The More Fungible Worker
unpleasantfacts.com
unpleasantfacts.com
Luddites were not anti-technology nor were they anti progress. They destroyed technology as a tactic to raise the price of the more automated competition. Their competition made cheaper, crappier equivalents of their artisanal work made with de-skilled McJob equivalent workers whose wages were pressured to abhorrent levels (via other means like the enclosure movement/Napoleonic wars).
Similarly, people who strike are not "futilely trying to stop the existence of work". It's another tactic.
In a way, the Luddites are pretty similar to the anti-H1B crowd of hacker news.
>Before these technological advancements, workers enjoyed mini-monopolies.
This is a hacky way of looking at it but the conclusion sort of works. It makes much more sense to look at relative market power of employees vs. employers rather than use the all-or-nothing terminology of monopoly vs. perfect competition.
If Amazon workers attempt to sabotage Amazon's stock picking machinery, I expect it will result in an increase in wages, much like it did for the Luddites. They will be called Luddites, but similar to the original Luddites, they kind of only really have a problem with technology that is used to control them.
H1B crowd == de-skilled McJob equivalent workers ?
Elance with its screen recording feature = the equivalent of stocking frames
... which enabled working-class people to own fairly large amounts of clothing for the first time, and even have fashionable clothing, which had once been the exclusive preserve of the rich.
Don't try to paint this as all rich-vs-poor. The poor got a lot out of mechanization, even at the time, and reforming that system worked out a lot better than trying to work with people who were so threatened by change they would destroy other peoples' method of earning a living.
Actually...
"English peasants didn’t want to give up their rural communal lifestyle, leave their land and go work for below-subsistence wages in shitty, dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of landowning capitalists. And for good reason, too. Using Adam Smith’s own estimates of factory wages being paid at the time in Scotland, a factory-peasant would have to toil for more than three days to buy a pair of commercially produced shoes. Or they could make their own traditional brogues using their own leather in a matter of hours, and spend the rest of the time getting wasted on ale. It’s really not much of a choice, is it?
Faced with a peasantry that didn’t feel like playing the role of slave, philosophers, economists, politicians, moralists and leading business figures began advocating for government action. Over time, they enacted a series of laws and measures designed to push peasants out of the old and into the new by destroying their traditional means of self-support."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/the-rise-of-bullshit-...
In today's world, austerity serves the same function as the enclosure laws. Reduce public sector demand for labor so as to push down wages across the board.
If the economic decision was really so simple and the desire for a rural communal lifestyle was really so strong, urbanization never would have happened.
Urbanization really wouldn't have happened without this. Indeed, as the pamphlets demonstrate, this is largely why the enclosure movement was enacted.
Also, the reasons for Urbanization are complex; not all reasons that drove some people to the cities were good ones.
From http://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/53n2a3.pdf: In 1851 the term ‘farm’ was used [by the Census Office] to mean an agricultural holding from which the occupier derived their primary employment and the term ‘farmer’ was restricted to those whose primary occupation was farming. ... Every householder was issued with a household schedule to complete together with an accompanying set of instructions. Under the heading ‘INSTRUCTIONS for filling up the Column headed “RANK PROFESSION, or OCCUPATION”’, there were a number of notes pertaining to specific occupational groups. ... In other words only those who described themselves as ‘farmers’ were requested to return the acreage of their holding and the numbers of in and out-door labourers. There was no request for other occupiers of agricultural land to supply this information. ... But which occupiers of land were and were not supposed to describe themselves as farmers? In particular how were those who mixed farming with another occupation supposed to have described themselves? The instructions for those with multiple occupations were admirably clear and succinct: ‘A person following MORE THAN ONE DISTINCT TRADE may insert his occupations in the order of their importance’.27 In other words only those whose primary occupation was farming should have recorded their occupation simply as ‘farmer’. Those for whom it was a secondary occupation should have listed their primary occupation first.
Wiki snippets:
Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. The first major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousand years ago. Village culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behavior whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behavior. This unprecedented movement of people is forecast to continue and intensify in the next few decades, mushrooming cities to sizes unthinkable only a century ago. ... From the development of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt until the 18th century, an equilibrium existed between the vast majority of the population who engaged in subsistence agriculture in a rural context, and small centres of populations in the towns where economic activity consisted primarily of trade at markets and manufactures on a small scale. Due to the primitive and relatively stagnant state of agriculture throughout this period the ratio of rural to urban population remained at a fixed equilibrium. With the onset of the agricultural and industrial revolution in the late 18th century this relationship was finally broken and an unprecedented growth in urban population took place over the course of the 19th century, both through continued migration from the countryside and due to the tremendous demographic expansion that occurred at that time. As labourers were freed up from working the land due to higher agricultural productivity they converged on the new industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham which were experiencing a boom in commerce, trade and industry.
A cottage industry is one where the creation of products and services is home-based, rather than factory-based. While products and services created by cottage industry are often unique and distinctive, given the fact that they are usually not mass-produced, producers in this sector often face numerous disadvantages when trying to compete with much larger factory-based companies. ... [W]orking from their homes, typically part time, home workers [were] engaged in tasks such as sewing, lace-making, wall hangings, or household manufacturing. Some industries which are usually operated from large, centralized factories were cottage industries before the Industrial Revolution. Business operators would travel around, buying raw materials, delivering them to people who would work on them, and then collecting the finished goods to sell, or typically to ship to another market. One of the factors which allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place in Western Europe was the presence of these business people who had the ability to expand the scale of their operations. Cottage industries were very common in the time when a large proportion of the population was engaged in agriculture, because the farmers (and their families) often had both the time and the desire to earn additional income during the part of the year (winter) when there was little work to do farming or selling produce by the farm's roadside.
For most of history, shoemaking has been a handicraft, limited to time consuming manufacture by hand. ... By the 1600s, leather shoes came in two main types. 'Turn shoes' consisted of one thin flexible sole, which was sewed to the upper while outside in and turned over when completed. This type was used for making slippers and similar shoes. The second type united the upper with an insole, which was subsequently attached to an out-sole with a raised heel. This was the main variety, and was used for most footwear, including standard shoes and riding boots. ... Shoemaking became more commercialized in the mid-18th century, as it expanded as a cottage industry. Large warehouses began to stock footwear in warehouses, made by many small manufacturers from the area. ... Until the 19th century, shoemaking was a traditional handicraft, but by the century's end, the process had been almost completely mechanized, with production occurring in large factories. Despite the obvious economic gains of mass-production, the factory system produced shoes without the individual differentiation that the traditional shoemaker was able to provide.
