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Artificially 'creating' or 'protecting' jobs doesn't help anyone, at least not in the long run. I get that people don't like change, but trying to stand still i

Artificially 'creating' or 'protecting' jobs doesn't help anyone, at least not in the long run. I get that people don't like change, but trying to stand still in a moving world only hurts the people standing still.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
I am curious what you suppose the solutions are if not protectionism and tarrifs. I cannot live in the US on a Chinese factory worker’s wage, and it’s my government’s job to protect me, not the free market. I have said this repeatedly, so forgive the repetition, but this is not progess if we’re all going to live in poverty in slums paycheck to paycheck except for the wealthy.
- ahnick 9y ago
  The long term solution is automate as much as possible and subsidize/invest in education. A robot in china more or less costs the same as a robot in the US. We are never going to be able to compete with the Chinese or other southeast asian countries with human labor costs. The next part of the solution is education and re-education of the labor force. If there is any place where deficit spending can make a real impact it is education. Student loan forgiveness, universal basic income for people going to school (university/vocational/community/etc), monetary incentives for going into highly skilled professions, increased teacher pay, etc. The key is transitioning the workforce to a knowledge based economy. Trying to resurrect the manufacturing jobs of yore is a sure-fire way to slow economic decay.
  - mdorazio 9y ago
    Educate and re-educate toward what exactly? Knowledge economy jobs are being upset by technology almost as fast as manufacturing jobs. See financial adviser and paralegal positions as examples. Your solution also naively assumes that people in their 40s and 50s who have only ever had one type of job can all magically re-train into knowledge economy jobs that may or may not be available where they live. The whole "we just need to re-align the labor force" argument has never made sense to me.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      It happens over time, but there is a lot of collateral damage in the meantime (the luddites never retrained because of the automated looms, they simply died out).
    - ahnick 9y ago
      That's simple. The jobs that are in demand and are needed. Software development, green energy, healthcare, etc. These jobs are not currently being upset by technology, which can easily be seen by the salaries that companies are willing to pay for these skilled workers. If you were correct about the speed of disruption then you should expect lower salaries across the board, but that is not what is being observed. You can cherry pick a few jobs of course, but even your example of paralegals is an exaggeration. (https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/paralegal https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/paralegal) People are very adaptable and given the option of living in poverty or going back to school, I'm pretty sure I know what most people would pick. Say what you will about coding bootcamps, but I'm willing to bet that someone who completes a 15 week course will have much better job prospects (and receive higher pay) than someone who does not. A lot of people just need a little financial help to make the transition and that is where the government can help. There's no magic involved here. Just common sense policy and hard work.
    - dragontamer 9y ago
      Until they make a robot that can change out bedpans at nursing homes and hospitals, nursing is going to be an incredibly in demand field as the Baby Boomers retire, grow old, and require care. Technology seems to be a field where the more tech is created, the more problems come up. There used to be typists who specialized in punching cards until the IDEs and compilers automated away their jobs. Their used to be entire staffs of people who would run programs one-after-the-other, until modern operating systems automated away their jobs. Each time a job is automated away in tech, it seems like 10 more pop up.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    It takes 3 technologists to create a robot that can do the job of hundreds. So if that robot took the job of 100 laborers, then lets say those 100 laborers decided to become technologists... then for every robot made we'd have 3 technologists employed to design robots and 93 technologists unemployed. How is this problem solved? Please don't say universal income. Knowledge has the property of needing only a few people who can fill demand.
    - ahnick 9y ago
      Sure, but as technology develops faster new jobs will emerge; therefore, even though traditional jobs are shrinking newer positions will open up. What we can say for sure is that there will be whole new fields and jobs tomorrow that don't even exist today and those will need workers (human and non-human). I think UBI may be useful to afford people the time to make transitions to these new roles.
      - jabl 9y ago
        Well, things eventually worked out in the Industrial revolution and most people were able to get a decent paying job and enjoy a good standard of living. However, I don't think it's a law of nature that "things will always work out ok". It's not written in stone anywhere that the AI/automation/whatever revolution will result in people having jobs, just different ones than what the Industrial revolution resulted in. What if the future turns out to be that those in control of the capital (automated factories, data for running AI algorithms on, data centres, whatever..) manage to get by without the services of a vast middle class? Will it mean the return of a fabulously wealthy 1% and the rest living in squalor, like the royalty and serfs of bygone eras?
        jopsen 9y ago
