6 ms·

What will we do if the system can no longer create jobs?

33 points by __Joker 12y ago

kapnobatairza 12y ago
I think there is a much easier answer to this and that is a basic income.
- corv 12y ago
  How so? If you give everyone money you'll only shift prices upwards.
  - AndrewDucker 12y ago
    Not if you shift the taxes around so that, on average, the amount of money in the system remains similar.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Not necessarily. Prices might rise because minimum wage labor gets more expensive (competing with BI) but excess profits will get sucked out of the system fast by competition.
  - _ak 12y ago
    You're not thinking in the grand scheme. The shift from full employment towards (idealistically) full automation requires drastic paradigm shifts in how we view economics. Just try to contemplate this question: what would a society, an economy look like if everyone was provided with everything for their basic needs, like a house or a flat, food and an "allowance" to participate in social activity, people could still be able to choose to work if they wanted to, but not working would not be frowned upon? How would this society develop, what would people do because they can do what they please all day, what would the influence on society's creativity and inventiveness be? "Basic income would negatively affect our current economic system" is not the right answer to that question. Automation will not become less, full employment will be less and less feasible, so answering these questions will be inevitable.
    - estebank 12y ago
      I mostly agree with you, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind: 1) With full automation, scarcity is pushed down, availability up, cost down, so price necessarily is pushed down. 2) Companies have a tendency of trying to avoid killing the golden eggs goose, and decreasing prices by higher availability is usually frowned upon by the people making the money, understandably so, I might add. It's perfectly rational, it just sucks for everyone else. Just look at the history of the music, books and movie/TV entertainment industries. 3) The road from "here" to "there" is going to be necessarily tumultuous, no matter what, precisely because of 2). I'm sure we'll get that omelette, but eggs on every side will be broken. 4) There is a sizable percent of the population (let's say 10%, pulling it from my backside) that have not found any artistic, professional or personal aspirations, regardless of social class. It might sound like I'm dissing "those" people, but I'm not. People are wired differently, and just in the same way a Linux user doesn't understand why somebody would be a VB.Net developer, or a programmer why anyone would be a lawyer, that doesn't mean those people are lesser in any way, they just have different interests and motivations. The increase in "leisure time" should be accompanied by an increase in availability and promotion of "entertainment" (I believe "pursuits" would be a better word) of many different kinds, to have a higher chance of people actually finding what does drive them.
    - saalweachter 12y ago
      I think there are at least three answers to the problem. 1. Basic income. Redistribute wealth, since enough wealth is produced, it just isn't available to everyone. 2. Force everyone to work less (for more money). If you lower the maximum number number of hours people are allowed to work, more people will need to be employed to do the same amount of work. You would probably need to accompany this by an increase in minimum wage. 3. We could all do more. Government could take a more active roll in back-filling demand. If we decided to employ a million more doctors, or revamp the entire power grid, or build a Moon base, or colonize Mars, or move Mars into orbit around Venus, or accelerate Venus's rotation to support colonization, we could easily achieve full employment.
  - collyw 12y ago
    Whereas you give it to bankers, they pump up asset price bubbles and shift prices upwards.
- RivieraKid 12y ago
  Why? Basic income is a different way of redistributing, it doesn't imply more redistributing. How is basic income better than the current system? Note that unemployed people get money today, at least in (most of?) Europe.
  - gabzuka 12y ago
    In a few countries they will give you a flat fee as long as you are unemployed (UK) but in others it's linked to your previous salary and only for a short time (Spain and Germany). Others I don't know much about.
    - rasur 12y ago
      Switzerland too. (~80% previous salary)
    - RivieraKid 12y ago
      > but in others it's linked to your previous salary and only for a short time (Spain and Germany) That's the unemployment benefit but if / after you're not entitled to that, you get different benefits. In Germany it's 382 EUR + housing and healthcare expenses according to wiki.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
vixin 12y ago
'With industrial society, on the other hand, we work as much as possible because it is labor that gives us money. '. Labor doesn't give us money. Creation of value in goods or sevices (as perceived by others) which may or may be accompanied by proportionate labor provides us with money. Marx, a clever man, nevertheless made this fundamental mistake.
- namenotrequired 12y ago
  Adam Smith did too, to an extent. He realised that wealth is not money but value, but did argue for labour as starting point of value.
