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Comment by beatpanda | Hacker News Reader

So at what point do we as software engineers start paying attention to the outcomes of what we build for society?

A lot of people working in software are building things that, in the aggregate, disempower people and transfer even more power into the hands of the owners of capital.

I know someone who, fully aware of the consequences, is helping build something to replace many food service industry workers with robots. It's a direct transfer of wealth from workers to the owners of capital. I won't work with him, on anything, because of this.

Why are we building this world? What are we thinking?

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> A lot of people working in software are building things that, in the aggregate, disempower people and transfer even more power into the hands of the owners of capital.

Information technology doesn't do that, broken social systems do that.

With a non-broken social system, the same automation would be empowering (Unconditional Basic Income is one element proposed as part of some proposed ways of un-breaking our social systems in this area.)

Software developers -- as citizens, especially in democracies, representative or otherwise -- ought to be aware of and engaged in solutions to broken social systems, but one shouldn't blame the effects of broken social systems on information technology.

Automation may seem unintuitive economically but the alternative is much worse.

Food workers tend to be minimum wage workers. Minimum wage really stands for minimum living wage which is different from place to place and somewhat artificial (e.g rent). If minimum wage workers could be paid less, the "owners of capital" would (because they don't generate that much value)

Example: if you order a 9$ burger and it costs 5$ to "manufacture" a burger (food processing, shipping, preparation etc.) and 4$ to have a minimum wage workers assemble it; by eliminating the minimum wage worker, eventually the price of the burger will go down.

But who will buy burgers? Automation/technology is about turning goods into commodities. Eliminating scarcity.

So, yeah, I would work for the guy killing minimum wage jobs because without him, 10-15 years from now, you'd be paying 25$ a burger and most of it will go to the minimum wage worker making 15$/hr doing a job a machine could do.

I won't bother to argue how mind numbing those jobs are.

I'm not arguing that people should be flipping burgers, or even that we should be "creating jobs", or whatever. I agree with you, some of the things people have to do to earn their right to exist in this society are inhumane and it would be great if they were automated away, and everyone benefited.

The problem is that nobody's really interested in what happens to the low-skilled worker once their job gets automated away. Take a walk through the Tenderloin in San Francisco some time and ask homeless people what they used to do before they became homeless, and see how the "benefits" of automation have worked out in practice.

The pariah class, represented in my mind by the number of chronically homeless people, the prison population, or people who work in the informal economy because they can't get work due to either of those conditions, has grown since the 70s, I believe in large part because of automation. And relative poverty in the U.S. is getting worse, not better.

I don't disagree with the potential benefits of automation. I just wonder whether we're really paying attention to who's receiving those benefits.

Why? Because people can do something more meaningful with their lives if they are are currently doing something that can replaced by a robot. (There will be other jobs that are created to fill the replaced jobs). Arguing that we should not innovate and progress as a society because it will take away jobs is like arguing that we shouldn't have toilets because it will create less jobs for sanitation workers.

I don't think your notion of transferring wealth from workers to the owners of capital holds much weight in the context of a sharing economy either. It seems to me that a sharing economy is simply a more decentralized way of doing business, in which individuals are leasing their property or providing their services more directly to consumers than before. A centralized economy still provides wealth from workers to the owners of capital (rental car companies, hotels, taxi medallions, etc), perhaps more so than a sharing economy does.

Right, but can people actually do anything more meaningful? I work in software not because I like it but because the things I actually like to do, like playing music, writing, or cooking, will never enable me to have a financial safety net. I would be no more "able" to do these things if my job disappeared tomorrow than I am today. What people are more able to "do something more meaningful" because their jobs no longer exist thanks to automation?

I basically agree with you, that automation could be profoundly empowering. But right now it isn't, unless you happen to control the automation technology.

I think this is the right track. Shared control is probably a requisite to avoid some of the bleaker possibilities.

The question would be, what comes next after these jobs are automated. I think that's largely unknown.

You could have made the same argument before the industrial revolution, or massive improvements in communications and the internet, but I think we've been better off as a result. of those improvements. People have much better access to information/education and have a wider platform for free speech, as well as being able to live longer.

Hopefully you find writing software more meaningful and enjoyable than the much harder labor jobs that was more common 100 years ago. It could be that an automation revolution, could better enable you to better financially support yourself in those things that you really like to do, and that are harder to automate, since those may become much more valuable in a more automated economy. (Just as music, writing and cooking are arguably more financially viable occupations for more people today than it was 100 years ago)

> (There will be other jobs that are created to fill the replaced jobs).

Maybe. The newly created jobs don't necessarily appear immediately or provide a smooth transition for the displaced worker though. This can cause a lot of disruption in peoples' lives and may be a huge inefficiency of the system as a whole.

A challenge would be to figure out how to eliminate the disruption caused, while still 'innovating' and 'progressing'.

Why do we automate things?

