In which alternative world is increased productivity a problem? I don't get the logic behind that. I just don't.
I suppose it depends what the cost of said productivity is. Slave societies were pretty productive.
AI are taking jobs
121–130 of 169 posts
Re: AI are taking jobs
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hear, hear. This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition. It's socialism, yes, but are we going to be responsible for allowing millions of people to become beggars while we enjoy the fruits of our labors? I started my career right out of uni by developing software which eliminated hundreds of low skill jobs. Hundreds... r…
> This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition. Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > It's my belief that as a result of our efforts, our drive to untangle complexity, that there will likely be 50% unemployment in the US by the end of the next decade. Let's design for that. You propo…
> Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition?
> You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people on a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will signal to those people that society considers them worthless. You will never produce anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to feed you for the effort.
You provide question and the answer. The idea of universal income (which this proposed wage is a limited application of) is that you give everyone a bare minimum stipend, while encouraging people to go out and earn more if they want more.
It wouldn't be event that expensive, considering what a modern social state already spends on its citizenry.
In a sense, modern government is partially already a mechanism of universal income (many government employees are unfit for being productive in private sector).
Re: AI are taking jobs
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but how many people are going to be able to make a living on Hamburger ebooks? I don't think it's that hard to supplement your income a bit like this but I don't see this kind of thing compensating for many lost full-time jobs.
OP's scenario is further complicated by the fact that his wife is (presumably) half supported by himself who (presumably) is earning a living. So... How many single people earn a living, pay rent, bills, feed themselves and live to an acceptable standard from selling Hamburger ebooks?
I don't know about hamburger ebooks, but the guy who runs parrotsecrets does make more than most computer programmers.
Also don't forget that you don't have to live in a rich country for you to sell ebooks. Anywhere with internet is fine.
Re: AI are taking jobs
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
As wealth accumulates among the masters of technology, asking what jobs might provide value to your peers is the wrong question. What value can your friends provide to big corporations?
Bertrand Gille (60s/70s historian of technology) had an interesting hypothesis, that as technical systems, and coupled technical-economic systems (e.g. large corporations built on technical advances) get complex, interdependent, and rapidly changing, at some point it becomes too difficult for humans to fully understand and control their workings and evolution, and the dependencies make even choosing which technologie…
From what you describe that does sound like the system we have always been under. I.e if you want to advance your position, and you need money to do so, you best find somebody who has them and make yourself useful to them.
Re: AI are taking jobs
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is just my uninformed opinion, but I think a lot of it has fallen victim to keeping up with the Joneses, and a lot of the rest to employers not being willing to give decent terms to part timers. People could get by with a much smaller salary (or keep the same salary but save a ton of it) by having an older car, a smaller house, less fancy food, etc. but everybody else has nicer things. I see people buying really…
I have a better explanation. Wages have not even remotely kept pace with productivity, so most people do not see the benefits of increased overall productivity . http://rationalrevolution.net/images/EPI_Productivity_vs_Com...
If that is the case, then you would expect to be able to make more money by starting your own business, because you start to reap all the rewards (and take on more of the risk).
My theory? Well somebody has to pay for all the useless people (Washington employes a ton of them and so do nearly all large companies in the world).
Re: AI are taking jobs
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition. Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > It's my belief that as a result of our efforts, our drive to untangle complexity, that there will likely be 50% unemployment in the US by the end of the next decade. Let's design for that. You propo…
> Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people on a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will signal to those people that society considers them worthless. You will never produce anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to feed you for the effort. You provide ques…
So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic.
While it's good that there's a safety net so slip-ups and bad luck won't put you in the street and kill your children, institutionalising that dynamic (effectively removing it) will have catastrophic effects on the values of society.
These concerns are not crack-pot libertarian wet dreams, they were raised even by social democrats when the Nordic social democratic welfare states were designed. Britain has talked about anti-social behaviour and broken society for years (it's not just something David Cameron invented with his good-on-paper/WTF-IRL-"Big Society") - don't have that kind of language for it in Denmark, but the same dynamics are present.
Re: AI are taking jobs
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition. Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > It's my belief that as a result of our efforts, our drive to untangle complexity, that there will likely be 50% unemployment in the US by the end of the next decade. Let's design for that. You propo…
> Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people on a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will signal to those people that society considers them worthless. You will never produce anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to feed you for the effort. You provide ques…
I think this is one of the most important ideas being explored right now and could not only save families but also become a giant incubator for new research. (It may also require moving to a new form of government, such as a Direct Democracy, to implement.)
It's an idea whose time has come.
Re: AI are taking jobs
#128The author does not fully understand the totality of the work these professional do. From the two example listed. "Radiologists, who can earn over $300,000 a year in America, after 13 years of college education and internship, are among the first to feel the heat. It is not just that the task of scanning tumour slides and X-ray pictures is being outsourced to Indian laboratories, where the job is done for a tenth of…
I agree it doesn't cover everything they do, but covering just some of the more routine activities can be enough for significant disruption. For example, dermatologists are fairly worried that "upload a photo and we'll diagnose your mole", either via software or outsourcing, will cut out a significant percentage of their business. It's not by any means the hardest work a dermatologist does, but it's common, steady wo…
If they are worried about it, why not preempt it? A simple upload form on the internet where you can upload your a picture of your mole and have a dermatologist take a quick look at it for $15 would be very attractive for a lot of people (not least because it is easier for people to do it than it is to schedule a visit.
And it would be a nice side income for some young doctor.
Re: AI are taking jobs
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people on a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will signal to those people that society considers them worthless. You will never produce anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to feed you for the effort. You provide ques…
I think this is one of the most important ideas being explored right now and could not only save families but also become a giant incubator for new research. (It may also require moving to a new form of government, such as a Direct Democracy, to implement.) It's an idea whose time has come.
The proportion of Danish citizens on some kind of transfer income: 60% (includes student stipends all the way to pensions)
The value of new research undertaken by people on transfer income: very small, if any at all.
The reason the idea requiring direct democracy is that it involves two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
Re: AI are taking jobs
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people on a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will signal to those people that society considers them worthless. You will never produce anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to feed you for the effort. You provide ques…
So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic. While it's good that there's a safety net so slip-ups and bad luck won't put you in the street and kill your children, institutionalising that dynamic (effectively removing it) will have catastrophic effects on the values of societ…
I guess to me that's not an interesting dynamic for a society that's advanced past subsistence farming. In subsistence farming, yes, you work to feed yourself. If you have modern 21st-century farming technology though, producing enough food to feed everyone takes only a few percent of GDP, not 100% of everyone's time. Why not just give it to everyone, since its cost is basically noise on modern economic scales anyway?
Then find some more advanced goals for people to work at. If they really, truly, want nothing but a bare subsistence existence, and nothing else that modern society has to offer, then fine, let them sit around eating 2000 calories/day for free; maybe in the future robots will do all the work anyway, and lazy humans can just live off the munificence of their robot benefactors (we're halfway there). But an "advanced" society in 2011 where the reason people work is because they'll starve otherwise, despite the utter un-scarcity of food, now that seems like a pretty shameful dynamic. I'd be more interested in asking, rather than setting up artificial scarcity so that people have to work for the old scarce things (e.g. food) even though they aren't scarce anymore (there's only a distribution problem, not a scarcity problem), whether we can have a society where people work for something else. Maybe the answer's no, but to me that'd be a pretty sad answer.