  - zo1 12y ago
    Which I can understand, because it's only in recent years where labor and value have gotten quite obviously disconnected. To the point such that we've got quite a lot of data points to assert that the theory doesn't hold true anymore.
- grondilu 12y ago
  Exactly. That's basically the one thing the author fails to acknowledge. Money doesn't magically appears from labor. It results as a voluntary exchange between a worker and a employer. There's no "capitalistic system", unless you consider "economic freedom" to be a "system". This also shows that labor still is connected to needs, despite what the author claims. Somebody wants something done, finds someone willing to do it for money, and they make a deal. Nothing new under the sun, except our society is much richer in needs of various forms which might explain why the author has the feeling our "pace of lives" is much more intense than "that of our grandparents". Overall, this article is full of communist FUD : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
  - guard-of-terra 12y ago
    "Money doesn't magically appears from labor" Tell that to job creation programmes. Our society is built on assertion that they do.
randyrand 12y ago
Start reducing births. Humans are THE worst thing for the environment. No reason to have more of them.
- estebank 12y ago
  The best way of reducing birth rates? Poverty reduction.
  - collyw 12y ago
    While I agree, poverty reduction will likely lead to a more consumerist, less environmentally friendly lifestyle.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  Can you do that to people in the Africa and the Middle East? India also. Because people in Europe and Far East no longer overreproduce. Also, the environment only has value to us if we're still able to use it. No value in the clean environment if humanity gets extinct.
  - collyw 12y ago
    Those kids won't use up nearly as many resources as a western child.
    - guard-of-terra 12y ago
      Oh, they would. Western kids won't hunt elephants to extinction or make charcoal out of rainforest. Western kids are going to live their life in their tiny home, which is going to become more and more green and self-sufficient. On the other hand, poor subsistence farmers live on large swaths of land with lots of wildlife, which they're going eat literally. And then they'll try to recapture western standards of living, but without all that green concern. Won't they?
      - collyw 12y ago
atemerev 12y ago
"The system" doesn't give jobs. _You_ give jobs.
- dasil003 12y ago
  And you are part of the system. I don't understand what your argument is.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
awalton 12y ago
Well, that's a silly question. The answer is simple: "change the system." There are enough parameters in "the system" that we should be able to change almost any single one of them and get some improvement in employment numbers. Change wages, change education levels, change the scale of industrialization, change the number of humans working, change laws surrounding mergers/acquisitions, etc. The real struggle here is getting anyone to do any of these things consistently, and then measuring the results.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  By doing blind changes you have much better chances of ruining the society in question. Blind evolution works, but it does so by killing most of its subjects by a painful death.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
"we should eat apples that are grown in the nearby orchard rather than in New Zealand" The problem is, we're going to hit Vladimir Sorokin world order if we try to implement it - 'cause he's already figured that out. I'd rather not :)
scrollaway 12y ago
I encourage everyone to watch Humans Need Not Apply, a mini-documentary by the excellent CGPGrey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU I suspect most of what is said in there is well known to the HN crowd, but it's all put together in a very pleasant video and is a nice thing to link to people who don't understand just how far along we are in the process of automating a lot of people's jobs.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
"A social movement that would directly occupy the workshops and the factories. Capitalism is abandoning many productive forces, because they are no longer profitable, but they are still capable of functioning effectively" That won't work. Imagine you've occupied a factory, and it needs a 20 $ worth of oil to produce a shirt. Meanwhile you can only sell that shirt for 15 $. You can think of most things around us as of made from oil (i. e. energy). Once you spend more energy than you can buy after selling your wares, you are bankrupt. This is why deindustrialization happen and why you can't overcome it by snapping fingers.
skrebbel 12y ago
