6 ms·

Where do the jobs for the elderly come from, if even young, healthy people are gradually priced out of their jobs by technology and automation? Right now, good

by groestl 10y ago

Where do the jobs for the elderly come from, if even young, healthy people are gradually priced out of their jobs by technology and automation? Right now, good jobs are replaced by bad, underpaid ones. Desperate people are serving burritos to a smaller group of people who are lucky to have the skills necessary in this time of transition. All of them work to aggregate productive capital in the hands of the very few. If there's only a handful of people left who own everything, supermarkets, datacenters, robots, software, machines, farmland.. to whom will these people sell all the stuff they produce? How do those who have no jobs pay for this stuff? I think whoever projects 40 years into the future, and sees no need to mention the words "UBI" or "property tax", is in for a surprise. Will it be a nice surprise? That depends on how fast our society realizes what is currently heading our way.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
Your question is based on a false premise. There is plenty of work, we just haven't figured out how to monetize most of it yet. Mental health, filmmaking, video games, quality food, cultural maintenance events, general caretaking, career development... we're not producing anywhere near the quantity of those things that we actually need. There are lots of reasons why the markets are currently failing to monetize the demand in those areas (there are incentives for corporations to leave demand on the table), but there's no reason why those incentives should be seen as permanent. If you think the selection of products and services we buy should be locked in the 1950s then it will look like there's not enough work, and automation will eat what work there is. But the catalog of services that people are purchasing is growing rapidly as we learn how to hack the market blockages, and it will grow exponentially as we approach the complete information liquidity event which is coming in the next decades. We're just starting to achieve widespread realization that you can offer a service and pay your bills using only Instagram. We're coming from a world where there were only mass-market channels for advertising (newspapapers, broadcast TV, etc), so there was only a limited information space for a small number of brands. That's why we think there are only a handful of job categories, the number of brands was tiny and a brand can only support a finite number of job categories. A decentralized system like Instagram can support infinite job categories.
- groestl 10y ago
  Maybe I did not phrase it clearly enough, but I know that there is plenty of work, just not paid work. That's why I used the word "jobs". Companies leave the demand for mental health on the table, because the metally ill don't have anything to offer to them in exchange. But I certainly hope that the future is so bright as you describe it.
  - amonette 10y ago
    It's already paid work for some fraction of forward thinking people - a friend has three income-generating houses, the first of which was financed by virtual coal trading in RuneScape in the early 00's.
    - VLM 10y ago
      A microeconomic reply to a macroeconomic problem. What bank will finance the mortgage on his incoming generating properties via 30 year mortgages when almost everyone is unemployed? Does the existing massively overgrown and under automated FIRE sector downscale to only 1% of the population having all the income and wealth? If it doesn't downscale, perhaps it doesn't operate at all, then how will he finance his real estate purchases via loans? He will have to pay cash and instead of 1/3 down on each income generating property he'll have to pay 100% for one property. Or prices will have to collapse by a minimum of 2/3 to clear the market. His properties are not income generating if the renters have no income. The purpose of the discussion is what do we do when essentially no one has income or net wealth anymore? The phrase incoming generating property means nothing if there's no rent to collect because no one has jobs or income or wealth anymore. Someone without power today can trust the courts and cops to protect his three properties because "everyone owns property or at least half of us or so". How does that break down when no one has any money? If there's only one landlord in the city who owns almost all property and he asks the cops to lean on him to sell his three houses, or squatters take over and there's no government support, because private property as we know it today is obsolete when no one owns anything, what does he do? Assuming the above is somehow fixed, lets see if its sustainable via replication. How do you get money from trading runescape coal in 2040 if no one playing games has any money? My kids have no money because they're little kids. Assuming they continue to have no money, how many games of tic tac toe do they need to play to afford three houses each if the net profit off each game played is $0 