6 ms·

if only most of the US labor force didn't rely on jobs in that sector...

dekhn 7y ago
If only manual laborers in 1850s England didn't rely on jobs that were replaced by machines (England went on to be far wealthier and provide far more opportunities to its people after the industrial revolution).
- oarsinsync 7y ago
  The information revolution appears to be having the opposite effect, with massive productivity gains resulting in fewer employees needed. One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country have been 'left behind' economically. This isn't only in England, but happening in other countries too (e.g. the USA). The surge in 'nostalgic'[0] voting (Brexit and MAGA spring to mind, respectively) is one of the outcomes of that occurring. I'm hoping I'm wrong, and I'm hoping there's something around the corner that changes the situation specific to the information revolution, rather than an outside force (like say, a virus causing a massive shift in demographics), but the way things look right now, that's not a given. [0] I'm deliberately ignoring the more controversial and/or negative aspects to those voting choices, as that would derail the conversation
  - allemagne 7y ago
    >One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country have been 'left behind' economically. That's the whole point of the comment you're replying to. This isn't new or unique to recent technological advancements. This is always the case when new technology displaces existing structures.
  - dekhn 7y ago
    I think in the short term, the information revolution appears similar to the industrial revolution: a category of jobs become obsolete, but long term, the economy grows, and adds many more categories of jobs.
    - jfengel 7y ago
      The possibility that it won't merits consideration. It's entirely possible that new industries will spring up, but it would be dangerous to rely on that and plan as if it were certain. Even the "long tail" that people predicted for artists to make a living in a widely-connected economy has thus far largely failed to materialize. The fact that I can't imagine it is no proof that it won't happen, of course. But I feel that we've gotten lucky in the past, and I hate depending on my luck.
      - dekhn 7y ago
        i guess if you take this idea to its logical conclusion, we will end up in a post-scarcity economy where nobody "needs" to work, yet all their needs are met. So far, it's unclear whether this outcome will occur, and I do agree it's unclear what the outcomes of the information revolution will be, in terms of overall economic comfort of individuals.
    - jbay808 7y ago
      This doesn't seem to be guaranteed by any law of economics, though. Despite the massive economic growth since the 19th century, the absolute number of job openings for horses has decreased substantially.
    - zepto 7y ago
      The logic seems to be: B followed A once before, therefore B always follows A.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      > but long term, the economy grows, and adds many more categories of jobs. Perhaps, but if history is any guide, that "long term" will span over multiple generations. That is of no help to those being hurt now.
- femiagbabiaka 7y ago
  The Industrial Revolution was a terrible period for workers up until the labor movement began fighting for putting basic protections in place. Lots of people got very wealthy though, that's for sure. This view of history as immutable, with the ends always meeting the means is the sort of thinking that I believe is holding us back as a society. Researchers are still studying the impact that the industrial revolution had on not just the environment, but also the mental health of the descendants of the working class in Europe: https://hbr.org/2018/03/research-the-industrial-revolution-left-psychological-scars-that-can-still-be-seen-today https://hbr.org/2018/03/research-the-industrial-revolution-l.... We can and should do better.
  - baryphonic 7y ago
    Compared to what? Sure, it was awful compared to working at Google with unlimited snacks and all of that. Compared to being a peasant subsistence farmer, it wasn't so bad.
    - nullorundefined 7y ago
      it was literally misery on scales that hadn't been seen before. children were expected to work in horrible and abusive conditions. everyone was working very long and gruelling days for next to nothing and had no way to protect themselves from exploitation.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        How is that different from subsistence farming?
        buckminster 7y ago
        It was just as bad only with industrial accidents and diseases on top.
        baryphonic 7y ago
- mcguire 7y ago
  ...and a century or so of civil unrest, bomb-throwing anarchists, communism, and other entertaining side-effects.
- bnjms 7y ago
  I see this all the time as the response to the argument that people rely on these jobs. The difference will be if, like England, the replacement jobs are more valuable by having greater leverage and impact. Or, as I suspect, the replacement jobs are fewer with similar or less value. I suspect we will see the latter pushing our lower classes into a tighter and lower band of incomes. As far as I can see many of the jobs we do these days don't provide any real value. In this case cashier doesn't provide real value so good riddance. But I'm not confident we'll find ourselves in a better place in the future. Also, somehow we undervalue manual labor with some skill and unions don't seem to work as well for non-factory/hospital/plant jobs.
- baryphonic 7y ago
  On the whole, I agree with your sentiment. I think the one difference is that despite the 1850s UK having (some) protectionism and (loads of) imperialism, they didn't have massive bureaucracies forbidding everyone from doing everything without permission. This is not actually a problem of technology but of governance. And we should keep in mind that this kind of improvement would make retail workers much more productive as well as the industry more sustainable.
- rjkennedy98 7y ago
  > England went on to be far wealthier and provide far more opportunities to its people after the industrial revolution To compare this to the Industrial Revolution is just wrong. Period. Just as comparing today to the Gilded Age is wrong. Those were period of massive productivity growth (and also wage growth) despite being periods of high inequality. On the contrary, we are in an age of tiny productivity growth and almost no wage growth. We have been through a decade with basically zero interest rates (or negative interest rates in parts of the world). To say, we've been through this before and we are all going to be better off for it, is just not true.