        > I don't think it's a law of nature that "things will always work out ok" So long as people like you keep asking the critical questions, we're not lost :) Lots of resources/jobs could be spent making life better for the majority of people. UBI is an extreme example of this. Universal health care, free higher education, solving homelessness, a human justice system, entertainment, could all use more resources. The question is if America has the will to make this happen. As it won't be possible with state-sponsored wealth redistribution. I suspect European countries will be a lot better at finding the balance.
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    I feel strongly that the long term solution is to end our reliance on jobs for individual survival. If we automate the industries that produce what people need for survival, and we find some way of collectivizing those industries (I only support voluntary non governmental collectivization of industry via common share holding schemes), then we can make the marginal cost of living close to zero. To me it seems perfectly reasonable that in 50-100 years people would no longer need to work to stay alive (as the norm). Productivity will continue to grow due to the high output (assisted by automation) of those who continue to work. The limits of a life supported by public infrastructure will still encourage anyone capable of doing useful work to do so, but no one would be cast away and suffering from lack of work. I write about this at: http://tlalexander.com/machine http://tlalexander.com/machine
    - crimsonalucard 9y ago
      Karl Marx once imagined an idealized economy. He called it communism. These theories rarely work in practice. I can't say with confidence whether or not your theory will succeed, but speaking purely from a perspective of probability, what you propose will unlikely be what's ahead for us in the future.
      - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
        Thanks for your comment! Sorry for the downvotes, I see you're actually trying to make good conversation. I think Marx's analysis of capitalism is over emphasized as a cause of the murderous regimes we saw under the "Communist" label in the 20th century. Stalin wanted control of the people, and he knew that Marx was very popular among the people at the time. But while I'm not an expert on all of these things, I don't think Marx advocated for the violent methods we saw used by those brutal regimes who used his name. And remember, Capitalist nations like the US were violent too (millions killed in Vietnam, and for what exactly?), but we don't blame Adam Smith or David Ricardo for those horrors. When I do mention communism, I mean an agreement between people where some good or service it shared amongst them without any individual or individuals laying specific claim to more than their fair share. Families operate this way with food for example, and employers like Google share food freely this way too. I'm advocating that we build robots that are owned by huge groups of people who then share the rewards of the machines freely. So it's "communism" because certain things are shared by the community, but people can still have their own private property and make other choices about what they do. It's a libertarian, non-violent non-coercive way to achieve a sort of voluntary communism for only life's most important goods (as decided by the people who choose to participate in these sharing schemes). I hope that clears it up somewhat!
  - cfmcdonald 9y ago
    Education for what? Do you imagine that there is sufficient demand for technically skilled workers to absorb millions and millions more people? What happens when those jobs are automated as well?
    - ahnick 9y ago
      You can see my reply in another response... IMHO the long long term answer is convergence. Well it's probably either convergence or total eradication by intelligent machines, so I'm going with convergence for now. :-)
  - lazulicurio 9y ago
    While I don't think tariffs are a solution to economic troubles, I have to admit I see a fair amount of irony in your comments about education[1]. > We are never going to be able to compete with the Chinese or other southeast asian countries with human labor costs Immediately followed by: > The next part of the solution is education and re-education of the labor force We educate our labor, they educate their labor; theirs is still cheaper. A knowledge-based economy isn't a panacea; knowledge, like capital, is really cheap to move around (compared to manufactured goods). The GGP says "Artificially 'creating' or 'protecting' jobs doesn't help anyone, at least not in the long run". Having worked in a large company, I find that statement quite amusing. The proportion of "actual" jobs to "artifical" jobs is tremendous. I'm not saying that all those people with "artifical" jobs don't do anything, but from a pure economic efficiency standpoint their work is probably unnecessary. So if successful companies can do it, why not at least entertain some amount of protectionism at a country level? [1] With that said, I think education is important for the long term health of our society. I just don't think education will fix the economic struggles currently facing many residents of the US.
    - ahnick 9y ago
      Knowledge is not cheap to move around. (At least not currently) Information is cheap to move around though. This perhaps is a subtle distinction, but an important one. Maybe eventually when we can directly write knowledge into peoples' heads (something akin to the Matrix) then I'd agree knowledge is cheap, but until that day comes knowledge will remain expensive. Chiefly because to be highly knowledgeable a great deal of time is involved in mastering the relevant information. I actually agree though that Chinese citizens or anyone else can learn the same information, so overtime we can expect these jobs to become cheaper as more and more people learn them. In fact, I think some re-balancing of economic power is inevitable as a knowledge based economy likely favors the country with more brains. (This is why I think the US should actually be encouraging immigration or at least not actively trying to deter it) The one downside China has going for it (which is perhaps a benefit for the US) is the level of totalitarian control that exists with the government. If China was more of a democracy then I think the economic future of the US would be in even more jeoparady. People don't like to be controlled and more information will make people resistant to that control. I don't think a knowledge-based economy is a panacea, but it's much better than what we currently have going and I think UBI will play a role in providing the country-level protectionism you reference.
