Comment by all2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by all2 | Hacker News Reader

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This thread is plagued by a rather insidious idea that has bubbled up in recent history: the idea of "human capital" in terms of the "greater good".

Sentiments like "people shouldn't be doing jobs that can be automated" or "machines should do the work instead, we need more useful jobs for those people" stink of the ideas that 1) people must serve some societal purpose, 2) that they are not fit to decide their own purpose, and 3) they are not fit to determine what has value to them.

These values are actually now embedded in U.S.A. policies and major non-profits, like "No Child Left Behind", and the Gates Foundation, or "School to Work". (A tangent: we aren't enabling people to learn and to think, we are teaching them to follow directions. Curiosity seems to be a waning capability of many kids and we seem to be slipping towards a Soviet style of teaching in public schools - which discourages self-generated thought and questions.)

I'm not bringing this up because I'm a Luddite. I rather like the idea of automating things, actually. I don't think our current, popular, justifications are healthy.

Rather, on an interpersonal level, I think some of the justifications in this thread are codependent, controlling, and uncaring.

As I’ve grown older and started focusing more on politics and the state of the nation, I started realizing that reconciliation is not abundant in the US politics and minds of people. Your comment is one of example.

There are comments about increasing automation and policies of that effect but no policy or recognition how job losses will be coped with. Apparently it’s ok to permanently remove jobs but universal basic income is non-negotiable.

Another example is cutting of taxes, but then increasing expenditures. Or not increasing taxes as expenditures go up. Somehow things just don’t reconcile. Maybe that’s just how politics is. But if there was reconciliation of things, we would be in a better place (or an even better place?)

Edit: spelling loses to losses.

> There are comments about increasing automation and policies of that effect but no policy or recognition how job losses will be coped with. Apparently it’s ok to permanently remove jobs but universal basic income is non-negotiable.

You're right! This is a huge, glaring, obvious contradiction.

I've always found it useful to extend the principle of charity in situations like the you so wisely point to. Perhaps people have some reason to expect that some other outcome could result from permanently removing jobs other than a permanent reduction in the number and type of jobs available? Do you think this is possible? Maybe these people might opine that our economy is not a fixed-size lump of labor.

Again, you very correctly point to a absolutely critical point. Might perhaps there be something else to consider here? If I'm wrong, and the world is indeed a fixed lump of labor, can you help me understand why these people are wrong?

>Might perhaps there be something else to consider here? If I'm wrong, and the world is indeed a fixed lump of labor, can you help me understand why these people are wrong?

I don’t think the world is a fixed lump of labor. Eventually there will be enough automation that people won’t have any work to do. Not everybody has the capacity to be a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer. We are just not wired that way, the brain simply works in unique ways. So how do we take away labor intensive work and still expect people to live happily while not providing them with means of living. I think there are two ways: (i) provide people with social services so they live above the standard of poverty. (ii) split automation so only so much work will be automated. This is a good compromise as we find out what automation does to our economy as years go on. For example(don’t shoot me, these are just examples), Mc Donald’s must have people working for the same amount of automatic kiosks in their restaurant. Or half of amazon warehouse must be people and half must be robots. Half of automatic Ubers must be driven by real people.

There are ways to do automation and still take care of people. I just don’t see that conversation and it’s bothersome because soon it will too late.

I think one important alternative you missed was allowing people to create businesses easily.

Given the opportunity, many people find problems to solve and build businesses around that solution.

By simplifying the process of starting a business to "just do it" and simplifying the tax implications of hiring and firing people, I don't think we would see a need to "create" or "preserve" jobs.

Oh definitely! I missed that one. That could be a solution. See, this is what I want. Have the conversation and the policy changes that come with the industry shifts. It only helps everyone.

In this particular case, the conversation you want happened over a century ago when economists figured out that automation tends to create (and enable the creation of) more jobs than it permanently removes. Economists figured out that the idea of the lump of labor is possessed of bountiful opportunities to come into greater alignment with observed reality. The whole industrial revolution involved a lot of people who shared your fears - that their jobs would be permanently removed by automation!

And you know what? They were right! Their jobs were permanently removed by automation. It's just that the story didn't end there, and the jobs created and enabled by automation far outstripped the jobs removed.

It might be worth considering that government intervention might not always be the solution. Choosing not to act is always an option, and is always worth considering. The first question should not be "How can we solve this problem with policy?", but instead should be "Should we solve this problem with policy?".

