4 ms·

As I understand it (and I say this as a fellow "techno-optimist"), one of the most significant challenges is that cultural and political change occur much more

by csallen 10y ago

As I understand it (and I say this as a fellow "techno-optimist"), one of the most significant challenges is that cultural and political change occur much more slowly than technological change. So it's not that we can't adapt, but that adaptation is exceedingly painful to various segments of the population. We tend to accept certain facts as "permanently true", which ends up tearing holes in society and in our lives when these facts inevitably change. For example: * Building a long-term career at a single company is safe. * Traditional college degrees are worth the monetary cost. * Society can only function if everyone works a job. I'm a bit skeptical that "we'll always find a way to quickly replace jobs" will stand the test of time, especially when the primary evidence given is, "Well that's how it's worked out so far."

jdross 10y ago
It's not just that it's how it's worked out in the past, but it's that it continues to work out that way every month in the present. Roughly 24% of jobs are permanently replaced in the US every year (which I found very surprising) "Researchers’ estimates on the scale of threatened jobs over the next decade or two range from 9 to 47 percent. For context, every 3 months about 6 percent of jobs in the economy are destroyed by shrinking or closing businesses, while a slightly larger percentage of jobs are added— resulting in rising employment and a roughly constant unemployment rate. The economy has repeatedly proven itself capable of handling this scale of change, although it would depend on how rapidly the changes happen and how concentrated the losses are in specific occupations that are hard to shift from." source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docume...
- csallen 10y ago
  Individual businesses shrinking and closing isn't the same as entire industries and professions being automated or "globalized" away. For example, plenty of tech startups fail, but that doesn't affect the market for programmers in the Bay Area, because plenty of tech startups are being created, too. Now, let's say the VC money dried up somehow, or we invented an AI capable of programming anything based on a vague description. Lots of programmers would be out of a job.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I'm a bit skeptical that "we'll always find a way to quickly replace jobs" will stand the test of time, especially when the primary evidence given is, "Well that's how it's worked out so far." Perhaps your skepticism can be allayed by looking at the mechanism. Money, in the form of capital, flows through an economy from providers to consumers. With a functional banking system capital doesn't accumulate. Even when a company like Apple has $200B in "the bank", that money is being lent out to others to build things and start businesses etc. Building stuff consumes labor and that transfers money back to the labor force which then uses it to purchase goods and services. All basic economics but the key is that the existence of money (capital) creates an economic force. Banks cannot simply sit on a pile of dollar bills and pay out 1.2% interest on that, they would go broke. They need to make a return on it so they find people (economic force) who will use the money to create additional value. In many ways its like "running out of water" which on its face is preposterous. The planet is literally covered in the stuff. The mechanism (evaporation and condensation) which move it around the planet can put too much or too little somewhere but we'll never be permanently "out" of water. It will rain somewhere at some point (or snow) because water is evaporating from the oceans every day. Economies are very much like that as well, they may have capital dry up in one area (like Appalachia) but it is probably raining somewhere else (like San Francisco). But the mechanism of buying and selling products or services is a constant force to move the money around. So that money will always find a way to be spent. And that means jobs. They may be different than the ones before but they will get created.
- kbenson 10y ago
  I don't disagree with what you've stated, but I think the disconnect with what you've stated and what the GP stated is that a specific unit of money doesn't buy/pay for the same amout of jobs when applied in different areas (whether "area" be geographic or sector). For example, taking money that previously was applied to 1000 coal miners and applying it towards a software company yields far fewer software engineers. Additionally, people are a resource, but a very finicky one. You would expect them to move to where there is a need for them, and to do what it takes to make themselves usable, but there are many external factors that make that far less likely than it could be, such as family, property, and various features of human nature. So, as money flows from labor-intensive industries to non-labor intensive industries, or transforms a previously high-labor industry into a low-labor one, what happens to labor as it increasingly loses value? What happens when the value of labor falls below the threshold required for human survival for increasingly more segments of the economy?

by csallen 10y ago

jdross 10y ago

It's not just that it's how it's worked out in the past, but it's that it continues to work out that way every month in the present. Roughly 24% of jobs are permanently replaced in the US every year (which I found very surprising) "Researchers’ estimates on the scale of threatened jobs over the next decade or two range from 9 to 47 percent. For context, every 3 months about 6 percent of jobs in the economy are destroyed by shrinking or closing businesses, while a slightly larger percentage of jobs are added— resulting in rising employment and a roughly constant unemployment rate. The economy has repeatedly proven itself capable of handling this scale of change, although it would depend on how rapidly the changes happen and how concentrated the losses are in specific occupations that are hard to shift from." source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docume...

csallen 10y ago
Individual businesses shrinking and closing isn't the same as entire industries and professions being automated or "globalized" away. For example, plenty of tech startups fail, but that doesn't affect the market for programmers in the Bay Area, because plenty of tech startups are being created, too. Now, let's say the VC money dried up somehow, or we invented an AI capable of programming anything based on a vague description. Lots of programmers would be out of a job.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I'm a bit skeptical that "we'll always find a way to quickly replace jobs" will stand the test of time, especially when the primary evidence given is, "Well that's how it's worked out so far." Perhaps your skepticism can be allayed by looking at the mechanism. Money, in the form of capital, flows through an economy from providers to consumers. With a functional banking system capital doesn't accumulate. Even when a company like Apple has $200B in "the bank", that money is being lent out to others to build things and start businesses etc. Building stuff consumes labor and that transfers money back to the labor force which then uses it to purchase goods and services. All basic economics but the key is that the existence of money (capital) creates an economic force. Banks cannot simply sit on a pile of dollar bills and pay out 1.2% interest on that, they would go broke. They need to make a return on it so they find people (economic force) who will use the money to create additional value. In many ways its like "running out of water" which on its face is preposterous. The planet is literally covered in the stuff. The mechanism (evaporation and condensation) which move it around the planet can put too much or too little somewhere but we'll never be permanently "out" of water. It will rain somewhere at some point (or snow) because water is evaporating from the oceans every day. Economies are very much like that as well, they may have capital dry up in one area (like Appalachia) but it is probably raining somewhere else (like San Francisco). But the mechanism of buying and selling products or services is a constant force to move the money around. So that money will always find a way to be spent. And that means jobs. They may be different than the ones before but they will get created.

kbenson 10y ago
I don't disagree with what you've stated, but I think the disconnect with what you've stated and what the GP stated is that a specific unit of money doesn't buy/pay for the same amout of jobs when applied in different areas (whether "area" be geographic or sector). For example, taking money that previously was applied to 1000 coal miners and applying it towards a software company yields far fewer software engineers. Additionally, people are a resource, but a very finicky one. You would expect them to move to where there is a need for them, and to do what it takes to make themselves usable, but there are many external factors that make that far less likely than it could be, such as family, property, and various features of human nature. So, as money flows from labor-intensive industries to non-labor intensive industries, or transforms a previously high-labor industry into a low-labor one, what happens to labor as it increasingly loses value? What happens when the value of labor falls below the threshold required for human survival for increasingly more segments of the economy?