  - the8472 9y ago
    > The long term solution is automate as much as possible and subsidize/invest in education. Does that take into the account that automation can more easily eat away at the low end of the (broad) IQ requirements of specific jobs? Otherwise it will only benefit some subset of the population and further increase wealth inequalities.
- jayess 9y ago
  The world economy was once 100% subsistence and farming. Now it's, what, 1%? At least in industrialized countries. What happened to those other 99%? OMG they must be living in slums paycheck to paycheck.
  - dane-pgp 9y ago
    Workers moved from agriculture to industrial manual production as farming tools and machinery became more efficient. Then workers moved from industrial manual production to more mentally demanding work like radiologists and web designers as industrial automation became more capable. Now AI is taking over these more mind-based tasks. The onus is on you to explain which entirely new sectors of the economy are suddenly going to spring into existence to provide jobs for people whose skills can't compete with those of ever more capable machines.
    - perl4ever 9y ago
      I'm not sure why new sectors need to suddenly "spring into existence" as though we are facing an inflection point. Automation is something that's been happening for hundreds of years, and any automation that people could do last year was done already. I don't understand why there is this feeling that there is a backlog and therefore automation is sneaking up on us to put everybody out of work next week. Perhaps there is too much handwaving about the "technological singularity".
      - fwsgonzo 9y ago
        There is a story on HN right now about how 10 000 people lost their jobs at Foxconn, being replaced by robotics. If the evidence is "evident" shouldn't we proceed to look for solutions?
        perl4ever 9y ago
        I don't understand the relevance of your response to my post, and wonder if you meant to reply to a parent. We are in the thread about Foxconn, talking about implications. My point was that at a macro level, automation seems to be a steady process that's gone on for much longer than any of us have been alive. But right now, it seems fashionable to assume a sudden discontinuous increase in the rate of automation is right around the corner. This only makes sense to me if there is a lot of "low hanging fruit" that people have not been automating until now. Which I think is implausible.
- oneplane 9y ago
  Well, don't work in a factory, and don't depend on a position as if it's going to be there forever. It might sound strange or maybe harsh, but it's not some sort of 'given' that you are going to learn how to do a thing and then you can just lean back, stop learning, and do the thing forever. You are born, learn a bunch of stuff to behave like other humans so you can live together instead of being dead, and then you select an initial training or education. Once you finish that, you usually start trading your knowledge and time for money. While you are doing that, you can look around, watch the world changing, change yourself, and maybe even arrange more change in your environment (i.e. by applying knowledge, skill and creativity to create something that wasn't there before). This process continues in an endless loop until you die (independent of doing something that would be called a 'job'). There is no case where you get born, learn some basic stuff on how to be a human, and then stop and pretend to be a basic automaton doing the same thing over and over until you stop existing (which is what protectionism, tariffs and artificial jobs boil down to at some point).
crimsonalucard 9y ago
>I get that people don't like change, but trying to stand still in a moving world only hurts the people standing still. Eventually the world will move so fast that all of us might as well be standing still. The factory worker that this initiative affects is a just the first victim. He is a representation of the impending wave that is to consume all of us. As the technology we create cannibalizes our jobs where does the world go from here? Many theorists talk about crazy things like universal basic income with machines as our servants. However, we all know that these theories rarely ever end up fitting the ideal fantasmical utopias we imagine. The future is unknown. I feel remorse that people are losing their jobs and I sympathise with individuals taking measures to protect these people with 'job protection' or 'artificial job creation.' When technology inevitably cannibalizes your career, technology will be moving at such a horrifying velocity that no human, programmer, engineer, scientist technologist let alone a factory worker will be able to keep up. During this time not only would you want job protection, you'd be on your knees begging for it.
- stale2002 9y ago
  People have been making these predictions, that machines are going to take away all of our jobs, for 'literally' hundreds of years. So, have those doomsday scenarios come true? Or, instead, is the world a much much better place because nobody is spending 80 hours a week working on a farm to feed themselves?