And, quite beyond clothing, mechanization makes all of the other advances we take for granted possible, leading to relatively cheap antibiotics and people not dying of simple wounds which get infected. We think MRSA is terrible, and it is, but it's mostly just a partial return to the old days, except we do have drugs which can kill MRSA. We didn't have anything in the old days.
Too bad it didn't happen for many decades and only then against strong (and often violent) resistance from the employers themselves.
I'm not denying the benefits of mechanization in general across the centuries. I'm denying that the Luddites and the working classes at the time saw any benefit from it.
No, that was due to social reform as a result of the threat of anarchist/socialist/communist uprisings against the established order.
Average living standards went down during most of the industrial revolution.
>reforming that system worked out a lot better than trying to work with people who were so threatened by change they would destroy other peoples' method of earning a living.
Except the capitalists attempted (mostly successfully) to destroy alternate ways of earning a living other than industrial work.
America was flooded with immigrants because it was a chance for peasants to have land of their own.
I'd describe it a bit differently. The anti-H1B crowd here is typically (not exclusively [1]) like the old Jim Crow/New Deal/Chinese Exclusion crowd - wanting to pass laws to reduce competition by people who have had a different accident of birth.
I'm curious to see if anyone can cook up an argument why protectionism against orange, white and green is morally justified, but protectionism against black is not.
[1] Some people, (including myself), have non-protectionist opposition (or at least reservations about) to immigration. I'm very unsettled that my reservations could also justify anti-black protectionism if the same empirical criteria were satisfied.
One of the ostensible goals of a state is to protect the interests of its citizens. Less politely: a state is an in-group that knows it's an in-group, and excludes the out-group, in accordance with all in-groups ever, everywhere.
I feel perfectly justified valuing the interests of, say, my family, over someone else's family. I extend the same to my countrymen, over some other country's citizens.
Sure, it's great to allow black people to shop at white stores, but what if they all decide "white man's ice is colder" and the black business community suffers? <- real thing that happened.
Since you seem to want to bring up a variety of empirical criteria, what are the specific empirical criteria that would justify laws which require black Americans to get a visa before living/working in white America? I.e., what has to happen before you favor segregation?
Jesus, you're racist as fuck.
Whether yes or no, I don't think it justifies treating black Americans the way we treat Nigerians and Indians.
You again ducked the question - if black Americans satisfy the same empirical criteria as Indians or Nigerians, should we treat them the same way?
As for your ad hominem, I have no idea what I've said here that leads you to believe this. In the lingo of social justice types, one of the largest systemic barriers keeping non-white people out of power is national boundaries. I favor reducing that barrier as much as possible. This makes me "racist as fuck"? Um, ok.
Your argument appears to be confused as well as mildly racist.
>Can you say with much confidence that allowing grinnbearit to enter the US would harm India?
If he was educated by India I would say that there is a very high likelihood. India would lose its investment in his education.
>You again ducked the question - if black Americans satisfy the same empirical criteria as Indians or Nigerians, should we treat them the same way?
You mean if black Americans were actually Nigerians or citizens of some other African country should we restrict the issuance of H1Bs to them...
Um, yes? Sorry, I didn't think that wasn't obvious.
Same deal for Europeans. Obviously. Just in case you again assumed that I give some special consideration to being white (P.S. I'm European and I don't think I'm being done any great favors by having H1B as an option).
>This makes me "racist as fuck"?
Stating outright that black people would be better off shopping in black only shops makes you racist as fuck, yes.
Hell, even just raising the possibility that it might be true implies racism. If I were you I would retract what I just said because it doesn't look at all good either in or out of context.
No. I asked if it is morally acceptable under any circumstances to treat a black American the way we treat Nigerians, by threatening them (or their employer) with violence for economic competition. And I'm wondering, if not, why not?
I'm reasonably confident you knew this is what I'm asking.
Hell, even just raising the possibility that it might be true implies racism.
I'm confused. Uncertainty and admission that an empirical question can have multiple answers is racist?
Because they are citizens of the country born under the United States government, and thus should be afforded certain guarantees from that same government. Including a decently paid job. I think that Nigerians deserve the same guarantees from their country too.
I don't believe that Nigeria owes American citizens a job, though. Or vice versa.
Unfortunately to prevent the emergence of poverty, it is necessary for some employers to face an implicit threat of violence that restricts competition among workers. Minimum wage, etc.
>I'm confused. Uncertainty and admission that an empirical question can have multiple answers is racist?
You remind me of this amusing episode: http://foxnewsboycott.com/glenn-beck/glenn-beck-raped-and-mu...
And here is the problem. You're still differentiating between white stores and black stores. Only when you view them as stores is racism gone.
It is the same thing as looking a black America versus America as a whole.
The more you point out the flaws in racism, the more he feels you are pointing out the flaws in anti-immigration.
One of the ostensible goals of a white supremicist group is to protect the interests of white people. I feel perfectly justified valuing the interests of, say, my race, over some other race.
As a moral matter, I don't see why my white supremicist group is somehow less legitimate than your state.
(Note that I don't actually hold the views I espouse above, I'm just writing in parallel language. Most of the people I care about are not of the same race or nationality as me, so both nationalism and racism are quite silly for me.)
However, that does not automatically mean that institutions (i.e. governments) that are set up to help a specific group of people should refrain from helping them because other people might need the help more.
The US government would help the outside world a lot more if it stopped trying to "help" the world (e.g. by bombing it) and focused exclusively on helping its ownc citizens.
I'm asking for a moral argument justifying the latter behavior.
Ok.
>and also threaten people with violence for engaging in peaceful behavior, particularly economic competition.
Absolutely. However, only one of them has a democratic mandate, habeas corpus and a guarantee of a fair legal trial by one's peers when engaging in said violence.
>I'm asking for a moral argument justifying the latter behavior.
Peaceful doesn't mean harmless.
Sheesh, Ayn Rand really did a number on you.
- The Jim Crow/Chinese Exclusion comparison is not in rhetorical good faith. Both are associated with violent mobs. Anti h1-b folk may have comparable legal goals, but they are not beating up Indian sysadmins at gas stations.
- Of all the injustices of birth to remedy, why pick the one for which the remedy hurts those suffering another accident of birth---being born without sufficient financial means to be capitalists? If this is about foreign aid within our borders, why do workers have to pay for it, while capitalists get cheap labor?
I'm also not attempting to "remedy" any injustice of birth, I'm merely opposed to using violence to make it worse.
When others can't engage in trade but you can, you have a monopoly, which could be (and by many, is) seen as a second-order form of wealth. It's disingenuous to posit that we are "merely treating people equally" when one group gets a net gain and another a net loss from a policy.
