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As a technologist, and a follower of automation related news for the past 4+ years, I have basically given up on the economists, save for a handful like Robin H

by fizixer 10y ago

As a technologist, and a follower of automation related news for the past 4+ years, I have basically given up on the economists, save for a handful like Robin Hanson. They will probably realize their folly when it's too late. Even their claims that "automation based disruption didn't happen in the past" is simply false. They back their claims by pointing to current unemployment (or the pre-2007-crisis rate of 4-5%), i.e., obviously unemployment is really low therefore automation didn't take away jobs. No you dummy. Automation did take away jobs, and the people whose jobs were lost were directly affected by it, and millions of families were destroyed. In recent history we can point to two major time periods of this sort, the first industrial revolution (around the turn of 19th century), and the second industrial revolution (at the turn of the 20th century). In the first one, the subject of economics, and statistics, and more involved census-taking was still in its infancy, and Europe was in general in a state of turmoil with warfare more rampant, so it's possible that the harmful effects of automation were not documented thoroughly. The second time, things were a lot more stable, economics and statistics were a lot more developed, and yet: - World War I happened! (why do you think things were so agitated around that time, after many decades of relative peace? Do you not call the events leading up to it social disruption?) - Major recession happened (any chance it had anything to do with the 2nd industrial revolution?) - World War II happened. (again, partly the result of social agitation, WWI, and recession). In the mean time, within decades a whole generation of farmers were rendered obsolete and asked to dismiss themselves. These middle-aged and old farmers were the bread winners of their families and didn't have quite the resources to "retrain" themselves and put themselves back into the workforce, something the economists love to tell you about as a solution. What ended up happening is that, after a lot of pain and suffering, their younger generation (the "millenials" of 100 years ago) got themselves educated in the newer trades, entered the workforce and brought the unemployment back to stable levels. If you can comprehend what happened in the decades roughly a 100 years ago, just know that what's happening this time is at least 10x worse if not more! (I always like to share CGPGrey's 'Humans Need Not Apply'. Go watch it on youtube if you have 10 minutes to spare). edit: not sure what happened but I commented in response to the article [0] not the bankunderground one. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-01/economists-may-be-underestimating-how-fast-the-robots-are-coming https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-01/economist...

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
Unemployment isn't a good measure of the thing we care about. Two factors for this: the politicization of the statistic, and a more fundamental mis-calibration. The mis-calibration is that unemployment looks at how hard it is to fill job openings - basically, it's the ratio of job-seekers to filled positions. When it's higher, there's more candidates trying to interview for the average position. When it's lower, there's fewer. This is a very distinct thing from what percentage of folks are productive members of society; the 40 year old mill worker that cannot retrain to a non-obsolete role ends up being "disabled" and not an unemployed job-seeker. The politicization is why we talk about official unemployment numbers as they are measured rather than more rough measures of labor participation. The unemployment rate is used as a measure for the effectiveness of various economic policies and political entities, so those policy-makers and political entities have decided to talk about the ones that make them look good. Goodhart's Law in action, basically.

by fizixer 10y ago

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

Unemployment isn't a good measure of the thing we care about. Two factors for this: the politicization of the statistic, and a more fundamental mis-calibration. The mis-calibration is that unemployment looks at how hard it is to fill job openings - basically, it's the ratio of job-seekers to filled positions. When it's higher, there's more candidates trying to interview for the average position. When it's lower, there's fewer. This is a very distinct thing from what percentage of folks are productive members of society; the 40 year old mill worker that cannot retrain to a non-obsolete role ends up being "disabled" and not an unemployed job-seeker. The politicization is why we talk about official unemployment numbers as they are measured rather than more rough measures of labor participation. The unemployment rate is used as a measure for the effectiveness of various economic policies and political entities, so those policy-makers and political entities have decided to talk about the ones that make them look good. Goodhart's Law in action, basically.