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> Isn't that how this works? As time goes on some jobs go away and new jobs come about and there is some pain in the interim? I don’t think this is quite as gu

> Isn't that how this works? As time goes on some jobs go away and new jobs come about and there is some pain in the interim? I don’t think this is quite as guaranteed as people think. When we mechanized farming the manufacturing sector had already existed for decades, it was clear what kinds of jobs the ex-farm-workers would move into. When we automated/offshored manufacturing, it seemed plausible that those ex-manufacturing-workers could move into service sector jobs (though that didn’t work out as well in practice, many people took a large cut to their household income). Nowadays we don’t have a sector hungry to absorb the laborers whose manufacturing and service jobs are being automated away. A lot of people act like the market will come up with jobs we can’t conceive of today, but that’s not how this has worked in the past. Even when there’s a sector with tons of existing job opportunities, the transition isn’t guaranteed to work. We don’t really have a precedent for what happens if we automate away a sector (or two) and don’t have an extra sectors-worth of job opportunities to replace it.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
trhway 2y ago
>the transition isn’t guaranteed to work we have disability and unemployment insurance. Why not have automated-away-job-insurance with addition of government money to pay for retraining programs. Everybody would be better off - society gets efficiency of automation, and the workers gets new skills and new jobs. My understanding is that there is shortage of various blue collar jobs in particular in construction, green energy, etc. And in general, i think society would be better off sponsoring in major part, if not in full, any retraining a worker wants to take, like with some minimal conditions, say 2-4 years in new job before eligible for retraining. We do see how constant upskilling (even just staying up-to-date with new frameworks) is valuable for everybody in tech, employees as well as employers.
- Uehreka 2y ago
  The people in these threads arguing that unions are a drain on society are not going to go for UBI-esque schemes, and currently UBI itself isn’t politically popular enough in general to happen. It’s not enough to have an idea of how things could work—you need something we can feasibly pull off in the current political landscape, otherwise it’s just wishful thinking.
  - cloverich 2y ago
    I in general view unions as a net negative, but think UBI is a great ideal to strive towards. IMO they arent remotely the same thing? One protects a narrow set of jobs and salary at seemingly any cost, the other is about wealth (re)distribution.
    - Uehreka 2y ago
      I’m glad you’re in favor of UBI, but the number of people in the “dislikes unions, likes UBI” camp is extremely tiny (though likely massively over represented on HN). It’s true that if UBI was really on the table, this conversation could go in much more interesting directions. Unfortunately right now it’s nowhere near politically viable (at least in America, where these strikes are happening) which makes it a non-solution to the immediate problems facing workers.
      - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
        Count me as another who views these demands by the union as counterproductive, while supporting UBI at the same time. I submit that we're under-represented on HN, canceling out the opinion that we're over-represented I think your guess about the overlap between UBI supporters and supporters of these union demands is way off base, and is serving to distract from the substance of the matter. The unions should be advocating for fair pay for employed union members, but not for unlimited jobs forever. If anything, the union has money and can provide a salary to laid-off employees. Alternatively, maybe unions should be advocating for UBI and advocating for their members to do the same, and to vote for the politicians more likely to support UBI.
charliea0 2y ago
The US still has a big manufacturing sector and it has an unemployment rate of 3.5%. It could definitely absorb a small number of displaced workers. I think the bigger problem is that folks often take wage cuts whenever they change sectors - you lose lots of your human capital and unique skills.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  Think bigger - we are about to automate driving. That’s like 20 Million of people. Where do they go? Look at top 10 jobs by employment, all of them are 100+ years old. Name a job that was created in the last 50 years - real jobs that employ at least 1 million people, not ‘leveraged crypto-equity portfolio manager’
  - charliea0 2y ago
    Home health and personal care aide is the largest employment category in the US. As other sectors become more efficient, you can direct more people into healthcare, entertainment, etc.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    > Name a job that was created in the last 50 years - real jobs that employ at least 1 million people C dates back to the early 70s, and computers weren't really ubiquitous until the 90s or so. So does computer programming in general make your cutoff? Or does it date back to Babbage in the 1800s?
    - Uehreka 2y ago
      Programming is one of the only truly new job fields in the last century. But despite growing up right alongside the automation/offshoring of manufacturing, it wasn’t able to absorb the labor coming from that sector. Labor is not a fungible thing that can easily move from one column to another, that’s a big part of the problem with any sudden massive change in the nature of labor.
  - SSLy 2y ago
kbknight 2y ago
> I don’t think this is quite as guaranteed as people think. It is, actually. People have infinite wants. Productivity increases lead to lower prices in the sector where the productivity increases happened. Lower prices lead people to spend the difference on something else ("private taxi for my burrito" is the meme example.) Spending the money on something else creates the other jobs. This is why we have 150 years of unemployment and labor force participation data, and the peaks and valleys have zero correlation with internal-combustion, electrification, or IT. Now....are those other jobs ones represented by a 100 year old union that is used to having the entire US economy in stranglehold? No, probably not. The overall economy gets vastly wealthier. But, if you are a 50 year old longshoreman, that's small comfort.
- Uehreka 2y ago
  If you lose your $90k/yr job at the factory and end up with a $24k/yr job flipping burgers, you won’t show up in the unemployment or labor participation stats, but your quality of life has massively decreased. That’s a problem, especially when it happens on a large scale. It doesn’t matter if the overall economy gets wealthier if the median laborer is suffering.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  > People have infinite wants. idk, citation needed. Plenty of people I've met had pretty finite wants. A lot of people really are very happy with their small apartment in the city, going to work, doing misc recreation, and then drinking a bit. They don't need a Rolls-Royce or a couple of yachts. A big problem with the argument that everybody wins from trading is that sure a pair of countries can go from 5 apples and 5 pears combined to 10 apples and 10 pears combined but what happens when there's only demand for 8 apples and 8 pears? People don't work as much. Perhaps a 50 year old longshoreman can be retrained to install solar panels or w/e. But I suspect much more they'll find an early retirement or a greeter job somewhere and the up and coming 18 yr old will install solar panels and the labor stats will show a decrease in longshoreman and an increase in installers even if the population isn't transferring between them.
  - kbknight 2y ago
corimaith 2y ago
The economy dosen't exist to provide jobs, it exists to fulfill consumers' needs. You need to remember that the idea of 40 hour-week middle class job fulfilling one's livelihood was only ever an social abstraction that emerged in the last hundred years or so. On the long run, increased efficiency in economies is what allows massive surplus vlaue to be created, making alot of luxuries once fit for kings now available for the masses. And so living standards improve and everyone benefits. If one is capable of automating an entire sector away, it also stands to reason that the massive surplus value created would make it trivial to restribute gains to those affected. And so forth for automation. Maybe you think the corporations and rich will not do even that, that they would rather (somehow bypassing the government) keep all the profits, but profits are only realised so long as there are customers capable of affording such goods. And richer median customers produce much larger profits.
- Draiken 2y ago
  Maybe economies started out to fulfill customers needs, but now they exist to generate profits. It's a very different incentive.
- ImJamal 2y ago
  > You need to remember that the idea of 40 hour-week middle class job fulfilling one's livelihood was only ever an social abstraction that emerged in the last hundred years or so. The idea and implementation started in the 1500s. It wasn't wide spread (Spain and America and not for every industry). Working in a mine was only 7 hours not 8. It was sometimes even applied to the Native Americans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

