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Whenever technology advances, industries based on the previous ways of doing things must die off, and the next generation of workers will work equally long and

by ds9 13y ago

Whenever technology advances, industries based on the previous ways of doing things must die off, and the next generation of workers will work equally long and hard at new occupations. Horses vs. cars, domestic workers vs. washing machines, it has happened over and over. It's inevitably hard on the disemployed workers, as many will be unable to retrain for whatever the new jobs demand. But this is only an argument for a "social safety net", not for resisting progress. Unfortunately this is not the whole explanation of the shrinking of the middle class. The internet is only one factor and not the biggest. The main cause is corporate takeover of governments, leading to "financialization" (i.e., make money by trading things that are only indirectly based one real goods, without producing new value) [1], oligopolistic, rent-seeking industries [2] and lack of popular influence on governments. 1. e.g. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/financialization-as-a-cause-of-economic-malaise/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/financializatio... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

kasey_junk 13y ago
That's not true. As we've made technology advances historically we've removed working hours. It just hasn't happened with the new digital revolution.
- ds9 13y ago
  Working hours were reduced only in the 20th century, and mainly then due to the influence of unions. There was very little reduction prior to this era - basically it was dawn to dusk on farms, then with the industrial revolution, dawn to dusk or even longer in factories, mines and other industries. Reformers have always argued, "New tech lets us produce the same output with less work, so let's have more leisure time" - but capital owners see it instead as an opportunity to work their employees (serfs, proletarians, then "at will" employees) the same hours and make more money.
  - Roboprog 13y ago
    Post Reagan era politics did a pretty good job at obliterating unions, AND, burying the history of the first half of the 20th century, eh? The problem as I see it with either a communist welfare state or feudalism is that either extreme provides little incentive for most people to be creative/inventive, as there is little to gain for them. Alas, we seem to be swinging toward a kind of corporate feudalism, at least in the US.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > As we've made technology advances historically we've removed working hours. Not at all true; up until the 20th century and the influence of labor unions, technological advances mostly increased working hours. Technology removes barriers that limit working hours (artificial lighting is pretty much the textbook example of this, but is very far from the only example), and increases in productivity due to technology increase the expected marginal output of each working hour, which increases the incentive to work (or, where the value of the output is captured by someone other than the worker, to employ/compel work.)
  - waps 13y ago
    Exactly. If you go back 3-4 centuries you'll find that people basically worked 2-3 months per year, tops. Hell, even my grandfather remembers a time when that was the case. I once researched it for a particular city in Europe in 1856, because information on it was readily available to me. 56 working days. I think for the large majority of history we were in the situation that there wasn't nearly enough work for all people, and we're simply getting to an actual peak in human employment and seeing the initial effects of labour needs not rising any more. It's a matter of only a little bit of time until the need for labour drops back to what it was since the later days of the Roman Empire until the industrial revolution : 10-15% employment at best (discounting illegal work like prostitution, which, scarily, must have been the second largest "employer" for over a millenium, and of course discounting wars, which employed many more). I personally think will be back into that situation by the end of the next decade.

by ds9 13y ago

kasey_junk 13y ago

That's not true. As we've made technology advances historically we've removed working hours. It just hasn't happened with the new digital revolution.

ds9 13y ago
Working hours were reduced only in the 20th century, and mainly then due to the influence of unions. There was very little reduction prior to this era - basically it was dawn to dusk on farms, then with the industrial revolution, dawn to dusk or even longer in factories, mines and other industries. Reformers have always argued, "New tech lets us produce the same output with less work, so let's have more leisure time" - but capital owners see it instead as an opportunity to work their employees (serfs, proletarians, then "at will" employees) the same hours and make more money.
- Roboprog 13y ago
  Post Reagan era politics did a pretty good job at obliterating unions, AND, burying the history of the first half of the 20th century, eh? The problem as I see it with either a communist welfare state or feudalism is that either extreme provides little incentive for most people to be creative/inventive, as there is little to gain for them. Alas, we seem to be swinging toward a kind of corporate feudalism, at least in the US.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> As we've made technology advances historically we've removed working hours. Not at all true; up until the 20th century and the influence of labor unions, technological advances mostly increased working hours. Technology removes barriers that limit working hours (artificial lighting is pretty much the textbook example of this, but is very far from the only example), and increases in productivity due to technology increase the expected marginal output of each working hour, which increases the incentive to work (or, where the value of the output is captured by someone other than the worker, to employ/compel work.)
- waps 13y ago
  Exactly. If you go back 3-4 centuries you'll find that people basically worked 2-3 months per year, tops. Hell, even my grandfather remembers a time when that was the case. I once researched it for a particular city in Europe in 1856, because information on it was readily available to me. 56 working days. I think for the large majority of history we were in the situation that there wasn't nearly enough work for all people, and we're simply getting to an actual peak in human employment and seeing the initial effects of labour needs not rising any more. It's a matter of only a little bit of time until the need for labour drops back to what it was since the later days of the Roman Empire until the industrial revolution : 10-15% employment at best (discounting illegal work like prostitution, which, scarily, must have been the second largest "employer" for over a millenium, and of course discounting wars, which employed many more). I personally think will be back into that situation by the end of the next decade.