Comment by reflexive | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reflexive | Hacker News Reader

Article has many holes in reasoning.

The measurable trends of the past half-century, and the plausible projections for the next half-century, are just too empirically grounded to dismiss as dismal science or ideological hokum

As NN Taleb points out exhaustively: social science puts too much faith in their models. "Measurable" trends? How do we even know what to measure, or that it's a trend? "Plausible" projections? What is the scientific measure of plausibility?

there’s not enough work to go around

There's a limitless amount of work - it just doesn't pay minimum wage. Every time you lower the minimum wage, it makes a new class of activities profitable.

you’ve just met an attractive stranger at a party, or you’re online looking for someone, anyone, but you don’t ask: ‘So, what do you do?’

This ubiquitous question may be asked and answered in the sense of "what are you passionate about" rather than "what is your largest source of income". It would be great if those co-incide, but that's often not the case.

Agreed about the "many holes". Furthermore on the models

But the bottom line is this. Most jobs aren’t created by private, corporate investment, so raising taxes on corporate income won’t affect employment.

This seems to be conjuring a whole new economic model out of thin air. How can it be the case that all of the models are wrong and that this model is right? I'm not saying it's wrong or right, but the preceding argumentation is not enough to support this line of thought.

It's also just plain ridiculous. This would mean that most jobs are created by... sole proprietorships? If you're employed it's almost certainly by an LLC, LLP, 501(c)3, etc. These are corporations. The simple act of training an employee is itself investment. If you suddenly make the profit of this new hire less valuable, we're expected to believe that this won't mean a reduction in new hires, even at the margin?

Limitless is not quite right: at some point, the value of work drops below the level at which a human can subsist on it.

Of course, if we take away that constraint through some means, like for example basic income, then the same problem remains in a different form; the value of the work drops below the level that a human can be bothered to do it.

Because this minimum exists, there is indeed a finite amount of work, and as machines drop the value of human labor in certain areas, there is potentially less and less of it available.

the value of work drops below the level at which a human can subsist on it

I agree with this analysis; the question becomes: how do we value a person's contribution to society, if not by someone's willingness to pay their wages?

I hope there is a solution in advanced tools for economic cooperation... imagine 90% of the population living off something like "GoFundMe for artists and educators".

If we can't or won't find such an answer, we then have the question: how many lives are we willing to subsidize who are contributing, by our best measures, a net negative to society?

It never made sense to me that "contribution to society" would be measured by money earned; it functions more as if your vote was proportional to the money you had in your bank account (and of course, the rich vote to get more rich). It ends up being some kind of distorted limit instead of actually reflecting anything resembling the real will of society.

It never made sense to me that "contribution to society" would be measured by money earned

Think of it this way. I am willing to give you money, if you make a significant positive contribution to my life. I am willing to participate in a collective to scheme to give you money, if what you do helps people in a way I can appreciate.

It's certainly a distorted signal, but better than no signal at all.

If we can't or won't find such an answer, we then have the question: how many lives are we willing to subsidize who are contributing, by our best measures, a net negative to society?

If you are posing this question from the implicit position as being one of those who are a net positive, reflect on how trivially chance could intervene and turn you into a net negative.

I imagine a future where 90% of the population must become shills for themselves to make a living, and I do not like it.

reflect on how trivially chance could intervene and turn you into a net negative.

All of us are a net negative some of the time. The question is, how many can be net negatives all of the time? 10x? 100x? One person supporting the entire rest of the human population?

"Contribution to society" is the main problem that needs a paradigm shift - if we look at 1900, then a system where economic subsistence is directly linked to a measurable contribution to society (whether by wages paid in capitalism or full participation in a collective society or whatever) makes sense.

However, if we look at year 2100 then it seems rather clear that a majority of population will not ever be able to make any real contribution to wider society whatsoever, since any job that they can do can be done better and cheaper by someone else (machines or other people - e.g. being a third rate guitarist is of no use if you have many first rate guitarists that also are eager to work for free) so there can be no practical, economic reason to ever choose them for any job.

Subsidizing people who aren't contributing to society seems the only humane option. Having them "contribute" to society in some artificial way is not a solution, since that policy by itself would be a net negative to society; Not subsidizing them is not a stable solution, since in the absence of any reasonable ways to survive they'll either starve to death or manage to violently overthrow the system.

