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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn o

by jerrya 15y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin, published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group.[1] In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as information technology eliminates tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors. He traced the devastating impact of automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees. While a small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers reap the benefits of the high-tech world economy, the American middle class continues to shrink and the workplace becomes ever more stressful. As the market economy and public sector decline, Rifkin predicted the growth of a third sector—voluntary and community-based service organizations—that will create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying neighborhoods and provide social services. To finance this enterprise, he advocated scaling down the military budget, enacting a value added tax on nonessential goods and services and redirecting federal and state funds to provide a "social wage" in lieu of welfare payments to third-sector workers. He was mostly laughed at.

angstrom 15y ago
Peak Labor. Anyone that's ever argued this in the past 200 years has been called a luddite. Yet, in the past 40 years as computers have automated more work, both labor and white collar, it's become clear that the productivity gains are only making it into the pockets of the 20% or so that own investments.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - kennu 15y ago
    The problem is, people have limits to the amount of immaterial and material products they can consume (limited time, space). So eventually so much stuff is being produced, mostly automatically, that nobody can consume it any more. The only solution would be to start increasing the quality of the immaterial and material products, putting more and more human effort to designing each one, but I think pretty much the opposite has been happening. To me this seems like a natural consequence of a market-based economy, which will by default try to minimize costs and labor until they approach zero. So eventually we'll have robots that build more robots and produce everything we need, while the majority of human kind is unemployed. Not that I'm an expert on economics, just trying to think about it logically.
- ekianjo 15y ago
  The productivity gains also make it to everyone. That's why you are able to buy a computer for so cheap these days. A PC used to cost more than 10 000 dollars in the 80s. There's no such thing as productivity gains being valuable only to investors. It's a win-win for both investors and consumers. It's no zero-sum game.
  - zasz 15y ago
    Can you eat a computer? Will it treat your hernia? No. You need a job that gives you money for those things, and not everyone can hack it as a programmer.
    - ekianjo 15y ago
      I am using computers as an example of how productivity gains benefit everyone. I was replying to the claim that productivity gains only enrich the investors, which is patently false. I was not talking about jobs at all. My point is that the whole planet (as a whole) is getting richer, whether you realize it or not.
      - marshray 15y ago
        PCs dropping from $10000 to $300 are not representative of almost anything about the last 30 years. Holding up PC prices or CPU speeds as an example of general economics is particularly contrived.
        jcrites 15y ago
        He did not say that the drop in the price of PCs was representative. He (successfully, I think) provided an example showing that a gain to productivity benefited everyone, not just the holders of investments. What is an example of an industry where gains to productivity don't benefit everyone? Gains to productivity in farming enable the price of food to drop. Gains to productivity in housing enable the price of housing to drop. How does it only benefit the rich? Even if the price does not drop directly as a first-order effect (such as if the company whose productivity is boosted keeps the difference as a profit), it will eventually through market pressure; a new price equilibrium will be established. In perfectly competitive market (such as food) a competitor will use the productivity boost to lower costs and undercut the first. The resulting competition will lower the market place. Productivity gains lower prices (real prices), benefiting everyone.
- david927 15y ago
