10 ms·

The effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs

107 points by ig1 13y ago

jbb555 13y ago
Well the alternative is "If only we all did our jobs less efficiently everyone would be better off". Which is clearly stupid.
- henrik_w 13y ago
  From the article: "Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. But the benefits of technological progress are unevenly distributed, especially in the early stages of each new wave, and it is up to governments to spread them."
  - furyg3 13y ago
    > "Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. " Interestingly even this is the opposite of what we're seeing. It may be more expensive (cost), worse (quality), and less efficient (time and materials) but: I like to brew my own beer instead of buying it. I like to build my own cabinet instead of shopping at Ikea. I like to take a day off to raise my child instead of sending them to daycare. To fix my car, make my own lamp, walk the dog, etc. I just went to an open air museum where perfectly right-minded people were looming their own textiles (for free!). I recently met a regional queen in Indonesia who wove her own, as well, because it was cultural, not because her family needed the money.
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      Well, you do this for fun. For every person like you who likes to brew his/her own beer, there are other people who just want to buy a beer to have something to drink while they're socializing with friends. The real benefit of innovation is that you're free to choose which things you care about enough to do them by yourself, and have all the others mass-produced and cheaply available.
      - VLM 13y ago
        I think you're in a circular loop. Once those "just wanna drink a beer" people have their jobs automated away, they will never again have money to participate in the economy again. At which point they will have to take up barter or crime. They might trade home grown weed for someones home brewed beer, but one thing I know is they won't be part of the monetary economy buying a beer anymore.
        TeMPOraL 13y ago
        > Once those "just wanna drink a beer" people have their jobs automated away, they will never again have money to participate in the economy again. This is the whole topic of this article. The economy is broken wrt. progress and needs to be fixed. Two pillars of our economic system - scarcity and endless growth - are both being destroyed as we speak.
        VLM 13y ago
        I'd agree with your two and add two of my own: 1) The existence of the middle class 2) The general public gets to participate in commodity markets. Not the trading commodity market, but the consumer markets. No more buying food, medical care, housing, clothing, no longer participants in the system. The monetary economy is for other people, the rich, not everyone or even the majority.
        xixi77 13y ago
        Middle class is going away for sure. It has always been a historical abnormality anyway. As for the latter -- people have been participating in monetary economy long before industrial revolution, and will be participating whichever way the society evolves -- it is just simply more convenient than barter. If someone can produce beer himself cheaper than it is available on the market, why would he not sell it and earn some money? And if he cannot make it cheaper, why would he not buy it instead (or not drink it at all if he is too poor, or steal money & buy beer, or...) -- the point is that whatever he does, making it himself is never a good idea unless he enjoys it as a (somewhat expensive) hobby.
- Fede_V 13y ago
  There is no need to strawman the article. You can be a huge advocate for technology, while still be concerned about the poisonous effects that winner-takes-all dynamics can have on societies.
- gaius 13y ago
  It really depends how you measure efficiency and value. Everyone likes the idea of their town having a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker, but they actually shop in an out of town megamart. Which is fine, it's more efficient in terms of calories per unit of currency, but there is also value in the lifestyle you want to live, which I think people only tend to realize too late.
- parasight 13y ago
  That's not an alternative. I think the alternative will be something like an unconditional basic income. There will be new jobs of course but there won't be enough new jobs to compensate the amount of jobs that will get lost in the process. And that's not a bad thing. I don't think we are born to have a job. Society has to adapt.
  - Buttons840 13y ago
    A tangential thought: if there was a guaranteed basic income, I suppose they could do away with minimum wage? This would open the possibility that some companies could pay less, but would have to compensate by making their employees really happy, otherwise they'd just go back to the basic income.
henrik_w 13y ago
Previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070945
001sky 13y ago
Less important is the nature of work. More important is the nature of contracting for that work. > Search Costs > Reach > Transparency These all equate to leverage, or options on leverage. The key takeaway: you better be the one doing the leverage. If you are on the wrong side (and you will be if you are not increasingly using technology to increase your personal leverage), things are not likely to be stable, predicatble, or really all that comfortable. SW is going to "eat the world" by providing leverage in a pocket. It might need a piece of HW and in IP connection, but the point is not the form of the device; but what it embodies: the opportunity to leverage...time, space, information, people. Not to mention data and the usefulness of data from the perspective of rhetoric (ie, appearing informed...even if authority is not explicitly yours...allows you to make claims...through the illusion/reality of perceived expertise). Anyways, these are fun times. Embrace the potential. Keep an eye on your back. And you will do fine. Do the opposite...ignore the potential, fail to keep your wits about you, and don't look over your shoulder...and other things will happen. Part of this is not being complacent; these powers will be used (potentially) for evil as well as good. And like the historical example of the cold-war...sometimes revolutionary prosperity is not actually all that fun to live through. So we should all keep that in mind, too.