trhway 2y ago

>the transition isn’t guaranteed to work we have disability and unemployment insurance. Why not have automated-away-job-insurance with addition of government money to pay for retraining programs. Everybody would be better off - society gets efficiency of automation, and the workers gets new skills and new jobs. My understanding is that there is shortage of various blue collar jobs in particular in construction, green energy, etc. And in general, i think society would be better off sponsoring in major part, if not in full, any retraining a worker wants to take, like with some minimal conditions, say 2-4 years in new job before eligible for retraining. We do see how constant upskilling (even just staying up-to-date with new frameworks) is valuable for everybody in tech, employees as well as employers.

Uehreka 2y ago
The people in these threads arguing that unions are a drain on society are not going to go for UBI-esque schemes, and currently UBI itself isn’t politically popular enough in general to happen. It’s not enough to have an idea of how things could work—you need something we can feasibly pull off in the current political landscape, otherwise it’s just wishful thinking.
- cloverich 2y ago
  I in general view unions as a net negative, but think UBI is a great ideal to strive towards. IMO they arent remotely the same thing? One protects a narrow set of jobs and salary at seemingly any cost, the other is about wealth (re)distribution.
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    I’m glad you’re in favor of UBI, but the number of people in the “dislikes unions, likes UBI” camp is extremely tiny (though likely massively over represented on HN). It’s true that if UBI was really on the table, this conversation could go in much more interesting directions. Unfortunately right now it’s nowhere near politically viable (at least in America, where these strikes are happening) which makes it a non-solution to the immediate problems facing workers.
    - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
      Count me as another who views these demands by the union as counterproductive, while supporting UBI at the same time. I submit that we're under-represented on HN, canceling out the opinion that we're over-represented I think your guess about the overlap between UBI supporters and supporters of these union demands is way off base, and is serving to distract from the substance of the matter. The unions should be advocating for fair pay for employed union members, but not for unlimited jobs forever. If anything, the union has money and can provide a salary to laid-off employees. Alternatively, maybe unions should be advocating for UBI and advocating for their members to do the same, and to vote for the politicians more likely to support UBI.

