6 ms·

As far as I can tell skimming through these comments, no one else here has actually read the thing. I'm not finished with it yet, so I won't offer a final opin

by cwal37 13y ago

As far as I can tell skimming through these comments, no one else here has actually read the thing. I'm not finished with it yet, so I won't offer a final opinion, but to the page I'm on it's been an impressive work. He's very apt at weaving together a narrative spanning far, far, longer than nearly all economics research, which is backed up with real data they (him and collaborators) spent quite a long time digging up and parsing. The book uses this sweeping dataset to color the major research/writings of prominent economists from several eras. Up to this point I had not read anything that had stepped back to this extent in terms of considering a history of economic thought, but which also backed up the history with data. Personally, I find the basic tenets of his thesis pretty convincing, although, again, I have not yet finished the book. I think this was published at a very opportune time as people begin to read more about the similarities between the wealth structure of the early 20th century and today. Considering the middle of the 20th century as something of an aberration is difficult to wrap my head around, because (like most of us I assume) I've had so little exposure to people and their experiences from before 1940. EDIT: To be clear, the foundation of this book began with research in the 1990s, so it's not as if I was trying to imply it was a completely opportunistic publishing. Rather, I consider it to be somewhat fortuitous to be able to gain a historical appreciation of these trends as they reach new peaks.