Of course, things were hardly equal before the change as well. So we have one unequal situation vs. an unequal action.
Given an unequal situation that favors people in my country, vs. an unequal action that favors people not in my country, I choose the former.
All existing proposals by the open borders crowd for the US with political traction are severely negative-sum for this reason. (I've seen a few ideas from them which are not, but they have essentially zero chance of being implemented.) If one wants to devote themselves to helping foreigners today, there are far, far better ways, like training/employing them in their home countries, or working toward constructive political change there.
I understand your morals could be different from mine but heres how I see it.
A Chinese or Indian citizen is an individual, like any other, just like you even. Through no fault of their own they've been born in a country that doesn't provide the same quality of life for them and their family that an American/EU resident enjoys. Don't they have the right to the pursuit of happiness just like you?
For an extreme example, would you rather be a Chinese Foxconn employee or an unemployed American. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance )
Edit:
If Exit is not longer an option for a citizen, that only leaves Voice and Loyalty and Voice doesn't have a great track record in these countries.
I believe that individuals separate from their ancestors? Saying its their fault for being born in a different country seems quite uncharitable, similar to blaming people for being born into poverty or a particular race.
These potential immigrants want to be productive members of a new society, they can't even get a chance to immigrate if they aren't able to work, they're willing to leave behind their culture and families and take on fairly exploitative contracts just for the chance of giving themselves and their families a better life.
I believe it is immoral to make this difficult
Do you feel differently?
I'm saying this as an immigrant myself. I wish the path to citizenship would be faster and easier (and I've seen people stuck for 10+ years on H1, while having kids and buying houses), but I have to respect decisions, the country the gave me a chance, made.
I'm not sure about "their fault for being born in a different country" - I've never made this statement.
"Just an individual" sweeps an immense bunch of important facts under the rug. Countries do not acquire their standard of living merely by luck: their economies grow through systematic planning and coordination.
At the margins, moving one individual between countries does not appear to have a large systemic impact. However, moving entire classes of individuals between countries usually results in one country dumping its externalities on another, thus misaligning the entire economic mechanism and resulting in deadweight losses as various ways to grow and improve get ignored.
A simple example: why should taxpayers in Germany, say, subsidize the training and education costs necessary to produce labor for American companies? The American firms are capturing a positive public-good externality from the Germans while dumping a negative externality (deskilling) on their fellow Americans. Since the externality producers in both countries are failing to capture the costs and benefits of their own productive activities, this is systematically unfair by definition (in the sense that "capitalist unfairness" consists of paying the costs and reaping the benefits of one's own activities).
1) Is the German education contract implicit? In India if you attend an army subsidised school [1] you are liable to serve in the army which is an explicit part of the contract. Do you believe that some/all subsidised/free education a state provides has a similar implicit contract? If not, should it be made explicit?
2) How are the Germans deskilling Americans? Isn't having a more skilled workforce (possible future citizens) positive? If you're arguing for labour protection because of wage competition there are arguably better ways to go about it than preventing competition from better skilled talent. Unless you believe that existing citizens should have protection from this competition, this seems a net loss for Germany and a net gain for the US.
3) And if Germany needs these people more than the US, aren't there better (more moral) ways to go about this than preventing them from leaving by force? Perhaps by making it more appealing for them to stay.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_Medical_College,_P...
It's quite explicit, in the sense that Germans vote for a government which funds university education with taxes.
>2) How are the Germans deskilling Americans?
No, it's the American firms deskilling American workers (by lobbying for and winning lower public American investment in education and training in order to get lower taxes).
>Unless you believe that existing citizens should have protection from this competition, this seems a net loss for Germany and a net gain for the US.
That's my point: the Germans voted responsibly to invest in their countrymen and have their investment consumed by Americans who are staunchly refusing to produce what they need themselves.
>3) And if Germany needs these people more than the US, aren't there better (more moral) ways to go about this than preventing them from leaving by force?
The German government doesn't use force to prevent Germans from leaving: they're in the Schengen Zone. Not issuing work visas to America puts a gun to nobody.
I'm not sure you saw my related example, German education may be subsidised/free but I don't think it comes with any strings attached. If being restricted to work in Germany after studying there is expected that should be made explicit. I have never heard something similar mentioned in any discussion on subsidised education, to me this is quite insidious.
> No, it's the American firms deskilling American workers (by lobbying for and winning lower public American investment in education and training in order to get lower taxes).
> That's my point: the Germans voted responsibly to invest in their countrymen and have their investment consumed by Americans who are staunchly refusing to produce what they need themselves.
If America can spend less on education and still end up with better skilled people (and better products) this still feels like a net win. Why is this bad?
> Not issuing work visas to America puts a gun to nobody.
I'm quite sure i'm missing the moral point. I'll try to summarise what I've got so far.
In general, I feel valuing a person differently depending on which state they're born in is immoral, similar to judging them by race.
You're argument (?)is that this immigration of skilled workers is negative for both countries, the country that subsidised their education and the country that receives the new workers.
I don't see how this is the case, it seems like a net positive for the country receiving the immigrants and the subsidised education responsibility should be an explicit part of the contract otherwise its a hidden, unadvertised cost.
Suppose that integration of black Americans also allows them to produce negative externalities and consume positive ones produced by white Americans. For example, suppose black Americans are disproportionate consumers of welfare and producers of crime.
If externalities are your true justification (rather than a post-hoc rationalization), then we should segregate black Americans as well. Do you favor this, contingent on circumstances?
Your example of Germany is interesting, given that the GDR did in fact prevent emigration in order to make sure the state didn't lose it's investment in human capital. So if the US opens it's borders, the Germans can just rebuild their wall.
And if I don't, I may just stop maintaining it. There's an alternative to Voice and Exit: Disengagement.
And your "Chinese or Indian citizen" example actually counters your own argument. Both countries have far too many people for the US to absorb, and both have also succeeded for the last three decades at raising living standards for their native people by more than would be possible via any achievable amount of brute-force migration to the US (though they have a lot more to do). Chinese and Indian "right to pursue happiness" has very little to do with US mass immigration policy; trade policy, technology transfer, Pax Americana, and the like have been far more relevant for a long time.
And even your "extreme example" fails spectacularly. I am Chinese, I voluntarily work for a Chinese-owned company, I've spent most of the last four years in and next to Shenzhen, and these years have been very good to me.
With all that said, I do support loosening restrictions on migration when doing so is actually positive-sum, and I think Chinese and Indian student immigration to the US frequently qualifies. But right now there's no way to push for that without simultaneously pushing for far-more-negative-sum policies.