charliea0 2y ago

The US still has a big manufacturing sector and it has an unemployment rate of 3.5%. It could definitely absorb a small number of displaced workers. I think the bigger problem is that folks often take wage cuts whenever they change sectors - you lose lots of your human capital and unique skills.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago
Think bigger - we are about to automate driving. That’s like 20 Million of people. Where do they go? Look at top 10 jobs by employment, all of them are 100+ years old. Name a job that was created in the last 50 years - real jobs that employ at least 1 million people, not ‘leveraged crypto-equity portfolio manager’
- charliea0 2y ago
  Home health and personal care aide is the largest employment category in the US. As other sectors become more efficient, you can direct more people into healthcare, entertainment, etc.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  > Name a job that was created in the last 50 years - real jobs that employ at least 1 million people C dates back to the early 70s, and computers weren't really ubiquitous until the 90s or so. So does computer programming in general make your cutoff? Or does it date back to Babbage in the 1800s?
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    Programming is one of the only truly new job fields in the last century. But despite growing up right alongside the automation/offshoring of manufacturing, it wasn’t able to absorb the labor coming from that sector. Labor is not a fungible thing that can easily move from one column to another, that’s a big part of the problem with any sudden massive change in the nature of labor.
- SSLy 2y ago

kbknight 2y ago

> I don’t think this is quite as guaranteed as people think. It is, actually. People have infinite wants. Productivity increases lead to lower prices in the sector where the productivity increases happened. Lower prices lead people to spend the difference on something else ("private taxi for my burrito" is the meme example.) Spending the money on something else creates the other jobs. This is why we have 150 years of unemployment and labor force participation data, and the peaks and valleys have zero correlation with internal-combustion, electrification, or IT. Now....are those other jobs ones represented by a 100 year old union that is used to having the entire US economy in stranglehold? No, probably not. The overall economy gets vastly wealthier. But, if you are a 50 year old longshoreman, that's small comfort.

Uehreka 2y ago
If you lose your $90k/yr job at the factory and end up with a $24k/yr job flipping burgers, you won’t show up in the unemployment or labor participation stats, but your quality of life has massively decreased. That’s a problem, especially when it happens on a large scale. It doesn’t matter if the overall economy gets wealthier if the median laborer is suffering.
lesuorac 2y ago
> People have infinite wants. idk, citation needed. Plenty of people I've met had pretty finite wants. A lot of people really are very happy with their small apartment in the city, going to work, doing misc recreation, and then drinking a bit. They don't need a Rolls-Royce or a couple of yachts. A big problem with the argument that everybody wins from trading is that sure a pair of countries can go from 5 apples and 5 pears combined to 10 apples and 10 pears combined but what happens when there's only demand for 8 apples and 8 pears? People don't work as much. Perhaps a 50 year old longshoreman can be retrained to install solar panels or w/e. But I suspect much more they'll find an early retirement or a greeter job somewhere and the up and coming 18 yr old will install solar panels and the labor stats will show a decrease in longshoreman and an increase in installers even if the population isn't transferring between them.
- kbknight 2y ago

corimaith 2y ago

The economy dosen't exist to provide jobs, it exists to fulfill consumers' needs. You need to remember that the idea of 40 hour-week middle class job fulfilling one's livelihood was only ever an social abstraction that emerged in the last hundred years or so. On the long run, increased efficiency in economies is what allows massive surplus vlaue to be created, making alot of luxuries once fit for kings now available for the masses. And so living standards improve and everyone benefits. If one is capable of automating an entire sector away, it also stands to reason that the massive surplus value created would make it trivial to restribute gains to those affected. And so forth for automation. Maybe you think the corporations and rich will not do even that, that they would rather (somehow bypassing the government) keep all the profits, but profits are only realised so long as there are customers capable of affording such goods. And richer median customers produce much larger profits.

Draiken 2y ago
Maybe economies started out to fulfill customers needs, but now they exist to generate profits. It's a very different incentive.
ImJamal 2y ago
> You need to remember that the idea of 40 hour-week middle class job fulfilling one's livelihood was only ever an social abstraction that emerged in the last hundred years or so. The idea and implementation started in the 1500s. It wasn't wide spread (Spain and America and not for every industry). Working in a mine was only 7 hours not 8. It was sometimes even applied to the Native Americans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day