jbooth 13y ago
I definitely haven't read it, but it's going on my list. How does he contrast the current unemployment situation with the boom-bust cycles during the industrial age? It seems completely different to me. Currently, we've got people being priced out of the job market forever based on their skills and what robots and asian child labor can do. That seems way different from the problems faced by factory workers in the 1900s.
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  There are a lot of parallels. The Industrial Revolution rendered obsolete a great deal of the agrarian-based economy that preceded it, and many farmers were forced out of work "forever" -- at least as farmers. They had to take up entirely new lines of work, and the transition was messy. In today's context, replace the transition from farming to industry with the transition from industry to knowledge-work and services. Robots and child labor will put a lot of people out of work, indefinitely, depending on the line of work they're in. So they'll need to find new lines of work. But it'll be a long time before robots have rendered all human work obsolete, despite what Singularity proponents would have us believe. There isn't too much fundamentally different between what happened back then and what's happening now; only the set dressing has changed. We're not yet in the era of fundamental shifts in the way labor works. We have not reached the end of history. What's changed between then and now? Predominantly, freer trade and more fluid and fungible labor markets. These have had at least as big an effect on labor as technology has (though the two forces have often worked in tandem). The book is generally pessimistic in its outlook. Some critics argue that even this book, despite the breadth of its historical analysis, doesn't rely on enough data to make predictions. In essence, the book discusses how the postwar decades were a local aberration in a global data set. But one could argue that even the book isn't global enough in its analysis. (Though I'd argue that a more sweeping, global view of history would tend to bear out the book's thesis more than confound it.)
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    > But it'll be a long time before robots have rendered all human work obsolete, despite what Singularity proponents would have us believe. I'm jumping on a detail here, but even if that time is near, it doesn't really matter, because the most likely scenario is intelligence explosion: the day the machines render all human work obsolete is the day they are at least as smart as us. Which means they can design AIs on their own. Smarter AIs. And those… Well this eventually means a super-intelligence that could take over the world —and will do so, if it's initial programming includes any unbounded goal, implicit or explicit. (To give you an idea of the potential gap: the other great apes don't rule the world. We do. 'Cause we're smarter, and though of things like picking up some hot blazing stick and taming it for food and shelter —or bridges and nukes, which can't even be explained in terms a chimp can understand. To the AI, we won't even look like chimps. More like mice, or bugs.) So at this point, we're not thinking about the economic consequences of human obsolescence. We're thinking of not being used for spare parts. --- In the meantime, all humans won't be obsolete, so your main point looks okay. I'll just add that however long it takes to reach intelligence explosion, it will probably be a period of perpetual transition: more and more automation, less and less human labour. Technological unemployment has already started, it will only amplify. Whether that's a tragedy or good news depends on how we handle it as a society. (Like, we could have ever more massive unemployment and inequality, or we could have basic income and 4-3-2-1 days work-week —or whatever I haven't thought of and actually works.)
    - aklemm 13y ago
      "(Like, we could have ever more massive unemployment and inequality, or we could have basic income and 4-3-2-1 days work-week —or whatever I haven't thought of and actually works.)" This is what kills me about the fear of automation and progressive taxation. There is a real shot here at capitalizing on the opportunity--less work and more, better living for all by reducing working hours. It's not talked about AT ALL in the media, which leads me to believe voters aren't even thinking about it. Worse, I suspect most people haven't considered it as a possible solution.
      - 13y ago
- cwal37 13y ago
  He does address it to some extent in that he's very pessimistic about the future. While I am quite enamored of his data and general skill as a researcher/writer, I choose to be a bit more optimistic about the future. If you go back and read some publications from the late 19th century any of the same concerns over job availability and mechanization appear. It is possible though, that we're past a different sort of tipping point now, and our robots will have a greater impact than the past's factories. While I enjoy thinking and reading about these things and trying to piece together data into global narratives, I'm also realistic, we can't ever 100% know what's coming. I will try to remain upbeat about the future, enjoy what I have, and strive to put myself into positions to create clearly positive value for the country/world around me, no matter what the overall picture looks like.
- akgerber 13y ago
  The original Luddites were skilled artisans being priced out of the job market forever based on their skills and what robots and child labor could do, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
iandanforth 13y ago
My beef with economics is the lack of experiment and falsifiable hypotheses. Or perhaps it's a failure to integrate repeated failure of hypotheses into a larger theory. Once you've finished could you report back if there is any attempt to make predictions that can be checked?
- cwal37 13y ago
