This reminds me of the old joke that GDP goes down when a man marries his maid. But this article manages to not only make that error, but ignore how clearly the data suggest that there are a fair number of men who are housekeepers and are going off the labor market for similar reasons.
Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
121–130 of 233 posts
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#122Warning: the following is conjecture which I have not researched. Because who has the time? My main question while reading this article was why is the author so stuck on "manufacturing" jobs being automated away? He does address this very briefly in section III but I cannot help but feel his foundational research is highly skewed. Sure, robotics are growing in popularity and that technology, specifically, will likely…
Any company able to obtain financing will instantly replace 10 workers with a $1 million machine.
If the machine is vaguely durable that even works if wages are $10 (~$30K annual cost per worker->$300,000 payroll per year, investment pays off in reasonable time).
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#123Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor. Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can't people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be? The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming beca…
This would be a wonderful thesis if it didn't ignore the fact that in the world (and the US in particular) there's a lot of land. So much land that you could fit the entire world's population twice into Texas alone assuming major city densities (assuming 67k /mi^2 and 268000 mi^2 per cursory googling gives some 18B).
As maxerickson said, that land is not free. And the question is not the amount of land, but the amount of valuable land. Land that is near jobs, near markets, near ports, or near decent hospitals or schools.
Sure there's loads of terrible land in West Texas, which could possibly provide for a lifestyle of subsistence farming, but the US standard of living is such that it would be wiser to live on welfare in a city.
But in theory, if someone could covertly farm some crops on one of the numerous vacant sites in Manhattan, and not have to pay any rent, then that same amount of subsistence labor could provide for a potentially decent lifestyle.
Same amount of effort would bring in a much greater return, just through the better location.
My point about farming was to ask why we can't all share in the fruits of rising productivity. Why can't we just keep doing what we had been doing, and still take advantage of fancy new gizmos? And the answer is that progress causes land values to rise, but the valuable land is generally owned by a subset of the populace who demand a greater and greater rent just because they can.
So really the question is: how can we all share the value of land, without it just funneling back to higher rents? My suggestion is to look at land value taxation.
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#124>"Increasingly, banks recognized the value of tellers enabled by information technology, not primarily as checkout clerks, but as salespersons, forging relationships with customers and introducing them to additional bank services like credit cards, loans, and investment products." Was this written before the Wells Fargo scandal came to light? Hard to be optimistic when the "silver lining" is that people who were once…
That behaviour describes my biggest pet peeve with banks. I don't want product offers from you. You take my money, make money with it, and pay me interest (a whole < 1%). That's our relationship, fuck off with your "credit card protection free trial period".
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Is this true? The stocking frame (and the reactionary group of Luddites that it incited) didn't really increase productivity. It just did work humans were doing for less money than a human salary. Mechanisation of the textile industry led to vast increases in the quantity of production. Prior to the industrial revolution, most peasants would have owned only one set of clothes and replaced them only when they were en…
>I don't see AI/ML following the same pattern. AI/ML which can mine through sports footage to create highlight reels and funny clip collections, etc will create tons of consumer goods (videos) which can all be monetized on Youtube. Just one example. How about Netflix? They use AI/ML quite a bit. It seems to have driven quite a lot more people to watch movies and tv than before. Amazon uses AI/ML in its Echo, which wa…
> How about Netflix? They use AI/ML quite a bit. It seems to have driven quite a lot more people to watch movies and tv than before.
... and the word 'cable cutters' is being thrown around with a lot more intensity, plus various charts of rapidly declining cable TV viewership.
> Amazon uses AI/ML in its Echo, which was quite a high-selling consumer good last holiday season.
[gestures at the latest brick-and-mortar bookstore news with B+N on the rocks and Borders in its grave ... given AMZ got it's start as a bookseller.]
A pessimistic response to be sure (and one that I'm reluctantly making), but there's coincidence, and then there's a pattern that starts emerging whenever a disruptor unicorn cements its place into an industry.
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#126Warning: the following is conjecture which I have not researched. Because who has the time? My main question while reading this article was why is the author so stuck on "manufacturing" jobs being automated away? He does address this very briefly in section III but I cannot help but feel his foundational research is highly skewed. Sure, robotics are growing in popularity and that technology, specifically, will likely…
This is why the post-recession employment recovery in the US is complete fabrication. The jobs lost in 2008 were careers, the jobs that replaced them were gig work like Uber. The employment figures today discount the tens of millions of NEETs and the tens of millions of people trying to scrape by on gig jobs that provide no healthcare, retirement, stability, and put them below the poverty line. Per-capita incomes are…
The increase in homeless encampments as detailed in this report are also a stark indication of how false the recovery is. Unfortunately most of the homeless get shipped to California, often with one way bus tickets from municipalities that don't want to deal with the problem. https://www.nlchp.org/Tent_City_USA_2017
(Looks like they need to renew their TLS certificate.)
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
scaling...it did. That is it had a ton of users using essentially the same product with a much smaller team, at one point. Paying the bills.., IDK. Presumably they've determined that these people are useful in this regard. Otherwise, why have them? But from a first principles reasoning, it seems possible to sell add without thousands of ad sellers.
Selling advertising online could be automated for the most part, unless Twitter really does offer personalised offering to ads buyers—which I'm not sure is the case.
At a certain spend level, advertisers want to have a single human that they can call when they need something/something goes wrong ("a single throat to strangle").
Providing this dedicated connection is also an opportunity to upsell them on more ad products.
I did this work at Google for a couple years at the start of my career. They are an exceptionally analytics driven company, and would not employ these kinds of people if there wasn't good ROI
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#128Warning: the following is conjecture which I have not researched. Because who has the time? My main question while reading this article was why is the author so stuck on "manufacturing" jobs being automated away? He does address this very briefly in section III but I cannot help but feel his foundational research is highly skewed. Sure, robotics are growing in popularity and that technology, specifically, will likely…
He alludes to that in the "something happening since the 1960s" - this is that thing, the rise of the computer.
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#129[deleted]
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#130>"Increasingly, banks recognized the value of tellers enabled by information technology, not primarily as checkout clerks, but as salespersons, forging relationships with customers and introducing them to additional bank services like credit cards, loans, and investment products." Was this written before the Wells Fargo scandal came to light? Hard to be optimistic when the "silver lining" is that people who were once…
The Wells Fargo scandal does not represent the banking industry as a whole. Believe it or not, but the products sold by the banking industry in general have an investment return greater than 0%.
Investing human capital in providing those products results in a net increase in overall human productivity.