18 ms·

The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

52 points by DickingAround 13y ago

AndrewKemendo 13y ago
The thought is generally good but it overshoots the solution I think in one key respect: consumer priorities. I think for this post you are conflating consumer spending with luxury spending. If indeed there were a single minded "consumerism" that strictly identified more or less meaningless items (luxury goods) as the key consumption then I would agree. The fact is however, "consumer driven economy" simply is distinguishing an economy that predominantly privately spends more than it publicly spends, saves or invests. To that point, I agree that we should be automating more things to free up all of our time. I hope someday to automate food production so that it can actually come full cycle, so there is definitely something there.
- DickingAround 13y ago
  But don't we already have a society that only has 2% of people working on food production? If that is considered the only non-luxury/required good, then most of us are working to get more luxuries.
  - AndrewKemendo 13y ago
    That is certainly not the only required good, but I would argue it is the #2 behind water consumption. I also wouldn't disagree that most folks are working for more luxuries. Remember I agreed that we should be working for fewer luxuries. The issue with food is that when you factor in everything, to include environmental impact, good sustainable food is actually very expensive. I am also including the logistics that go into food delivery and the significant amount of waste and impact it causes [1]. [1]: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2013/09/12/un-says-that-if-food-waste-was-a-country-itd-be-the-3-global-greenhouse-gas-emitter/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2013/09/12/un...
  - vbuterin 13y ago
    Food is basically a solved problem. Priority #1 is medical care IMO. Housing is expensive, but really Japanese-style closet hotels can solve that problem for ultracheap if needed (as I understand it's mostly zoning laws preventing it right now). If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity.
    - ehsanu1 13y ago
      If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity. How so? Post-scarcity implies, to me at least, that nobody has to work to live: everything is abundant and free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy
      - vbuterin 13y ago
        People will always work; some people just want to do stuff for fun. If we can get the need for employment down to that low percentage, then we're de facto there IMO. At that point, there are several ways to fill in the missing pieces; a government-funded (or even ideally endowment-funded) basic income, food becoming a gimmick to attract customers rather than a commodity the same way water is today, the equivalent of public libraries and bookstores for housing, etc. Money probably won't be an issue in any case; if work is done by that percentage of people who want to work, they won't necessarily need a salary; I can see money being limited to a mechanism for regulating large-scale resource use.
  - ilaksh 13y ago
    The thing that most people miss is that the majority of the world doesn't operate the way the US does (including things like food production). You have to look at the system as a whole. And it is extremely destructive and inhospitable when you evaluate it objectively and holistically. I know that the popular world-view for internet technologists is very different from that of course. I saw the Hans Rosling TED talk. I used to share the same rose-colored worldview. I also used to believe all of the propaganda put out on television. I now know that the world we live is far more violent and dysfunctional than we are led to believe. We have very deep structural problems starting with a Social Darwinistic worldview that leads to massive inequality and waste. I believe that technology is working rather directly against all of those negative legacy factors. And I also believe that technology is currently improving the situation and will continue to do so as things like ultra-local food and energy production aided by nanotechnology become mainstream. I also think that within about twenty years unaugmented humanity will be obsoleted by advanced, vastly superior AI, and that will eliminate the current severe problems with worldviews and social structures holding back technological advancement. I am a little worried we might run into World War III before we get those things online though.
gitpushupbra 13y ago
> Consumption doesn't improve economy or humanity in general. Neither does production. If you want to help, start automating things. I'm not sure you know what any of these things mean.
jkramer7 13y ago
Can someone clarify? I'm not sure what end goal the article is driving at. Are we aiming for more free time? If that's the case, then I fail to see how automation helps. Companies have incentives to hire as few employees as possible -- it cuts down on administrative overhead, like the necessity of sending out a check to each employee. The result will be as many full-time employees as possible. The workers displaced by automation then move on to make other goods (perhaps napkins) or provide other services, with the same incentives to work full-time, and nobody has any more free time. The end result is just more goods to purchase, which the author seems to have disdain for.
- gilgoomesh 13y ago
  The article is poorly written. The article starts by talking about pointless consumer spending (convincing people to buy things they don't need). This is a net loss to society. However, the article doesn't make any kind of distinction between pointless consumer spending and wise consumer spending and instead runs off on a totally unrelated tangent about automation (which certainly helps but isn't related to the macroeconomic effects of consumption). The article totally ignores the fact that "wise" consumer spending is a significant benefit to everyone – i.e. when consumers are buying things they need or where the benefit of the purchase exceeds the effort input to earning the money. It also helps progress the economy when consumers are buying products that are new and innovative and make technology or business model improvements.
