Will Cloud Computing Make Everything (and Everyone) Work Harder?
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
Tech has a wee bit of an effect in changing these economic underpinnings of how the culture works. So do economic arrangements, social pressures, the health of the alternative models, etc. (For a few decades there it was more economical in Japan to buy/sell labor in fifty year blocks than it was to buy it in two week chunks, like it is bought in America. That system is no longer healthy, which makes the two week chunk option more appealing.)
Anyhow, it is by no means a given that the net result of increasing efficiency is working harder. The Internet makes it really efficient for me to negotiate I've-got-brains-you've-got-money-lets-trade relative to the traditional employment system in this neck of the woods. This caused my economic output to go waaaay the heck up and my hours worked to crater.
So it actually becomes a law of nature.
One idea: find some way to turn the economy into an MMMORPG. Ie 3d printing where the designs are created by Warcraftesque guilds and the profits are shared.
Google "john robb open source ventures".
The minimal capital investment, even for these supposed "borderless" technology jobs, is several thousand dollars. For every person in the world that doesn't have several thousand dollars (which is to say, the majority of them), employers who provide capital equipment will continue to exist.
Employers aren't going away.
With specific regards to minimal capital investments to do knowledge work: I think that this will soon be the cost of a handset, which is lower bounded by ~$5 at the moment and has no reason to stay that high, either. (The greater problem is that in a perfectly efficient worldwide marketplace for information work, poor people in Africa -- and poor people in America, for that matter -- generally have nothing that I want to buy, at any price.)
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(Im talk about a system for Switzerland)
I propose a "basic income" no strings attached (Everybody gets X$ per month and all wages are reduced by X$ is the short version of how it works) with this we replace all the diffrent social systems we have nowdays (money for kids, unemployment, AHV (money for the retired ...).
This will liberate people in the sence that they don't have to hang on to there jobs even if they are badly treated, they wont be social outcasts if they dont have a job.
instead give them insentives to improve there education (and thereby you could then get a job in a high tec economy), to be more entrepreneurial (find out what people really need and trie to provid it).
A more importend example for the people here is app marked development. App marked made it possible to start a project in a small team and make money relativly fast. The insentive to trie something like this is much greater and you can't fall that far.
It may not be the best model in pure economic groth terms but I hope it is a good model for a sustainable healthy society in a world where it is very hard to have full employment (because the economy changes to fast).
Not having a job isn't about being a social outcast, it's about not producing enough value/wealth to exchange for the cost of continuing existence. As an old book famously observed, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat"; that's not punitive, that's the economics of biology.
In other words, education alone brings no value to society. If there is no incentive to create value, because you are already given an income with no strings attached, that education will not be put to any meaningful use.
It seems to me that the stipend would need to be based on a plan to create value for society. If some level of education is required in order to proceed with that plan, it could be granted as part of the implementation.
This reasonably mirrors the way entrepreneurs operate, which is essentially what we want to duplicate. The dream always comes before the education. The education is only a means to an end.
It not socialism, when you acctully learn something/do something you will be able to get more.
California allows young adults to continue getting their parents' benefits until their late 20s if they're in school. This does not actually encourage people to get a useful eight-year education.
I am intrigued by the question of how income would be distributed in a still-hypothetical post-industrial world, but I fear the easy answer of just giving people a certain minimal income can't be made to work, which is unfortunate because I haven't got a better answer any more than anybody else does....
I am pretty liberarian but just like Hayek I think one function of the state is help pure people. You could never get a law past that basiclly says "He who does not work, neither shall he eat". Here in Switzerland pretty much everybody agreeds that helping the pure threw the staat is a good thing.
The system im proposing would at least be (a) fair (b) be much much much less complicated does getting read of a lot of human workforce that is no bound up in stupid jobs pushing around papers.
I would say the insentives to work are still there, this is not sozialim, im not taling about a basic income of min. wage or something.
Karl Marx would be happy to hear that. If you implement your idea then small fraction of society would use their free time to learn, read books, follow their passion or improve the world. Much larger fraction would concentrate on pleasant but much less challenging aspects of life like partying/booze/drugs/sex/good food/watching tv/browsing net. [Edit:spelling]
Im not proposing giving everybody tonnes of money. Im talking about a effective system to help the poor. I and most other people think that one of the things the stat has to do is to help poor people. Nowdays we do this in a really bad way and we make it really hard for them to get out off the system. Why would somebody that is unemployed talk a low paying job? He would because its not worth it if you get only a little be more money then when you stay unemployed and if they loose the job it talkes more then a month to get money again. Its economicly speaking extremly stupid way to do welfair.
Friedmans negativ income tax was much better because you allways have more then you would if you didn't work but that system has some other problems.
If you can come up with a better system tell it to me. If you think that the state should not be doing that at all say so. Dont tell im a marxist when I acctually stated that the idea is partly dirived from hayek. Hayek wrote one of the most inflential books against socialist ideas (the road to serfdom).
But for a lot of things, switching contexts is expensive. Productivity drops, and any cost savings can be easily nullified. One may argue that the capacity wasn't going to be used anyway, so it's a waste if not used. But I find the calculations used to estimate capacity assume that transaction costs for switching contexts is 0 instead of some large number. Thus, they actually overestimate capacity, thereby causing not only lowering productivity because they jam too many contexts into the space that still need to be handled on time, but also lower job dissatisfaction.
The problem is that in a global economy one could argue that American workers are competing with Chinese workers that do work 7 days a week and have no free time.
Personally I think that there are plenty of places where the effect the article documents could be productively put to use for the benefit of everyone. e.g. most commuter cars have one person each. A giant centralized database of everyones commutes could make carpooling as easy as pushing a button on your phone over breakfast and seeing "be outside in 3 minutes" in response.
That's just one example. I'm sure there are others, "think smarter not harder" should be the idea in general.
It will provide people with the opportunity to work harder if that's their preference.
As for downward pressure on wages. That's only a bad thing if there is no proportionately downward pressure on prices. Many of these services make markets more competitive (LiveOps versus traditional call centers, AirBnB versus traditional accommodations). So prices will probably drop more than wages.
This also benefits people in economically weak areas. Not just globally but also in the US, e.g. Deep South, Rust Belt, etc.
Lower Prices = good for the common person.
I don't think this would cause lower wages per se, if more people are doing less work (and getting less total pay), then this will lower the average wage. However that's not too important. More people have more money! yay!
For example as a software developer you may make $50/hr at your main job but at your weekend call center spare time thing you only make $10/hr. This will not drive your wage down but it will drive your average wage down.
The article resonates with me because I work from home for several customers and I always have work tasks queued up. It takes some discipline to take time off.
If we delete the "cloud computing" buzzword and instead insert "crowdsourcing labor to the lowest cost source worldwide", and for "everyone" we substitute "U.S. workers", then yes, it's clear that over time this will accelerate the wage depression in the United States which has already been occurring.