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Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

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Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#51

Post by noosphr »

aeternum wrote: post #24

This 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 ove…

Becuase they would quit and work anywhere else after a few days.

In 1913 Ford had to hire over 52,000 workers just to maintain an active factory workforce of 14,000.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-stor...

> The reason is because people were literally starving in the countryside.

Because their land was stolen during enclosure.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#52

Post by SoftTalker »

janalsncm wrote: post #49
gruez wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to the point where raising a family on a single income is not a realistic goal for most people. Was this ever true? During the 1950s, (the perceived heyday of American middle class wealth) the female labor force participation rate was 35%[1], which was close half of the male labor force participation rate. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001

1) Based on your numbers, 65% of women were not working at that time. 2) That 35% number was likely even lower for married women. 3) Racism was still a systemic problem and was bad. Black men were excluded from the GI bill for example. 4) In spite of that, the median American household needed only 2x their salary to buy the median house. That number is 5x today, and after taxes the ratios are 2.2x then vs 6x today, w…

Compare the median house in 1950 with one today.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#53

Post by noosphr »

vanuatu wrote: post #23
giaour wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cheap cloth didn't mean cheap clothes. You had to wait a century for the sewing machine for that to happen.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#54

Post by smallmancontrov »

cluckindan wrote: post #38
siavosh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everything changed with floating currency. Inflation became a tool for centralization of ownership.

The Robber Barons were able to r>g their empires just fine in gold-backed currency.

The Cantillon Pump is only one of several major "rich get richer" mechanisms in the economy. It is not the most important, and it does not consistently run in the same direction (wages can inflate faster than assets).

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#55

Post by janalsncm »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #33
janalsncm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The reason the 'middle class' is smaller is because more families have become "upper middle class". All the data shows this. You can argue that housing is too much or that inflation hasn't benefited the right things, but to say that the middle class is shrining just doesn't match reality.

“Upper middle class” has nothing to do with it.

In 1950, the median household could buy a house with 2 years of income. That is, 50% of households could do this.

Today, the median house costs $400k. Only the top 12-14% of households make 200k per year.

So proportionally, the % of households that have the same buying power as a median 1950s household has shrunk roughly 4x.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#56

Post by janalsncm »

SoftTalker wrote: post #52
janalsncm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Based on your numbers, 65% of women were not working at that time. 2) That 35% number was likely even lower for married women. 3) Racism was still a systemic problem and was bad. Black men were excluded from the GI bill for example. 4) In spite of that, the median American household needed only 2x their salary to buy the median house. That number is 5x today, and after taxes the ratios are 2.2x then vs 6x today, w…

Compare the median house in 1950 with one today.

It’s not hard to do. A lot of them are for sale today and will sell over asking, no contingencies.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#57

Post by ihm »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #48
maxbendick wrote: post #19

Marx actually has a bit about this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm... The most interesting point here is relating machine speed to intensity. Plenty of tech folks are both working longer hours and overseeing more responsibilities thanks to AI. There are other factors at play though (interest rates and AI-addiction, for two).

[flagged]

What part of Marx's work do you think has been disproven?

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#58

Post by rafaelRiv »

palmotea wrote: post #31
georgemcbay wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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". We can and we will. If you read HN for any period of time, you'll probably read at least 5 apologia for the harms caused by prior technological change for every one critique or expression of sympathy. After all, we're well-indoctrinated software engineers, and most of the rest are temporarily em…

> Not me! I'm 100x AI engineer who will certainly remain comfy an secure. LLMs are awesome! It's all those luddite doomer jerks who cling to their old ways of understanding how things work and manual coding that are going to be poor, and they deserve it.

We will see in 5 years ! I think you highly overestimate llms

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#59

Post by t-writescode »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #33
janalsncm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The reason the 'middle class' is smaller is because more families have become "upper middle class". All the data shows this. You can argue that housing is too much or that inflation hasn't benefited the right things, but to say that the middle class is shrining just doesn't match reality.

The only way one can claim that the middle class isn’t shrinking is to have a floating definition of the middle class.

If you lock it in any way to something like “home ownership and simple vacations once a year” (which was absolutely possible in the 90s), it has plummeted.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#60

Post by DaedalusII »

There was a time when life was much simpler. We would all walk a few miles down to the 'station then have breakfast and read the 'paper while the steam smoke hung thick in the air

Then we all had to move to cars. The fire man, stations, engineers, and conductors all lost their jobs, and the commute got 10 times more intense. Now we had to drive our own cars, follow road rules, maintain our cars, and find parking

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