furyg3 13y ago
While it's a great idea to train people for the job skills that are on an upward trend, I feel like the article is being fairly short sighted. Automating away 50% of the workforce won't happen in a vacuum. It will come with major changes to the political, economic, and social systems. Maybe we decide to let tech do everything while we go fishing (the oft-cited technology utopia that never seems to happen). Maybe we switch to a fixed-income economic model, where it's fine if people decide not to work. Maybe we decide not to automate some components (gasp!). Or use all that extra manpower to philosophize, make art... or war. To say "it's going to be a big problem if 50% of the workforce is made redundant, we better start educating people now!" is exactly what you would expect from an (or 'the') economist. Economic rules are based on people's desires, and people desires may also be revolutionized if most of what they do is done by computers.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  Well, I don't think there's much space for me to agree with you on the issues here, but maybe the past can inform us a little. Historically, virtually 100% of the population was employed in food production. We've automated well past the 50% point by now. What happened to the surplussed workers? (Of the things you listed, I'd actually say "use the extra manpower to philosophize, make art, and make war" is a decent description of what happened.)
  - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    > What happened to the surplussed workers? They found other jobs. When one industry needs few workers, another always takes up the slack. I've heard this principle stated in different ways in different places over the years. But is it a iron law of nature, or just a thing that goes on until it doesn't? If it will eventually stop (and I think this is likely), how would you tell when it is going to stop? Would you notice if it is already happening? What does the current situation resemble? I have posed this question before ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6853359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6853359 ) No definitive answer yet.
    - 13y ago
r0h1n 13y ago
The Economist, imho, has never been a great place to read about Internet trends (they do a great job with cutting-edge tech, esp. from a science or R&D point of view). But their current special report is a rare exception. Ludwig Siegele, the anchor (Economist writers are allowed bylines for special reports) has covered quite a bit of ground. Some of the stuff may be familiar to HN readers, but I can almost guarantee it will be very useful and revealing to most other (non-tech) readers. Which is why I'll take the risk of posting links to all the stories in the report: The 'Cambrian Explosion' in web entrepreneurship - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593580-cheap-and-ubiquitous-building-blocks-digital-products-and-services-have-caused http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593580-cheap-... Lean methodology - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593580-cheap-and-ubiquitous-building-blocks-digital-products-and-services-have-caused http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593580-cheap-... How venture capital is adapting - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593585-venture-capital-adapting-itself-new-startup-landscape-leafy-lofty http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593585-ventur... The role of accelerators, including YC - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593592-biggest-professional-training-system-you-have-never-heard-getting-up-speed http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593592-bigges... Rocket Internet's approach towards farming startups - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593586-how-build-companies-kit-rocket-machine http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593586-how-bu... Global startup ecosystems - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593582-what-entrepreneurial-ecosystems-need-flourish-all-together-now http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593582-what-e... The 'dark side' of starting up - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593591-are-startups-just-workaholic-white-male-lumpen-preneurs-founders-blues http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593591-are-st... Hardware startups and Shenzhen - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593590-why-southern-china-best-place-world-hardware-innovator-be-hacking http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593590-why-so... The growth of platforms - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593583-proliferating-digital-platforms-will-be-heart-tomorrows-economy-and-even http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593583-prolif...
- drcode 13y ago
