5 ms·

Jobs aren't what make people wealthy, its access to markets. Jobs are an expense, not an end in itself. Politicians and now even economists always talk about jo

by bko 11y ago

Jobs aren't what make people wealthy, its access to markets. Jobs are an expense, not an end in itself. Politicians and now even economists always talk about jobs as some thing to strive for. This article talks about outsourcing but freeing up human resources to pursue more meaningful work should be applauded. Eliminating menial work for people to perform (usually replaced by machines or in this case outsourcing to low cost countries) has led to furthering human achievement. That is of course only true if you believe people aren't mindless sheep.

kiba 11y ago
And what if meaningful works get eliminated by machines?
- Kalium 11y ago
  What meaningful work has ever been eliminated by machines? Do you have examples?
  - yrro 11y ago
    To rephrase the question in terms you may agree with: what should happen when there is not enough meaningful work to keep everyone employed? (I believe we reached this point some time ago)
    - Kalium 11y ago
      The bounds of the human imagination, and its possible expressions, are functionally infinite. Then it is only a question of resources. I don't agree that we've reached this point. In a post-scarcity world, I don't think the problem of insufficient meaningful work is likely to occur. There will always be a kitten to be played with, art to be made, research to be performed, and more.
      - nulltype 11y ago
        Where are all these purfessional kitten-playing-with jobs?
        mdpopescu 11y ago
        I know several people who make a great living from playing card games (Hearthstone). This would have sounded insane to me 20 years ago.
        Kalium 11y ago
        I know several people who make their livings running a cat cafe.
- jdreaver 11y ago
  If absolutely everything useful is done by machines, then every good or service will be so stupid cheap you won't need a job.
  - mwnz 11y ago
    I have heard this utopian fantasy before. It's kinda laughable. Remember, greed will never disappear. Greed breaks the utopian hypothesis.
    - aianus 11y ago
      > Remember, greed will never disappear. I agree, but that's actually a good thing. How do you get more than someone else if everything is made for free by machines? New jobs would have to appear that produce handmade expensive goods and services that the rich can use to distinguish themselves from the poor :) We're living in a lite version of that utopian world today, actually. It's pretty damn cheap to live in Canada or the US if you don't buy anything but food, water, and shelter. You'll find that most of your dollars today are spent on luxurious crap to improve your standing versus other people (new cars, rent in a fashionable urban center, new clothes, etc.) In many socialist countries welfare is good enough that you can live quite healthy without ever working at all! But we've always found new things to work on and purchase and we will continue to do so. They'll just be more meaningful than the repetitive crap most people have to do to eke out a living today.
      - mwnz 11y ago
        > We're living in a lite version of that utopian world today, actually. It's pretty damn cheap to live in Canada or the US Well, this is a prime example of why our trajectory is not converging to utopia. 'Things' are cheap, yet income inequality is extremely high in the countries. 'Things' will always come at a cost. Those who profit in the absence of labor will be a small subset of the population. The land owners, the farmers, those with political control. Sound familiar? Welfare may be good enough in socialist democratic countries to live in relative comfort, but that is being subsidized by those who work (and I agree with this strategy). The assumption you are making is that if labor were removed from the equation, these countries would continue to exist as they are. I disagree with this premise. We have always found new things to work on. But at the same time, jobs have become more monotonous as they are minified. The rate of automation is exponential, which hasn't been seen before. The assumption that we will all move into knowledge work is a poor assumption. Bob the builder wants to use his hands, not his brain. And good on him for being him.
tomohawk 11y ago
The only mindless sheep here are the people allowing this travesty to occur. There is absolutely no way that the US Government should be incentivizing the offshoring of work. Instead of H1B, we should update our immigration laws and policies to prefer educated people of means who have a desire to come here and contribute to our country.
- aianus 11y ago
  > There is absolutely no way that the US Government should be incentivizing the offshoring of work. And why not? The offshoring of work reduces the cost of goods and services and frees American time up to do meaningful, better compensated work instead. The eventual conclusion (perhaps even in our lifetime) of automation and offshoring will be that Americans will not have to work for the necessities of life at all, just for self-actualization and luxuries.
  - acchow 11y ago
    > And why not? The offshoring of work reduces the cost of goods and services and frees American time up to do meaningful, better compensated work instead. In general, in a free capitalist market the government probably shouldn't be subsidizing corporations in any way.
    - kyllo 11y ago
      That model assumes that the government has absolute power over corporations and that politicians need nothing from corporations. In real life, governments need to negotiate with corporations, because individual politicians need corporate sponsors to finance their campaigns, so they sell their influence.
  - tomohawk 11y ago
    The accountant seemed to be pretty happy (self actualized) in her job, which she no longer has. She's been stripped of her self actualization by a government that she paid taxes to in the expectation that it wouldn't pull the rug out from under her. I guess now she'll have to be self actualized on the unemployment line. And what if she gets retrained and into another job? Why, isn't the best thing that could happen is that she should lose that one, too, helped by our good friends running H1B?
josu 11y ago
This is not a new concept, David Ricardo developed the theory of Comparative Advantage [1] in 1817 to refer to that phenomenon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
slantedview 11y ago
"freeing up human resources to pursue more meaningful work should be applauded" Only if that pursuit can be realized, which in the reality of our current world and for the workers being displaced, it usually cannot.
hwstar 11y ago
Then you have people like me who through no fault of their own, are forced into semi-retirement due to the lack of interesting and challenging work. I spend my time working on open source projects and living off my investments and rental income, but I'd prefer to be employed. Is laying off Americans in a poor job market with few opportunities because most of the interesting work has been moved overseas really a judicious use of resources and talent? If it costs X amount of dollars to live in a certain area of the planet, and companies don't employ workers in that area of the planet, how can the company continue to have sales in that area over the long term? Employers are really not all that serious about hiring. The economy really isn't in good shape when compared to before 2008. They'll hire people with very specialized skills at a bargain pay rate, but that's it. There are two ways out of this. In the best case, the cost of living will decrease in first world countries and meet the third world counties in the middle. In the worst case, there will be war on a scale similar to World War II at the end of the Great Depression. War is a good stimulus for the economy and it puts people to work. I'm hoping for the former and not the latter.

