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> I lean conservative/libertarian on social issues, but I am adamant that we're going to need a "living wage" stipend for the people who simply don't have enoug

> I lean conservative/libertarian on social issues, but I am adamant that we're going to need a "living wage" stipend for the people who simply don't have enough skills to participate in the future job market It's funny, because I lean liberal and I don't. I think there will be plenty of jobs for a long time. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is it possible what you're saying reflects some sort of bias you have about the inherent value of people who are less _____ than you? Can you say a little bit about what these supposedly useless/unmarketable people are like, what they have spent their time doing and why their skills have no value? My hypothesis is different than yours: The pendulum in the employer class has swung towards authoritarian control over the last 50 years. Employers have tried to organize both their business and society so that employees either have fewer choices, or believe they have fewer choices. Employers have organized things such that people are afraid to leave their jobs, through norms like employer-provided health insurance. They have pushed important work like customer service into an "hourly" category, which is considered unskilled, where wages can remain stagnant. These norms benefit all employers, and can't easily be "shorted" by a single organization paying their employees their true value. To extract the true value from those workers you'd need to have a continually expanding management apparatus to provide space for those employees to grow into, and you run into scaling issues. Therefore the mispriced labor can only be "shorted" by a federated system of many businesses making the play together. But the pendulum is swinging back. People are waking up to the idea that if they can contract themselves out to multiple clients, they can have leverage to extract their actual market rate from employers. And software will eventually provide the market for the federated play I describe.

jpm_sd 9y ago
> People are waking up to the idea that if they can contract themselves out to multiple clients, they can have leverage to extract their actual market rate from employers. The people who are living this lifestyle ("gig"-only, or multiple part time jobs) seem to dislike it. Their income is unpredictable and highly variable, while their expenses are consistent and difficult to meet. Please note that I'm not talking about software development consultants - I'm talking about Uber drivers and service industry hourly workers.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  I agree there's not enough infrastructure yet to make it comfortable.
  - SapphireSun 9y ago
    The entire idea of a gig economy is that you get random low paying clients. How could infrastructure ever make this any different from what it is?
TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
> is it possible what you're saying reflects some sort of bias you have about the inherent value of people who are less _____ than you? I'm puzzled by the question. Aren't we already seeing it? When it takes a 4-year degree to do an office clerk's job, doesn't this already indicate that people who can't get a degree are being phased out of the job market? If the employers with menial positions have enough selectivity in the job pool to weed out people without a degree -- for jobs that do NOT require them -- doesn't that, in itself, show that we're running out of jobs for people? I'm being simplistic for the sake of brevity, but it seems to me that there's a whole class of people (non-college-grads) that are being weeded out of the job market as we speak.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  I see it as a failure to capture value. Your belief is based on the perfect market hypothesis ("If there were a way to capture value from those employees someone would be doing it") but the landscape is changing so fast due to software, I just don't think you can make that claim. I think the old systems of employment have mostly run their course and are on the decline, but new systems based on loosely federated networks of independent contractors will replace them. Right now the tools are weak, but will get better. So we're in a kind of gap right now, where the old system has optimized on a local maximum that is leading to unemployment, but the new system hasn't quite formed to take over those employees. Increased unemployment will increase the pressure for the tools to stand up.
  - TuringTest 9y ago
    What makes you think the new system will be sustainable, or loosely federated? If we go by the known examples of Uber and AirBnB, the new tools produce environments where power is even more concentrated, and independent contractors are squeezed to the lowest viable income levels by competition.
    - TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
      And what are the dynamics of this new system upon which the GP can assume that everyone will find a place in it? How many people has Google Apps for Business already put out of work? I've "gigged" setting up this sort of thing for small companies with Linux, and continue to do it for my medium-sized church. However, this market has changed DRAMATICALLY within the past 5 years. My church payed the money to switch. Even the Fortune 150 I work for has now outsourced its email and messaging, from in-house Notes, to hosted Office365. That represents HUNDREDS of internal admins that are simply no longer needed in one of the largest manufacturers in the country. Even someone with experience and specialized knowledge in basic networking and services (email/file & print/DNS/DHCP) will have a hard time finding "gigs" going forward with Google Apps and Office365 in the market. It's just too easy! A kid who grew up with a smartphone is all you need to set it up. We, as a society, are already leveraging the efforts of a relative tiny few to alleviate the work of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, just in IT services, and this grows exponentially by the year. Twenty years ago, the trade mags were raging on "cloud" everything. It took 10 years to figure out that it just meant "someone else's computer." Now it means a web portal to configure everything you need and take your money. I'm also good at hardware (microcontroller-based machines) and business domain programming. Sure, I figure I'll have work until I'm dead, but I see what's happening with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, and the "internet of things." I know it's crap, but when Joe Blow can buy the junk from Amazon, throw it in his home and office, and it does essentially what it's supposed to do, what's the difference to him? That trend is also going to continue to scale out so that more and more things that would have taken custom hardware and software will be recognized as a market need, and product-ized. At each step, more and more people just aren't needed to make what everyone wants or needs, because of market dynamics like the parent alludes to: all home appliances being made by less than a handful of companies. All entertainment being copyrighted by 4 companies. All IT being controlled by about 6. All cell services in the hands of (essentially) 2. All broadband in 4. On and on it goes. All endeavors trend towards monopoly in a capitalistic system, and I don't see any way for the US government to reign that in at this point, with regulatory capture being operative phrase of the day. I'm glad someone's hopeful about how my grandchildren are going to find their place in society. I'm holding my breath.
RealityNow 9y ago
There's a severe shortage of quality jobs and people who want those jobs. An unbelievably high percentage of Americans are either underemployed or working low paying low quality dead-end jobs. Even if this were a small percentage, the fact that even a single person has to suffer or go homeless due to their not being an employer willing to hire this person for a quality job is reason enough for a "living wage". You suggested that the commenter might be biased against those people and feel above them. Those who oppose a living wage for everyone are the ones who tend to have this attitude because they believe that poverty is the individual's fault.