partiallypro 7y ago
Creative destruction
shadowgovt 7y ago
I thought most of the US labor force relied on trucking?
- femiagbabiaka 7y ago
  trucking is important for sure, but retail/food industries account for a lot more: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-sector.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-...
Frost1x 7y ago
A lot of business strategy these days tend to forget that their labor are often their customers in a somewhat symbiotic relationship. This was part of the realization Henry Ford had when developing Ford motors and during the heydays of labor rights. Cut your labor and you strangle your customer base. Now we're seeing a tendency of businesses focusing on more wealthy clients, luxury goods, etc. Some modern mall strategies are gearing at primarily targeting luxury stores vs appealing to the masses because the mass labor force purses are growing ever tighter (mainly because they're emptying). Seems like a natural progression as the "wealth trickle" progresses more and more to a drought and pools up at the top in guarded reservoirs away from the majority: the labor force. It's one thing to automate away tasks people don't want to do and replace those tasks with tasks people do want to do (and get paid for). It's an entirely different story when you eliminate work and provide no alternatives, displacing large segments of the population, then simply accumulate the labor cost savings for your business and chief investors while stagnating growth. Most counter arguments to this trend point at historic technological shifts where new industry popped up to supply alternative means of living for the labor force. This makes an assumption that the change is the same and ignores the trends, hand waving it away in ambiguous complexity and proposing we play the experiment out. Most wanting to play the experiment out have little to lose and much to gain. The other side have a lot to lose and relatively little to gain. We're seeing a lot more of businesses pooling cash and asset reserves and not reinvesting them back into society and people are starting to get a bit cranky about it.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Yes but it's a tragedy of the commons / prisoner's dilemma issue. If your store employs 1% of the people in a given area, and therefore also 1% of your customers, you can't prevent the other 99% from laying off their own workforce and affecting you, unless you collude with them somehow. On the other hand, increasing your workers' pay will give you no meaningful sales benefit as it can at most affect that 1%.
  - Frost1x 7y ago
    I agree with your point and it seems (to me) to be a natural progression/emergent behavior of the current implementation of capitalism we subscribe to. It could potentially be even more axiomatic than that and an unavoidable result of core/firmly held beliefs with trade systems that there will always be those to exploit the weaker (in an economic system) to the point where the system becomes unsustainable. It often reminds me of agent based models of predator/prey systems where ultimately, the incorrect balance of predators, their efficiencies and successes result in a systematic collapse where the predators starve themselves to death by not allowing the prey to procreate and gather resources necessary that predators ultimately survive on. In this case, if the wealthy (predators) don't allow the labor force (prey) to collect resources, create value, etc. before snatching added value up ('eating' if you'll humor the idea), they ultimately end up with no future value added from labor force (prey) because the labor doesn't have resources anymore to add value. From your example following the same basic model, if some of the predators allow themselves to refrain from eating too much and allow the prey to better maintain stable set resources through self control, nothing stops their competitors (other prey) from focusing on their short term gains with no control (yum, more dinner). Ultimately, those predators looking at maintaining a long term stable system will starve if his/her competitors don't share the same views and are allowed to follow the more basic rules. It seems to me, you have to introduce artificial rules into the system to maintain the system (e.g., government regulation or new fundamental underlying rules to the dynamics). Obviously, the real relationship is far more complex than this view and this model has many shortcomings, but it seems to provide at least some potentially valuable insight to the situation, IMHO.
hanniabu 7y ago
Cue the typical "it'll be fine, technology will create more jobs that we just can't predict yet" response that is no longer relevant.
dazc 7y ago
In the UK, many shop floor staff in supermarkets work part-time and it's been designed that way to exploit the benefit system. Very few traditional 40 hour week jobs are actually available but lots at 16 hours or so with lots of unfilled vacancies.
vessenes 7y ago
This reminds me of the Aberhart quote recommending airports be built with spoons and forks, not modern machines, if a jobs program is what's required. Perhaps we could add more jobs by having people hand total receipts and the computers could just check them for accuracy :) My own perspective is that it is basic reality that a large number of low-skill jobs will be automated over the next 10 to 20 years. Rather than complain, I prefer to think about what society can and should do about it. In my case, I don't believe that we should create makework low skills jobs to 'solve' this 'problem' of humans no longer being needed to run cash registers though; I have a hard time imagining most people preferring to run a cash register as their ideal day job.
- ar_lan 7y ago
  I don't understand the notion of moving backward in order to keep jobs for people. I get why people say they want that (fear of losing their jobs), but I don't really understand the logical progression to getting there and I believe its influenced by: a) Practically, this imposes a big problem to future society if low-skill jobs are gone. b) I'm definitely privileged to have a "high-skill" job so my fear factor here is irrelevant. That said - if this were really a concern people were serious about, I don't see why we don't just ban cars/trains/airplanes/etc. and have caravans to do all trading once again. It would create tons of jobs all in the name of regress.
  - femiagbabiaka 7y ago
    believing that the only options available to us are ruining lives or technical regression is a pretty nihilistic worldview.

