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My first reaction when I saw (ted.com) after the link was that this would be an essay about ted speakers. I should have known that it would be more chatter abo

My first reaction when I saw (ted.com) after the link was that this would be an essay about ted speakers. I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete.

rdiddly 10y ago
Nice one! My reaction was more like, we have this already due to plain old economic stagnation and (in the US) offshoring. No AI needed!
- yomly 10y ago
  It seems convenient to blame technology, and it is definitely going to be the bigger cause in the long term. This said, I am strongly of the opinion that globalization is not a force that benefits everyone (to put it nicely) and it is not constructive that this opinion is not discussed more widely without having to pussyfoot around dirty words like protectionism and nationalism as if they are automatically bad words.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Globalization is centralization: finance is centralized in New York and London; manufacturing is centralized in China and Germany; IT outsourcing is centralized in India. Over the 19th and early 20th century, the benefits of American westward expansion and the development of the industrial Midwest largely accrued to the big banks in New York. The same is occurring, just on a larger scale and accelerated due to leaps in technology.
    - dantheman 10y ago
      The US manufactures more than it ever did, page 2 of this pdf shows it quite clearly: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf The US is more than double Germany.
      - Nomentatus 10y ago
        But with fewer workers.
        dantheman 10y ago
        Progress?
    - yomly 10y ago
      There's a lot here to discuss. I think you're right: look at the huge tech grab between China and America. Almost all Western Internet + parts of Asia goes through America (Google/Amazon/Facebook) for example. As for centralization, I agree with you, but what do you do with all the people who didn't back the right industry? They're slowly being displaced. If you subscribe to the concept of social welfare, a government should be ensuring their quality of life. This includes access to employment, education, healthcare and even pleasure. This is the inconvenient truth of the current world we live in, but frustratingly it took a Trump and a Brexit to happen for the idea to get much coverage, and even still it is mired in unnecessary political complications that are not strictly relevant.
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      Actually massive British investments provided a lot of the capital, so London got a very large share as well.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  The 'nice' thing about technology being to blame instead of offshoring is that there is no clear and obvious villain to point pitchforks at. That's useful for some people. So: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/265cd8fb02fb44a69cf0eaa2063e11d9/mexico-taking-us-factory-jobs-blame-robots-instead http://bigstory.ap.org/article/265cd8fb02fb44a69cf0eaa2063e1... "Blame robots [for your imminent unemployment]. [Proved by] "A study at Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research" ("The myth and reality of manufacturing in America"). Which states: http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf "We begin by examining productivity. The most common measure of productivity is the average product of labor, which is simply the value of all goods manufactured in the U.S. divided by the number of workers. " ^^ Which literally means that according to the author's calculations, if you offshore 50 workers and maintain sales, you have decreased US employment / GDP ratio and thus increased. The of the paper then measures productivity, states that it's gone up and segues into a lot of reasons why it thinks the increase in productivity is actually because of machines. Then they invent a calculation involving the trade deficit to determine the number of jobs lost by outsourcing (where one Chinese person buying a $5 million house/year in Cali "makes up for" losing 20 $50k/year jobs) and finish up with what can only be described as an unrelated whinge about US corporate tax rates (just in case you were left with any lingering doubts about whose side they're on). Authors: Michael J. Hicks and Srikant Devara, MBA. tl;dr some people use phony math to explain why it's wrong to point pitchforks at the 1%.
kafkaesq 10y ago
I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete. It has the potential to be a very vexing problem, actually. That may condemn literally hundreds of millions of people to poverty, feelings of uselessness (if not outright despair and depression). And very likely be contributing to higher suicide rates, among the newly obsolesced. In that vein, it seems rather callous to describe earnest attempts to get a handle on the problem as "chatter".

My first reaction when I saw (ted.com) after the link was that this would be an essay about ted speakers. I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete.

rdiddly 10y ago

Nice one! My reaction was more like, we have this already due to plain old economic stagnation and (in the US) offshoring. No AI needed!

yomly 10y ago
It seems convenient to blame technology, and it is definitely going to be the bigger cause in the long term. This said, I am strongly of the opinion that globalization is not a force that benefits everyone (to put it nicely) and it is not constructive that this opinion is not discussed more widely without having to pussyfoot around dirty words like protectionism and nationalism as if they are automatically bad words.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Globalization is centralization: finance is centralized in New York and London; manufacturing is centralized in China and Germany; IT outsourcing is centralized in India. Over the 19th and early 20th century, the benefits of American westward expansion and the development of the industrial Midwest largely accrued to the big banks in New York. The same is occurring, just on a larger scale and accelerated due to leaps in technology.
  - dantheman 10y ago
    The US manufactures more than it ever did, page 2 of this pdf shows it quite clearly: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42135.pdf The US is more than double Germany.
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      But with fewer workers.
      - dantheman 10y ago
        Progress?
  - yomly 10y ago
    There's a lot here to discuss. I think you're right: look at the huge tech grab between China and America. Almost all Western Internet + parts of Asia goes through America (Google/Amazon/Facebook) for example. As for centralization, I agree with you, but what do you do with all the people who didn't back the right industry? They're slowly being displaced. If you subscribe to the concept of social welfare, a government should be ensuring their quality of life. This includes access to employment, education, healthcare and even pleasure. This is the inconvenient truth of the current world we live in, but frustratingly it took a Trump and a Brexit to happen for the idea to get much coverage, and even still it is mired in unnecessary political complications that are not strictly relevant.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    Actually massive British investments provided a lot of the capital, so London got a very large share as well.
crdoconnor 10y ago
The 'nice' thing about technology being to blame instead of offshoring is that there is no clear and obvious villain to point pitchforks at. That's useful for some people. So: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/265cd8fb02fb44a69cf0eaa2063e11d9/mexico-taking-us-factory-jobs-blame-robots-instead http://bigstory.ap.org/article/265cd8fb02fb44a69cf0eaa2063e1... "Blame robots [for your imminent unemployment]. [Proved by] "A study at Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research" ("The myth and reality of manufacturing in America"). Which states: http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf "We begin by examining productivity. The most common measure of productivity is the average product of labor, which is simply the value of all goods manufactured in the U.S. divided by the number of workers. " ^^ Which literally means that according to the author's calculations, if you offshore 50 workers and maintain sales, you have decreased US employment / GDP ratio and thus increased. The of the paper then measures productivity, states that it's gone up and segues into a lot of reasons why it thinks the increase in productivity is actually because of machines. Then they invent a calculation involving the trade deficit to determine the number of jobs lost by outsourcing (where one Chinese person buying a $5 million house/year in Cali "makes up for" losing 20 $50k/year jobs) and finish up with what can only be described as an unrelated whinge about US corporate tax rates (just in case you were left with any lingering doubts about whose side they're on). Authors: Michael J. Hicks and Srikant Devara, MBA. tl;dr some people use phony math to explain why it's wrong to point pitchforks at the 1%.

kafkaesq 10y ago

I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete. It has the potential to be a very vexing problem, actually. That may condemn literally hundreds of millions of people to poverty, feelings of uselessness (if not outright despair and depression). And very likely be contributing to higher suicide rates, among the newly obsolesced. In that vein, it seems rather callous to describe earnest attempts to get a handle on the problem as "chatter".