4 ms·

That’s not supported by the evidence. Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. In preindustrial societies nearly everyone was working to su

by Retric 3mo ago

That’s not supported by the evidence. Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. In preindustrial societies nearly everyone was working to support themselves and their families, these days a huge percentage of the population is in education, retirement, prison, disability, etc. The only way jobs have kept up with automation is when you ignore population growth, but more people naturally increases the required workforce. You inherently need more police, food, etc when you have more people.

jorisw 3mo ago
> That’s not supported by the evidence. Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. What evidence? Wasn’t employment in engineering down before all this could’ve gotten enough widespread traction to actually displace jobs?
- Retric 3mo ago
  Programming/engineering may be of supreme concern to you, but they made a much wider claim. > There's never been an automation revolution that worked otherwise. Requires all automation to have zero effect on net jobs long term. Meanwhile the percentage of people working is down so that’s clearly not true.
protocolture 3mo ago
>Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. Ignoring for a second that net jobs and employment rates aren't really the same thing. >In preindustrial societies nearly everyone was working to support themselves and their families, these days a huge percentage of the population is in education which may be investing in their future but isn’t directly producing anything. Retirement as a percentage of the population similarly exploded etc. The first thing anyone does in employment statistics is remove non participants. Bringing them back in is weird. If you don't need or want a job its kind of a non sequitur to be lumped in with the employment seeking population. AI doomers aren't suggesting that its going to gainfully retire the population. >preindustrial societies Pre industrial societies can be loosely grouped into "People farming to make 3-5 times the food they need" and "city dwellers". Now that a single person can farm for 100s of people, we do have hundreds more city jobs going. We dont have a huge number of out of work farmers sitting around doing nothing. Likewise, Banks employ more people after introducing ATM's than before. Likewise cloud didnt leave IT people lining up at the dole office, but it just moved them from cleaning up on prem messes to cleaning up cloud messes and onprem messes.
- nok22kon 3mo ago
  > Likewise, Banks employ more people after introducing ATM's than before. that's a common trope, and its both true and false true: more bank employees after ATM's false: less bank employees after smartphone banking
  - bigfatkitten 3mo ago
    The big 4 Australian banks (Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, National Australia Bank and Westpac) all employ pretty much the same number of people now as they did 25 years ago, but their workforce composition has changed. More software developers, fewer branch staff.
    - monjedetonsura 3mo ago
      ~20% outsorced workforce in places like India, Vietnam and Philipines nowadays
      - bigfatkitten 3mo ago
        I’m only counting the Australian FTE. The numbers are up if you count the outsourcing.
        Retric 3mo ago
        The Australian population size isn’t pretty much the same as it was 25 years ago. 28 million in 2026 vs 18.8 million in 2001 is a ~50% jump… So no the numbers are down significantly even with outsourcing.
        protocolture 3mo ago
        I really hate the (very australian) propensity to take an argument about X, and make it about X as a proportion of Y, pretending they are exactly the same statistic. LNP: Taxes less. Labor: Taxes less (as a proportion of GDP) (Seeing as GDP includes government spending, it seems like you can make the rate of tax go down by increasing government spending by more than taxes increase) If a claim is about X, introducing another variable doesn't invalidate the claim about X.

by Retric 3mo ago

jorisw 3mo ago

> That’s not supported by the evidence. Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. What evidence? Wasn’t employment in engineering down before all this could’ve gotten enough widespread traction to actually displace jobs?

Retric 3mo ago
Programming/engineering may be of supreme concern to you, but they made a much wider claim. > There's never been an automation revolution that worked otherwise. Requires all automation to have zero effect on net jobs long term. Meanwhile the percentage of people working is down so that’s clearly not true.

protocolture 3mo ago

>Current rates of employment are well below historic levels. Ignoring for a second that net jobs and employment rates aren't really the same thing. >In preindustrial societies nearly everyone was working to support themselves and their families, these days a huge percentage of the population is in education which may be investing in their future but isn’t directly producing anything. Retirement as a percentage of the population similarly exploded etc. The first thing anyone does in employment statistics is remove non participants. Bringing them back in is weird. If you don't need or want a job its kind of a non sequitur to be lumped in with the employment seeking population. AI doomers aren't suggesting that its going to gainfully retire the population. >preindustrial societies Pre industrial societies can be loosely grouped into "People farming to make 3-5 times the food they need" and "city dwellers". Now that a single person can farm for 100s of people, we do have hundreds more city jobs going. We dont have a huge number of out of work farmers sitting around doing nothing. Likewise, Banks employ more people after introducing ATM's than before. Likewise cloud didnt leave IT people lining up at the dole office, but it just moved them from cleaning up on prem messes to cleaning up cloud messes and onprem messes.

nok22kon 3mo ago
> Likewise, Banks employ more people after introducing ATM's than before. that's a common trope, and its both true and false true: more bank employees after ATM's false: less bank employees after smartphone banking
- bigfatkitten 3mo ago
  The big 4 Australian banks (Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, National Australia Bank and Westpac) all employ pretty much the same number of people now as they did 25 years ago, but their workforce composition has changed. More software developers, fewer branch staff.
  - monjedetonsura 3mo ago
    ~20% outsorced workforce in places like India, Vietnam and Philipines nowadays
    - bigfatkitten 3mo ago
      I’m only counting the Australian FTE. The numbers are up if you count the outsourcing.
      - Retric 3mo ago
        The Australian population size isn’t pretty much the same as it was 25 years ago. 28 million in 2026 vs 18.8 million in 2001 is a ~50% jump… So no the numbers are down significantly even with outsourcing.
        protocolture 3mo ago
        I really hate the (very australian) propensity to take an argument about X, and make it about X as a proportion of Y, pretending they are exactly the same statistic. LNP: Taxes less. Labor: Taxes less (as a proportion of GDP) (Seeing as GDP includes government spending, it seems like you can make the rate of tax go down by increasing government spending by more than taxes increase) If a claim is about X, introducing another variable doesn't invalidate the claim about X.