by bko 11y ago

kiba 11y ago

And what if meaningful works get eliminated by machines?

Kalium 11y ago
What meaningful work has ever been eliminated by machines? Do you have examples?
- yrro 11y ago
  To rephrase the question in terms you may agree with: what should happen when there is not enough meaningful work to keep everyone employed? (I believe we reached this point some time ago)
  - Kalium 11y ago
    The bounds of the human imagination, and its possible expressions, are functionally infinite. Then it is only a question of resources. I don't agree that we've reached this point. In a post-scarcity world, I don't think the problem of insufficient meaningful work is likely to occur. There will always be a kitten to be played with, art to be made, research to be performed, and more.
    - nulltype 11y ago
      Where are all these purfessional kitten-playing-with jobs?
      - mdpopescu 11y ago
        I know several people who make a great living from playing card games (Hearthstone). This would have sounded insane to me 20 years ago.
      - Kalium 11y ago
        I know several people who make their livings running a cat cafe.
jdreaver 11y ago
If absolutely everything useful is done by machines, then every good or service will be so stupid cheap you won't need a job.
- mwnz 11y ago
  I have heard this utopian fantasy before. It's kinda laughable. Remember, greed will never disappear. Greed breaks the utopian hypothesis.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > Remember, greed will never disappear. I agree, but that's actually a good thing. How do you get more than someone else if everything is made for free by machines? New jobs would have to appear that produce handmade expensive goods and services that the rich can use to distinguish themselves from the poor :) We're living in a lite version of that utopian world today, actually. It's pretty damn cheap to live in Canada or the US if you don't buy anything but food, water, and shelter. You'll find that most of your dollars today are spent on luxurious crap to improve your standing versus other people (new cars, rent in a fashionable urban center, new clothes, etc.) In many socialist countries welfare is good enough that you can live quite healthy without ever working at all! But we've always found new things to work on and purchase and we will continue to do so. They'll just be more meaningful than the repetitive crap most people have to do to eke out a living today.
    - mwnz 11y ago
      > We're living in a lite version of that utopian world today, actually. It's pretty damn cheap to live in Canada or the US Well, this is a prime example of why our trajectory is not converging to utopia. 'Things' are cheap, yet income inequality is extremely high in the countries. 'Things' will always come at a cost. Those who profit in the absence of labor will be a small subset of the population. The land owners, the farmers, those with political control. Sound familiar? Welfare may be good enough in socialist democratic countries to live in relative comfort, but that is being subsidized by those who work (and I agree with this strategy). The assumption you are making is that if labor were removed from the equation, these countries would continue to exist as they are. I disagree with this premise. We have always found new things to work on. But at the same time, jobs have become more monotonous as they are minified. The rate of automation is exponential, which hasn't been seen before. The assumption that we will all move into knowledge work is a poor assumption. Bob the builder wants to use his hands, not his brain. And good on him for being him.