If only manual laborers in 1850s England didn't rely on jobs that were replaced by machines (England went on to be far wealthier and provide far more opportunities to its people after the industrial revolution).

oarsinsync 7y ago
The information revolution appears to be having the opposite effect, with massive productivity gains resulting in fewer employees needed. One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country have been 'left behind' economically. This isn't only in England, but happening in other countries too (e.g. the USA). The surge in 'nostalgic'[0] voting (Brexit and MAGA spring to mind, respectively) is one of the outcomes of that occurring. I'm hoping I'm wrong, and I'm hoping there's something around the corner that changes the situation specific to the information revolution, rather than an outside force (like say, a virus causing a massive shift in demographics), but the way things look right now, that's not a given. [0] I'm deliberately ignoring the more controversial and/or negative aspects to those voting choices, as that would derail the conversation
- allemagne 7y ago
  >One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country have been 'left behind' economically. That's the whole point of the comment you're replying to. This isn't new or unique to recent technological advancements. This is always the case when new technology displaces existing structures.
- dekhn 7y ago
  I think in the short term, the information revolution appears similar to the industrial revolution: a category of jobs become obsolete, but long term, the economy grows, and adds many more categories of jobs.
  - jfengel 7y ago
    The possibility that it won't merits consideration. It's entirely possible that new industries will spring up, but it would be dangerous to rely on that and plan as if it were certain. Even the "long tail" that people predicted for artists to make a living in a widely-connected economy has thus far largely failed to materialize. The fact that I can't imagine it is no proof that it won't happen, of course. But I feel that we've gotten lucky in the past, and I hate depending on my luck.
    - dekhn 7y ago
      i guess if you take this idea to its logical conclusion, we will end up in a post-scarcity economy where nobody "needs" to work, yet all their needs are met. So far, it's unclear whether this outcome will occur, and I do agree it's unclear what the outcomes of the information revolution will be, in terms of overall economic comfort of individuals.
  - jbay808 7y ago
    This doesn't seem to be guaranteed by any law of economics, though. Despite the massive economic growth since the 19th century, the absolute number of job openings for horses has decreased substantially.
  - zepto 7y ago
    The logic seems to be: B followed A once before, therefore B always follows A.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > but long term, the economy grows, and adds many more categories of jobs. Perhaps, but if history is any guide, that "long term" will span over multiple generations. That is of no help to those being hurt now.
femiagbabiaka 7y ago
The Industrial Revolution was a terrible period for workers up until the labor movement began fighting for putting basic protections in place. Lots of people got very wealthy though, that's for sure. This view of history as immutable, with the ends always meeting the means is the sort of thinking that I believe is holding us back as a society. Researchers are still studying the impact that the industrial revolution had on not just the environment, but also the mental health of the descendants of the working class in Europe: https://hbr.org/2018/03/research-the-industrial-revolution-left-psychological-scars-that-can-still-be-seen-today https://hbr.org/2018/03/research-the-industrial-revolution-l.... We can and should do better.
- baryphonic 7y ago
  Compared to what? Sure, it was awful compared to working at Google with unlimited snacks and all of that. Compared to being a peasant subsistence farmer, it wasn't so bad.
  - nullorundefined 7y ago
    it was literally misery on scales that hadn't been seen before. children were expected to work in horrible and abusive conditions. everyone was working very long and gruelling days for next to nothing and had no way to protect themselves from exploitation.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      How is that different from subsistence farming?