  I still give the Economist huge credit for releasing this cover image in 2005: http://www.tradersnarrative.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/after%20the%20fall%20house%20prices%20economist%20magazine%202005.png http://www.tradersnarrative.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/a... That was arguably the most unambiguous and accurate prediction on the cover of a magazine, ever. I remember the lady next to me on an airplane telling me she was just getting heavily into a house flipping business. I happened to have that issue of the Economist with me to read on the plane. I showed her the cover and said "But what about this?" (I wonder what happened to her business...)
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Always the same message, that is deeply flawed: That the problem today is technology, it is not. Reality is that today economy is central planned in order to protect the money from the people at the top at the expense of the one of normal people, who had seen taxes increase and life much more expensive as a result. Don't get me wrong, I have friends that are rich, but the reality is that lots of people at the top got money speculating on bad assets or bubbles. When it was time for correction,(2008) the governments entered in order to protect those speculators from losses, and bought those bad assets making miserable the general economy. The problem is not solved, protecting malinvestors only makes them more confident to do it again.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  There's a bigger problem with our economy - its two main pillars are scarcity and growth. The first one is disappearing thanks to automation, and the second one is unsustainable, as we're about to hit the roof. The economy will change, it's only a question of whether we handle the transition gracefully, or let the whole thing collapse on our heads.
  - xixi77 13y ago
    What are the signs of either scarcity, or growth, being in danger of soon (or ever) going away? The asinine "infinite growth on a finite world has to be impossible" meme is getting really tired; but even if we subscribed to that notion for a second, what would constrain future growth if not scarcity? And what would do away with scarcity if not growth?
klenwell 13y ago
I found one of the simplest and most insidious examples of the effect of today's technology on today's jobs in this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/business/a-part-time-life-as-hours-shrink-and-shift-for-american-workers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/business/a-part-time-life-... It documents how scheduling software in the retail and food sectors has allowed corporate chains to optimize the scheduling of low-wage workers, scheduling them for shorter shifts concentrated at peaks hours and sending them off when not needed. This article doesn't go into great detail about another exploitative practice: the split shift. This means a employee may be required to work a short morning shift and a short evening shift, making it effectively impossible for those prepared to scrape by working a second job to even do that any more. The net effect is less wages and less benefits for workers. And to whom does the difference accrue? Technology here acts as a tool further disadvantaging those who are already at a disadvantage. And technology itself doesn't offer an obvious remedy. Collective action among workers might help their cause, but unions in this country struggle to organize. Facebook and Snapchat don't appear to be picking up the slack. Government regulation would seem to offer a more civil remedy. Simply don't allow employers to squeeze their employees like this. But while I continue to hear occasional media stories and personal narratives about these abuses, I haven't heard reports of any serious proposals to end them.
- maerF0x0 13y ago
  The negatives of the split shift will drive up the per hour wages. To illustrate: say I'll work all day for $64 but I have some bare minimum I need to live on, maybe $60. If I cannot make $60 in the 2x 3hour shifts, then I have to look elsewhere. As people look elsewhere, the price to fill the job will rise. Furthermore, there are side benefits of split shifts, like being able to do a workout midday, running errands or seeing your kids, having a walk in the park etc. etc. These side benefits are the kinds of benefits that come to all workers when we utilize skills more effectively. When all the dishwashers were laid off due to dish washing machines, we rejoiced because people dont have to do menial work anymore and can pursue the higher callings of human life. Its scary, but beneficial to all. >"And to whom does the difference accrue" A portion of the difference will go to those who made the software, A portion to the capitalists who invest in the software, A portion to the business owner who implements the software etc. etc. A portion will be passed onto consumers as price competition.Like the economist article says, it can take time for the market effects to settle out though, maybe not now, maybe not in 5 years, but eventually everyone will be doing it, saving us all 10 cents on a combo (or whatever contrived number)..
nsxwolf 13y ago
There seems to be a lot of automation anxiety on HN lately. If an article is not about the NSA it's about how 100 million jobs are about to vanish into thin air and we need a guaranteed income, the theory that people are freed up to do other jobs is bunk because we've reached the end of the line, etc... I wonder if we're really that close to the end of jobs, or if we are just suffering from a lack of imagination.
- doktrin 13y ago
