Comment by m52go | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m52go | Hacker News Reader

I think this notion of a jobless future is extreme. Hear me out.

What we're witnessing is the dawning of a new era in which relying upon a job to earn a livelihood becomes extinct.

That's very different.

Instead of submitting to an employer to be productive members of society, we'll need to actually produce.

We'll all need to be entrepreneurs: creative problem-solvers who go out and get our own. Not necessarily venture-backed billionaire-destined heroes, but tradesmen solving small to midsize problems in our communities. Remember human life before the 401(k)? Enterprising souls who earned livings without mega-corporations?

All this technology we're developing now will be instrumental for that era. With Meteor, a tattoo-artist can (and has) create an enterprise-ready app. That's the epitome of productivity in a technology-driven society, and I think we'll see more of that as we move into this 'jobless' environment. AKA 'innovate or die'.

Problems to solve aren't going anywhere (technology always causes people to think there's "nothing left to do." there always is). The need to earn our keep isn't either (we'll always need food, shelter, and love).

This jobless future is exaggerated...but the effects aren't. We'll just need to be more enterprising and more creative in how we handle those effects.

A problem with your vision of the future is that finding (and keeping) a profitable niche is hard.

Historically, you could always own the corner store, and always get business from at least your block. However the trends driving the "jobless future" will see local businesses absorbed into larger entities. The corner store will be replaced with instant delivery.

So you have to find a niche that is global, and when you find it, you'll instantly be bombarded by global competitors, and you'll have to grow or die.

In the "jobless future," individualism looks like etsy--super-niche artisan work for the status of owning something unique. Handmade luxury items can't replace an entire economy.

I agree that artisan work can't replace an entire economy. But I also don't think that artisan work will be the only viable means of earning a living in that world.

Notably, I don't think the corner store (in terms of local services) is going very far. Sure, retail has an enormous battle to fight. But that's just one front.

People will always depend on each another for one thing or another. Beyond retail, whether it's local products like food or local services like domestic contracting or professional services, I think the community will play an even more significant role than it does now in spite of a burgeoning global scene.

I've been deeply influenced by Charles Hugh Smith's writings on community. It's a term we tend to devalue, but it's one Smith thinks is a fundamental building block for the future. He's a bit extreme, as he tends to expect a large macro-disturbance, but his ideas are sound. Here's one piece:

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept13/community-economy9-13.h...

> Notably, I don't think the corner store (in terms of local services) is going very far.

A lot of services can be automated, and actual retail -- well, once you have sufficiently economical self-driving vehicles and product picking robots, local automated delivery hubs from which products are dispersed to purchasers are a lot more likely than local retail shops -- they'll be "stores" in the sense of places that store things, but customers won't ever have to set foot in one; potentially, no one will go there except to service the robots.

>> finding (and keeping) a profitable niche is hard

...which is why evolution will have to regain control.

Governments are antinatural in their obsession with increasing the number of citizens - not healthy, prodctive, citizens, but SSNs.

Initially, living was for the fittest, not for everyone.

As someone extremely average, I will be among the first to go extinct. And I see no problem with this, as my disappearance will free up space and resources for those who are better.

My contention with the idea of everyone-as-a-producer is the same forces that enable companies to produce without employees also increasingly drives winner-takes-all behavior that leaves little room for being second-best.

While the disruptions in distribution mechanisms and increasing ease of deploying web-apps has provided the appearance of it being easy to launch your own business and make money, I'd argue that it might very well be a transitory period until bigger players with deeper pockets lock down profitable sectors.

I just can't see a long term steady-state where the market is spread so thinly that everyone can simultaneously be a business-owner serving some small collection of a few hundred customers, instead of aggregating into single, monolithic companies that serve thousands or millions.

True. While it's tough to predict the future, I'll counter that every trade isn't endlessly scalable and winner-take-all.

As a business-owner, that's where you want to be, but there will be plenty of 'jobs' serving others that will scale linearly (whether that's in relation to people, time, etc) to keep people busy.

Examples: inspecting Uber cars, community development, specialized consulting.

> Examples: inspecting Uber cars

Automated inspections aren't a particular radical application of automation, once automated its subject to the same factors that favor the biggest player in terms of relevant capital as other industries.

> community development

But where's the market?

> specialized consulting.