  That's exactly right. Recently Foxconn in China has started to replace some of its workers with automation. Think about that: when even low paid work in China can't beat automation, you have a problem. There used to be a place for unskilled/semi-skilled labor: factory work, travel agents, insurance sales people. It's what created the middle class. And it's gone. Now you have the owners of the travel web site making a fortune and the rest struggling to find a way to contribute. It seems we have passed the tipping point for unskilled/blue collar and a good portion of white-collar labor. The future doesn't need the bottom 90% at all.
  - speleding 15y ago
    If unskilled labor is no longer needed for factory work it becomes available again for other low cost service work. A century ago lots of families employed a nanny, a cook, a cleaning lady and a gardener. Perhaps we will return to that time.
    - GFischer 15y ago
      There are some services with unlimited demand, like healthcare. My guess is that the demand will switch to other services as well, like the nannies you mentioned and better education and other wealthy-person services: personal trainers, nutrition, leisure, party/wedding planners, clothing advisors, gourmet cooking. There will also be a lot of services needed for the elderly. Of course, competition will be cut-throat, but those jobs that cannot be made more efficient or paralellized (those with a high amount of in-person involvement) will sustain the new middle class.
    - david927 15y ago
      Roomba, self-cleaning ovens, ... do I need to go on? Yes, people can move to service work but there's not much demand for it. I live near Monaco and the people I know who could easily afford such domestic help tend to get by with less than you would expect. Besides, do we want it to be 10% has the other 90% working for them doing cleaning and cooking?
hpvic03 15y ago
It's not so impossible to believe. The objection I often hear (and I recall that this is PG's stance as well) is that as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place. For example, as the article mentioned, the former toll booth operator could now repair the automated toll booth system. So far this general idea has been true. Before computers existed as we know them, "computers" were people who did lengthy computations for a living, often for scientists. Once electronic computers arrived these people seemingly found new jobs and survived. I'm not sure if this will continue to be the case. We may be reaching a discontinuous point on the economic timeline. If robotic and computer systems are developed that can effectively do the jobs of most humans for less than minimum wage, there won't be enough work for people to make a good living. The key difference is the following: in the past, technology has only disrupted specific segments of the economy, allowing humans to find work other places where they could still add value. Now, technology has the potential to disrupt the majority of the economy. There won't be any work to do. There will still be pockets where humans can add value, but there will be so much competition for this work by all the unemployed that the wages will be driven down to nil. If this situation occurs, the Government will have to find a way to distribute resources directly to the masses lest every sitting politician be voted out of office. In fact, all the rhetoric right now about creating jobs is exactly that. Politicians are promising that they'll find a way to distribute resources to the unemployed.
- kamaal 15y ago
  Before this thread descends to saying the 'The Matrix' is inevitable. If the levels automation rise to crazy levels, and there are cheaper and greener sources to energy to drive them. Then Food, Clothing and Shelter won't be much of a problem. We will get those three things without much effort. In other words, you can survive without doing anything. But you will still pay for Opera, a concert, you will pay to visit a art gallery. You will still pay for quality entertainment. You will continue to pay for a costly vacation in a foreign country. You will pay to find out the deepest secrets of the universe and traveling to get there. Somebody might invent an organic fruit which might taste nothing like before, and you might have to pay just to taste it. There might be narcotic drugs that take you heaven without killing you, and you might pay for it etc etc. .Our goals as a society will be different. But we will still have to work to meet them. There will be reasons for humans to exist, but those will be very different reasons.
edwinnathaniel 15y ago