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    Dude. Those factory workers just lost their jobs. Machines literally took their jobs. It's not a prediction, the article literally said it happened. >So, have those doomsday scenarios come true? Or, instead, is the world a much much better place because nobody is spending 80 hours a week working on a farm to feed themselves? I'd say that technology has benefited society but has also widened the wealth inequality gap. Technology has benefited us but it is now harder to be employed in jobs that distribute wealth more evenly. My guess in what is to come with technology is that there will be a few mega rich elite people who own that technological real estate while almost everyone else works multiple menial jobs to barely get by.
crimsonalucard 9y ago
We as technologists are the last to fall and the first to blame others for not being able to keep up.
- darawk 9y ago
  Nobody is blaming anyone. It just is what it is.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    Have you been paying attention to politics lately? Blame is alive and well, and I for one don’t want to put up against a wall by rioters because of the worst of us. The blame is real, whether it’s fair and accurately placed being another question.
    - darawk 9y ago
      Perhaps, but the grandparent comment was not engaging in any sort of blame. So, i'm not sure what relevance politics broadly has to my comment.
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    Sounded like blame to me. The person was attributing it to people who "don't like change" while the reality is that those people can't change even if they wanted to.
    - darawk 9y ago
      He said "I get that people don't like change". That isn't apportioning blame. It's just recognizing a fact.
- oneplane 9y ago
  It's not about blame, it's about trying to stop a tsunami with an umbrella.
golemiprague 9y ago
But also artificially bringing illegal immigrants to do a job doesn't help anyone. There is certain subset of the population who can do certain type of jobs. Those people need all our help but instead we pit imported cheap labor against them so we can have cheaper services and products. There are enough things that must be done locally, require simple or sometimes sophisticated labor work and will not be replaced by robots very soon. The Chinese competition would not be an issue if we didn't import so many people to do jobs here which should go to existing Americans.
afterburner 9y ago
We still need social benefits to keep up with potentially devastating changes in society.
- adventured 9y ago
  We have social benefits. The US spends $4.x trillion every year on social programs, at the local+state+federal levels. The US has the world's largest welfare and social entitlement programs, and some of the richest per capita as well (only rivaled by elite Scandinavian nations). About 65% of all US Government spending is going to entitlements at this point. ~80% is going to entitlements + welfare programs. That percentage will continue to increase over the next decade. At the current rate of growth, entitlement spending alone will consume all US Government spending in about 30 years. Entitlement, welfare programs, and defense spending are basically crowding out all other government spending, pushing the "other" spending toward an ever smaller share of the budget (which is why US infrastructure is in such desperate need of investment). You can certainly argue we need to be a lot smarter in our spending allocation. The biggest problem the US has is not that it isn't spending, it's that the cost of these systems is astronomically out of line with what is actually sustainable (eg the US healthcare system at all levels).
  - murftown 9y ago
    > The US spends $4.x trillion every year on social programs Source? > About 65% of all US Government spending is going to entitlements at this point Source? And does this include military? > At the current rate of growth, entitlement spending alone will consume all US Government spending in about 30 years Source? And is this just the "current rate of growth" frozen in place or does it take into account ways that that rate of growth has been changing as well?
    - antidamage 9y ago
      At least part of the problem there is that once you give people that social welfare they're expected to pay for ridiculously high insurance costs. Get rid of the rich-person welfare that comes in the form of bloated medical and insurance costs and your social welfare budget for the poor will plummet. The way it's organised now is that your government gives the poorest some money while the rich complain incessantly, then the rich siphon it off for themselves.
IntronExon 9y ago
If the alternative isn’t social and economic measures to help poeple out of a job, then what you’re saying is just a slightly glossy version of “fuck ‘em.” Telling people to just let “progress” roll over them without alternatives is nasty, useless, and counterproductive.
crdoconnor 9y ago
Protectionism is exactly how China ended up with > 1 million Foxconn jobs in the first place. Did that not help China in the long run? Is China worse off than 30 years ago?
- dao- 9y ago
  A million pretty shitty jobs by Western standards. China is an advanced developing country with low wages. Foxconn will have to pay higher wages in the US, and thus the pressure for automation will be even higher. The US, an industrial country, adopting China's tactics from a few decades ago, in today's environment, seems quite foolish.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >A million pretty shitty jobs by Western standards. You'd be surprised -- especially after you factor in relative cost of life.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    Building iPhones is way better than most American low wage jobs - driving Ubers, flipping burgers, etc.
coldtea 9y ago
>Artificially 'creating' or 'protecting' jobs doesn't help anyone, at least not in the long run Artificial jobs have helped people for half a century or more. The whole modern office jobs (and services sector) has been built up on them...

