What Amazon Teaches Us About AI and the “Jobless Future”(medium.com)
medium.com
What Amazon Teaches Us About AI and the “Jobless Future”
https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/do-more-what-amazon-teaches-us-about-ai-and-the-jobless-future-8051b19a66af
187 comments
The trend of fast fashion (buying clothes just to wear them a few times) has nothing to do with Amazon though. It is a direct result of our modern society. We now have the luxary to afford more then we actually need to survive so we strive to have more and more. This is really fused by the fashion industry and advertising companies rather then AI and automation. Fast fashion has been practiced long before we really had automation, and while I believe automation will drive down the prices (and thus increase the demand), the important advantage is fewer people who do jobs.
Wether we use automatiom for that or not will only have a marginal difference. People buy so many clothes because they can (they are relatively cheap now compared to other expenses in our lives).
Lastly, I believe Amazon (or shipping in general) actually brings down the carbon footprint. If you think about it, buying a new cable for me is either: drive about 9 miles to a mall to buy a single cable and drive 9 miles back or shipping it to my address which is bundled with many other and the driver only needs to drive an extra mile for me (at most) instead of 18. sure there is more packaging but there is also a lot of behind the scenes packaging for “in-store” items. Maybe not as much but I believe, in almost all cases, the carbon footprint for driving all the way to the mall for picking up a cubic feet and 1 pound of materials is rather wasteful.
Wether we use automatiom for that or not will only have a marginal difference. People buy so many clothes because they can (they are relatively cheap now compared to other expenses in our lives).
Lastly, I believe Amazon (or shipping in general) actually brings down the carbon footprint. If you think about it, buying a new cable for me is either: drive about 9 miles to a mall to buy a single cable and drive 9 miles back or shipping it to my address which is bundled with many other and the driver only needs to drive an extra mile for me (at most) instead of 18. sure there is more packaging but there is also a lot of behind the scenes packaging for “in-store” items. Maybe not as much but I believe, in almost all cases, the carbon footprint for driving all the way to the mall for picking up a cubic feet and 1 pound of materials is rather wasteful.
>I believe Amazon (or shipping in general) actually brings down the carbon footprint. [...] drive about 9 miles to a mall to buy a single cable and drive 9 miles back or shipping it to my address
Sure, home delivery is probably a more efficient way to consume, but the argument is that people end up consuming more as a result of the convenience. If buying a new cable means you have to drive to the store, maybe you decide you don't need it right now.
Sure, home delivery is probably a more efficient way to consume, but the argument is that people end up consuming more as a result of the convenience. If buying a new cable means you have to drive to the store, maybe you decide you don't need it right now.
But the same agreement can also be applied to the opposite. Since Amazon deliveries often take one to two days (assuming you have prime) you might reconsider if you really need that item.
When it's difficult for me to get to a store (because I don't have a car anymore), I either:
- Buy stuff I don't really need when I do rent a car/Uber to visit that store, just in case I need it later.
- Vastly overpay for the same item at the ultra-luxury version of the store located on the ultra-luxury walkable land near my office or a public transit station. (The markup on basic goods for "people who live here don't have cars so what else are they gonna do, starve?" is insane).
- Buy stuff I don't really need when I do rent a car/Uber to visit that store, just in case I need it later.
- Vastly overpay for the same item at the ultra-luxury version of the store located on the ultra-luxury walkable land near my office or a public transit station. (The markup on basic goods for "people who live here don't have cars so what else are they gonna do, starve?" is insane).
>If buying a new cable means you have to drive to the store, maybe you decide you don't need it right now.
Perhaps. But it's also possible I'll go to the store and walk out with ten things I don't really need either on impulse buys or because going to the store is a hassle and I want to make sure I don't have to go back.
Perhaps. But it's also possible I'll go to the store and walk out with ten things I don't really need either on impulse buys or because going to the store is a hassle and I want to make sure I don't have to go back.
>The trend of fast fashion (buying clothes just to wear them a few times) has nothing to do with Amazon though. It is a direct result of our modern society.
It's a direct result of clothing deflation (clothing deflation is 2nd only to electronics deflation).
That in turn, is a direct result of pushing manufacturing to the cheapest 3rd world sweatshops (e.g. Bangladesh & Vietnam), not automation.
It's a direct result of clothing deflation (clothing deflation is 2nd only to electronics deflation).
That in turn, is a direct result of pushing manufacturing to the cheapest 3rd world sweatshops (e.g. Bangladesh & Vietnam), not automation.
TBH, that's pretty much automation. From the point of view of businesses, those workers in 3rd world sweatshops are nothing more than cheap-ass protein robots that inhabit the area.
It's better for them if we all believe metal and plastic robots are doing those jobs. If people believe that those jobs migrated overseas because of trade agreements they might start to get dangerous ideas that threaten their bottom line.
Plus, the logistics operation that makes it economically feasible to make cheap stuff half the world way from it where is actually sold is pretty much automated.
Yeah, we buy new stuff, even if we're not super much into fashion. Going to a job interview? It's a cool startup, so I don't have to wear a suit but I need clothes that don't look like rags. Oh, looking for an apartment? The landlord probably doesn't want his property to look as worn out as this person's clothes.
