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> This is exactly the type of conversation we need to have as a society. Jobs have been disappearing at a high rate for at least a couple of generations now, a
by nomilk 4y ago
> This is exactly the type of conversation we need to have as a society.
Jobs have been disappearing at a high rate for at least a couple of generations now, and have steadily been replaced with new ones, often high paying ones.
We can't control which jobs are in high, low, and no demand, so we're best off swimming with the current, whichever way it flows. 1. Accept that professions come and go. 2. Expect jobs to disappear every decade or so and plan accordingly. 3. Look forward to an awesome new job after your current one is made obsolete. That goes for all of us.
- thorncorona 4y ago> 1. Accept that professions come and go. 2. Expect jobs to disappear every decade or so and plan accordingly. 3. Look forward to an awesome new job after your current one is made obsolete. That goes for all of us. What can we do? Hope to save enough to not go into more debt for a second degree? Hope that second degree isn’t obsoleted either? As AI becomes more advanced the minimum education and likely IQ required to even get a job that pays above minimum wage will increase. What are we gonna do about the ever increasing N+1% of people who won’t be cost effective versus an AI?
- Turskarama 4y agoThe solution is the same one we should have had from the start: take some of the responsibility from peoples careers off individuals and place it on society. As mentioned above, this has always been a problem it's just that now it's a problem for intellectual careers and not just laborers. Education (and re-education) should be at least affordable if not completely free. Unemployment benefits should be enough to live on (if not well) and be freely available to anyone getting an education. If that is "too expensive" then limit it to specific educations which are currently in short supply. And lastly, tax income from investments exactly the same as income from labour. This part is actually necessary because if automation is a future we actually want (and we should!) then this will increasingly become the _only_ form of income.
- junofan 4y agoYou’re taking a central planner’s view of a decentralized system. You can’t say “here’s a problem; let’s just make it go away.” We are going to print so much money. I don’t see how bumping up capital gains taxes are going to change anything. People will plow extra help into speculative bubbles. Casino thesis.
- anonyfox 4y agoHow about striding for one of the core societal values that make many advanced democraties (including the European nordics) so much better/happier than the US? It’s called Equality. Insert strong progressive taxes, especially on wealth, and use it to fund a strong public sector, so _everyone_ has as access to basic goods and services for free, like education/health/transport/… . I think you vastly underestimate how much money is the rich have siphoned from society, what do you think that printed money goes to? The change impact would be _massive_, suddenly people would have disposable money instead of crushing debts, nd actually stimulate the economy!
- jokethrowaway 4y ago[flagged]
- danjac 4y agoUm...Python, C++, Linux, Erlang, mobile phones (Nokia), Spotify, HTML... Having worked for both European and US companies, I would say that a) innovation is mutual (we learn from each other) and talent/mediocrity are pretty much evenly distributed. The US has a more "dynamic" economy in some sense - for example the VC ecosystem is far better funded - but is detrimental in others (Byzantine health care system deters would-be entrepreneurs).
- roenxi 4y agoAnd yet if we take a snapshot literally right now: Guido van Rossum - Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Bjarne Stroustrup - professor of Computer Science at Columbia University (City of New York) Linus Torvalds - Nationality American/US since 2010 (should I write GNU/American/US? Someone educate me). Erlang - I don't know anything about Erlang so I've got nothing to say. Nokia - brutally ejected from the market by the Americans, bought out and sepukku-ed under Microsoft leadership. Now phones may as well be an Asian technology. Oversaw the collapse of European leadership in the mobile space, to the point where it is going to be a case study in how to fail at innovation. Spotify - Leading EU tech success story. Makes up 50% of the counterexamples, along with ASML. Not detectable as a serious tech company when compared to Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc, etc. HTML - I mean, we'd probably have managed without the Europeans on this one. Although useful, HTML isn't a very technical accomplishment. Anyone could invent this, including most CS undergrads.
- bitwize 4y agoSocialism. The answer is socialism. AI is a philosopher's stone that transmutes labor into capital. This is as good as lead into gold for capitalists, but the rest of us are hosed.
- bennysonething 4y agoHow many times do we have to try socialism before we're convinced it doesn't work? Or maybe you mean something like Nordic countries that are capitalist but tax more heavily and redistribute wealth more?
- broken_thesis 4y agoThat magical Nordic system is called "social democracy", it's of course rooted in socialism, and it's so old that one of the first dark memes amongst left-wing groups ("You killed Rose Luxemburg!) is about them.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoIt's strange how those who say the Nordics aren't really socialist will be the first to dismiss their policies as socialist when they're suggested for the US.
- bennysonething 4y agoThey have free markets and businesses, doesn't sound like a socialist system to me.
- fxtentacle 4y ago> What are we gonna do about the ever increasing N+1% of people who won’t be cost effective versus an AI? Fairly tax companies' profits. And then you can afford to just feed 10% of society even if they don't contribute a thing. Also, free world-class education seems to do wonders in Europe ;)
- fullsend 4y agoThat is step 6. Step 1 is “fundamentally change how modern Capitalism considers making money the only moral good.” It will collapse first.
- megaman821 4y agoLow corporate tax is fine. Fairly tax the recipients of those profits. Warren Buffet should pay more on his share of Apple's profit than some retiree with Apple in their portfolio. A large corporate tax ends up being regressive.