  It's eminently possible, if not likely, that the way the future will actually unfold differs from our current predictions (on HN, or elsewhere). However, you work with what you've got. If our best model for the future involves the progressive automation of all human labour - it makes sense to at least theorize (if not plan) for that eventuality. If the situation turns out to not be dire - great - but you plan for the worst, as the axiom goes.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  > I wonder if we're really that close to the end of jobs, or if we are just suffering from a lack of imagination. Maybe, but I personally believe that people saying that we don't have to worry about that suffer from the lack of imagination - the very same kind as the one that leads some to say things like "we can't / won't be able to do that". If there's one thing last 100 years of progress have proved, it is that we can do pretty much everything as long as we care about it strongly enough. Some people warn against believing in power of technology too much; I say people believe in it too little.
cliveowen 13y ago
The Economist has been publishing basically the same article for the last 8 months, what the hell is going on?
pgeorgi 13y ago
I wonder how articles like this always consider management to be safe from automation. If there is something that can be done better by computers than humans, it's unemotional number crunching (like risk assessment or other decision making). You still need to enter the right questions and numbers and then act on the result, but I see quite some slack in that field that could be optimized away once the right product shows up.
- rohall 13y ago
  This is actually really interesting. I wonder how well it would work when combined with self managing teams. It might provide the oversight needed to make business decisions while still letting the team figure out the best structure for the success of a project (I'm thinking about software dev particularly).
- rm445 13y ago
  Interesting (and slightly terrifying) short story that was posted here a while back, positing that computer vision and speech would make middle management obsolete first. It makes for quite different consequences to the usual vision, that the workers are in trouble but the managers are safe. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
VLM 13y ago
"The millions freed from the land were not consigned to joblessness, but found better-paid work as the economy grew more sophisticated." No explanation why this is anything other than a very convenient coincidence, which is too bad. I'm not convinced its other than a coincidence. I would feel better if there was some kind of reasoning behind it. Anything. You may as well argue that drinking large amounts of tea was followed by an industrial revolution in .uk therefore the best economic plan for Africa would be to airdrop bags of tea, if it worked before, what could possibly go wrong tomorrow?
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  It's worse when you realise that the millions freed from the land mostly had to choose between working insane hours (often dying from stress alone), or dying of cold or starvation. Better paying jobs only started to appear a generation later, and only become really common at the XX century.
yawz 13y ago
rolls eyes They have to put "Big Data" in there, don't they? sigh
yetanotherphd 13y ago
For people like me who have trouble making it to the end of an article, I want to repeat the solution that the authors propose: >Yet however well people are taught, their abilities will remain unequal, and in a world which is increasingly polarised economically, many will find their job prospects dimmed and wages squeezed. The best way of helping them is not, as many on the left seem to think, to push up minimum wages. Jacking up the floor too far would accelerate the shift from human workers to computers. Better to top up low wages with public money so that anyone who works has a reasonable income, through a bold expansion of the tax credits that countries such as America and Britain use. For basic income advocates, I would also like to point out that this policy is much closer to basic income than increasing the minimum wage.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  It is, but then again why compromise? Actual basic income schemes proposed by various economists are better than either propping up the minimum wage or using "public money" to pay workers enough to live. One single unitary basic income system from which all benefit to the same degree, whether you are now poor, rich, lazy or driven should be our goal.
  - nickff 13y ago
    >"One single unitary basic income system from which all benefit to the same degree, whether you are now poor, rich, lazy or driven should be our goal." I have to disagree, as my goal is simply for everyone's life to be constantly (but not necessarily monotonically) improving. I am not too choosy about the means by which this is achieved (excepting immoral means such as slavery). >"It is, but then again why compromise? Actual basic income schemes proposed by various economists are better than either propping up the minimum wage or using "public money" to pay workers enough to live." This is a great point, as one problem with the minimum wage (MW) is that it is not a transparent policy, as no one knows its true costs. If a basic income or other system were a line item on the governmental budget, the voters might understand its (direct) costs, and weigh the benefits against those. Democracy requires transparency, as citizens must be able to learn what their votes have done, and will do. Yet another problem of MWs is that their opaqueness makes it easy for firms with low labor costs to lobby for increases in the MW to destroy their competition; while high labor cost companies lobby to keep the MW constant, and increase the money supply (to deflate the MW).
esja 13y ago
A decent article, but as usual treats "capital mobility" as a law of nature. If present trends continue, capital controls will be making a comeback.