So yeah, we need to buy new clothes. And to not spend too much money it's best to buy cheap stuff, right? In fact the more is expensive stuff not only lasts longer but it also looks non-embarrassing in 5 years. Actually I once read that the french (the epicentre of fashion) have only very few clothes.
Actually a year ago or so I watched a documentary about minimalism. So there are people who have like 30 (!!!!) things. Of course they are moderate but there's also a nice technique: writing down the stuff you want to buy on a list. You look at the list one month later and if you still need it, you gonna buy it. Wanna save CO2? You can go every one or two months to the mall and buy the stuff from your list. This also saves annoying returns, buying stuff that instantly breaks because you never had it in your hands etc etc...
So yeah, we need to buy new clothes. And to not spend too much money it's best to buy cheap stuff, right? In fact the more is expensive stuff not only lasts longer but it also looks non-embarrassing in 5 years. Actually I once read that the french (the epicentre of fashion) have only very few clothes.
Actually a year ago or so I watched a documentary about minimalism. So there are people who have like 30 (!!!!) things. Of course they are moderate but there's also a nice technique: writing down the stuff you want to buy on a list. You look at the list one month later and if you still need it, you gonna buy it. Wanna save CO2? You can go every one or two months to the mall and buy the stuff from your list. This also saves annoying returns, buying stuff that instantly breaks because you never had it in your hands etc etc...
> And to not spend too much money it's best to buy cheap stuff, right? In fact the more is expensive stuff not only lasts longer but it also looks non-embarrassing in 5 years.
In my experience yes, it's best to buy cheap clothes. Brands know this reasoning, and so expensive clothes (and shoes) tend to be of similar quality as the cheap ones. You pay premium for the brand.
That, or I'm such a special person that I can wear down any trousers or shoes in half a year, one year tops, regardless of the price.
In my experience yes, it's best to buy cheap clothes. Brands know this reasoning, and so expensive clothes (and shoes) tend to be of similar quality as the cheap ones. You pay premium for the brand.
That, or I'm such a special person that I can wear down any trousers or shoes in half a year, one year tops, regardless of the price.
My experience is the exact opposite. Pratchett described it best:
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...
The clothes I buy are on the expensive side, but they last me a long time. The trick is to avoid popular, fashionable brands, and go for utility brands instead. I own a pair of hiking pants I bought from REI nine years ago and to this they day are my favorite pair.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...
The clothes I buy are on the expensive side, but they last me a long time. The trick is to avoid popular, fashionable brands, and go for utility brands instead. I own a pair of hiking pants I bought from REI nine years ago and to this they day are my favorite pair.
I think you are confusing quality with expensive.
Quality clothes are definitely not cheap, but expensive clothes are sometimes not quality.
Quality clothes are definitely not cheap, but expensive clothes are sometimes not quality.
I'm not. I'm doubting the availability of quality clothes. Moreover, my main point is that the price is not a reliable proxy for quality, and I don't know of any other way I could tell between good and crappy wear. They all look the same to me.
Understood. I'll throw out one: Allen Edmunds shoes. They are the only shoes I have (not counting tennis shoes), and all cost $300-400 each. The oldest pair I have is 27 years old and still look good. The youngest pair I have is about 5 years old.
They are classic American shoes, solid build, excellent leather. Unlike fancy Italian shoes, they last forever with care and maintenance.
I will never, ever, buy another brand of shoes. And I really don't care how much they cost because they are clearly worth it.
I have to say, it's fun getting compliments on shoes and then seeing the look on someone's face when they hear the shoes are a quarter century old. :)
They are classic American shoes, solid build, excellent leather. Unlike fancy Italian shoes, they last forever with care and maintenance.
I will never, ever, buy another brand of shoes. And I really don't care how much they cost because they are clearly worth it.
I have to say, it's fun getting compliments on shoes and then seeing the look on someone's face when they hear the shoes are a quarter century old. :)
Speak for yourself, I bike to the store when I need stuff. I merely pointed out fast fashion because the author uses it as an example of why the Luddites complaining were wrong about the loom and in doing so neglects the negative effects of technology in the clothing industry.
> ..We now have the luxary to afford more then we actually need to survive so we strive to have more and more.
I've come to the conclusion that this is primary issue with a establishing a universal income.
Providing everyone with a means to buy essentials for life would insist that no one overbuys -- which would have the effect of inflating market prices and eliminate any benefits imagined from having such an income.
I've come to the conclusion that this is primary issue with a establishing a universal income.
Providing everyone with a means to buy essentials for life would insist that no one overbuys -- which would have the effect of inflating market prices and eliminate any benefits imagined from having such an income.
I have concerns as well.
My own suspicion is that UBI would give policymakers a mighty political carrot-and-stick; debating the morality of certain spending habits, etc., and slowly de-universalizing UBI into something with strings attached.
I prefer the idea of creating our own value for trade, if we could iron out some of the kinks in the system we have already.
My own suspicion is that UBI would give policymakers a mighty political carrot-and-stick; debating the morality of certain spending habits, etc., and slowly de-universalizing UBI into something with strings attached.
I prefer the idea of creating our own value for trade, if we could iron out some of the kinks in the system we have already.
From the top post of reddit.com/r/latestagecapitalism - https://i.imgur.com/p6DSnv6.jpg
I think we will transition over to new more sustainable models. Capitalism just causes too much damage and unintended consequences when it uses the speed and scale the tech sector provides. Just look at the number of followers of that subreddit and the speed at which it is growing.