  In the case of this book, he's proposing a new "theory" (I'm putting it in quotes because it's weaker than a scientific theory, but stronger than the popular use of the word), with the most comprehensive and far reaching national-level economic dataset that has existed up to this point (as far as I am aware). In that sense, I feel his work is more concrete than most economic research I've read, and it's several orders of magnitude away from the typical economist op-ed with a single chart, and some cherry-picked data. His predictions for the future are pessimistic, and down the line they will certainly be at least partially verifiable. Only partially, because economies are huge and ghastly things, that we apply numbers to, but don't really have a complete handle on. There are almost always enough extraneous or unaccounted for factors for an opposition group to claim an opposing viewpoint. I think part of the value from Piketty's work is that he tries to account for as much of the data that is integral to his theories as possible (moreso than most economists). Writing this has made me a bit thoughtful, so I'll also take this an an opportunity to go off on a related personal tangent/ramble. Hopefully I don't bore you too much, feel free to ignore. I have always, always, been frustrated with economics. A field that is so divisive, but represents itself as a "science", has always annoyed the hell out of me. However, my academic and professional track has brought me further into economics over time, rather than away. Right now I have a BS and MS in environmental science, and an MPA in energy policy. I'm nearly certain I want to pursue a PhD in the future, and it looks more and more like it will probably be in energy economics. One way I have calmed down my inner turmoil over this is to more frankly assess my economist and scientist sides. Basically, the scientist is in love with raw, pure, data generation, while my inner economist is about using that data to generate a picture (or a graph, so many graphs). Another side to this is that my inner economist constantly wants to generate an interesting narrative and draw out the connections between trends, while my inner scientist tears down those hypotheses or works to find the data points which are not influenced by a "narrative". I've been happy on a lab bench centrifuging, pipetting, and doing PCR in the process of splicing soybean embryos, but I also enjoy sifting through census data and plotting $/kWh trends. Ultimately, I still maintain a distrust of the broad field of economics, but I think the phenomenon we broadly place within it could do with a more thorough explication via more scientific methods.
rosser 13y ago
As far as I can tell skimming through these comments, no one else here has actually read the thing. This is the internet. You don't need to read something, or even know what it's actually about to have an opinion on it. (No, I haven't read the book yet, either; I'm waiting for Amazon to ship my copy. They said it'll be here by the end of the week.)
dredmorbius 13y ago
As far as I can tell skimming through these comments, no one else here has actually read the thing. Given it's a 696 page economics text just released in English, this doesn't much surprise me. I've only managed to 1) acquire a copy and 2) start looking at reviews and interviews with Piketty and others. Anyone who's actually read him in depth either 1) had an advance copy (and still not much time to digest the work), 2) has been following Piketty for some time (e.g., Krugman), or is fluent in French and read the original. Anyone else either hasn't, is lying, or hasn't fully processed the work. The only conclusions I've drawn so far are that Piketty is respected by many, feared by many, and has clearly struck a nerve. I have a nagging suspicion he's missed a few points I consider to be key, though that is, absolutely, based on not having read the actual book. Briefly: I put a lot of stock in the thermoeconomics / biophysical economics, and complexity economics schools (see, e.g., Herman Daly or Charles A.F. Hall, or J. Doyne Farmer and much of the Santa Fe Institute / Institute for New Economic Thinking), which at least in his interviews Piketty doesn't address. My sense is that he's hit a very strong nerve, and that yes, inequality is a significant problem. It's more symptom than a cause, though it also has both effects on the economy as a whole and can likely be addressed in at least part. The work will, I'm pretty certain, be considered important, but it's not the earth-moving revolution which economics clearly and so desperately needs. http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23jqiy/j_doyne_farmer_complexity_economics/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23jqiy/j_doyne_... dang recently posted a link to an excellent overview of the life of Karl Polanyi as well. It generated upvotes but no comments of note: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7610550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7610550 http://prospect.org/article/karl-polanyi-explains-it-all http://prospect.org/article/karl-polanyi-explains-it-all
- cwal37 13y ago
  Thanks for the comprehensive comment. I completely agree on the discussion here and that Piketty has struck a nerve. I was just a bit annoyed that no one was even attempting to claim actual knowledge of the book at hand, but was ready to make statements on its content, without any kind of qualifier (really, all I wanted). I have a feeling this is going to be one of those books whose influence, at least in discussion, will be greater than expected given the people in those conversations who didn't read it. I have found it an easier read than I expected though. Right now I alternate between it or Infinite Jest each night, which is a really nice change of pace in either direction. I got the ebook on my tablet to just speed through in bed, but I've realized this is going to be one I'll need a physical copy of eventually to annotate. Thanks for the link to your subreddit, I've subscribed.