107 points by ig1 13y ago

Well the alternative is "If only we all did our jobs less efficiently everyone would be better off". Which is clearly stupid.

henrik_w 13y ago
From the article: "Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. But the benefits of technological progress are unevenly distributed, especially in the early stages of each new wave, and it is up to governments to spread them."
- furyg3 13y ago
  > "Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. " Interestingly even this is the opposite of what we're seeing. It may be more expensive (cost), worse (quality), and less efficient (time and materials) but: I like to brew my own beer instead of buying it. I like to build my own cabinet instead of shopping at Ikea. I like to take a day off to raise my child instead of sending them to daycare. To fix my car, make my own lamp, walk the dog, etc. I just went to an open air museum where perfectly right-minded people were looming their own textiles (for free!). I recently met a regional queen in Indonesia who wove her own, as well, because it was cultural, not because her family needed the money.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Well, you do this for fun. For every person like you who likes to brew his/her own beer, there are other people who just want to buy a beer to have something to drink while they're socializing with friends. The real benefit of innovation is that you're free to choose which things you care about enough to do them by yourself, and have all the others mass-produced and cheaply available.
    - VLM 13y ago
      I think you're in a circular loop. Once those "just wanna drink a beer" people have their jobs automated away, they will never again have money to participate in the economy again. At which point they will have to take up barter or crime. They might trade home grown weed for someones home brewed beer, but one thing I know is they won't be part of the monetary economy buying a beer anymore.
      - TeMPOraL 13y ago
        > Once those "just wanna drink a beer" people have their jobs automated away, they will never again have money to participate in the economy again. This is the whole topic of this article. The economy is broken wrt. progress and needs to be fixed. Two pillars of our economic system - scarcity and endless growth - are both being destroyed as we speak.
        VLM 13y ago
        I'd agree with your two and add two of my own: 1) The existence of the middle class 2) The general public gets to participate in commodity markets. Not the trading commodity market, but the consumer markets. No more buying food, medical care, housing, clothing, no longer participants in the system. The monetary economy is for other people, the rich, not everyone or even the majority.
        xixi77 13y ago
        Middle class is going away for sure. It has always been a historical abnormality anyway. As for the latter -- people have been participating in monetary economy long before industrial revolution, and will be participating whichever way the society evolves -- it is just simply more convenient than barter. If someone can produce beer himself cheaper than it is available on the market, why would he not sell it and earn some money? And if he cannot make it cheaper, why would he not buy it instead (or not drink it at all if he is too poor, or steal money & buy beer, or...) -- the point is that whatever he does, making it himself is never a good idea unless he enjoys it as a (somewhat expensive) hobby.
Fede_V 13y ago
There is no need to strawman the article. You can be a huge advocate for technology, while still be concerned about the poisonous effects that winner-takes-all dynamics can have on societies.
gaius 13y ago
It really depends how you measure efficiency and value. Everyone likes the idea of their town having a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker, but they actually shop in an out of town megamart. Which is fine, it's more efficient in terms of calories per unit of currency, but there is also value in the lifestyle you want to live, which I think people only tend to realize too late.
parasight 13y ago
That's not an alternative. I think the alternative will be something like an unconditional basic income. There will be new jobs of course but there won't be enough new jobs to compensate the amount of jobs that will get lost in the process. And that's not a bad thing. I don't think we are born to have a job. Society has to adapt.
- Buttons840 13y ago
  A tangential thought: if there was a guaranteed basic income, I suppose they could do away with minimum wage? This would open the possibility that some companies could pay less, but would have to compensate by making their employees really happy, otherwise they'd just go back to the basic income.

henrik_w 13y ago

Previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070945

001sky 13y ago

Less important is the nature of work. More important is the nature of contracting for that work. > Search Costs > Reach > Transparency These all equate to leverage, or options on leverage. The key takeaway: you better be the one doing the leverage. If you are on the wrong side (and you will be if you are not increasingly using technology to increase your personal leverage), things are not likely to be stable, predicatble, or really all that comfortable. SW is going to "eat the world" by providing leverage in a pocket. It might need a piece of HW and in IP connection, but the point is not the form of the device; but what it embodies: the opportunity to leverage...time, space, information, people. Not to mention data and the usefulness of data from the perspective of rhetoric (ie, appearing informed...even if authority is not explicitly yours...allows you to make claims...through the illusion/reality of perceived expertise). Anyways, these are fun times. Embrace the potential. Keep an eye on your back. And you will do fine. Do the opposite...ignore the potential, fail to keep your wits about you, and don't look over your shoulder...and other things will happen. Part of this is not being complacent; these powers will be used (potentially) for evil as well as good. And like the historical example of the cold-war...sometimes revolutionary prosperity is not actually all that fun to live through. So we should all keep that in mind, too.

