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

Are jobs obsolete?

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 331 posts

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#191

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Let me see if I understand this reasoning correctly. Old, fragile and stiff huge organizations like the Post Office cannot provide the numbers of jobs they used to. The economy is changing. Therefore -- some hand-waving here -- the very idea of jobs is out-of-date.

Ouch.

But it gets better. We should pay folks not to work. After all, there's no jobs for them, so why should we expect them to do things that are impossible?

This is very reminiscent to me of all the hare-brained articles about capitalism being dead that came out right around the banking crisis. Yes, things are way screwed up, but capitalism remains. You could make any kind of wide-spread social change you wanted and capitalism would still remain. People like to trade stuff.

The crazy thing here is, like most of this tripe, there's a nugget of something useful in there. We cannot predict how the labor force will evolve. To do so is folly. The answer to this is not to announce the death of jobs, it's to create systems where new job roles which are unforeseen by us are created. To promote flexible adaptation in our businesses and governments.

What's dead is our big boxes of generic labels to stick on things -- all those labels and boxes have been stretched so far they don't work any more. Trying to continue to create policies around those labels and boxes is idiotic. We all need to adapt -- not in a lets-bring-some-academics-on-tv-to-talk-about-the-knowledge-economy sense, but in a real, live policy sense. If your terms and generalizations are bad, your conclusions and policies will never work. I understand that's frustrating and that you are out of ideas -- but a mental model with a huge impedance mismatch the reason, not that we've suddenly been thrust into a 27th century scarcity-free economy.

Take a look at the comments on this thread. Everybody gets out their favorite political pinata and beats on it. Is this a very productive type of article for this site?

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#192

Post by fuzionmonkey »

Ridiculous. If we had our priorities straight, there would be low unemployment.

Our infrastructure is crumbling beneath us, yet we won't spend any money to fix it. Instead we're fighting a handful of wars abroad that doesn't help us at all.

We need better roads, public transportation, and faster internet.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#193

Post by Helianthus »

brown9-2 wrote: post #186
johngalt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spend more per student than we ever have in history. Why wasn't the country in chaos when there weren't public schools at all? Teaching the kids that they are owed something merely because they have less than someone else? Seems to justify theft to me.

Why wasn't the country in chaos when there weren't public schools at all? Because education isn't a cure-all and isn't the only variable in the lives of the youth. Teaching the kids that they are owed something merely because they have less than someone else? I'm sorry, but where do you get this sentiment from the previous posts?

it exists in the shadowy echo of the intent. while it is completely correct for tjstankus to note that it is foolish in the extreme to _not_ invest in the future, the system must also correct for the greed of men: as you say rather more politely, education isn't a cure-all and isn't the only variable.

This conflict, between the desire for generosity and the _requirement_ that the system must also compel (or at least result in) responsible human beings is where the sentiment arises.

The question is over culture. Culture of giving and providing, culture of responsibility. Those that take without giving are found both in the rich and the poor.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#194

Post by Helianthus »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #191

Let me see if I understand this reasoning correctly. Old, fragile and stiff huge organizations like the Post Office cannot provide the numbers of jobs they used to. The economy is changing. Therefore -- some hand-waving here -- the very idea of jobs is out-of-date. Ouch. But it gets better. We should pay folks not to work. After all, there's no jobs for them, so why should we expect them to do things that are impossi…

I think you're missing the overall stab. As you say "Trying to continue to create policies around those labels and boxes is idiotic"--because those labels and boxes are out of date.

Which is to say, 'job' might just be one of those labels.

This is _about_ redefining terms and generalizations.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#195

Post by hackinthebochs »

jbooth wrote: post #145
hackinthebochs wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the quote is not referring to any particular person. The rest of your points are tangential to the quote, but I'll address them anyways. Claiming lack of funds is not an issue is misguided. The problem with property-taxes-fund-education is that in poor areas, the funds derived from property taxes are much much lower than in a more well off area. These are the areas that require even greater investment to c…

Actually, FWIW, urban low-income districts typically get more money per pupil than suburban ones. Why and where it goes is a much longer discussion than I have time to get into, but it's basically personnel and specialists.

