Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization • Hacker News Board

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#101

Post by Creationer » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:35 AM UTC

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #64

ZhuanXia wrote: post #2

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 think saving is an essential part of it, but not the whole story. I recently took a job at a university. I had a bit of leverage (extensive clojure experience ftw), and I spent it on negotiating for 20 hrs/week. This gives me much more time to do "the other stuff" that's part of a career---networking, learning, interviewing, starting soon-to-be-aborted businesses. I've also been trying (with a group of friends) to…

The problem is that jobs are over, but we are still taxed the old fashioned way - mostly to pay for the healthcare and pensions of baby boomers who had steady careers and cheap housing.

Healthcare and pensions make up 66% of the US Federal Budget. Its a similiar case in most other Western countries. If we could somehow find a way to relieve ourselves of that burden, taxes on labour could be much lower and life significantly better.

I think this is partly why we've seen such a huge boom in freelancing. Its much easier to optimise your taxes that way, instead of working for a company.

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#102

Post by andrenth » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:40 AM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #72

andrenth wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare these numbers from the 80s-90s to current data. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/1999/sept/wk5/art02.htm?view_fu... https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm

Interesting. I'm really surprised that auto parts don't track vehicle assembly more closely. But, in your second reference, see the "back data" graph links for 1990-2019, in any of the manufacturing categories. I would expect that figures for the sixties and seventies would be much higher still, as much of the automation and de-industrialisation was through the eighties. The seventies perhaps, as a pure guess, the ma…

I’ve found this paper [1] which has data from 1960 to 1990 in a plot on page 3. The peak is in 1978 but the number range is very similar to today’s numbers (~1 million employees). I’m assuming the numbers in that chart are in manufacturing alone (didn’t read the paper), because today’s numbers including retail trade, wholesale trade and services add up to more than 4 million jobs, according to my second link above.

[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/24ba/b100ea6eb7d96c9c4247eb...

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#103

Post by wavefunction » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

andrenth wrote: post #51

wavefunction wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car sales in total have increased though. Due to the population of the world and adoption of automobiles in the rest of the world as well. I don't find any compelling arguments to disprove what a lot of seeming educated and intelligent researchers and social critics are saying regarding the coming disruption of the labor market.

The claim is that automation destroys jobs. This has been historically false, despite claims made each time that “this time it will be different”. Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Let us turn to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. The first chapter [...] is called “Of the division of labor,” and on the second page of this first chapter the aut…

You can post a long wall of text but the actual claim is that FUTURE DISRUPTION due to globalization and automation will destroy existing jobs faster than new jobs that the displaced workers can move into can be created. Please respond to the actual subject of discussion in the future.

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#104

Post by wavefunction » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 3:16 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #55

wavefunction wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car sales in total have increased though. Due to the population of the world and adoption of automobiles in the rest of the world as well. I don't find any compelling arguments to disprove what a lot of seeming educated and intelligent researchers and social critics are saying regarding the coming disruption of the labor market.

>Car sales in total have increased though. _because_ of automation lowering car prices among other causes.

That appears to be an unfounded assertion given what I've found comparing inflation adjusted average car prices: https://blog.chron.com/carsandtrucks/2016/04/cost-of-a-car-i...

The average car price from 1967 is $3000 cheaper in 2016 dollars than the 2016 average car price. That may be due to a number of factors but I'm at least providing some data to back up my assertions.

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#105

Post by kochikame » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 4:07 AM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #43

ryanmarsh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a consultant with clients in a wide range of industries I concur. Most of the employees I come into contact with have jobs that could be automated with a few days or weeks of programmer effort. They are one successful software project from losing their jobs. Lucky for them their companies are terrible at shipping software. Conversely, automating the work of a plumber would require a massive investment in AI and…

"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…

So there'll be one or two people taking care of those human decisions when necessary... when there used to be ten people taking care of the whole process.

So it doesn't automate all the jobs out of existence; it just automates most of them out of existence

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#106

Post by IOT_Apprentice » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 6:15 AM UTC

pault wrote: post #62

ryanmarsh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a consultant with clients in a wide range of industries I concur. Most of the employees I come into contact with have jobs that could be automated with a few days or weeks of programmer effort. They are one successful software project from losing their jobs. Lucky for them their companies are terrible at shipping software. Conversely, automating the work of a plumber would require a massive investment in AI and…

> They are one successful software project from losing their jobs. Maybe. However, consider how successful Google has been at automating customer service.

If google is the example, then the world is in for an automated hands off hellscape for consumers and their true customers--advertisers.

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#107

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

andrenth wrote: post #51

wavefunction wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car sales in total have increased though. Due to the population of the world and adoption of automobiles in the rest of the world as well. I don't find any compelling arguments to disprove what a lot of seeming educated and intelligent researchers and social critics are saying regarding the coming disruption of the labor market.

The claim is that automation destroys jobs. This has been historically false, despite claims made each time that “this time it will be different”. Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Let us turn to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. The first chapter [...] is called “Of the division of labor,” and on the second page of this first chapter the aut…

That books was originally written in the 40s and updated in the 70s.

Hazlitt likely didn't even dream of people being replaced by algorithms.

The trick in the past has always been to invent new types of jobs to take advantage of the technological progress. We're out of tricks if one can automate highly sophisticated tasks.

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#108

Post by Tsubasachan » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:08 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #36

nosianu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed. My grandfather worked at a coal mine and after that he laid tram rails with his bare hands. This was during the reconstruction decades after WW2.

I don't know how things are exactly in the US but my country is wealthier than ever. Hundreds of thousands of people are retiring so there are tons of jobs going to be around.

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#109

Post by majewsky » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:36 AM UTC

robocat wrote: post #82

cosmodisk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While that would eliminate jobs within your organisation, it would clearly create development work in your suppliers. On balance I would guess you would create work overall rather than reduce it.

Tangentially related: The German industry is working on a standard for digital invoices. Invoices would be a human-readable PDF file with an additional XML payload containing a machine-readable version of the same data. I can't say anything about adoption though. The Google keyword is "ZUGFeRD" for those who are interested.

Re: Richard Baldwin on the “inhumanely fast” next phase of globalization

#110

Post by majewsky » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:57 AM UTC

perfunctory wrote: post #6

nosianu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A while ago I created a poll about BS jobs which unfortunately didn't attract much attention. With N=8, most HNers have bullshit jobs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880159

This poll is missing a crucial option, "Don't know".

What I noticed in bigcorps is that they do the same stuff that small startups do with way more people. What a startup does with 3 people, bigcorp needs 60 people for that. But when you look at it from up close, it's incredibly hard to tell which of those 60 people are the ones that are actually needed.