aaron695 13y ago
>Fewer are willing to admit the culturally-exploratory, finding-yourself vacation experience we read about on a travel blog has pretty much the same level of benefit to society. Totally lost me on this line. What's the point of being alive if you're not going to have experiences like travel. That pretty much only leaves work as an option to fill you're time.
- peterkelly 13y ago
  While I'm mostly in agreement with the rest of the article, I think on this point that cultural exploration does actually benefit society to a degree, because it results in people who are better educated about the world and less xenephobic/racist. If you spent a gap year in a particular country and have friends there, you're much less likely to support a war against that country.
  - DickingAround 13y ago
    I'd agree that cultural exploration can benefit society by making people more accepting of each other. But I'd like to distinguish it as still being a form of consumption/production since no production is permanently improved. For example, if the person who did the exploration dies, unless they've done something clearly permanent to teach it to their kids or enshrine that learning, the experience will die with them. I feel like many vacations end up in that category, though obviously it's not a universal situation.
    - peterkelly 13y ago
      I consider it a combination of consumption and education, rather than production per se. The balance between these two factors depends a lot on the person; someone who goes abroad just to party will have a little bit of cultural immersion but mostly just consume. Someone who goes abroad to seriously learn about a country, learn the language, spend time living there and getting to know the locals, will have more of an education. But I agree it can't be classified as production.
    - aaron695 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
shadowOfShadow 13y ago
One sized straw man =/=> all.
yzhengyu 13y ago
Article comes across to me as a very preachy, high falutin, very warped perception of what constitutes a modern economy. If the end outcome of increasingly rapid automation means that a significant percentage of humanity ends up being unable to participate in economic activity due to an inability to acquire currency, then we are in big trouble.
- contingencies 13y ago
  Maybe, as some people suggest, we need to redefine the nature of currency using social and environmental welfare as factors? The problem is, SWIFT, SIX Interbank Clearing and the ISO don't support this, banks don't support this, and national governments don't support this. Instead, IMHO, they pay it just enough lip service (eg. carbon credits) to keep it from having a truly fair go. With the technology we have available today, alternate and more broadly informed currencies are entirely feasible as potential instruments of trade for large portions of the economy, at least in the developed world. The kicker is, it will detract from nationalism, and governments have a PR problem with taxing the facilitation of social or environmental good.
  - rapala 13y ago
    How would these social and environmental factors be featured in the new currency? How would they differ from the current situation where things like moral value of goods are reflected directly in the price (green energy costs more because it has more value)? I'm having difficulties seeing how this new currency would work.
    - contingencies 13y ago
      I'm no expert, there is an entire field here. However, basically, anything people agree to value can function as an asset to be traded as nationally issued fiat-currency (debt) is today. There's essentially no difference, though the latter has the historical benefit of being demanded as tax and supporting by a large army, theoretically though the governments cannot wield these against the hippy next door for, you know, growing trees (environmental credits) or sharing spliffs (social credits). People wanting the currency (debt) is based upon trust; ie. the trust that the debt society owes you, symbolized in the form of your possession of the asset in question, will be redeemed at some future point by someone else for something you want. (Note that due to inflation and the creation of money in current era systems this debt notion is flipped; typical money must be repaid - with interest, at speed - or forfeited. But that's a tangent.) A path forward will probably include convincing one or more governments to adopt some alternate assets and begin to effectively provide rates of exchange through government tax incentives or similar. This could kickstart a modern renaissance in multi-asset accounting and localized economies. Not holding my breath on speed, but anything's possible. Part of the challenge here is that social and environmental concerns typically cross borders and election terms, and developed countries' political decisionmaking is heavily blinkered against these two classes of issue. Recommended reading: Debt: The First 5000 Years.
joe_the_user 13y ago
Actually, I would suggest that to "improve ... humanity in general" you actually need to redefine the production process, the consumption process and what gets consumed. If you keep the keep the same assumptions and automate more, all you wind-up with is people lose their jobs and become homeless because there's no new activity for them to do. And his example of increase production shows how that doesn't necessarily improve things. Of course, any increase in production does redefine all this stuff, it has to. The question is whether it redefines them enough.
cwhy 13y ago
