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That invariable seems absurd to me. It seems much more inevitable to me that we eventually will be able to eliminate the majority of jobs. Is that not the goa

by cgag 14y ago

That invariable seems absurd to me. It seems much more inevitable to me that we eventually will be able to eliminate the majority of jobs. Is that not the goal? A transitory period where unemployment slowly increases is going to happen and needs to be addressed.

molsongolden 14y ago
I hope we can take advantage of this and make unemployment a measure of efficiency rather than a doomsday indicator.
wpietri 14y ago
Desires are numberless. People will always have wants. Other people will always find a way to satisfy those wants. When I have been consulting, I've ended up taking stretches of time off to recover from brutal projects. It seems great initially, but I get restless. Eventually I miss doing useful things. You'll see that writ large in the lives of the rich. Like Bill Gates, a lot of them go from doing paid work to doing charity work. Warren Buffett said, "I want to give my kids enough so that they could feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing." I think that's because he recognizes that having nothing to do is bad for the soul.
johngalt 14y ago
The jobs being done today perhaps. In practice you see that as automation increases, it just makes the surface area of the market larger. It's hard to see this going forward, but easy to see if you play technology in reverse. Lets play it in reverse and create jobs by eliminating technology. Lets make vaccuum cleaners illegal. Now more people will be needed to clean carpets in all the office buildings etc... What effects would this have? 1. All the people manufacturing vaccum cleaners would be out of work (minus a small number of jobs) 2. Tons of low skilled labor would now be employed as carpet cleaners (plus a large number of jobs temporarily) So we declare victory right? Wooo More jobs! Except for... 3. People and business who can't afford to employ large numbers of carpet cleaners just rip out the carpets. Over time it becomes the norm just to not have carpets. Only the wealthy have carpets as a status symbol. (minus carpet installers jobs, and carpet cleaning jobs over the long term) So at the end of this experiment we end up roughly a wash in total job numbers, and we have to walk on cold floors. It's similar to the parable of the broken window.

by cgag 14y ago

molsongolden 14y ago

I hope we can take advantage of this and make unemployment a measure of efficiency rather than a doomsday indicator.

wpietri 14y ago

Desires are numberless. People will always have wants. Other people will always find a way to satisfy those wants. When I have been consulting, I've ended up taking stretches of time off to recover from brutal projects. It seems great initially, but I get restless. Eventually I miss doing useful things. You'll see that writ large in the lives of the rich. Like Bill Gates, a lot of them go from doing paid work to doing charity work. Warren Buffett said, "I want to give my kids enough so that they could feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing." I think that's because he recognizes that having nothing to do is bad for the soul.

johngalt 14y ago

The jobs being done today perhaps. In practice you see that as automation increases, it just makes the surface area of the market larger. It's hard to see this going forward, but easy to see if you play technology in reverse. Lets play it in reverse and create jobs by eliminating technology. Lets make vaccuum cleaners illegal. Now more people will be needed to clean carpets in all the office buildings etc... What effects would this have? 1. All the people manufacturing vaccum cleaners would be out of work (minus a small number of jobs) 2. Tons of low skilled labor would now be employed as carpet cleaners (plus a large number of jobs temporarily) So we declare victory right? Wooo More jobs! Except for... 3. People and business who can't afford to employ large numbers of carpet cleaners just rip out the carpets. Over time it becomes the norm just to not have carpets. Only the wealthy have carpets as a status symbol. (minus carpet installers jobs, and carpet cleaning jobs over the long term) So at the end of this experiment we end up roughly a wash in total job numbers, and we have to walk on cold floors. It's similar to the parable of the broken window.