Thats a fair argument, however I don't think "freedom to leave" would mean much if you couldn't leave a company because no other company would hire you and your only other option would be to starve. Its why food stamps and unemployment make sense.
On the other hand, what would exit from a country without another country to go to mean?
> A huge wave of unskilled immigration is practically certain to weaken the US enough to increase, not reduce, the number of places like North Korea that are outside the US's military reach.
> Chinese and Indian "right to pursue happiness" has very little to do with US mass immigration policy; trade policy, technology transfer, Pax Americana, and the like have been far more relevant for a long time.
We're debating morality here, which is subjective, but I'm not stupidly deontological. If open borders leads to a world which I rank lower morally than a world without then restrictive borders it is.
In general, I feel valuing a person differently depending on which state they're born in is immoral, similar to judging them by race.
i.e. 2 similar individuals who are both skilled, both want to work and are both being hired should not be treated differently depending on which state controls their passport. On the other hand geographical distance, cultural ties etc are obviously valid points of difference.
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> And even your "extreme example" fails spectacularly. I am Chinese, I voluntarily work for a Chinese-owned company, I've spent most of the last four years in and next to Shenzhen, and these years have been very good to me.
An uncharitable interpretation, I'm quite happy where I'm working too but I'd still rather be unemployed in the US than in India.
Edit:
temujin is right, restating
I'd rather be unemployed in the US than employed as a low level Foxconn employee in China
Ordinary self-interest and the existence of >200 independent countries make it very likely that someone who just wants to be a contributor to any country that'll take him/her will find somewhere to go, even if it's not his/her first choice. Refugee treaties cover the corner case.
> We're debating morality here, which is subjective, but I'm not stupidly deontological. If open borders leads to a world which I rank lower morally than a world without then restrictive borders it is.
Then the argument is over, at least for the next decade or two. Sweden's experience provides the last bit of evidence necessary to demonstrate that open borders policy, as currently understood, leads to worse outcomes in Western countries than more moderate immigration policy.
I support research into better implementations of open borders, and if people like you act quickly, it might not be too late to correct e.g. Sweden's worst mistakes and arrive at something simultaneously more open and more functional there than current US policy. But this cannot be morally done without citizen consent, and you have no chance of getting that in the US in the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, I'll do what I can to help Chinese live better lives back in their home country, and I encourage others to do the same for India and other poor countries. And I'll vote for free trade and related policies. Because those courses of action, unlike open borders, are actually effective at reducing global poverty today.
> An uncharitable interpretation, I'm quite happy where I'm working too but I'd still rather be unemployed in the US than in India.
You wrote employed in China vs. unemployed in the US, not unemployed in [China/India] vs. unemployed in the US. You're now backtracking, as you should.
And its about the morality of allowing open immigration.
For example, I morally support the unification of Korea, even though it would be quite bad for South Korea but at the moment its horrific for the people of North Korea.
As such, you're conducting a long, wasteful discussion on the basis of an absolutist, deontological rule you cannot convince the rest of us to adopt.
You are not saying to minimize violence, since you are quite comfortable with both the inherent systemic violence of private property and the resultant levels of systemic and symptomatic violence involved in petty crime, organized crime, and crime by capitalists (ie: corporate crime, in both its white-collar and Pinkerton-esque forms). You're not weighing consequences against each-other in terms of how much violence different policies generate. So it's not that you're even talking about a local minimum of violence while we're talking about other minima: it's that you simply do not care how much violence you create by enforcing minarcho-capitalism, so long as minarcho-capitalism is enforced.
So why are you wasting everyone else's time for the sake of an incoherent, unreasonable ideology?
Of course you would.
>I'm curious to see if anyone can cook up an argument why protectionism against orange, white and green is morally justified, but protectionism against black is not.
Four aspects of the debate that the, uh... 'curious' tend to misrepresent or outright ignore:
* Race-baiting doesn't change the fact that at its heart it is about wages vs. profits.
* H1Bs are not just about bringing in workers. They are also about giving employers the power to fuck those they bring over by linking their immigration status to their job. This isn't just bad for them.
* The effects of brain drain on 3rd world countries where the brightest people flee to richer countries.
* Brain drain is not just about losing the brightest people but also about losing the (often large) investment in their education paid for by the 3rd world, that the 1st world gets the whole benefit of.
> The effects of brain drain on 3rd world countries where the brightest people flee to richer countries.
> Brain drain is not just about losing the brightest people but also about losing the (often large) investment in their education paid for by the 3rd world, that the 1st world gets the whole benefit of.
Apart from the nationalistic idea that anyone owes the State that controls the land they're born in by default, most of these H1B immigrants in these 3rd world countries get very little government support, at least compared to what you'd see in Europe or America and you wouldn't prevent any of "their" citizens from leaving would you?
Many get a lot, actually. Especially in ex-soviet countries. Many have excellent free education systems.
>you wouldn't prevent any of "their" citizens from leaving would you?
Of course not. Nonetheless, the idea that freedom of immigration is an unparalleled good for the country providing the immigrants simply because individually they are better off, should die already.
As the son of a poor indian who became a Fulbright scholar and came to the US for his Masters' degree & made a life here, i can say that at least in the case of India this isn't quite true. In India at least you had to fight the system tooth & nail to succeed.
I suspect that's less true nowadays though
Would you be ok with immigrants from countries where they don't? India provides very little in comparison and also has the highest percentage of H1B applicants. [1]
> Of course not. Nonetheless, the idea that freedom of immigration is an unparalleled good for the country providing the immigrants simply because individually they are better off, should die already.
Shouldn't the State make it more attractive for these citizens to stay there? Especially since they're so valuable? Why is it only the citizens who have this responsibility.
[1] http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/skilled-immigrants.
If you want to alter the H1B program, I'm all for auctioning off work permits. That's not an argument to eliminate H1B, that's merely an argument to replace it. I'm arguing against eliminating/reducing it and comparing many of those who favor it to Jim Crow types.
As for "brain drain", the same can happen with the black community. A black person may get a good job in white America and then leave his predominantly black neighborhood. He might then marry a white woman and never look back. Oh noes!
Similarly, a black person who attends Howard University and then works as a plastic surgeon for rich white women has also had his investment paid for by the black community, but the first world is getting the whole benefit. (Yeah, isn't it a bit disconcerting when I describe the black community the way you describe a nation?)
And again, like I said, these are all empirical criteria. Even if you have exact thresholds in each criteria which India currently satisfies but "Black America" does not, one could easily imagine a future where Black America does cross those thresholds. Should we bring back segregation at that time, and require black Americans to get a B1B visa to live and work in white America? If you oppose this, then your stated criteria are not your real ones.