> But what takes place is just the opposite. Today we work much more than ever before. All you need to do is to compare the pace of our lives and that of our grandparents. A German philosopher says this to a Portuguese interviewer, and it is not questioned? I am convinced that most people in Europe nowadays work less and less hard than they did 40 years ago. I can understand that it is not questioned on HN, given that most of us live in a culture where working 80 hours a week is considered normal, but in Europe? Come on. I'm from the Netherlands. My grandfather was an old man at 65, tired and broken from a life of hard farm work. When I came to visit as a child, we'd talk a bit and that was it. My parents, now older than my granddad then, play with my son with vigor and love. They're fitter and happier, because they didn't work as hard. I work 4 days a week. My girlfriend three. We don't consider these numbers a temporary situation. Everybody I know thinks what we do is normal. I didn't look up the stats, but it seems to me that either I'm really weird, or the quoted philosopher likes to selectively pick out those facts that support his rant.
- jahaja 12y ago
  Please do look up the stats before going on an anecdotal evidence binge.
  - skrebbel 12y ago
    No, I won't. HN is a place for civilized discussion, but not a place where only deeply and scientifically researched observations may stand a chance. It's so easy to debunk an argument with "you have no stats". I bring just as many stats to the table as the philosopher in the article, and we're here, discussing the article, no?
- clarry 12y ago
  > I work 4 days a week. My girlfriend three. I study six days and two evenings a week. I have trouble affording food.
  - skrebbel 12y ago
    And you live in Western Europe? And there are many peers like you?
grondilu 12y ago
The use of the word "system" here is obviously a rhetoric device. Only far-left-oriented people use this term. If you ask the question, "What will we do if the system can no longer create jobs?", it's hard not to see this question as suggesting the answer "well, we change the system.". But what if I phrase the question like this: "What will we do if economic freedom can no longer create jobs?". It's much harder then to answer, "well, we abolish economic freedom", isn't it? Capitalism is all about the right to exchange and collect means of production. It's a natural consequence of economic freedom. It can be worrying if technology turns many people's labor useless, thus questioning their means of sustaining their lives, but to me that's not enough to question the rights of the others.
- jahaja 12y ago
  Are you suggesting that we currently enjoy "economic freedom" or that Capitalism in it's internet-libertarian definition is synonymous with "economic freedom"? Also, "Communist FUD" doesn't do you any favours.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    We have a system where an individual who happens to have wealth is generally allowed to take the wealth, purchase capital, use the capital (or pay someone to use the capital) to create something that he or someone else will value, and then either use that something himself or (attempt to) sell it to a third party for More Wealth. Notwithstanding a variety of reasonably important things like Taxes or Labor Market Regulations or even Regulatory Capture which detract from the purity of this model in practice, this is: (a) essentially the textbook definition of what 'capitalism' is (b) a natural consequence of the combination of property rights and basic economic freedoms like "i can purchase capital" -- be it a billion-dollar oil rig or a fifty-dollar sewing machine (c) and a common path taken by many or most people who have some wealth and wish to obtain more wealth, be they entrepreneurs themselves or ordinary people saving for retirement or homeowners looking to save money by insulating their basement or what the heck ever. So yes, in a general way we do enjoy that sort of system, and if someone has some explaining to do around here, it's actually you. We're not in some sort of political echo chamber such that you just say "capitalism" and people will automatically translate that to "Satan, and all his evil works, and all his empty promises" and implicitly remind people of their mission to elect ${politician} to support ${cause}. What do you redefine these words to mean?
nathan-muir 12y ago
Not a great article on this topic. But still interesting. The main points I see in the article, are that weak labour = weak market, and not every country can be an exporter. It seems that pressure to increase profitability, ends up exerting itself by reducing labour utilisation (via efficiencies or other means). Which (can eventually) in turn, exert further pressure to increase profitability (due to a weaker market). What I find disheartening is, the current tools governments have to improve the situation are hamstrung in a global environment. * Corporate Taxation wont work without global reform * Minimum wages, employment conditions, and other regulations don't work if the job can be outsourced / performed overseas * Import tariff's on the former, usually result in your own exports being penalised (in retaliation) * Existing players wish to maintain the status quo The other issue, is "free time". There could be a considerable portion of the labour market are willing to take a part time-job "for the love of it" with their free time. Effectively volunteering or taking a "token" wage. Industries accessible to hobbyists / free timers, will suffer a further devaluation of labour, if they haven't already. Anecdotally, it appears this has already started for some roles like teaching / professorships. The odds seem firmly stacked against a good percentage of the global population. Hopefully those capable of making lasting change do so, before it's too late.
esbranson 12y ago
> What will we do if the system can no longer create jobs? kill the jobs using the most resources

