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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

#391

Post by lotsofpulp »

RivieraKid wrote: post #330
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…

> UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down If you mean UBI that would allow anyone to stop working and live a modest life, that just doesn't work. UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work. That's not just a "safety net" because you could decide to stop working forever just because it's more comfortable than working. I w…

>UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work.

That is what earned income tax, payroll taxes, and Medicare and Social Security taxes are.

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

#392

Post by KaiserPro »

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…

In the UK as weaving was mechanised it lead to huge upheavals and only narrowly avoided civil war. It changed the face of the country completely.

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

#393

Post by austin-cheney »

Just as a reminder this subject of AI replacing developers come up all the time but it has not happened yet.

People want to focus on AI but the same problem has always been there for 2-4 decades. Software, as a profession, has no credentials, no common elevation path, no common training criteria. You just show up and everyone is super insecure. AI just provides a name to identify that insecurity. Nothing else has changed.

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

#394

Post by ben_w »

RivieraKid wrote: post #330
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…

> UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down If you mean UBI that would allow anyone to stop working and live a modest life, that just doesn't work. UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work. That's not just a "safety net" because you could decide to stop working forever just because it's more comfortable than working. I w…

> If you mean UBI that would allow anyone to stop working and live a modest life, that just doesn't work. UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work. That's not just a "safety net" because you could decide to stop working forever just because it's more comfortable than working.

This is, IMO, why UBI has to be timed almost perfectly for when the AI is ready to be the one who does the work.

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

#395

Post by ben_w »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #391
RivieraKid wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI type system in place to pad the fall, people will bounce back and adapt when industries break down If you mean UBI that would allow anyone to stop working and live a modest life, that just doesn't work. UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work. That's not just a "safety net" because you could decide to stop working forever just because it's more comfortable than working. I w…

>UBI is essentially redistribution from those who work to those who don't work. That is what earned income tax, payroll taxes, and Medicare and Social Security taxes are.

Your list is the "from" part, UBI could be the "to" depending on how people choose to live when they don't need to work.

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

#396

Post by mrguyorama »

ang_cire wrote: post #322
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because we watched our careers go from being in service of an industry of tinkerers and designers, to being in service of the worst people attempting to maximize wealth extraction no matter the human cost? And this is different than other industries how? Everything from electricity to the railroad to trucking to finance to environmentalism has had this arc from wild west to establishment.

I agree about what happened, but I think the timescale is different. Railroads were the tools of robber-barons even in the 1800s. Electricity was captured by the major electric companies before most millennials were born. Finance was a stodgy-suit-wearing-white-guy's game when my dad got into it in the 1970s. I knew that's what "finance jobs" meant back when I was a kid building fan pages on GeoCities. But GeoCities…

>If our boomer parents had warned us about crapitalism as kids

All of American society tried to warn boomers about this their whole lives, and they consciously rejected it in favor of a movie star who promised the economy would magically be amazing if only we didn't allow the government to have any say in how business works.

"Hey, don't let industries conglomerate because they will do bad things to customers and in general it's pretty inefficient for the economy" was known when Railroads did it two hundred years ago. But that didn't stop Reagan insisting that letting businesses buy up all their competition would magically make prices fall, and it didn't stop the american public from consuming that bullshit with abandon.

Like, I don't know what more you want. My social studies textbooks were pretty clear about the times we had to break up monopolies, why we had to do it, and how it had clear benefits.

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

#397

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#398

Post by dom96 »

hollowturtle wrote: post #344
THX1137 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forcing me to go out every day and talk to human beings face to face, even just little things like making sure I was showered and dressed every day This part is strange to me. I've worked from home for about 10 years and I've never once had an issue with twice-daily showering, meeting people face-to-face, going out for coffee, going outdoors, going to the gym, etc. The fact I can just go sit in a park, on a hiking…

I mean in which lucky place of the planet you live in? I dunno u but where I live it's 40 degree celsius out there and all over europe. I'm a remote worker and most time of the year going outside is just not possibile, over heat or too cold or raining like it never did before(climate change you know)

Not the person you're replying to, but this is genuinely the killer feature of the UK. Yes, we get heat waves and more of them now, but it's much better than mainland Europe. Especially if you stay away from London (which I would recommend).

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

#400

Post by slashdev »

nradov wrote: post #260
MichaelZuo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there is some latent risk in choosing a career anywhere, that the demand disappears. There can’t literally be zero risk of structural demand changes.

I'm pretty sure there's literally zero risk of structural demand changes for law enforcement. Defunding the police isn't going to happen and there's no plausible path toward automating most of the work. Security cameras and robots can only do a fraction of what will be needed.

Police robots and drones.

You say no plausible path to automating - I beg to differ.

It would get officers out of harms way.

Not imminent but not zero risk either.

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