Of course you are. I'm sure you don't believe there are any social issues that cannot be solved with the healing power of the holy market.
>Similarly, a black person who attends Howard University and then works as a plastic surgeon for rich white women has also had his investment paid for by the black community, but the first world is getting the whole benefit.
* Black Americans (whom I assume you are referring to) live in the first world, which reaps the benefit of their education it paid for.
* Education for black Americans is largely paid for by the state and indirectly paid for and supported by citizens of the United States.
I think regarding racism you should probably be a bit more introspective.
Let me again point out - you've brought up a bunch of empirical criteria. Suppose the situation changes and black Americans suddenly satisfy those empirical criteria. Do you favor imposing the same restrictions on them that we impose on Indians? For example, if the educational funding situation changes, and most black people are educated via black people-funded community organizations, would requiring visas before we allow them to work be acceptable?
If not, why is it acceptable to do this to Indians and Haitians?
Are you merely taking the legitimacy of the nation state as some moral first principle?
I think regarding racism you should probably be a bit more introspective.
Ah yes - dislike what someone has to say, so hint that they are racist.
I'm currently interpreting your comment as being intended in a somewhat hostile manner. Am I correct in doing so?
Government. A nation is served by an institution that delivers (more or less) consistent policy that can be shaped to benefit (or harm) those under it.
It makes sense to have opinions about how institutions should operate. It does not make sense to have opinions about how the government of the non-existent nation of American white (or black) people should operate because it does not exist.
>Are you merely taking the legitimacy of the nation state as some moral first principle?
I'm not trying to wish it away like you are. Given that it does exist, it should operate for the benefit of its citizens.
>Ah yes - dislike what someone has to say, so hint that they are racist.
...is exactly what you were doing by bringing race into this discussion.
>I'm currently interpreting your comment as being intended in a somewhat hostile manner. Am I correct in doing so?
Amusing :)
We aren't discussing giving welfare or medicaid to Americans but not Nigerians. We are discussing threatening the Nigerian with violence if he works for an American in America.
...is exactly what you were doing by bringing race into this discussion.
I did nothing of the sort. I said directly that nationalism is just as bad (morally) as racism. I didn't say it was racism.
I'll note that you've yet again ducked the question of whether it's morally correct to treat black Americans as badly as we treat Kenyans under any particular circumstance.
Nah, threaten the profit-seeking employer with imprisonment, not the Nigerian.
>I did nothing of the sort.
Bringing race into a discussion where it was clearly not warranted and using it to imply racism is something of the sort, actually.
>I said directly that nationalism is just as bad (morally) as racism.
And I said that I am not nationalistic. I'm not even American. Again I fail to see why you needed to raise the issue of race at all.
>I'll note that you've yet again ducked the question
I haven't ducked any questions at all.
>whether it's morally correct to treat black Americans as badly as we treat Kenyans under any particular circumstance.
I'm happy to answer but your question lacks precision. In what sense are we using the term 'treat as badly'? Who do you mean by 'we'?
How do you distinguish this from threatening those who might choose to employ black Americans in order to make a buck?
Again I fail to see why you needed to raise the issue of race at all.
Because in the case of racial bias, people are shocked and horrified. Yet in the case of national bias, people aren't. I'm attempting to point out that there are few good distinguishing principles between the two cases, so the dichotomy is unjustified.
In what sense are we using the term 'treat as badly'? Who do you mean by 'we'
I've repeatedly said that "treat badly" means "threaten with violence for engaging in mutually agreeable trade" and "we" means "organizations that purport to act on our behalf" (US Govt, white supremicist groups, etc).
Quite easily. Nobody needs a visa to employ black Americans.
I'm sure black Americans would feel somewhat relieved that they were not forced to compete with Nigerians.
>Because in the case of racial bias, people are shocked and horrified. Yet in the case of national bias, people aren't.
I fail to see why this horrifies you so much. White skin didn't pay for my education. The nation I was born and grew up in did.
It's no use pretending that employers are pro-immigration thanks to their worldliness and desire to help non-Americans, either. Nigel Farage in the UK represents the epitome of national bias yet guess what he did when he wanted to hire somebody for cheap? Yup, that's right. Immigrants.
>I'm attempting to point out that there are few good distinguishing principles between the two cases
Failing I would say.
>I've repeatedly said that "treat badly" means "threaten with violence for engaging in mutually agreeable trade" and "we" means "organizations that purport to act on our behalf" (US Govt, white supremicist groups, etc).
Ok, so I agreed - no violence towards Nigerians who come to the US looking for work. Perhaps a mild deportation, that's all (it's happened to me before due to a visa mixup and it didn't leave any bruises).
As I expected - another smug non-sequitur and ducking the core question. Have fun.
The question is: Why is it acceptable for a group of people defined by "nationality" to form a collective (government) that creates and enforces economic protection for itself against non-members, but not acceptable for a group defined by "race" to do the same?
The closest you came to answering this was when you wrote "Given that it does exist, it should operate for the benefit of its citizens." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886112) which to me reads as "it is acceptable because that's the way it is today" or possibly "it is not acceptable but that's just the way it is".
mild deportation
If you would prefer instead to live under the explicit and constant threat of violence there are societies on this planet without laws and regulations.
Note that while you wrote "no violence towards Nigerians", in the post you replied to yummyfajitas wrote ""threaten with violence" which is not quite the same.
-- Anatole France
Of course you are. I'm sure you don't believe there are any social issues that cannot be solved with the healing power of the holy market.
I don't understand your condescending attitude or why it's preferred by voters over a regular argument.
Especially when you believe that the issue is the cost of education. Auctioning off work permits would allow the country receiving immigrants to pay off the government which paid for their education.
You talk about social issues and then pick the one easiest to address with a market solution. This is the least problem here.
yummyfajitas' neoliberal market-first, capital-first views are fairly predictable. The idea that markets will always solve social issues better than any other means is such a deeply held, religious belief that he doesn't even think to try and justify his opinion. He feels that merely voicing it is sufficient to convince.
So I tease him about it.
>Especially when you believe that the issue is the cost of education. Auctioning off work permits would allow the country receiving immigrants to pay off the government which paid for their education.
I don't see that happening, ever. Auctions, sure. America giving India enough money to cover the education of the citizens who emigrate to the US? Not a chance.
>You talk about social issues and then pick the one easiest to address with a market solution.
I don't see how auctioning off work permits solves any social issues.
Frankly it sounds eerily similar to Dubai/Qatar-style indentured servitude where the construction workers take out loans to get a job paying a few dollars a day and have to work for months effectively for free to pay back that debt.
