Are jobs obsolete? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#261

Post by wbienek » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 11:26 PM UTC

dbingham wrote: post #206

noahc wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 responsi…

We need to leave behind the concept of "value". Value was created by scarcity. But scarcity is decreasing and, in some cases, disappearing entirely. If it costs me nothing to make a copy of something, then I have no incentive at all to pay money for it. It has no "value" to me. I can copy it instantly for free. And frankly, why should I pay money for it? Sure, someone had to do work to create it in the first place, b…

You are voted down by the idiots who will wonder why they're broke one day (or not wonder cuz these smart alecs think they have it figured out). Like the post office their logic is flawed and one day when the RETIREMent they expected doesn't happen they'll whine and bitch.

Guess what. No retirement! Its a frigging ponzzi scheme! The fact that that isn't foremost on peoples mind as well as other corruptions is proof they're idiots!

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#262

Post by wbienek » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 11:30 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #90

serge2k wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you have to support not only people who are just going through some tough times, but those who just want to leech off society. Plus those people who go out and have kids, then waste the money they are given to feed them on crap so their child is either starving or lives off a terrible diet. It's really not an easy problem to solve. Ideally everyone should be guaranteed that they get enough food and a pl…

Agreed. Good government must manage the leech/liar problem. Such people should not be enabled.

You were voted out. Like me for other comments above. These are idiots who dont have substantive arguments. When they lose their jobs. Retirement. Etc. Serves em well.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#263

Post by awolf » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 11:33 PM UTC

> We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.

This is a nice thought but it seems impossible to move forward until food and shelter are givens for everyone world wide - not just givens for those in the USA.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#264

Post by nickik » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 11:43 PM UTC

zasz wrote: post #121

commanda wrote: post #93

This article skips discussing one reason why jobs are in a sense ends to themselves: the feeling of being useful. Retired people often complain that they don't know what to do with themselves after leaving the workforce, so they go do things like volunteering. A friend of mine recently took 2 months off between jobs and nearing the end of that time, she started becoming very depressed and realized it was because she…

It might not be "feeling useful" so much as the social stimulation. The days when I work from home and don't talk to anyone at the office are soul-crushingly lonely, sometimes, even if I'm very active over IM.

Very much agree its a social thing. "The West" looks down on people that don't work does they feel bad and usless. All these people that will not have to work for money anymore have more time and they should be encouraged do good things. Take care of your parents, look after there children, study a new field, go out and talk to people about politics ....

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#265

Post by reader5000 » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 11:48 PM UTC

Spyro7 wrote: post #209

Why is this being upvoted? This article begins with a questionable premise and then descends straight into misinformation. The problems in the USPS did not begin with email. They began with a highly questionable requirement that the USPS fund a plan to fully cover the estimated future health care costs of all current employees. They are the only government institution required to do this, and it has crippled their ab…

> The critics say this time is different, this time there will be no new jobs, and we should urge people to find something other to do than working. The critics are wrong. Don't worry people. Employment is here to stay.

I mean this is hand-waving as well. You havent actually provided any substantive counter-argument other than bring up the Luddites.

I think the basic argument that at some point, possibly already past, the productive activity required for basic human survival will be virtually entirely automated and require 0 human labor input. How do we allocate productive output in a society that requires no labor input? The notion of the "job" as described in the article may very well be obsolete.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#266

Post by ChuckMcM » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:23 AM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #199

ChuckMcM wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess I'm less willing to generalize than you are that the roots are an 'anti-education' culture. It hasn't been my experience that these 'slackers' (for lack of a better term) are disproportinally represented by any specifically identifiable group. They express a common 'you can't make me do this' kind of attitude but beyond that much of the correlation seems to fall off.

There is clearly a 'too cool for school' factor, but this could just be a rationalization. And there seems to be some correlation with family engagement as well. I really don't know what drives this attitude. My view of it externally is that there is no physical, mental, or equipment related barrier to their participation in the education process, they just don't. And what alarms me is that they seem to represent such a large fraction of the total population at the school.