So we are back to square one. If automation makes whole populations jobless, then we should be ready to take care of them. If it doesn’t, we are good as we were. Therefore, if automation makes unemployment go up, those unemployed should have a plan waiting for them that makes sure they live above the poverty line.

Are we back to square one? The plan so far is that history suggests pretty strongly that automation creates more jobs than it destroys. Actively choosing not to intervene is a plan, although it can easily be mistaken not having one.

That's very intersting! Thank you very much for sharing.

You might think about pausing to consider that you have described what economists call the lump of labor. This is the idea that there's a finite amount of work to go around, and it can only be distributed among various people or machines. Some might opine that there could be something to be gained by investigating writings and studies on this exact subject from the past century or more. Wikipedia can be a great starting point - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

I have had a very different experience. I see the conversation you call for going on constantly. I see it among dozens of people I know personally, of many different ages and races and education levels and careers. This is enough to lead me to think that your idea is so good and so wise that it's already been adopted en masse!

> Apparently it’s ok to permanently remove jobs but universal basic income is non-negotiable.

Are you generalizing across all "young people"? Or are you assuming what I mean? I was not trying to argue that we as a society, and especially as individuals, shouldn't help the displaced. What I have a problem with is the essentially Communist rhetoric we are using to justify removal from and placement in jobs.

> Or not increasing taxes as expenditures go up. Somehow things just don’t reconcile. Maybe that’s just how politics is.

A frequent conversation between a close friend of mine and myself is one that highlights these inconsistencies. I think the core issue is a fundamental lack of understanding on the part of the politician/person. We call it "bumper sticker" politics. Everyone wants a drop-the-mic moment, the feel vindicated, to feel justified, to feel right.

It is a scary thing to be wrong, even about trivial things. If a person possesses functional introspective capabilities, being wrong about something can shake a person's sense of identity.

Generally, I think that fear is the cause of 1) lack of introspection, which leads to 2) "yelling" meaningless phrases in an attempt to articulate a political opinion they don't understand.

>Are you generalizing across all "young people"? Or are you assuming what I mean? I was not trying to argue that we as a society, and especially as individuals, shouldn't help the displaced. What I have a problem with is the essentially Communist rhetoric we are using to justify removal from and placement in jobs.

I think we are on the same page. I was just saying that if we are moving towards automation and the corporations are going to push for it, policies should be in place beforehand to help those displaced. Specifically from the profits of that automation. Not even the tax payers. Then as the whole industry shifts, the social services can be used to compensate whole populations. I am not writing policies and I am definitely not an expert. But the conversation of automation and job removal should include compensation for those displaced.

>I think the core issue is a fundamental lack of understanding on the part of the politician/person.

Yes, I agree. And the rush to prove the other side wrong. Which is usually accompanied by extreme examples and unfounded rhetoric.

Consider an alternative angle - Companies, as rational actors, will eliminate automatable positions. Unless you're suggesting some sort of deliberate intervention to save these jobs, they're gone.

The next question is how do we assist those displaced by automation. There are multiple proposals including UBI and its ilk, but the most palatable bipartisan idea is to find them new jobs.

The idea of finding 'better' jobs with more agency, etc. is not immensely new - it draws from organization research on employee fulfillment and productivity.

Overall, no one is saying that any specifically displaced individual needs to take up <new job> in some sort of imagined totalitarian state - they're perfectly free to choose a new job from the market. The only question is one of skills and motivation.

I'd suggest people learn how to do plumbing and electrical work. It's not work that can be easily automated, and plumbers are often charging more than lawyers.

The fact is, there is a LOT of room for people to work and grow. The typical factory job is significantly waning, and will continue to do so. Local service oriented jobs are far less likely to be outsourced at all. "Dirty jobs" in particular tend to pay well, and are pretty damned safe from outsourcing.

The bigger issues are more societal and likely to worsen with roughly 2/3 of those in higher education being women, and over 70% of women unwilling to date/marry those of a lower social/education status, even with matching income.

The highest satisfactions in life, generally speaking, come from earned work:income and family engagement.

> I'd suggest people learn how to do plumbing and electrical work. It's not work that can be easily automated, and plumbers are often charging more than lawyers.

