Hacker News Reader

Comment by perfunctory | Hacker News Reader

> what actually happened[1]: half the workforce gets laid off.

The article says as much:

> In a sane world, Russell thought, the factory would simply halve working hours, maintaining the same wages but greatly increasing the time that the workers could devote to the joys of leisure. But, as Russell observed, this rarely happens. Instead, the factory owner will opt to keep half the workers on the same hours and lay off the rest. The gains from the advances of technology will be realised not as an expansion of leisure but rather as drudgery for some and jobless destitution for others, with the savings enjoyed only by the winner, the factory owner.

View on HN

The reason this didn't happen is two fold.

First, workers gain skill by the hour. It's more efficient to have forty hour work weeks for a workforce of half the size than twenty hour work weeks with the same size.

Second, many things in the economy are arms races. Housing[0], cost of education, status goods, actual arms for our militaries, etc. We have enough productivity for things like food to be very, very cheap but it just drives up prices elsewhere.

[0] Specifically land value, but also housing in the physical sense since raw materials and labour are not unlimited.

Zeroth, the more unemployed, the more downward salary pressure on the employed.

edit: the reasonable expectation is that half of the workers are fired and the remaining workers' salaries are cut. The Luddites were a result of noticing technological improvements lowered wages and employment at the same time.

It's kinda weird how the labour is almost always in oversupply.

Won't be if basic income becomes available :)

Is the sane solution then not some sort of encouragement of greater stock market participation? Where when the "factory owner" wins, everybody wins, because everyone has shares in the factory?

Then the incentives are aligned - the more productive, technologically advanced the economy is, the greater your stock returns and the better off you are.

Is that not more or less the case for many people that have lived in the developed world for generations? You do not need to save a lot every month in order for it to compound into a meaningful stock ownership after 200 years. Median household net worth in the UK is £300'000, and that includes many many recent arrivals. For comparison, with a net worth of £500'000, you could draw ~£15'000/year in perpetuity if you wanted - is that not a much better alternative to UBI?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com