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Yes, but manufacturing jobs and the like tend to get offshored a few hundred or thousand at a time, to hit the latest expense targets. It's a slow bleeding that

by tashi 10y ago

Yes, but manufacturing jobs and the like tend to get offshored a few hundred or thousand at a time, to hit the latest expense targets. It's a slow bleeding that can take decades. The right tech startup can sometimes have the power to destroy an entire industry all at once and make its workers obsolete. So trying to cultivate empathy in startup founders deserves special attention. (In online arguments about this I've seen over the years, an econ student comes along to talk about buggy whips and entire new classes of jobs being created, but in recent decades the trend has been to create a small number of jobs for highly educated people that go to the young, and lots of zero-benefits freelance work the displaced workers can compete for.)

m0llusk 10y ago
Manufacturing jobs being offshored is an incorrect narrative. Much of the manufacturing capacity has actually returned to the US but does not employ many people because it modern manufacturing is so productive and efficient that orders of magnitude fewer people are needed. There is also a critically important moral angle in that any one country dominating manufacturing internationally as the US and Germany do makes things more difficult for emerging countries as opportunities have been limited by big players. Beyond that it is not clear that jobs are truly desirable. The economy no longer generates enough opportunity to keep people employed. One of the biggest employers of the middle class is the trucking industry which is being automated. This is essentially inevitable and will improve safety and productivity. Looking realistically we have to question a system that encourages people to work to the point that their ties to friends and family fall away and drowsy driving has become an epidemic. Given the huge percentage of the workforce that is tuned out at work and present without being engaged with purpose the idea that work was ever a good thing needs to be questioned. In any case the old days where anyone with skills and ambition could find work that would support them and their family are gone and now more than ever we need to account for those who don't have skills or ambition or discipline. This is the real challenge for the empathic: How do we look to an age where work is no longer at the core of our society?

by tashi 10y ago

m0llusk 10y ago

Manufacturing jobs being offshored is an incorrect narrative. Much of the manufacturing capacity has actually returned to the US but does not employ many people because it modern manufacturing is so productive and efficient that orders of magnitude fewer people are needed. There is also a critically important moral angle in that any one country dominating manufacturing internationally as the US and Germany do makes things more difficult for emerging countries as opportunities have been limited by big players. Beyond that it is not clear that jobs are truly desirable. The economy no longer generates enough opportunity to keep people employed. One of the biggest employers of the middle class is the trucking industry which is being automated. This is essentially inevitable and will improve safety and productivity. Looking realistically we have to question a system that encourages people to work to the point that their ties to friends and family fall away and drowsy driving has become an epidemic. Given the huge percentage of the workforce that is tuned out at work and present without being engaged with purpose the idea that work was ever a good thing needs to be questioned. In any case the old days where anyone with skills and ambition could find work that would support them and their family are gone and now more than ever we need to account for those who don't have skills or ambition or discipline. This is the real challenge for the empathic: How do we look to an age where work is no longer at the core of our society?