It mostly just that people don't understand what automation is, and especially not many of the self-proclaimed experts. You automate things like electrical work like you "automate" Uber, by making it unskilled. You put all the logic in the terminal, if not the cables, so almost anyone can do it. In a longer time span you might just change the whole wiring to something else, like lower powered dc.

That said there is no need to go crazy. We are undergoing a second industrial revolution with information instead of energy, but overall the same rules apply. If we just make things better for people we will be alright.

>The bigger issues are more societal and likely to worsen with roughly 2/3 of those in higher education being women, and over 70% of women unwilling to date/marry those of a lower social/education status, even with matching income.

Depends on your perspective. As a single man with his life together in his early 30's I'm finding life good. Is this societies problem or a problem for these women?

As society is dependent on a growing youth to support senior care, it depends on your POV.

Because you specifically are doing well, doesn't mean society is. Directly, the women in particular are not harmed, but statistically less happy. Changing perspectives on a broader level would help a lot in any case.

Growth cannot continue forever. At some stage we will need to stabilise or reduce the population. I'm expecting that I'll be working until close to 70 and I think others should prepare for the same. If you're hoping for 35 years of retirement then you should have a lot of money put aside.

As for women, this is their own choosing. If you want to "have fun" with the most attractive men (looks, status, wealth) you can from 18 to 28 before you look for a partner then you shouldn't be surprised when the men who will settle down with you don't live up to the standards you're used to. There is only so many of these men and they're happy to oblige fun but commitment isn't so easy. There was a post yesterday showing how many young men are completely missing out on sexual interaction.

> I'd suggest people learn how to do plumbing and electrical work

This might be a solution for some people, but it's not a long term solution for everyone. As people age, their bodies deteriorate. An injury might put someone out of work temporarily, or forever. Manual labor becomes more difficult, or outright impossible, for people entering their 40s, 50s and 60s.

>2/3 of those in higher education being women, and over 70% of women unwilling to date/marry those of a lower social/education status

Modern hypergamy (Tinder) will create more childless single women in their 40s+ than human civilization has ever seen.

Electrical/plumbing is a great idea. The ultimate job I think is robot repairman, because by the time that is automated we're all screwed anyway.

But consider exercise. Society automated a lot of manual labor and people still need to exercise, even though it's a blatantly wasteful use of energy. It's even more inefficient than digging holes and filling them again, because it's not even good for the soil. But it's important for people to do it.

I'm basically with you here.

There is a reality that no one wants to admit - for some sizable percentage of the population, a 'job easily replaced by automation' is the best they can hope for in life - they're either not smart enough, not driven enough, or have some other issue preventing them from being a rocket scientist - beyond that, there is a limited societal need for highly educated workers - but we have lots of jobs that need just need doing, and are every bit as important, both for societal cohesion and for the fact that they need done - we need to pay those people a fair and living wage.

It comes down to a question - are we as a society willing to pay people to not work - not just starvation - but pay them a fair and reasonable wage for doing nothing - or do we as a society expect to try to get as close to a fair and living wage as possible for everyone no matter how much value they add - provided they are doing some sort of reasonable amount of work - this is the real question posited by automation.

> but pay them a fair and reasonable wage for doing nothing

I subscribe to some limited belief that prices rise (where possible) to meet demand. See San Francisco housing prices, or Madison, WI housing prices as companies attract and pay their employees quite a lot. So, just paying people a "living wage" isn't enough. If that's a route we go in (and I sincerely hope we don't) we need to handle every aspect of living; housing, food, medicine, etc. Just dolling out dollars/euros isn't enough.

> or do we as a society expect to try to get as close to a fair and living wage as possible for everyone no matter how much value they add

Paying regardless of performance will destroy productivity. People tend to do a "gradient descent" algorithm in work, finding some local minima of effort for their pay. I understand not all people are like this. I'm only saying I think that enough people do, that paying some fixed minimum for all no-matter-the-value will destroy economic growth.

You're referring to a type of supply curve that rises sharply to the right as demand increases and where that supply curve has limited ability to react in a new equilibrium. Small increases in demand result in large increases in price but extra supply cannot be brought to the market to push pricing down.

This is mostly true in cases with artificially limited supply. You mention real estate, which is a good example in cities where (1) large employers are moving in, (2) zoning is constrained, and optionally (3) extra land is difficult to get, either because of geography or sprawl.

Most goods are not like this. Food, for example, does not typically have permanently higher prices after an increase in demand, because the supply curve will also change (additional supply is provided).

