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?

#61

Post by ahoy » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #14

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is misallocation of labor. There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work. It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements. They're not done because the metrics of Wall St…

> Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy. And yet, this turns out to be the most succesful strategy civilization has used so far.

And until modern medicine came about, leeches were the most successful medical strategy.

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

#62

Post by Gravityloss » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

Are there lots of jobs that produce value above minimum wage? It's a tough question...

There are ways to solve some issues in a low barrier for entry style. Finland has mandatory return payment on all bottles and cans sold. This has resulted in a cottage industry of bottle collectors who target public outdoor events and places where people hang out.

So those people perform a valuable service and nobody needs to really coordinate anything.

But it would be a very bad way to depend on for livelihood. Somehow these worlds need to meet...

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

#63

Post by bduerst » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #4

Is the "infinite work hypothesis" finally ending?? The answer to "what happens to workers being replaced" has always been "they'll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs", what I've seen called the "infinite work hypothesis" where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.

Well centuries of automation and employment have supported that claim, maybe not to the the full hyperbole by which you repeat it.

In fact, the inverse is considered a fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

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

#64

Post by dkarapetyan » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

wrong_variable wrote: post #9

People forget History. The two times where labor was more valuable than capital. 1 | After the black death in Europe 2 | After the second world war Most of history's default was the gilded age, the roman empire survived for 600[1] years with having worse inequality than in the modern times. Usually the only way to reverse the trend is by a large scale elimination of significant portion of young people. [1] EDIT : cor…

Or, you know, we can admit there is enough food and shelter to go around for everyone and stop pretending everyone needs to work.

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

#65

Post by topspin » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

doorty wrote: post #24

Side note: If college education was "free," it might encourage faster re-skilling and more "profitable" to society.

The operative word there is "might." Greece has free education. Their educated youth are fleeing as fast as they can. Not very profitable. All that free education also somehow failed to prevent their chronic debt crisis and general decline. It's almost as if economic prosperity is more involved than just distributing free stuff........

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

#66

Post by fredgrott » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #17

criley2 wrote: post #4

Is the "infinite work hypothesis" finally ending?? The answer to "what happens to workers being replaced" has always been "they'll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs", what I've seen called the "infinite work hypothesis" where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.

>> every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs That is false on its face. If you buy a robot to replace a welder, you indirectly employ the people who design, build, and maintain that robot. True, and those are higher paid jobs than the welder. But at the end of the day, the person running the factory where said robot is used did an analysis and concluded that it was cheaper to buy the robot than to…

I disagree, if the displaced labor uses platforms on top of internet to build a business than its somewhat a true statement..

BUT, that is where we are at now with our FUNDS miss-allocated to some other task rather than the encouragement of small business growth

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

#67

Post by lumberjack » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #43

emodendroket wrote: post #15

Then the government should either directly employ people or else provide them with an income, or some combination of these.

The government employs 2.7 million civilians and well over a million people in the military. That's over 2% of the entire labor force.

That's nothing. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_se...

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

#68

Post by astazangasta » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

welanes wrote: post #19

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is misallocation of labor. There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work. It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements. They're not done because the metrics of Wall St…

> There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work. But not the money to pay for these jobs. > It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed. But who pays for this training? > Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners c…

>But not the money to pay for these jobs.

This is wrong, in my estimation. Money exists right now that is lying idle, and moreover the more money is used, the more becomes available.

The past decade saw an enormous effort to dump money into the economy, to no avail. Nor is this new, there is even a name for this sort of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap

The problem is not the lack of money, the problem is that vast majority of capital is controlled by a small group of people with limited vision and pecuniary interests.

These people will never allocate capital towards the enormous list of demands that go unfilled every day; nor should we expect them to. No one will build a road in your shitty small town just for your good health.

The more we structure our economy to produce this situation (concentration of wealth), the less we will find that unexpressed demands are being met by that economy.

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

#69

Post by paavokoya » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #27

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy. And yet, this turns out to be the most succesful strategy civilization has used so far.

Well, technically allocating them based on whether stock owners can profit in the long term is the most successful strategy civilization has used so far. It's just that to survive to the long term you have to get through the short and medium term, where a lot of froth and misallocation happens. (This is not unique to this point in history, BTW - during the Rennaissance-era Age of Exploration and Second Industrial Rev…

>you have governments who are determined to avoid a panic at all costs, but the process of panics & financial crises is what sweeps short-term-oriented people out of the market

Exactly, which turns these "short term bubbles and money-grabbing schemes" into long term institutionalized parasitic organizations which slowly erode the foundation for small business. A healthy forest sees many small forest fires to clean out the dead brush. Without these small fires, a major fire event can wipe out a forest.

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

#70

Post by douche » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #58

welanes wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anybody pays them "to remain unemployed". But in most countries they receive social welfare while out of work. You could have them go break large rocks into smaller rocks if you have an ideological bent against people being unemployed but unless those rocks can be sold to somebody for more than what unemployment benefit is there's no incentive. Edit: Agree with the comments below. Rather than being idle…

But not the money to pay for these jobs....But in most countries they receive social welfare while out of work. See the contradiction here? We could put these people to work engaging in labor that is valuable, but not as valuable as the cost of their welfare. I.e. pay them $7.25/hour to do $5/hour worth of labor (net cost to society = $2.25/hour). Yet we don't. Instead we pay them to play video games (net cost to soc…

Bring back the CCC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps