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TBH, if Zero Hedge accurately reported that the loss of wages was due to the executives who authorized the R&D for this system half of their readers would immed

by al2o3cr 10y ago

TBH, if Zero Hedge accurately reported that the loss of wages was due to the executives who authorized the R&D for this system half of their readers would immediately denounce the site as Communist propaganda.

dxhdr 10y ago
> TBH, if Zero Hedge accurately reported that the loss of wages was due to the executives who authorized the R&D for this system half of their readers would immediately denounce the site as Communist propaganda. Not sure I understand; your argument is that automation is the result of sinister executive R&D?
- smcl 10y ago
  Where are you getting "sinister" from? There's no negative implication in the GP commenter - they were literally just describing the root cause. We're on Hacker News, I think it's safe to say that automating processes/jobs is our bread-and-butter. The issue is that someone's trying to imply that merely proposing that the US has a modest minimum wage is enough to endanger people's livelihoods. To me that's the only sinister thing here - which is basically what my original comment was hinting at.
  - dxhdr 10y ago
    I'd argue the root cause is the decreasing utility of unskilled labor in an increasingly automated economy. Automation is inevitable, not the result of a few executives "authorizing" R&D. Describing it that way is a gross mischaracterization. > The issue is that someone's trying to imply that merely proposing that the US has a modest minimum wage is enough to endanger people's livelihoods. I didn't interpret the argument that way. To me it read as: look, here's a machine replacing unskilled labor at the current minimum wage, imagine how much more common this will be if it were raised to $15? Unfortunately they didn't provide any actual economic analysis as to the answer to that question and instead just smeared a political party; very low quality article indeed.

by al2o3cr 10y ago

dxhdr 10y ago

> TBH, if Zero Hedge accurately reported that the loss of wages was due to the executives who authorized the R&D for this system half of their readers would immediately denounce the site as Communist propaganda. Not sure I understand; your argument is that automation is the result of sinister executive R&D?

smcl 10y ago
Where are you getting "sinister" from? There's no negative implication in the GP commenter - they were literally just describing the root cause. We're on Hacker News, I think it's safe to say that automating processes/jobs is our bread-and-butter. The issue is that someone's trying to imply that merely proposing that the US has a modest minimum wage is enough to endanger people's livelihoods. To me that's the only sinister thing here - which is basically what my original comment was hinting at.
- dxhdr 10y ago
  I'd argue the root cause is the decreasing utility of unskilled labor in an increasingly automated economy. Automation is inevitable, not the result of a few executives "authorizing" R&D. Describing it that way is a gross mischaracterization. > The issue is that someone's trying to imply that merely proposing that the US has a modest minimum wage is enough to endanger people's livelihoods. I didn't interpret the argument that way. To me it read as: look, here's a machine replacing unskilled labor at the current minimum wage, imagine how much more common this will be if it were raised to $15? Unfortunately they didn't provide any actual economic analysis as to the answer to that question and instead just smeared a political party; very low quality article indeed.