We can vote. We can unionize. We can push for better healthcare, education, labor, etc., policy. The status quo is the problem here, IMO, which I believe is the source of much of the anxiety many of us experience in this era.
> Amazon is undergoing the largest layoffs in company history after it went on a hiring spree during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company’s global workforce swelled to more than 1.6 million by the end of 2021, up from 798,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019.
This isn't to suggest there's no other factors, but monetary policy is a major driving force in the boom/bust cycle.
Why would a company entertain demands of Spoiled Tech Dudes Union, whose work can be performed by people overseas equipped with ChatGPT for a fraction of cost?
This could be not too distant the future, if IT workers decide to unionize
Here in the UK the unions are medium-strong and haven't prevented self checkouts, ticket sellers being replaced with machines, etc.
What you need is strong labor laws. A universal three or six month notice period in favour of the employee would do wonders to prevent overhiring and overfiring.
Future benefits of technology will primarily be enjoyed by the 1% with the other 99% becoming poorer and working (hours wise) more.
The history of technology & capitalism is quite the reverse.
A few years back, a steamboat from the 1850s was discovered buried in the muck in the Missisoupi. Archeologists rushed to dig it up and discover what it was carrying. They had the same notion you did. They were shocked that the steamboat was not carrying luxury items at all. It was loaded to the gills with manufactured stuff for ordinary folks. Things like factory made shoes, textiles, tools, pots, pans, dishes, bottled food, nails, hardware, etc.
You see the same thing today with, for example, the iphone. That machine was made for everyone, not just the 1%. And it made Apple the richest company in the world.
Look at what wealthy tech companies make - they make stuff for ordinary people.
Umm, what?
The iPhone is meant to be a status symbol, not "for everyone".
The next generation will have a lower quality of life than ours. They will have less wealth, they will work more, they will experience less.
Just looking back to 2003 compared to now and there’s so much more information and opportunity compared to 20 years ago. It’s not uniform and there are certainly some parts worse (housing) but I think that just the example of smart phones shows a huge leap of businesses and life improvements available now. I expect improvements to be available 20 years from now.
For who? Real wages have been falling for decades. 'Quality of life' is amorphous. Do we have a higher quality of life than people did 20 years ago? We're fatter, we have less wealth, we spend more time commuting, it's basically impossible to buy a house for most people.
I'd disagree with your assessment that we are better off than we were in 2003.
Somebody gets to pay for this:
https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/federal-spending-per...
and it's gonna be you and me.
I appreciate that capitalism has been better than any of its competitors in every case to date in raising living standards. There's no question.
But I still think it isn't equipped to handle automation and AI on a very large scale. If I'm right it'll become painfully obvious as soon as something approaching or close-enough to AGI appears. And the trajectory we're on seems to make that appear to be something we'll see in the 2020s rather than the 2100s or beyond as I previously thought.
If by 2029 90% of the knowledge work humans do today can be done more cheaply by a LLM, that's a tremendous shock to the system. Especially if they'll be able to start to write code efficiently and create new AI models to solve problems, we could rapidly see easier problems like self-driving cars solved in a few years. Which leaves as available human jobs "politician" (presumably robots are banned from holding office) as well as any forms of skilled and unskilled manual labor that require walking around. If computer vision etc become good enough it's not hard to conceive of a bipedal android that can do tasks like build houses, deliver packages from a truck, etc.
In this situation, the vast majority of Americans would not have "jobs" in that no business wants their labor when a machine is cheaper and better. Capitalism dictates that those 90% starve. See the problem?
Note: I'm not saying the above will come true. Just that if the technology part does come through, I'm arguing capitalism as-is simply will not work anymore. And the breakdown would hurt everyone. The wealthy won't have any consumers to sell to when all consumers are unemployed.
Capitalism works imho because of scarcity. When 'labor' isn't really scarce anymore due to AI, that is a fundamental change that is bound to totally transform the game. It's like playing Mario Bros with gravity turned to 10000% so you can't jump. The game controls and level design then no longer make sense.