33 points by __Joker 12y ago

kapnobatairza 12y ago

I think there is a much easier answer to this and that is a basic income.

corv 12y ago
How so? If you give everyone money you'll only shift prices upwards.
- AndrewDucker 12y ago
  Not if you shift the taxes around so that, on average, the amount of money in the system remains similar.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Not necessarily. Prices might rise because minimum wage labor gets more expensive (competing with BI) but excess profits will get sucked out of the system fast by competition.
- _ak 12y ago
  You're not thinking in the grand scheme. The shift from full employment towards (idealistically) full automation requires drastic paradigm shifts in how we view economics. Just try to contemplate this question: what would a society, an economy look like if everyone was provided with everything for their basic needs, like a house or a flat, food and an "allowance" to participate in social activity, people could still be able to choose to work if they wanted to, but not working would not be frowned upon? How would this society develop, what would people do because they can do what they please all day, what would the influence on society's creativity and inventiveness be? "Basic income would negatively affect our current economic system" is not the right answer to that question. Automation will not become less, full employment will be less and less feasible, so answering these questions will be inevitable.
  - estebank 12y ago
    I mostly agree with you, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind: 1) With full automation, scarcity is pushed down, availability up, cost down, so price necessarily is pushed down. 2) Companies have a tendency of trying to avoid killing the golden eggs goose, and decreasing prices by higher availability is usually frowned upon by the people making the money, understandably so, I might add. It's perfectly rational, it just sucks for everyone else. Just look at the history of the music, books and movie/TV entertainment industries. 3) The road from "here" to "there" is going to be necessarily tumultuous, no matter what, precisely because of 2). I'm sure we'll get that omelette, but eggs on every side will be broken. 4) There is a sizable percent of the population (let's say 10%, pulling it from my backside) that have not found any artistic, professional or personal aspirations, regardless of social class. It might sound like I'm dissing "those" people, but I'm not. People are wired differently, and just in the same way a Linux user doesn't understand why somebody would be a VB.Net developer, or a programmer why anyone would be a lawyer, that doesn't mean those people are lesser in any way, they just have different interests and motivations. The increase in "leisure time" should be accompanied by an increase in availability and promotion of "entertainment" (I believe "pursuits" would be a better word) of many different kinds, to have a higher chance of people actually finding what does drive them.
  - saalweachter 12y ago
    I think there are at least three answers to the problem. 1. Basic income. Redistribute wealth, since enough wealth is produced, it just isn't available to everyone. 2. Force everyone to work less (for more money). If you lower the maximum number number of hours people are allowed to work, more people will need to be employed to do the same amount of work. You would probably need to accompany this by an increase in minimum wage. 3. We could all do more. Government could take a more active roll in back-filling demand. If we decided to employ a million more doctors, or revamp the entire power grid, or build a Moon base, or colonize Mars, or move Mars into orbit around Venus, or accelerate Venus's rotation to support colonization, we could easily achieve full employment.
- collyw 12y ago
  Whereas you give it to bankers, they pump up asset price bubbles and shift prices upwards.
RivieraKid 12y ago
Why? Basic income is a different way of redistributing, it doesn't imply more redistributing. How is basic income better than the current system? Note that unemployed people get money today, at least in (most of?) Europe.
- gabzuka 12y ago
  In a few countries they will give you a flat fee as long as you are unemployed (UK) but in others it's linked to your previous salary and only for a short time (Spain and Germany). Others I don't know much about.
  - rasur 12y ago
    Switzerland too. (~80% previous salary)
  - RivieraKid 12y ago
    > but in others it's linked to your previous salary and only for a short time (Spain and Germany) That's the unemployment benefit but if / after you're not entitled to that, you get different benefits. In Germany it's 382 EUR + housing and healthcare expenses according to wiki.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

vixin 12y ago

'With industrial society, on the other hand, we work as much as possible because it is labor that gives us money. '. Labor doesn't give us money. Creation of value in goods or sevices (as perceived by others) which may or may be accompanied by proportionate labor provides us with money. Marx, a clever man, nevertheless made this fundamental mistake.

