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It's nearly in the job description of every software engineer to create things that ease people's workloads or replace their jobs entirely. I bet Stallman's pr

It's nearly in the job description of every software engineer to create things that ease people's workloads or replace their jobs entirely. I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs. Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive.

glesica 12y ago
> Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive. Seems like this is really his point, if it isn't going to be preemptive, then (he feels) we should stop the jobs from going away.
- baddox 12y ago
  And that's the problem. If basic income won't happen until technological advancement causes mass unemployment, and governments ban technological advancement that might lead to mass unemployment, then we will get neither technological advancement nor basic income.
  - tharga8616 12y ago
    Absolutely right
  - glesica 12y ago
    Why can't basic income happen first? Or why can't basic income be phased in smoothly? I mean, don't get me wrong, I agree with you that basic income is unlikely to happen until there has been an incredible amount of pain and suffering, but does it have to be that way? Not necessarily. If we, as a society, set compensating policies as a condition for technological progress, then the progress might come more slowly, but it will still come. Of course I'm probably being a crazy person thinking that our government might act rationally. :(
  - ThomPete 12y ago
    It's not just about job loss it's as much about salaries stagnating and thus making people poor. Especially here in the US it's a problem since it in return affect things like ones ability to pay for healthcare.
- kamaal 12y ago
  >>we should stop the jobs from going away. We can't stop anything from going away. Technology progress by and large has always been incremental. Large changes haven't occurred since the time of Industrial revolution. And I guess the next one won't occur until we get Artificial general intelligence. Until then affairs of the world will go on as they always have. AGI would alter the very course of economy in a way the whole concept of a job and a income would be very largely irrelevant. Heck you may not even need a basic income, because you only need to bootstrap a few machines and from there on they are going to do every single thing for you.
pdpi 12y ago
"I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs." Indirectly, perhaps. Application-level software projects do tend to have the "automate people's jobs away" effect, but AFAIK, Stallman has been mostly involved in infrastructure-ish "enable some people to work (on automating away other people's jobs)" projects.
- agildehaus 12y ago
  Exactly. He's responsible for many of the tools which make it much easier for everyone else to automate jobs away.
larrys 12y ago
" I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs." No question about that. As someone who back in the day paid thousands for business software that is now almost always free, money went from our company to a company that had employees, sales people, programmers who made a living off the software that was being offered. Not to mention obviously the people that we didn't need anymore as a result of that software. (Bookeepers, anyone?)
- xsmasher 12y ago
  That sounds remarkably like the broken window fallacy. What does your company do with that extra money now? Throw it in a barrel and burn it?
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    What are Uber and passengers going to do with the extra money? In both cases, we see the loss of specific jobs and (at least) short term pain for the people who were relying on them.
    - xsmasher 12y ago
      Right; short term pain while the money is redistributed to somewhere it can be of more efficient use. The parent made it sound like the loss of jobs was going to collapse the economy.
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        "Right; short term pain while the money is redistributed to somewhere it can be of more efficient use." Right. Which isn't to say we shouldn't be considering it. The short term matters - we spend a lot of time there. "The parent made it sound like the loss of jobs was going to collapse the economy." Well, there's nothing to say the money is redistributed to labor, and it's hard to run a consumer economy when only a few people have any money to pay for anything. That said, I don't really get that vibe from the parent comment in the first place...
macspoofing 12y ago
>I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs. Great point. It's hard to quantify though. OSS gives companies access to a quality software stack for minimal cost. On the other hand, those companies are not now buying software from proprietary vendors. I don't know which is more: jobs created by having access to inexpensive quality software, or jobs lost due to less spending on application code.

glesica 12y ago

> Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive. Seems like this is really his point, if it isn't going to be preemptive, then (he feels) we should stop the jobs from going away.

baddox 12y ago
And that's the problem. If basic income won't happen until technological advancement causes mass unemployment, and governments ban technological advancement that might lead to mass unemployment, then we will get neither technological advancement nor basic income.
- tharga8616 12y ago
  Absolutely right
- glesica 12y ago
  Why can't basic income happen first? Or why can't basic income be phased in smoothly? I mean, don't get me wrong, I agree with you that basic income is unlikely to happen until there has been an incredible amount of pain and suffering, but does it have to be that way? Not necessarily. If we, as a society, set compensating policies as a condition for technological progress, then the progress might come more slowly, but it will still come. Of course I'm probably being a crazy person thinking that our government might act rationally. :(
- ThomPete 12y ago
  It's not just about job loss it's as much about salaries stagnating and thus making people poor. Especially here in the US it's a problem since it in return affect things like ones ability to pay for healthcare.
kamaal 12y ago
>>we should stop the jobs from going away. We can't stop anything from going away. Technology progress by and large has always been incremental. Large changes haven't occurred since the time of Industrial revolution. And I guess the next one won't occur until we get Artificial general intelligence. Until then affairs of the world will go on as they always have. AGI would alter the very course of economy in a way the whole concept of a job and a income would be very largely irrelevant. Heck you may not even need a basic income, because you only need to bootstrap a few machines and from there on they are going to do every single thing for you.

pdpi 12y ago

"I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs." Indirectly, perhaps. Application-level software projects do tend to have the "automate people's jobs away" effect, but AFAIK, Stallman has been mostly involved in infrastructure-ish "enable some people to work (on automating away other people's jobs)" projects.

agildehaus 12y ago
Exactly. He's responsible for many of the tools which make it much easier for everyone else to automate jobs away.

larrys 12y ago

" I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs." No question about that. As someone who back in the day paid thousands for business software that is now almost always free, money went from our company to a company that had employees, sales people, programmers who made a living off the software that was being offered. Not to mention obviously the people that we didn't need anymore as a result of that software. (Bookeepers, anyone?)

xsmasher 12y ago
That sounds remarkably like the broken window fallacy. What does your company do with that extra money now? Throw it in a barrel and burn it?
- dllthomas 12y ago
  What are Uber and passengers going to do with the extra money? In both cases, we see the loss of specific jobs and (at least) short term pain for the people who were relying on them.
  - xsmasher 12y ago
    Right; short term pain while the money is redistributed to somewhere it can be of more efficient use. The parent made it sound like the loss of jobs was going to collapse the economy.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      "Right; short term pain while the money is redistributed to somewhere it can be of more efficient use." Right. Which isn't to say we shouldn't be considering it. The short term matters - we spend a lot of time there. "The parent made it sound like the loss of jobs was going to collapse the economy." Well, there's nothing to say the money is redistributed to labor, and it's hard to run a consumer economy when only a few people have any money to pay for anything. That said, I don't really get that vibe from the parent comment in the first place...

macspoofing 12y ago

>I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs. Great point. It's hard to quantify though. OSS gives companies access to a quality software stack for minimal cost. On the other hand, those companies are not now buying software from proprietary vendors. I don't know which is more: jobs created by having access to inexpensive quality software, or jobs lost due to less spending on application code.