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When Argrarian societies industrialized into developing countries, the growth in better paying manufacturing jobs was enough to absorb the increasing number of

When Argrarian societies industrialized into developing countries, the growth in better paying manufacturing jobs was enough to absorb the increasing number of poeple moving into cities that living standards could see a noticeable increase. And so much of the working class could eventually climb to the middle class as the country transitioned to developed status. But after a country has becomed developed, it seems like this general growth for population stops. The number of middle transitioning to upper or upper middle turns to a trickle, not everyone can be a businessman or an investment banker or a doctor in a same way as a every farmer can be a factory worker. And so we stagnate, as the rest of working class climb up, more and more begin to fight for a static number of "good jobs", while families that do fight fiercer than ever to maintain their positions, as we see with increasingly competitive college admissions preparations from as early as kindergarten. Globalization and the Internet has only expounded this effect, as now many are now competing against billions from across the world. We are stagnating. And I would argue much of the increasing radicalisation and tension is owed to these worsening economic conditions. Birthrates have fallen below replacement, and over encumbered system of pensions and benefits is sucking up the revenue to maintain, let alone improve crumbling infrastructure. From my observations, this phenomenon is apparent for just about every developed country or society, from the Coastal Cities of China, Japan, Korea, the EU, USA, etc. Whether you build more electric cars or quantum computers, or redistribute wealth, the problem remains the same that there just aren't enough good jobs. What can we do then to solve this? How can we create those new jobs? Or perhaps that "job" is the role of the businessman and investor, but then why hasn't more of the upper-middle transitioned to that stage? I would argue solving this will be the important issue of our modern era, because if we don't we're on a one way track to stagnation, and then oblivion.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
We need more leisure time from the productivity created, versus more jobs. Otherwise, it’s endless doom loop of people loudly proclaiming we need to collectively work harder and more for a few parties to soak up the gains from all that productivity. “What are we working for?” “What is enough?” These questions are more important than “we need more jobs” imho.
- DonnyV 2y ago
  This right here. Thats the correct answer. ^^^
- anon7000 2y ago
  100%. Severely reduce outsized executive pay and investor profits, and only let people work half as much. Everyone gets a 3 day work week. Company can now hire almost double the amount of people if they want to stay open :p Or, excess profit goes into a universal basic income type fund. Either way, relying on everyone having a job is not a long-term solution. There simply aren’t enough actually good jobs, and expecting most people to work shitty jobs isn’t great.
rileymat2 2y ago
There are two separate concepts, producing goods and services and distributing those goods and services. A good job might eventually be defined as something that is personally rewarding instead of economically rewarding if enough goods and services are available to you.
rapind 2y ago
I think there’s a deepening despair or malaise accompanying the massive class gap.
namaria 2y ago
> When Argrarian societies industrialized into developing countries, the growth in better paying manufacturing jobs was enough to absorb the increasing number of poeple moving into cities This is just not true. The influx of urban population and the lack of available jobs in industry was a major problem that drove growth of slums all over major European cities, sparked the 1848 revolutions and contributed to the collapse of the Austrian Empire.
- badpun 2y ago
  Yup. European and North American cities in XIX century were on average much more ghastly places than the countryside. Homelessness, hunger, starvation, hordes of underage prostitutes were common in Paris, London etc. If you had a job, you worked 80 hour weeks for pittance. If you lost it, due to an injury or company not needing you anymore, you ended up on a refuse pile. All that gave us socialism and communism, which did not exist before the industrial revolution.
joegibbs 2y ago
We had thousands of years where power was derived from ruling over territories and owning land, until they were surpassed by the factory-owning bourgeoisie of the 19th century, who could produce more commodities more efficiently without needing much land at all. The ancient nobility were numerically constrained by the population and territory they controlled. This meant that the social structures were based on stability, respecting your betters, to become a noble your father had to be a noble - because the only other way was conquering and taking land from the current owner. They didn’t want a culture based on entrepreneurship or independence because it was a zero-sum game. But as technology advanced, anyone could strike it rich by inventing some new method of doing something more effectively. Someone who owned a match factory didn’t lose their match factory, or they money, if someone else got rich with a new model of loom (they could lose their factory to a new type of match, but it was more abstract, no roving horde of barbarians was pillaging it). So it was all good for culture and society to change. You could be born as a nobody and become rich through your match factory. But there are only so many processes that are low-hanging fruit, hence why you don’t see many solo "inventors" coming up with things, the investment to see a result becomes higher and higher. Maybe in the future we will see a regression to a mean. Maybe the CFO of Snap Inc will be an inherited position and the CEO of Meta will be divinely ordained to rule. Or maybe AI will get more and more advanced, technological innovation will speed up, and we’ll have no idea where it goes.
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  > there are only so many processes that are low-hanging fruit You might be right, but the commissioner of the U.S. Patent office said in 1899, "The patent office ought to be closed, as everything that can be invented has been invented". There might be lots more coming
bluefirebrand 2y ago
Don't forget that we haven't just developed from Agrarian to Industrial. At this point we're Post-Industrial, and most of the job growth is not in production anymore. Most jobs nowadays are in Service, which is a much lower growth model than Production. Production scales with capacity to produce, which has seen massive growth due to automation Service scales on how many people you can serve, which is more or less linear, or maybe even negative growth. Automation gains in service industry mostly doesn't augment humans, it replaces them Service income however scales based on how many customers you have and can process. So we're in a very weird place where a ton of business is based on Service, so they want to grow the number of customers they have access to, but people cannot find good paying jobs to consistently even afford to pay for service Seems like a bit of a death spiral to me
mistrial9 2y ago
> Birthrates have fallen below replacement for some populations.. see K and N ecosystem adaptation for an analogy

