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Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

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Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#41

Post by Padding »

zenogais wrote: post #20
gboudrias wrote: post #4

> The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do. Part of me thinks this will lead to make much more apparent the paradox of capitalism: Those with the most money can... make the most money. Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything (which is silly and most likely would not be put up with afte…

> Another part of me thinks that automation has been part of our society for a long time, and that taking it further only changes the kind of jobs everyone has, maybe even promoting equality by eliminating the more menial tasks (and therefore making every worker's skill and experience important, instead of them being just a replaceable cog). This is the theory, but the realities of this promoting equality are really…

> In reality automation seems to be a source of widespread immiseration beneficial to only a few.

Are you serious?

The printing press alone has benefitted humanity as a whole immensly over the last centuries.

And there were piles and piles more of automation necessary for us to be able have this discussion right now - on a global scale and at virtually no cost to either of us.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#42

Post by scrollaway »

gboudrias wrote: post #4

> The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do. Part of me thinks this will lead to make much more apparent the paradox of capitalism: Those with the most money can... make the most money. Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything (which is silly and most likely would not be put up with afte…

Copying a comment of mine from a few days ago, seems relevant:

I encourage everyone to watch Humans Need Not Apply, a mini-documentary by the excellent CGPGrey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

I suspect most of what is said in there is well known to the HN crowd, but it's all put together in a very pleasant video and is a nice thing to link to people who don't understand just how far along we are in the process of automating a lot of people's jobs.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#43

Post by AnthonyMouse »

noonespecial wrote: post #18
beedogs wrote: post #12

"What does it mean for the economies of these up-and-coming world powers? Well, probably the same thing that it means for everyone else: The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do." Or, you know, basic income. Why is the answer to "there are no jobs anymore" always "well, I guess you can starve, then"?

Its almost like a signaling error. A farmer would gladly grow corn in exchange for a tractor and a mechanic would gladly supply that tractor in exchange for corn, but the corn that theoretically could be factory farmed by automation would be cheaper than the farmer can grown and the robot built tractor would theoretically be cheaper than the mechanic can build so neither do anything. Both farmer and mechanic starve a…

> Both farmer and mechanic starve and then the automated systems make neither corn nor tractor while the capital owner wonders why no one is buying.

I don't think your math works out. If a tractor is worth more in the market than the corn then the mechanic is better off to sell the tractor and buy corn in the market than trade with the farmer, and vice versa if the corn is worth more in the market than the tractor. Making the trade only makes sense if the tractor and the corn have the same market value, but in that case they could both just as easily sell to the market rather than bartering.

Automation is only a problem when it lowers the price of the things you're selling but not the price of the things you're buying.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#44

Post by xerophyte12932 »

teebs wrote: post #37
rtpg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know we always talk about rich families accumulating wealth, but what about corporations? Apple has $150 billion in cash sitting idly, accumulating more every time someone buys an iThing. That's money that's disappearing in the short term.

From my understanding of this issue, that money is "owned" by the Apple stockholders, and is incorporated into the company's stock price. If a corporation has a lot of money, its shareholders have that money. Same with anything else the company owns--buildings, equipment, etc.

From my understanding, all the capital (money) and other assets (equipment etc) all belong to Apple, where Apple isn't just "a group of people", but is an entity in itself.

To make it clearer, if apple has $150 Billion cash lying around, none of the stockholders can just withdraw some of it, or even their percentage share of it. What they can do is sell their "share", where the share itself can be considered a separate object that is less related to the company's assets, and more concerned with the market's perception of the company. To illustrate the last point, suppose all of Apple's stockholders suddenly decide to sell their shares. The market would be flooded by sell orders and the price of the shares would begin to plummet, even though there has been absolutely no change in the company's assets. The price drops simply because apparently no one wants to own the share. Similarly when a lot of people want to own it, the price rises. (yes, this is an over simplification)

When you buy a share, you aren't buying a percentage of the company's assets, you are buying:

- a stream of future dividends. - A sell-able "share" which you may hope to sell at profit in the future.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#45

Post by AnthonyMouse »

anigbrowl wrote: post #30
beedogs wrote: post #12

"What does it mean for the economies of these up-and-coming world powers? Well, probably the same thing that it means for everyone else: The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do." Or, you know, basic income. Why is the answer to "there are no jobs anymore" always "well, I guess you can starve, then"?

Very possibly, but proponents of a basic income consistently fail to articulate three things: how these monies will be collected, what rationale there is for distributing it (other than the implicit acknowledgement that the alternative is civil unrest) and why it won't be inflationary.

> how these monies will be collected

Taxation.

> what rationale there is for distributing it (other than the implicit acknowledgement that the alternative is civil unrest)

A basic income removes the need for a long list of bureaucratic social programs like social security, food stamps, housing assistance, pell grants, etc. etc. It's the free market solution for social welfare programs. You allow individuals to decide what they need rather than having the government decide from the office of central planning.

