The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.
Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
21–30 of 144 posts
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Labour saving devices do not save any labour for the employees, their workday is just as long.
The 8-hour workday movement in the US predates Marxism, let alone communism.
It was explicitly socialist in the UK.
There was a paternal element of duty-of-care-and-welfare to factory/business ownership in the UK - patchy, but very real - which flared briefly in the US but is completely absent now.
It's still present in Europe, to varying degrees.
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#23This feels wrong. Did the vacuum make cleaning worse for employees? What about sewing machines? Modern looms? It is probably a safe case that most tech revolutions reduced the number of needed employees for most things. But even then, it would be great if this would provide evidence of that! Notably, it isn't like people strongly missed this work! Yes, there are fewer secretaries. But there aren't none, and the ones…
The introduction of mechanical looms (is this what you mean by "modern"?) was famously terrible for workers. Weaving went from a high-skill, safe task to a dangerous, low-skill one and was largely responsible for the rise of factories. The original Luddites were weavers.
it was terrible for weavers
it was great for workers around the world who now can afford clothes
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#24This seems obviously wrong as there are many counter examples. Employees in Ford's plants for instance saw huge wage increases and an additional day off. Mining mechanization made mines far less deadly and greatly reduced the human exertion required. I'd much rather harvest corn in an air conditioned combine vs. with an ox.
Even during the early industrial revolution, notorious for poor working conditions, people overlook why there was such high demand for those shitty jobs. The reason is because people were literally starving in the countryside. A family's survival was dependent on a good harvest.
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#25The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.
> pretty consistently improved
I can accept the premise that condiitions have improved, but not that it was consistent. It seems to me that it was anything but; more like extremely spiky. great depression, postwar economic miracle. Massive labor movements rose and fell, general strikes... Plus most countries have had several wars + revolutions in the last 200 years, including two world wars. Not all of those are to do with technology, but I also dont think technology wasnt indirectly responsible for the conditions that created some of them
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Labour saving devices do not save any labour for the employees, their workday is just as long.
The 8-hour workday movement in the US predates Marxism, let alone communism.
It was signed into law with the fair labour standards act of 1938, as part of the New Deal under FDR.
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#27The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.
> working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years
They've improved, but not consistently on human timescales.
Being a worker in the pre-labor-movement industrial revolution was by all accounts horrendous. Things have, so far, trended better over time but they can be bad for whole generations and also past results do not guarantee future results.
> The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity.
I don't think we can sweep the worst parts of it under the rug because the bad impacts are only happening to "the poors". And anyway when it comes to the current tech revolution, it is likely that almost all of us are going to be "the poors".
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#28This feels wrong. Did the vacuum make cleaning worse for employees? What about sewing machines? Modern looms? It is probably a safe case that most tech revolutions reduced the number of needed employees for most things. But even then, it would be great if this would provide evidence of that! Notably, it isn't like people strongly missed this work! Yes, there are fewer secretaries. But there aren't none, and the ones…
The claim of the article is that expectations increase at a faster rate than the work becomes easier. It probably feels that way to someone who got comfortable doing their job the old way wishes the world could go back to when they had it all comfortably figured out. If this does happen, it’s a second order effect from reducing the barrier to entry. Now that anyone can make some code with enough prompts, it’s no long…
The expectation is always that employees will do more for less. Employees are considered a cost, while their productive value is considered an entitlement, so the economics always push for cost reduction.
In practice businesses above a certain size accrete layers of make-work and bureaucracy, which is how you end up with "It takes three weeks to change a button" friction.
AI will make it easier to change the button, but it won't necessarily - yet - cut through the processes around it.
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#29The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.
I think you're conflating productivity growth with distribution. Technology increased wealth, but whether workers shared in those gains depended heavily on bargaining power and institutions.
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#30The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.
> working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years
Really depends on the group of people you are including. In the US the middle class has been eviscerated to the point where raising a family on a single income is not a realistic goal for most people.