I suppose we could come up with an experiment where we offered a cash incentive to some and none to a control group to see how it affected their participation. Something to put forward at the next PTA meeting.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#267

Post by zasz » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:31 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #197

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 fir…

So if you're willing to grant the point that not everyone is going to be capable of creating good art, then what do the non-producers do? Just sit back and consume? The problem is that we use productive output as a heuristic for determining how much stuff to give back to a given member of society. If the standard changes from "making widgets" to "making art," most people are still going to starve.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#268

Post by wvenable » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:38 AM UTC

billybob wrote: post #56

jneal wrote: post #15

As time goes on, and technological abilities improve, more and more jobs will fall to "robots" or computerized replacements for real jobs. There will always be need for creative jobs, engineers, etc, but the non-skilled labor jobs will be less and less. I don't see how anyone could disagree that there is already a problem here, and in the future, there will be an even bigger problem. The only people able to get jobs…

'Aside from that, in the "old days" women stayed at home and took care of the family. "Nowadays" women are going to work, and I think that is absolutely great!' Another way of looking at this is, "in the old days, a household could be supported by one parent's work and the other could raise children. Now, both have to work to pay the bills, and children get less time with parents and more time in institutions."

The question is, did the fact that women entered the work-force create the situation where one parent's work is no longer sufficient to maintain a household?

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#269

Post by dbingham » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:40 AM UTC

timwiseman wrote: post #251

dbingham wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to leave behind the concept of "value". Value was created by scarcity. But scarcity is decreasing and, in some cases, disappearing entirely. If it costs me nothing to make a copy of something, then I have no incentive at all to pay money for it. It has no "value" to me. I can copy it instantly for free. And frankly, why should I pay money for it? Sure, someone had to do work to create it in the first place, b…

You are using value in a nonstandard way. Value and price are only loosely coupled. I get enormous value from things that are free (Python, Firefox, etc). Also, I pay for things I could have gotten for free all the time. Sometimes this is to reward or encourage the person providing it and then it is called a tip or gratuitity (or sometimes donation, though that evokes charity in my mind rather than voluntary payment…

I believe I was using the definition of value gleaned from the post above which pretty strongly linked value with getting paid for your work. Call it what you will, my point is that the economy is focused on producing something that people will pay money for. But current models are based on scarcity, which may be becoming obsolete.

You're right that something can be free and abundant and still be of enormous value. I think my point is more that we should think about ways to restructure society around the sharing of valuable abundance.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#270

Post by meric » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:53 AM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #208

davidw wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is Hayek 101, and I agree with it strongly in terms of society being a 'complex system' that is difficult/impossible to do much about in…

davidw, I know you, of all people, disdain political articles. So I'm going to follow-up. I think we all take these models too far -- including fans of Hayek. I wasn't saying that everybody should subscribe to some school of thought. All I was saying is that when politicians use the terms "jobs" and "education", they mean certain things. For "job" they mostly a 9-5 job paying taxes, perhaps with some kind of benefit…

The current legislative system is doomed to always give us laws 10 years behind. Voters don't notice a problem until it has taken roots. We've only really had the internet for a bit over 10 years, and it was only the last few that all these things you're talking about starting to happen.

A system that produces 10 year behind laws is fine for an economy that grows over decades, but if there really is a "technological revolution" that can greatly boost economic growth so it doubles not in decades but in years, then the 10 year old laws will become untenable. Unfortunately, this'll have to happen before we even think about the possibility of changing how Presidents, Congresses and Parliaments work.

I worry though, the industrial revolution happened after political, cultural change. "Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market there based on the management of the national debt by the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private financial investment in industrial ventures." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

At the moment, just as then, the governing system is the biggest roadblock to societal growth. In 1688, the parliamentarians overthrew the king of england. Today, however, it'd be lucky if we had a single dictator we can overthrow which would solve all our problems. (Except for some of us from Egypt, etc.)

The irony of my point is... Since our political systems are so entrenched and unchangeable we're unlikely to ever see the sort of societal changes you speak of. The things that've started to happen, will stagnate and stop growing. Therefore, 10 year behind laws will continue to be sufficient for our needs.