Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think they'll try, but I honestly think we've got a perfect storm coming.

Now's the best time ever for automation to take off. There's also going to be more big businesses eating little businesses and consolidation.

Globalization's biggest leaders will come out ahead, and thrive as always - but a LOT less workers are going to be needed in general from here on out thanks to ML/AI/Etc...

It's first step towards post-scarcity, except for the millions who will be hurt if govt's don't create repurposing plans to give people a purpose for existing and enough $ to eat and live.

Also, I personally won't step foot in a sit-down restaurant or movie theater for at least 2-3 years, or until there's a viable vaccine. I'm sure I'm not the only person boycotting crowds.

Real estate analysts estimate that 50%+ of mall retailers will close their door by q4 2021. that's a shit ton of jobs gone forever.

I was starting to get skeptical of the claim that 40% of jobs would be gone by 2030, but 2020 definitely is showing it's highly possible. What do we do w/ 40% permanent unemployment?

How can government give folks a purpose? I always assumed that in our strange age purpose is up to the individual, but now I am curious how a nation-state could foster `a purpose-driven life`.

Nation states tried to do that in twentieth century, with very disappointing results.

> What do we do w/ 40% permanent unemployment?

This assumes that somehow people cannot be re-trained to do other things, if those jobs really all disappear, which they probably wont.

There's always more work to do, things to improve, people to help. It will be like that forever.

The question is, who allocates labor? Perhaps the kind of market system we have has run its course, perhaps this time it's over.

I predict that the market will recover, just like it always has, but feel free to disagree.

Pollyanna thinking.

We'll have what, 30M unemployed people? Who mostly can't be retrained to be engineers, even if we needed that many engineers which we don't.

No, we're entering a post-scarcity economy. Never mind Marxism or Socialism or Capitalism - when Labor has nothing left of value to offer, where do they go? What leverage do they have?

"It'll be like that forever" flies in the face of history. When weaving machines came in 1760, the weavers didn't just get reeducated or reallocated - they starved and died, along with their families.

I always feel sad at the oft-repeated theme "We'll just get everybody working again!". In the 1950's, lots of philosophers and writers imagined a future of robots lifting the yoke of labor from our shoulders, freeing us for lives of leisure. Now that it's happening, all I hear is schemes to make people work again. The old Puritan ethic - if you're not working, your a waste of breath.

Seems pretty pollyannaish to think we're heading into post-scarcity anything, for anyone. Where is that idea even coming from? Or is "post-scarcity" just a nice way of saying "massive social stratification built on the exploitation of an effectively permanent underclass"?

> Who mostly can't be retrained to be engineers, even if we needed that many engineers...

I didn't say they will become engineers. A low-class worker will stay in low-class work, but there will still be demand for it. Even if the market doesn't demand it, the government is there as a buyer of last resort.

Again, there's always something to do. There's always something to improve, to build or to repair. Where do you think work came from before capitalism?

The argument for capitalism is that it's generally more efficient than government at allocating resources and creating wealth. If that fails, we can still fall back to something else.

> Never mind Marxism or Socialism or Capitalism - when Labor has nothing left of value to offer, where do they go? What leverage do they have?

They can riot.

> When weaving machines came in 1760, the weavers didn't just get reeducated or reallocated - they starved and died, along with their families.

If this was a historical fact and not a figment of your imagination, it would be repeated at every opportunity where "the dangers of automation" were discussed.

> I predict that the market will recover, just like it always has, but feel free to disagree.

What are the public policies that will help the market recover? (assuming that you mean the “job market” or “market economy” in general, and not the stock market which is another topic)

Are those policies pursued or likely to be pursued in the next few years?

It seems politically untenable in the US to break from the “socialism for large business/the wealthy, free market for everyone else” slate of policies. And this is with either political party.

Whenever there has been epochal change and recovery in the US economy during the 20th century there have been substantial policy changes: the New Deal in the ‘30s. The Military-Scientific spending in the 40s-60s.

The market recovers on its own, because it reflects the wants and needs of the population. The most important thing the government can do is to maintain the stability of the currency as well as law and order.

Whenever there has been a government response to market crisis, it is hailed as "the solution" in retrospect by the powers that be. The alternative history where the intervention never took place doesn't play out and can't be judged on its merits.

> The market recovers on its own, because it reflects the wants and needs of the population.

What does a successful recovery look like?

There are a large number of market-distorting policies in effect today. I'm talking about both policies that predate the crisis and those that went into effect during the response (these are mainly monetary - the fiscal ones seem temporary at this point).

> The most important thing the government can do is to maintain the stability of the currency as well as law and order.

To get to this point, the government would need to undo interventions that are currently in place throughout the economy. If the government were to "do nothing" (really, "change nothing") starting today, then this would in no way be some kind of "free market" like you're implying should exist.

Do you think that the government should undo interventions across the economy? Or apply new ones? Or leave the existing alone? I'm genuinely curious

> Do you think that the government should undo interventions across the economy?

It can't undo them, so that point is moot. The government shouldn't have been injecting so much liquidity that wasn't really needed for all these years - but now is certainly not the time to remove that liquidity.

The big question is, is the dollar going to collapse under that weight?

If so, then there's nothing that can be done now that makes a difference, so we might as well stay course for the time being.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com