IT itself is susceptible to the danger of shrinking given 2 things: - The rise of *aaS - The mindset of maximizing profits and and minimize expense Some of us have said a few times in the past: building software is expensive. Some of us have also said a few times in the past that: good programmers are expensive. Put two together and you get a recipe as to why more companies shy away from custom-development and prefer to build IT based on OOB + small tweaks. I've been seeing a growing demand of Microsoft Office 365 + Sharepoint Online + Dynamics CRM Online as opposed to in-house installation or using Basecamp.NEXT + Backpack (yes, SP Online is equal to Basecamp.NEXT + Backpack). Some companies don't necessarily put top premium for nice UI or super simple easy and friendly software. Open Source software is also impacted with the rise of the cloud: in certain area of software, if the cost of the commercial offering is less than installing+maintaining Open Source software, then that particular area of software for Open Source probably will die eventually (e.g.: Open Source bug tracking and project management software => Is it more expensive to install+maintain Trac vs paying GitHub/FogCreek/Atlassian to host everything?) We might be slowly eating ourselves as well (in the context of IT). Whether we can produce something new, innovative, and exciting, faster than we can eat is yet to be seen. PS: There are industries with unique requirements and regulations, these industries might pay for expensive custom software until one day a new software will arise and effectively kill customization in the said industry.
- csomar 15y ago
  Some companies don't necessarily put top premium for nice UI or super simple easy and friendly software. Aren't these companies more vulnerable to disruption? If there productivity is very low, and they don't provide digital solutions. This means they can't go bankrupt by competitive and high-tech competition (like Netflix did) The question is "when they will go away?" It's very likely when the cost of implementing the technology is cheaper than hiring many workers.
  - edwinnathaniel 15y ago
    I'm referring to the many productivity cloud solutions out there vs Sharepoint. Not "old vs new" digital distributions etc, but instead between big and established company like Microsoft who can still able to execute (ignore Bing and WinMo/Tablet/Phone) vs the so-called nimble and agile smaller companies. When comparing Basecamp vs SharePoint Online, there are people who don't care of the warm fuzzy feeling of Basecamp.NEXT "paper" UI and would probably go with SharePoint Online due to Microsoft brand.
itmag 15y ago
If productivity rises to an absurd degree, I think it makes sense to start having a citizen's wage / minimum guaranteed income: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-income/ http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-inc... Sure, a lot of people might just become layabouts doing nothing. But are they really doing much right now, by enduring crappy jobs that add marginal value? Other people might unlock vast reservoirs of creativity which would bring great positive externalities to society, if they didn't have to spend their productive hours on such a trite problem as survival.
- GFischer 15y ago
  My country, Uruguay, implemented something like that ("Plan de emergencia"). And I don't like the results. The problem is not that they're "doing nothing", it's that they're actively increasing their burden to the working society by having an unsustainable amount of children. They're also REJECTING job offers (80% of those getting the emergency wage). And many of those job offers were for a good wage by local standards. (spanish links) http://elobservador.com.uy/noticia/214462/el-80-de-la-poblacion-del-mides-rechazo-una-oferta-de-trabajo/ http://elobservador.com.uy/noticia/214462/el-80-de-la-poblac... http://www.mides.gub.uy/mides/text.jsp?contentid=14247&site=1&channel=mides http://www.mides.gub.uy/mides/text.jsp?contentid=14247&s... It may sound fascist, but I'd like people to be able to support themselves before having children. The idea of a citizen's wage sounds nice in theory, but implementation opens a big can of worms.
  - Drbble 15y ago
    Easy fix (logically, that is. Politically, nothing is easy). Have a US style "earned income tax credit" or "civilian conservation corps" where for folks get paid to work, and the government creates (productive, civil engineering and janitorial type) work if there is not enough private sector work,
    - GFischer 15y ago
      Yes, I know it's a political problem not a logical one :( . There's plenty of work available, on the second link above, Alberto Iglesias, the president of the Farmer's federation acknowledged that (losing the wage if you get employed) makes it very difficult to get labor to harvest fruit and vegetables. "Crews have been decimated at an alarming rate"" There's also a labor shortage for construction work, at wages above the country's mean, and higher than the "Plan de emergencia" wage, but of course, you don't have to work for that one, so that's the one people choose. It also goes agains the link the parent posted, which was what I was partly refuting: "a regular “paycheck” just for being alive, a paycheck sufficient to support basic human needs, with no means-test nor any rules on how it could be used"

