9 ms·

Tangentially, I think "what didn't happen" in the last decades is an interesting question. Most of Kurzweil's predictions have two parts, implied or explicit.

• ced 6y ago
  why the prediction failed (people decided to keep working lots and buy more stuff instead of chillin) totally unsatisfactory. Why not?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • dalbasal 6y ago
    Why unsatisfactory? Essentially because I think Keynes (and most economists of his era) were right in their basic assumptions. If you made the average person in the 1920 10X richer, they'd have behaved much like the "leisure class" of the time. If you ask the average person "why don't you work 65% less and chill?" most people would look at you funny. It's not a choice. I have rent, etc. A solution that relies exclusively on choice fails the smell test. I have my own ideas about the solution, but that's besides the point. My point was that Keynes, not knowing the future, gave a more intellectually honest projection of what the theories predict than any post facto economist would have. note: no reason to downvote a respectful, on topic comment. Asking "why not" is the whole point of discussions.
    • ced 6y ago
      "why don't you work 65% less and chill?" most people would look at you funny. It's not a choice. I have rent, etc. I see what you're saying, but at the same time, at what annual revenue level do humans actually start "chilling" more and work less? 500 thousand? I'd be curious to see statistics. Where I live (Canadian city), a lot of parents are working less, through a variety of arrangements (stay-at-home mom, consulting, part-time work, parental leave). Some of them have pretty low incomes. Society doesn't make it exactly easy, but it's certainly possible, it's just not yet the mainstream option. Social safety nets obviously help. Wikipedia has this nice chart: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Heures_travaillees_OCDE.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Heures_t... . Some countries have seen impressive reductions. Anyway, I definitely agree with that: A solution that relies exclusively on choice fails the smell test. Wealth inequality, etc...
      • dalbasal 6y ago
        IDK really. Income correlates to a lot of stuff though, and that makes measuring complicated. A lot of high earning jobs are also intellectually stimulating, high status, high power, etc. Those are the jobs people may do regardless. For his part, I believe Keynes asked (poor) people at what salary they would work less and also observed the "leisure class" of his day. For my part, I think the "cost of thriving index" is a good starting point. For most people it's $X plus the amount needed to they buy a house, car, pay tuitions, healthcare, etc.. If you add up all these "basic" expenses, the "cost of thriving" has far outpaced official inflation and even median salary.
• cblconfederate 6y ago
  > Keynes' 15 hr workweek prediction I m optimistic about this , with people who work remotely. There are alot of jobs that dont require a lot more than 3 hours of real effort per day.
  • dalbasal 6y ago
    Yeah, a backdoor.
• dustingetz 6y ago
  keynes failed to see that competition is relative- that is, how hard you have to work is relative to the people you’re competing with. so where did all the extra value go? it accumulates to any place that is inadequately checked by competition: monopolies
  • dalbasal 6y ago
    If this is Keyne's failing (I agree it's a part of it) then the majority of economists still make this mistake. Where they do acknowledge it, it's usually via frivolous examples. Your friends have cool cars, so you need one too.
    • dustingetz 6y ago
      Another angle is as discussed in Mythical Man Month - due to O(n^2) growth of communication overhead, the optimal team size is 2. 2 people working 100 hours a week >>> 5 people working 40 hours a week, as is obvious in any early stage startup.
  • zzbzq 6y ago
    The textbook explanation for why Keynes' workweek prediction failed is that he failed to account for the shift to a service economy, which provides ample room for people to expand what they work on and what they spend on. The crisis within that explanation is that the number of people employed in the "service" category has not grown proportionately with gains in productivity. In fact, it's barely grown at all. The type of job that has filled the gap is "administrative/clerical." This observation has led David Graeber to propose that perhaps Keynes was essentially right, and that the only reason we don't have the shorter work week is basically that we refuse to let it happen. We would rather continue "working" whatever number of hours was customary in our culture (40 hours a week in the US, less in Europe, many more in Asia) and if there's not enough to actually do (there isn't) we have a small number of people do the work for 40 hours and the rest are just managers and administrators sitting around in a redundant meeting or staring at a screen waiting for the next redundant meeting.
    • 6y ago
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > I felt that the professor's explanation for why the prediction failed (people decided to keep working lots and buy more stuff instead of chillin) totally unsatisfactory. I disagree with this conclusion. I, for one, never decided to work more, I simply don't have a real choice. No one will hire a 15hr/wk person except in positions that don't pay enough per hour to make a living wage anyway. If I could cut my current salary to 37.5% to only work 15hr/wk I'd do it in a heartbeat.
  • Retric 6y ago
    The option to quit and only work either every other year or every 6 months is more viable. Though still job/industry specific, many people pull this off.
    • cjg 6y ago
      Or work 7 years and then retire. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      Yeah, because a resume with that work history is going to go over so well?
      • Retric 6y ago
        Seasonal jobs or contracting work etc can cover up such things.
        • dalbasal 6y ago
          You can always be eccentric, go off script and life hack Keynes' predictions into existence. However, people mostly don't and economics is about what people do.
          • Retric 6y ago
• beamatronic 6y ago
  It turns out you cannot simply network computers together - you are connecting them to the existing network, the people network. A non-networked machine is not wired to people. Once machines got wired into the people network, software models needed to be updated to reflect people issues (trust, spam, crime)
  • dalbasal 6y ago
    Solid point. This comment really demonstrates why certain kinds of wrong predictions are very valuable. Extremely relevant as we move into our second attempt at making WFH work.