toomuchtodo 9y ago

I am curious what you suppose the solutions are if not protectionism and tarrifs. I cannot live in the US on a Chinese factory worker’s wage, and it’s my government’s job to protect me, not the free market. I have said this repeatedly, so forgive the repetition, but this is not progess if we’re all going to live in poverty in slums paycheck to paycheck except for the wealthy.

ahnick 9y ago
The long term solution is automate as much as possible and subsidize/invest in education. A robot in china more or less costs the same as a robot in the US. We are never going to be able to compete with the Chinese or other southeast asian countries with human labor costs. The next part of the solution is education and re-education of the labor force. If there is any place where deficit spending can make a real impact it is education. Student loan forgiveness, universal basic income for people going to school (university/vocational/community/etc), monetary incentives for going into highly skilled professions, increased teacher pay, etc. The key is transitioning the workforce to a knowledge based economy. Trying to resurrect the manufacturing jobs of yore is a sure-fire way to slow economic decay.
- mdorazio 9y ago
  Educate and re-educate toward what exactly? Knowledge economy jobs are being upset by technology almost as fast as manufacturing jobs. See financial adviser and paralegal positions as examples. Your solution also naively assumes that people in their 40s and 50s who have only ever had one type of job can all magically re-train into knowledge economy jobs that may or may not be available where they live. The whole "we just need to re-align the labor force" argument has never made sense to me.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    It happens over time, but there is a lot of collateral damage in the meantime (the luddites never retrained because of the automated looms, they simply died out).
  - ahnick 9y ago
    That's simple. The jobs that are in demand and are needed. Software development, green energy, healthcare, etc. These jobs are not currently being upset by technology, which can easily be seen by the salaries that companies are willing to pay for these skilled workers. If you were correct about the speed of disruption then you should expect lower salaries across the board, but that is not what is being observed. You can cherry pick a few jobs of course, but even your example of paralegals is an exaggeration. (https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/paralegal https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/paralegal) People are very adaptable and given the option of living in poverty or going back to school, I'm pretty sure I know what most people would pick. Say what you will about coding bootcamps, but I'm willing to bet that someone who completes a 15 week course will have much better job prospects (and receive higher pay) than someone who does not. A lot of people just need a little financial help to make the transition and that is where the government can help. There's no magic involved here. Just common sense policy and hard work.
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    Until they make a robot that can change out bedpans at nursing homes and hospitals, nursing is going to be an incredibly in demand field as the Baby Boomers retire, grow old, and require care. Technology seems to be a field where the more tech is created, the more problems come up. There used to be typists who specialized in punching cards until the IDEs and compilers automated away their jobs. Their used to be entire staffs of people who would run programs one-after-the-other, until modern operating systems automated away their jobs. Each time a job is automated away in tech, it seems like 10 more pop up.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- crimsonalucard 9y ago
  It takes 3 technologists to create a robot that can do the job of hundreds. So if that robot took the job of 100 laborers, then lets say those 100 laborers decided to become technologists... then for every robot made we'd have 3 technologists employed to design robots and 93 technologists unemployed. How is this problem solved? Please don't say universal income. Knowledge has the property of needing only a few people who can fill demand.
  - ahnick 9y ago
    Sure, but as technology develops faster new jobs will emerge; therefore, even though traditional jobs are shrinking newer positions will open up. What we can say for sure is that there will be whole new fields and jobs tomorrow that don't even exist today and those will need workers (human and non-human). I think UBI may be useful to afford people the time to make transitions to these new roles.
    - jabl 9y ago
      Well, things eventually worked out in the Industrial revolution and most people were able to get a decent paying job and enjoy a good standard of living. However, I don't think it's a law of nature that "things will always work out ok". It's not written in stone anywhere that the AI/automation/whatever revolution will result in people having jobs, just different ones than what the Industrial revolution resulted in. What if the future turns out to be that those in control of the capital (automated factories, data for running AI algorithms on, data centres, whatever..) manage to get by without the services of a vast middle class? Will it mean the return of a fabulously wealthy 1% and the rest living in squalor, like the royalty and serfs of bygone eras?
      - jopsen 9y ago
        > I don't think it's a law of nature that "things will always work out ok" So long as people like you keep asking the critical questions, we're not lost :) Lots of resources/jobs could be spent making life better for the majority of people. UBI is an extreme example of this. Universal health care, free higher education, solving homelessness, a human justice system, entertainment, could all use more resources. The question is if America has the will to make this happen. As it won't be possible with state-sponsored wealth redistribution. I suspect European countries will be a lot better at finding the balance.
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  I feel strongly that the long term solution is to end our reliance on jobs for individual survival. If we automate the industries that produce what people need for survival, and we find some way of collectivizing those industries (I only support voluntary non governmental collectivization of industry via common share holding schemes), then we can make the marginal cost of living close to zero. To me it seems perfectly reasonable that in 50-100 years people would no longer need to work to stay alive (as the norm). Productivity will continue to grow due to the high output (assisted by automation) of those who continue to work. The limits of a life supported by public infrastructure will still encourage anyone capable of doing useful work to do so, but no one would be cast away and suffering from lack of work. I write about this at: http://tlalexander.com/machine http://tlalexander.com/machine
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    Karl Marx once imagined an idealized economy. He called it communism. These theories rarely work in practice. I can't say with confidence whether or not your theory will succeed, but speaking purely from a perspective of probability, what you propose will unlikely be what's ahead for us in the future.
    - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