I think this is a good question. It really made me think. Why did we invent a steam shovel when it put so many ditch diggers out of work?

I think the answer is because you can build things with a steam shovel that you could never, ever build digging ditches by hand.

It may not be immediately apparent with some forms of automation, but I think that's the driving force behind all technological progress.

What if we want to deliver nutritious, affordable food to every person on the planet? Is that economically feasible with having a part of the supply chain rate-limited to a human capacity? I don't know, but I think probably not.

In the short term, some people might be out of work. In the long term, even poor people today have a higher standard of living than the richest people of a couple hundred years ago could dream of.

But what gets built, and who benefits? And what happens to the people who were digging ditches? Does anyone care? Is it enough to wave our hands and say that statistically people like them will be better off in the future?

Well, what responsibility does an employer have to an employee? Is it a paternalistic relationship? Once you employ someone, are you thereafter responsible for their well being for the rest of their life? Or is it an economic transaction between relative equals, where either may end the relationship and go on their way? Or something in between?

In my mind, it's more the latter. The ditch diggers are grown adults and should be capable of taking care of themselves.

The paternalistic approach has been tried, but it has some unpleasant side-effects e.g. Ford spying on his factory workers to monitor their behavior in their off hours. Personally, I'd find it infantilizing.

From the employer's perspective, it's not much of a choice. If a steam shovel exists, you can buy one and lay off your workers, or you can wait for your competitor to buy one and put you out of business, then you lay off your workers anyway.

Why are we building this world? What are we thinking?

Quite simple: because if we don't want to end up under the bus ourselves, we need to throw the underskilled masses there first and try to buy room to breathe.

We can't save them, but maybe we can save ourselves (maybe).

Pretty cynical viewpoint. I can see where you're coming from, but by saying "bus" are you implying a zero-sum world?

I can see a shining future where all shit jobs are automated, and where so much productivity is gained from automation, that a large majority of the population won't need to work to enjoy a comfortable standard of living.

But I can't clearly see a way to get to there from here. We need to find a way to tax automated productivity as well as labour. We need to find a way to reverse the wealth concentration trend.

But we can try to build this world in the ways we know how, we can automate more and more and more and try to steer the future in the direction we wan't, because the alternative, some weird sort of labour preservation is clearly wrong.

I agree with you that labor preservation is wrong, but:

>But I can't clearly see a way to get to there from here.

We can't leave that part up to chance! I think this is the future many of us want, but it is not inevitable.

> But I can't clearly see a way to get to there from here. We need to find a way to tax automated productivity as well as labour.

That's not hard (well, except in terms of the political challenge due to its impact on the already politically powerful.) Just tax capital income the same as labor, rather than treating it preferentially.

The political challenge is exactly why it is hard.

The biggest problem is that there are no political entities fighting for this future. Both the left and the right agree that low unemployment is the highest political goal, and the idea that only a job and a career gives social status is very firmly entrenched in our society.

And even if there were political entities fighting for it, the current moneyed elite is very much against a higher capital gains tax.

There are political entities fighting for this future. They aren't the dominant factions of either of the major political parties, yet, but in our system, issues that become successful often start out being pushed by smaller entities.

As an example, I don't kill insects (or any living beings, for that matter). I once asked a Buddhist monk "I own rental properties, but sometimes they need to be treated for termites. Isn't that killing?"

He said "If you apply that reasoning everywhere, then almost nothing would be allowable."

The intention is not to disempower, but to make wealth for himself and his family. To buy and enjoy material things. (I wouldn't know, as I don't want kids and my tastes are spartan, but these are reasonable desires.) He's not trying to take advantage of anyone.

It's the natural progression. Going against automation is like rock fighting against erosion.

For the sake of argument let's say I agree. But why aren't we automating away management and coordination tasks to empower workers? Or, why are we building systems that capture the value of the work we're automating away and funneling it up to the owners of capital, instead of distributing the value of those productivity gains to the people doing the work?

I'd say you have a bit of an idealistic/warped view of the world, and the inhabitants within it. Not everyone has the luxury of being so generous, or non-ambitious enough to not be competitive. You're arguing against a natural set of rules, and the effects that emerge from them.

If someone invents something that eliminates a task/work/something, then they won't pass on all those costs to the general public. Not unless it suits them to undercut competitors. And that's just one example. On the other hand, you also have business owners that regularly pass on savings to their customers, even when not necessary.

If they can manage to do that, good for them. But let's not impose our unrealistic ideals on free-thinking individuals "just because it's good".

I don't accept that competitive, winner-take-all behavior is at all "natural", and I don't think that's a sound argument.

I also don't think the systems we're building are a result of "free thinking", I think it has a lot more to do with what's getting funding.

> I don't accept that competitive, winner-take-all behavior is at all "natural"

You don't have to accept that the sky is blue either, but we are all the descendants of those who obtained the most resources for themselves and their offspring.

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