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Let me see if I understand this reasoning correctly. Old, fragile and stiff huge organizations like the Post Office cannot provide the numbers of jobs they used

Let me see if I understand this reasoning correctly. Old, fragile and stiff huge organizations like the Post Office cannot provide the numbers of jobs they used to. The economy is changing. Therefore -- some hand-waving here -- the very idea of jobs is out-of-date. Ouch. But it gets better. We should pay folks not to work. After all, there's no jobs for them, so why should we expect them to do things that are impossible? This is very reminiscent to me of all the hare-brained articles about capitalism being dead that came out right around the banking crisis. Yes, things are way screwed up, but capitalism remains. You could make any kind of wide-spread social change you wanted and capitalism would still remain. People like to trade stuff. The crazy thing here is, like most of this tripe, there's a nugget of something useful in there. We cannot predict how the labor force will evolve. To do so is folly. The answer to this is not to announce the death of jobs, it's to create systems where new job roles which are unforeseen by us are created. To promote flexible adaptation in our businesses and governments. What's dead is our big boxes of generic labels to stick on things -- all those labels and boxes have been stretched so far they don't work any more. Trying to continue to create policies around those labels and boxes is idiotic. We all need to adapt -- not in a lets-bring-some-academics-on-tv-to-talk-about-the-knowledge-economy sense, but in a real, live policy sense. If your terms and generalizations are bad, your conclusions and policies will never work. I understand that's frustrating and that you are out of ideas -- but a mental model with a huge impedance mismatch the reason, not that we've suddenly been thrust into a 27th century scarcity-free economy. Take a look at the comments on this thread. Everybody gets out their favorite political pinata and beats on it. Is this a very productive type of article for this site?