I think we will transition over to new more sustainable models. Capitalism just causes too much damage and unintended consequences when it uses the speed and scale the tech sector provides. Just look at the number of followers of that subreddit and the speed at which it is growing.
But I got rich starting a high-frequency alt-coin hedge fund because I created value in the sense that I found a way to enrich myself. Now I'm going to pay these politicians comparatively small amounts (but far above what you could afford to stop me) to protect my interests.
> But I got rich starting a high-frequency alt-coin hedge fund because I created value in the sense that I found a way to enrich myself.
Here's the crux of the problem. You created value in terms of market economy. That doesn't mean you created any value in terms of human society, or how people generally understand this world.
Hell, in your particular example it's quite easy to argue that alt-coins (if proof-of-work-based) generate lots of negative value (by wasting ungodly amounts of energy), and whether or not HFT is helpful to the stability of the economy is debatable.
Here's the crux of the problem. You created value in terms of market economy. That doesn't mean you created any value in terms of human society, or how people generally understand this world.
Hell, in your particular example it's quite easy to argue that alt-coins (if proof-of-work-based) generate lots of negative value (by wasting ungodly amounts of energy), and whether or not HFT is helpful to the stability of the economy is debatable.
You seem to be responding seriously to satire...
[deleted]
You bet, the system as it is needs real reform! My previous post uses the word "kinks" and I don't mean to minimize the problem we have today. Old capitalist thinking seems out of date, and this does feel like late-stage.
This is so out of base with common economics I don't even know where to begin.
Thus, I suggest you read a microeconomic textbook to get some more context on how government wide economic policies (like UBI) will have on individuals.
Thus, I suggest you read a microeconomic textbook to get some more context on how government wide economic policies (like UBI) will have on individuals.
Would it be out of line to ask you to make a specific critique?
I may be taking the parent comment out of context myself (as sparse as it is), but I worry about nation-states manufacturing dependency.
I may be taking the parent comment out of context myself (as sparse as it is), but I worry about nation-states manufacturing dependency.
I'm not up to speed with the latest highfalutin micro economic theories but it seems to me that we already have a universal basic income of $0.00 and a basic cost of goods. Please explain how raising the UBI to, let's say $30K, won't just raise the basic cost of goods by the same percentage, establishing a new equilibrium that is essentially the same as we have now.
UBI would mostly just replace existing programs, at least at the levels most people are talking about.
Do food stamps raise the cost of food?
Does everybody, regardless of need, receive the same amount of foodstamps? If not, we're not comparing apples to apples.
That's not how any Universal Basic Income plan I have ever seen works... they are all based on what is essentially a negative income tax bracket.
[deleted]
The kind of people who benefit most from being able to buy cheap clothes made in sweatshops is not Silicon Valley professionals, it's poor people.
Get rid of the unsafe factories and poor people won't be able to afford clothes anymore. And the workers of those unsafe factories won't be able to afford anything.
There is no easy answer.
Get rid of the unsafe factories and poor people won't be able to afford clothes anymore. And the workers of those unsafe factories won't be able to afford anything.
There is no easy answer.
> Get rid of the unsafe factories and poor people won't be able to afford clothes anymore
poor people have always been able to afford clothes, it was called saving for a while to buy a good pair of pants and mending it for many years until it pretty much fell apart.
Poor people would not be able to afford new clothes all the time, sure, but clothes in general most certainly.
And let's not forget about thrift stores, go into any goodwill and you will be able to buy plenty of good quality extremely lightly used clothes for very little money.
poor people have always been able to afford clothes, it was called saving for a while to buy a good pair of pants and mending it for many years until it pretty much fell apart.
Poor people would not be able to afford new clothes all the time, sure, but clothes in general most certainly.
And let's not forget about thrift stores, go into any goodwill and you will be able to buy plenty of good quality extremely lightly used clothes for very little money.
"The kind of people who benefit most from being able to buy cheap clothes made in sweatshops is not Silicon Valley professionals, it's poor people."
The benefit they gain through slightly cheaper clothes is more than offset by the benefits from the jobs they could have had if the manufacture of clothing (like everything else) was not offshored.
The real winner is Stefan Persson and the $28 billion he made from H&M's sweatshop labor arbitrage.
"There is no easy answer."
There is. Make trade deals contingent on good labor and environmental conditions and ruthlessly enforce that. That will bring jobs home and improve working conditions in 3rd world countries.
Then, deal with the fact that that new top is going to cost $4 more and Stefan Persson won't be quite so spectacularly wealthy.
The benefit they gain through slightly cheaper clothes is more than offset by the benefits from the jobs they could have had if the manufacture of clothing (like everything else) was not offshored.
The real winner is Stefan Persson and the $28 billion he made from H&M's sweatshop labor arbitrage.
"There is no easy answer."
There is. Make trade deals contingent on good labor and environmental conditions and ruthlessly enforce that. That will bring jobs home and improve working conditions in 3rd world countries.
Then, deal with the fact that that new top is going to cost $4 more and Stefan Persson won't be quite so spectacularly wealthy.
As long as the people from 3rd world countries can easily relocate to places with better working conditions.
To be clear, this usually means poor 3rd world countries pay for the educations of their best and brightest and then see no benefit from doing so.
