There already was great efficiency growth that would have enabled "less work".
It was all taken by the ruling "elite".
Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
171–180 of 186 posts
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And there exists unskilled necessary work that armies of skilled workers can not replace. I think this is false. Unskilled work is easy to teach and learn, by definition. All you need is an "army" and the unskilled work can be easily fulfilled.
Much, if not most, of "unskilled" work also has a lot of hidden complexity that means your productivity starts off slow and improves over time. There's a reason capitalists have gotten us to think of some work as "unskilled," and that's so they can pay those people far less than they should be, and no one raises a stink about it. The farm worker is an obvious example of "unskilled" labor, but if you watch a video of…
Unless you hold some capital, you are paid according to how much your work is valued and how much of it can be supplied, not how hard your work is. They are unskilled in the sense that many other people can perform their job after some training. In aggregate the work of farming is highly valuable, but many individuals who partake in such work aren't specifically so and can be replaced easily even if their work is in fact difficult in itself.
An established rapper could be paid millions for a single mumbled line on a single song but that happens because he can export his value to millions of people who have in interest in it, whereas the ditch-digger can only rely on his labor and what it can provide in his current location.
You say hardly anyone cares, but are you willing to pay extra for the items and services that are produced by farmers and other workers? Perhaps you are, but in reality that is the stopping block that makes people stop caring, and it does have a certain cold logic to it.
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
>forgetting about the people building your stuff, growing your food, extracting your oil (and killing the planet in the process), moving your stuff around, nursing people, building your house, installing your AC, shipping your amazon packages, What do you mean "forgetting"? I pay those people for their services out of the money I earn. They're not doing all those things out of the goodness of their hearts, they worki…
I would say, to be pedantic, that your pay isn't set by the market "really," because of market distortions of all kinds. Like doctors are highly paid for a number of reasons one of which is cause the APA restricts the number of doctors that can be trained, but also because of the nature of the finance of healthcare in America, and the cost of training doctors. None of those is determined purely based on the market re…
A distorted market is still a market. Considering there has never in history been a market completely free of distortion due to authority figures, I don't see the distinction you're making.
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
>forgetting about the people building your stuff, growing your food, extracting your oil (and killing the planet in the process), moving your stuff around, nursing people, building your house, installing your AC, shipping your amazon packages, What do you mean "forgetting"? I pay those people for their services out of the money I earn. They're not doing all those things out of the goodness of their hearts, they worki…
> Their pay, just like my pay, is set by the market. If you don't think that's fair, your issue is with capitalism. I'm actually open to the idea of moving away from capitalism, but very few people, especially in the US, are, and I have no expectation that will change in my lifetime. No, the pay of people that you pay is set by you, not by capitalism. If you think some people that provide you services deserve more pa…
That is a good point, however, I generally don't know what percent of what I'm paying is going to the employee who's providing the service to me, so I usually can't make that determination.
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
>forgetting about the people building your stuff, growing your food, extracting your oil (and killing the planet in the process), moving your stuff around, nursing people, building your house, installing your AC, shipping your amazon packages, What do you mean "forgetting"? I pay those people for their services out of the money I earn. They're not doing all those things out of the goodness of their hearts, they worki…
By forgetting I meant forgetting their contribution to society (and the value they create). There is a lot to say about pay to show that wages are not a real market as well :-)
A distorted market is still a market. Considering there has never in history been a market completely free of distortion due to authority figures, I don't see the distinction you're making.
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The actual output of society is produced by a relatively small minority of skilled individuals that are not easily replicable C'mon man, that's not even remotely true. Even taking the outlier; google, $360,000 revenue generated per employee. Big deal; I'm pretty sure a decent accounting firm creates more value per employee.
I didn't read it as Google employees are productive while $othercorp employees are not. Even within google, things like Price's Law apply. Essentially half of all productivity is accomplished by the square root of the workers. So if Google has 10k developers. 100 of those developers are producing half of the value. The other 9,900 work together to produce the other half. https://www.am1st.com/another-reason-companies…
I used the example of Google because it is a particularly productive company on a per-employee basis for a large company in a way that can be measured. Not that I think Google is awesome: I think they should be broken up, and its employees should consider their life choices that they continue to work for the Great Satan. FWIIW they have more like 100,000 employees.
The older I get, the less I believe in crap like Price's law. It sure seems like this in large and old organizations, but I can never point to the actually productive people. Some people appear to do nothing in a large group, but the group then falls apart when they leave/retire. In smaller groups, it definitely, trivially doesn't work like this.