I am from China, and I can share a bit of what I have learnt about Marxism in my secondary school: 1. As technology advances, machines will do more and more things that what human originally do. 2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment 3. At the same time, people (organization) who owns (not develops) machines will take this income. 4. People (organization) who owns more machines can more easily to buy another one. 5. Richer people will get richer. Poor people will get poorer. -. Capitalism has bugs. In the future (my crazy thoughts): (If machines keep getting smarter) > More and more jobs are handled by humans, thus things like labor strike will have less and less impact on machine owners - since machines can still work for them. (If machines are smarter than human) > People who cannot develop machines will have no competition with machine owners, since they have machines which are smarter (If machines can developer machines) > Even people who can develop machines (maybe the last group of people) will be unemployed. People who own machines will have endless expansion. And people's life will be depending on how many machines they have and how advanced the machines are. About new jobs the machine enables: Other than machine generator/operators, most of them are entertainment which are generated needs. This portion of job looks unlikely will be replaced by machines. But who knows. I know my logic may be flawed and all objections with reasons are extremely welcome. I only proposed a problem with no solution, as I cannot imagine one (and definitely not pure centralized socialism), and I like machines.
- agibsonccc 13y ago
  It's not too far away. Many businesses are built on the idea of automating manual work now (mine included; one man shop!) . Aside from getting in to the meta discussions here. I think automation is also an enabler as much as it also detracts from different kinds of labor. I think it just means a temporary disruption in the short term, but a redistribution of skills in the long term. One good example of this is one we're seeing now. It was Auto and industrial before where people had the most employment (at least as far as what had the highest quality of life). This will (and is already) moving to technology. As it matures, it will become easier to teach and I hate to say it, but commoditize the work. After that, money made will be based on combinations of value add not necessarily what skills you know.
iSnow 13y ago
I cannot see how increased automation without some pseudo-socialist redistribution of income is going to reduce working hours. We had lots and lots of automation over the last generations - and all it led to is still the same long weeks, overnighters, checking in to the company via smartphone. The jobs made redundant have been replace by bullshit pseudo-jobs like commnity managers and social media experts.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  It's a shame you think community manager is a bullshit job. Do you want to work the forums two hours a day rather than code? That's what the "community managers" at my workplace do, and I really appreciate it.
  - iSnow 13y ago
    I do something like this in my spare time (not two hours a day of course) and would not ever consider it an occupation. But it's not community manager per se - I could have chosen grocery packers at the checkout too. I was trying to pick on fluff jobs that are only marginally useful and can only exist because they cannot easily be automated and add just enough of marginal value that companies decide to pay for it. I doubt anyone would notice if they were gone and replaced by an inferior automaton longer than 2 weeks. The point is: we are not reaping the fruits of 150 years of fierce rationalization, but fight for the 10% indispensable employees, keep the majority employed whether it makes sense or not - and pay the rest just enough that they don't starve. Seems dysfunctional to me.
xlayn 13y ago
first than nothing, discussion about the topic is great as most of the times is @hn, but I have this felling about this post: why this kind of post keep appearing in HN? is this also going to go the same way of decadence as slashdot to end up being another Yahoo answers? Let start to dissect the post: The tenet is: "Consumption doesn't improve economy or humanity in general. Neither does production. If you want to help, start automating things." first thing first, where is the cold, hard data supporting this, or is this another "I would write some fancy stuff on my blog and get it re-blogged, I'm so tweet-in"? this is starting to be a trend, in which people throw a lot of poorly supported stuff to their blogs so they look "in". Poor argument, emotion driven conclusion, at the beginning of the second paragraph is stated: "Imagine" but he later concludes: "At this point, both of them are getting fat from their excessive consumption and working harder pay for it all." what the heck does being fat has to do with the idea behind it all? is this a slimfast supporting post? what does the fat analogy means? was an analogy? "Both are now working harder for things they don't need" why they both should work harder? if they did not want ice cream or cookies the example is flawed in first place, economic should start with things that are required and go up to things we want a la Maslov. "Of course, if they were intelligent people they'd try to improve the production of cookies and ice cream" it's called "competition" and it does already exist, it force you to create new technology to make the process cheaper and have better income from the same products allowing you to get your prices low (because you have better earning marging) and still be profitable, it's what prevents you from start making average tennis shoes, or cookies or ice cream because someone else is already way better at doing that; PLEASE do not come to the argument of "if they were intelligent" explain why is better. "Is it true that we will only automate the processes we're working on once we're <<working long hours for things we don't need?>>" at this point I'm starting to think this is about a existential problem/phase of the author. and I'm pretty sure you can start dissecting any part of the post with arguments pro and against it, as with anything else, it's the lack of any new light that bothers me, please don't tell me this will start to be the "throw some random stuff so I can show I'm cool" place.