by jerrya 15y ago

angstrom 15y ago

Peak Labor. Anyone that's ever argued this in the past 200 years has been called a luddite. Yet, in the past 40 years as computers have automated more work, both labor and white collar, it's become clear that the productivity gains are only making it into the pockets of the 20% or so that own investments.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- kennu 15y ago
  The problem is, people have limits to the amount of immaterial and material products they can consume (limited time, space). So eventually so much stuff is being produced, mostly automatically, that nobody can consume it any more. The only solution would be to start increasing the quality of the immaterial and material products, putting more and more human effort to designing each one, but I think pretty much the opposite has been happening. To me this seems like a natural consequence of a market-based economy, which will by default try to minimize costs and labor until they approach zero. So eventually we'll have robots that build more robots and produce everything we need, while the majority of human kind is unemployed. Not that I'm an expert on economics, just trying to think about it logically.
ekianjo 15y ago
The productivity gains also make it to everyone. That's why you are able to buy a computer for so cheap these days. A PC used to cost more than 10 000 dollars in the 80s. There's no such thing as productivity gains being valuable only to investors. It's a win-win for both investors and consumers. It's no zero-sum game.
- zasz 15y ago
  Can you eat a computer? Will it treat your hernia? No. You need a job that gives you money for those things, and not everyone can hack it as a programmer.
  - ekianjo 15y ago
    I am using computers as an example of how productivity gains benefit everyone. I was replying to the claim that productivity gains only enrich the investors, which is patently false. I was not talking about jobs at all. My point is that the whole planet (as a whole) is getting richer, whether you realize it or not.
    - marshray 15y ago
      PCs dropping from $10000 to $300 are not representative of almost anything about the last 30 years. Holding up PC prices or CPU speeds as an example of general economics is particularly contrived.
      - jcrites 15y ago
        He did not say that the drop in the price of PCs was representative. He (successfully, I think) provided an example showing that a gain to productivity benefited everyone, not just the holders of investments. What is an example of an industry where gains to productivity don't benefit everyone? Gains to productivity in farming enable the price of food to drop. Gains to productivity in housing enable the price of housing to drop. How does it only benefit the rich? Even if the price does not drop directly as a first-order effect (such as if the company whose productivity is boosted keeps the difference as a profit), it will eventually through market pressure; a new price equilibrium will be established. In perfectly competitive market (such as food) a competitor will use the productivity boost to lower costs and undercut the first. The resulting competition will lower the market place. Productivity gains lower prices (real prices), benefiting everyone.
david927 15y ago
That's exactly right. Recently Foxconn in China has started to replace some of its workers with automation. Think about that: when even low paid work in China can't beat automation, you have a problem. There used to be a place for unskilled/semi-skilled labor: factory work, travel agents, insurance sales people. It's what created the middle class. And it's gone. Now you have the owners of the travel web site making a fortune and the rest struggling to find a way to contribute. It seems we have passed the tipping point for unskilled/blue collar and a good portion of white-collar labor. The future doesn't need the bottom 90% at all.
- speleding 15y ago
  If unskilled labor is no longer needed for factory work it becomes available again for other low cost service work. A century ago lots of families employed a nanny, a cook, a cleaning lady and a gardener. Perhaps we will return to that time.
  - GFischer 15y ago
    There are some services with unlimited demand, like healthcare. My guess is that the demand will switch to other services as well, like the nannies you mentioned and better education and other wealthy-person services: personal trainers, nutrition, leisure, party/wedding planners, clothing advisors, gourmet cooking. There will also be a lot of services needed for the elderly. Of course, competition will be cut-throat, but those jobs that cannot be made more efficient or paralellized (those with a high amount of in-person involvement) will sustain the new middle class.
  - david927 15y ago
    Roomba, self-cleaning ovens, ... do I need to go on? Yes, people can move to service work but there's not much demand for it. I live near Monaco and the people I know who could easily afford such domestic help tend to get by with less than you would expect. Besides, do we want it to be 10% has the other 90% working for them doing cleaning and cooking?

hpvic03 15y ago

It's not so impossible to believe. The objection I often hear (and I recall that this is PG's stance as well) is that as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place. For example, as the article mentioned, the former toll booth operator could now repair the automated toll booth system. So far this general idea has been true. Before computers existed as we know them, "computers" were people who did lengthy computations for a living, often for scientists. Once electronic computers arrived these people seemingly found new jobs and survived. I'm not sure if this will continue to be the case. We may be reaching a discontinuous point on the economic timeline. If robotic and computer systems are developed that can effectively do the jobs of most humans for less than minimum wage, there won't be enough work for people to make a good living. The key difference is the following: in the past, technology has only disrupted specific segments of the economy, allowing humans to find work other places where they could still add value. Now, technology has the potential to disrupt the majority of the economy. There won't be any work to do. There will still be pockets where humans can add value, but there will be so much competition for this work by all the unemployed that the wages will be driven down to nil. If this situation occurs, the Government will have to find a way to distribute resources directly to the masses lest every sitting politician be voted out of office. In fact, all the rhetoric right now about creating jobs is exactly that. Politicians are promising that they'll find a way to distribute resources to the unemployed.

kamaal 15y ago
Before this thread descends to saying the 'The Matrix' is inevitable. If the levels automation rise to crazy levels, and there are cheaper and greener sources to energy to drive them. Then Food, Clothing and Shelter won't be much of a problem. We will get those three things without much effort. In other words, you can survive without doing anything. But you will still pay for Opera, a concert, you will pay to visit a art gallery. You will still pay for quality entertainment. You will continue to pay for a costly vacation in a foreign country. You will pay to find out the deepest secrets of the universe and traveling to get there. Somebody might invent an organic fruit which might taste nothing like before, and you might have to pay just to taste it. There might be narcotic drugs that take you heaven without killing you, and you might pay for it etc etc. .Our goals as a society will be different. But we will still have to work to meet them. There will be reasons for humans to exist, but those will be very different reasons.