I'm interested in reading more about it, if you know of links or sources off hand.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#196

Post by potatolicious »

Helianthus wrote: post #194
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #191

Let me see if I understand this reasoning correctly. Old, fragile and stiff huge organizations like the Post Office cannot provide the numbers of jobs they used to. The economy is changing. Therefore -- some hand-waving here -- the very idea of jobs is out-of-date. Ouch. But it gets better. We should pay folks not to work. After all, there's no jobs for them, so why should we expect them to do things that are impossi…

I think you're missing the overall stab. As you say "Trying to continue to create policies around those labels and boxes is idiotic"--because those labels and boxes are out of date. Which is to say, 'job' might just be one of those labels. This is _about_ redefining terms and generalizations.

But how are jobs out of date?

What we're going through is not substantially different from what happened during the industrial revolution, or the invention of the loom. We're talking about the complete obsolescence of an entire group of skilled tradespeople due to automation.

People will continue to work for other people, doing certain things - which is pretty much the definition of "job". In time - possibly not in time for this current generation of unemployed - society will find new jobs for people to do. But jobs they will be.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#197

Post by icebraining »

zasz wrote: post #129

I don't think anyone would want to pay for the art I can make. I don't want to pay for anyone else's either. Given how much music piracy there is, and the vast skill disparity between casual amateurs and dedicated professionals, and the near-zero cost of replicating the bits composed by someone better than me or any of my immediate peers, I can't believe the author thinks that trading bits is a possible outcome. Why…

You might not want your friend's art, but there's plenty of excellent art not on DeviantArt. Especially if you custom made: Kickstart and other escrow services can fund stuff that doesn't exist yet (and therefore can't be pirated).

Similar to what's done with TV shows (a pilot is made, then if there's interest by any network, they fund the rest of the season), but with artists directly proposing their 'pilots' (a first chapter of a book, a trailer of a movie, a single song) directly to the audience and letting them fund the rest.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#198

Post by msluyter »

jganetsk wrote: post #105

Policy adjustments for maintaining capitalism in the post-employment era: provide a minimum guaranteed income to all citizens and abolish minimum wage. This was Milton Friedman's idea. This would create a massive market for a standard "life package": a combination of food, shelter, and healthcare for one person with cost equal to the minimum income. We could even have cities organized around the concept. Then, people…

This is also Marshall Brain's idea:

http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

IIRC, he advocates a 25k stipend for all americans, which incidentally, given ~300M people would cost 7.5 trillion. That's approximately double the entire federal budget for 2012. Factoring in state/local spending gets you to near 6 trillion. Given that fact and our current political climate, I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that it'll be a quite a while before adopt such a solution. ;)

Brain suggests lots of ways of raising the money (some rather implausible) here:

http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#199

Post by hackinthebochs »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #179
johngalt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spend more per student than we ever have in history. Why wasn't the country in chaos when there weren't public schools at all? Teaching the kids that they are owed something merely because they have less than someone else? Seems to justify theft to me.

Totally agree. My kids have gone to the public high school and a large fraction (more than 20%) of the students there could be getting an education but they choose not to . I don't know why this is, but I know of no counter argument that supports why an individual, who gets to school, has the books and supplies provided for them, and teachers willing to help them with any issues they are having, choose not to learn.…

The problem is pretty simple to identify in my opinion. These people live in a culture of anti-education. This is going to take a lot of money to counter. The cheapest way to counter it is probably to simply pay students for good grades, starting as young as possible. Create an external motivation to learn and apply yourself where there otherwise would be none.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#200

Post by noahc »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #191

Let me see if I understand this reasoning correctly. Old, fragile and stiff huge organizations like the Post Office cannot provide the numbers of jobs they used to. The economy is changing. Therefore -- some hand-waving here -- the very idea of jobs is out-of-date. Ouch. But it gets better. We should pay folks not to work. After all, there's no jobs for them, so why should we expect them to do things that are impossi…

I think we need a class in school called 'Identifying and Creating Value in the 21st Century (like your great great grandparents did)." Let's be honest, that's where the jobs are going to come from and where they are going to go.

The point of the class is to get people to go from "What do I want to be when I grow up" to thinking "How can I add value to some process that people will pay me for." This puts the responsibility for job creation on individuals, not governments, schools, societies, communities, or business.

It amazes and frustrates me to see people who think their craft is so special that they think they should be paid because they are a good designer, programmer, artist. No! You're not paid because you're good at it, you're paid because you create value. Being good at it is only a secondary consideration.

Some where along the line the wires got crossed and basically people became professional whatevers instead of value creators.

Post reply on HN