I highly agree that the conventional 'job' is becoming obsolete. Technology is enabling us to live in a bottom-up world where we can add value individually. We don't have to to work for a company to add value. Imagine all the commerce that could be happening in a 5 mile radius from where you live - all the needs you could address to add value. And when you add value, you are rewarded financially. There is no recession.
Are jobs obsolete?
321–330 of 331 posts
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kijiji, AirBnB, Cars.com, etc. etc. See http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/345941486/the-spawn-of-cr... I think you didn't grasp the phrase "second order effects."
There should really be a Godwin-like rule when it comes to accusing someone of not knowing how to read. How many people does AirBnB employ, again? I've never even heard of Kijiji. Add up all those companies and you're around the level of a single 100k city newspaper. Maybe 2-3 of them. Did you know that newspapers actually employ a lot of people who's whole job is to get stuff printed out on paper and delivered to ev…
This can be taken to an extreme.
How many corporations make/made printing presses? How many corps make/made network devices, monitors, keyboards, mice, smartphones.
You can go third to fourth order all day long and you'll end up with the same statement:
The only thing that is constant is change. People have to be willing to change and willing to learn or they will be left behind.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rushkoff writes: "What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff." To wit, the discovered it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. With the lofty assumption the idle will, lacking want, pursue productive meaningful occupation, he fails to observe…
>he fails to observe London-like riots are the more likely outcome You're suggesting that the London riots, where income distribution and control of wealth and political process is nearly as skewed as in the US, with all the attendant social ills, where civil rights are an even bigger joke than in America, is the result of social democracy run amok? Do you know what social democracy is? I don't disagree that many peo…
"I don't disagree that many people will not pursue productive work if they're free from want. In fact I suspect most won't. But I fail to see why that makes a difference."
The problem is that most of the idle people will have an unsustainable amount of children.
I've sometimes thought that only people demonstrably able to support their children should be helped to do so.
I'm not extremist enough to suggest outright prohibition, China-style, but some kind of discouragement and maybe social stigma, plus education (would it be "indoctrination"?).
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
>he fails to observe London-like riots are the more likely outcome You're suggesting that the London riots, where income distribution and control of wealth and political process is nearly as skewed as in the US, with all the attendant social ills, where civil rights are an even bigger joke than in America, is the result of social democracy run amok? Do you know what social democracy is? I don't disagree that many peo…
"I don't disagree that many people will not pursue productive work if they're free from want. In fact I suspect most won't. But I fail to see why that makes a difference." The problem is that most of the idle people will have an unsustainable amount of children. I've sometimes thought that only people demonstrably able to support their children should be helped to do so. I'm not extremist enough to suggest outright p…
"The problem is that most of the idle people will have an unsustainable amount of children."
Madness.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I don't disagree that many people will not pursue productive work if they're free from want. In fact I suspect most won't. But I fail to see why that makes a difference." The problem is that most of the idle people will have an unsustainable amount of children. I've sometimes thought that only people demonstrably able to support their children should be helped to do so. I'm not extremist enough to suggest outright p…
"The problem is that most of the idle people will have an unsustainable amount of children." Madness.
Could you elaborate? We have a welfare system in Uruguay, and it is an observable fact that people on welfare have more children than people not on welfare.
Whether that is caused by welfare, idleness or other factors should be subject to studies, but that's what I'm talking about.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
We spend more per student than we ever have in history. Why wasn't the country in chaos when there weren't public schools at all? Teaching the kids that they are owed something merely because they have less than someone else? Seems to justify theft to me.
Totally agree. My kids have gone to the public high school and a large fraction (more than 20%) of the students there could be getting an education but they choose not to . I don't know why this is, but I know of no counter argument that supports why an individual, who gets to school, has the books and supplies provided for them, and teachers willing to help them with any issues they are having, choose not to learn.…
What would be the advantages and disadvantages of making school available to those who want it, and denying both school and welfare eligibility to those who don't?
(A GED could still "reverse" bad decisions from teenage years.)
People don't want to give up on these students, but it doesn't seem we have much to lose.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
A major nitpick as a middle American a disproportionate percentage of MY salary is used to support the poor relative to rich people. The vast majority of wealth redistribution in this country is though SS which the wealthy get to opt out from. When you consider that I pay more in SS as a percentage of my income than Warren Buffet's entire tax bill there is something wrong with this picture. (In theory I might see som…
I'm surprised noone commented on the "as a percentage of my income" bait. So I'll bite :) It is in no way obvious or written in stone that what matters are "percent of income". For many centuries, per capita tax was the norm. Indeed, you could argue that what matters is the actual, absolute amount taken from an individual, by threat of force, and not some abstract proxy metric. There, arguably, Buffet delivers more t…
For several thousand years people where taxed by land owned which was effectively an income tax. It was hard to guess how much income someone had because they could always hide some of the harvest but if you farmed 10 acres or 10,000 you still paid at the same rate.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hello, I'm a freelancer. I'll do the job you want for 150% of my former salary, yet at a lower price that my boss sold it to you ! I wonder why everyone is not doing that... I cut the middle men, so that means I get to go to dinner with clients, I get to negotiate prices, I got to be friend with the CEO of the startup that employs me. I always suspected that the salary of a commercial was a high price for a very comf…
Your work now consists of your former job and being a salesman. That explains why everyone's not doing it.
It's also because most people just want the comfort and stability of a job.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are using value in a nonstandard way. Value and price are only loosely coupled. I get enormous value from things that are free (Python, Firefox, etc). Also, I pay for things I could have gotten for free all the time. Sometimes this is to reward or encourage the person providing it and then it is called a tip or gratuitity (or sometimes donation, though that evokes charity in my mind rather than voluntary payment…
I believe I was using the definition of value gleaned from the post above which pretty strongly linked value with getting paid for your work. Call it what you will, my point is that the economy is focused on producing something that people will pay money for. But current models are based on scarcity, which may be becoming obsolete. You're right that something can be free and abundant and still be of enormous value. I…
"I believe I was using the definition of value gleaned from the post above which pretty strongly linked value with getting paid for your work. Call it what you will, my point is that the economy is focused on producing something that people will pay money for. But current models are based on scarcity, which may be becoming obsolete."
Scarcity is still there. You can copy adobe photoshop, but you wouldn't be able to build it from scratch in your basement. This is the scarcity: the intelligence, creativity, and man-hours it takes to build it.
You can copy it easily for free now, but the industry will eventually change. Internet is getting faster and faster and eventually (because of the people that feel they deserve software for free), we will only have software services.
I am a developer and I don't create software applications anymore..only services. It's funny because if this wasn't the case, people could buy my apps for a flat-fee. Now they need to pay me money every month to use it.
Re: Are jobs obsolete?
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately you have to support not only people who are just going through some tough times, but those who just want to leech off society. Plus those people who go out and have kids, then waste the money they are given to feed them on crap so their child is either starving or lives off a terrible diet. It's really not an easy problem to solve. Ideally everyone should be guaranteed that they get enough food and a pl…
I think this is an irrational fear. I don't think that leeching lies in human nature. People naturally want to take part in society as long as they are healthy. Just think about what you would do if you wouldn't have to work. Would you stay in bed all day? I would most certainly write programs to help other people, just as I do now.
Have you ever run any kind of business where you are giving away something for free? People will eventually take more and more until you go out of business.
"I don't think that leeching lies in human nature"
I think many thousands of years of human history proves this statement false. Leeching is one of the core components of human nature. Businesses (or governments) that take this into account will be successful. The ones that don't will fail miserably.