edwinnathaniel 15y ago

IT itself is susceptible to the danger of shrinking given 2 things: - The rise of *aaS - The mindset of maximizing profits and and minimize expense Some of us have said a few times in the past: building software is expensive. Some of us have also said a few times in the past that: good programmers are expensive. Put two together and you get a recipe as to why more companies shy away from custom-development and prefer to build IT based on OOB + small tweaks. I've been seeing a growing demand of Microsoft Office 365 + Sharepoint Online + Dynamics CRM Online as opposed to in-house installation or using Basecamp.NEXT + Backpack (yes, SP Online is equal to Basecamp.NEXT + Backpack). Some companies don't necessarily put top premium for nice UI or super simple easy and friendly software. Open Source software is also impacted with the rise of the cloud: in certain area of software, if the cost of the commercial offering is less than installing+maintaining Open Source software, then that particular area of software for Open Source probably will die eventually (e.g.: Open Source bug tracking and project management software => Is it more expensive to install+maintain Trac vs paying GitHub/FogCreek/Atlassian to host everything?) We might be slowly eating ourselves as well (in the context of IT). Whether we can produce something new, innovative, and exciting, faster than we can eat is yet to be seen. PS: There are industries with unique requirements and regulations, these industries might pay for expensive custom software until one day a new software will arise and effectively kill customization in the said industry.

csomar 15y ago
Some companies don't necessarily put top premium for nice UI or super simple easy and friendly software. Aren't these companies more vulnerable to disruption? If there productivity is very low, and they don't provide digital solutions. This means they can't go bankrupt by competitive and high-tech competition (like Netflix did) The question is "when they will go away?" It's very likely when the cost of implementing the technology is cheaper than hiring many workers.
- edwinnathaniel 15y ago
  I'm referring to the many productivity cloud solutions out there vs Sharepoint. Not "old vs new" digital distributions etc, but instead between big and established company like Microsoft who can still able to execute (ignore Bing and WinMo/Tablet/Phone) vs the so-called nimble and agile smaller companies. When comparing Basecamp vs SharePoint Online, there are people who don't care of the warm fuzzy feeling of Basecamp.NEXT "paper" UI and would probably go with SharePoint Online due to Microsoft brand.

itmag 15y ago

If productivity rises to an absurd degree, I think it makes sense to start having a citizen's wage / minimum guaranteed income: http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-income/ http://www.xamuel.com/ten-reasons-for-guaranteed-minimum-inc... Sure, a lot of people might just become layabouts doing nothing. But are they really doing much right now, by enduring crappy jobs that add marginal value? Other people might unlock vast reservoirs of creativity which would bring great positive externalities to society, if they didn't have to spend their productive hours on such a trite problem as survival.

GFischer 15y ago
My country, Uruguay, implemented something like that ("Plan de emergencia"). And I don't like the results. The problem is not that they're "doing nothing", it's that they're actively increasing their burden to the working society by having an unsustainable amount of children. They're also REJECTING job offers (80% of those getting the emergency wage). And many of those job offers were for a good wage by local standards. (spanish links) http://elobservador.com.uy/noticia/214462/el-80-de-la-poblacion-del-mides-rechazo-una-oferta-de-trabajo/ http://elobservador.com.uy/noticia/214462/el-80-de-la-poblac... http://www.mides.gub.uy/mides/text.jsp?contentid=14247&site=1&channel=mides http://www.mides.gub.uy/mides/text.jsp?contentid=14247&s... It may sound fascist, but I'd like people to be able to support themselves before having children. The idea of a citizen's wage sounds nice in theory, but implementation opens a big can of worms.
- Drbble 15y ago
  Easy fix (logically, that is. Politically, nothing is easy). Have a US style "earned income tax credit" or "civilian conservation corps" where for folks get paid to work, and the government creates (productive, civil engineering and janitorial type) work if there is not enough private sector work,
  - GFischer 15y ago
    Yes, I know it's a political problem not a logical one :( . There's plenty of work available, on the second link above, Alberto Iglesias, the president of the Farmer's federation acknowledged that (losing the wage if you get employed) makes it very difficult to get labor to harvest fruit and vegetables. "Crews have been decimated at an alarming rate"" There's also a labor shortage for construction work, at wages above the country's mean, and higher than the "Plan de emergencia" wage, but of course, you don't have to work for that one, so that's the one people choose. It also goes agains the link the parent posted, which was what I was partly refuting: "a regular “paycheck” just for being alive, a paycheck sufficient to support basic human needs, with no means-test nor any rules on how it could be used"