52 points by DickingAround 13y ago

The thought is generally good but it overshoots the solution I think in one key respect: consumer priorities. I think for this post you are conflating consumer spending with luxury spending. If indeed there were a single minded "consumerism" that strictly identified more or less meaningless items (luxury goods) as the key consumption then I would agree. The fact is however, "consumer driven economy" simply is distinguishing an economy that predominantly privately spends more than it publicly spends, saves or invests. To that point, I agree that we should be automating more things to free up all of our time. I hope someday to automate food production so that it can actually come full cycle, so there is definitely something there.

DickingAround 13y ago
But don't we already have a society that only has 2% of people working on food production? If that is considered the only non-luxury/required good, then most of us are working to get more luxuries.
- AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  That is certainly not the only required good, but I would argue it is the #2 behind water consumption. I also wouldn't disagree that most folks are working for more luxuries. Remember I agreed that we should be working for fewer luxuries. The issue with food is that when you factor in everything, to include environmental impact, good sustainable food is actually very expensive. I am also including the logistics that go into food delivery and the significant amount of waste and impact it causes [1]. [1]: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2013/09/12/un-says-that-if-food-waste-was-a-country-itd-be-the-3-global-greenhouse-gas-emitter/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2013/09/12/un...
- vbuterin 13y ago
  Food is basically a solved problem. Priority #1 is medical care IMO. Housing is expensive, but really Japanese-style closet hotels can solve that problem for ultracheap if needed (as I understand it's mostly zoning laws preventing it right now). If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity.
  - ehsanu1 13y ago
    If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity. How so? Post-scarcity implies, to me at least, that nobody has to work to live: everything is abundant and free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy
    - vbuterin 13y ago
      People will always work; some people just want to do stuff for fun. If we can get the need for employment down to that low percentage, then we're de facto there IMO. At that point, there are several ways to fill in the missing pieces; a government-funded (or even ideally endowment-funded) basic income, food becoming a gimmick to attract customers rather than a commodity the same way water is today, the equivalent of public libraries and bookstores for housing, etc. Money probably won't be an issue in any case; if work is done by that percentage of people who want to work, they won't necessarily need a salary; I can see money being limited to a mechanism for regulating large-scale resource use.
- ilaksh 13y ago
  The thing that most people miss is that the majority of the world doesn't operate the way the US does (including things like food production). You have to look at the system as a whole. And it is extremely destructive and inhospitable when you evaluate it objectively and holistically. I know that the popular world-view for internet technologists is very different from that of course. I saw the Hans Rosling TED talk. I used to share the same rose-colored worldview. I also used to believe all of the propaganda put out on television. I now know that the world we live is far more violent and dysfunctional than we are led to believe. We have very deep structural problems starting with a Social Darwinistic worldview that leads to massive inequality and waste. I believe that technology is working rather directly against all of those negative legacy factors. And I also believe that technology is currently improving the situation and will continue to do so as things like ultra-local food and energy production aided by nanotechnology become mainstream. I also think that within about twenty years unaugmented humanity will be obsoleted by advanced, vastly superior AI, and that will eliminate the current severe problems with worldviews and social structures holding back technological advancement. I am a little worried we might run into World War III before we get those things online though.

gitpushupbra 13y ago

> Consumption doesn't improve economy or humanity in general. Neither does production. If you want to help, start automating things. I'm not sure you know what any of these things mean.

jkramer7 13y ago

Can someone clarify? I'm not sure what end goal the article is driving at. Are we aiming for more free time? If that's the case, then I fail to see how automation helps. Companies have incentives to hire as few employees as possible -- it cuts down on administrative overhead, like the necessity of sending out a check to each employee. The result will be as many full-time employees as possible. The workers displaced by automation then move on to make other goods (perhaps napkins) or provide other services, with the same incentives to work full-time, and nobody has any more free time. The end result is just more goods to purchase, which the author seems to have disdain for.

gilgoomesh 13y ago
The article is poorly written. The article starts by talking about pointless consumer spending (convincing people to buy things they don't need). This is a net loss to society. However, the article doesn't make any kind of distinction between pointless consumer spending and wise consumer spending and instead runs off on a totally unrelated tangent about automation (which certainly helps but isn't related to the macroeconomic effects of consumption). The article totally ignores the fact that "wise" consumer spending is a significant benefit to everyone – i.e. when consumers are buying things they need or where the benefit of the purchase exceeds the effort input to earning the money. It also helps progress the economy when consumers are buying products that are new and innovative and make technology or business model improvements.