furyg3 13y ago

While it's a great idea to train people for the job skills that are on an upward trend, I feel like the article is being fairly short sighted. Automating away 50% of the workforce won't happen in a vacuum. It will come with major changes to the political, economic, and social systems. Maybe we decide to let tech do everything while we go fishing (the oft-cited technology utopia that never seems to happen). Maybe we switch to a fixed-income economic model, where it's fine if people decide not to work. Maybe we decide not to automate some components (gasp!). Or use all that extra manpower to philosophize, make art... or war. To say "it's going to be a big problem if 50% of the workforce is made redundant, we better start educating people now!" is exactly what you would expect from an (or 'the') economist. Economic rules are based on people's desires, and people desires may also be revolutionized if most of what they do is done by computers.

thaumasiotes 13y ago
Well, I don't think there's much space for me to agree with you on the issues here, but maybe the past can inform us a little. Historically, virtually 100% of the population was employed in food production. We've automated well past the 50% point by now. What happened to the surplussed workers? (Of the things you listed, I'd actually say "use the extra manpower to philosophize, make art, and make war" is a decent description of what happened.)
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
  > What happened to the surplussed workers? They found other jobs. When one industry needs few workers, another always takes up the slack. I've heard this principle stated in different ways in different places over the years. But is it a iron law of nature, or just a thing that goes on until it doesn't? If it will eventually stop (and I think this is likely), how would you tell when it is going to stop? Would you notice if it is already happening? What does the current situation resemble? I have posed this question before ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6853359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6853359 ) No definitive answer yet.
  - 13y ago

r0h1n 13y ago

The Economist, imho, has never been a great place to read about Internet trends (they do a great job with cutting-edge tech, esp. from a science or R&D point of view). But their current special report is a rare exception. Ludwig Siegele, the anchor (Economist writers are allowed bylines for special reports) has covered quite a bit of ground. Some of the stuff may be familiar to HN readers, but I can almost guarantee it will be very useful and revealing to most other (non-tech) readers. Which is why I'll take the risk of posting links to all the stories in the report: The 'Cambrian Explosion' in web entrepreneurship - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593580-cheap-and-ubiquitous-building-blocks-digital-products-and-services-have-caused http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593580-cheap-... Lean methodology - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593580-cheap-and-ubiquitous-building-blocks-digital-products-and-services-have-caused http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593580-cheap-... How venture capital is adapting - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593585-venture-capital-adapting-itself-new-startup-landscape-leafy-lofty http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593585-ventur... The role of accelerators, including YC - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593592-biggest-professional-training-system-you-have-never-heard-getting-up-speed http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593592-bigges... Rocket Internet's approach towards farming startups - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593586-how-build-companies-kit-rocket-machine http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593586-how-bu... Global startup ecosystems - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593582-what-entrepreneurial-ecosystems-need-flourish-all-together-now http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593582-what-e... The 'dark side' of starting up - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593591-are-startups-just-workaholic-white-male-lumpen-preneurs-founders-blues http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593591-are-st... Hardware startups and Shenzhen - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593590-why-southern-china-best-place-world-hardware-innovator-be-hacking http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593590-why-so... The growth of platforms - http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593583-proliferating-digital-platforms-will-be-heart-tomorrows-economy-and-even http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21593583-prolif...

drcode 13y ago
I still give the Economist huge credit for releasing this cover image in 2005: http://www.tradersnarrative.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/after%20the%20fall%20house%20prices%20economist%20magazine%202005.png http://www.tradersnarrative.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/a... That was arguably the most unambiguous and accurate prediction on the cover of a magazine, ever. I remember the lady next to me on an airplane telling me she was just getting heavily into a house flipping business. I happened to have that issue of the Economist with me to read on the plane. I showed her the cover and said "But what about this?" (I wonder what happened to her business...)

