communism is becoming palatable again.

Could this be due to all of the old communist states either ceasing to exist or (for instance, the case of China) changing into something quite unlike their former sleves? In short, did we forget about those states?

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#39

Post by shams93 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:53 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #18

pixie_ wrote: post #8

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,…

I doubt that's sustainable, especially given that you have people like 'starving artists', 'starving writers', and of course game programmers who throw themselves at projects working eighty hours per week. Anything that people likes to do tended to be oversupplied.

That's so right, if you look at income numbers for SAG its scary, starving artists is right!

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#40

Post by welanes » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 8:53 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #28

welanes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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 c…

Who pays for those people to remain unemployed? They still have food, shelter, utilities...

I don't think anybody pays them "to remain unemployed". But in most countries they receive social welfare while out of work.

You could have them go break large rocks into smaller rocks if you have an ideological bent against people being unemployed but unless those rocks can be sold to somebody for more than what unemployment benefit is there's no incentive.

Edit: Agree with the comments below. Rather than being idle there's many ways society could harness the skills and manpower of the unemployed for socially value adding, but perhaps not financially profitable, ventures.