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#177The problem is fairly simple. The actual output of society is produced by a relatively small minority of skilled individuals that are not easily replicable (ie fungibility is largely a myth). We need those people to work a full week operating the machines that actually make all the output we all consume. But why should they do that if nobody else is working? They could just make enough for the small set of people tha…
> The actual output of society is produced by a relatively small minority of skilled individuals that are not easily replicable (ie fungibility is largely a myth) That's a very arrogant and elitist attitude. I wish Galt's Gulch actually existed and we could exile elitists there. Let's see how they do without all the lower castes in society who pick their fruit, clean their toilets, cook and serve their food, take car…
> pick their fruit, clean their toilets, cook and serve their food, take care of their children, pick up their garbage
Already doing most of this, so... if I start picking my fruit (and vegetables) and learn to drive a garbage truck, what do I get in return?
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#178“The individual, in our society, works for profit; but the social purpose of his work lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this divorce between the individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to think clearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentive to industry. We think too much of production, and too little of consumption. One result is that we attach t…
I disagree. I think it largely depends on the work you do. If you are doing something you dont enjoy.or don't find meaningful, the work is just a means to an end. But for many people a job is something they derrive meaning from, many craftspeople have notions of pride in their work. I think probably the best example is people who work with the mentally handocapped, studies reveal they tend to be the happiest and most…
I don't need a job to give my life meaning. Thanks, but I already have friends, family, hobbies, etc. It's the need to have a job to pay my bills, that reduces the time I can actually spend with my friends, family, hobbies, etc.
So, the current system gives meaning to some, and takes meaning from some. I'd have to see some math first, in order to believe it is actually a net benefit on average.
> many craftspeople have notions of pride in their work
Yeah, the job keeps me advancing at my craft; I think alone I would be doing similar things anyway, but probably more slowly. At the same time, the job often forces me to cut corners; alone I would prefer to do things properly, rather than hurry up towards a bullshit deadline only to fix things later when they start falling apart. Again, the pride is both given and taken.
> I think people actually want to feel like they are contributing to society, like they are useful.
But that's quite different from having a job. With more free time, I could contribute to society in ways that are not predictably profitable (which is why I am not doing as a source of income now), but would probably have more meaning that what I am doing now.
> how do we make work more meaningful for people
If you make it voluntary, at least the smart people will have freedom to optimize it towards more meaning. Maybe stupid people will need more guidance. If so, let there be some provided, but again, make it a bit more voluntary than "obey or starve".
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> while forgetting about the people ... You might be reading the comment slightly sideways. My read was that the people you list are from small businesses creating value, and most of the tech workers are creating very little value with a few peakers who do amazing things. > Without the drivers, Uber does not exist. Personal bugbear, there is as yet no evidence that Uber is creating more value than it destroys. It has…
> That might be the core disagreement here. There are a lot of people doing activities that are useful. I struggle to think of them as value creators because what they are actually doing is whatever someone tells them - there is a lack of agency in deciding what they do, so I have difficulty attributing outcomes to them. They are fungible, but the people telling them what to do are not. If you tell them to do somethi…
I clean trains (includes lots of toilets) the hilarious story to share is that long long ago one would just show up at the trainstation and be hired to clean by annother cleaner. Paid in cash every friday. Over time a truly insane number of madly overpaid deskjokeys was tagged onto the process to do countless completely nonsensical tasks. From a really well paid job and really good cleaning, in 70 years, things moved to really shit pay and half the employees. The work didnt change at all but everything is measured to the detail. Apparently the combination of shit pay and more work than one can do makes employees unreliable enough to justify tons of desk work. The hr and countless job agencies are completely overworked. The measurment of bad results triggers countless meetings. The ppl making work schedules are tasked with a completely and utterly impossible mission. But it gets truly hilarious where the cleaners bring new employees into the 3rd party job agencies, when we dont like it change the work schedule and carefully compare salaries with hours worked. So nothing has really changed at all. The only new thing is that for every 1000 euro in actual cleaning there is now 2500 euro in administrative tasks.
Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you take as given that people doing unskilled labor are to a one doing it because they are incapable of anything else.
Nobody is arguing that unskilled laborers are incapable . We are saying that they are by definition unskilled . These skills are slow to teach and learn. Having lots of people willing to perform skilled jobs is not enough - they need the skills. The same is not true about unskilled work. Hence the comment about armies of people being able to perform unskilled labor.
I just like physical labor. I could be in some open floor plan trying to write code in some langulag designed by an unsophisticated person over the weekend while interupted by slack nonsense and by a manager who cant tie his own shoes. One coworker is an accountant and annother is an industrial designer. Im incredibly fit and my brain is reserved for private use only.