The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#31

Post by tbrownaw » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:27 AM UTC

rewqfdsa wrote: post #3

Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.

Unused and less-used skills deteriorate over time. For skilled professions, how much time practicing is needed to counteract this?

Technology is changing very rapidly. As a software developer, I need to put in some amount of time keeping up with the changes. Someone specifically focused on web stuff would probably need to put in even more time keeping up. Lawyers will have to keep with new laws, and case law. I understand it's typical for licensed professions to require members to have ongoing education in order to keep their licenses. How much time keeping up is needed to stay current?

If you try to force a 20-hour work week, what do you do when people try to evade this by taking multiple jobs? What do you do about independent business owners who only employ themselves?

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#32

Post by jqm » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:28 AM UTC

uberdeveloper wrote: post #14

Mediocre people are getting pushed out. This is a good thing for the efficiency of the economy.

Where are they getting pushed out to? If you can't vaporize them (and you can't) what happens?

The failure of hubris isn't necessarily in obnoxiousness. It's in shortsightedness.

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#33

Post by pjmorris » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:30 AM UTC

jes wrote: post #26

rewqfdsa wrote: post #3

Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.

In the online dictionary I consulted, dignity is defined as "The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect." I think productive work is one means by which individuals can become more worthy of honor and respect. Thoughts?

Are you saying that work, not people, is what is worthy of honor and respect?

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#34

Post by e12e » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:31 AM UTC

justinmk wrote: post #8

rewqfdsa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm not sure what point you're making. If market forces can operate in a world with a 40 hour default work week, they can operate in a world with a 20 hour work week. At the macroeconomic level, we're talking about tweaking a coefficient. So what? By shortening the work week, we can give many more people an opportunity to engage in dignified work, give them more leisure time, and spur further investment in labor-…

That strikes me as a tangent, it raises many questions (What happens if I want to work more than 20 hours a week?). The idea of a "work week" is based on the salary model which is based on the idea that companies are magical job fairies that exist to provide jobs. What if I create a product and work on it more than 20 hours? What if I want to sell peanut butter at the local food market on the weekends?

This obsession with hours might be the root of the problem.

Most businesses have given up trying to measure produced value per worker (and certainly don't reward based on value produced). The 40 hour work week just means that it is expected that you work 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year (give or take, depending on vacation practice/laws) -- in order for the employer to pay you "full benefits". That typically includes ideas about a living wage (not in all parts of the world), and some form of social safety net, such as health care, insurance etc.

A 20 hour work week, would just mean that the expected time most need to put in, to get the basic salary/coverage would be cut in half.

I don't think a smooth, nor easy transition is possible -- you can look at like doubling hourly wages, or halving all prices, or through some other lens: but I think that we are getting accustomed to thinking of hourly pay, hourly wages/compensation etc is part of the problem.

The idea of a work week: that one can work "full time" for one employer doesn't really say that much about how much time one puts in -- it's more about what responsibility that employer have for the employee. And the "norm" of 40 hours is used as a guide to compensate extra for overtime, or to reduce compensation for people that can't or won't work "full time".

Maybe the best way forward, if one believes that some form of "fair" distribution is possible under capitalism, is to have all businesses be 100% employee owned. It's not entirely clear why anyone else should benefit directly from being able to pay less for work put in by workers, and pocket the difference. Especially considering that a lot of the capital invested might be borrowed money -- which under fractional reserve banking is just money made up out of thin air and given to those that need it the least.

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#35

Post by mahyarm » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:33 AM UTC

rewqfdsa wrote: post #3

Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.

That only works if the fixed costs of a worker (benefits) are negligible at best. If employers need to keep on paying for health care, then it's always cheaper to overwork a worker unless the overtime makes it more expensive. So you need govt. health care for one to get rid of a fixed cost of employees before it becomes feasible for companies.

Also a single worker can produce more work until exhaustion effects start kicking in than a single worker. That equilibrium is probably around 40hrs. Communication and management overhead alone adds more fixed cost to adding an employee.

But if you look at the charts of average work weeks, you'll notice that they are going down. In parts of europe, a full time worker is becoming something between 30-40 hrs.

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#36

Post by jjoonathan » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:33 AM UTC

jes wrote: post #26

rewqfdsa wrote: post #3

Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.

In the online dictionary I consulted, dignity is defined as "The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect." I think productive work is one means by which individuals can become more worthy of honor and respect. Thoughts?