Most people ignore this subsidy from poor countries to rich.
Most people ignore this subsidy from poor countries to rich.
I do mean unrestricted. That includes unlimited immigration of unskilled/lower skilled labour as well.
Agreed. When people think they're doing the third world a disservice by buying consumer electronics, I point them to Paul Krugman's essay, In Praise of Cheap Labor: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...
This is just fancy apologetics for exploiting cheap third world labour. It completely ignores the brutal violence underlying the whole story. There are good reasons why people there can't have jobs unless we hire them for buttons. It's not the natural state of things that we are generously saving them from. There's a history of colonial domination in all of these places that was exploited to negotiate very one sided trade deals with western nations. So they are being paid buttons because we hold their governments hostage to get nice deals for our industry. And when they don't play ball, we send in the troops like that coup in Chile for a famous example.
The can most certainly afford clothing, if not make their own. What they can't afford is fashion
No they can't. Being able to change clothes (incl. underwear) everyday is a recent custom, and a luxury.
Even if they can, the extra money they would have to spend is money that they won't be able to spend in food and other essentials. Time they spend making clothes is time they can't spend making money for buying other things, or in education.
Even if they can, the extra money they would have to spend is money that they won't be able to spend in food and other essentials. Time they spend making clothes is time they can't spend making money for buying other things, or in education.
> Being able to change clothes (incl. underwear) everyday is a recent custom, and a luxury
Replace or just wash? The latter has been absolutely common across many cultures that had access to water and hot enough climate to dry clothes quickly.
Sturdy cotton lasts 10 years or even more.
Replace or just wash? The latter has been absolutely common across many cultures that had access to water and hot enough climate to dry clothes quickly.
Sturdy cotton lasts 10 years or even more.
I do not believe that for one single second. There is absolutely zero reason whatsoever to disregard safety in manufacturing.
But why are they poor to begin with? A big reason is the capture of wealth by industries like those in silicon valley that engage in exploitative labour practices and pay low taxes. There is easily enough money going around to have safe work conditions and still get everyone enough to have access to the basics and then some.
[deleted]
What a load of rubbish.
Ever heard of a thrift shop? Hand-me-downs?
There are plenty of ways for poor people to get clothes that don't involve buying stuff produced in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.
Ever heard of a thrift shop? Hand-me-downs?
There are plenty of ways for poor people to get clothes that don't involve buying stuff produced in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.
Why can't the western world properly tax large job destroyers?
I don't mean to sound inflammatory just focusing solely on the negative impact to mum and dad shops that Amazon can cause.
Large American based organisations have been hoarding an extreme amount of cash. Why is this allowed? Why do they feel the need to "give back" and engage in philanthropy?
Can't we just stop them from using tax loopholes and re-invest it in society with new preemptive educational programs and universal healthcare?
Seriously now, why do I keep seeing examples of corporate America outdoing themselves on Corporate Social Responsibility?
Why is it not just about applying special taxes on the mega profitable monopolistic entities?
I don't mean to sound inflammatory just focusing solely on the negative impact to mum and dad shops that Amazon can cause.
Large American based organisations have been hoarding an extreme amount of cash. Why is this allowed? Why do they feel the need to "give back" and engage in philanthropy?
Can't we just stop them from using tax loopholes and re-invest it in society with new preemptive educational programs and universal healthcare?
Seriously now, why do I keep seeing examples of corporate America outdoing themselves on Corporate Social Responsibility?
Why is it not just about applying special taxes on the mega profitable monopolistic entities?
"Now that you are super-successful - let the state take your money. Because, reasons" ?
Why do you believe that the state (with its lifetime employeed mediocraties or venal politicians), with no competition itself to always be improving, would or could be a better steward of resources than a corporation?
Why do you believe that the state (with its lifetime employeed mediocraties or venal politicians), with no competition itself to always be improving, would or could be a better steward of resources than a corporation?
Because the state is accountable to voters and not just shareholders, so there is an intrinsic incentive to redistribute wealth in a more equitable way than a corporation has any incentive to.
I'm not a huge fan of the state myself but it for sure helps people that corporations never would (because it's not profitable to do so) so in many ways they are better custodians of a society's collective wealth.
I'm not a huge fan of the state myself but it for sure helps people that corporations never would (because it's not profitable to do so) so in many ways they are better custodians of a society's collective wealth.
The bureaucracy is beholden to itself (and acts to survive on that basis), and the elected official presents a principle-agent problem.
Now, I understand how it is supposed to work. But I am asserting that this is not how it does work.
Now, I understand how it is supposed to work. But I am asserting that this is not how it does work.
> would or could be a better steward of resources than a corporation?
Because as an abstract entity, a corporation doesn't give a damn about the society beyond ensuring it has market opportunities to exploit. A state, on the other hand, will redirect those resources towards social good.
At least that's how it happens in the ideal world. Our world is a bit more messy, but the base argument retains some merit.
Because as an abstract entity, a corporation doesn't give a damn about the society beyond ensuring it has market opportunities to exploit. A state, on the other hand, will redirect those resources towards social good.
At least that's how it happens in the ideal world. Our world is a bit more messy, but the base argument retains some merit.
> A state, on the other hand, will redirect those resources towards social good.
