81–90 of 140 posts
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> I think it is a really good idea to start accumulating capital, even at today’s valuations. This is an interesting take. The alternative to individually trying to each become capitalists, is grouping together and making sure we all have access to the proceeds of automation.
Becoming a capitalist has a long history of being successful. The other way not as much.
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"Most of the employees I come into contact with have jobs that could be automated with a few days or weeks of programmer effort." After looking at some of the business processes at my company I am not so sure about this anymore. There are a lot of jobs that are pretty mundane but when you look a little closer most of the processes have a lot of exceptions where the employee makes decisions that don't follow the proce…
This is often a process issue more than anything else. For instance, our finance team spends insane amounts of time dealing with a variety of invoices with varying information and structure.There are a number of exceptions, rules and etc. However what's often ignored,is the fact that we are much bigger than any of our supplier and it would be pretty easy to convince them to invoice us the way we want instead the way…
On balance I would guess you would create work overall rather than reduce it.
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Okay... so now also include in your statement the quality of those new jobs. Not how many electronic gadgets people can buy compared to 50 years ago, but how stressed they are and how they fit into greater society. Also include how useful many jobs feel to those working in them - reference to "Dilbert jobs" (or Wally jobs, if you like and how common the feeling seems to be that ones job is useless (I myself certainly…
Sorry, but you should look at what jobs used to be like. Back-breaking work on the farm. Mind-numbing and body-destroying assembly line work that could cut off your hand. Construction work without any of the safety standards we now have. Alcohol consumption and tobacco smoking was sky-high. Any way you slice it, the quality of jobs today is tremendously higher than in the past, and people are not being paid less. Tru…
Really? What about 40 years ago? Jobs were a lot easier, and you could buy a house and raise a family on one income. Why do you ignore that period of time, when workers had it good?
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The solution is to keep your scripts private, automate your job, and work on whatever you want while making sure you always look busy when your boss walks by.
If you roll over like you suggest and let your boss tickle your belly, what do you say to yourself when you look in de mirror?
Given that the global poor gaining jobs are statistically much worse off than those losing them, I'd say it's inhumanely slow...
That's just factually untrue. First-world workers aren't losing jobs in aggregate at all. They're not statistically worse off at all. (Unfortunately median income hasn't been improving , but it certainly hasn't been getting meaningfully worse .) While the global poor are experiencing massive benefits lifting them out of poverty. I fail to see what is inhumane here.
Jobs are an undesirable side effect of a business, not the goal. With or without globalism, that is and always will be true.
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Becoming a capitalist has a long history of being successful. The other way not as much.
Gonna run out that clock when there’s no more natural world to exploit ruthlessly
If we somehow exhaust the mineral deposits on Earth in the next few hundred years, we can and will mine the solar system.
In the absolute worst case scenario, the rest of the natural world off of Earth is available for ruthless exploitation by our Capitalist ways for thousands and thousands of years to come. The clear bet is that it will be exploited eventually, probably by whatever we replace ourselves with.
I remember reading Average is Over and A Fairwell to Alms just when I first started working. They convinced me that labour power was going to decline precipitously. I stared saving 60+% of everything I made and putting it into index funds. Anyone making a good salary should attempt the same. Much of white collar work is extremely amenable to automation, much more than even truck driving: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wi…
I remember reading Average is Over and A Fairwell to Alms just when I first started working. They convinced me that labour power was going to decline precipitously. I stared saving 60+% of everything I made and putting it into index funds. Anyone making a good salary should attempt the same. Much of white collar work is extremely amenable to automation, much more than even truck driving: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wi…
You know, if 5% of the workforce follows that strategy, but things go to hell for 50% because of these trends, then we will have rioting in the streets, maybe a revolution with a nasty government installed, that is what history shows usually happens. And then the new government will go after the successful people like you.
Some problems can be dealt with only through responsible collective action.