Comment by dirtyaura | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dirtyaura | Hacker News Reader

I watched Moritz's presentation yesterday, and I got a feeling that he has been actively thinking about the idea of data factories but he couldn't yet effectively convey the key insights. As a side note, this is very interesting that a VC that probably listens hundreds of pitches a year, is basically struggling with same issues that most of the founders: conveying your thinking in a crystallized form.

As far as I understood, the key point of data factories is that they are a new paradigm for organizing work. Many aspects are pretty obvious to folks hanging out in HN. A few key differences to earlier models: companies don't anymore employ workers directly, but more and more act as mediators between consumers and producers. Distance between consumers and data factories is shorter than between consumers and traditional factories, which gives new, previously unseen efficiency to the feedback loop and allows data factories to direct their efforts (or efforts of 3rd party producers) better than - let's say - a traditional car manufacturer.

Were you watching the same keynote?

“It’s tough if you’re poor, it’s tough if you’re middle class. It means you have to have the right education to work at [the tech giants]. If you’re not like us, it’s tough

The key point of data factories is that they are economically disenfranchising the vast majority of the population. The 'new paradigm' isn't for organizing work, its getting your consumers to do the work for you. If we weren't so wrapped up in the VC/HN/Web Tech echo chamber it would probably be easier to realize that this mode of economic growth is at best unsustainable and at worst destructive to the longterm health of a modern economy.

It would be great for startups to focus less on social and ads and more on how technology can be leveraged to raise the living standards for everyone.

Your message is a bitter pill for this site to swallow, but I do have to agree.

If we look at "where are the jobs going", one large part is automation, yes. Another large part is "shadow work": work that was once done by a paid employee but is now shifted onto the customer.

If forcing people off their ancestral lands to get them into factories was exploitation, how much more exploitative is it for business to lay off workers and then demand that paying customers do the actual labor?

Why does anyone consider it acceptable to disemploy workers, exploit customers, and then call it "technology"?

Is it called technology or hierarchy? The business models are radical pyramids. This is true even in rareified industry like finance and academia. Lots of jr people dong the work, a few at the top scaling all of the leverage to extract outsize rewards. The "social model" is just farming out the funnel, increasing the size, and the competition, to shift the dynamics of supply and demand. The technology is allowing this, but the motivations and the structures are nothing new or "technology" driven per-se. Its just the logical outcome of the current process.

>It would be great for startups to focus less on social and ads and more on how technology can be leveraged to raise the living standards for everyone.

I agree. When we automated away agricultural work, we found new things for workers to do. Now we're automating away the service economy, but nothing has sprung up to take it's place.

Do you have any ideas in this direction? all the sites I know of that are focused on finding shit work for the lower classes (taskrabbit, etc..) usually end up being criticized for replacing full-time work with part-time work without benefits that pays poorly and isn't stable.

Can you give an example of such a business? even a hypothetical one?

I mean, if the standard is "technology that can be leveraged to raise the living standards for everyone" that's a little easier. there's lots of opportunities for organization on the internet. But actually creating jobs without destroying more jobs? that's... difficult.

>Can you give an example of such a business? even a hypothetical one?

i think a lot of conclusions one can derive from pondering a situation like this one - "there is an order backlog of 800 Boeing 787 planes" and "there are a lot of unemployed people". Even if we suppose that these unemployed people possess necessary skills, the situation would still be pretty much the same as there is a lot of business/financial, technological, and societal/governmental complexity in the situation.

To compare, the unique situation of Great Depression allowed to plow right through the complexity and put people to work. Nobody (in wide sense, i.e nor people nor institutions) has the guts and skills/abilities/resources to put much more people to work on building planes in the current situation.

>i think a lot of conclusions one can derive from pondering a situation like this one - "there is an order backlog of 800 Boeing 787 planes" and "there are a lot of unemployed people". Even if we suppose that these unemployed people possess necessary skills, the situation would still be pretty much the same as there is a lot of business/financial, technological, and societal/governmental complexity in the situation.

I... disagree. Yes, there is bullshit surrounding hiring and firing folks. But it's not extreme bullshit. I have managed to do it. It's not impossible.

If, for whatever reason, you absolutely can't hire someone to run payroll for you and keep track of your workman's comp bills, there are plenty of companies that do that and only that; trinet is one. The idea being that your employees are officially employed by trinet, who handles all the HR bullshit (Not hiring, of course, but the real bits of HR... managing benefits, taxes, workers comp, unemployment, and all that happy horseshit.) You just pick the folks you want and send trinet a wad of money every month.

Your point is correct, though I think it's more like hundreds of pitches a week if you count written ones.

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