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https://phys.org/news/2015-09-link-economy-crime-broken.html
There are a lot of hypothesis to explain that, but I believe computer games played some role in that.
Video games become the sole source of agency in many people's lives. This isn't just for the unemployed, but also for folks stuck in a job where they feel like they lack control. I couldn't understand at first why my fellow Googlers found so much time to play video games, but after a couple of months I understood. Afternoon Halo matches became the highlight of my day, I felt like I had more choice and responsibility…
It's funny, I can tell how in control of my life by gauging how much I play games. When I start obsessing about playing games (I like playing them, but when I feel I have to play them to escape), I know something needs to change in my life. I'm saying it's that way for everyone, but it really is a great tool for stress relief for some.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article does note this, albeit using "good job" as a proxy for "all the things one might have historically expected to stem from having a good job." This seems like a forewave of the trends that point towards the basic income argument. Fewer productive jobs being necessary than labor force to fill them results in bifurcation of the labor market: between overpaid specialties (e.g. software dev) and underpaid make-…
I think this sector is now a embodied in sales/marketing. It's reasonable to expect from some one to become a productive salesperson after a few months. This professional will have many options from online marketing through mall cart sales to selling cloud services to corporations
I can't think of any substantial value-adds from sales/marketing in the future to necessitate adding jobs there. High value (e.g. Apple) is currating a brand and most value is added at the top (average Genius salary looks around $45k [1]). Low value (e.g. Android OEMs) doesn't have the profit margins to support a larger human-sales/marketing team. And commodity (e.g. McDonald's) is high-level strategic branding with essentially no low level value add.
[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Apple-Mac-Genius-Salaries-E...
On positive side, until recently economic crisis caused crime rate to go up. However, after 2007-2008 crisis the overall crime rate has not increased. https://phys.org/news/2015-09-link-economy-crime-broken.html There are a lot of hypothesis to explain that, but I believe computer games played some role in that.
If nothing else, at least those economists have found the solution to keep people occupied when AI renders half the world unemployed. Now the premise of the Matrix doesn't seem so far fetched after all.
There might be an indirect causation which is homework vs games, but I suspect that students with less encouragement from their parents to do their homework spend the time on games.
So forbid homework and make the schools take responsibility for actually learning their students something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article does note this, albeit using "good job" as a proxy for "all the things one might have historically expected to stem from having a good job." This seems like a forewave of the trends that point towards the basic income argument. Fewer productive jobs being necessary than labor force to fill them results in bifurcation of the labor market: between overpaid specialties (e.g. software dev) and underpaid make-…
I think this sector is now a embodied in sales/marketing. It's reasonable to expect from some one to become a productive salesperson after a few months. This professional will have many options from online marketing through mall cart sales to selling cloud services to corporations
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article does note this, albeit using "good job" as a proxy for "all the things one might have historically expected to stem from having a good job." This seems like a forewave of the trends that point towards the basic income argument. Fewer productive jobs being necessary than labor force to fill them results in bifurcation of the labor market: between overpaid specialties (e.g. software dev) and underpaid make-…
I think this sector is now a embodied in sales/marketing. It's reasonable to expect from some one to become a productive salesperson after a few months. This professional will have many options from online marketing through mall cart sales to selling cloud services to corporations
What happens when many business services are selected from automated markets... I guess we all sell custom hand-made widgets to each other?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the easy response to the article. It is partially true, but the article is more true than you're giving it credit for. There are other articles about this (e.g. http://www.vulture.com/2017/02/video-games-are-better-than-r... ) all confirming that unemployed people who play video games don't have the same increase in unhappiness that other unemployed people have. Which might be good for their short-term well-b…
-if the post-scarcity UBI future ever happens- I live in a country that throws away half of its prepared food. Like we're not even talking about some chopped up animal corpse that sits out for too long and has to be discarded before it goes rancid - in the US we strait-up assemble food in some factory, wrap it plastic, burn fuel shipping said wrapped and assembled food to a store halfway across the country, unwrap th…
Ok, slaughtering is a problem, but I think it will sort itself out eventually.
So if you don't have the money and you have the time you should choose activities that provide the most entertainment for the least $
Previously unemployed people would watch a lot of TV for affordable entertainment, an they probably still do it a lot. However video games can be more cognitively engaging and more social, so they might be actually an improvement.