Well, I guess if the social issue was "we want more dubai style indentured servitude"...
If India is really worried about people leaving after getting educated, they can restrict emigration like the GDR, Soviet Union and North Korea.
Of course, there are bigger problems we should worry about. I was educated in NJ but then immigrated to NY. Maybe NY also needs to restrict immigration from the B&T crowd, solely for the benefit of NJ, of course?
It certainly is. That's not the point.
>The US Govt takes $10k extra from their paycheck in taxes every year for 3 years. Solving your Dubai problems is pretty easy.
The Dubai problem is that the workers are forced to take a loan in order to work. Your idea does not solve it, it creates it.
>If India is really worried about people leaving after getting educated, they can restrict emigration like the GDR, Soviet Union and North Korea.
That worked out wonderfully for those countries, didn't it?
>Of course, there are bigger problems we should worry about. I was educated in NJ but then immigrated to NY. Maybe NY also needs to restrict immigration from the B&T crowd, solely for the benefit of NJ, of course?
Depends if NY decides to secede from the union. Do you think that's likely? Or do you think that citizens of both states will continue to pay taxes to the same IRS and be governed by the same federal legislature?
Hey, maybe the US should merge and become an Indian state to allow for unbridled immigration. How would you feel about following their laws and paying taxes to Delhi?
I find libertarians obnoxious too, but he's actually parroting our meme on this one. "Auctioning" work visas is usually taken to mean auctioning them by salary, turning the visa-application process into a competition to push up wages.
You may be fine with either one, both, neither, and even some combination depending on the particular good or person. Conflating them is disingenuous.
I didn't mean to say these are simple issues, I meant to say it's hypocritical to support one and not support another, ideologically speaking.
Imagine the EU, but without free movement of labor. So Western companies come into the East, buy up anything worth buying (including farmland and mineral rights) and out compete anything that's not (putting people out of work), but then a citizen in the East who wants to get a good job in the West and will do it for less than a Westerner is told to GTFO.
Just call a spade a spade. Management likes H1B because they can and do treat them like slaves, like owned property of the corporation, less than human. Nobody wants to compete with or become slaves, and its morally and ethically disgusting to support or encourage a system of slavery.
Like most, I like immigrants and individual H1B holders, its the destructive system of slavery that's horrific. Simply getting rid of the whole H1B system and transferring that quota over to the "skilled trades" real-immigration quota would be a fine idea. Heck, double the number while they're at it or even remove the limit.
The civil war ended in the 1860s. Its the 2010s. Isn't it time to remove slavery from the system? Must we wait longer while our brothers sit in chains?
Those people will be unemployed as soon as the Amazon Robot Picking Challenge (http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/) succeeds.
This is the future.
http://youtu.be/Fr6Rco5A9SM?t=2m33s
I knew about Kiva and the widescale automation in warehousing but I had no idea the UI was so...simple. I see no reason the person couldn't be taken out of the loop completely here with a robotic arm.
As for "there will be jobs building and repairing the robots", Amazon has about 30,000 pickers during peak season. Kiva Systems has about 600 employees. Because all those little mobile robots are interchangeable, there's not much need for on-site maintenance. There's someone on site to replace wheels and batteries and do basic diagnostics, but seriously broken ones are just shipped back to the factory.
The Kiva system requires little installation, which is why it's being deployed so fast. Previous systems required conveyors, stacker cranes running on tracks, and lots of specialized, custom machinery. Kiva just needs a flat floor, markers on the floor, and WiFi.
Here's what US employment looks like, by sector: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm Manufacturing is only 8% of the labor force, yet the US makes more stuff than ever. US manufacturing is doing great. The drop in output after 2008 has been completely recovered. Manufacturing just doesn't need many people. The jobs lost never came back.
In 2012, retail employed 10% of the US labor force. Remember malls? (See deadmalls.com) No new indoor mall has been built in the US in 10 years. (OK, American Dream Meadowlands in New Jersey is still under construction, after 12 years, three bankruptcies, and a roof collapse, but that's a political boondoggle, part of a stadium complex.) Online ordering doesn't need many people. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates show a small decline over the next 10 years, but those numbers predate Amazon's recent growth and are probably optimistic. The BLS shows employment growth in transportation and warehousing. Probably not going to happen.
This is the future, and the future is now.
The US doesn't make more stuff than ever as can be verified by:
* Taking one look at the gaping US trade deficit.
* Taking a look at all of the manufactured items in your home. How many say made in America?
* Inflation * Overcapacity * Transfer pricing
* Inflation
> (1) output measured in physical units
* Overcapacity
I'm not even sure what you're claiming as a problem with the IP index here; it measures actual production, while there are entirely separate indices for Capacity (and Capacity Utilization). See http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/CapNotes.htm
* Transfer pricing
Again:
> (1) output measured in physical units
The people who put these indices together are, surprisingly enough, professionals who have thought about these issues.
This does not imply that malls are dying. Existing malls may be expanding, e.g. the largest in NY started another round of expansion in 2007 and shops are still opening up in the new space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny_USA
Online ordering is never going to put clothes & accessories or fragrance shops out of business, until you have very high resolution displays and tactile output, or figure out one-hour-or-less drone delivery for free.
In the aforementioned mall a large proportion of the shops are exactly this type, along with restaurants and entertainment (video games, bowling and the like). It's hard to deny that the expansion of online ordering has forced malls to adapt or die, but it's simply incorrect to pronounce the death of the concept.
It's true that we haven't been building indoor malls. That's not because of online ordering. We're still building malls. But now they are outdoors and called "lifestyle centers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_center_%28retail%29
The difference between them and a strip mall is mostly connotation. Lifestyle centers tend to target upscale retailers and feature better landscaping (some grass and benches between the store and the parking lot). Many stores that used to open in malls are flocking to lifestyle centers because indoor malls are going out of fashion. And unlike malls, lifestyle centers don't have large common areas to keep up, so the rent is cheaper.
2 large lifestyle centers are being built in my town (Northern NJ, the land of malls). And we already have a large lifestyle center and an indoor mall nearby.
E-commerce certainly took business away from brick and mortar stores. But those stores reacted by changing their offerings. They aren't totally suffering, as shown by these articles:
Walmart performs well on cyber monday:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazons-new-nemesis-brick-and-mo...
Amazon opens brick and mortar location:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-open-first-store-14128...
The trend of "showrooming" is reversing in traditional retailers' favor:
http://www.businessinsider.com/reverse-showrooming-bricks-an...
However, I agree that, in the long term, technology will swallow jobs. It will happen slowly.