aaron695 13y ago

>Fewer are willing to admit the culturally-exploratory, finding-yourself vacation experience we read about on a travel blog has pretty much the same level of benefit to society. Totally lost me on this line. What's the point of being alive if you're not going to have experiences like travel. That pretty much only leaves work as an option to fill you're time.

peterkelly 13y ago
While I'm mostly in agreement with the rest of the article, I think on this point that cultural exploration does actually benefit society to a degree, because it results in people who are better educated about the world and less xenephobic/racist. If you spent a gap year in a particular country and have friends there, you're much less likely to support a war against that country.
- DickingAround 13y ago
  I'd agree that cultural exploration can benefit society by making people more accepting of each other. But I'd like to distinguish it as still being a form of consumption/production since no production is permanently improved. For example, if the person who did the exploration dies, unless they've done something clearly permanent to teach it to their kids or enshrine that learning, the experience will die with them. I feel like many vacations end up in that category, though obviously it's not a universal situation.
  - peterkelly 13y ago
    I consider it a combination of consumption and education, rather than production per se. The balance between these two factors depends a lot on the person; someone who goes abroad just to party will have a little bit of cultural immersion but mostly just consume. Someone who goes abroad to seriously learn about a country, learn the language, spend time living there and getting to know the locals, will have more of an education. But I agree it can't be classified as production.
  - aaron695 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

shadowOfShadow 13y ago

One sized straw man =/=> all.

yzhengyu 13y ago

Article comes across to me as a very preachy, high falutin, very warped perception of what constitutes a modern economy. If the end outcome of increasingly rapid automation means that a significant percentage of humanity ends up being unable to participate in economic activity due to an inability to acquire currency, then we are in big trouble.

contingencies 13y ago
Maybe, as some people suggest, we need to redefine the nature of currency using social and environmental welfare as factors? The problem is, SWIFT, SIX Interbank Clearing and the ISO don't support this, banks don't support this, and national governments don't support this. Instead, IMHO, they pay it just enough lip service (eg. carbon credits) to keep it from having a truly fair go. With the technology we have available today, alternate and more broadly informed currencies are entirely feasible as potential instruments of trade for large portions of the economy, at least in the developed world. The kicker is, it will detract from nationalism, and governments have a PR problem with taxing the facilitation of social or environmental good.
- rapala 13y ago
  How would these social and environmental factors be featured in the new currency? How would they differ from the current situation where things like moral value of goods are reflected directly in the price (green energy costs more because it has more value)? I'm having difficulties seeing how this new currency would work.
  - contingencies 13y ago
    I'm no expert, there is an entire field here. However, basically, anything people agree to value can function as an asset to be traded as nationally issued fiat-currency (debt) is today. There's essentially no difference, though the latter has the historical benefit of being demanded as tax and supporting by a large army, theoretically though the governments cannot wield these against the hippy next door for, you know, growing trees (environmental credits) or sharing spliffs (social credits). People wanting the currency (debt) is based upon trust; ie. the trust that the debt society owes you, symbolized in the form of your possession of the asset in question, will be redeemed at some future point by someone else for something you want. (Note that due to inflation and the creation of money in current era systems this debt notion is flipped; typical money must be repaid - with interest, at speed - or forfeited. But that's a tangent.) A path forward will probably include convincing one or more governments to adopt some alternate assets and begin to effectively provide rates of exchange through government tax incentives or similar. This could kickstart a modern renaissance in multi-asset accounting and localized economies. Not holding my breath on speed, but anything's possible. Part of the challenge here is that social and environmental concerns typically cross borders and election terms, and developed countries' political decisionmaking is heavily blinkered against these two classes of issue. Recommended reading: Debt: The First 5000 Years.

joe_the_user 13y ago

Actually, I would suggest that to "improve ... humanity in general" you actually need to redefine the production process, the consumption process and what gets consumed. If you keep the keep the same assumptions and automate more, all you wind-up with is people lose their jobs and become homeless because there's no new activity for them to do. And his example of increase production shows how that doesn't necessarily improve things. Of course, any increase in production does redefine all this stuff, it has to. The question is whether it redefines them enough.