      Thanks for your comment! Sorry for the downvotes, I see you're actually trying to make good conversation. I think Marx's analysis of capitalism is over emphasized as a cause of the murderous regimes we saw under the "Communist" label in the 20th century. Stalin wanted control of the people, and he knew that Marx was very popular among the people at the time. But while I'm not an expert on all of these things, I don't think Marx advocated for the violent methods we saw used by those brutal regimes who used his name. And remember, Capitalist nations like the US were violent too (millions killed in Vietnam, and for what exactly?), but we don't blame Adam Smith or David Ricardo for those horrors. When I do mention communism, I mean an agreement between people where some good or service it shared amongst them without any individual or individuals laying specific claim to more than their fair share. Families operate this way with food for example, and employers like Google share food freely this way too. I'm advocating that we build robots that are owned by huge groups of people who then share the rewards of the machines freely. So it's "communism" because certain things are shared by the community, but people can still have their own private property and make other choices about what they do. It's a libertarian, non-violent non-coercive way to achieve a sort of voluntary communism for only life's most important goods (as decided by the people who choose to participate in these sharing schemes). I hope that clears it up somewhat!
- cfmcdonald 9y ago
  Education for what? Do you imagine that there is sufficient demand for technically skilled workers to absorb millions and millions more people? What happens when those jobs are automated as well?
  - ahnick 9y ago
    You can see my reply in another response... IMHO the long long term answer is convergence. Well it's probably either convergence or total eradication by intelligent machines, so I'm going with convergence for now. :-)
- lazulicurio 9y ago
  While I don't think tariffs are a solution to economic troubles, I have to admit I see a fair amount of irony in your comments about education[1]. > We are never going to be able to compete with the Chinese or other southeast asian countries with human labor costs Immediately followed by: > The next part of the solution is education and re-education of the labor force We educate our labor, they educate their labor; theirs is still cheaper. A knowledge-based economy isn't a panacea; knowledge, like capital, is really cheap to move around (compared to manufactured goods). The GGP says "Artificially 'creating' or 'protecting' jobs doesn't help anyone, at least not in the long run". Having worked in a large company, I find that statement quite amusing. The proportion of "actual" jobs to "artifical" jobs is tremendous. I'm not saying that all those people with "artifical" jobs don't do anything, but from a pure economic efficiency standpoint their work is probably unnecessary. So if successful companies can do it, why not at least entertain some amount of protectionism at a country level? [1] With that said, I think education is important for the long term health of our society. I just don't think education will fix the economic struggles currently facing many residents of the US.
  - ahnick 9y ago
    Knowledge is not cheap to move around. (At least not currently) Information is cheap to move around though. This perhaps is a subtle distinction, but an important one. Maybe eventually when we can directly write knowledge into peoples' heads (something akin to the Matrix) then I'd agree knowledge is cheap, but until that day comes knowledge will remain expensive. Chiefly because to be highly knowledgeable a great deal of time is involved in mastering the relevant information. I actually agree though that Chinese citizens or anyone else can learn the same information, so overtime we can expect these jobs to become cheaper as more and more people learn them. In fact, I think some re-balancing of economic power is inevitable as a knowledge based economy likely favors the country with more brains. (This is why I think the US should actually be encouraging immigration or at least not actively trying to deter it) The one downside China has going for it (which is perhaps a benefit for the US) is the level of totalitarian control that exists with the government. If China was more of a democracy then I think the economic future of the US would be in even more jeoparady. People don't like to be controlled and more information will make people resistant to that control. I don't think a knowledge-based economy is a panacea, but it's much better than what we currently have going and I think UBI will play a role in providing the country-level protectionism you reference.
- the8472 9y ago
  > The long term solution is automate as much as possible and subsidize/invest in education. Does that take into the account that automation can more easily eat away at the low end of the (broad) IQ requirements of specific jobs? Otherwise it will only benefit some subset of the population and further increase wealth inequalities.
jayess 9y ago
The world economy was once 100% subsistence and farming. Now it's, what, 1%? At least in industrialized countries. What happened to those other 99%? OMG they must be living in slums paycheck to paycheck.
- dane-pgp 9y ago
  Workers moved from agriculture to industrial manual production as farming tools and machinery became more efficient. Then workers moved from industrial manual production to more mentally demanding work like radiologists and web designers as industrial automation became more capable. Now AI is taking over these more mind-based tasks. The onus is on you to explain which entirely new sectors of the economy are suddenly going to spring into existence to provide jobs for people whose skills can't compete with those of ever more capable machines.
  - perl4ever 9y ago
    I'm not sure why new sectors need to suddenly "spring into existence" as though we are facing an inflection point. Automation is something that's been happening for hundreds of years, and any automation that people could do last year was done already. I don't understand why there is this feeling that there is a backlog and therefore automation is sneaking up on us to put everybody out of work next week. Perhaps there is too much handwaving about the "technological singularity".
    - fwsgonzo 9y ago
      There is a story on HN right now about how 10 000 people lost their jobs at Foxconn, being replaced by robotics. If the evidence is "evident" shouldn't we proceed to look for solutions?
      - perl4ever 9y ago
        I don't understand the relevance of your response to my post, and wonder if you meant to reply to a parent. We are in the thread about Foxconn, talking about implications. My point was that at a macro level, automation seems to be a steady process that's gone on for much longer than any of us have been alive. But right now, it seems fashionable to assume a sudden discontinuous increase in the rate of automation is right around the corner. This only makes sense to me if there is a lot of "low hanging fruit" that people have not been automating until now. Which I think is implausible.
oneplane 9y ago
Well, don't work in a factory, and don't depend on a position as if it's going to be there forever. It might sound strange or maybe harsh, but it's not some sort of 'given' that you are going to learn how to do a thing and then you can just lean back, stop learning, and do the thing forever. You are born, learn a bunch of stuff to behave like other humans so you can live together instead of being dead, and then you select an initial training or education. Once you finish that, you usually start trading your knowledge and time for money. While you are doing that, you can look around, watch the world changing, change yourself, and maybe even arrange more change in your environment (i.e. by applying knowledge, skill and creativity to create something that wasn't there before). This process continues in an endless loop until you die (independent of doing something that would be called a 'job'). There is no case where you get born, learn some basic stuff on how to be a human, and then stop and pretend to be a basic automaton doing the same thing over and over until you stop existing (which is what protectionism, tariffs and artificial jobs boil down to at some point).