      - buckminster 7y ago
        It was just as bad only with industrial accidents and diseases on top.
        baryphonic 7y ago
mcguire 7y ago
...and a century or so of civil unrest, bomb-throwing anarchists, communism, and other entertaining side-effects.
bnjms 7y ago
I see this all the time as the response to the argument that people rely on these jobs. The difference will be if, like England, the replacement jobs are more valuable by having greater leverage and impact. Or, as I suspect, the replacement jobs are fewer with similar or less value. I suspect we will see the latter pushing our lower classes into a tighter and lower band of incomes. As far as I can see many of the jobs we do these days don't provide any real value. In this case cashier doesn't provide real value so good riddance. But I'm not confident we'll find ourselves in a better place in the future. Also, somehow we undervalue manual labor with some skill and unions don't seem to work as well for non-factory/hospital/plant jobs.
baryphonic 7y ago
On the whole, I agree with your sentiment. I think the one difference is that despite the 1850s UK having (some) protectionism and (loads of) imperialism, they didn't have massive bureaucracies forbidding everyone from doing everything without permission. This is not actually a problem of technology but of governance. And we should keep in mind that this kind of improvement would make retail workers much more productive as well as the industry more sustainable.
rjkennedy98 7y ago
> England went on to be far wealthier and provide far more opportunities to its people after the industrial revolution To compare this to the Industrial Revolution is just wrong. Period. Just as comparing today to the Gilded Age is wrong. Those were period of massive productivity growth (and also wage growth) despite being periods of high inequality. On the contrary, we are in an age of tiny productivity growth and almost no wage growth. We have been through a decade with basically zero interest rates (or negative interest rates in parts of the world). To say, we've been through this before and we are all going to be better off for it, is just not true.

partiallypro 7y ago

Creative destruction

shadowgovt 7y ago

I thought most of the US labor force relied on trucking?

femiagbabiaka 7y ago
trucking is important for sure, but retail/food industries account for a lot more: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-sector.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-...

Frost1x 7y ago

A lot of business strategy these days tend to forget that their labor are often their customers in a somewhat symbiotic relationship. This was part of the realization Henry Ford had when developing Ford motors and during the heydays of labor rights. Cut your labor and you strangle your customer base. Now we're seeing a tendency of businesses focusing on more wealthy clients, luxury goods, etc. Some modern mall strategies are gearing at primarily targeting luxury stores vs appealing to the masses because the mass labor force purses are growing ever tighter (mainly because they're emptying). Seems like a natural progression as the "wealth trickle" progresses more and more to a drought and pools up at the top in guarded reservoirs away from the majority: the labor force. It's one thing to automate away tasks people don't want to do and replace those tasks with tasks people do want to do (and get paid for). It's an entirely different story when you eliminate work and provide no alternatives, displacing large segments of the population, then simply accumulate the labor cost savings for your business and chief investors while stagnating growth. Most counter arguments to this trend point at historic technological shifts where new industry popped up to supply alternative means of living for the labor force. This makes an assumption that the change is the same and ignores the trends, hand waving it away in ambiguous complexity and proposing we play the experiment out. Most wanting to play the experiment out have little to lose and much to gain. The other side have a lot to lose and relatively little to gain. We're seeing a lot more of businesses pooling cash and asset reserves and not reinvesting them back into society and people are starting to get a bit cranky about it.

