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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

#851

Post by rayiner »

andrepd wrote: post #741
listenallyall wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point about affording the lifestyle isnt entirely incorrect, but it is skewed by what you choose to include vs ignore. Owning a house? Indeed, grandfather probably had it easier. More space per person in the primary residence? Grandson wins, most likely. Restaurant meals vs home cooked, international travel, ubiquitous air conditioning, threat of being drafted into the military (and actually being deployed!), ex…

In other words: everything to do with economics is worse and everything to do with the inexorable march of progress is better. Yeah sorry but no shit. Technology has progressed since grandpa's day. "TVs are better and cheaper" is not a useful counterpoint when discussing the economy of the 2020s.

(voiceover) technology is part of economics.

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

#852

Post by soulofmischief »

rayiner wrote: post #831
soulofmischief wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, many people do not own property and are one missed paycheck away from homelessness.

[flagged]

I evicted someone from my home just a couple months ago and the process took one month.

I'm not sure what "Do you mean in absolute terms?" is asking, but I think it's generally wise to follow the Hacker News guidelines here:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith

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

#853

Post by win311fwg »

Draiken wrote: post #788
win311fwg wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oligopolies are unlikely in a free market because as soon as you do anything interesting a million other people will copy what you are doing wholesale and you will have no advantage to see you rise up to form an oligopoly. We find oligopolies in our regulated markets because regulation, such as copyright, patents, tariffs, etc., legally hinder that competition from emerging. However, even if we accept oligopolies as…

Taking aside the fact that free markets are a myth, all we have to do is look at our current society and you'll see how utopic this view is. In the real world, oligopolies are the rule not the exception.

Our current society is shaped by its regulation and the regulation is shaped by our current society. Regulated markets and our society are one and the same. To separate some kind of imagined free market out of that while still clinging to the same society doesn't make sense. They are fundamentally inseparable.

In the real world, the markets are regulated. We are talking about where there is a free market. Was your comment posted just to let us know that you don't give things much thought?

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

#855

Post by demo4567 »

cheschire wrote: post #222
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #163

This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me. I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new…

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this t…

the part that you conveniently didn't say: nobody wanting to work from home is forcing you to work from home, but because you want to be in office, you force everyone into the office.

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

#856

Post by Recurecur »

rayiner wrote: post #827
chongli wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the GGP post (by Animats) trivializing the risk? They're saying "it's a survival issue" and saying the printers became homeless and struggling to feed themselves. Sounds much more like a warning than a dismissal to me. If 40-50% of the workforce ends up like that then we're living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland failed state.

> If 40-50% of the workforce ends up like that then we're living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland failed state. I a lot less than that. Most people don’t have jobs that can be done remotely, which I think is a good proxy for the ceiling of who can be replaced by AI. Almost nobody on my block besides me is going to be replaced (beer brewer, several nurses, navy servicemen, cops, and teachers).

I think you’re failing to factor in the rapid improvement in robotics.

I was at the hospital a few days ago, and was pondering the numerous nurses who were wheeling around portable nursing stations with monitors and various types of equipment. They’d stop at a room, take a patient’s blood pressure (among various other things), type some notes, and move on. I can easily imagine most nursing tasks being subsumed by robotics.

The same goes for brewers, soldiers, cops, and teachers. Soldier, cop, and teacher robots are already being tested, or actually deployed…and it’s early yet. If a safe, highly dense source of power is developed, that will vastly accelerate the process. At best, there will be far fewer humans involved, monitoring the robots, much as software engineers are now monitoring the agentic AIs.

I’m not sure how human society will adapt. The optimistic view (championed by Elon Musk) is that we’re headed for a “Star Trek economy” of essentially endless abundance for everyone. I hope things play out somewhere along those lines…

I’ve personally been impacted very heavily by LLM technology. Two of my major skills, coding and writing, have been greatly devalued by it. I’m relying on one of the truly core human traits to compensate - adaptability. That’s an area where LLMs currently lag far behind.

We’ll see how things go from here… ;-)

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

#857

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

rayiner wrote: post #831
soulofmischief wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, many people do not own property and are one missed paycheck away from homelessness.

[flagged]

So, your contention is that it'll take a couple of months of missed paychecks before their lives are irrecoverably ruined, rather than just one?

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

#858

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

jdm2212 wrote: post #754
lp4v4n wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst of all is that people will still argue that, in this day and age, labour has not been completely devalued and that you are wealthier than your grandfather. That kind of story was not uncommon at all in the past, today you would have to be a literal multi-millionaire to have that lifestyle.

If you're ok with 1963 living standards, you can in fact have the grandfather's same lifestyle today at a very reasonable cost.

Where can I get a house, 3 apartments, a car, and money for raising 5 children at a very reasonable cost?

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

#859

Post by miyoji »

cheschire wrote: post #222
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #163

This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me. I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new…

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this t…

Commutes are uncompensated labor, so you're advocating for a pay decrease for both yourself and your coworkers.

Pay me for my commute and I'll gladly work from wherever you like, just recognize that I would get more done if you weren't paying me to travel to and from work. If you don't pay me for the time I spend commuting, you aren't interested in paying the total cost of employing me and you can kindly go fuck off.

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

#860

Post by bushbaba »

estearum wrote: post #798
Animats wrote: post #225

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…

Surprised no one has made the extremely obvious observation that it took literal centuries for printing technology to eliminate the trade of printers, which could not have possibly have employed more than 0.01% of people at its peak. Compared to the potential obsolescence of 40% to 60% of the US workforce over the course of 10 - 20 years? You can argue about whether the obsolescence is real or not, but if it is , the…

I doubt unemployment can even raise to 40% before the government and billionaire class is overthrown.

The French Revolution was not an isolated event

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