That's basically Manna, sans headphones.
Or are we resigned to a dystopian future where the landscape is covered by Amazon fulfillment centers sitting silent, stocked to the ceiling with product that can't be sold because no one can afford said merchandise?
However, long before that we will have adopted some form of Basic Income, or we'll have decided to go to space and restart the resource race on hardmode.
The security robots should deal with warlords quickly.
Trying to kill the entire 99%er population of the world by starvation to preserve resources for the rich is likely to make "starting a land war in Asia" look like brilliant military strategy.
One interesting side effect of the existing system, is stratification of wealthy by family connection, race, and gender is likely to mean the smartest people will be on the other, larger side. So one side has the numbers, the brains, self preservation instincts, probably quite a bit of anger and hope, and the other side has ... money, temporarily. Wonder how that'll turn out.
That's a likely future. Lots of people in big housing projects, surviving but not much more than that. About 1% do really well, maybe 5-10% are "middle class", and the rest are warehoused in housing blocks. That was the normal living condition in the Soviet bloc, and today's urban China is much like that. The US is headed that way, but with better gadgets in your tiny apartment.
When a job disappear, people either retire or change job, that's pretty much what happened when agriculture became mechanized.
Or go on disability until they're eligible to retire:
This dystopia has been envisioned for more than 80 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q030WNZvXrA
It's a good reminder that social and technological progress must often be fought for separately.
The market is brutal when applied to people. Worker fungibility is a value add for the company, and yet it drops wages to the minimum, since the worker's individual bargaining power is practically non-existent. The traditional answer is unions, but even that becomes impractical as the cost of replacing a worker approaches zero.
This is especially relevant when the buzzwords of the day are crowdsourcing and independent contracting. Are we really making things more efficient and creating value, or are we just helping drive down the wages of people that already have a hard time scraping by?
[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Nobody hires people because robots can do it cheaper, so no one has a job, so no one can buy anything, so no robots do those things that they could do cheaper.
The technology doesn't even have to exist to cause poor-world. Only be possible.
Put me firmly in the basic minimum income camp.
The alternative is the same one that happens every time a large enough percentage of the population starts going hungry: they simply take what they need from those that are hoarding it. Sometimes this includes putting those responsible for the hoarding under the guillotine - possibly for revenge and and possibly as a warning for future generations.
The future you descirbe is a prerequisite, and it will get ugly a lot sooner than most people expect. While being one of those with money is probably a good idea when possible, it is also a good idea to prepare for when those who do not have money decide to go full Robespierre.
I'm afraid the default is to just kill the unneeded with deprivation. That's what happens if we just let things sort themselves out.
The real question is whether or not the machines are suitably advanced this time to prevent a global "French Revolution" against those few from turning the entire world back to cave men.
You might be surprised what rapidly becomes feasible politically at the edge of anarchy.
What a grotesquely self-fulfilling fatalism.
The basic cultural / economic assumptions that is being disagreed on, are that all humans will be participants in the economy as producers and consumers, in which case the existing pyramidal ponzi scheme can keep rolling a little while longer till we run out of cheap oil, or they will not be participants (which is where we've been headed for a couple generations), in which case we may as well create a startup plan for 3-d printed guillotines, because that's the inevitable eventual outcome.
You can see which side of the battleground you're on by analyzing your response to the Japanese population being 100M and shrinking and only having enough economy to support 90M. If you think the shrinking economy is great, because at least the bread riots will be smaller and maybe the smaller population will eventually match the size of the shrinking economy, you're on one side. The other side believes, (I think rather ignorantly) that if the Japanese grew the 100M population to 120M then magically the economy would grow from 90M people size to 120M people size, because it feels really nice to operate under that delusion, or something.
From a US-centric view point, this might be valid, however, BI will most likely be championed by one or several European countries at this point.
I too fear that the general population won't accept until it's very too late the concept that one should not slave their entire lives for just the right to live.
> Therefore, what you must do now is to ensure that you are one of those who have money.
More scary thought if your scenario actually happens: assuming that the tech sector is more likely to survive automation for longer, we'll all here suddenly have close and extended non-tech families and friends looking for our support. So you won't have just yourself to feed from your income. It might be 10 or more people.
So, while I fear a different future, I'm also firmly in the basic income camp. Right to live should not in principle be dependent on slaving away your life, so let's deal with that when the technology allows us to.
Staff of course have a different view as to their "fungibility". I tend to overcome this in two ways:
First, "If you can't be replaced then you can't be promoted." That resonates a lot.
Second, I replace the 'Bus Factor'[2] context with the 'Lottery Factor'. More directly, "How many of you, if you won $35M in Powerball, would still be working here next year? So let's plan for at least one of you to win the lottery."
(They're not bad at maths, they get that it's the same conversation as being hit by a bus, but the energetic flip leads to faster engagement in the process.)
[1] Maybe I need a new Cloud metaphor?
that is a very sneaky way of saying that their wage/salary cannot increase.
It seems to me that it is self-evident that most low-skill labor, at the very least, is in the process of being automated and is therefore going to be unnecessary. There has been no other time in human history when ALL low-skill labor was in the process of being automated in such a generalized way.
While it is certainly true that there is and always has been huge economic pressure on low-skill labor to be destroyed, it is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate and the economic forces that are destroying it don't seem to be creating any residual low-skill labor (like the assembly line, etc did). Making sure that the labor force is educated enough to not need the low-skill labor is good, and it is undeniable that everybody is getting more educated. Still, I worry a great many people are going to get left out in the dark.
Then NO ONE is left out to starve, ever. People would still get jobs to get MORE money, because people always want more, but you could eliminate minimum/living wage laws, so the marginal cost of production at jobs that people enjoyed could actually go down, while at the same time more people would have money to spend.
The transition is the hard part.
No actual experiment with basic income has, to my knowledge, ever shown a double-digit percentage reduction in total work hours.
I prefer the kind of "functioning" where no one is starving. You see violent and other crime drop quickly as a society's quality of life improves, so even if I'm one of the ones "on top", my own QoL is better not having to worry as much about someone stealing things from me.
If you haven't seen the effects of unconditional cash grants for charity, I think that makes for similarly surprising reading: http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/cas... :)
I'm not arguing that everyone is like that - but from one can see today, I don't think humans in general are lazy and need to be forced to work.
I'm not sure this is restricted to low-wage labor. There are plenty of low-wage jobs that are just complex enough to make automation more expensive than wages for the near future. Driving is a good example here (for now).
And there's plenty of high-wage jobs which are quite automatable - accounting (TurboTax), financial management (wealthfront/betterment), lots of software operations work (AWS tools), etc.