It also eliminates means testing much to the benefit of the middle class (and simplicity and economic efficiency).

> why it won't be inflationary

Inflation comes from increasing the money supply faster than the size of the economy increases. Inflation would only occur if the money paid out was newly printed. When it comes from taxation the amount of money in circulation is unchanged, only the parties holding it change.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#46

Post by Bahamut »

bruceb wrote: post #9

Cites recent layoffs but has no real stats on the decline of outsourcing, near shoring, etc. Weak. Part of the problem with India is lack of standards. There are people who are good at programming in both the US and India and people who are bad at it. The problem is in the US most of the bad ones don't end up getting a CS degree where in India they do. This means there are a lot of people in India who have a little b…

"The problem is in the US most of the bad ones don't end up getting a CS degree where in India they do."

There are plenty in the US that have a CS degree and aren't good at programming. It isn't a magic ticket to knowledge.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#47

Post by yummyfajitas »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #45
anigbrowl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very possibly, but proponents of a basic income consistently fail to articulate three things: how these monies will be collected, what rationale there is for distributing it (other than the implicit acknowledgement that the alternative is civil unrest) and why it won't be inflationary.

> how these monies will be collected Taxation. > what rationale there is for distributing it (other than the implicit acknowledgement that the alternative is civil unrest) A basic income removes the need for a long list of bureaucratic social programs like social security, food stamps, housing assistance, pell grants, etc. etc. It's the free market solution for social welfare programs. You allow individuals to decide…

Inflation comes from increasing the money supply faster than the size of the economy increases.

This is a strange Austrian definition and is not widely accepted.

The normal definition of inflation is increases in the value of a basket of consumption. CPI is a good proxy for this over the short term (in the long term CPI becomes useless for this purpose since the basket changes).

If BI increases demand for consumption (as most of it's proponents claim it will), then the price of consumption will increase - hence, inflation.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#48

Post by jmadsen »

Interesting to read all these comments about the "real" problem. What the article actually SAID was:

"Labor in India and China is still cheaper than it is in the United States, but it's not the obvious economic move that it was just a few years ago: Wages in India have increased about 10 percent annually over the last five years"

In other words, it might seem - I say might, because the article is obviously not a real heavy-hitter with data - that the old idea of wages balancing over regions is coming true. I find this interesting because I used to reject this notion, because I feel labor is actually very static (you can't just freely move to China if the jobs move there), but my economics days pre-date the internet and much of what we can do today via technological advances.

So, I'm not really sure about anything based only on this article, but find this to be very interesting.

As far as the Automation part goes, I think in the short- to medium-run it will simply become a case of "Automating things" is the new hot job for a while.

Purely theoretical, long-run thoughts? We are moving closer to that Utopia of machines doing all the labor, while Joe Man-on-the-street gets a guaranteed yearly salary so he doesn't rebel and kill everyone with money. Unless Running Man is your thing.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#49

Post by avz »

msandford wrote: post #6
gboudrias wrote: post #4

> The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do. Part of me thinks this will lead to make much more apparent the paradox of capitalism: Those with the most money can... make the most money. Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything (which is silly and most likely would not be put up with afte…

A huge part of the problem here is the low, low interest rate environment we're in. Low interest rates make expensive machines cheaper than humans. High interest rates make humans cheaper than machines. (For a range of values of cheaper) Being able to afford a $300k house on $50k/year is great until you don't make the $50k/year anymore because you've been automated out of a job. In the past people with a lot of money…

> opportunities to grow your wealth aren't scale invariant.

This can be solved by pooling your capital with a group of people until you reach the scale at which the opportunity you were looking for becomes available. One way this has been done for over a century is via mutual funds.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#50

Post by Padding »

ilaksh wrote: post #3

I know this is a tough sell but I am going to say it anyway. Automation effects every single person and every single job. For example, if your job is writing custom software, it becomes progressively harder to find problems that don't already have open source solutions. Or look at how component marketplaces and open source components or modules increases software reuse. There is not an infinite capacity for software…

For better or worse, this isn't true.

Software development to some extent is a creative process, thus eluding automation in many ways, though not for lack of trying.

Much like book authors, in the general case, can't really "re-use" subplots of one another's stories, software devs can't really, in the general case, re-use one anoher's implementations. Of course there are many more specific situations in which software may be re-usable than there are for subplots in books .. but that doesn't impact the overall argument.

Much like a detective story will have some crime being commited by some perpertrator, harming some victim and being investigated by some detective, an e-mail client will run on some OS have some GUI and exchange some IMAP and SMTP messages. But the creation of the specific detective story and the specific e-mail client still require creative input by some human before they can come into existence.

Or is your argument that there is less need for e-mail clients and detective stories because there already are enough of them in existence? If so, then this is an issue orthogonal to automation itself.

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