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

Always the same message, that is deeply flawed: That the problem today is technology, it is not. Reality is that today economy is central planned in order to protect the money from the people at the top at the expense of the one of normal people, who had seen taxes increase and life much more expensive as a result. Don't get me wrong, I have friends that are rich, but the reality is that lots of people at the top got money speculating on bad assets or bubbles. When it was time for correction,(2008) the governments entered in order to protect those speculators from losses, and bought those bad assets making miserable the general economy. The problem is not solved, protecting malinvestors only makes them more confident to do it again.

TeMPOraL 13y ago
There's a bigger problem with our economy - its two main pillars are scarcity and growth. The first one is disappearing thanks to automation, and the second one is unsustainable, as we're about to hit the roof. The economy will change, it's only a question of whether we handle the transition gracefully, or let the whole thing collapse on our heads.
- xixi77 13y ago
  What are the signs of either scarcity, or growth, being in danger of soon (or ever) going away? The asinine "infinite growth on a finite world has to be impossible" meme is getting really tired; but even if we subscribed to that notion for a second, what would constrain future growth if not scarcity? And what would do away with scarcity if not growth?

klenwell 13y ago

I found one of the simplest and most insidious examples of the effect of today's technology on today's jobs in this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/business/a-part-time-life-as-hours-shrink-and-shift-for-american-workers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/business/a-part-time-life-... It documents how scheduling software in the retail and food sectors has allowed corporate chains to optimize the scheduling of low-wage workers, scheduling them for shorter shifts concentrated at peaks hours and sending them off when not needed. This article doesn't go into great detail about another exploitative practice: the split shift. This means a employee may be required to work a short morning shift and a short evening shift, making it effectively impossible for those prepared to scrape by working a second job to even do that any more. The net effect is less wages and less benefits for workers. And to whom does the difference accrue? Technology here acts as a tool further disadvantaging those who are already at a disadvantage. And technology itself doesn't offer an obvious remedy. Collective action among workers might help their cause, but unions in this country struggle to organize. Facebook and Snapchat don't appear to be picking up the slack. Government regulation would seem to offer a more civil remedy. Simply don't allow employers to squeeze their employees like this. But while I continue to hear occasional media stories and personal narratives about these abuses, I haven't heard reports of any serious proposals to end them.

maerF0x0 13y ago
The negatives of the split shift will drive up the per hour wages. To illustrate: say I'll work all day for $64 but I have some bare minimum I need to live on, maybe $60. If I cannot make $60 in the 2x 3hour shifts, then I have to look elsewhere. As people look elsewhere, the price to fill the job will rise. Furthermore, there are side benefits of split shifts, like being able to do a workout midday, running errands or seeing your kids, having a walk in the park etc. etc. These side benefits are the kinds of benefits that come to all workers when we utilize skills more effectively. When all the dishwashers were laid off due to dish washing machines, we rejoiced because people dont have to do menial work anymore and can pursue the higher callings of human life. Its scary, but beneficial to all. >"And to whom does the difference accrue" A portion of the difference will go to those who made the software, A portion to the capitalists who invest in the software, A portion to the business owner who implements the software etc. etc. A portion will be passed onto consumers as price competition.Like the economist article says, it can take time for the market effects to settle out though, maybe not now, maybe not in 5 years, but eventually everyone will be doing it, saving us all 10 cents on a combo (or whatever contrived number)..

nsxwolf 13y ago

There seems to be a lot of automation anxiety on HN lately. If an article is not about the NSA it's about how 100 million jobs are about to vanish into thin air and we need a guaranteed income, the theory that people are freed up to do other jobs is bunk because we've reached the end of the line, etc... I wonder if we're really that close to the end of jobs, or if we are just suffering from a lack of imagination.