because no one playing has any money to lose? The future being unevenly distributed, being a slumlord today in Detroit is kinda like being a suburban landlord in 2030 perhaps, or an urbanite landlord in 2040, assuming you believe in new urbanism which is very popular here. The 50th percentile landlord will impact reality like a bug hitting a windshield long before the 90%th percentile landlord, which is a whole nother topic. Eventually only the top 1% of landlords will be in on the game much like only 1% of the population will have old fashioned jobs or participate in the old fashioned economy via pay and wealth, which brings us back to the original macroeconomic problem. Surely you can't be implying that 99 landlords will rent their 297 houses to the one guy who still has an old fashioned job?
FT_intern 10y ago
Technology has made maintaining a job infinitely easier for the elderly compared to physical labor jobs. The problem is that many who approach old age are not trained in technology
ThrowawayR2 10y ago
> I think whoever projects 40 years into the future, and sees no need to mention the words "UBI" or "property tax", is in for a surprise Sorry, but robbing Peter to pay Paul does not strike me as a viable long term strategy either. Much like the current brain drain from other countries to the West, the reverse could easily occur; the talented and wealthy could leave for other countries and find success there. A saner approach would be re-defining full-time employment to 35 hours or even 30 hours and vigorously enforcing overtime pay requirements, to spread out employment among more people, and taking strong measures to get the cost of living under control enough that single-income households become viable again, so that people can take care of their families and have more time to rebuild the social bonds of their community.
- FLUX-YOU 10y ago
  >the talented and wealthy could leave for other countries and find success there. And those governments could suddenly realize there is nothing really protecting these people and then tax the hell out of them or just take their stuff. America and the world would be too busy dealing with the mass unemployment of its middle class, no one's going to notice some rich kids getting robbed on an island country.
- thatfrenchguy 10y ago
  > full-time employment to 35 hour Never going to happen, how are you going to make fun of the French otherwise for having a life ? :/
- groestl 10y ago
  > Sorry, but robbing Peter to pay Paul does not strike me as a viable long term strategy either. Of course that's not a viable long term strategy. The viable long term strategy is Peter giving away decent food and shelter to Paul freely. The smart Peters of the world do that already, because they know: if we ever reach the point where a majority of Pauls need to rob Peters for food and shelter, they might not stop at food and shelter alone. > ...to spread out employment among more people I'm with you here. Whatever is left in terms of human employment, it better be distributed as wide as possible.
remir 10y ago
What is money, really? Money, today, is not in sync with a world made of matter and with the needs of a changing world. Your city needs to build a new bridge, a subway station or a new hospital? It has the engineers, the architects, the workers, the machines and the materials needed, you can begin construction right now, but if there is no "money", nothing will get done. How absurd is that? I just came back from the dollar store and the amount of energy, time and resources that went into the production of useless crap is absolutely mind boggling. UBI is inevitable, but for something like this to be possible, our use of money will have to change. It will need to be in sync with the real world and right now, the resources of this world are diminishing and its environment is being degraded. Meanwhile, real human needs are not met. We cannot artificially maintain a life style of over-consumption and wastefulness with a UBI. Things have to change. The population growth will need to be controlled. We have to stop wasting resources. No more planned obsolescence.
- groestl 10y ago
  Exactly. As another user in this thread pointed out, people tend to apply microeconomic thinking to macroeconomic problems. They think in monetary terms, but money is irrelevant in this context. What matters is produce, the capital to produce, and the power to enjoy produce (which money represents, currently). There is no way to "save" money for the retirement, without also making sure the economy fares well as you age. If your country's economy does not produce anything at the point of retirement (and no other country is sending you their products, either forced, because your society projects military power, or freely, because their society thinks it's inhuman for your population to suffer), your saved currency is worthless.
- NickBusey 10y ago
  I'm curious how exactly you would go about controlling population growth.
  - remir 10y ago
    Access to better education and opportunities, especially for women, in developing countries. Promoting the use of contraception, too.