by cwal37 13y ago

jbooth 13y ago

I definitely haven't read it, but it's going on my list. How does he contrast the current unemployment situation with the boom-bust cycles during the industrial age? It seems completely different to me. Currently, we've got people being priced out of the job market forever based on their skills and what robots and asian child labor can do. That seems way different from the problems faced by factory workers in the 1900s.

jonnathanson 13y ago
There are a lot of parallels. The Industrial Revolution rendered obsolete a great deal of the agrarian-based economy that preceded it, and many farmers were forced out of work "forever" -- at least as farmers. They had to take up entirely new lines of work, and the transition was messy. In today's context, replace the transition from farming to industry with the transition from industry to knowledge-work and services. Robots and child labor will put a lot of people out of work, indefinitely, depending on the line of work they're in. So they'll need to find new lines of work. But it'll be a long time before robots have rendered all human work obsolete, despite what Singularity proponents would have us believe. There isn't too much fundamentally different between what happened back then and what's happening now; only the set dressing has changed. We're not yet in the era of fundamental shifts in the way labor works. We have not reached the end of history. What's changed between then and now? Predominantly, freer trade and more fluid and fungible labor markets. These have had at least as big an effect on labor as technology has (though the two forces have often worked in tandem). The book is generally pessimistic in its outlook. Some critics argue that even this book, despite the breadth of its historical analysis, doesn't rely on enough data to make predictions. In essence, the book discusses how the postwar decades were a local aberration in a global data set. But one could argue that even the book isn't global enough in its analysis. (Though I'd argue that a more sweeping, global view of history would tend to bear out the book's thesis more than confound it.)
- loup-vaillant 13y ago
  > But it'll be a long time before robots have rendered all human work obsolete, despite what Singularity proponents would have us believe. I'm jumping on a detail here, but even if that time is near, it doesn't really matter, because the most likely scenario is intelligence explosion: the day the machines render all human work obsolete is the day they are at least as smart as us. Which means they can design AIs on their own. Smarter AIs. And those… Well this eventually means a super-intelligence that could take over the world —and will do so, if it's initial programming includes any unbounded goal, implicit or explicit. (To give you an idea of the potential gap: the other great apes don't rule the world. We do. 'Cause we're smarter, and though of things like picking up some hot blazing stick and taming it for food and shelter —or bridges and nukes, which can't even be explained in terms a chimp can understand. To the AI, we won't even look like chimps. More like mice, or bugs.) So at this point, we're not thinking about the economic consequences of human obsolescence. We're thinking of not being used for spare parts. --- In the meantime, all humans won't be obsolete, so your main point looks okay. I'll just add that however long it takes to reach intelligence explosion, it will probably be a period of perpetual transition: more and more automation, less and less human labour. Technological unemployment has already started, it will only amplify. Whether that's a tragedy or good news depends on how we handle it as a society. (Like, we could have ever more massive unemployment and inequality, or we could have basic income and 4-3-2-1 days work-week —or whatever I haven't thought of and actually works.)
  - aklemm 13y ago
    "(Like, we could have ever more massive unemployment and inequality, or we could have basic income and 4-3-2-1 days work-week —or whatever I haven't thought of and actually works.)" This is what kills me about the fear of automation and progressive taxation. There is a real shot here at capitalizing on the opportunity--less work and more, better living for all by reducing working hours. It's not talked about AT ALL in the media, which leads me to believe voters aren't even thinking about it. Worse, I suspect most people haven't considered it as a possible solution.
    - 13y ago
cwal37 13y ago
He does address it to some extent in that he's very pessimistic about the future. While I am quite enamored of his data and general skill as a researcher/writer, I choose to be a bit more optimistic about the future. If you go back and read some publications from the late 19th century any of the same concerns over job availability and mechanization appear. It is possible though, that we're past a different sort of tipping point now, and our robots will have a greater impact than the past's factories. While I enjoy thinking and reading about these things and trying to piece together data into global narratives, I'm also realistic, we can't ever 100% know what's coming. I will try to remain upbeat about the future, enjoy what I have, and strive to put myself into positions to create clearly positive value for the country/world around me, no matter what the overall picture looks like.
akgerber 13y ago
The original Luddites were skilled artisans being priced out of the job market forever based on their skills and what robots and child labor could do, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

iandanforth 13y ago

My beef with economics is the lack of experiment and falsifiable hypotheses. Or perhaps it's a failure to integrate repeated failure of hypotheses into a larger theory. Once you've finished could you report back if there is any attempt to make predictions that can be checked?