- asah 4y agoWhat about jobs that take years of training? We need them done...
- jokethrowaway 4y ago> What are we gonna do about the ever increasing N+1% of people who won’t be cost effective versus an AI? Their quality of life will increase because of all the cheap stuff we can make with ai and robots. They will coexist and compete with robots. Upward mobility should be better, given the access to advanced technology. Worst case scenario, they can all band together outside of the advanced civilisation, grow their food and live a separate life. There is no need to make high iq people to pay for low iq to live in a high iq society. We're already seeing a divide of cities for rich people and cities for poor people. It will just be more pronounced.
- Epa095 4y ago> Their quality of life will increase because of all the cheap stuff we can make with ai and robots. Ahh, the old "modern poor people are better off than medevial kings since we have microwaves and supercomputers in our pockets". No matter that they are all stressed, living paycheck to paycheck and a single (treatable) disease from crippling debt.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago> single (treatable) disease from crippling debt. This sounds a lot better than being a single (treatable) disease from guaranteed death? Which many, many, historical monarchs experienced. At least some fraction of such monarchs would have gladly taken the opportunity to swap places if they had known in advance.
- antifa 4y ago> This sounds a lot better than You can justify pretty much any horrible thing with "sounds better than a torment nexus"
- MichaelZuo 4y agoWhat's a 'torment nexus'?
- 4y ago
- dukeofdoom 4y agoEndless amount of things that need improving.
- borissk 4y agoThe things that are easy to improve have been improved long ago.
- dukeofdoom 4y agoNot really, have a closer look at anything outside. The Sun and rain and weather constantly erode the condition of human creations. Try fixing some roads and bridges to start with. They're in terrible shape in most of the US. Any city could probably employ 10 times as many gardeners to take care of the plants and build nicer things. Elderly need taking care of, and young people teaching. Houses need cleaning. Shoes need shinning. Endless list really.
- borissk 4y agoWhat are you talking about? Stop the traffic on a road to fix it without local administration permission? Do you think getting such permission is easy? How are you going to pay for the materials to do the repairs? Do you think it's easy to get a job as a gardener?
- bbor 4y agoI think you need to read other’s thoughts more charitably. I doubt he was suggesting bored artists and call center workers grab a hard hat and pick a road. The point is that AI makes it easier for humans to do work, and there’s an endless amount of work we as a society want done. Avandon capitalist frameworks of wages/capital/“deserved poverty” for a minute, and just consider a group of humans and a pile of tasks that need to be done.
- danjac 4y ago3. Look forward to an awesome new job after your current one is made obsolete. You do realize that "awesome new job" will require years of training and experience? Enjoy working at the Amazon Fulfilment Center in the meantime (until of course that's automated too).
- 7speter 4y agoDon’t forget all the people who laugh in your face and tell you you don’t actually know your newly learned skills, and reduces you to a bartender fraudulently entering their field.
- Dma54rhs 4y agoIts been like that forever. Factory workers had to adapt when the jobs went to Asia. I don't see how comfortable office guys should get any other treatment. It used to be learn to code then maybe learn to weld or plumb it something that is harder to automate away.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jstummbillig 4y agoWhile fundamentally true, this comment is astonishingly tone deaf in light of the entirely unprecedented amplitude and timescale at which the shift is happening this time. "Just prepare" does not work when years become days.
- onion2k 4y agoJobs have been disappearing at a high rate for at least a couple of generations now, and have steadily been replaced with new ones, often high paying ones. In the past jobs took a while to disappear. People had time to retrain, to change career, and to come to terms with things ending. The difference now is that it seems like you could be in a high demand role today, and the whole industry you work in might not exist any more in a few years time. The suggestion that this is just like it was in the past ignores that massive difference.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoI suspect this comment won't age well.
- jzb 4y agoThis is what I would call toxic positivity. Maybe with a side of survivor bias. Lots of people don’t get awesome new jobs. They struggle, they fall out of the workforce. People don’t want to “accept” that’s some thing they have trained to do and gotten good at is going to just go away. It’s a reality, but it’s also pretty fucking awful. My father used to make a very good living doing sign painting until the late 80s when vinyl signs became cheap and fast to make. They weren’t as good, they didn’t last as long, but they were cheap. And so his good living went away, and he spent the rest of his working years doing jobs that were not well paid. (The full story is more complicated, but the larger point stands.)
- deepsquirrelnet 4y agoWhen faced with the reality of capitalism, maybe toxic positivity is all there is. I’d like to think that there’s a way that we could plan our society better, and evaluate tech against social costs, but the reality is that in the US we have never done that. I disagree with your point. The problem is that people will gladly accept changes brought by technology up until the point that it affects them personally. The people that bought a cheap vinyl sign were not forced to purchase them, and yet they did. This is not a problem with tech, it’s a problem with us. If you like liberty, then you know the choice that people will make, and that’s what is terrifying.
- flippinburgers 4y agoNaively positive. People whose jobs are outpaced by technology end up working "dead end" jobs that nobody else wants or fall into poverty if they are not lucky enough to be able to retire. Turning around in your 40s, 50s, or 60s to find new employment in a new field? This is exceptionally challenging.
- tekknik 4y ago> Jobs have been disappearing at a high rate for at least a couple of generations now, and have steadily been replaced with new ones, often high paying ones. You don’t feel like you should quote some data for this claim?