I'd encourage you to read up more on current affairs! Capitalism is global. How happy do you think impoverished people in Vietnam are? How about people exposed to toxic chemicals for their entire lives?
Your understanding of capitalism is based on a 50 year blip. You should read up on your history.
Capitalism is not why they are exposed to toxic chemicals as you say. It's the corruption...which won't be solved if we are using some other system.
I lived in Vietnam for a couple of years, very recently. I could drive around with no license and pay police officers some cash if I got caught. Sometimes they would shake people down when they were low on money, especially around Chinese new year. This was also in a big city.
I also wonder what your alternative would be? Your post reads like you are in the antiwork subreddit. Most people have this romanticized view of communism and socialism that we will somehow have exactly what we have now, but you won't have to work (or you will be given a home by the government).
It's funny how many people fight so hard to have someone else pay their bills.
It's not corruption. It's capitalism. Who do you think funds the corruption in Vietnam? Don't look to closely at Nike or Apple's connections in SE Asia.
Vietnam was just an example. Capitalism firms expose billions of people all over the world to unsafe conditions to maximize profit, even in the United States and Europe.
> Your post reads like you are in the antiwork subreddit.
Your post reads like every conservative in existance. It's not capitalism's fault! It's just everything that exists in a capitalist system!
>Most people have this romanticized view of communism and socialism that we will somehow have exactly what we have now, but you won't have to work (or you will be given a home by the government).
I'm not sure why you are rambling about communism or socialism. You understand that there are a lot of economic and societal theories in the world. You don't have to buy into binary narratives.
>It's funny how many people fight so hard to have someone else pay their bills.
It's funny how many privileged people refuse to acknowledge the huge amount of human suffering caused by capitalism.
If you look at Vietnam before capitalism and after. It's a big difference. But I don't think you care about this.
Why do you think children have to work in these countries? If not for companies like Nike, they would have nothing and no ability to feed their family because of the government in power.
You are the privileged one. Not understanding actual human suffering.
All systems contain human suffering. Capitalism allows for actual freedom.
You still haven't given me an example of a better system.
Fun fact: "The initial use of the term "capitalism" in its modern sense is attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 ("What I call 'capitalism' that is to say the appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others") and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861 ("Economic and social regime in which capital, the source of income, does not generally belong to those who make it work through their labor")" [0]
Both Blanc and Proudhon were socialists.
Further more, I would argue that kindness and sexual intercourse have been responsible for more human happiness than our current economic system, although it's possible that by "everything else" you meant "any other economic system", in which case maybe you would have a point, with the caveat that perhaps more primitive economies (your stereotypical 'merry band of hunter gatherers') would have, on average, healthier and happier inhabitants.
Or that 'socialist' Danes tend to be much happier than 'capitalist' Americans.
Or that with the regulatory capture of most industries by big company lobbying, our current economic system would more correctly be described as corporatism, where the means of production are owned not by individuals but by corporations.
And you could also argue that the North Korea/USSR were less happy than Western countries due to democratic, liberal governments being nicer than authoritarian ones.
^_^
I think it’s a transitional economic force though. Like it works for getting super poor, super inefficient systems up to moderate and then starts scooping up and concentrating.
I feel like being able to complain about capitalism is a luxury created by capitalism and people who are too poor complain about other things (like starving to death). Similarly to the shift from dying from infectious disease to dying from chronic disease due to eliminating or reducing preventable disease. It’s not that vaccines cause cancer and diabetes, it’s that vaccines stop people dying earlier of vaccine preventable diseases.
Tech workers are the most privileged class of workers in the whole world. No one will take you seriously when you say these things. Also the metaphor doesn’t make sense. I wish we could keep this Reddit style, front page politics off our tech website.
Which is why it only takes a layoff or threat of layoff for many of them to feel like the world is ending. Not to minimize the impact that a layoff can have on someone.
HN is not just a "tech website". Never has been. You seem to not understand what hacker means.