jpm_sd 9y ago

> People are waking up to the idea that if they can contract themselves out to multiple clients, they can have leverage to extract their actual market rate from employers. The people who are living this lifestyle ("gig"-only, or multiple part time jobs) seem to dislike it. Their income is unpredictable and highly variable, while their expenses are consistent and difficult to meet. Please note that I'm not talking about software development consultants - I'm talking about Uber drivers and service industry hourly workers.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
I agree there's not enough infrastructure yet to make it comfortable.
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  The entire idea of a gig economy is that you get random low paying clients. How could infrastructure ever make this any different from what it is?

TheRealDunkirk 9y ago

> is it possible what you're saying reflects some sort of bias you have about the inherent value of people who are less _____ than you? I'm puzzled by the question. Aren't we already seeing it? When it takes a 4-year degree to do an office clerk's job, doesn't this already indicate that people who can't get a degree are being phased out of the job market? If the employers with menial positions have enough selectivity in the job pool to weed out people without a degree -- for jobs that do NOT require them -- doesn't that, in itself, show that we're running out of jobs for people? I'm being simplistic for the sake of brevity, but it seems to me that there's a whole class of people (non-college-grads) that are being weeded out of the job market as we speak.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
I see it as a failure to capture value. Your belief is based on the perfect market hypothesis ("If there were a way to capture value from those employees someone would be doing it") but the landscape is changing so fast due to software, I just don't think you can make that claim. I think the old systems of employment have mostly run their course and are on the decline, but new systems based on loosely federated networks of independent contractors will replace them. Right now the tools are weak, but will get better. So we're in a kind of gap right now, where the old system has optimized on a local maximum that is leading to unemployment, but the new system hasn't quite formed to take over those employees. Increased unemployment will increase the pressure for the tools to stand up.
- TuringTest 9y ago
  What makes you think the new system will be sustainable, or loosely federated? If we go by the known examples of Uber and AirBnB, the new tools produce environments where power is even more concentrated, and independent contractors are squeezed to the lowest viable income levels by competition.
  - TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
    And what are the dynamics of this new system upon which the GP can assume that everyone will find a place in it? How many people has Google Apps for Business already put out of work? I've "gigged" setting up this sort of thing for small companies with Linux, and continue to do it for my medium-sized church. However, this market has changed DRAMATICALLY within the past 5 years. My church payed the money to switch. Even the Fortune 150 I work for has now outsourced its email and messaging, from in-house Notes, to hosted Office365. That represents HUNDREDS of internal admins that are simply no longer needed in one of the largest manufacturers in the country. Even someone with experience and specialized knowledge in basic networking and services (email/file & print/DNS/DHCP) will have a hard time finding "gigs" going forward with Google Apps and Office365 in the market. It's just too easy! A kid who grew up with a smartphone is all you need to set it up. We, as a society, are already leveraging the efforts of a relative tiny few to alleviate the work of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, just in IT services, and this grows exponentially by the year. Twenty years ago, the trade mags were raging on "cloud" everything. It took 10 years to figure out that it just meant "someone else's computer." Now it means a web portal to configure everything you need and take your money. I'm also good at hardware (microcontroller-based machines) and business domain programming. Sure, I figure I'll have work until I'm dead, but I see what's happening with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, and the "internet of things." I know it's crap, but when Joe Blow can buy the junk from Amazon, throw it in his home and office, and it does essentially what it's supposed to do, what's the difference to him? That trend is also going to continue to scale out so that more and more things that would have taken custom hardware and software will be recognized as a market need, and product-ized. At each step, more and more people just aren't needed to make what everyone wants or needs, because of market dynamics like the parent alludes to: all home appliances being made by less than a handful of companies. All entertainment being copyrighted by 4 companies. All IT being controlled by about 6. All cell services in the hands of (essentially) 2. All broadband in 4. On and on it goes. All endeavors trend towards monopoly in a capitalistic system, and I don't see any way for the US government to reign that in at this point, with regulatory capture being operative phrase of the day. I'm glad someone's hopeful about how my grandchildren are going to find their place in society. I'm holding my breath.

RealityNow 9y ago

There's a severe shortage of quality jobs and people who want those jobs. An unbelievably high percentage of Americans are either underemployed or working low paying low quality dead-end jobs. Even if this were a small percentage, the fact that even a single person has to suffer or go homeless due to their not being an employer willing to hire this person for a quality job is reason enough for a "living wage". You suggested that the commenter might be biased against those people and feel above them. Those who oppose a living wage for everyone are the ones who tend to have this attitude because they believe that poverty is the individual's fault.