Same with televisions, cars, refrigerators, computers, household consumables, etc.

Therefore, I don't think it makes sense to throw out the baby with the bathwater: yes, real estate is not a normal market for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't mean that spreading dollars around doesn't work for everything else.

Real estate may need some special solutions, such as relaxing zoning laws, housing subsidies, evaluating code impact on construction costs, mass transit investment to increase travel efficiency, property tax on vacant properties, etc.

If you paid people a wage that didn't tie them to a place, or if they could get that 20 bucks an hour no matter where they lived, they'd likely relocate to someplace cheaper.

What do we do with all the people who's jobs are automated out of existence? Do we prevent the automation from happening, or do we just pay people for doing nothing? That's the question I'm positing.

We allow them to start businesses with little to no overhead. Let them solve problems as they see them and hire people to help.

Even with the explosion of software related businesses, the actual growth of new small businesses has been grinding to a halt [0]. I'd argue that this is specifically a regulation and paperwork issue from local all the way up to Federal levels.

If we want to "create jobs" for people who are displaced, we need to allow for new jobs to be created. The government can't "create" jobs, no matter how much money it has or taxes it levies. Unless everyone works for the government. Then we're on our way to some kind of bureaucratic totalitarianism.

[0] "Firm Size" - https://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurship.ht...

I'll note - at no point I mentioned the government as a driver in this - this is a societal question - government might be the mechanism to do it - but government cannot initiate it - we as a society must form a consensus on what to do with the displaced first.

Broadly I'd also agree with you, the regulatory environment makes running any sort of business needlessly complex and difficult, and tends to increases the capital requirements greatly - though I'd argue that state and local regulations are the primary burdens at this point.

It certainly helps to make it easier to start businesses. I think it's a great idea, but even in the most optimistic scenario though it is a fractional (but worthwhile!) solution. Reducing bureaucratic burden and improving access to capital can make a real difference though.

> are we as a society willing to pay people to not work - not just starvation - but pay them a fair and reasonable wage for doing nothing

This will be exceedingly difficult in the U.S. where there is this deeply ingrained cultural belief that a living is something that must be “earned”. Basic Income and other safety nets that let people survive without working for it would be politically difficult. We are more likely to have government pay 1/2 the people to dig holes and the other 1/2 to fill them in, than have something like Basic Income here.

Everyone I've known out of a Soviet era education seems to feel it was quite a bit better than US education. Early bucketing by ability, allowing those who can to succeed and those slower learners to work with others at a more comfortable pace. As long as people are able to move in/out of grouping based on skill and effort, I'm not sure it sounds so bad.

> I'm not sure it sounds so bad.

You speak primarily about administrative organization. I'm speaking about content and focus of material.

I'm not sure the U.S. changes in education since the 80's especially in K-12 have been productive, both administratively and structure. I was talking about letting those that can learn more math, or better language/communication skills being able to do so at a younger age, and not holding them back to keep everyone the same (lowest common standard) on a larger scale, not just for the wealthy.

You say "codependent" like it's a bad thing. What's so great about individualist thinking? When finding meaningful work, why shouldn't we consider what other people want? And why should people have to figure it all out on their own?

"Codependent" has a specific meaning in psychology, it doesn't just mean people who depend on each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency

I know but I worded that badly. "Codependent" seems to be used metaphorically and I'm not sure it's justified.

To me it's not the matter that "people shouldn't be doing jobs that can be automated" or "machines should do the work instead," it's that in a capitalist system, these changes are inevitable. As soon as these jobs start to be automated out of perfectly sound capitalist motivations, the dollar value of a human performing that task is going to fall precipitously, to near-zero.

Clearly we need to figure out how to keep those people compensated enough to survive, possibly through changing to work that our economy values sufficiently, through subsidizing them from those same gains in efficiency through automation, or via some means not yet discussed.

If they're not doing something with some societal value and they're not homesteading how do they provide for themselves?

I think you are confusing "societal value" with "things people are willing to pay for". Like a coffee shop. Another coffee shop doesn't hurt society, nor does it benefit society at large. Even on the scale of a small town, a coffee shop adds nothing of intrinsic societal value.

But people still want their caffeinated milk shakes and misnamed espresso sugar drinks, and they will pay a premium for their fix.

Why is providing people with a good they desire not benefiting society?

Maybe they work as an app or web dev?

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