The Rise of Invisible Work | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of Invisible Work

theatlanticcities.com

36 pointsadrianhoward29 comments

> When people share and rent things instead of buying them, does that mean we need to produce less stuff, requiring fewer jobs, ultimately creating less economic growth?

Hey look! It's our old friend, the Broken Window Fallacy [1]. It has been so long since I've seen it I've almost missed it.

Waste is never good for an economy. If it were, we could have an amazing economy by setting up factories and recycling plants right next to one another and skipping the output. That's massive activity, but zero productivity, and it's productivity that we want.

[1] http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fal...

What does waste have to do with sharing vs. owning?

Roughly, if two people need to use a car half-time, it is more wasteful for them to own separate cars than to arrange to share one.

Only if the "half-time" is consistently and predictably non-overlapping without interfering with the efficiency of whatever operation produces the need.

But if there is some uncertainty and/or overlap it's still not necessarily a deal breaker- you can buy a lot of bus passes for the price of half a car.

Sort of like by using a schedule? Posted online? On one convenient website? Like airbnb?

Owning things that you use infrequently is inefficient. If you could rent or borrow it for the actual time that you need it, then you are wasting (time|money|other) if you own.

Unless you can rent it out when you aren't using it, in which case owning it may be more efficient.

Both sides of the same coin. Own and rent it out, or rent-when-you-need. The net of these two in action reduces overall waste.

Well if that was the case its interesting that products are built to expire. Cause its certainly good for companies.

Waste is just a resource we have not found a way to utililze, we will.

>Well if that was the case its interesting that products are built to expire

No, it's not.

Yes it is.

Our problem is too much supply and way to little demand.

Intentionally designed obsolescence has literally nothing tondonwith Bastiat's broken window fallacy.

No but it has to do with the claim "waste is never good for any economy". Which is obviously wrong.

It's only wrong if you interpret "any economy" to refer to local ones which don't have to deal with some of their own negative externalities.

If you interpret "any economy" to refer to "any global economic system," then yes, waste is always bad.

No it's not. It's necessary. Your definition is just too narrow.

Why would you think waste is necessary? I understand that it's utopian to avoid, but it's a necessary evil in that case. You seem to suggest that it's a necessary good. Why?

> products are build to expire

They aren't - the replacements are higher productivity.

See the PC market for what happens when the replacements are not higher productivity.

Eh yes they are. Not all but quite a lot of them.

> Waste is never good for an economy. If it were, we could have an amazing economy by setting up factories and recycling plants right next to one another and skipping the output. That's massive activity, but zero productivity, and it's productivity that we want.

There's a Keynesian argument that it's worth maintaining high employment by having some people do unproductive work (in effect a stealth way of doing wealth redistribution from productive to unproductive (bwim poor) people), because the velocity of money is higher in their hands.

If we were all out of productive things to do, that might make some sense. I just have never seen that happen.

There's always something that needs cleaning, infrastructure that needs upgrading, things that people need to learn.

It makes sense as long as a lot of people are unemployed. Which they are. If you can figure out a way to get those unemployed people doing more productive things, great! But if you can't, there's an argument that you should hold off on creating more unemployed people.

Ah, I see what you're saying. I'm still not sure it makes complete sense. I think it requires people not figuring out what they're doing is pointless. Otherwise, I think you're better off just giving them unemployment checks. But better still to send them to school, or give them productive work of the sort that no individual can pay for.

There is also, what looks like efficiency is merely externalization of costs. It may be highly efficient for you to let your apartment on AirBnB but only because you are passing your hidden costs onto your neighbours.

>* the widening gap between productivity and employment in America... is deeply troubling to economists. But it’s possible... that the gap could contain all these people we are currently not counting.*

Growing productivity could also just lead to decreasing employment if the same roles are being accomplished by fewer people who do them more efficiently. Having a bit of work on the side essentially amounts to people who are employed doing more, rather than unemployed people having an Etsy or ebay shop which is their main employment. And many of these people probably don't count as "unemployed," as there are advantages to being set up as a full time seller (at least on ebay and amazon) for tax purposes.

>So far, the sharing economy’s impact has been largely unseen because we (and the Bureau of Labor Statistics) are used to counting employment in whole jobs, or part-time jobs, not something-I-do-on-the-side-while-I-freelance jobs.

I hope it stays that way. I know it's not the best case scenario for the metrics, but I already report enough to the government as is, please don't frame reporting more info as a potentially good thing.

Ideally we would measure success in terms of happiness / GDP, not GDP alone.

That said, services like airbnb have externalities in cost which are born by all citizens. Transients staying next door? No thanks. Increased rents? Ouch!

This is worthy of discussion because it brings up a point that's been true for a long time: the economy the way it actually exists and the economy the way it exists in many people's minds are two completely different things. So when politicians talk about doing things to get "jobs" -- I have no idea what that term even means. Most politicians think it all boils down to a bunch of cronyism that ends up with a defense or environmental contractor located in their district. Maybe some kind of ribbon-cutting ceremony that can hit the evening TV News.

The article has some pretty big flaws, however, the biggest of which is that it doesn't even truly understand the degree of dissonance in terms involved. Instead, we get some marketing blurb thrown out, the "sharing economy" and then the entire problem is viewed in terms of that.

Bad analysis always leads to bad advice, then bad solutions. This isn't any kind of new concept that has to do with AirBnB or Uber. This is the way the economy actually works From gin joints to smuggling to gun running to "working under the table" -- the real economy is messy and fuzzy. It's full of people sharing and trading all kinds of things under the radar. Technology is just multiplying our ability to hook up and help each other out. That's a great thing. I just wish the writer could see the forest instead of just a couple of trees.

But heck, can't have everything.

>When people share and rent things instead of buying them, does that mean we need to produce less stuff, requiring fewer jobs, ultimately creating less economic growth?

Well if this was true you could just force people to buy things they don't need then throw them away and create economic growth easily.

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