Are jobs obsolete?

Post by zeroonetwothree » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 7:36 AM UTC

femto wrote: post #42

Jare wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we could: replace 'work' with 'contribute' and it makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't believe in the mid- and long-term viability of a society that supports its members without requiring them to participate in its existence, development and improvement. Without some form of obligation, it would stagnate into a world of (so to speak) couch potatoes too easily. If I had a home, food and health care as a basic right, w…

The last paragraph suggests a new organisation for a company: one where people can job share high value jobs, in return for an average salary. Here's an example. Let's say I am capable of earning $160,000 a year, if I work 5 days a week in a role that is optimally suited to my skills. The problem is that this role leaves me with little time for my family (or other projects) and an excess of money. What I really want…

Post by csomar » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 7:36 AM UTC

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #55

jerrya wrote: post #10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin, published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group.[1] In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as information technology eliminates tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and servic…

IT itself is susceptible to the danger of shrinking given 2 things: - The rise of *aaS - The mindset of maximizing profits and and minimize expense Some of us have said a few times in the past: building software is expensive. Some of us have also said a few times in the past that: good programmers are expensive. Put two together and you get a recipe as to why more companies shy away from custom-development and prefer…

Post by devs1010 » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 7:44 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #65

femto wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last paragraph suggests a new organisation for a company: one where people can job share high value jobs, in return for an average salary. Here's an example. Let's say I am capable of earning $160,000 a year, if I work 5 days a week in a role that is optimally suited to my skills. The problem is that this role leaves me with little time for my family (or other projects) and an excess of money. What I really want…

The problem with your proposal is that employee time does not scale down linearly. There is a certain fixed amount of time needed for each employee to do training and administration, whether that employee works part time or full time. Let's say that takes 2 hours per week. If you drop from 40 hours per week to 16 then your actual productive time is only 37% as much. Plus there is additional fixed overhead for HR, com…

Post by jimmytucson » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 7:54 AM UTC

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #80

jimmytucson wrote: post #74

"Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves." I feel kinda stupid for saying this but I always thought people stopped producing their own "stuff" when we really got the hang of money. In other words, thanks to money, I can do one thing all day (and maybe get really good at it!) ins…

This isn't true at all. Working "for" someone else goes back to the earliest governments and religions. Corporations only took off much later, after the end of mercantilism.

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 8:10 AM UTC

evincarofautumn wrote: post #48

jerf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence flatly contradicts this. Give people contraception and reasonable financial security and the reproduction rate drops like a rock. You can argue about the why, but the what is at this point undeniable. There is no need to go around starving people to "control" the population. This suggestion is no longer a fashionably cynical stance to take in the face of hard reality, it's just evil. We are not reproduci…

…No. The evidence strongly supports this. It’s a fundamental principle of ecology that an increase in food production causes an increase in population. But what may not be intuitive is that these two increases need not happen in the same place, and often do not. Contraception is irrelevant. Our population is not growing as quickly in the developed world as it is elsewhere, but it is still assuredly growing. It always…