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I see you ALSO failed to explain what the replacement jobs for these highly skilled, well-paid employees will be. Horse tradesman became car dealerships. Elev

by tw04 6y ago

I see you ALSO failed to explain what the replacement jobs for these highly skilled, well-paid employees will be. Horse tradesman became car dealerships. Elevator operator was never a skilled position in the first place. The internet has actually created a massive crisis in the western world that we're just now starting to realize - local newspapers going out of business is HORRIBLE for a functioning democracy, and nations across the globe are suing companies like google because of it. You're insinuating that there will somehow be a new job for the folks put out of work, but fail to explain what that is. Look no further than Detroit, hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs that are simply gone. More weight on the economy, fewer middle class citizens, but a handful of shareholders and executives that are significantly more wealthy. While I appreciate the condescending tone, I don't think you've even begun to put critical thinking skills to the problem. You're just parroting the same old tired story that justified "trick down economics" which is also based on a reality that doesn't exist.

seibelj 6y ago
What’s better - everyone who lost their jobs picks a new career and retrains doing something new that is valued by society, or the government subsidizes unvalued industries that no one wants just so people never experience any pain? I’m sympathetic that government can help those who lose jobs. My preference is straight-up cash transfers so they can pick their own schools and move to where jobs are, rather than a government-run school loaded with bureaucracy. But artificially preserving shrinking industries just so we can all act like we still need them around is a waste of tax dollars and is logically inconsistent.
- tw04 6y ago
  You keep downvoting me, but you’ve yet to explain where these jobs are coming from. The jobs Detroit lost didn’t shift, they were just lost forever. The people who held them now work minimum wage jobs or live off welfare. What are the electricians and plumbers doing instead? You can keep saying people will just retrain and do something else but that’s about as useful as Trump saying he’ll bring manufacturing jobs back to the US without any plan. The end result is a lot of nothing.
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    > The people who held them now work minimum wage jobs or live off welfare. You might want to provide a source for that one, there is still a huge amount of car industry expertise there including robotics, electric car engineering and thousands of support companies that feed the main companies.
    - phobosanomaly 6y ago
      Your name made my day.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    I’m not downvoting you - on HN you can’t downvote someone you are replying to. It’s the rest of HN that is downvoting your arguments. Tons of jobs we have now didn’t exist 5, 10, 25 years ago. Every time a mass amount of jobs are lost when an industry collapses, they always say “this time is different!” I just fundamentally disagree with that premise. There will always be work to do and someone willing to pay for it. If that ceases to be the case it would be the first time in human history, which seems way less likely than society continuing on like it has for millennia. You also seem to think individuals are too stupid to look at the job market, see what skills are in demand, and self-select for learning a skill that they will enjoy and get compensated a fair wage to them. Every single person who loses a job, provided they eventually get off the government dole, will have to find something new to do. Working for a while at a restaurant or warehouse isn’t something they have to do forever. There is just a distinct lack of belief in human agency in your postings.
    - phobosanomaly 6y ago
      I think the sentiment you are responding to is the erosion of good jobs. There are tons of new jobs, but for those impacted by this stuff very few of them are good jobs that pay a middle-class income (I know, I don't have a cite, but I'm explaining a sentiment, not a fact - so iono I don't got it). A contractor in a town where the jobs dried up might work at Lowe's now for example, where they would be kept under 20 hours a week so Lowe's doesn't have to pay benefits, and they could look forward to living in a van off of social security when they retire (source - this is my brother in law at 55 y/o - he has no idea how computers work, and desperately just wants to go back to laying tile like he did for most of his life - lost work - got a job at Lowes a few years back - just laid off actually, due to the virus - he's 100% screwed). There are a lot of these folks floating around, and what has happened to them is absolutely tragic. Ideally he should re-train in something, but what often winds up happening is that they get sucked into for-profit colleges that encourage them to take out predatory high-interest loans for training that lead to job markets that are either oversaturated, or misrepresented. Then come the payday loans, then come the repossessions. Ideally those people would just buy a bunch of NoStarch books and become fullstack developers or something, but that's not how people work, unfortunately and we just haven't figured out a good mechanism to help keep those folks on their feet. The person you're responding to is waaaaaay too angry, and I don't believe you deserve to be on the receiving-end of that, but they may be going through some really rough stuff right now. There's a lot of people who have suddenly found themselves unemployed and homeless and they may very well be in that situation.
bobthepanda 6y ago
ATMs actually led to an increase in bank branches and employees, because while they did replace positions they made it cheaper to open branches; bank tellers can be used more profitably than just doing extremely routine deposit and withdrawals. If building becomes a lot less bottlenecked, the same may apply.
solarmist 6y ago
I disagree that’s what he’s insinuating. I take a much bleaker view of it. Those jobs are gone permanently and many of the new jobs we see on the lower skill end of the scale are ghost jobs that ONLY exist because it’s cheaper and quicker to just pay people to do those things than to automate them, but once the cost of development/automation has been paid for we’re going to see millions of low wage jobs disappear at a MUCH faster pace than we have to this point. Job losses are only going to accelerate for the foreseeable future across most industries and they won’t be replaced by anything or at most a small fraction of what was lost. Instead of the Jetsons (everyone’s jobs get simpler and simpler until they’re trivial, which seems to be what you’re leaning towards) we’ll have huge swaths of people that have so much time on their hands the time value of labor will drop to almost $0.

