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

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

#351

Post by kazagistar » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:05 AM UTC

reflexive wrote: post #338

kazagistar wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fin…

It never made sense to me that "contribution to society" would be measured by money earned; it functions more as if your vote was proportional to the money you had in your bank account (and of course, the rich vote to get more rich). It ends up being some kind of distorted limit instead of actually reflecting anything resembling the real will of society.

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

#352

Post by zardo » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:15 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #317

knieveltech wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popular because people are clumping in areas that have jobs...

Also because they like those areas? Many people dream of moving to New York. And they would dream that with out without the jobs.

It may more or less boil down to lots of movies and television shows being set in New York.

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

#353

Post by pdonis » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:20 AM UTC

PrimalDual wrote: post #298

pdonis wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending? The US is doing exactly that, and has been for decades. Since the 2008 debacle it has being doing even more of it. > inflation in a sense is unavoidable If you mean politically unavoidable, I agree; no government in human history has been able to avoid messing with the currency. If you mean unavoidable period, I'm no…

What do you mean by decades? The US has been borrowing money but that hardly translates to printing it. I can definitely see how quantitative easing essentially translates to printing a couple of trillion to buy outstanding debt but that has already stopped. By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it. Especially if you are holding assets that are appreciating at a slower rate than inflati…

> What do you mean by decades?

The US money supply has been increasing fairly steadily since WW II.

> The US has been borrowing money but that hardly translates to printing it.

The US has indeed been borrowing money. But it has also been printing it.

> I can definitely see how quantitative easing essentially translates to printing a couple of trillion to buy outstanding debt but that has already stopped.

QE is just the latest round of printing money. (More precisely three rounds, since there was QE1, QE2, and QE3.)

> By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it.

Only if the supply of currency increases. Why is that unavoidable?

> I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of literally running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if businesses have to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will inevitably rise.

No, it's not clear at all. What is clear is that the price of labor (wages and salaries) will increase relative to the price of capital (e.g., interest rates). But that does not mean price levels in general will rise. That depends on how well businesses can substitute capital for labor. In the age of automation, that is usually "pretty well".

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

#354

Post by mdpopescu » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:21 AM UTC

knieveltech wrote: post #211

remir wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. It's not a work problem; there's so much work to do. The problem is who will pay and how much.

Oh really? Doing what, exactly?

Feed me grapes?

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

#355

Post by reflexive » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:22 AM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #351

reflexive wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fin…

It never made sense to me that "contribution to society" would be measured by money earned; it functions more as if your vote was proportional to the money you had in your bank account (and of course, the rich vote to get more rich). It ends up being some kind of distorted limit instead of actually reflecting anything resembling the real will of society.

It never made sense to me that "contribution to society" would be measured by money earned

Think of it this way. I am willing to give you money, if you make a significant positive contribution to my life. I am willing to participate in a collective to scheme to give you money, if what you do helps people in a way I can appreciate.

It's certainly a distorted signal, but better than no signal at all.

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

#356

Post by jcoffland » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:24 AM UTC

cesarbs wrote: post #240

vacri wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Knowledge workers have it easy . It's hard to get here, but once we're here it's a great gig. We're paid well, we're in demand, and there's a robust freelancing sector to our industries, be it software, legal, medical, engineering, or whatever. That link describes a call center worker as a knowledge worker. That's absolute nonsense. You could, in theory, argue that a call center worker is about manag…

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 don't want to work with you if you're a nine-to-fiver either. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with you for feeling this way but I don't want to work with people who don't love what they do.

Edit: to clarify, by nine-to-fiver I mean someone who is just punching the clock in order to make a living but does not care much about what they are doing. I don't really care what hours you work if you're really into it when you do.

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

#357

Post by pdonis » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:25 AM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #253

pdonis wrote: post #242

The article lost me in the second paragraph, with "there is not enough work to go around". Seriously? There are so many things that need to be done. We need better energy sources. We need better health care. We need better infrastructure. I could go on and on. There is a huge amount of work to be done. More than enough for everybody.

Then the big question is if work is a aplenty, and workers scarce. Why is it so hard for such a large portion of the population to find good work? Why doesn't all of that work turn into jobs?

> Why doesn't all of that work turn into jobs?

Because the market that is supposed to match workers with jobs is highly inefficient. There are a number of possible causes of this, but I think a major one is regulation, which greatly increases the cost of hiring a worker. Any market with large transaction costs is going to be inefficient. That's one of those "economics 101" things that many people tend to forget.

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

#358

Post by pdonis » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:26 AM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #311

JamesBarney wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the big question is if work is a aplenty, and workers scarce. Why is it so hard for such a large portion of the population to find good work? Why doesn't all of that work turn into jobs?

That work requires government initiative and investment. Many of the depressed areas keep voting for politicians who are convinced government doesn't work and they are determined to prove it. Thus, the labor force remains depressed instead of fixing the obscene number of infrastructure issues in the rust belt. Can you imagine if they spent the next 4 years spending some money to fix up the cities to make them attract…

> That work requires government initiative and investment.

No, it doesn't. It requires initiative and investment, but there's no reason why those things have to come from the government.

> Many of the depressed areas keep voting for politicians who are convinced government doesn't work and they are determined to prove it.

Many other depressed areas keep voting for politicians who are convinced government can work--but they are unable to prove it.

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

#359

Post by njharman » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:33 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…

> The 'entertainment sector' was not even a part of the economy 100 years ago. Now it's a big chunk.

Computer sector is younger and bigger. What is your point?

> There are tons and tons of jobs that can't be done by computers.

Not really, less and less all the time. Automation has been a trend since Industrial age. It is now expanding into knowledge work. Translation, copywriting, all sorts of analysis & prediction, navigation/driving (for fun look up how many truck driver jobs that will be automated in 10-20 years). IBM Watson isn't just a research project lark, IBM is developing a product to automate thinking and reasoning. Google all over it too.

> Think of how big sports are. That was all 'unpaid amateur' stuff before.

Do you believe there is more than an insignificant fraction of people employed by "sports"? btw there use to be people compiling stats, doing betting. They have been replaced by machines.

> unskilled labour has been getting more expensive, not less.

unskilled is misnomer, its un-automatable labour. Humans can't compete with machines. And more and more activities are being automated. Even labour such as medical, legal and acting.

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

#360

Post by RyanZAG » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:34 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…

Except we've redefined what "the level at which a human can subsist on". Go 50, 100 or 200 years back and look at the kind of life most citizens lived. It was far below what even a person without a job today has - and a person without a job has an incredible amount of free leisure time compared to the 18 hour days that were common even 100 years ago.

The simple fact is that welfare and minimum wages have removed many jobs from the economy, and those jobs that were removed kept the economy at full employment. There's no real change aside from us effectively banning some jobs. Remove the ban, remove welfare, and we'd have full employment again. Is that a good thing to do? Probably not, but it's an important point to understand that the author completely left out of his essay. You're not going to find a good solution if you don't even stop to consider how we got here.