cwhy 13y ago

I am from China, and I can share a bit of what I have learnt about Marxism in my secondary school: 1. As technology advances, machines will do more and more things that what human originally do. 2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment 3. At the same time, people (organization) who owns (not develops) machines will take this income. 4. People (organization) who owns more machines can more easily to buy another one. 5. Richer people will get richer. Poor people will get poorer. -. Capitalism has bugs. In the future (my crazy thoughts): (If machines keep getting smarter) > More and more jobs are handled by humans, thus things like labor strike will have less and less impact on machine owners - since machines can still work for them. (If machines are smarter than human) > People who cannot develop machines will have no competition with machine owners, since they have machines which are smarter (If machines can developer machines) > Even people who can develop machines (maybe the last group of people) will be unemployed. People who own machines will have endless expansion. And people's life will be depending on how many machines they have and how advanced the machines are. About new jobs the machine enables: Other than machine generator/operators, most of them are entertainment which are generated needs. This portion of job looks unlikely will be replaced by machines. But who knows. I know my logic may be flawed and all objections with reasons are extremely welcome. I only proposed a problem with no solution, as I cannot imagine one (and definitely not pure centralized socialism), and I like machines.

agibsonccc 13y ago
It's not too far away. Many businesses are built on the idea of automating manual work now (mine included; one man shop!) . Aside from getting in to the meta discussions here. I think automation is also an enabler as much as it also detracts from different kinds of labor. I think it just means a temporary disruption in the short term, but a redistribution of skills in the long term. One good example of this is one we're seeing now. It was Auto and industrial before where people had the most employment (at least as far as what had the highest quality of life). This will (and is already) moving to technology. As it matures, it will become easier to teach and I hate to say it, but commoditize the work. After that, money made will be based on combinations of value add not necessarily what skills you know.

iSnow 13y ago

I cannot see how increased automation without some pseudo-socialist redistribution of income is going to reduce working hours. We had lots and lots of automation over the last generations - and all it led to is still the same long weeks, overnighters, checking in to the company via smartphone. The jobs made redundant have been replace by bullshit pseudo-jobs like commnity managers and social media experts.

jamesaguilar 13y ago
It's a shame you think community manager is a bullshit job. Do you want to work the forums two hours a day rather than code? That's what the "community managers" at my workplace do, and I really appreciate it.
- iSnow 13y ago
  I do something like this in my spare time (not two hours a day of course) and would not ever consider it an occupation. But it's not community manager per se - I could have chosen grocery packers at the checkout too. I was trying to pick on fluff jobs that are only marginally useful and can only exist because they cannot easily be automated and add just enough of marginal value that companies decide to pay for it. I doubt anyone would notice if they were gone and replaced by an inferior automaton longer than 2 weeks. The point is: we are not reaping the fruits of 150 years of fierce rationalization, but fight for the 10% indispensable employees, keep the majority employed whether it makes sense or not - and pay the rest just enough that they don't starve. Seems dysfunctional to me.

xlayn 13y ago

first than nothing, discussion about the topic is great as most of the times is @hn, but I have this felling about this post: why this kind of post keep appearing in HN? is this also going to go the same way of decadence as slashdot to end up being another Yahoo answers? Let start to dissect the post: The tenet is: "Consumption doesn't improve economy or humanity in general. Neither does production. If you want to help, start automating things." first thing first, where is the cold, hard data supporting this, or is this another "I would write some fancy stuff on my blog and get it re-blogged, I'm so tweet-in"? this is starting to be a trend, in which people throw a lot of poorly supported stuff to their blogs so they look "in". Poor argument, emotion driven conclusion, at the beginning of the second paragraph is stated: "Imagine" but he later concludes: "At this point, both of them are getting fat from their excessive consumption and working harder pay for it all." what the heck does being fat has to do with the idea behind it all? is this a slimfast supporting post? what does the fat analogy means? was an analogy? "Both are now working harder for things they don't need" why they both should work harder? if they did not want ice cream or cookies the example is flawed in first place, economic should start with things that are required and go up to things we want a la Maslov. "Of course, if they were intelligent people they'd try to improve the production of cookies and ice cream" it's called "competition" and it does already exist, it force you to create new technology to make the process cheaper and have better income from the same products allowing you to get your prices low (because you have better earning marging) and still be profitable, it's what prevents you from start making average tennis shoes, or cookies or ice cream because someone else is already way better at doing that; PLEASE do not come to the argument of "if they were intelligent" explain why is better. "Is it true that we will only automate the processes we're working on once we're <<working long hours for things we don't need?>>" at this point I'm starting to think this is about a existential problem/phase of the author. and I'm pretty sure you can start dissecting any part of the post with arguments pro and against it, as with anything else, it's the lack of any new light that bothers me, please don't tell me this will start to be the "throw some random stuff so I can show I'm cool" place.