namenotrequired 12y ago
Adam Smith did too, to an extent. He realised that wealth is not money but value, but did argue for labour as starting point of value.
- zo1 12y ago
  Which I can understand, because it's only in recent years where labor and value have gotten quite obviously disconnected. To the point such that we've got quite a lot of data points to assert that the theory doesn't hold true anymore.
grondilu 12y ago
Exactly. That's basically the one thing the author fails to acknowledge. Money doesn't magically appears from labor. It results as a voluntary exchange between a worker and a employer. There's no "capitalistic system", unless you consider "economic freedom" to be a "system". This also shows that labor still is connected to needs, despite what the author claims. Somebody wants something done, finds someone willing to do it for money, and they make a deal. Nothing new under the sun, except our society is much richer in needs of various forms which might explain why the author has the feeling our "pace of lives" is much more intense than "that of our grandparents". Overall, this article is full of communist FUD : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  "Money doesn't magically appears from labor" Tell that to job creation programmes. Our society is built on assertion that they do.

randyrand 12y ago

Start reducing births. Humans are THE worst thing for the environment. No reason to have more of them.

estebank 12y ago
The best way of reducing birth rates? Poverty reduction.
- collyw 12y ago
  While I agree, poverty reduction will likely lead to a more consumerist, less environmentally friendly lifestyle.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Can you do that to people in the Africa and the Middle East? India also. Because people in Europe and Far East no longer overreproduce. Also, the environment only has value to us if we're still able to use it. No value in the clean environment if humanity gets extinct.
- collyw 12y ago
  Those kids won't use up nearly as many resources as a western child.
  - guard-of-terra 12y ago
    Oh, they would. Western kids won't hunt elephants to extinction or make charcoal out of rainforest. Western kids are going to live their life in their tiny home, which is going to become more and more green and self-sufficient. On the other hand, poor subsistence farmers live on large swaths of land with lots of wildlife, which they're going eat literally. And then they'll try to recapture western standards of living, but without all that green concern. Won't they?
    - collyw 12y ago

atemerev 12y ago

"The system" doesn't give jobs. _You_ give jobs.

dasil003 12y ago
And you are part of the system. I don't understand what your argument is.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

awalton 12y ago

Well, that's a silly question. The answer is simple: "change the system." There are enough parameters in "the system" that we should be able to change almost any single one of them and get some improvement in employment numbers. Change wages, change education levels, change the scale of industrialization, change the number of humans working, change laws surrounding mergers/acquisitions, etc. The real struggle here is getting anyone to do any of these things consistently, and then measuring the results.

guard-of-terra 12y ago
By doing blind changes you have much better chances of ruining the society in question. Blind evolution works, but it does so by killing most of its subjects by a painful death.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

"we should eat apples that are grown in the nearby orchard rather than in New Zealand" The problem is, we're going to hit Vladimir Sorokin world order if we try to implement it - 'cause he's already figured that out. I'd rather not :)

scrollaway 12y ago

I encourage everyone to watch Humans Need Not Apply, a mini-documentary by the excellent CGPGrey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU I suspect most of what is said in there is well known to the HN crowd, but it's all put together in a very pleasant video and is a nice thing to link to people who don't understand just how far along we are in the process of automating a lot of people's jobs.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

"A social movement that would directly occupy the workshops and the factories. Capitalism is abandoning many productive forces, because they are no longer profitable, but they are still capable of functioning effectively" That won't work. Imagine you've occupied a factory, and it needs a 20 $ worth of oil to produce a shirt. Meanwhile you can only sell that shirt for 15 $. You can think of most things around us as of made from oil (i. e. energy). Once you spend more energy than you can buy after selling your wares, you are bankrupt. This is why deindustrialization happen and why you can't overcome it by snapping fingers.

skrebbel 12y ago

> But what takes place is just the opposite. Today we work much more than ever before. All you need to do is to compare the pace of our lives and that of our grandparents. A German philosopher says this to a Portuguese interviewer, and it is not questioned? I am convinced that most people in Europe nowadays work less and less hard than they did 40 years ago. I can understand that it is not questioned on HN, given that most of us live in a culture where working 80 hours a week is considered normal, but in Europe? Come on. I'm from the Netherlands. My grandfather was an old man at 65, tired and broken from a life of hard farm work. When I came to visit as a child, we'd talk a bit and that was it. My parents, now older than my granddad then, play with my son with vigor and love. They're fitter and happier, because they didn't work as hard. I work 4 days a week. My girlfriend three. We don't consider these numbers a temporary situation. Everybody I know thinks what we do is normal. I didn't look up the stats, but it seems to me that either I'm really weird, or the quoted philosopher likes to selectively pick out those facts that support his rant.