That's very deniable in the US. The rising cost of education and lack of government funding for education means that many, many people are not getting more educated.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/histor...
and others on this page:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/histor...
seem to disagree with your intuition
I'm making a bit of a pedantic point, I realize. But I think that just because more people are getting educated doesn't mean we can ignore the people who are still consistently excluded from higher education.
'Following, ALM, we refer to these procedural, rule-based activities to which computers are currently well-suited as "routine" tasks. By routine, we do not mean mundane (e.g., washing dishes) but rather sufficiently well understood that the task can be fully specified as a series of instructions to be executed by a machine (e.g., adding a column of numbers). Routine tasks are characteristic of many middle-skilled cognitive and manual jobs, such as bookkeeping, clerical work, repetitive production, and monitoring jobs. Because the core job tasks of these occupations follow precise, well-understood procedures, they can be (and increasingly are) codified in computer software and performed by machines.'
eg. http://www.amazon.com/Whirlpool-WDF310PAAW-White-Console-Dis...
Thought so.
Replacing all of your kitchen cupboards with the 4 or so dishwashers would only cost $2000 dollars, so yes, you could do that if you were so inclined. Also note that top end models do have a drying feature.
> What if I need this plate RIGHT NOW, it's just a single plate, shouldn't take more than a minute.
Do you only own a single plate? Just buy more and use a different one, you've already got a robot to clean them for you.
> What if I burn my food, will it scrub the pans for me?
"soak and scour" is a feature on high-end commercial machines these days, but soaking the pan overnight and then throwing it in the dishwasher in the morning has served me well. My teflon coated pans don't seem to have as much problem with requiring scrubbing after burns though.
Maybe owning dishwasher isn't quite the robotic maid you were promised, but having lived with and without one, I consider a dishwasher a requirement for modern living.
Although I do have a single plate.
I disagree that dish washing is any less susceptible to automation than clerical work. I think we just take dishwashing automation for granted since that transition happened decades ago.
Resist hindsight bias here; the work we consider low-skill today--working in factories--was the high-skilled labor of its day. The low-skill labor it replaced was largely the large-scale manual labors of raising food, producing energy, and making basic everyday items.
The need for more educated, better trained, smarter workers during the Industrial Revolution led directly to the establishment of free, publicly funded schools for all through high school. That was a major cultural shift, a huge public investment, and a huge jump in the mental capabilities of the workforce as a whole.
I think it's arguable that now we're facing another similar shift, and we need to make another jump in how we educate people. The number of people who get left behind depends on how well we recognize and commit to this shift.
I would argue that a starting point is to accept that the economy is changing, and we have to do something to prepare everyone for that. Wishing that textile or car factories would go back to centers of mass employment won't really protect anyone.
Finance task :
> finance system to address task
> excel spreadsheet to address finance system shortcomings
> finance system to 'formalise' the spreadsheet
> excel spreadsheet to address finance system shortcomings
> finance system to 'formalise' the spreadsheet
etc...
1) New capabilities and demonstrations of capabilities mean its easier to make the new thing a business requirement, now implemented and supported by IT.
2) Labor required to do something vs skill level in programming scales way beyond linear, maybe exponential. So pay a genius 10 hours of labor at 3x pay, your average grunt "real programmer" 50 hours at 2x pay, or front line sorcerers apprentice doesn't even have programmer in his job title 250 hours at 1x pay to do it in a spreadsheet.
3) Sorcerers apprentices have no idea how to use tools making them incredibly inefficient both in calculating results and the immense labor they expend for their result. The most expensive way to get a result is to pay people who have no idea what they're doing.
If a worker can make ten times the widgets with newer technology, the amount that can be charged per widget, and thus the amount a worker can be paid to produce each one, has to drop eventually.
And this is literally true. Cars, for example, used to cost ten times as much. You can buy a car as reliable as any 1914 model for a few hundred bucks that is more efficient and cheaper to maintain. You can also start it without getting out of the car.
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/searle20150109
Excerpt:
'The moral Cowen draws from freestyle chess is that the winners of these games, and he extrapolates, the economic “games” of the future, are those human beings who are most willing to defer to the decisions of the machine. I find this conclusion more than a little chilling given we’re talk about real people here rather than Knight or Pawns, but Cowen seems to think it’s just common sense.
In its simplest form Cowen’s argument boils down to the prediction that an increasing amount of human work in the future will come in the form of these AI-human teams. Some of this, he admits, will amount to no workers at all with the human part of the “team” reduced to an unpaid customer. I now almost always scan and bag my own goods at the grocery store, just as I can’t remember the last time I actually spoke to a bank teller who wasn’t my mom. Cowen also admits that the rise of AI might mean the world actually gets “dumber” our interactions with our environment simplified to foster smooth integration with machines and compressed to meet their limits.
In his vision intelligent machines will revolutionize everything from medicine to education to business management and negotiation to love. The human beings who will best thrive in this new environment will be those whose work best complements that of intelligent machines, and this will be the case all the way from the factory floor to the classroom. Intelligent machines should improve human judgement in areas such as medical diagnostics and would even replace judges in the courtroom if we are ever willing to take the constitutional plunge. Teachers will go from educators to “coaches” as intelligent machines allow individualized instruction , but education will still require a human touch when it comes to motivating students.'
They all my IT-friends were like, "Don't do it man. No one needs new software! Better be an administrator, in the future they will be needed to manage all the IT stuff that already exists, but there will hardly be anything new on the marked!"
That was 2003, right before the social and mobile boom.
Maybe you won't need sysadmins in ~10 years. Maybe. Those of us still doing IT will just pivot into another niche.
Yes, the possiblities for bugs increase exponentialy. But no, that does not mean you'll need exponentialy more time tracking them. And that's not even the most important scaling factor: the point is that good abstractions are simple, and get reused enough so that they create very few interface bugs, and those bugs get resolved.
Have you worked with Docker in production? Managing tens of thousands of running containers isn't what I call "plug and play", and orchestration tools like Mesos don't make it as simple as people would like to believe.
I will admit great strides are being made, but all this handwaving that we're at some sort of "great push forward" is pretty laughable if you look at the history of computing.
We have plenty of examples of good abstraction already (programming languages, operational systems, databases...). After we get one, most people stop even thinking that it's prossible to program without them.
Right. And that's why we're how many versions of Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX in? PHP, Python, .Net, VB, Ruby, GoLang, Rust, Objective C, Swift.
And so the dance continues.
Which all still needs ops. IT departments aren't threatened; their capital expenditure budget is. Someone still needs to make sure the gears at the end of the day.