Lots of things that used to provide demand for specialized consulting have narrowed markets from advances in information technology (both delivery and processing); I'd expect that to continue as technology advances. There's probably some level at which this becomes are hard AI problem, though, sure.

OTOH, the market for specialized consulting is driven by the number of firms in other markets, so as other markets go winner-take-all the size of the market for "specialized consultants" narrows within the same overall economy. So, the market here looks largely winner-take-all as a second-order effect of the markets supported by consultants going that way.

>I just can't see a long term steady-state where the market is spread so thinly that everyone can simultaneously be a business-owner serving some small collection of a few hundred customers...

That's interesting, because that's how the market was for thousands of years.

The idea that there was an entrepreneurial "market" thousands of years ago is just wrong. The entrepreneur is a fairly recent social role. Thousands of years ago it was possible, without selling your labour to another person, to make your own living off of the land. This was how most people survived. The aristocratic class was created through the employment of slave labour. Life consisted not of running a business but of social life. Most people were not "business owners" in any sense of the word that would be recognizable to us. So the idea that this is somehow a return to a more ancient way of life is simply wrong.

>Remember human life before the 401(k)?

I guess this is well before my time, but was the effect of having a 401k really that profound? Your post suggests 401k's was (or at least one of) the cause of large corporations.

I didn't mean to suggest the 401(k) causes large corporations to exist. It doesn't.

It does, however, create a mentality of dependence on relying on companies for employment and livelihood.

In this new environment, that's a toxic mentality to have...continued employment is not as good of a bet as it once was.

But yeah, in general, I think having a 401(k) was a profound idea. At no other time in history could you rely on the markets to subsidize the latter third of your life.

And at the rate markets are going now, I don't think we'll see that time again for a while (i.e., rapid booms + busts).

Prior to the 401(k) (late 1970s), we all had lifetime employment and solid company pensions. So I don't think that your 401(k) created this 'mentality of dependence' on companies - that was something that had been around for a while. The nature of 'having a job' changed a lot in the '80s, and the market-driven and sometimes indiscriminate culture of layoffs in the corporate world had a much bigger effect than any tax-shelter retirement plan did.

As a non-American, it does seem a bit odd that you can't have a 401(k) or some equivalent outside of your job - or can you? In Canada you can have an RRSP through your employer, where your contribution is made automatically through your paycheck, pre-tax. Or you can make contributions yourself to a private RRSP, and then claim the contribution on your taxes and get a refund.

>As a non-American, it does seem a bit odd that you can't have a 401(k) or some equivalent outside of your job - or can you?

That's call an IRA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_IRA

I guess "coming full-circle" isn't quite the term I want to use, but I'm old enough to remember when 401(k)'s were branded as the corporation's way of throwing their employees to the wind to fend for themselves. Compared to the defined benefit pension that was commonplace.

>At no other time in history could you rely on the markets to subsidize the latter third of your life.

So now saving for retirement is an act of benevolence on the part of the companies who receive the investment? Since that doesn't make sense, are you maybe referring to the small tax deferral provided by section 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code?

Here's a link to describe what 401(k) is all about, for those who are curious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/401%28k%29

> It does, however, create a mentality of dependence on relying on companies for employment and livelihood.

The 401k and similar defined-contribution arrangements largely -- and by design -- replaced the defined-benefit benefit pensions. So I don't think that historically this argument makes much sense, even if we accept the premise that having some connection between an employer and a retirement savings fosters a "mentality of dependence for employment and livelihood".

(Argue, I'd say that capitalism and the wage labor structure themselves do that, by design, and that any effect of the particular details of the common retirement programs are minor compared to the basic structure of the employee-employee relationship itself.)

> But yeah, in general, I think having a 401(k) was a profound idea.

The idea of the 401(k) was to provide a taxpayer subsidy to the financial services industry while allowing employers to appear to be providing for employees retirements, without actually incurring any obligations to retirees.

> But yeah, in general, I think having a 401(k) was a profound idea. At no other time in history could you rely on the markets to subsidize the latter third of your life.

You can't rely on that with the 401k system (as many people have discovered the hard way as a result of the market collapses since the 401k became the major retirement vehicle), either. I mean, you can, but not, generally, justifiably. Its just a capital investment, not a "subsidy" from the "markets" any more than any other capital holding is.

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