toomuchtodo 2y ago

We need more leisure time from the productivity created, versus more jobs. Otherwise, it’s endless doom loop of people loudly proclaiming we need to collectively work harder and more for a few parties to soak up the gains from all that productivity. “What are we working for?” “What is enough?” These questions are more important than “we need more jobs” imho.

DonnyV 2y ago
This right here. Thats the correct answer. ^^^
anon7000 2y ago
100%. Severely reduce outsized executive pay and investor profits, and only let people work half as much. Everyone gets a 3 day work week. Company can now hire almost double the amount of people if they want to stay open :p Or, excess profit goes into a universal basic income type fund. Either way, relying on everyone having a job is not a long-term solution. There simply aren’t enough actually good jobs, and expecting most people to work shitty jobs isn’t great.

rileymat2 2y ago

There are two separate concepts, producing goods and services and distributing those goods and services. A good job might eventually be defined as something that is personally rewarding instead of economically rewarding if enough goods and services are available to you.

rapind 2y ago

I think there’s a deepening despair or malaise accompanying the massive class gap.

namaria 2y ago

> When Argrarian societies industrialized into developing countries, the growth in better paying manufacturing jobs was enough to absorb the increasing number of poeple moving into cities This is just not true. The influx of urban population and the lack of available jobs in industry was a major problem that drove growth of slums all over major European cities, sparked the 1848 revolutions and contributed to the collapse of the Austrian Empire.

badpun 2y ago
Yup. European and North American cities in XIX century were on average much more ghastly places than the countryside. Homelessness, hunger, starvation, hordes of underage prostitutes were common in Paris, London etc. If you had a job, you worked 80 hour weeks for pittance. If you lost it, due to an injury or company not needing you anymore, you ended up on a refuse pile. All that gave us socialism and communism, which did not exist before the industrial revolution.

joegibbs 2y ago

We had thousands of years where power was derived from ruling over territories and owning land, until they were surpassed by the factory-owning bourgeoisie of the 19th century, who could produce more commodities more efficiently without needing much land at all. The ancient nobility were numerically constrained by the population and territory they controlled. This meant that the social structures were based on stability, respecting your betters, to become a noble your father had to be a noble - because the only other way was conquering and taking land from the current owner. They didn’t want a culture based on entrepreneurship or independence because it was a zero-sum game. But as technology advanced, anyone could strike it rich by inventing some new method of doing something more effectively. Someone who owned a match factory didn’t lose their match factory, or they money, if someone else got rich with a new model of loom (they could lose their factory to a new type of match, but it was more abstract, no roving horde of barbarians was pillaging it). So it was all good for culture and society to change. You could be born as a nobody and become rich through your match factory. But there are only so many processes that are low-hanging fruit, hence why you don’t see many solo "inventors" coming up with things, the investment to see a result becomes higher and higher. Maybe in the future we will see a regression to a mean. Maybe the CFO of Snap Inc will be an inherited position and the CEO of Meta will be divinely ordained to rule. Or maybe AI will get more and more advanced, technological innovation will speed up, and we’ll have no idea where it goes.

commandlinefan 2y ago
> there are only so many processes that are low-hanging fruit You might be right, but the commissioner of the U.S. Patent office said in 1899, "The patent office ought to be closed, as everything that can be invented has been invented". There might be lots more coming

bluefirebrand 2y ago

Don't forget that we haven't just developed from Agrarian to Industrial. At this point we're Post-Industrial, and most of the job growth is not in production anymore. Most jobs nowadays are in Service, which is a much lower growth model than Production. Production scales with capacity to produce, which has seen massive growth due to automation Service scales on how many people you can serve, which is more or less linear, or maybe even negative growth. Automation gains in service industry mostly doesn't augment humans, it replaces them Service income however scales based on how many customers you have and can process. So we're in a very weird place where a ton of business is based on Service, so they want to grow the number of customers they have access to, but people cannot find good paying jobs to consistently even afford to pay for service Seems like a bit of a death spiral to me

mistrial9 2y ago

> Birthrates have fallen below replacement for some populations.. see K and N ecosystem adaptation for an analogy