Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#41

Post by hwstar » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

geebee wrote: post #35

hwstar wrote: post #24

Silicon valley doesn't produce much hardware like it did in the past. Instead it creates businesses with questionable customer value such as social networking, personal assistant services, short term house rental services, and other software-as-a-service businesses. There will be an implosion of these SAAS businesses at some point. After the dust clears, it will be interesting to see if Silicon Valley still is able t…

I do partly agree with you, but there are still some fundamental things going on in Silicon Valley. On-line education, I think, has the potential to be very transformative. Self-driving electric cars could also have a very positive effect on the world as well (including solving the "last mile" problem with train travel). There's also a lot going on of course with bioengineering, and while I wouldn't necessarily equat…

I was referring to a time when Silicon Valley was all semiconductors, electronics, and computer hardware. There are probably 10 SAAS business for every one producing something tangible. This is the problem.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#42

Post by pbreit » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

Considering the point of Silicon Valley is to eliminate jobs, that doesn't seem entirely surprising.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#43

Post by daodedickinson » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

laotzu wrote: post #30

bko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often forget that jobs are an expense, not a benefit. We should celebrate that society can do more with less. If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential.

>If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential One of the 3 main goals of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is to achieve maximum employment. This is why politicians harangue on "putting country x back to work". The idea that "the devil finds work for idle hands to do" is deeply ingrained in…

As far as can tell, the redeeming social value of Netflix, if there is one, is keeping of the peace. I would say that making work to prevent antisocial behavior is deeply ingrained in civilization itself, and is perhaps at its core; The Prince calls for make-work projects to mandate full employment to keep the peace and it must have been a primary effect, intended or otherwise of pyramid building and other group rituals. The Nietzschean/Emersonian counterdream of everyone retiring to their own homes as gods leaves no peacekeeping force or incentive. The spiderweb on US paper bills symbolizes the intent of economic interdependence as a positive incentive for peace. Without economic interdependence, one could promote peace by propoganda, genetic engineering, medication, and many other ways, but as the population unNEEDed by others increases, I find it hard to see how that population's safety could increase indefinitely. The manufacturing of needs, of "increasingly sophisticated consumer tastes" in the Fukuyama-esque formulation, is probably reaching a breaking point (or at least I personally have stopped wanting any new consumer products) but don't fail to see the wisdom in an idea just because the devil metaphor can be taken in a manner so literal it offends your sensibilities.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#44

Post by mangeletti » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

augustocallejas wrote: post #3

Here's a though experiment I came up with several years ago: Say one day you created a copy of the Earth and with that copy, it had the same population as the current Earth, and they were connected so you can travel between them easily. I can see that these two worlds would need twice as many barbers as the current world. Would these two new worlds need twice as many Google/Facebook/etc. employees?

Epic comment!

I mean, I'm not suggesting that we should stop innovating and continue employing people for jobs that can be automated, but at some point we do have to realize that we will replace humans with machines.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#45

Post by daodedickinson » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #20

bko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often forget that jobs are an expense, not a benefit. We should celebrate that society can do more with less. If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential.

Except for the fact that a job is a prerequisite to affording a comfortable lifestyle. Until something like basic income is implemented (which simply isn't politically practical in the US currently) I don't blame anyone for trying to artificially create jobs to keep people busy and allow them to earn some money.

It's a prerequisite to social distinction that can't be equalized, not to a standard of living far above average for the species by many measures.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#46

Post by programminggeek » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

Software does two things generally - automates things, and improves information transportation (communication).

Neither of those create new jobs. If anything, they both seek to remove jobs and displace existing middlemen.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#47

Post by staticint » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 10:09 PM UTC

homogeneous wrote: post #13

> in 2010, only 0.5% of the US labour force is employed in industries that did not exist in 2000 Well that doesn't seem too surprising, I can't really think of many industries that exist today that didn't in 2000.

For comparison, software developers make up about 0.7% of the labour force (2012)[1]. It is always surprising to me how small the industry actually is.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#48

Post by bko » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 10:09 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #23

bko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often forget that jobs are an expense, not a benefit. We should celebrate that society can do more with less. If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential.

Our current economic system holds that people don't deserve food, shelter, medical care, or dignity if they don't have a job. If you believe that we should stick with the current system then the proposition "everyone should have a job" follows from "everyone should have food, shelter, medical care, and dignity".

Well that's a disagreement between positive and negative rights:

> A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group; negative rights permit or oblige inaction. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action or another person or group; positive rights permit or oblige action.

You may believe in positive rights, like I have a right to food, shelter, etc. Others may believe in only negative rights, like I have the right to not provide you food, shelter etc. It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#49

Post by javajosh » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 10:11 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #40

whistlecrackers wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The curse of machinery! http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap07p1.html

What happens when we start replacing men with electronic minds? There is a particular class of problems of a 'machine economy' where machines produce products for machines, the machines can use the economic product more efficiently (at making the capital owners more profit), and humans are cut out of the loop. The last chapter of the essay points out the issue, not that machines take jobs, that machines can and will…

I think that we underestimate our value as physically dextrous beings. Imagine a world where robots do large-scale work in difficult environments, in return for human-produced bodies - which themselves lack the dexterity to reproduce themselves. (And it's not an artificial lack, either: I strongly suspect that general fine-motor control will be THE engineering problem for AIs for a very long time, perhaps forever.)

Re: Silicon Valley Is Not Driving Jobs Growth

#50

Post by rwmj » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 10:17 PM UTC

rattray wrote: post #31

This article doesn't actually seem to provide any evidence to support its claim - the actual factoid at the heart of the article is that Total Factor Productivity (TFP) has fallen since the 90's, which is irrelevant. The only pieces of evidence supporting the "No Jobs Growth" claim are Facebook's employee count from _2013_ (which has since grown by almost 50% to 12000 [0]), and the claim that "in 2010, only 0.5% of t…

What do 12000 people do at Facebook?

Edit:

(Apart from sitting around and downvoting me).

Does it really take 12000 people to run a site where people write about what they're doing, and upload some photos and videos? Instagram had 13 employees when they were acquired by Facebook.