• pas 6y ago
  > administration (to the extent that measurement is possible) seems to have gotten less efficient. This is an interesting "problem". After all we now have more ways to manage data, so we generate more data. And usually this means more administration. The question is, are we getting more out of it? Also, we see what reduced administration looks like. Every webshop, every online platform where you just click something and you can buy/sell/report/ban. Aaand, there's the incumbent lobby doing regulatory capture to resist de-administration, eg. filing taxes. > Harvard is still Harvard. It took this pandemic to show the world how fragile that status quo is. Plus the recent admission discrimination lawsuits and scandals show that it isn't really about education.
  • dalbasal 6y ago
    >>The question is, are we getting more out of it? This really is the question, quite literally, in economics. That's basically what economics studies. The outputs of a car factory are easy to measure. How many cars came out? We can quibble over quality, but quantity is most of the game and that is measurable. Administration is harder to measure. David Graeber, in his provocateur style, concluded that they are more efficient in the sense that they produce a lot more paperwork... which is their output. Economists would consider this nonsensical as paperwork itself doesn't benefit anyone and can't be considered an output. He wasn't an economist though.
    • SiempreViernes 6y ago
      > Economists would consider this nonsensical as paperwork itself doesn't benefit anyone and can't be considered an output. He wasn't an economist though. Or they would observe that wages are paid to produce it and estimate it's worth based on the total wages and total pages of paperwork. It's a very blind method, but it makes a certain sort of sense.
      • dalbasal 6y ago
        ..effectively they do do this. The baseline assumption is generally that "prices are correct" and that the value of such paperwork is worth more than the salary to whoever pays for it. When theorizing though, economists don't consider the paperwork itself an output. If that administrator works for a car company, it's considered to be a contribution towards outputting cars.
• Balgair 6y ago
  I really like this idea of 'what history didn't happen'. It's not 'alternative history', in the literary fiction sense, but more ... academic? Granted, the fictional sense is more compelling to read.
• ashtonkem 6y ago
  On the 15 hour work week front: I think Keynes and other economists missed social trends here. What they didn’t predict was a culture that glorifies being busy. Look at the blogs from entrepreneurs in the past decade bragging about their 60 hour work weeks. To be clear, the vast majority of these people are lying, either to us or themselves. What’s important is not what they actually work, but the fact that claiming to objectively overwork is something that they feel is socially necessary.
  • adamsea 6y ago
    > What they didn’t predict was a culture that glorifies being busy. I'd argue the culture glorifies being busy in part because the folks benefitting the most from the current arrangement want it to. And also because of the whole America/Protestant work ethic thing, which isn't all wrong but ...
• yourapostasy 6y ago
  > I felt that the professor's explanation for why the prediction failed (people decided to keep working lots and buy more stuff instead of chillin) totally unsatisfactory. If we accepted Keynes' era's quality and standard of care for healthcare, entertainment options, transportation options, clothing options (almost wear the same clothes every day), appliance options, food options, and real estate constraints (for most young people who do not already have pledge-able assets today, that means rent or cash-over-the-barrel-no-mortgages), I can see a 15 hour work week. There are very few people who willingly accept those limits and eschew modern improvements. Keynes to my knowledge never said 15 hours with improved technological benefits in all areas of life [1], only mostly the technological improvements that brought about economic productivity enhancements.
• fallingfrog 6y ago
  If you want people to be able to work 15 hours a week and have enough to make ends meet- I think most people would jump at the chance, but capitalism is not the right economic system if that’s your goal. Capitalism is a machine that maximizes returns on investment; having people only work 15 hours a week doesn’t do that. Also, there’s a hidden assumption in there that child care doesn’t count as “work”. A child needs 16 hours of care and attention every day and no economic system can reduce that.
• JSavageOne 6y ago
  > people decided to keep working lots and buy more stuff instead of chillin That's not why people don't work 15 hour work weeks, it's because we're forced to due to artificially induced scarcity of essentials like housing, along with a competitive labor market where employers generally demand 40+ hour work weeks and can get away with it because they have the leverage.
  • cma 6y ago
    Plus laws keep people from organizing in various ways (secondary strikes are illegal) and not in others (combining two companies to cooperate together is generally ok, even if it would be illegal for them to cooperate in certain ways if they were separate). Contractors can't effectively organise in some situations.
  • emiliobumachar 6y ago
    Also, they'll totally get flak if they systematically hire part timers. See current Uber/Lyft woes regarding contractors/employees. If the government gets its way, and it may, these companies will eventually go "you're only worth your benefits if you work 40 hours".
• ezoe 6y ago
  >PCs have been on every desk for 25 years. Actually, this part is regressed back these days. Invention of the smartphone makes many people not to have a computer with efficient input devices: mouse and keyboard. Although smartphone is handy, it makes people dumb. Smartphone makes people a mere consumer of the art, not producing it. Because smartphone is inefficient at input devices but people don't much care about it. Yes. Majority of the people are consumers but if not for the smartphone, we could have potentially more producers of the art. It's so unfortunate future I didn't expect 25 years ago.
• tim333 6y ago
  I think it's partly human behaviour - people like doing things rather than being unemployed even if you have some cash hand out. We are awake about 112 hours a week so 40 hours = 36% and 15 hours = 13% so maybe 13% is too little and we should look to make work fun rather than less hours. I figure even if we have AI robots that can do everything people will still teach each other yoga, acting and the like. Also people are competitive - maybe 15 hours can pay for food and shelter but then the Joneses next door work 60 and buy a Porsche.