A state is also an abstract entity. Composed of people with a range of incentives based on their positions. Elected representatives offer us a fine view into what economists call "The Agency Problem" [0][1]
Pournelle's "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists, and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
In both cases, the "state" is less benign than what one might suppose. But, because we are all (mostly) taught by agents of the state from childhood - this is never really brought to our attention during our early indoctrination process.
[0]: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
A state is also an abstract entity. Composed of people with a range of incentives based on their positions. Elected representatives offer us a fine view into what economists call "The Agency Problem" [0][1]
Pournelle's "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists, and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
In both cases, the "state" is less benign than what one might suppose. But, because we are all (mostly) taught by agents of the state from childhood - this is never really brought to our attention during our early indoctrination process.
[0]: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
I disagree completely. The State is run by humans, often humans who will do anything for power, including lying, cheating, killing.
The difference between a corporation and the State is that the State has the final say, and thus, the ultimate power.
Keep in mind that a corporation can't kill people without consequences, while a State can. That alone should be enough proof of the power they wield.
The difference between a corporation and the State is that the State has the final say, and thus, the ultimate power.
Keep in mind that a corporation can't kill people without consequences, while a State can. That alone should be enough proof of the power they wield.
Ahem, Blackwater (or Academi)? East India trading company historically? And again, you're forgetting about the externalities that are less obvious and definitely less publicised. How many people working for Foxconn committed suicide because of the terrible working conditions or will die early as a result of them. Remember Erin Brokovich? How many lives have been ruined by companies like PG&E that were just never brought to justice?
You could be right as long as there is no monopoly or oligopoly.
However, in capitalism money agglutinates, and thus it has a natural tendency into this direction.
Also don't forget that capitalism works until it doesn't, at which point a revolution may take place, and then anything can happen.
However, in capitalism money agglutinates, and thus it has a natural tendency into this direction.
Also don't forget that capitalism works until it doesn't, at which point a revolution may take place, and then anything can happen.
You make a good point.
I did a survey of national and local monopolies a while back, and I couldn't find many sustained ones (in the US) that weren't sponsored by the state.
Oligopoly is another matter entirely.
> Also don't forget that capitalism works until it doesn't, at which point a revolution may take place, and then anything can happen.
Revolution may occur when the peasants feel injustice hard enough (the starvation poverty kind - not the poorer than Bill Gates kind) - but are there any examples of this happening in a more-or-less Laissez-faire market system? [I seriously don't know - could well have been]. Do you think that (for example, in the US) that we have enough mass of discontent to build up revolutionary momentum, given that the poor are (on average) fat, dumb and happy? For example, the driving force behind the French Revolution wasn't simply that people wanted social justice (although they wanted that too), but that they were hungry. And, in Venezuela, where there may be revolution soon (or simply escape), it isn't driven by a paradise of low-priced veggie options at every supermarket supplied by capitalism - it's desperation driven by hunger caused by extreme corruption that have gutted the country in the name of equality.
For myself (and I realize that opinions vary), if the government keeps a light hand on making sure that people don't lie, cheat and steal as people engage in day-to-day commerce in the marketplace (as humans are wont to do - we like to trade, it seems), that generates "plenty" -- which we have seen from the kingdom of Lydia to the present day.
I did a survey of national and local monopolies a while back, and I couldn't find many sustained ones (in the US) that weren't sponsored by the state.
Oligopoly is another matter entirely.
> Also don't forget that capitalism works until it doesn't, at which point a revolution may take place, and then anything can happen.
Revolution may occur when the peasants feel injustice hard enough (the starvation poverty kind - not the poorer than Bill Gates kind) - but are there any examples of this happening in a more-or-less Laissez-faire market system? [I seriously don't know - could well have been]. Do you think that (for example, in the US) that we have enough mass of discontent to build up revolutionary momentum, given that the poor are (on average) fat, dumb and happy? For example, the driving force behind the French Revolution wasn't simply that people wanted social justice (although they wanted that too), but that they were hungry. And, in Venezuela, where there may be revolution soon (or simply escape), it isn't driven by a paradise of low-priced veggie options at every supermarket supplied by capitalism - it's desperation driven by hunger caused by extreme corruption that have gutted the country in the name of equality.
For myself (and I realize that opinions vary), if the government keeps a light hand on making sure that people don't lie, cheat and steal as people engage in day-to-day commerce in the marketplace (as humans are wont to do - we like to trade, it seems), that generates "plenty" -- which we have seen from the kingdom of Lydia to the present day.
I'd say the recent elections have shown that people are reaching that point. Or at least, the people who matter in electoral politics finally are - especially young people with no prospects of living an American dream style of life. There is a very significant portion of the population that have always had the need for a revolution and still do - the vast number of black people living in poverty or, worse, in and out of the prison industrial complex. There are also plenty migrant workers who suffer terrible work conditions to produce all that food (among other things) so cheaply here, government subsidies or not. If the racial divide could be crossed, as recently seems to be happening, where young educated white people are starting to see solidarity with people of colour with similarly grim prospects, there could be a considerable force to challenge the established class relations in the USA. I think there are interesting times ahead.
Well, certainly, enough forces are at work as to make serious prognostication of this type a fool's game...
It took more than a century to arrive at where Marx in "Das Kapital" already was. Please, I am NOT talking about the communism spirit which resonates with "Marx" as in "Marxism" but purely his economic theories.
