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Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

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Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#181

Post by gnarlee »

Bakary wrote: post #172
Frondo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Haha, you've nicely described how things work but didnt provide any sane justification for it. But ok, ill play along. How much extra are we talking about? I've just cleaned trains for about 50 000 travelers with 4 people. In my previous job we bake half a million boxes of cookies with 8 people. Farmers however, they feed truly insane numbers. If we charge you 1 cent extra for things you wouldnt complaint about it. Lets see, that would be 50000 cent extra, 500 euro split 4 was. Shit, that would double my salary!

But dont worry about it. I get that you are just that cheap. (Joking)

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#182

Post by someguydave »

Bakary wrote: post #172
Frondo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm impressed you are willing to address a serious point deeply embedded in my downvoted comment.

You are correct - the market will match labor supply with demand. Note that this also cuts both ways - sometimes the market at the "top end" of labor is also constrained. Just because someone is highly skilled does not guarantee a high salary.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#183

Post by Bakary »

gnarlee wrote: post #181
Bakary wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Haha, you've nicely described how things work but didnt provide any sane justification for it. But ok, ill play along. How much extra are we talking about? I've just cleaned trains for about 50 000 travelers with 4 people. In my previous job we bake half a million boxes of cookies with 8 people. Farmers however, they feed truly insane numbers. If we charge you 1 cent extra for things you wouldnt complaint about it. L…

I'd say saving money is one of the sanest justifications in the insane world we live in.

We are talking about aggregates here. I would have to pay not just you, but tens of thousands of other people that extra cent. Farmers, cleaners, attendants, cashiers, literally any of those professions that play a part in modern life. I guess I could pay only you, but it would hardly be a sane justification, would it?

Again, the problem is that your profession is valuable in aggregate but each individual has very little negotiating power. Unfortunately, if you want to double your salary, you'll have to enter a profession whose members each have a better bargaining position.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#184

Post by hokus »

Bakary wrote: post #183
gnarlee wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, you've nicely described how things work but didnt provide any sane justification for it. But ok, ill play along. How much extra are we talking about? I've just cleaned trains for about 50 000 travelers with 4 people. In my previous job we bake half a million boxes of cookies with 8 people. Farmers however, they feed truly insane numbers. If we charge you 1 cent extra for things you wouldnt complaint about it. L…

I'd say saving money is one of the sanest justifications in the insane world we live in. We are talking about aggregates here. I would have to pay not just you, but tens of thousands of other people that extra cent. Farmers, cleaners, attendants, cashiers, literally any of those professions that play a part in modern life. I guess I could pay only you, but it would hardly be a sane justification, would it? Again, the…

Its not about me but about the system as a whole of course. Likewise, it isn't about you. You are not the one paying for everything, we all do. If we optimize for lack of purchase power there will only be economy of scale for necessities.

It just struck me that we might be that we are missing the most important part of the topic.

You are not just saving whole cents left and right but in the process you will also be required to emotionally detach yourself. On the large scale the choice is really between engineering empathy vs psychopathy. If we minimize cost and maximize what people have to pay we cant be all to concerned with peoples well being.

I've had lots of other jobs, I can easily earn twice what I get now. I just one day had the rather silly realization that doing a lot of cycling to improve my shape is a lot of work. Its not work like a job, you have to push yourself until you cant do any more if you want to make progress. It seemed odd to do work without getting paid. It clearly is possible to be both productive and physically active.

You can imagine what it looks like, without a money driven thought process I do 2 times the work one could expect from an employee. You would think it is enough but that is not how the system works. There are other employees who are suppose to get more work out of me, they have no idea about the work, are really unfit and earn a lot more. My effort doesn't make cleaning cheaper or result in better cleaning. They just scale down the number of workers, get larger bonuses and the owners of the company make more money. With 2/3 already going towards the bureaucracy the 1 cent extra is really a joke.

For the people in those jobs to feel productive they have to emotionally detach themselves. I have to buy cheap products made by wage slaves who are probably much worse of, they might not be able to sustain themselves. I'm similarly forced to not overthink it.

Its not impossible for the animals I eat to see some daylight. Its not that if we abolish child labor or slavery the economy collapses. People are just making a lot of money telling that story or they need to tell themselves that in order to cope with the system.

If you can spend 1 euro extra and double a hundred peoples salary the money is the least of your concern.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#185

Post by cryptica »

ellius wrote: post #66
cryptica wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Stuff that is genuinely helpful and valueable and unique should, given time, take on its own, without influencers. This is completely false. It depends entirely on your social network. My main OSS project has over 5K stars on GitHub; it's used by thousands of companies and has been growing steadily but I'm certain that if it hadn't been on the front page of HN 5 years ago, nobody would be using it today. These day…

In other words, marketing is very important. I think as technical people we like to "evaluate things on merit," but the reality is that the technological complexity of our society has become such that it is virtually impossible for someone to gauge the quality of a product in a field where we're not an expert. That's part of why marketing takes on such importance.

Yes it is. It's just extremely frustrating that even though people are aware of how powerful marketing is, that no one seems to acknowledge its effects on themselves and on society. Marketing doesn't create value, it redistributes existing value by creating an illusion of added value. The reality is that it takes value from a large number of small players and gives it to a few large players; and this has nothing to do with the true underlying value of the products.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#186

Post by qntty »

vivekd wrote: post #121
handedness wrote: post #118

“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…

There's a lot of work that could potentially be meaningful but isn't because it's done under bad conditions. A craftsperson who isn't able to put enough time into the thing they make because of the demands of their manager, for example. Or a person who works on an assembly line who doesn't feel like they "make" anything at all because they are responsible for only a small part of the final product and never get to see the whole thing come together. Part of the battle has to be a recognition that workers ought to have far more rights than they are currently thought to have. They ought to have the right to feel satisfaction in their work as much as possible.
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