doktrin 13y ago
It's eminently possible, if not likely, that the way the future will actually unfold differs from our current predictions (on HN, or elsewhere). However, you work with what you've got. If our best model for the future involves the progressive automation of all human labour - it makes sense to at least theorize (if not plan) for that eventuality. If the situation turns out to not be dire - great - but you plan for the worst, as the axiom goes.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> I wonder if we're really that close to the end of jobs, or if we are just suffering from a lack of imagination. Maybe, but I personally believe that people saying that we don't have to worry about that suffer from the lack of imagination - the very same kind as the one that leads some to say things like "we can't / won't be able to do that". If there's one thing last 100 years of progress have proved, it is that we can do pretty much everything as long as we care about it strongly enough. Some people warn against believing in power of technology too much; I say people believe in it too little.

cliveowen 13y ago

The Economist has been publishing basically the same article for the last 8 months, what the hell is going on?

pgeorgi 13y ago

I wonder how articles like this always consider management to be safe from automation. If there is something that can be done better by computers than humans, it's unemotional number crunching (like risk assessment or other decision making). You still need to enter the right questions and numbers and then act on the result, but I see quite some slack in that field that could be optimized away once the right product shows up.

rohall 13y ago
This is actually really interesting. I wonder how well it would work when combined with self managing teams. It might provide the oversight needed to make business decisions while still letting the team figure out the best structure for the success of a project (I'm thinking about software dev particularly).
rm445 13y ago
Interesting (and slightly terrifying) short story that was posted here a while back, positing that computer vision and speech would make middle management obsolete first. It makes for quite different consequences to the usual vision, that the workers are in trouble but the managers are safe. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

VLM 13y ago

"The millions freed from the land were not consigned to joblessness, but found better-paid work as the economy grew more sophisticated." No explanation why this is anything other than a very convenient coincidence, which is too bad. I'm not convinced its other than a coincidence. I would feel better if there was some kind of reasoning behind it. Anything. You may as well argue that drinking large amounts of tea was followed by an industrial revolution in .uk therefore the best economic plan for Africa would be to airdrop bags of tea, if it worked before, what could possibly go wrong tomorrow?

marcosdumay 13y ago
It's worse when you realise that the millions freed from the land mostly had to choose between working insane hours (often dying from stress alone), or dying of cold or starvation. Better paying jobs only started to appear a generation later, and only become really common at the XX century.

yawz 13y ago

rolls eyes They have to put "Big Data" in there, don't they? sigh

yetanotherphd 13y ago

For people like me who have trouble making it to the end of an article, I want to repeat the solution that the authors propose: >Yet however well people are taught, their abilities will remain unequal, and in a world which is increasingly polarised economically, many will find their job prospects dimmed and wages squeezed. The best way of helping them is not, as many on the left seem to think, to push up minimum wages. Jacking up the floor too far would accelerate the shift from human workers to computers. Better to top up low wages with public money so that anyone who works has a reasonable income, through a bold expansion of the tax credits that countries such as America and Britain use. For basic income advocates, I would also like to point out that this policy is much closer to basic income than increasing the minimum wage.

wavefunction 13y ago
It is, but then again why compromise? Actual basic income schemes proposed by various economists are better than either propping up the minimum wage or using "public money" to pay workers enough to live. One single unitary basic income system from which all benefit to the same degree, whether you are now poor, rich, lazy or driven should be our goal.
- nickff 13y ago
  >"One single unitary basic income system from which all benefit to the same degree, whether you are now poor, rich, lazy or driven should be our goal." I have to disagree, as my goal is simply for everyone's life to be constantly (but not necessarily monotonically) improving. I am not too choosy about the means by which this is achieved (excepting immoral means such as slavery). >"It is, but then again why compromise? Actual basic income schemes proposed by various economists are better than either propping up the minimum wage or using "public money" to pay workers enough to live." This is a great point, as one problem with the minimum wage (MW) is that it is not a transparent policy, as no one knows its true costs. If a basic income or other system were a line item on the governmental budget, the voters might understand its (direct) costs, and weigh the benefits against those. Democracy requires transparency, as citizens must be able to learn what their votes have done, and will do. Yet another problem of MWs is that their opaqueness makes it easy for firms with low labor costs to lobby for increases in the MW to destroy their competition; while high labor cost companies lobby to keep the MW constant, and increase the money supply (to deflate the MW).

esja 13y ago

A decent article, but as usual treats "capital mobility" as a law of nature. If present trends continue, capital controls will be making a comeback.