He was descriptive and prescriptive. His descriptive narrative was prescient.
If I had to choose, I would rather have an incompetent and bloated organization dedicated to helping people than a sleek and hypercompetent one dedicated to exploiting people. The former will at least occasionally bumble its way into helping people; the latter will do the bare minimum necessary to keep its worker units productive, and aggressively optimize away all other good outcomes.
Sure. I agree. If that was the choice. But we have an incompetent and bloated organization dedicated to serving themselves, not the people.
EDIT: Where I come up a bit baffled is where people got the idea that government is here to serve them? [1] Where did that idea come from? They clearly (the people, generally) understand that corporations (say, Walmart) are here to serve themselves, and maybe as a by-product offer low-cost goods to people who want them, but they don't understand that bureaucracies have their own incentives that also don't exist to serve the people. With Walmart, I get what I pay for. With the government, I don't - and they spy on me on the side.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Decisions-Thomas-Sowell/dp/...
EDIT: Where I come up a bit baffled is where people got the idea that government is here to serve them? [1] Where did that idea come from? They clearly (the people, generally) understand that corporations (say, Walmart) are here to serve themselves, and maybe as a by-product offer low-cost goods to people who want them, but they don't understand that bureaucracies have their own incentives that also don't exist to serve the people. With Walmart, I get what I pay for. With the government, I don't - and they spy on me on the side.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Decisions-Thomas-Sowell/dp/...
Most western nations have some sort of program with a mandate to help the disadvantaged, however feeble and inadequate it may be. Corporations are not generally interested in spending any money on public welfare beyond token charity donations for PR purposes. If they're publicly traded, it's actually illegal for them to "waste" money on the public good without improving shareholder value.
The state exists to protect and serve the interests of the wealthy IMO
Given who the establishment's people's friends are, and the nature of the revolving door, I find it hard to find fault with that assessment. But "the wealthy" is maybe a too broad brush. Co-conspirators, maybe...
>I don't mean to sound inflammatory just focusing solely on the negative impact to mum and dad shops that Amazon can cause.
But why are you just focusing on the negative effects? If I can buy something cheaper on Amazon, it leaves me more money to spend on something else, creating jobs. The problem with this kind of thinking, pace Bastiat, is there are things you see and there are things you don't see. If you make policy based only on the things you see the effects of your policies won't be what you intended.
But why are you just focusing on the negative effects? If I can buy something cheaper on Amazon, it leaves me more money to spend on something else, creating jobs. The problem with this kind of thinking, pace Bastiat, is there are things you see and there are things you don't see. If you make policy based only on the things you see the effects of your policies won't be what you intended.
If you start confiscating all their profits, why would they continue doing the work to generate them?
Deliveries are often vastly lower carbon footprint than that same person going shopping. The best example is mail where 100 people can get mail on a street vs. 100 people all doing the same trip to the post office.
Also, I've found that many times I go out driving in search of a product and end up coming home with nothing or only part of what I needed.
Just yesterday I drove 20 minutes to home Depot to buy a saw blade, which their website listed exactly how many were in stock(16) and where to find them. I go there and they're no where to be found, so I ordered one for next day delivery on Amazon while standing at the aisle where the product should have been. Events like this make me much less likely to go out and buy specific items. Generic items I will still get in person where their specifications aren't too important.
Just yesterday I drove 20 minutes to home Depot to buy a saw blade, which their website listed exactly how many were in stock(16) and where to find them. I go there and they're no where to be found, so I ordered one for next day delivery on Amazon while standing at the aisle where the product should have been. Events like this make me much less likely to go out and buy specific items. Generic items I will still get in person where their specifications aren't too important.
Why not bike and get some exercise while you're at it
Because I would need to ride my bike on the shoulder of a 55mph highway to do that. People do it frequently, but I don't have a death wish
Maybe they are in the US, but in a lot of the world people walk or take transport when it comes to going to the shops. In these places, deliveries would obviously have a far higher carbon footprint.
First, I am an American and often walk to stores so your mileage may vary. However, items also get shipped to stores so it really depends, but if your walking to the store it's a likely a fairly meaningless difference.
Buses are generally considered efficient, but items are often vastly smaller than people which shifts things again. Moving 100+ pound people is simply less efficient than moving sub 1 pound objects.
It may come down to packaging which seems to be in favor of going to the store. But, Amazon packaging does not need to look good or be tamper resistant and can thus often avoids using a lot of clear plastic on some items etc.
In the end it's a surprisingly complex optimization problem. Made worse when you consider the vast overhead of physical stores which must be cooled/heated/cleaned and have a wide selection on hand etc.
Buses are generally considered efficient, but items are often vastly smaller than people which shifts things again. Moving 100+ pound people is simply less efficient than moving sub 1 pound objects.
It may come down to packaging which seems to be in favor of going to the store. But, Amazon packaging does not need to look good or be tamper resistant and can thus often avoids using a lot of clear plastic on some items etc.
In the end it's a surprisingly complex optimization problem. Made worse when you consider the vast overhead of physical stores which must be cooled/heated/cleaned and have a wide selection on hand etc.
> Before, a single kettle could last generations. I'm personally very disturbed by the idea of more and more people getting many deliveries every single day. That kind of consumption is insanity and just think of the carbon footprint.