cwal37 13y ago
In the case of this book, he's proposing a new "theory" (I'm putting it in quotes because it's weaker than a scientific theory, but stronger than the popular use of the word), with the most comprehensive and far reaching national-level economic dataset that has existed up to this point (as far as I am aware). In that sense, I feel his work is more concrete than most economic research I've read, and it's several orders of magnitude away from the typical economist op-ed with a single chart, and some cherry-picked data. His predictions for the future are pessimistic, and down the line they will certainly be at least partially verifiable. Only partially, because economies are huge and ghastly things, that we apply numbers to, but don't really have a complete handle on. There are almost always enough extraneous or unaccounted for factors for an opposition group to claim an opposing viewpoint. I think part of the value from Piketty's work is that he tries to account for as much of the data that is integral to his theories as possible (moreso than most economists). Writing this has made me a bit thoughtful, so I'll also take this an an opportunity to go off on a related personal tangent/ramble. Hopefully I don't bore you too much, feel free to ignore. I have always, always, been frustrated with economics. A field that is so divisive, but represents itself as a "science", has always annoyed the hell out of me. However, my academic and professional track has brought me further into economics over time, rather than away. Right now I have a BS and MS in environmental science, and an MPA in energy policy. I'm nearly certain I want to pursue a PhD in the future, and it looks more and more like it will probably be in energy economics. One way I have calmed down my inner turmoil over this is to more frankly assess my economist and scientist sides. Basically, the scientist is in love with raw, pure, data generation, while my inner economist is about using that data to generate a picture (or a graph, so many graphs). Another side to this is that my inner economist constantly wants to generate an interesting narrative and draw out the connections between trends, while my inner scientist tears down those hypotheses or works to find the data points which are not influenced by a "narrative". I've been happy on a lab bench centrifuging, pipetting, and doing PCR in the process of splicing soybean embryos, but I also enjoy sifting through census data and plotting $/kWh trends. Ultimately, I still maintain a distrust of the broad field of economics, but I think the phenomenon we broadly place within it could do with a more thorough explication via more scientific methods.

rosser 13y ago

As far as I can tell skimming through these comments, no one else here has actually read the thing. This is the internet. You don't need to read something, or even know what it's actually about to have an opinion on it. (No, I haven't read the book yet, either; I'm waiting for Amazon to ship my copy. They said it'll be here by the end of the week.)

dredmorbius 13y ago

As far as I can tell skimming through these comments, no one else here has actually read the thing. Given it's a 696 page economics text just released in English, this doesn't much surprise me. I've only managed to 1) acquire a copy and 2) start looking at reviews and interviews with Piketty and others. Anyone who's actually read him in depth either 1) had an advance copy (and still not much time to digest the work), 2) has been following Piketty for some time (e.g., Krugman), or is fluent in French and read the original. Anyone else either hasn't, is lying, or hasn't fully processed the work. The only conclusions I've drawn so far are that Piketty is respected by many, feared by many, and has clearly struck a nerve. I have a nagging suspicion he's missed a few points I consider to be key, though that is, absolutely, based on not having read the actual book. Briefly: I put a lot of stock in the thermoeconomics / biophysical economics, and complexity economics schools (see, e.g., Herman Daly or Charles A.F. Hall, or J. Doyne Farmer and much of the Santa Fe Institute / Institute for New Economic Thinking), which at least in his interviews Piketty doesn't address. My sense is that he's hit a very strong nerve, and that yes, inequality is a significant problem. It's more symptom than a cause, though it also has both effects on the economy as a whole and can likely be addressed in at least part. The work will, I'm pretty certain, be considered important, but it's not the earth-moving revolution which economics clearly and so desperately needs. http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23jqiy/j_doyne_farmer_complexity_economics/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23jqiy/j_doyne_... dang recently posted a link to an excellent overview of the life of Karl Polanyi as well. It generated upvotes but no comments of note: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7610550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7610550 http://prospect.org/article/karl-polanyi-explains-it-all http://prospect.org/article/karl-polanyi-explains-it-all

cwal37 13y ago
Thanks for the comprehensive comment. I completely agree on the discussion here and that Piketty has struck a nerve. I was just a bit annoyed that no one was even attempting to claim actual knowledge of the book at hand, but was ready to make statements on its content, without any kind of qualifier (really, all I wanted). I have a feeling this is going to be one of those books whose influence, at least in discussion, will be greater than expected given the people in those conversations who didn't read it. I have found it an easier read than I expected though. Right now I alternate between it or Infinite Jest each night, which is a really nice change of pace in either direction. I got the ebook on my tablet to just speed through in bed, but I've realized this is going to be one I'll need a physical copy of eventually to annotate. Thanks for the link to your subreddit, I've subscribed.