Helianthus 15y ago
I think you're missing the overall stab. As you say "Trying to continue to create policies around those labels and boxes is idiotic"--because those labels and boxes are out of date. Which is to say, 'job' might just be one of those labels. This is _about_ redefining terms and generalizations.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  But how are jobs out of date? What we're going through is not substantially different from what happened during the industrial revolution, or the invention of the loom. We're talking about the complete obsolescence of an entire group of skilled tradespeople due to automation. People will continue to work for other people, doing certain things - which is pretty much the definition of "job". In time - possibly not in time for this current generation of unemployed - society will find new jobs for people to do. But jobs they will be.
  - Helianthus 15y ago
    >We're talking about the complete obsolescence of an entire group of skilled tradespeople due to automation. Coincident with a huge increase in unemployment and a saturation of educated workers without employment, this means a _broad swath_ of the workforce across many strata is simply _going unused._ This is unsurprisingly making us wonder if the concept of everyone having a job is going to die. The continued existence of jobs wouldn't contravene the death of employment as a societal universal. which is to say, I'm not saying that there won't be jobs, I'm saying that _what we're actually discussing_ is exactly the deconstruction you recommended.
  - ctdonath 15y ago
    Alas the buggywhip-making laborers...
noahc 15y ago
I think we need a class in school called 'Identifying and Creating Value in the 21st Century (like your great great grandparents did)." Let's be honest, that's where the jobs are going to come from and where they are going to go. The point of the class is to get people to go from "What do I want to be when I grow up" to thinking "How can I add value to some process that people will pay me for." This puts the responsibility for job creation on individuals, not governments, schools, societies, communities, or business. It amazes and frustrates me to see people who think their craft is so special that they think they should be paid because they are a good designer, programmer, artist. No! You're not paid because you're good at it, you're paid because you create value. Being good at it is only a secondary consideration. Some where along the line the wires got crossed and basically people became professional whatevers instead of value creators.
- dbingham 15y ago
  We need to leave behind the concept of "value". Value was created by scarcity. But scarcity is decreasing and, in some cases, disappearing entirely. If it costs me nothing to make a copy of something, then I have no incentive at all to pay money for it. It has no "value" to me. I can copy it instantly for free. And frankly, why should I pay money for it? Sure, someone had to do work to create it in the first place, but once it's created it takes on a life of its own. And, often, the people doing the creating will do it whether I pay them or not. They do the creating because they want to. Musicians make music because they want to make music. As a programmer, many of the programs I write are ones I want to see exist. Were it not for the necessity of having money to survive, I would happily keep creating and giving away. The necessity to make money to buy the goods and services I need to survive may be built into the current system. But as we automate more and more and produce a greater and greater surplus it's entirely possible that it could be removed from the system. It will take a change of culture, but there may come a point when we are efficient enough to produce everything we need simply by allowing people to pursue the creative endeavors that interest them and then sharing the results. We don't have starfleet replication technology. But with digital media, 3d printers, and modern construction means we're pretty damned efficient.
  - 15y ago
davidw 15y ago
> We cannot predict how the labor force will evolve. To do so is folly. The answer to this is not to announce the death of jobs, it's to create systems where new job roles which are unforeseen by us are created. To promote flexible adaptation in our businesses and governments. This is Hayek 101, and I agree with it strongly in terms of society being a 'complex system' that is difficult/impossible to do much about in a centrally controlled way. Where I get off that train though is the idea that we should just dump the human leftovers of "creative destruction" (ok, that's not Hayek, but another Austrian, Schumpeter) into the garbage. No government support, no health care, no education, no nothing. They failed, they can go die in the streets, unless "private charities" happen to step in, but by all means let's not create a society-wide system to prop up the inevitable losers in a market-based system to minimum sustenance levels. I much more strongly identify with Warren Buffet's way of thinking: by all means, get the government mostly out of the way and let markets do their work. But then step in and give people who didn't come out so well a helping hand to get back on their feet. That's not "central planning", that's a safety net. > Take a look at the comments on this thread. Everybody gets out their favorite political pinata and beats on it. Is this a very productive type of article for this site? Absolutely not, let's please flag it and ask the moderators to ban these kinds of articles, as they beget political discussions, where we go round and round and round: you can look up very similar sorts of discussions on usenet from the 1980ies if you do some poking.
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  davidw, I know you, of all people, disdain political articles. So I'm going to follow-up. I think we all take these models too far -- including fans of Hayek. I wasn't saying that everybody should subscribe to some school of thought. All I was saying is that when politicians use the terms "jobs" and "education", they mean certain things. For "job" they mostly a 9-5 job paying taxes, perhaps with some kind of benefit package, usually with some larger-corporation. When they say "education" they mean some sort of accredited institution that produces degreed folks. Not always, but a lot of the time. We've created these complex, well-funded, intricate, and powerful systems around the "normal" usage of these concepts. With lots of vested interests. Not bad people, or any of that. Just big systems to understand what these words mean and control how we relate to them. The problem is that a huge swath of people are finding places to create value that don't involve working 9-5 at the mill any more. And an even greater number of folks are getting educated in ways that didn't even exist ten years ago. Yes, if you a want a social welfare net by all means advocate for one. All I'm saying is that when some guy gets on TV and says we need to spend more money on education in order to produce jobs for the 21st century? Those terms are so far out of whack with what's actually happening as to make the solution worse than the initial problem. Unless your mental model has some small degree of fidelity with reality, your conversations and solutions will never work. So I think it's entirely possible to separate creating a model of how things actually work -- which may have parts from Hayek or anybody else -- and applying that model to political discussions to get what we'd all like in a society. I had no intention of taking the discussion towards Hayek and letting the sick and poor die in the streets. I'm just pleading with authors like this to at least pick up some ideas from some other folks and take a look to see if the models -- words and relationships -- you are using actually reflect what's happening. Model creation is different from model application. It has to be.
wbienek 15y ago
Simple solution to all this. But like most GOOD solutions it isn't without pain. Create a state in the union with very little or no regulations to compete with china. Boom. Done. Like how Nevada has great gambling and built their economy around that and ton this day no state has anything like the las Vegas strip. It won't happen. America will continue to sink against china et al counties with no regulation. I have no mercy.. Don't take my advice. Go out of business There is NO solution without real pain/sacrifice..
atomicdog 15y ago
>Yes, things are way screwed up, but capitalism remains I'd say "lingers" is a better choice of words, here.

Helianthus 15y ago

I think you're missing the overall stab. As you say "Trying to continue to create policies around those labels and boxes is idiotic"--because those labels and boxes are out of date. Which is to say, 'job' might just be one of those labels. This is _about_ redefining terms and generalizations.

potatolicious 15y ago
But how are jobs out of date? What we're going through is not substantially different from what happened during the industrial revolution, or the invention of the loom. We're talking about the complete obsolescence of an entire group of skilled tradespeople due to automation. People will continue to work for other people, doing certain things - which is pretty much the definition of "job". In time - possibly not in time for this current generation of unemployed - society will find new jobs for people to do. But jobs they will be.
- Helianthus 15y ago
  >We're talking about the complete obsolescence of an entire group of skilled tradespeople due to automation. Coincident with a huge increase in unemployment and a saturation of educated workers without employment, this means a _broad swath_ of the workforce across many strata is simply _going unused._ This is unsurprisingly making us wonder if the concept of everyone having a job is going to die. The continued existence of jobs wouldn't contravene the death of employment as a societal universal. which is to say, I'm not saying that there won't be jobs, I'm saying that _what we're actually discussing_ is exactly the deconstruction you recommended.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  Alas the buggywhip-making laborers...

noahc 15y ago

I think we need a class in school called 'Identifying and Creating Value in the 21st Century (like your great great grandparents did)." Let's be honest, that's where the jobs are going to come from and where they are going to go. The point of the class is to get people to go from "What do I want to be when I grow up" to thinking "How can I add value to some process that people will pay me for." This puts the responsibility for job creation on individuals, not governments, schools, societies, communities, or business. It amazes and frustrates me to see people who think their craft is so special that they think they should be paid because they are a good designer, programmer, artist. No! You're not paid because you're good at it, you're paid because you create value. Being good at it is only a secondary consideration. Some where along the line the wires got crossed and basically people became professional whatevers instead of value creators.

