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Comment by t0suj4 | Hacker News Reader

From my parents' experience guaranteeing people a job will only result in people idling at job site because there is no work to do instead of people idling at home or possibly studying for a job they want to do.

Giving artificial jobs don't differ much from giving people artificially valued money.

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Look around when you're outside and take notice of all the maintenance not being performed. Speak with people who have a job and see how many of them would describe their workplace as chronically understaffed. We're a long way away from "people idling at a job site". And even if we weren't, there's a cost to idle tasks that sit around waiting for someone to be available to do them.

That said, only a small percentage of workers are happy to be pointless. Punishing everyone over the few hypothetical lazy does more harm than good.

1000 people buzzing to build up a startup that has negative unit econimonics and will never be possible is no different than doing nothing at work.

That being said, you’re right that we are seeing a lot of genuine demand for important work not being filled.

To me, this seems like mid-allocation of labor and it’s one of the effects of a low interest environment.

>> 1000 people buzzing to build up a startup that has negative unit econimonics and will never be possible is no different than doing nothing at work.

One could make the case that is actually worse than doing nothing, as it can be seen as a net negative.

*mis-allocation

I think the maintenance is not being performed because nobody wants to spend all the time and sweat to fix a bridge and getting rewarded by "Thank you and Goodbye! Oh by the way we couldn't get your budget approved but thank you, again, you helped us out with that thorn in our butt... about your payment.. better luck next time! KTHXBYE!".

Except there is plenty of work to do in public infrastructure, if the government is willing to spend money on getting it done: roads and bridges crumbling, water treatment systems in dire need of maintenance and repair, power grids fluctuating and unable to handle peak loads. And lots of second order work: administration of, and job training for, these infrastructure projects comes to mind.

"Giving artificial jobs don't differ much from giving people artificially valued money."

There's a big difference. It uses up the hours so they can't self consume them. And they are forced to turn up on time, and stay the day - or they don't get paid.

Which goes back to the root of our exchange system. We don't really exchange money, that's just a token - we exchange the output of our time, which is finite, and therefore valuable.

A job is a way of giving up your hours for the benefit of others.

An artificial job does not produce value from which others would benefit.

A real job that produces value would not need to have been artificially created!

A contract of employment is a contract for time. Giving up the hours is all that is required.

It's the job of capitalists to extract value from that time. If they do they get paid. If they don't they go bust.

The number of 'artificial jobs' is entirely in the gift of capitalists. If they don't like them, all they have to do to make them go away is hire the people's time and use it better.

If they can't do that in aggregate, then they lose out until they do. That's how the stabilisation works.

A contract of employment is also usually tied to some vague job description the employer is expecting from the employee.

It's your job to take the most value out of your time, either selling it to someone else (getting employed) or helping a grandma across the street.

Hiring a bag stuffer is less of an artificial position than hiring eleventh construction worker on a project for four.

Artificial job - A job that doesn't produce value for the employer

It's not your job to get the most value out of your time. It is the person who is hiring you's job to get the most value out of your time. That's where the surplus that pays them comes from.

Otherwise you are in business and the surplus should accrue to you, not your employer.

The employer has to extract value otherwise they have no right to that value.

How does that work on an island away from civilization? I still need to get the most value out of my time so I don't starve to death.

First time I came to the US over 25 years ago, one thing I noticed that was really different from western Europe was the amount of artificial jobs: grocery store bag filler, elevator boy, parking place guard, etc. I hadn’t seen these in Europe for years, cause nobody needs them. Having first visited Eastern Europe during communism, the resemblance in this aspect surprised me.

“Grocery _story_ bag filler”. Love the typo in the context of the post about artificial jobs.

Seriously though: other factors may create these needs: wage costs, security needs, cultural expectations.

You have not seen them in part because of labour costs. Their existence seems to correlate with that.

It's harder for a few at the top to monopolize all the jobs than all the money.

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