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As software developers, we know what getting workers to have better lives while working less looks like. There's some sleight of hand at play, though, in the e
by cxr 3y ago
As software developers, we know what getting workers to have better lives while working less looks like. There's some sleight of hand at play, though, in the employer/employee relationship (favoring the employer).
> Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?"
It's not just AI, but technology generally. And it's because when it comes to managing people, organizations for the most part don't actually concern themselves with getting their employees to produce value—that is, whether they are, and how much, and at what cost (to the business) it comes at, and where that measure of productivity lies (objectively) when scored against some rubric. Instead what they make their most immediate concern is whether their employees are exposed to sufficient toil. Look at any example that involves someone accepting a new job with a set of work duties/expectations where they proceed to automate part of their workload and thus provide the same value (or more) in comparison to what they were doing before, or in comparison to their coworkers, or in comparison to whomever would have ended up with the job if the person who did accept and automate it had accepted an offer elsewhere instead: they end up soliciting feedback (or opining themselves) about whether what they're doing is unethical.
This is the mechanism that wealth disparity through concentration of wealth comes from, but everyone (the employer and the employee alike) walks around as if they either don't notice it or—if they do—as if it's wrong when there's a known path for the concentration to flow upward but it isn't happening.
- WalterBright 3y ago> favoring the employer If you've ever been an employer, you'd be disabused of that quickly.
- cxr 3y agoDisabused of what?
- WalterBright 3y agoWealth in a free market is not concentrated, it is created. It does not "flow", either, as free trades are an exchange of value, not a flow of value. Wealth disparity comes from people creating different amounts of value.
- timmb 3y agoI think it’s more complex than that. Wealth is often created by monopolising things (e.g. enclosures) instead of by creating them.
- WalterBright 3y agoThere are 33 million businesses in the US. Are they monopolies?
- RichEO 3y agoOn what do you base these statements?
- reddit_clone 3y agoSome Iyn Rand novel would be my guess.
- WalterBright 3y agoListening to and reading books by economists. If you think about it, you'll see it in action all the time. After all, consider yourself. Does wealth "flow" to you? Or do you create value at your job, and exchange that value for your paycheck?
- cxr 3y agoYou haven't responded (clearly) here to anything I actually said. You just posted two short, dismissive comments consisting of glib non-specifics. If you want to dispute what I'm saying, how about starting with the example I gave (an employee figures out how to automate part of their job, enabling them to either 1. deliver the same amount of value to their employer at a fraction of the effort, or 2. deliver something like 2x–10x or more value, owing to the fact that they've been able to automate it)?
- WalterBright 3y agoIf you automate part of your job resulting in a 2x improvement of your productivity, you have demonstrated a skill that you can sell for more money. That's how you realize the value you created. The wealth didn't "flow" to you. You created it.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago> their most immediate concern is whether their employees are exposed to sufficient toil. Protestant work ethic, twisted and disfigured through late capitalism has become a sadistic and wholly disgusting human trait. To impose moral, intellectual and physical labour on others, not of necessity, nor to create value, but to serve a system rooted in guilt and a craving for validation in the eyes of others is about as un-Christian as can be.