81–90 of 310 posts
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)
#2 seems more like a way to shift jobs around from one place to another than to create them
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.
Many political arguments arise from disagreements over whether a given task is best handled by market or the government, but there are few who would prefer to live in either a pure government-run society or a pure unregulated free market with no government services.
1) Eventually, and probably pretty soon (within 100years), that there obviously won't be jobs for everyone. Automation, progress(efficiency gains) and increasing population makes it inevitable.
2) That a general "goal" of society is do away with jobs. In any traditional sense. To me we've been approaching that ever since agriculture provided ability to support specialists (those who don't spend time gathering/producing the food/resources they need). Such as scientists, artists and soldiers. The jobs keep moving "up" the ladder (away from production). Previous low-rung jobs get reduced in number by efficiency or replaced via automation. The end of this trend is that all basic needs are met by 0 to a tiny fraction of a percent of human labor and rest are all free to pursue specialist activities such as science, art, and killing each other.
People forget History. The two times where labor was more valuable than capital. 1 | After the black death in Europe 2 | After the second world war Most of history's default was the gilded age, the roman empire survived for 600[1] years with having worse inequality than in the modern times. Usually the only way to reverse the trend is by a large scale elimination of significant portion of young people. [1] EDIT : cor…
Or, we simply wait out the next few centuries. Reproduction rates in many developed countries have dipped below replacement. Maybe the total world population will decrease in our time.
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…
Part of the reason that training is not profitable is that there is no real way for companies to recoup money spent on it. If you spend large amounts of effort training someone, you still have to pay them the same salary as someone already trained, or your competitors will hire them away.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are mis-attributing our current trajectory. Most of the scientific developments that are now powering the US knowledge economy came out of government (ARPA, etc.) funded labs. Allocating R&D funds based strictly on "whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term" is relatively new in the US (although you could argue it was the norm before we became a superpower). Our most e…
The OP was talking about labor allocation and you're talking about R&D allocation.
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…
I wonder what your alternate theory that fixes the unemployed 50 something factory worker is? Legislation that ensures job security? Pension? Severance?
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)
#2 seems more like a way to shift jobs around from one place to another than to create them
In one of our scenarios was a future where humans bounced from job to job (high turnover, low unemployment) and skills-based education was cheap and easily accessible. Some of the factors leading to this was the "established"-education bubble bursting, increased automation, and less desire for consumers to own assets while still having access to them (variable sharing economy).
A #2 type of future might not be that unrealistic.
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…
TCO goes way down -> price of product goes way down -> sales go up because price is lower.
It doesn't always happen that way, but sometimes it does. uber is a good example. By reducing cost of car rides, I pay someone to ride in their car 10X the amount I used to.
If Americans wanted to live a 1916 lifestyle, not many of us would have at work. But we buy a lot more stuff and use a lot more services.
We've automated away nearly every job people did in 1875's America. But we all still have jobs.