dbingham 15y ago
We need to leave behind the concept of "value". Value was created by scarcity. But scarcity is decreasing and, in some cases, disappearing entirely. If it costs me nothing to make a copy of something, then I have no incentive at all to pay money for it. It has no "value" to me. I can copy it instantly for free. And frankly, why should I pay money for it? Sure, someone had to do work to create it in the first place, but once it's created it takes on a life of its own. And, often, the people doing the creating will do it whether I pay them or not. They do the creating because they want to. Musicians make music because they want to make music. As a programmer, many of the programs I write are ones I want to see exist. Were it not for the necessity of having money to survive, I would happily keep creating and giving away. The necessity to make money to buy the goods and services I need to survive may be built into the current system. But as we automate more and more and produce a greater and greater surplus it's entirely possible that it could be removed from the system. It will take a change of culture, but there may come a point when we are efficient enough to produce everything we need simply by allowing people to pursue the creative endeavors that interest them and then sharing the results. We don't have starfleet replication technology. But with digital media, 3d printers, and modern construction means we're pretty damned efficient.
- 15y ago

davidw 15y ago

> We cannot predict how the labor force will evolve. To do so is folly. The answer to this is not to announce the death of jobs, it's to create systems where new job roles which are unforeseen by us are created. To promote flexible adaptation in our businesses and governments. This is Hayek 101, and I agree with it strongly in terms of society being a 'complex system' that is difficult/impossible to do much about in a centrally controlled way. Where I get off that train though is the idea that we should just dump the human leftovers of "creative destruction" (ok, that's not Hayek, but another Austrian, Schumpeter) into the garbage. No government support, no health care, no education, no nothing. They failed, they can go die in the streets, unless "private charities" happen to step in, but by all means let's not create a society-wide system to prop up the inevitable losers in a market-based system to minimum sustenance levels. I much more strongly identify with Warren Buffet's way of thinking: by all means, get the government mostly out of the way and let markets do their work. But then step in and give people who didn't come out so well a helping hand to get back on their feet. That's not "central planning", that's a safety net. > Take a look at the comments on this thread. Everybody gets out their favorite political pinata and beats on it. Is this a very productive type of article for this site? Absolutely not, let's please flag it and ask the moderators to ban these kinds of articles, as they beget political discussions, where we go round and round and round: you can look up very similar sorts of discussions on usenet from the 1980ies if you do some poking.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
davidw, I know you, of all people, disdain political articles. So I'm going to follow-up. I think we all take these models too far -- including fans of Hayek. I wasn't saying that everybody should subscribe to some school of thought. All I was saying is that when politicians use the terms "jobs" and "education", they mean certain things. For "job" they mostly a 9-5 job paying taxes, perhaps with some kind of benefit package, usually with some larger-corporation. When they say "education" they mean some sort of accredited institution that produces degreed folks. Not always, but a lot of the time. We've created these complex, well-funded, intricate, and powerful systems around the "normal" usage of these concepts. With lots of vested interests. Not bad people, or any of that. Just big systems to understand what these words mean and control how we relate to them. The problem is that a huge swath of people are finding places to create value that don't involve working 9-5 at the mill any more. And an even greater number of folks are getting educated in ways that didn't even exist ten years ago. Yes, if you a want a social welfare net by all means advocate for one. All I'm saying is that when some guy gets on TV and says we need to spend more money on education in order to produce jobs for the 21st century? Those terms are so far out of whack with what's actually happening as to make the solution worse than the initial problem. Unless your mental model has some small degree of fidelity with reality, your conversations and solutions will never work. So I think it's entirely possible to separate creating a model of how things actually work -- which may have parts from Hayek or anybody else -- and applying that model to political discussions to get what we'd all like in a society. I had no intention of taking the discussion towards Hayek and letting the sick and poor die in the streets. I'm just pleading with authors like this to at least pick up some ideas from some other folks and take a look to see if the models -- words and relationships -- you are using actually reflect what's happening. Model creation is different from model application. It has to be.

wbienek 15y ago

Simple solution to all this. But like most GOOD solutions it isn't without pain. Create a state in the union with very little or no regulations to compete with china. Boom. Done. Like how Nevada has great gambling and built their economy around that and ton this day no state has anything like the las Vegas strip. It won't happen. America will continue to sink against china et al counties with no regulation. I have no mercy.. Don't take my advice. Go out of business There is NO solution without real pain/sacrifice..

atomicdog 15y ago

>Yes, things are way screwed up, but capitalism remains I'd say "lingers" is a better choice of words, here.