Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

>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.

View on HN

>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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com