crimsonalucard 9y ago

>I get that people don't like change, but trying to stand still in a moving world only hurts the people standing still. Eventually the world will move so fast that all of us might as well be standing still. The factory worker that this initiative affects is a just the first victim. He is a representation of the impending wave that is to consume all of us. As the technology we create cannibalizes our jobs where does the world go from here? Many theorists talk about crazy things like universal basic income with machines as our servants. However, we all know that these theories rarely ever end up fitting the ideal fantasmical utopias we imagine. The future is unknown. I feel remorse that people are losing their jobs and I sympathise with individuals taking measures to protect these people with 'job protection' or 'artificial job creation.' When technology inevitably cannibalizes your career, technology will be moving at such a horrifying velocity that no human, programmer, engineer, scientist technologist let alone a factory worker will be able to keep up. During this time not only would you want job protection, you'd be on your knees begging for it.

stale2002 9y ago
People have been making these predictions, that machines are going to take away all of our jobs, for 'literally' hundreds of years. So, have those doomsday scenarios come true? Or, instead, is the world a much much better place because nobody is spending 80 hours a week working on a farm to feed themselves?
- crimsonalucard 9y ago
  Dude. Those factory workers just lost their jobs. Machines literally took their jobs. It's not a prediction, the article literally said it happened. >So, have those doomsday scenarios come true? Or, instead, is the world a much much better place because nobody is spending 80 hours a week working on a farm to feed themselves? I'd say that technology has benefited society but has also widened the wealth inequality gap. Technology has benefited us but it is now harder to be employed in jobs that distribute wealth more evenly. My guess in what is to come with technology is that there will be a few mega rich elite people who own that technological real estate while almost everyone else works multiple menial jobs to barely get by.

