Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

slatestarcodex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 233 posts

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#71

Post by lmm »

crc32 wrote: post #49
adynatos wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

inequality is rising because some people are simply more skilled than others.

OK - would you agree that this presents us with an ethical problem? How about a societal/practical problem? Is an unequal society sustainable? What actions can be taken to mitigate the ethical and practical problems presented by inequality?

> OK - would you agree that this presents us with an ethical problem?

My instinct is that inequality is not inherently unethical if it's a fair reflection of people's skills and/or efforts. If people are so poor that their needs are going unmet that's an ethical problem, but those people are not made any worse off by the existence of wealthy people.

> How about a societal/practical problem? Is an unequal society sustainable?

An unequal society where people still feel like they're contributing something seems to be sustainable. I think we're hitting an issue where it becomes clear that some people have essentially no ability to contribute to society, and that might be unsustainable, but I don't think we can or should turn back the technological clock to make them able to contribute. At which point we're down to handouts or make-work jobs, and while I'm all for supporting the worst off, that doesn't address the fundamental problem.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#72

Post by edanm »

_delirium wrote: post #41
adynatos wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

inequality is rising because some people are simply more skilled than others.

More data supports the hypothesis that inequality is rising because some people have more money than others, and currently it's easier to earn significant returns from capital than from labor. Of course, not everyone agrees, but Piketty et al have some evidence for the hypothesis. Is there anyone with data-driven support for the claim that changes in overall inequality are primarily driven by divergence in high-skill…

Interesting question.

I'm not sure, but there have been a lot of economists who disagree with Piketty and written about where he goes wrong. I assume that this implicitly proves the other direction, that capital growth isn't larger than wage growth, or whatever, so it might be a good idea to look there.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#73

Post by crdoconnor »

abusoufiyan wrote: post #48
crdoconnor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the luddites' case that 'person' was willing to work for less using the weaving machinery because they were desperate. The Napoleonic Wars made them lose their livelihoods, homes and families. After the industrial revolution, the enclosure movement was used to strip peasants of their land. After being dispossessed, they were then desperate enough to accept the paltry wages and disgusting working conditions offered…

>Personally, I think trade policy needs to be intimately connected to human rights and environmental and labor conditions. It's never ever ever going to happen. Be careful what you wish for. If what you wanted to happen happened, you would be paying over $100 for the same shirt that costs you $6 in Walmart right now. I also want to point out that, yes, in a globally competitive world wages become globally competitive…

>you would be paying over $100

$100 is sheer fantasy. It might double the price of a shirt from $6 to $12.

>There aren't other options available. No President is going to preside over the term where all the trade deals were made alongside human rights conditionals

This is actually how it used to happen and this is partly how TPP was killed in Congress (by attaching an anti-slavery rider).

>You can boohoo about it all you want, but your chocolate, your coffee, your clothes, and your computer parts are all made by or had their materials harvested by slaves, and most likely you would scoff at voluntarily paying twice the price for all those commodities.

No, I'm more than happy to pay a extra for chocolate, coffee, clothes and computer parts if I get to live in a world where labor exploitation, environmental destruction and slavery is made more difficult.

Are you really willing to go on the record and state that your preference is for the opposite?

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#74

Post by dalbasal »

xtrapolate wrote: post #52
dalbasal wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be a substantial difference between what the company and the employee "do." I walk by a twitter building every day. Probably about 500 people, maybe more. What are they doing in there? They sell ads, manage ad accounts, moderation, data protection audits... stuff that David Graeber wold call BS jobs. Now... I'm not in the same camp as him entirely. I think it's rash to just write off 70% of modern, white co…

Twitter was twitter before they had all those people. Sure, but it can't scale without them. How exactly is Twitter supposed to pay the bills? People use this platform because, for the most part, the basic premise is entirely free. How else can they fund the infrastructure/R&D costs?

scaling...it did. That is it had a ton of users using essentially the same product with a much smaller team, at one point.

Paying the bills.., IDK. Presumably they've determined that these people are useful in this regard. Otherwise, why have them? But from a first principles reasoning, it seems possible to sell add without thousands of ad sellers.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#75

Post by rubidium »

elgenie wrote: post #18
erikrothoff wrote: post #5

It feels like we're moving away from jobs that are purely productive, to jobs that are more creative. I don't mean arts etc, but 50 years ago a company like Facebook/Snap/Gaming/Any digital entertainment really, could not exist because people were occupied work that was required for society to function. Now humans can start focusing on spending their day building things for the entertainment of other humans, and also…

Facebook/Snap/Gaming/Digital-Entertainment don't employ all that many people. I'd be surprised if the ratio of entertainers / audience is much different than it was for, say, stars of silent movies 100 years ago, even though Charlie Chaplin wasn't doing something that could be termed "needed for society to function".