by groestl 10y ago

erikpukinskis 10y ago

Your question is based on a false premise. There is plenty of work, we just haven't figured out how to monetize most of it yet. Mental health, filmmaking, video games, quality food, cultural maintenance events, general caretaking, career development... we're not producing anywhere near the quantity of those things that we actually need. There are lots of reasons why the markets are currently failing to monetize the demand in those areas (there are incentives for corporations to leave demand on the table), but there's no reason why those incentives should be seen as permanent. If you think the selection of products and services we buy should be locked in the 1950s then it will look like there's not enough work, and automation will eat what work there is. But the catalog of services that people are purchasing is growing rapidly as we learn how to hack the market blockages, and it will grow exponentially as we approach the complete information liquidity event which is coming in the next decades. We're just starting to achieve widespread realization that you can offer a service and pay your bills using only Instagram. We're coming from a world where there were only mass-market channels for advertising (newspapapers, broadcast TV, etc), so there was only a limited information space for a small number of brands. That's why we think there are only a handful of job categories, the number of brands was tiny and a brand can only support a finite number of job categories. A decentralized system like Instagram can support infinite job categories.

groestl 10y ago
Maybe I did not phrase it clearly enough, but I know that there is plenty of work, just not paid work. That's why I used the word "jobs". Companies leave the demand for mental health on the table, because the metally ill don't have anything to offer to them in exchange. But I certainly hope that the future is so bright as you describe it.
- amonette 10y ago
  It's already paid work for some fraction of forward thinking people - a friend has three income-generating houses, the first of which was financed by virtual coal trading in RuneScape in the early 00's.
  - VLM 10y ago
    A microeconomic reply to a macroeconomic problem. What bank will finance the mortgage on his incoming generating properties via 30 year mortgages when almost everyone is unemployed? Does the existing massively overgrown and under automated FIRE sector downscale to only 1% of the population having all the income and wealth? If it doesn't downscale, perhaps it doesn't operate at all, then how will he finance his real estate purchases via loans? He will have to pay cash and instead of 1/3 down on each income generating property he'll have to pay 100% for one property. Or prices will have to collapse by a minimum of 2/3 to clear the market. His properties are not income generating if the renters have no income. The purpose of the discussion is what do we do when essentially no one has income or net wealth anymore? The phrase incoming generating property means nothing if there's no rent to collect because no one has jobs or income or wealth anymore. Someone without power today can trust the courts and cops to protect his three properties because "everyone owns property or at least half of us or so". How does that break down when no one has any money? If there's only one landlord in the city who owns almost all property and he asks the cops to lean on him to sell his three houses, or squatters take over and there's no government support, because private property as we know it today is obsolete when no one owns anything, what does he do? Assuming the above is somehow fixed, lets see if its sustainable via replication. How do you get money from trading runescape coal in 2040 if no one playing games has any money? My kids have no money because they're little kids. Assuming they continue to have no money, how many games of tic tac toe do they need to play to afford three houses each if the net profit off each game played is $0 because no one playing has any money to lose? The future being unevenly distributed, being a slumlord today in Detroit is kinda like being a suburban landlord in 2030 perhaps, or an urbanite landlord in 2040, assuming you believe in new urbanism which is very popular here. The 50th percentile landlord will impact reality like a bug hitting a windshield long before the 90%th percentile landlord, which is a whole nother topic. Eventually only the top 1% of landlords will be in on the game much like only 1% of the population will have old fashioned jobs or participate in the old fashioned economy via pay and wealth, which brings us back to the original macroeconomic problem. Surely you can't be implying that 99 landlords will rent their 297 houses to the one guy who still has an old fashioned job?

FT_intern 10y ago

Technology has made maintaining a job infinitely easier for the elderly compared to physical labor jobs. The problem is that many who approach old age are not trained in technology

ThrowawayR2 10y ago

> I think whoever projects 40 years into the future, and sees no need to mention the words "UBI" or "property tax", is in for a surprise Sorry, but robbing Peter to pay Paul does not strike me as a viable long term strategy either. Much like the current brain drain from other countries to the West, the reverse could easily occur; the talented and wealthy could leave for other countries and find success there. A saner approach would be re-defining full-time employment to 35 hours or even 30 hours and vigorously enforcing overtime pay requirements, to spread out employment among more people, and taking strong measures to get the cost of living under control enough that single-income households become viable again, so that people can take care of their families and have more time to rebuild the social bonds of their community.

FLUX-YOU 10y ago
>the talented and wealthy could leave for other countries and find success there. And those governments could suddenly realize there is nothing really protecting these people and then tax the hell out of them or just take their stuff. America and the world would be too busy dealing with the mass unemployment of its middle class, no one's going to notice some rich kids getting robbed on an island country.
thatfrenchguy 10y ago
> full-time employment to 35 hour Never going to happen, how are you going to make fun of the French otherwise for having a life ? :/
groestl 10y ago
> Sorry, but robbing Peter to pay Paul does not strike me as a viable long term strategy either. Of course that's not a viable long term strategy. The viable long term strategy is Peter giving away decent food and shelter to Paul freely. The smart Peters of the world do that already, because they know: if we ever reach the point where a majority of Pauls need to rob Peters for food and shelter, they might not stop at food and shelter alone. > ...to spread out employment among more people I'm with you here. Whatever is left in terms of human employment, it better be distributed as wide as possible.

remir 10y ago

What is money, really? Money, today, is not in sync with a world made of matter and with the needs of a changing world. Your city needs to build a new bridge, a subway station or a new hospital? It has the engineers, the architects, the workers, the machines and the materials needed, you can begin construction right now, but if there is no "money", nothing will get done. How absurd is that? I just came back from the dollar store and the amount of energy, time and resources that went into the production of useless crap is absolutely mind boggling. UBI is inevitable, but for something like this to be possible, our use of money will have to change. It will need to be in sync with the real world and right now, the resources of this world are diminishing and its environment is being degraded. Meanwhile, real human needs are not met. We cannot artificially maintain a life style of over-consumption and wastefulness with a UBI. Things have to change. The population growth will need to be controlled. We have to stop wasting resources. No more planned obsolescence.

groestl 10y ago
Exactly. As another user in this thread pointed out, people tend to apply microeconomic thinking to macroeconomic problems. They think in monetary terms, but money is irrelevant in this context. What matters is produce, the capital to produce, and the power to enjoy produce (which money represents, currently). There is no way to "save" money for the retirement, without also making sure the economy fares well as you age. If your country's economy does not produce anything at the point of retirement (and no other country is sending you their products, either forced, because your society projects military power, or freely, because their society thinks it's inhuman for your population to suffer), your saved currency is worthless.
NickBusey 10y ago
I'm curious how exactly you would go about controlling population growth.
- remir 10y ago
  Access to better education and opportunities, especially for women, in developing countries. Promoting the use of contraception, too.