jahaja 12y ago
Please do look up the stats before going on an anecdotal evidence binge.
- skrebbel 12y ago
  No, I won't. HN is a place for civilized discussion, but not a place where only deeply and scientifically researched observations may stand a chance. It's so easy to debunk an argument with "you have no stats". I bring just as many stats to the table as the philosopher in the article, and we're here, discussing the article, no?
clarry 12y ago
> I work 4 days a week. My girlfriend three. I study six days and two evenings a week. I have trouble affording food.
- skrebbel 12y ago
  And you live in Western Europe? And there are many peers like you?

grondilu 12y ago

The use of the word "system" here is obviously a rhetoric device. Only far-left-oriented people use this term. If you ask the question, "What will we do if the system can no longer create jobs?", it's hard not to see this question as suggesting the answer "well, we change the system.". But what if I phrase the question like this: "What will we do if economic freedom can no longer create jobs?". It's much harder then to answer, "well, we abolish economic freedom", isn't it? Capitalism is all about the right to exchange and collect means of production. It's a natural consequence of economic freedom. It can be worrying if technology turns many people's labor useless, thus questioning their means of sustaining their lives, but to me that's not enough to question the rights of the others.

jahaja 12y ago
Are you suggesting that we currently enjoy "economic freedom" or that Capitalism in it's internet-libertarian definition is synonymous with "economic freedom"? Also, "Communist FUD" doesn't do you any favours.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  We have a system where an individual who happens to have wealth is generally allowed to take the wealth, purchase capital, use the capital (or pay someone to use the capital) to create something that he or someone else will value, and then either use that something himself or (attempt to) sell it to a third party for More Wealth. Notwithstanding a variety of reasonably important things like Taxes or Labor Market Regulations or even Regulatory Capture which detract from the purity of this model in practice, this is: (a) essentially the textbook definition of what 'capitalism' is (b) a natural consequence of the combination of property rights and basic economic freedoms like "i can purchase capital" -- be it a billion-dollar oil rig or a fifty-dollar sewing machine (c) and a common path taken by many or most people who have some wealth and wish to obtain more wealth, be they entrepreneurs themselves or ordinary people saving for retirement or homeowners looking to save money by insulating their basement or what the heck ever. So yes, in a general way we do enjoy that sort of system, and if someone has some explaining to do around here, it's actually you. We're not in some sort of political echo chamber such that you just say "capitalism" and people will automatically translate that to "Satan, and all his evil works, and all his empty promises" and implicitly remind people of their mission to elect ${politician} to support ${cause}. What do you redefine these words to mean?

nathan-muir 12y ago

Not a great article on this topic. But still interesting. The main points I see in the article, are that weak labour = weak market, and not every country can be an exporter. It seems that pressure to increase profitability, ends up exerting itself by reducing labour utilisation (via efficiencies or other means). Which (can eventually) in turn, exert further pressure to increase profitability (due to a weaker market). What I find disheartening is, the current tools governments have to improve the situation are hamstrung in a global environment. * Corporate Taxation wont work without global reform * Minimum wages, employment conditions, and other regulations don't work if the job can be outsourced / performed overseas * Import tariff's on the former, usually result in your own exports being penalised (in retaliation) * Existing players wish to maintain the status quo The other issue, is "free time". There could be a considerable portion of the labour market are willing to take a part time-job "for the love of it" with their free time. Effectively volunteering or taking a "token" wage. Industries accessible to hobbyists / free timers, will suffer a further devaluation of labour, if they haven't already. Anecdotally, it appears this has already started for some roles like teaching / professorships. The odds seem firmly stacked against a good percentage of the global population. Hopefully those capable of making lasting change do so, before it's too late.

esbranson 12y ago

> What will we do if the system can no longer create jobs? kill the jobs using the most resources