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What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

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Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#301

Post by shimman »

pzo wrote: post #288
pixelready wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to this is always the one we don’t want to talk about: a robust public safety net. This is the balance to “move fast and break shit” technological disruption. It’s great to have an adaptive overall system, but disruption has a human cost. If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down. If instead we stick our…

Maybe I'm too pessimistic but i doubt how this can work out worldwide. It can work out maybe for some few wealthy countries but in this AI revolutions most likely we will have only 2 winners: USA and China. Smaller EU countries cannot even today introduce a fair revenue tax on big tech so that they pay any tax without being threatened about retaliatory steps by US administration.

What does winning even mean for the USA here? I'm not going to benefit if OpenAI or Anthropic become trillion dollar companies, and I sure as fuck won't benefit when more myopic business leaders become billionaires that have some of the most anti-human ideas that decide they want more control of society.

Americans would largely languish if big tech wins, big tech is already profiting of our misery now they want to profit in other domains too?

80% of this country is not going to benefit at all from any American corporations because American corporations have open disdain for workers.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#302

Post by [deleted] »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #168
mattcantstop wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rude to me as well. But I think we are wrong about this. I was in the doctor's office and a person was on the phone talking in the waiting room. I thought it was weird. But then I thought "if a person was sitting in the seat next to them and they were talking, would that be weird?" I don't think we'd see two people talking as being weird. Why is it weird if someone is by themself speaking to someone that isn't a…

I would consider two people talking to each other in a waiting room or on a train very rude too. If they are loud enough that the people next to them or behind them can hear the words they are saying, then it is rude of them. Of course, this is relative to how noisy the place is overall.

[deleted]

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#303

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

elmer2 wrote: post #273
pixelready wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to this is always the one we don’t want to talk about: a robust public safety net. This is the balance to “move fast and break shit” technological disruption. It’s great to have an adaptive overall system, but disruption has a human cost. If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down. If instead we stick our…

"If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down." This would be great, in theory. The reality is that people would live on it and never work, have kids, and the same thing would happen with a new generation. As it expands, you run out of tax payers and the system collapses. A 'robust' healthcare system that the governmen…

Tax payers don't fund governments, governments fund tax payers. Taxes are there to encourage certain economic activities and discourage others.

Today, many of those activities are either toxic, like fossil fuel subsidies, or useless, like casino stock markets which force everyone to play PR con games that are divorced from bedrock physical fundamentals - like clean water, a safe food supply, and a stable climate.

Guns won't help anyone when farming dies.

Not for long, anyway.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#304

Post by bojan »

pzo wrote: post #288
pixelready wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to this is always the one we don’t want to talk about: a robust public safety net. This is the balance to “move fast and break shit” technological disruption. It’s great to have an adaptive overall system, but disruption has a human cost. If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down. If instead we stick our…

Maybe I'm too pessimistic but i doubt how this can work out worldwide. It can work out maybe for some few wealthy countries but in this AI revolutions most likely we will have only 2 winners: USA and China. Smaller EU countries cannot even today introduce a fair revenue tax on big tech so that they pay any tax without being threatened about retaliatory steps by US administration.

Which is why I still think that the only way forward is that the EU becomes a country of its own. I'm aware that's deeply unpopular, partially due to The forrogn influence, but thr alternative is catastrophic - stagnation and letting US, China and Russia dictate our way of life.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#305

Post by epistasis »

follow_the_mone wrote: post #270
Animats wrote: post #221

Addressing the question in the title, "What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers", look at what happened to printers. That was a good skilled trade for centuries. Then it just went away. Phototypesetting took the high volume end. Desktop publishing took the low end. Computer-controlled presses took press operators. And then the newspaper business died. I've heard homeless former printers…

We remind people that Noema Magazine is owned by Berggruen Institute: https://berggruen.org/ Which is an AI booster: https://berggruen.org/projects/ai-visionaries You cannot read these articles posing as human interest without following the money.

Ah yes, any funding source invalidates all the arguments....

Does this article seem like an AI boosting article? Perhaps exactly the opposite?

I dislike this article intensely, and disagree with it, but its lot because somehow the Berggruen Institute is shadow pushing AI here

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#306

Post by hingler36 »

npilk wrote: post #285

So the author tells us there is a crisis of meaning in the workplace, and their proposed solution is… to remember none of the work matters? The start of the piece: “These conversations inevitably turn to fundamental questions about careers: What the fuck are we actually doing? What the fuck is the point of all of this?” The end: “For most employees, we owe it to each other to remind one another that this work is not,…

Yeah, this take is wildly out of touch. Sure, it's great when you're able to derive philosophical meaning from your work, but at the end of the day the vast majority of people are here for the paycheck.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#307

Post by tuesdaynight »

tavavex wrote: post #207
marginalia_nu wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an experiment, completely stop consuming news and social media for a few weeks. People have lived their entire lives without these information streams, you'll survive unplugging a bit. Now I can't tell you what you will experience if you go through with this, but I can promise it's very enlightening.

Of course, not being exposed to negativity will make you more positive. But this advice strikes me as a request to plug my ears and close my eyes. Doing these things will not stop the negative things that are happening in the world, and having the information about it at least makes me more knowledgeable about the world and hopefully prepared for when something snaps and there is a crisis that affects me in the most…

Why do you believe that you will better prepared? How do you differentiate between "preparation" and doomscrolling?

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#309

Post by exogenousdata »

elmer2 wrote: post #273
pixelready wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to this is always the one we don’t want to talk about: a robust public safety net. This is the balance to “move fast and break shit” technological disruption. It’s great to have an adaptive overall system, but disruption has a human cost. If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down. If instead we stick our…

"If there’s a robust public healthcare and UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down." This would be great, in theory. The reality is that people would live on it and never work, have kids, and the same thing would happen with a new generation. As it expands, you run out of tax payers and the system collapses. A 'robust' healthcare system that the governmen…

“This would be great, in theory. The reality is that people would live on it and never work, have kids, and the same thing would happen with a new generation. As it expands, you run out of tax payers and the system collapses.”

Are there historical or contemporary examples of this? I googled but couldn’t find any specifics.

The reason I ask is that I in the US, employer-provided health insurance is a large expense for businesses. And anecdotally, I’ve never spoken to any US small business owner that feels that choosing employee insurance plans is a real competitive advantage. But perhaps the historical/contemporary alternatives are worse?

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#310

Post by kstenerud »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #267
kstenerud wrote: post #250

The author talks as if this were a new phenomenon; it is not. I actually did go buy a farm in the 2010s, grew alfalfa, managed cattle, cared for horses, etc. Except I did it while working remote as a software engineer. Very fun life, and I may return to it again. But it's not an AI thing, and it's not a disappearing job thing. It's just that office work keeps you so separated from the real world that you yearn for so…

How much time did the farming take, compared to the software engineering aspect? My very limited understanding of farming is that it takes a huge amount of time, and you're usually up and working before sunrise, even with automation.

Yes, I was up at 4 am every day. It's hard work.
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