Oh, that's an interesting question. I've seen a graph of (US) advertising spend vs GDP which seems to hold constant over the last 70 years.

But to lump all FB/snap/twitter into entertainment+advertising and get % of the population working for those companies would be interesting.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#76

Post by eeZah7Ux »

paulpauper wrote: post #66
djrobstep wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we are moving from jobs that are actually productive, to bullshit jobs. Advertising doesn't produce anything useful in itself, it simply shifts and amplifies demand, and yet, Google, Facebook, and a vast slice of the rest of the economy is dedicated to producing ads. Even companies which are nominally dedicated to producing things of importance (eg pharmaceuticals) are mostly focussed on marketing. Then there's t…

This bullshit job argument has never made much sense to me, but I see the argument a lot. If companies care about maximizing productivity and profits, and given America's hyper-competitive economy and super-fickle stock market where the difference between meeting the earnings estimate versus missing it by a penny can make the difference between a stock being up 10% or down 10%, why would a company waste money on jobs…

Companies are far from all-knowing and perfectly rational agents. They are made of people.

Also, growing from a lean company into a too-big-to-fail behemoth (which happens all the time) is very valuable to CEOs & co. It what makes you graduate from billionaire to billionaire with political power.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#77

Post by mseebach »

rubidium wrote: post #75
elgenie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook/Snap/Gaming/Digital-Entertainment don't employ all that many people. I'd be surprised if the ratio of entertainers / audience is much different than it was for, say, stars of silent movies 100 years ago, even though Charlie Chaplin wasn't doing something that could be termed "needed for society to function".

Oh, that's an interesting question. I've seen a graph of (US) advertising spend vs GDP which seems to hold constant over the last 70 years. But to lump all FB/snap/twitter into entertainment+advertising and get % of the population working for those companies would be interesting.

But then you start doing violence to the categories. Twitter/Facebook certainly have entertainment functions, but they also have tentacles reaching deep into publishing and news. Now, suddenly a like for like comparison needs to include newspapermen, typesetters, printers and papermill workers.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#78

Post by jacobush »

dalbasal wrote: post #37
erikrothoff wrote: post #5

It feels like we're moving away from jobs that are purely productive, to jobs that are more creative. I don't mean arts etc, but 50 years ago a company like Facebook/Snap/Gaming/Any digital entertainment really, could not exist because people were occupied work that was required for society to function. Now humans can start focusing on spending their day building things for the entertainment of other humans, and also…

There can be a substantial difference between what the company and the employee "do." I walk by a twitter building every day. Probably about 500 people, maybe more. What are they doing in there? They sell ads, manage ad accounts, moderation, data protection audits... stuff that David Graeber wold call BS jobs. Now... I'm not in the same camp as him entirely. I think it's rash to just write off 70% of modern, white co…

The economic machine used to fulfill our basic needs, to keep us varm and fed. Now, that problem is solved, we have infinite sugar and cheap synthetic clothes. So it's on to massaging our psychological needs. And the market forces who gave us cheap soda gives us the same "solution" in FB, Twitter and friends.

A giant perverted maslov hierarchy for our society if you will.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#79

Post by djrobstep »

paulpauper wrote: post #66
djrobstep wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we are moving from jobs that are actually productive, to bullshit jobs. Advertising doesn't produce anything useful in itself, it simply shifts and amplifies demand, and yet, Google, Facebook, and a vast slice of the rest of the economy is dedicated to producing ads. Even companies which are nominally dedicated to producing things of importance (eg pharmaceuticals) are mostly focussed on marketing. Then there's t…

This bullshit job argument has never made much sense to me, but I see the argument a lot. If companies care about maximizing productivity and profits, and given America's hyper-competitive economy and super-fickle stock market where the difference between meeting the earnings estimate versus missing it by a penny can make the difference between a stock being up 10% or down 10%, why would a company waste money on jobs…

Spoken like somebody who has never actually worked in a large company.

Picture a stereotypical manager who does nothing but attend pointless meetings all day. (S)he attends reliably, and is good at appearing busy and authoritative and otherwise managerial.

This manager will not be fired, as (s)he's outwardly doing work duties and not doing anything specifically incompetent or negligent.

Other management-layer folk like this person as they confirm to middle class white collar norms socially.

Nevertheless, this person is useless. Every company is full of people like this.

Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#80

Post by guelo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #38

I'm somewhat surprised by the article's conclusion, but will accept it, given that Scott is pretty thorough with his sourcing and analysis. Even though he says we're getting the worst outcome (something is happening, but it's not apocalyptic, so people won't notice in time to coordinate at scale), it shifted my internal doomsday countdown ~20 years to the future. One thing I wonder though, and it's a general concern…

I think the fact that the data shows gradual trends over long terms with reasonable changes at big inflection points such as recessions gives some confidence that it is capturing some real world signals.
Post reply on HN