crimsonalucard 9y ago

We as technologists are the last to fall and the first to blame others for not being able to keep up.

darawk 9y ago
Nobody is blaming anyone. It just is what it is.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  Have you been paying attention to politics lately? Blame is alive and well, and I for one don’t want to put up against a wall by rioters because of the worst of us. The blame is real, whether it’s fair and accurately placed being another question.
  - darawk 9y ago
    Perhaps, but the grandparent comment was not engaging in any sort of blame. So, i'm not sure what relevance politics broadly has to my comment.
- crimsonalucard 9y ago
  Sounded like blame to me. The person was attributing it to people who "don't like change" while the reality is that those people can't change even if they wanted to.
  - darawk 9y ago
    He said "I get that people don't like change". That isn't apportioning blame. It's just recognizing a fact.
oneplane 9y ago
It's not about blame, it's about trying to stop a tsunami with an umbrella.

golemiprague 9y ago

But also artificially bringing illegal immigrants to do a job doesn't help anyone. There is certain subset of the population who can do certain type of jobs. Those people need all our help but instead we pit imported cheap labor against them so we can have cheaper services and products. There are enough things that must be done locally, require simple or sometimes sophisticated labor work and will not be replaced by robots very soon. The Chinese competition would not be an issue if we didn't import so many people to do jobs here which should go to existing Americans.

afterburner 9y ago

We still need social benefits to keep up with potentially devastating changes in society.

adventured 9y ago
We have social benefits. The US spends $4.x trillion every year on social programs, at the local+state+federal levels. The US has the world's largest welfare and social entitlement programs, and some of the richest per capita as well (only rivaled by elite Scandinavian nations). About 65% of all US Government spending is going to entitlements at this point. ~80% is going to entitlements + welfare programs. That percentage will continue to increase over the next decade. At the current rate of growth, entitlement spending alone will consume all US Government spending in about 30 years. Entitlement, welfare programs, and defense spending are basically crowding out all other government spending, pushing the "other" spending toward an ever smaller share of the budget (which is why US infrastructure is in such desperate need of investment). You can certainly argue we need to be a lot smarter in our spending allocation. The biggest problem the US has is not that it isn't spending, it's that the cost of these systems is astronomically out of line with what is actually sustainable (eg the US healthcare system at all levels).
- murftown 9y ago
  > The US spends $4.x trillion every year on social programs Source? > About 65% of all US Government spending is going to entitlements at this point Source? And does this include military? > At the current rate of growth, entitlement spending alone will consume all US Government spending in about 30 years Source? And is this just the "current rate of growth" frozen in place or does it take into account ways that that rate of growth has been changing as well?
  - antidamage 9y ago
    At least part of the problem there is that once you give people that social welfare they're expected to pay for ridiculously high insurance costs. Get rid of the rich-person welfare that comes in the form of bloated medical and insurance costs and your social welfare budget for the poor will plummet. The way it's organised now is that your government gives the poorest some money while the rich complain incessantly, then the rich siphon it off for themselves.

IntronExon 9y ago

If the alternative isn’t social and economic measures to help poeple out of a job, then what you’re saying is just a slightly glossy version of “fuck ‘em.” Telling people to just let “progress” roll over them without alternatives is nasty, useless, and counterproductive.

crdoconnor 9y ago

Protectionism is exactly how China ended up with > 1 million Foxconn jobs in the first place. Did that not help China in the long run? Is China worse off than 30 years ago?

dao- 9y ago
A million pretty shitty jobs by Western standards. China is an advanced developing country with low wages. Foxconn will have to pay higher wages in the US, and thus the pressure for automation will be even higher. The US, an industrial country, adopting China's tactics from a few decades ago, in today's environment, seems quite foolish.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >A million pretty shitty jobs by Western standards. You'd be surprised -- especially after you factor in relative cost of life.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  Building iPhones is way better than most American low wage jobs - driving Ubers, flipping burgers, etc.

coldtea 9y ago

>Artificially 'creating' or 'protecting' jobs doesn't help anyone, at least not in the long run Artificial jobs have helped people for half a century or more. The whole modern office jobs (and services sector) has been built up on them...