I agree that this type of rampant consumerism is an entirely new (and disturbing) thing, but there is an enormous surivorship bias in a statement like "a single kettle could last generations." All the kettles in the world today that someone inherited from their great-grandparents were extremely well made, but it does not follow that all the kettles that generation owned were well made.
I agree that this type of rampant consumerism is an entirely new (and disturbing) thing, but there is an enormous surivorship bias in a statement like "a single kettle could last generations." All the kettles in the world today that someone inherited from their great-grandparents were extremely well made, but it does not follow that all the kettles that generation owned were well made.
> All the kettles in the world today that someone inherited from their great-grandparents were extremely well made, but it does not follow that all the kettles that generation owned were well made.
I cannot follow this argumentation. A kettle lasted to generations (assumed working) -- isn't that 'well made'?
I cannot follow this argumentation. A kettle lasted to generations (assumed working) -- isn't that 'well made'?
Some percentage of kettles were not well made and did not last. All the kettles that did last were well made. It's wrong to look at the population of kettles that lasted, observe that they are all well made, and conclude that all kettles made long ago were therefore well made.
i think you are missing their point, which is talking about selection bias
You misunderstood him. His point was this - say in 1900 they made 100 kettles, only 10 of which were well made. Those 10 were passed down as heirlooms while the other 90 were consigned to the scrap heap. Now 117 years later people go looking for old kettles, look at those 10 and say "wow, they don't make 'em like they used to".
In reality we're making them possibly better than we were earlier.
In reality we're making them possibly better than we were earlier.
We're undergoing a transformative shift in the nature of jobs. I am an optimist, we will experience a lot of uncertainty in the next few years but come out the other side with full employment.
Listened to an engaging interview Jason Calacanis had on TWIST with Ryan Carson from Treehouse. He said that our universities are graduating 400,000 programmers a year but we need over a million. He's arguing that education needs to change.
http://thisweekinstartups.com/ryan-carson-treehouse/
There are plenty of people right here in America that are either unemployed or under employed that can take those jobs. But it's going to be with $8000 for a developer bootcamp or if you're able to learn online for $1200 with Treehouse.
Someone has to service the robots of the future and the driverless car software. Just like Twilio allowed even average developers to create telephony apps a future company will allow smart people to knit together expert systems with API calls to a framework with something like Google's TensorFlow on the back end.
Sorry @sama but I just don't see a need for basic income, the jobs will be there but they just haven't been invented yet.
Listened to an engaging interview Jason Calacanis had on TWIST with Ryan Carson from Treehouse. He said that our universities are graduating 400,000 programmers a year but we need over a million. He's arguing that education needs to change.
http://thisweekinstartups.com/ryan-carson-treehouse/
There are plenty of people right here in America that are either unemployed or under employed that can take those jobs. But it's going to be with $8000 for a developer bootcamp or if you're able to learn online for $1200 with Treehouse.
Someone has to service the robots of the future and the driverless car software. Just like Twilio allowed even average developers to create telephony apps a future company will allow smart people to knit together expert systems with API calls to a framework with something like Google's TensorFlow on the back end.
Sorry @sama but I just don't see a need for basic income, the jobs will be there but they just haven't been invented yet.
People who hire engineers say there should be a surfeit of engineers.
Meanwhile have you seen the bloodbaths going on at IBM and HP? This is not a field I could recommend in good faith to any young person. Go into something that can't be offshored, without the rampant ageism...
Meanwhile have you seen the bloodbaths going on at IBM and HP? This is not a field I could recommend in good faith to any young person. Go into something that can't be offshored, without the rampant ageism...
What profession would you advise young people go into, if you are dissuading them from one of the few careers that can pay a living wage right out of the bat with almost unlimited upside potential (second only to law/medicine).
Beware 'almost unlimited upside potential'. So has the lottery. I abandoned my small business that had made a quarter of a million dollars over the years (gross) to convert it to Patreon: decimated my income, but made it way more stable and predictable.
If I wanted to advise young people in such a way that they'd be secure, I'd tell them to (a) go into trades and (b) study some of the entrepreneurial types but apply it to marketing their merits as a tradesman, not as an 'inventor' or 'programmer'. Some of Guy Kawasaki's stuff is quite good that way, generally useful.
Anything with 'upside potential' is balanced by a very real risk of getting gruesomely hosed through pursuing that bait. It seems like 'being a human' is one of those 'upside potential' things, and on the whole we're set up to fail.
If I wanted to advise young people in such a way that they'd be secure, I'd tell them to (a) go into trades and (b) study some of the entrepreneurial types but apply it to marketing their merits as a tradesman, not as an 'inventor' or 'programmer'. Some of Guy Kawasaki's stuff is quite good that way, generally useful.
Anything with 'upside potential' is balanced by a very real risk of getting gruesomely hosed through pursuing that bait. It seems like 'being a human' is one of those 'upside potential' things, and on the whole we're set up to fail.
go into trades
Absolutely. A plumber is never going to see business dry up, if you'll forgive the pun.
"Unlimited upside potential" is another thing said by people who want to hire engineers for less than they're worth...
Absolutely. A plumber is never going to see business dry up, if you'll forgive the pun.
"Unlimited upside potential" is another thing said by people who want to hire engineers for less than they're worth...