In essence, the likely future involves the unprecedented scenario of billions of people who are, from an economic standpoint, absolutely unnecessary and a net economic negative to society; and the only (?) possible solutions seem to be either to accept that we'll subsidize them or exterminate them. Or, possibly, "others" will subsidize or exterminate us, as it's not set in stone on which side I or my kids will be.

Subsidizing people who aren't contributing to society seems the only humane option.

I think humane is the key word here. We are human, after all. It's human that you would take someone in to your home and feed and care for them, though they might never repay you.

It's not human that you would take 10 people into your home and support them indefinitely while they contribute nothing, and then support their children, their children's children, etc forever.

Except we've redefined what "the level at which a human can subsist on". Go 50, 100 or 200 years back and look at the kind of life most citizens lived. It was far below what even a person without a job today has - and a person without a job has an incredible amount of free leisure time compared to the 18 hour days that were common even 100 years ago.

The simple fact is that welfare and minimum wages have removed many jobs from the economy, and those jobs that were removed kept the economy at full employment. There's no real change aside from us effectively banning some jobs. Remove the ban, remove welfare, and we'd have full employment again. Is that a good thing to do? Probably not, but it's an important point to understand that the author completely left out of his essay. You're not going to find a good solution if you don't even stop to consider how we got here.

Not really. I think most of the jobs are being lost because of the improvements in productivity. We need less people to do the same job, because we have a lot of machines and automation. So, even if there is more work to do (because there are more people on the Earth now than 100 years ago), there is relatively less "work per person" to do. I know this is not exact (lump of labor fallacy) but I think it explains a lot of what's happening right now.

The saddest thing, for me, is the effect on economy. Since the corporate earnings remain the same but the automation means that less workers get paid (and, when controlling for inflation, workers don't get paid much more, except in a few select industries), this means that the owners keep the rest, and this is why the gap between poor and rich people is widening so fast.

What you're seeing is "creative destruction". If you focus on any one industry or sector for a short period of time, then yes, there's less work to go around. But if you widen your lens across time and industries, what you'll see is that these jobs will be reallocated to more productive uses of human effort. That is, automation has made these people's effort relatively less productive compared to a machine, so they need to find work in a different field.

I'm not saying that this process is all sugar and rainbows, losing your job to automation _is hard_. Some will never recover.

However, human society has always valued what is scarce. What will be scarce in the future is products and services made by human hands.

Already we see this happening. Visit a farmer's market - see all the hand-crafted soaps? If you could have a new desk from Ikea or made with hand hewn wood, engraved and embellished by a true craftsman, which would you prefer? It sounds trite today, but as our most basic necessities continue to be met at ever cheaper rates, we'll start trading our labor for better, higher quality things. Where quality is measured in human ingenuity and artistic beauty.

We can see this shift all around us. The rise in natural grocery chains, farmer's markets, Etsy. There are hundreds if not thousands of individuals who have quit their jobs to become full time YouTube creators.

I know that it all sounds banal, but it's because it is currently only the wealthiest in society who at this moment can afford to shop exclusivly at Whole Foods. However, in a truely vibrant economy, one that embraces change and makes reallocation of effort as smooth as possible, one with ample access to capital, one with low barriers to entry, will bring these luxuries of today to society as a whole tomorrow. And it will probably happen faster than human history has ever made it happen before. We're just impatient and spoiled by a world that's changing ever more quickly.

Welfare is meant to help provide a minimum living standard. Society generally agrees that living below these levels is not acceptable to allow (though perhaps survivable). It is therefore seen as more of a human right in western worlds.

Remove the ban? Watch a whole range of job wages plummet, and a whole range of people fall into poverty. People will have to work horrendous hours, or in horrendous conditions just to get enough to survive. This will only increase the income inequality, making it harder for the poor to make a living. The employment numbers may have increased - but at what cost? More civil unrest, more crime, more people in hopeless situations. Whilst you realise its not a good idea, you seem to trivialise it.

I'm sure the author did consider this point. They realised that - we didn't get here simply because we introduced welfare and minimum wage - and that getting rid of them isn't a valid approach to get to full employment. Its something so obvious its not worth discussing.

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