Live data from Hacker News

Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

evonomics.com

61–70 of 186 posts

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#61

The problem is fairly simple. The actual output of society is produced by a relatively small minority of skilled individuals that are not easily replicable (ie fungibility is largely a myth). We need those people to work a full week operating the machines that actually make all the output we all consume. But why should they do that if nobody else is working? They could just make enough for the small set of people tha…

Unproductive people must do pointless work or the productive people will be unhappy. But conversely, the productive people are paid less than the value they create, to keep the unproductive people happy. Why didn't Norman Borlaug die the richest man alive? Most people have never even heard of him. It's human instinct that only people of great social status are allowed great wealth. Obviously the CEO has to be paid more than the engineers, because the CEO has mastered the (zero sum) social status game. They were lucky enough to be born tall, attractive, well connected, sociopathic, intelligent, etc., and exploited their natural advantages. According to common sense this makes them a better and more deserving person.

There's an obvious positive sum trade: the useless people get to slack off (e.g. living on UBI), and in exchange the useful are paid commensurate with the value the produce. The useful are happy because they're fabulously rich, and the useless are happy because they're not the ones working so hard. The only real losers are the social status masters, and social status is positional, so they'll always be a small minority.

Unfortunately that small minority controls the cultural narrative. They can reinforce the natural human tendency to zero-sum thinking, and they can hold out the false hope that the useless can become successful parasites too. Everybody is born equal, so if you're not rich it must be because you didn't work hard enough! It's easy to fall for it when your brain is hard-wired with the just-world fallacy.

This combination of cognitive biases and active manipulation means I don't expect to see any improvement before environmental collapse renders the whole thing moot. The 1% rule and everybody else is either overworked or underpaid. You'd have to think like an economist to even see the possibility of escape, and who wants to do that?

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#63

If market competition wasn't so aggressive, we could start to focus more on value creation. Right now the economy is all about capturing existing value, monopolizing markets to keep competitors out and using targeted advertising to divert people's attention away from real value. Journalism is in such bad shape that if an independent scientist invented a cure for cancer, most people probably wouldn't hear about it and…

> Capital has replaced our values. We need to bring back real values like honesty, integrity, humility, experience, pursuit of knowledge, empathy, efficiency...

But how?

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#64
post #6

I dunno, I like working. I don't think I would want to go on an extended period without working hard. In fact, retiring early increases mortality[1]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/627711

Surveys indicate you’re in the minority. Most people don’t enjoy their job, or want to work less. We’re long overdue to move past “maximizing employment” at an economic policy level (looking at you US Federal Reserve).

I don't think you are right about people not enjoying their work, in the US context at least. The vast majority of workers seem to have pretty high job satisfaction. In fact, a quick search shows concern when average nationwide job satisfaction drops below the mid 80%s, which seems phenomenal. (https://news.gallup.com/poll/147833/Job-Satisfaction-Struggl...)

As for wanting to work less, that's probably true, but I'll bet you could get that result for almost any question involving extensive time commitment- for example, I love my kids dearly and love spending time with them, but if grandma offers to watch them I'll take her up in a hot second.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#65

The problem is fairly simple. The actual output of society is produced by a relatively small minority of skilled individuals that are not easily replicable (ie fungibility is largely a myth). We need those people to work a full week operating the machines that actually make all the output we all consume. But why should they do that if nobody else is working? They could just make enough for the small set of people tha…

The definition of a highly skilled worker kind of hinges on the fact that there are few. If everyone was skilled then we'd raise the bar.

Your argument makes sense, but I'm suspicious that there is that wide of a gap between the 2 classes of people described.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#66
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try starting an open source project these days; your chance of getting any traction is close to zero. Influencers are unlikely to help you to spread awareness of your project unless there is something in it for them financially; they're more likely to help promote an enterprise competitor who will pay them. This is interesting. You're saying you would be giving away something valueable for free, and yet there would…

>> Stuff that is genuinely helpful and valueable and unique should, given time, take on its own, without influencers. This is completely false. It depends entirely on your social network. My main OSS project has over 5K stars on GitHub; it's used by thousands of companies and has been growing steadily but I'm certain that if it hadn't been on the front page of HN 5 years ago, nobody would be using it today. These day…

In other words, marketing is very important. I think as technical people we like to "evaluate things on merit," but the reality is that the technological complexity of our society has become such that it is virtually impossible for someone to gauge the quality of a product in a field where we're not an expert. That's part of why marketing takes on such importance.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surveys indicate you’re in the minority. Most people don’t enjoy their job, or want to work less. We’re long overdue to move past “maximizing employment” at an economic policy level (looking at you US Federal Reserve).

I don't think you are right about people not enjoying their work, in the US context at least. The vast majority of workers seem to have pretty high job satisfaction. In fact, a quick search shows concern when average nationwide job satisfaction drops below the mid 80%s, which seems phenomenal. ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/147833/Job-Satisfaction-Struggl... ) As for wanting to work less, that's probably true, but I'…

[deleted]

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surveys indicate you’re in the minority. Most people don’t enjoy their job, or want to work less. We’re long overdue to move past “maximizing employment” at an economic policy level (looking at you US Federal Reserve).

I don't think you are right about people not enjoying their work, in the US context at least. The vast majority of workers seem to have pretty high job satisfaction. In fact, a quick search shows concern when average nationwide job satisfaction drops below the mid 80%s, which seems phenomenal. ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/147833/Job-Satisfaction-Struggl... ) As for wanting to work less, that's probably true, but I'…

[deleted]

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#69
Less work is harder then it sounds because (in advanced economies) MOST jobs are skilled jobs, even the ones that don't seem that way, and developing skill takes time, skill, and practice. As others have noted, labor isn't nearly fungible as we often pretend, and two workers doing 20 hour schedules generally aren't as productive as one worker doing a 40 schedule. This shows up in the "part time penalty" for workers amongst other things, but should resonate with anyone who's had to onboard others to a team or project.

There is also obviously a point where more effort out of individual workers is counter productive (see Ford and the 40h work week), but it seems 32-40h weeks may be near optimum generally.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#70
post #6

I dunno, I like working. I don't think I would want to go on an extended period without working hard. In fact, retiring early increases mortality[1]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/627711

Or people in poor health are forced to retire early because they can no longer work.
Post reply on HN