Is Technology Fostering a Race to the Bottom? | Hacker News Reader

Is Technology Fostering a Race to the Bottom?

nytimes.com

31 pointsRockyMcNuts19 comments

In other words, does it make the economy more efficient? I think so.

This kind of reminds me of articles from the 70s + 80s wondering if computers will steal jobs. Sure, but they also made jobs. Services like airbnb might take money away from hotels, but then give it to enterprising people that have extra space to rent. Overall, I can't imagine how that's not a good thing.

Why is that technology hasn't decreased the amount of hours we've worked in a week then?

Good question but here is my take. Even though technology has not reduced the amount of hours we work in a week (average 40 in the US), it has reduced the elapsed time to finish a certain trivial task. For example, wall street traders still work the same hours per week but they can execute hundreds and thousands of transactions per day with technology. Imagine when trading used to happen without computers.

Hmm then what's the use of efficiency to us personally, if we still work the same amount of hours?

You are asking the question of "how can we have more time for ourselves without needing to be at work 8 hours a day necessarily". That IMO has nothing to do with technology. But yes, i agree that ideally, we should be able to choose how we spend our time in a day/week efficiently but technology is not the only answer.

We get a much higher benefit from it. What used to be considered huge house, multiple cars, tons of gages, vacation in France another one in Mexico in winter etc.

We scale up to capacity.

Technology has decreased the amount of time it takes for you to do your job.

So much so that your company learned it could fire the guy next to you (or let him quit and not replace him, however you like to look at it) and make you do his work, since you're more productive with new tools.

Remember, it's not about letting you work less hours, it's about their labor costs (I wonder if there's correlation between Executive Compensation and the increased use of technology to replace labor -- the money goes somewhere). If you can replace half your HR department with good software run by the other half, no one's hours are changing, but the company is saving a ton of money.

I ultimately think that this is the future of technology:

Jobs replaced by technology are wholly not being recreated by it. Maybe at a factor of 2 gone per 1 gained. I wish real stats could be done on this. The drive of technology is one of making human effort redundant.

I was hoping this article would be about the fact that software/technology/etc is replacing labor for far less money. About how labor wholly cannot compete with software and computer assisted/run assembly lines and 3D printers and whatever else we invent. About how recessions incite businesses to look for cost-cutting measures, and how those businesses are latching onto software and smarter machinery to replace expensive labor.

Your arguments assume that the number of companies with jobs is fixed; that the same technologies that increase productivity for existing employers can't be used by individuals to create new businesses.

This web site that you're posting on is dedicated to entrepreneurs who create businesses in their home offices without the need for a big corporation to back them and provide HR, Accounting, and other overhead services. That revolution in new business model opportunities is afforded by the advances in technology that your thesis is decrying.

"This web site that you're posting on is dedicated to entrepreneurs who create businesses in their home offices without the need for a big corporation to back them and provide HR, Accounting, and other overhead services. That revolution in new business model opportunities is afforded by the advances in technology that your thesis is decrying."

I think you misunderstand: This site, us, these people: we're in the business of making a 1000 person company into a 10 person company.

What do you think happens to that other 980 people?

That's my point. Yes, that is what we here do. We create novel ways of doing things better, or in another light: we replace copious amounts of human labor with technology equivalents.

I'm not decrying the trend, either. I'm calling attention to it: We have to realize what is happening and adapt as a culture.

I do not think we will ever return to 4% unemployment. I think a critical mass of technology has been hit in a number of industries where re-adding the number of employees lost in a recession never happens. I think that structural unemployment number is going to keep rising until we confront the hard questions about how exactly we approach labor in this country.

Why is that technology hasn't decreased the amount of hours we've worked in a week then?

We (working people in the United States, which at a wild guess both you and I are) have far more stuff, better health and longer lifespans, more flexibility in work schedules, and much more expensive tastes in leisure than "we" had back in the 1960s. Genuine personal wealth in the United States has increased greatly in the last few decades, despite government figures understating that increase in wealth, and we have every prospect of continuing to increase personal wealth, gaining more utility in whatever we value most, as the decades roll on.

See Matt Ridley's writings for the long version of this argument.

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/

As for why people aren't content to live an early 1960s lifestyle with fewer hours of work per week (which is perfectly possible to do in the United States), most people gauge their wealth on a relative rather than absolute basis, and so compare themselves to their neighbors. As "everyone" they know enjoys more of today's wealth, they work hard enough to keep up, subject to the utility trade-offs they consider important. So most people still work full-time hours at most occupations, even though part-time employment at today's rate of compensation allows a lifestyle that was considered quite adequate within my memory.

That's half the answer. In reality much of the efficiency gain due to technology is going to the employer rather than the employee. Even if you were content with a 1960's lifestyle, it would take more hours to support than the technology gains would suggest.

This seems to be a poorly titled piece, when the real insight is simply that government regulation has stifled innovation. If you compete because you've sidestepped some of that regulation then it's not really surprising that some of the things you liked have also gone as well.

Basically governments need to step back a bit, before they're completely swept aside.

These seem to be make-work for lawyers in the making, which IMO supports the idea that too much regulation stifles innovation...

That said, what keeps me from turning libertarian is that most of these regulations were extremely well-intended and addressed genuine societal issues. I just wish there were a middle ground here and there doesn't seem to be one.

I have gradually increased my airbnb rates while maintaining a constant level of occupancy from $35 to $90 over two years, so at least from where I'm standing it doesn't seem like a race to the bottom.

Summary: new startups enable mildly illegal markets to operate at a large scale making you feel less illegal because, hey, like, everybody is doing it.

There's a good chance renting your place and car violates your homeowner's insurance, lease agreement, and/or car insurance.

Or perhaps better phrased: YOU are the next business externality.

The name of the game now is how businesses can pay you a pittance and get you to take loads of risk. I need only speak of the lady who's car was involved in a fatal accident. It was her car, driven by someone who paid her for the time. Who's at fault?

For that case in particular, you're talking about a new business model that uses an insurance and liability model that might not be suited for it quite yet.

That case hasn't been decided and the only article I saw on it just was warning about possible problems.

This article is silly. It looks to me like what happens when a writer meets a situation he is unable to comprehend yet wants to say something really profound about it. Really poor execution on the structure of the piece.

What he should have done, instead of quoting the blogger who was worried over the collapse of western civilization or one of the startup founders, is interview people on both sides of the economic transaction. Are sellers happy with their experience? How about buyers? This would have given the reader the ability to at least anecdotally walk in the shoes of those involved. That would be a nice newspaper story. Take me to the scene of where something unique and interesting is happening.

Or, if he wanted to make some over-arching societal point, he should have written an opinion piece. Gave us more statistics. As it is presented it is not much of a newspaper story or an opinion piece, neither bird nor foul. Meh.

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