What if jobs are not the solution but the problem? • Hacker News Board

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#331

Post by cesarbs » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:04 AM UTC

kLeeIsDead wrote: post #285

cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

I thought the call-center example was dumb too, but he got his point across. What you describe is the way I read it as well. That's why I don't think I'm going to pursue a career in software engineering despite doing it as a hobby since a young age. I think there'd be some irreversible damage to my brain if I used something I've liked and identified with for my whole life as a means to do something I hate. To me it s…

What sort of blue collar job do you do?

A part of me dislikes that I turned what was a genuine interest of mine into my job. Software was a lot more fun to do before it became a professional thing for me.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#332

Post by Swizec » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:09 AM UTC

bluejekyll wrote: post #288

cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

For some people it's a passion. For others it's a job. IMO anyone who is passionate about their work will have greater success and generally be more innovative. I'm sure this is true across all career paths not just engineering. In software there is no one right answer, the passion comes into play when you look for the most elegant or most performant solution, that may not be obvious on the first pass. This makes it…

A professional does not work for free. Be passionate, work on your own projects, build stuff to learn.

But when it comes to the job, they get what they pay for.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#333

Post by kazagistar » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:12 AM UTC

reflexive wrote: post #303

Article has many holes in reasoning. The measurable trends of the past half-century, and the plausible projections for the next half-century, are just too empirically grounded to dismiss as dismal science or ideological hokum As NN Taleb points out exhaustively: social science puts too much faith in their models. "Measurable" trends? How do we even know what to measure, or that it's a trend? "Plausible" projections?…

Limitless is not quite right: at some point, the value of work drops below the level at which a human can subsist on it.

Of course, if we take away that constraint through some means, like for example basic income, then the same problem remains in a different form; the value of the work drops below the level that a human can be bothered to do it.

Because this minimum exists, there is indeed a finite amount of work, and as machines drop the value of human labor in certain areas, there is potentially less and less of it available.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#334

Post by kazagistar » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

edblarney wrote: post #216

Animats wrote: post #79

We're there already. There are vast numbers of people who cannot make an economic contribution large enough to cover their costs. Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as many computers as needed doing it. The US has already hit "peak school" in terms of economic benefit. About half of college graduates tak…

"Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as many computers as needed doing it. " This is pragmatically not true. There are tons and tons of jobs that can't be done by computers. The 'entertainment sector' was not even a part of the economy 100 years ago. Now it's a big chunk. Think of how big sports are. That…

Everyone moved to advertising; since useful work ran out, its all about the zero-sum competition for eyeballs and capturing the biggest possible chunk of consumer spending.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#335

Post by Pyxl101 » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

nico_h wrote: post #203

nhaehnle wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we already have a form of "social credits". It's called money. We're just not used to thinking of it that way, but that's really what money is. So replace "social credits" in your line of thinking by money, and you've basically arrived at the idea of a Job Guarantee. And somebody who works for their money is no longer a moocher, so...

The flaw in this analogy is that the current top earners (CEO, traders, White collar) net contribution to society has no correlation with the money they extract from the system. Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids? These are highly valuable se…

> Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids?

According to society's value system, as reflected by market pricing, I believe the answer is generally yes, the CEO is valued more.

The CEO is valued more because their work affects the company they lead as a whole and the work of many other people at the company - such as by determining what to work on, what initiatives to invest in strategically, or by obtaining funding for the company from investors. Poor decisions by the CEO can cause the entire company to fail; good decisions can create 100x as many jobs at the company, and increase its value by 100x.

It is more difficult for people to grasp the value of CEOs because their effect is spread out over a lot of people and abstract concepts like company success. It is easier to grasp the value of a nanny who spends time with your kids. But the fact that the nanny's work is much more concrete and obvious does not mean that it's more valuable. Consider: how much will you personally spend on a nanny? Would you spend 30-50% of your income on a fantastic nanny (the way that many people will spend that amount buying a house?) Most people don't value a nanny that much.

For a comparison, think about the effect that a good or bad president will have on the entire US. They can make a tremendous difference to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. A good CEO can do the same for their company, and all of their workers and investors. A bad CEO can do the opposite, and run the company into the ground.

Nannys and CEOs operate at entirely different scales. A CEO can destroy billions in value, or create billions in value. This is why companies and their boards and investors value good CEOs highly and pay them well. They want the best possible person for the job, and the best people demand high compensation.

There are also factors of supply and demand to consider. Most adult humans are intrinsically equipped to be nannies - to care for children. We're evolved to do it. No specific qualifications are necessary beyond not being a shitty or unreliable person. By comparison, not many people are equipped to be an effective CEO of a large, medium, or even small company. Thus, nannies earn less because there is a large supply of people who can act as nannies (almost the entire adult population), and a substantially smaller supply of effective CEOs. They need intelligence, drive, education, charisma, leadership capability, experience, vision, and other qualities.

Regarding your specific point about CEOs cutting jobs, sometimes that needs to happen. Lines of business don't always remain profitable. Sometimes a company needs to shut down unprofitable business units entirely, and exit the business. Sometimes a company needs to lay off workers and find a different approach to remain profitable.

