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"If your company produces 1 car for every 50 hours of labor and another company produces 1 car for every 25 hours of labor, your labor isn't worth as much. If I

"If your company produces 1 car for every 50 hours of labor and another company produces 1 car for every 25 hours of labor, your labor isn't worth as much. If I can automate processes that save time, my labor becomes worth more and yours less." If you automate a process, your labor is worth less. That's the point of automating a manual process--it's necessary to produce competitive advantage. Simultaneously, it allows a manufacturer to produce more goods, while replacing skilled workers who were necessary to produce the commodity manually, with less skilled or unskilled workers.

mdasen 18y ago
I should have been more clear: If I can automate a process that saves time, my labor becomes worth more with me as the automator. Let's say you work at a University in Residence Life. Each year, 5,000 students all pick where they want to live by coming up in person to you and 4 other people who have to coordinate room availability, write everything down, etc. It takes a long time and requires 5 people. The next year, you write an awesome Web 2.0 app that students can log into and just deal with it in an automated fashion. The labor of the 5 of you hand-doing that process declines. However, you're now doing new labor: that web 2.0 app! That Web 2.0 app does the work of 5 people and only requires YOU! That means that your labor on the automation process makes your labor more valuable (roughly 5x more valuable) while the labor of those who don't automate the process becomes less valuable. Likewise, let's say we both work at investment firms and we're told to get standard investing data on 10,000 stocks each off Google Finance. If I go through an manually type it in and write it down, that will take a long time. If you write a script that does it in minutes, your labor is more valuable than mine. Therefore, if you can automate a process, your labor becomes worth more since you're getting an inanimate object to do your work for you and being more productive because of it.
- turkishrevenge 18y ago
  To start, the first example is moot, as a university is not a competitive entity like a manufacturer. Whether they decide to automate depends on a need to save money where possible, not survive in a marketplace. Second, you just reaffirmed my point. You are confusing productivity with labor value. By writing a script, you've revolutionized the production of obtaining standard investing data. As such, it requires even less labor. In fact, it now requires no labor, since a machine without any human intervention (save for negligible maintenance costs) can do the job! Why should anyone be paid to--according to what you described above--to do nothing. It's all automated. Now, if investment firm B (my firm) wants to compete, it will have to do the same, since it is spending $X amount to collect the data, while your firm spends $0. This is a pointless cost. As such, it will be forced to do the same to stay in business. Now, firm B no longer requires a warm body to perform the aforementioned task, i.e. it no longer employs someone to enter data. How does not employing someone generate wages for them? By writing your own script, you cancel out your own employment. While true, that the writing of the "awesome" Web 2.0 app (I love yc news, it's full of this stuff) will absorb a fixed amount of labor, thus keeping you employed for the duration of writing it. Once it is completed though, you will be made obsolete. You essentially, wrote your own death sentence. Now don't this is a misguided Luddite speaking, I am a programmer too, and I can sympathize. I want to keep up this discussion.

mdasen 18y ago

I should have been more clear: If I can automate a process that saves time, my labor becomes worth more with me as the automator. Let's say you work at a University in Residence Life. Each year, 5,000 students all pick where they want to live by coming up in person to you and 4 other people who have to coordinate room availability, write everything down, etc. It takes a long time and requires 5 people. The next year, you write an awesome Web 2.0 app that students can log into and just deal with it in an automated fashion. The labor of the 5 of you hand-doing that process declines. However, you're now doing new labor: that web 2.0 app! That Web 2.0 app does the work of 5 people and only requires YOU! That means that your labor on the automation process makes your labor more valuable (roughly 5x more valuable) while the labor of those who don't automate the process becomes less valuable. Likewise, let's say we both work at investment firms and we're told to get standard investing data on 10,000 stocks each off Google Finance. If I go through an manually type it in and write it down, that will take a long time. If you write a script that does it in minutes, your labor is more valuable than mine. Therefore, if you can automate a process, your labor becomes worth more since you're getting an inanimate object to do your work for you and being more productive because of it.

turkishrevenge 18y ago
To start, the first example is moot, as a university is not a competitive entity like a manufacturer. Whether they decide to automate depends on a need to save money where possible, not survive in a marketplace. Second, you just reaffirmed my point. You are confusing productivity with labor value. By writing a script, you've revolutionized the production of obtaining standard investing data. As such, it requires even less labor. In fact, it now requires no labor, since a machine without any human intervention (save for negligible maintenance costs) can do the job! Why should anyone be paid to--according to what you described above--to do nothing. It's all automated. Now, if investment firm B (my firm) wants to compete, it will have to do the same, since it is spending $X amount to collect the data, while your firm spends $0. This is a pointless cost. As such, it will be forced to do the same to stay in business. Now, firm B no longer requires a warm body to perform the aforementioned task, i.e. it no longer employs someone to enter data. How does not employing someone generate wages for them? By writing your own script, you cancel out your own employment. While true, that the writing of the "awesome" Web 2.0 app (I love yc news, it's full of this stuff) will absorb a fixed amount of labor, thus keeping you employed for the duration of writing it. Once it is completed though, you will be made obsolete. You essentially, wrote your own death sentence. Now don't this is a misguided Luddite speaking, I am a programmer too, and I can sympathize. I want to keep up this discussion.