tomohawk 11y ago

The only mindless sheep here are the people allowing this travesty to occur. There is absolutely no way that the US Government should be incentivizing the offshoring of work. Instead of H1B, we should update our immigration laws and policies to prefer educated people of means who have a desire to come here and contribute to our country.

aianus 11y ago
> There is absolutely no way that the US Government should be incentivizing the offshoring of work. And why not? The offshoring of work reduces the cost of goods and services and frees American time up to do meaningful, better compensated work instead. The eventual conclusion (perhaps even in our lifetime) of automation and offshoring will be that Americans will not have to work for the necessities of life at all, just for self-actualization and luxuries.
- acchow 11y ago
  > And why not? The offshoring of work reduces the cost of goods and services and frees American time up to do meaningful, better compensated work instead. In general, in a free capitalist market the government probably shouldn't be subsidizing corporations in any way.
  - kyllo 11y ago
    That model assumes that the government has absolute power over corporations and that politicians need nothing from corporations. In real life, governments need to negotiate with corporations, because individual politicians need corporate sponsors to finance their campaigns, so they sell their influence.
- tomohawk 11y ago
  The accountant seemed to be pretty happy (self actualized) in her job, which she no longer has. She's been stripped of her self actualization by a government that she paid taxes to in the expectation that it wouldn't pull the rug out from under her. I guess now she'll have to be self actualized on the unemployment line. And what if she gets retrained and into another job? Why, isn't the best thing that could happen is that she should lose that one, too, helped by our good friends running H1B?

josu 11y ago

This is not a new concept, David Ricardo developed the theory of Comparative Advantage [1] in 1817 to refer to that phenomenon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

slantedview 11y ago

"freeing up human resources to pursue more meaningful work should be applauded" Only if that pursuit can be realized, which in the reality of our current world and for the workers being displaced, it usually cannot.

hwstar 11y ago

Then you have people like me who through no fault of their own, are forced into semi-retirement due to the lack of interesting and challenging work. I spend my time working on open source projects and living off my investments and rental income, but I'd prefer to be employed. Is laying off Americans in a poor job market with few opportunities because most of the interesting work has been moved overseas really a judicious use of resources and talent? If it costs X amount of dollars to live in a certain area of the planet, and companies don't employ workers in that area of the planet, how can the company continue to have sales in that area over the long term? Employers are really not all that serious about hiring. The economy really isn't in good shape when compared to before 2008. They'll hire people with very specialized skills at a bargain pay rate, but that's it. There are two ways out of this. In the best case, the cost of living will decrease in first world countries and meet the third world counties in the middle. In the worst case, there will be war on a scale similar to World War II at the end of the Great Depression. War is a good stimulus for the economy and it puts people to work. I'm hoping for the former and not the latter.