by tw04 6y ago

seibelj 6y ago

What’s better - everyone who lost their jobs picks a new career and retrains doing something new that is valued by society, or the government subsidizes unvalued industries that no one wants just so people never experience any pain? I’m sympathetic that government can help those who lose jobs. My preference is straight-up cash transfers so they can pick their own schools and move to where jobs are, rather than a government-run school loaded with bureaucracy. But artificially preserving shrinking industries just so we can all act like we still need them around is a waste of tax dollars and is logically inconsistent.

tw04 6y ago
You keep downvoting me, but you’ve yet to explain where these jobs are coming from. The jobs Detroit lost didn’t shift, they were just lost forever. The people who held them now work minimum wage jobs or live off welfare. What are the electricians and plumbers doing instead? You can keep saying people will just retrain and do something else but that’s about as useful as Trump saying he’ll bring manufacturing jobs back to the US without any plan. The end result is a lot of nothing.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  > The people who held them now work minimum wage jobs or live off welfare. You might want to provide a source for that one, there is still a huge amount of car industry expertise there including robotics, electric car engineering and thousands of support companies that feed the main companies.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    Your name made my day.
- seibelj 6y ago
  I’m not downvoting you - on HN you can’t downvote someone you are replying to. It’s the rest of HN that is downvoting your arguments. Tons of jobs we have now didn’t exist 5, 10, 25 years ago. Every time a mass amount of jobs are lost when an industry collapses, they always say “this time is different!” I just fundamentally disagree with that premise. There will always be work to do and someone willing to pay for it. If that ceases to be the case it would be the first time in human history, which seems way less likely than society continuing on like it has for millennia. You also seem to think individuals are too stupid to look at the job market, see what skills are in demand, and self-select for learning a skill that they will enjoy and get compensated a fair wage to them. Every single person who loses a job, provided they eventually get off the government dole, will have to find something new to do. Working for a while at a restaurant or warehouse isn’t something they have to do forever. There is just a distinct lack of belief in human agency in your postings.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    I think the sentiment you are responding to is the erosion of good jobs. There are tons of new jobs, but for those impacted by this stuff very few of them are good jobs that pay a middle-class income (I know, I don't have a cite, but I'm explaining a sentiment, not a fact - so iono I don't got it). A contractor in a town where the jobs dried up might work at Lowe's now for example, where they would be kept under 20 hours a week so Lowe's doesn't have to pay benefits, and they could look forward to living in a van off of social security when they retire (source - this is my brother in law at 55 y/o - he has no idea how computers work, and desperately just wants to go back to laying tile like he did for most of his life - lost work - got a job at Lowes a few years back - just laid off actually, due to the virus - he's 100% screwed). There are a lot of these folks floating around, and what has happened to them is absolutely tragic. Ideally he should re-train in something, but what often winds up happening is that they get sucked into for-profit colleges that encourage them to take out predatory high-interest loans for training that lead to job markets that are either oversaturated, or misrepresented. Then come the payday loans, then come the repossessions. Ideally those people would just buy a bunch of NoStarch books and become fullstack developers or something, but that's not how people work, unfortunately and we just haven't figured out a good mechanism to help keep those folks on their feet. The person you're responding to is waaaaaay too angry, and I don't believe you deserve to be on the receiving-end of that, but they may be going through some really rough stuff right now. There's a lot of people who have suddenly found themselves unemployed and homeless and they may very well be in that situation.

bobthepanda 6y ago

ATMs actually led to an increase in bank branches and employees, because while they did replace positions they made it cheaper to open branches; bank tellers can be used more profitably than just doing extremely routine deposit and withdrawals. If building becomes a lot less bottlenecked, the same may apply.

solarmist 6y ago

I disagree that’s what he’s insinuating. I take a much bleaker view of it. Those jobs are gone permanently and many of the new jobs we see on the lower skill end of the scale are ghost jobs that ONLY exist because it’s cheaper and quicker to just pay people to do those things than to automate them, but once the cost of development/automation has been paid for we’re going to see millions of low wage jobs disappear at a MUCH faster pace than we have to this point. Job losses are only going to accelerate for the foreseeable future across most industries and they won’t be replaced by anything or at most a small fraction of what was lost. Instead of the Jetsons (everyone’s jobs get simpler and simpler until they’re trivial, which seems to be what you’re leaning towards) we’ll have huge swaths of people that have so much time on their hands the time value of labor will drop to almost $0.