Sometimes a job that was done by humans before will be automated tomorrow. For example, the company Hostess that makes Twinkies used to employ 22,000 workers. The company went bankrupt, and people bought its ashes and restarted it. The new hostess now heavily takes advantage of automation and employs only 1,170 people. (1)

A lot of people got laid off in that transition. The layoffs were also necessary for the company to continue at all; otherwise it would have gone under for good. They had a non-viable economic model for producing their baked goods. The leaders in charge of the transition took the only reasonable action (in hindsight) to prevent the company from cratering. (1)

CEOs are the people in charge of making the best decision for their stakeholders in really tough circumstances. Sometimes layoffs are the best possible outcome among many worse outcomes. No CEO would prefer to lay off their people - it's a horrible thing to have to do - but when the company is in dire financial straights, sometimes there is no better alternative.

(1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/07/05/w...

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#336

Post by kazagistar » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:22 AM UTC

edblarney wrote: post #217

intopieces wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>About half of college graduates take jobs that don't really require a college education. Trade schools do even worse. Do you have a source for this statistic? Because there are some important questions about such a study that might clarify the true meaning of such a number. 1.) How many of the graduates employed in "jobs that don't really require a college education" move on to a job that does, how long does it take…

That 'college education' one is tough. 'Opening a restaurant' does not require a Uni education, but I'd rather the person be smarter, more educated, understand aesthetics, customers, finance etc. - and be college educated. You don't need 'high school education' to do a lot of construction work, but I'd rather hire high school graduates. There's a lot of intelligence that goes into many of these kinds of jobs. As peop…

Do the schools cause the intelligence, or does achievement just measure it? Cause if level of schooling acts more like a measure of certain aptitudes, with the actual information learned being largely useless, then we still are faced with the problem of some people being increasingly unemployable.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#337

Post by kazagistar » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

AmirS2 wrote: post #87

Practicality wrote: post #4

At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it. The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations? This is a huge question in human history and it remains to be seen how we as a species are going to a…

> fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it. and from the article > there’s not enough work to go around I disagree. There's not enough paid employment to go around, but there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done! Our entire society needs to be weaned off its carbon dependence if we want humans to survive the next century. This will involve at the very least the w…

I agree, and an extensive program like this might permit for a clean transition as even the make-work disappears; pay for public good work to doing whatever you want and sharing it with the world sounds like the ideal utopian outcome.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#338

Post by reflexive » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:29 AM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #333

reflexive wrote: post #303

Article has many holes in reasoning. The measurable trends of the past half-century, and the plausible projections for the next half-century, are just too empirically grounded to dismiss as dismal science or ideological hokum As NN Taleb points out exhaustively: social science puts too much faith in their models. "Measurable" trends? How do we even know what to measure, or that it's a trend? "Plausible" projections?…

Limitless is not quite right: at some point, the value of work drops below the level at which a human can subsist on it. Of course, if we take away that constraint through some means, like for example basic income, then the same problem remains in a different form; the value of the work drops below the level that a human can be bothered to do it. Because this minimum exists, there is indeed a finite amount of work, a…

the value of work drops below the level at which a human can subsist on it

I agree with this analysis; the question becomes: how do we value a person's contribution to society, if not by someone's willingness to pay their wages?

I hope there is a solution in advanced tools for economic cooperation... imagine 90% of the population living off something like "GoFundMe for artists and educators".

If we can't or won't find such an answer, we then have the question: how many lives are we willing to subsidize who are contributing, by our best measures, a net negative to society?

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#339

Post by kazagistar » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:33 AM UTC

belovedeagle wrote: post #72

Practicality wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"everybody it [is] fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money." That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want. At that point it's not a question of giving e…

> whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources You can already decide to do this today, and the government will even reward you for doing so. What you're really talking about is redistributing others' resources .

Maintaining the system of resource allocation we use today known as "property" takes resources and violence. If we can create one that is cheaper, less cruel, and has better outcomes then the current one, we should do it. Arguing that its wrong because this system says it is wrong is backwards circular thinking.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#340

Post by Klockan » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

nico_h wrote: post #203

nhaehnle wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we already have a form of "social credits". It's called money. We're just not used to thinking of it that way, but that's really what money is. So replace "social credits" in your line of thinking by money, and you've basically arrived at the idea of a Job Guarantee. And somebody who works for their money is no longer a moocher, so...

The flaw in this analogy is that the current top earners (CEO, traders, White collar) net contribution to society has no correlation with the money they extract from the system. Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids? These are highly valuable se…

> Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids?

Yes, by firing people who don't provide much value at this company they can go on and provide more value at other companies. It will make their lives tougher for a while, but redistributing labor can provide immense value.

For example, lets say that a CEO over many hospitals cleaned up bureaucracy in them. This lead to increased efficiency, and now many people are just doing busywork and aren't really needed. The CEO then fires thousands of healthcare workers who can go on and work at other hospitals. This will drive down costs and help more people get the healthcare they need. His work is surely more important than the work of an individual healthcare worker.