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

311–320 of 331 posts

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#311

Post by gaius »

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.…

Here in the UK the yout' say they want "opportunity". Well Opportunity #1 is "education" and they ain't interested in that.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#312

Post by atomicdog »

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 Therefore -- some hand-waving here -- the very idea of jobs is out-of-date.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…

>Yes, things are way screwed up, but capitalism remains

I'd say "lingers" is a better choice of words, here.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#313

Post by Iv »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #158
Iv wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, I'm a freelancer. I'll do the job you want for 150% of my former salary, yet at a lower price that my boss sold it to you ! I wonder why everyone is not doing that... I cut the middle men, so that means I get to go to dinner with clients, I get to negotiate prices, I got to be friend with the CEO of the startup that employs me. I always suspected that the salary of a commercial was a high price for a very comf…

Your work now consists of your former job and being a salesman. That explains why everyone's not doing it.

"Being a salesman" consists in being a nice human and a little bit of an actor. Any self-respecting roleplayer can be one.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#314

Post by Iv »

vladd wrote: post #152
Iv wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, I'm a freelancer. I'll do the job you want for 150% of my former salary, yet at a lower price that my boss sold it to you ! I wonder why everyone is not doing that... I cut the middle men, so that means I get to go to dinner with clients, I get to negotiate prices, I got to be friend with the CEO of the startup that employs me. I always suspected that the salary of a commercial was a high price for a very comf…

According to economics, companies exist when workers are able, together, to output more than the sum of their parts. More enough to compensate for the boss overhead, and then some. In fact, it's recommended to go indie if you're medium to strongly competent in a wide range of skills such as marketing, sales, programming and operations... But for most specialized workers, the company provides the collective which make…

I agree that this is the ideal situation but I think the system has been perverted. A single developer alone will probably bring less money than if he was working in a company, but the money he earns personally increases.

I personally blame a whole generation of people coming out of management school thinking they deserved a higher salary than anyone else when in fact they were doing a job that was equally important (no more, no less) than any worker in the company.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#315

Post by [deleted] »

tomlin wrote: post #232

So let's start picking apart this article. And the other article that talks about the end of capitalism. And then the next 50, 100, 1000 articles that prey on our confused notion that capitalism is the end-game for eternity. Watch as self-driving vehicles takeover all modes of goods transport. And robotics and information systems remove 90% of the health care workforce. And construction. And education. Keep telling y…

[deleted]

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#316

Post by tomlin »

I am going to get downvoted for criticizing an ideology - especially capitalism, which I would consider HN the best place for. We'll see.

These technological evolutions are not lightyears away. They are around the corner and they are coming fast. Also, remember that with each branch of technological evolution comes a whole subset of mashup-ability. There are countless jobs to be had by these innovations.

Of all communities, you'd think HN would be the highest order witness to the fall of capitalism since many of the startups and weekend projects seek to automate, or otherwise kill off manual intervention (read: jobs). Take a few of your favorite properties, YC or otherwise, then take a look back 20 years and compare the industry they represent today.

What if Airbnb became a household name, do you think that will increase the employment at Best Western? Or an open MLS system. Increase real estate agents?

Internet businesses, in general, seek to destroy inconvenience and under the best intentions. Just as I am sure capitalism works under the best intentions, despite child labour and deforestation.

50 years is not so ridiculous to plan for. We're giving our parents and grandparents flack for not taking care of our planet - "Where was your foresight!", we say. And here we are doing no better. We've already rolled into the same comfy cognitive dissonance.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#317

Post by grammaton »

"As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products."

This right here is my favorite piece of unintentional irony out of the whole article.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#318

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

v21 wrote: post #249
protomyth wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As hated as Wal-Mart is, they have cut the cost of living for people with low wages. The after effects are up for debate.

> But there are some things which make poverty more tolerable. Wal-Mart for one. I’d moved to Louisville with not even a fork or a spoon. Wal-Mart sells all that — hamper, dishes, utensils, dish rack, sheets, telephones, you name it — for prices so incredibly low that I was genuinely grateful. I thought about Wal-Mart’s union busting, its abused work staff of geriatrics and economically desperate wage slaves, its sto…

I love that article. One of the most unappreciated pieces on America today IMHO.

Sorry this comment doesn't really contribute anything but I'm thrilled to see someone else remembering this little gem.

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#319

Post by brohee »

nyrath wrote: post #236
billybob wrote: post #72

Great! All we have to do is convince poor people to be happy living at a subsistence level, and convince rich people to be happy supporting them! Seriously, I agree with his point that, say, building bridges in order to create jobs is backwards. But his plan seems to require changing basic human motivations.

Well, you can avoid changing basic human motivations by using an alternative solution. Jay Gould is attributed to have said "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half. "

The current version is more akin to hiring half the working class to guard the other imprisoned half. It's more sustainable that way.

http://prisonvalley.arte.tv/

Re: Are jobs obsolete?

#320

Post by brohee »

brianobush wrote: post #231

how are jobs obsolete when 91% of the working-aged population (in the US) have one?

The last number I heard was more like 56% for the US (can't find the source back, percentage of adults working is a surprisingly hard to find number).

Working people number ain't number of working age people minus number of job seeking people.

It's number of working age people minus (job seeking people, people on disabilities and not looking for a job, people in jail, stay at home parents, people who retired early...)

Post reply on HN