‘Robots’ Are Not 'Coming for Your Job'–Management Is
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
There is, however, a more fundamental argument to be made against the notion that this kind of technology is neutral and that you can somehow stop management from making these kinds of decisions. It's not and you can't.
If technology exists to lower the operating cost of a type of business through automation, it's only a matter of time before one of the players in that business adopts that technology, to get ahead of their competition. As soon as that happens, all other players are pressured to follow or face the consequences. Often they cannot avoid adopting the technology as well.
The flip side of this is that if you can be the first to create and market this kind of technology, there is a good chance it will be very lucrative, so there is a lot of pressure to do so. It's almost like the technology wants to be born.
As a result, if it is possible for a robot to be created to take your job and do it cheaper, it is very likely that someone will do just that at some point. We could of course all agree to not create such technology or use or buy it (if we think this is better for everyone), but this makes it even more lucrative for some other company to come along and break that agreement (prisoner's dilemma).
So far, robots are mostly taking menial jobs that most people do not enjoy a lot. I am not convinced we should prevent that. What I do believe is that we should offset the loss of income so people who lose menial jobs can be compensated and pursue another occupation that is – hopefully – more meaningful than what the robots took.
(Google Translate calls it 'gainful employment', no idea if it's the right translation. What I mean is work for which you're getting paid money which you need to use to survive.)
As I understand it, the human work probably wasn't directly taxed. I'm guessing that what was taxed as the incomes of the humans. This may seem like a meaningless distinction, but the humans have other opportunities to earn taxable incomes.
All that said, you seem to be getting at the notion of a Universal Basic Income. It's an increasingly popular idea in some political circles.
I think the point Kalium was trying to make is that it's not possible to quantify the value of human labor without pinning it to the income someone earns from doing it. A programmer's job is less physically labor intensive then a farm worker's, who obviously earns less. And there are numerous skills and fields more complex then programming that nobody will pay as much, or at all, for someone to do.
For a machine, it's value is directly tied to the profits gained by it's operation relative to it's operating costs, which is the business income that is already taxed. I think the taxing of machine "work" jeena was asking for would basically just be an increase in taxes on corporate profits, perhaps with some variation based on how many people they employ relative to their profits.
Right. And the same is true of immigrants and outsourcing. The idea that foreigners are "stealing" jobs is a narrative that intentionally deflects from the conscious decisions company managers make to reduce costs.
Ultimately, the cheaper solution will win, but why be angry at the rich people making these decisions when we can take it out on robots and poor people just trying to get by?
It would take a real idiot to be angry with someone that needs a job and is allowed to have one by the government they voted for. There are some of these idiots, but not too many...
If you listen closely, you will find that people don't like two things. 1) Mass immigration (we probably need to further define that). And illegal immigration. I think most people understand (at least in America) that we are founded on immigration, and we enjoy amazing food, and cultures because of it.
Mass immigration - large number of people immigrating and displacing the existing population within a short period of time (probably also needs defined). I think when places and areas change slowly it is much smoother. Its like boiling a frog. Regardless of where you are from it can be upsetting to see your culture displaced by another. And that is why we have limits on how many people can immigrate to America every year. Some say they are too high, some say they are too low. I am sure we will find just the right amount one day.
As for a short period of time - that is mostly defined in generations. For immigration to work I think it needs to happen slow. Both sides need to adjust. The existing culture needs time to meld with the arriving culture, and the arriving culture needs time to adjust to the new culture. Both sides will need to be willing to give and take to form a NEW culture. Neither side can force full respect of the entirety of all parts of either culture. Doing so will result in generational disputes and battles.
I think most things can generally be solved with culture clash by having a potluck and enjoying each others food. Fat bellies of tasty food can bring people from all walks of life together.
I think the market is being inefficient here, and I don't know if its a market failure (lowest paying people have the lowest bargaining power, cultural power, etc) or a regulatory challenge (you cant automate away doctors, lawyers, VC capital, management, investment votes, etc).
Probably both.
Software engineers constantly cannibalize their own jobs, but there are so many positions for software engineers available (or potentially available) that we (software engineers) don't feel the affects.
There are some companies on a very predictable path. You could replace Eddie Lampert or Johnny Ive with a D20 mapped to management tactics and get pretty much the same outcomes at least on a short to mid term.
Plenty of competent companies have enough self-contained knowledge that you could make good decisions simply by surveying the on-the-ground employees, weighting them in some way, and generating policy that way. One would hope a widget factory with a combined 200,000 man-years of widget industry experience would know more about the widget business than a drop-in CEO that had to look up what a widget was on Wikipedia before he made his introduction speech.
I suspect the real justification for the wildly overpaid C-suite is that you need someone to be a scapegoat for Wall Street's whims.
A local and autonomous team that knows their market and is competent is not going to sack half of their own to finance a stock buyback, but a $30 million a year stuffed suit can impose it from above.
Most companies are like a train. The C level guys mostly report to the board where they think the train is going to be -- which is normally wag or ferry tail.
I know I am speaking in broad terms. There are companies out there where the CEO matters, but those are few and far .
Having a bunch of factory jobs replaced by a machine is an excellent example of this. People are blaming the management, but really it's the market forcing it. If the management here doesn't do this and their competitors do, they'll become uncompetitive and eventually go out of business.
The worst part is that there isn't an easy solution to this. You can try to re-train those workers so they can get new jobs, but eventually those jobs will be automated away as well. You can try to make laws to protect the jobs, but this makes it inefficient and prone to corruption.
I would extend the "automate" to more the more generalized "innovate".
They are also part of the (general) problem. And all of those jobs should also be targets of automation.
Where are you getting this data?
“San Francisco offers excellent benefits and the current starting salary is $87,230 per year. After seven years of service a Police Officer may earn up to $129,896 per year.”
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/your-sfpd/careers/sworn-j...
I have no idea what the story is with Paulo Morgado, but you simply cannot claim he's representative of all SF police officers.
That makes your comment seem pretty dramatically misleading... so how do you reconcile this with your comment above? Are you reconsidering your thoughts here? Doesn't the data you posted tend to not point at unions, or possibly point in the opposite direction, that unions aren't a factor?
Companies generally act very logically and seek to maximize their future cash flows. If economic incentives change, such as labor becoming more expensive, automation becomes cheaper relatively, and we should expect a well-run company to invest more in automation.
It makes little sense to blame the managers. We live in a market economy and policy-makers should look to economic incentives as the main way to drive behavior.
You are right but from certain perspective immigrants and outshoreing (as available economic resource not as human beings of course) are a sort of Dutch disease. Instead for innovation and increased productivity companies reach for imported labor and outsourcing which will hurt the economy in the long run.