A disaster is looming for American men • Hacker News Board

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#91

Post by PhasmaFelis » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:22 AM UTC

tdb7893 wrote: post #70

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should actually read up on the Luddites. Their main goal was better treatment of workers; smashing machines was just their preferred means of protest. The image of the backwards anti-tech fetishist was a propaganda smear by the industrialists at the time, which was so successful that people are still buying it now.

I have already been told this many times in the past (firstly when I learned about them originally from my history teacher). I need a new word for people that irrationally fear technology but technophobe just looks weird to me.

So you know it's wrong, but you keep doing it?

Aren't you doing exactly the same thing as the industrialists who slandered the Luddites? You're reducing the real welfare of thousands of workers and their families to "oh, they're scared of technology, just ignore the silly primitives."

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#92

Post by 1_2__3 » Thu, Sep 29, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #23

hrgeek wrote: post #19

Disaster is already here. In the 1950's you could raise a family with 2.3 children on a 40 hour work week. Today, families are struggling to make ends meet with 60-70+ hour work weeks. Technology was supposed to have made things more efficient. It seems to have had the opposite effect.

This is partly because the definition of comfortable has increased faster than the average salary.

I'm sure you feel very smug saying that but most people reading your comment are likely aware of this argument and don't agree with it. So you'd need to provide some evidence, rather than just a naked claim that we've all heard before.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#93

Post by drewcrawford » Sat, Oct 01, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

mohamedattahri wrote: post #57

drewcrawford wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not actually any different; "technical unemployment" has caused many problems that are clearly visible from a cursory examination of the historical record. The obvious place to start is the horse: the horse population in the US peaked at 26M in 1917 and had declined to 3M by 1960, almost 1/10th of its peak value [0]. When those horses were unemployed by the automobile, we did not retrain them in new lines of wor…

I'm sorry, but the horses example is really terrible. Technological disruption is not new. It's been around forever. If your theory stands true, then how come that overall, the global economy is growing? Doesn't it mean that we've created more jobs that we've destroyed? What about the other important element no one seems to care about in this conversation: the jobs created - very often - require a higher level of ski…

> If your theory stands true, then how come that overall, the global economy is growing? Doesn't it mean that we've created more jobs that we've destroyed?

The number of jobs does not correlate to GDP growth [0]. So whether "the economy is growing" is not terribly related to whether jobs are being created. This is somewhat puzzling under Adam-Smith-Wealth-of-Nations ideas about economics, but it's an empirical fact.

> Technological disruption is not new. It's been around forever.

You seem to be misunderstanding the argument; I'm not arguing for something new. I'm arguing that negative effects of technological shock are well-attested in the historical record: you can look back at historical data and plainly see them.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/18/business/economy/us-growth...