Any successful scam is very productive in the economic sense. Does that make the scammer worthy of honor and respect? If Bill Gates gives away a billion meals to starving African children then he is 0% productive (no revenue!). Does that make Bill Gates unworthy of honor and respect?

Ken Levine (of BioShock fame) calls this the "circus of value." The disparity between economic terms and their moral/intuitive counterparts grows very large in certain important limits.

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#37

Post by greggman » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:42 AM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #35

rewqfdsa wrote: post #3

Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.

That only works if the fixed costs of a worker (benefits) are negligible at best. If employers need to keep on paying for health care, then it's always cheaper to overwork a worker unless the overtime makes it more expensive. So you need govt. health care for one to get rid of a fixed cost of employees before it becomes feasible for companies. Also a single worker can produce more work until exhaustion effects start…

How does gov health care change this? I pay $500 a year to health ins or $500 a year more in taxes. Either way I pay $500 a year. That's not an argument for or against gov health care I'm just asking for clarification why it matters for your point

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#38

Post by jes » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:44 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #36

jes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the online dictionary I consulted, dignity is defined as "The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect." I think productive work is one means by which individuals can become more worthy of honor and respect. Thoughts?

Any successful scam is very productive in the economic sense. Does that make the scammer worthy of honor and respect? If Bill Gates gives away a billion meals to starving African children then he is 0% productive (no revenue!). Does that make Bill Gates unworthy of honor and respect? Ken Levine (of BioShock fame) calls this the "circus of value." The disparity between economic terms and their moral/intuitive counterp…

I have a different view on scams. I don't think they are productive, even in an economic sense, if one takes the long view.

A person who tries to succeed in life by scamming other people enters a war with reality. He may fool some people, for a certain period of time, but he is forced to constantly be looking over his shoulder. One lie leads to the need for additional lies.

Some people think this is fine, or that it's a price they are willing to pay in order to get away with stealing a million dollars or whatever. It's not worth it to me, however.

As regards Bill Gates, what he does with his money is his business. If he wishes to give it way in that manner, I'm fine with it.

I'd suggest, however, that Bill Gates worked many long hours to earn his money. So if you claim that giving it away is 0% productive, I think you're dropping the context of how he came to have the money in the first place.

Thoughts?

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#39

Post by tbrownaw » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:48 AM UTC

e12e wrote: post #34

justinmk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That strikes me as a tangent, it raises many questions (What happens if I want to work more than 20 hours a week?). The idea of a "work week" is based on the salary model which is based on the idea that companies are magical job fairies that exist to provide jobs. What if I create a product and work on it more than 20 hours? What if I want to sell peanut butter at the local food market on the weekends?

This obsession with hours might be the root of the problem. Most businesses have given up trying to measure produced value per worker (and certainly don't reward based on value produced). The 40 hour work week just means that it is expected that you work 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year (give or take, depending on vacation practice/laws) -- in order for the employer to pay you "full benefits". That typically includes…

I'd think a better solution (that requiring full employee ownership) would be to remove as much of the per-employee cost as possible.

Make health insurance not tied to employment. (It could be universal coverage handled by the government, it could be what we're half trying where everyone buys their own. As long as it's not thru the employer, it doesn't matter for this.)

Make things like FMLA leave not depend on working enough hours.

Remove the caps that some payroll taxes have.

Some per-employee costs are unavoidable. If my team has 10 people instead of 5 people, and they're all available at different times, that's a cost. The work has to be divided differently, I have to remember more interpersonal crap, there will be communication delays, etc.

But as much as possible should either be handled by Someone Else or made dependent linearly on hours or pay, rather than being tied to employment as a boolean or to a threshold number of hours or amount of pay.

Re: The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

#40

Post by nightski » Sun, Apr 12, 2015, 1:50 AM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #17

rewqfdsa wrote: post #3

Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.

> Enact a 20-hour work week "Enact" implies the government restricting everyone to working 20 hours per week. That's a violation of our freedom to work as many hours as we want. I do support you in that all of people shouldn't have to work in order to meet the basic needs of life today (food, housing, and connectivity). Agricultural and industrial efficiency and automization has advanced to a point where we can provi…

I just can't get behind basic income. It makes sense from a very self-motivated individual's point of view (which many/most on HN are) but if you look at the majority of the country in my opinion most people are not driven this way.

I really feel like we would end up with a country where the majority just live on basic income and do nothing. At least now they must contribute to society on a basic level to earn an income, even if it is unsatisfactory (welfare and social programs aside).