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Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

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

#141

Post by dv_dt »

dalbasal wrote: post #74
xtrapolate wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twitter has people to sell adds to companies that use people to decide to buy ads. If automation makes it easier to use fewer people to buy ads, then twitter and other ad companies would likely sell ads with fewer people in the mix.

As an aside it's odd to think of twitter and google etc as a kind of modern successor to the MadMen ad house. I guess if you were being pedantic, they're more like the modern version of what the network TV commercial industry was in the 60's.

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

#142

Post by icantdrive55 »

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…

"why would a company waste money on jobs that are bullshit. Obviously, they (the company) derive value from these jobs or else such jobs would not exist (or at least not for long)."

I don't agree with parent post, but I have a feeling he's looking at a lot Tech jobs in particular?

Yes--Technology/start-ups.

Repeat, most companies are scalping any human they can get their greedy mits on.

Their will be no bullshit jobs soon. I don't think there's a huge amount of BS jobs now in the private sector.

He looked at all the essentially free money the fed provided to the wealthy investors this past decade. And all the investors who wanted to build the next FB. All the rediculious start-ups, that are getting decimated by the monopolies.

Hell---I see so many jobs that will be just stuff of "Hay--remember the old days. The warm office? Getting hired because you knew the owner's newphew. Hired with a dubious set of skills? Or, hired because you were a seemingly good fit for the company?"

I don't know where he's located, but living in the Bay Area; I have seen some people with some seemilgly fantasy jobs. It's almost cute they think it will last. I do have a bit of a problem with the arrogant ones.

There's something that Willie Brown quipped years ago that stayed with me.

'What will San Francisco do when the tech party ends. The homeless problem will be massive. I don't know what SF is going to do with them.'

(Most of you come from loving/understanding homes, so their will always be a bed somewhere to retret to, so I don't worry about a huge spike in homelessness.)

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

#143

Post by trs80 »

Chris_Jay wrote: post #140
nwah1 wrote: post #107

Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor. Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can't people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be? The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming beca…

Funnily enough, my own (long term) project is aimed at addressing the problem you're pointing out. Given the possibility of remote work, there's no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers. https://sites.google.com/s/0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg/p/0B...

403 forbidden.

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

#144

Post by stronglikedan »

Chris_Jay wrote: post #140
nwah1 wrote: post #107

Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor. Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can't people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be? The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming beca…

Funnily enough, my own (long term) project is aimed at addressing the problem you're pointing out. Given the possibility of remote work, there's no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers. https://sites.google.com/s/0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg/p/0B...

> there's no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers.

IMHO, one very insurmountable reason is that you could never convince everyone that an urban center is worth living in. Quite a few people just don't enjoy that lifestyle.

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

#145

Post by geodel »

IshKebab wrote: post #98

Did he really show a graph of increasing employment in women, decreasing in men, and then say "Let's ignore the women. Why on earth could male employment be going down?" Erm.... maybe because... women were taking their jobs?

I guess someone in comments mentioned that it is something more like more capable women replacing less capable men. It is more reasonable in itself. But as I see it leads more inequality as more capable people get together, raise families and generate better income and lifestyle for them. At the same time situation for less capable people further deteriorates.

I think there would be studies about the impact of increasing professional double income couples on rising income inequalities in society at large.

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

#146

Post by jeffreyrogers »

The idea that rising disability is a cause of declining labor force participation is interesting, and fits in with anecdotal data from what family members in medicine have told me. They basically phrase it as: If you're uneducated and poor, why would you work a low paying job with little hope of advancement when you could go on disability and collect a similar amount of money without working?

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

nwah1 wrote: post #107

Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor. Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can't people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be? The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming beca…

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by dragonwriter »

Chris_Jay wrote: post #140
nwah1 wrote: post #107

Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor. Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can't people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be? The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming beca…

Funnily enough, my own (long term) project is aimed at addressing the problem you're pointing out. Given the possibility of remote work, there's no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers. https://sites.google.com/s/0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg/p/0B...

> there's no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers.

There's actually a very fundamental reason why land perceived as being worth living in becomes an urban center, and remote work doesn't change most of the climate, water, resource distribution, etc., reasons why particular sites are much more attractive for human habitation.

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

#149

Post by danaliv »

EnFinlay wrote: post #124
tinokid wrote: post #96

>"Increasingly, banks recognized the value of tellers enabled by information technology, not primarily as checkout clerks, but as salespersons, forging relationships with customers and introducing them to additional bank services like credit cards, loans, and investment products." Was this written before the Wells Fargo scandal came to light? Hard to be optimistic when the "silver lining" is that people who were once…

That behaviour describes my biggest pet peeve with banks. I don't want product offers from you. You take my money, make money with it, and pay me interest (a whole < 1%). That's our relationship, fuck off with your "credit card protection free trial period".

That "credit card protection free trial period" is how they're making money.

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

#150

Post by PeterisP »

ryandrake wrote: post #108
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #34

A really surprising thing here is that their analysis is also based on an somewhat unrealistically negative datum. They're using the labor force participation rate. The labor force participation rate counts people who are happy to not work, which is not a problem - and probably to be expected as the total number of upper and rich class individuals increases over time as a share of society. A much more useful measurem…

It’s really hard to measure underemployment. I mean, I have what most would consider a pretty decent tech job, however many of my peers are Senior Director of this and VP of that, and with my background and experience I know I could be a CTO rather than what I am. Am I underemployed? I feel underemployed, but who’s to say I am or am not?

A commonly used measure of underemployment is 'years of education not needed for this job'. In this measure, if you'd be qualified to be a CTO but are not, this doesn't count as underemployment, neither does the difference between a junior engineer and a senior one, nor between a mcdonalds franchise manager and mcdonalds CEO.

However, it does count going to a different/lower industry. A STEM grad in McDonalds; a teacher in a cleaning job, etc; where you can clearly point towards some 4 years spent on something that the current job doesn't need.

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