What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around? • Hacker News Board

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#291

Post by maxerickson » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #225

Gatsky wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel for you - this kind of thing just shouldn't happen. I think that medicine is a bad example of the point you are trying to make though... It has a lot of embedded costs and roadblocks that aren't really related to regulation. For example - the procedure you describe is highly specialised, and can only be learnt in certain places. Say there are 4 people that can do this procedure at a hospital. Attracting a doct…

One of the roadblocks I forgot to mention is the federal government, which effectively sets limits on the number of new residents that are trained each year: https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71178/gme_gme0012.html (Not enough people know this, because there would be real outrage if they did.)

Those are funding caps, which aren't quite the same as limits.

I'm not aware that there is anything stopping private hospitals funding residency slots. Hospital systems with hundreds of millions of dollars of profit could easily afford to fund a few residencies.

Medicare is probably a pretty smart and fair place to pull the funding from (it's a broad based tax and key patient focused component of the US healthcare system), but it certainly isn't the only entity with money.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#292

Post by mathattack » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

st3v3r wrote: post #289

mathattack wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some laws are good for individuals, bad for the specific company and bad for the ecosystem. (example: Ease of suing companies) Some laws are good for individuals, bad for the specific company, and good for the ecosystem. (example: No non-competes) Some laws are more ambiguous. (example: Minimum Wage) Laws in bucket 2 are what help California. Laws in bucket 1 hurt. Laws in bucket 3 are harder to determine.

I'm not convinced that bucket 1 is bad for the ecosystem.

At an extreme it is. (The buckets aren't so black and white)

Look at France. The costs of firing employees is so high, that companies on the margin choose to hire elsewhere. They only hire after extensively validating the employee. It's much harder to convince an employer to "give me a shot" because they can't back out of the decision easily. It helps the employees already hired, but hurts the ecosystems.

Other laws which force good behavior on everyone at a relatively low cost can help the ecosystem. (Voiding non-competes is one, getting rid of child labor is another)

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#293

Post by zghst » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #60

In the mid-west we have programmers 2 years out of school making $100k in places where the CPI is 90. What if we just have a massive misallocation of resources and people should be learning how to program, nurse, become doctors, plumbers, HVAC, or all the other jobs that pay incredibly well?

Software engineers provide immense value, I highly doubt there is any misallocation, however with other jobs, what if their wages are suppressed because of the lack of a strong market presence and intense competition prevents wages from rising.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#294

Post by zghst » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #5

I feel like the "infinite jobs" idea is too foundational to American culture to be completely removed. The very definition of "prosperity" includes having a job. The definition of "success" includes having a job.

Prosperity isn't only a job. A good, well paying job.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#295

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #278

yummyfajitas wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely, generous welfare isn't preventing Islamic terrorists from blowing up Europe on a regular basis. But lets take your claim as given, namely that some classes of people are so dangerous if we don't pay them they'll harm us. If I thought you were right, then I'd probably turn to the Brexiters and Trumpkins for a solution. Are you really claiming that the poor are basically just gangsters and terrorists?

Hungry and/or angry people commit more crimes. That's just axiomatic. Desperation will cause those who had formerly been following all the rules to try something different in order to improve their situation. So social welfare as a bribe mainly helps that marginal fraction that would only shoplift if they absolutely couldn't pay. And there are a lot of people like that. It won't do anything about those who would shop…

It may be "axiomatic", but is it true? Personally I'd feel far safer walking through dharavi (in fact I go here semi regularly) or bhaiganwadi than Baltimore or Tijuana. Yet the latter two are vastly richer. I also passed through a slummy area in Kuala Lumpur, never felt unsafe.

Are my perceptions wrong? Do you have any evidence to support your claim?

Also, why can't vigorous policing - rather than paying tribute to violent criminals - also solve the problem?

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#296

Post by zghst » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

emblem21 wrote: post #183

At Emblem 21, we analyze not just the time, material, and energy costs for economic activity, but also the complexity components as well. Every economic activity consumes and yields complexity. This complexity is difficult to measure given its contextual nature, but it is encoded into the pricing of the transaction itself. Currently working on very advanced neural networks to detect the edges of this contextual compl…

Your site is down. I find it a bit worrisome, looking through your repos that many files are blank. I would like to learn more about your company.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#297

Post by squeaky-clean » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 6:33 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #178

squeaky-clean wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are sports economics zero-sum? Both teams get paid for playing. If one team loses, they don't give money to the other team.

Most sports are zero-sum in the sense that over a given set of matches, the number of wins has to equal the number of losses. Obviously not every sport is that way. A major marathon might have one male and one female winner among 30,000 entrants.

Sure, winning and losing is zero-sum, but the payout isn't. Lebron is still going to get that $27 million / year from his contract, regardless of whether or not the cavs win anything. (or whatever team he's decided to switch to most recently, haha. I barely follow these things)

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#298

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 8:14 PM UTC

sedachv wrote: post #133

emodendroket wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the US went communist in the 1930s, government employment, even for the express purpose of creating jobs, wouldn't constitute communism. Besides that, if there is really not enough demand for workers, and there is never going to be, the alternative would seem to be a permanently unemployed underclass.

> Unless the US went communist in the 1930s, government employment, even for the express purpose of creating jobs, wouldn't constitute communism. I came across this interview recently: HG Wells: > My visit to the United States excited my mind. The old financial world is collapsing; the economic life of the country is being reorganised on new lines. > Lenin said: “We must learn to do business,” learn this from the cap…

Well, clearly that is not what happened.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#299

Post by internaut » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

syngrog66 wrote: post #236

internaut wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can visualize a future in which disposable robots are very small and remotely controlled, capable of liquefying specific organic substances or dispensing drug doses.

I had two reactions to your comment. One, in which I assume you meant it in a way that was optimistic and benign. Two, in which it described a Matrix-like dystopia.

I meant the first but the second interpretation is somehow more compelling.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#300

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #290

dredmorbius wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm largely disagreeing with you here. There is, I think, ultimately a problem with having to unlearn old skills which is difficult. If nothing else, you end up with a workforce in a particular area, say, if retrained, who bring in very widely divergent backgrounds on how to do something. This might not be all bad if your goal is to mix and match methods and come up with something better . But that's rarely a firm's…

> There is, I think, ultimately a problem with having to unlearn old skills which is difficult. Picking up new skills at a level that puts you in competence with AI is just as difficult. As you age and your responsibilities increase and mind plasticity decreases, your capacity for learning decreases almost asymptotically. You simply cannot make 40-50-60 year olds learn new skills and expect any ROI on it. Most great…

Possibly, but really not where I'm going.

To take a fairly trivial example, in driving, when braking on a wet or slippery surface, in an age before antilock brakes, the recommendation was to pulse the brake pedal, to keep the wheels from locking up. With antilock brakes, the advice is to apply firm, steady pressure -- the ABS itself will apply the pulsing far more rapidly and accurately than any human could.

That's an example of skill-unlearning which you're demanding of the hundreds of millions of drivers who've had decades of experience with the former method.

I could toss out numerous other examples -- practices, tools, techniques, rules of thumb, etc., which, having already been learnt, are now counterproductive.

The young have the advantage of only needing to learn something. The old have the task of both unlearning and learning. Interestingly, that's a point that Alvin Toffler made in Future Shock, a book I've yet to read completely, but have skimmed in part.

Even with equal brain plasticity, the more experienced person is at a disadvantage.