umanwizard 7y ago
Yes but it's a tragedy of the commons / prisoner's dilemma issue. If your store employs 1% of the people in a given area, and therefore also 1% of your customers, you can't prevent the other 99% from laying off their own workforce and affecting you, unless you collude with them somehow. On the other hand, increasing your workers' pay will give you no meaningful sales benefit as it can at most affect that 1%.
- Frost1x 7y ago
  I agree with your point and it seems (to me) to be a natural progression/emergent behavior of the current implementation of capitalism we subscribe to. It could potentially be even more axiomatic than that and an unavoidable result of core/firmly held beliefs with trade systems that there will always be those to exploit the weaker (in an economic system) to the point where the system becomes unsustainable. It often reminds me of agent based models of predator/prey systems where ultimately, the incorrect balance of predators, their efficiencies and successes result in a systematic collapse where the predators starve themselves to death by not allowing the prey to procreate and gather resources necessary that predators ultimately survive on. In this case, if the wealthy (predators) don't allow the labor force (prey) to collect resources, create value, etc. before snatching added value up ('eating' if you'll humor the idea), they ultimately end up with no future value added from labor force (prey) because the labor doesn't have resources anymore to add value. From your example following the same basic model, if some of the predators allow themselves to refrain from eating too much and allow the prey to better maintain stable set resources through self control, nothing stops their competitors (other prey) from focusing on their short term gains with no control (yum, more dinner). Ultimately, those predators looking at maintaining a long term stable system will starve if his/her competitors don't share the same views and are allowed to follow the more basic rules. It seems to me, you have to introduce artificial rules into the system to maintain the system (e.g., government regulation or new fundamental underlying rules to the dynamics). Obviously, the real relationship is far more complex than this view and this model has many shortcomings, but it seems to provide at least some potentially valuable insight to the situation, IMHO.

hanniabu 7y ago

Cue the typical "it'll be fine, technology will create more jobs that we just can't predict yet" response that is no longer relevant.

dazc 7y ago

In the UK, many shop floor staff in supermarkets work part-time and it's been designed that way to exploit the benefit system. Very few traditional 40 hour week jobs are actually available but lots at 16 hours or so with lots of unfilled vacancies.

vessenes 7y ago

This reminds me of the Aberhart quote recommending airports be built with spoons and forks, not modern machines, if a jobs program is what's required. Perhaps we could add more jobs by having people hand total receipts and the computers could just check them for accuracy :) My own perspective is that it is basic reality that a large number of low-skill jobs will be automated over the next 10 to 20 years. Rather than complain, I prefer to think about what society can and should do about it. In my case, I don't believe that we should create makework low skills jobs to 'solve' this 'problem' of humans no longer being needed to run cash registers though; I have a hard time imagining most people preferring to run a cash register as their ideal day job.

ar_lan 7y ago
I don't understand the notion of moving backward in order to keep jobs for people. I get why people say they want that (fear of losing their jobs), but I don't really understand the logical progression to getting there and I believe its influenced by: a) Practically, this imposes a big problem to future society if low-skill jobs are gone. b) I'm definitely privileged to have a "high-skill" job so my fear factor here is irrelevant. That said - if this were really a concern people were serious about, I don't see why we don't just ban cars/trains/airplanes/etc. and have caravans to do all trading once again. It would create tons of jobs all in the name of regress.
- femiagbabiaka 7y ago
  believing that the only options available to us are ruining lives or technical regression is a pretty nihilistic worldview.