Not quite true: when we're all living in modular robot houses that aren't human-maintainable, the plumber's got no purpose anymore. But for the time being, he's got a very large installed base of stuff to maintain, and he's going to be as secure as he wants to be (if he knows enough of the entrepreneurial thing to manage a personal business and his reputation).
All of them! The focus should be on career flexibility, not pigeonholing oneself into a single career that can lose viability in an instant.
There is a saying: Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. It is especially pertinent when it comes to jobs. Things can change very quickly, as many people have learned over the years. When there is a concerted effort to push people towards a certain career, as we are seeing with software engineers right now, one should be especially leery about the future.
But at the same time one may as well capitalize on these careers while they are viable. Flexibility allows that and readys one to move into the next big thing when the shift comes.
There is a saying: Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. It is especially pertinent when it comes to jobs. Things can change very quickly, as many people have learned over the years. When there is a concerted effort to push people towards a certain career, as we are seeing with software engineers right now, one should be especially leery about the future.
But at the same time one may as well capitalize on these careers while they are viable. Flexibility allows that and readys one to move into the next big thing when the shift comes.
I would say law, finance, medicine or management. These professions seem to best at protecting themselves.
We already have too many lawyers for the number of law school graduates.
A huge chunk of routine legal work is going to be automated, similarly to how millions of people use TurboTax for their taxes.
There's a reason why so many banks are investing in blockchain technology: they'll be able to eliminate many thousands of humans currently involved in clearing and settlement in financial institutions.
A huge chunk of routine legal work is going to be automated, similarly to how millions of people use TurboTax for their taxes.
There's a reason why so many banks are investing in blockchain technology: they'll be able to eliminate many thousands of humans currently involved in clearing and settlement in financial institutions.
Yep, law or medicine. Maybe biotech.
Don't be mislead by Silly Valley - most working programmers sit in cubicles cranking out code for the same salary as any other office worker while their managers plot and scheme day and night how to offshore their jobs.
Don't be mislead by Silly Valley - most working programmers sit in cubicles cranking out code for the same salary as any other office worker while their managers plot and scheme day and night how to offshore their jobs.
I think you're severely overestimating how much an office worker makes or you underestimate how much a decent programmer makes. Though likely both.
If you only consider salaries at major companies in SF/Seattle/NYC/Chicago, or you only look at the salaries of graduates from top programs, then sure. But the average programmer, graduated from an average school and working at an average company, probably makes a salary not too different from anyone else with a STEM degree.
Unemployment among lawyers is high and increasing. Some of that may be due to the sheer numbers of new lawyers but that's kind of the point.
I have two kids under three. My mindset is not to advise them towards a particular profession but to teach them how to learn, explore, fail safely, and get back up again. When they start thinking about jobs in 12+ years, hopefully they'll have a variety of skills and understanding and a willingness to experiment to find something that fits.
I'm more worried about our teenager who will be considering college in the next couple years.. I suspect this transition will be painful.
I have two kids under three. My mindset is not to advise them towards a particular profession but to teach them how to learn, explore, fail safely, and get back up again. When they start thinking about jobs in 12+ years, hopefully they'll have a variety of skills and understanding and a willingness to experiment to find something that fits.
I'm more worried about our teenager who will be considering college in the next couple years.. I suspect this transition will be painful.
Having had a mother that took a very hands-off approach to guiding me towards a career, I highly recommend giving as much guidance as you can as early as possible. Describe how difficult something like medical school is, but how you can easily expect to start earning 200k once you get a job. Talk about the legal profession (where I work) having a steep learning curve for any job, with schooling that is entirely inapplicable to practice, but you can start earning 60k-110k right off the bat and do some pretty cool stuff.
If you wait too long, a kid can get listless or behind (I did) and it is then harder to figure things out. If kids are not taught the concrete realities of adult finances and vocations when young, it tends to never really stick.
Obviously none of that is relevant to a 3 y/o, but I so wish my mother would have repeatedly explained some of these things when I was younger. Even teenagers understand the benefit of earning six-figures, and can it light a fire under their asses if they appreciate the value of that. And the freedom it provides.
I don't think it is happenstance that all my (mostly Indian and Asian) friends whose parents pushed them to be doctors... are now great doctors, and doing financially well. While many of my (Caucasian) friends languished in their family wealth and are still listless in their mid-thirties.
/end anecdotal directionless rant.
If you wait too long, a kid can get listless or behind (I did) and it is then harder to figure things out. If kids are not taught the concrete realities of adult finances and vocations when young, it tends to never really stick.
Obviously none of that is relevant to a 3 y/o, but I so wish my mother would have repeatedly explained some of these things when I was younger. Even teenagers understand the benefit of earning six-figures, and can it light a fire under their asses if they appreciate the value of that. And the freedom it provides.
I don't think it is happenstance that all my (mostly Indian and Asian) friends whose parents pushed them to be doctors... are now great doctors, and doing financially well. While many of my (Caucasian) friends languished in their family wealth and are still listless in their mid-thirties.
/end anecdotal directionless rant.
Well meaning people try to predict the future and fail. When I was in college in the early seventies the hot ticket was learning Russian. No one was learning Chinese because we even lacked a diplomatic relationship with the mainland and besides they had little of an economy or the income to purchase anything. If you'd suggested then that by 2020 they'd be the largest capitalistic economy in the world while still remaining a communist country you would have been considered stark raving mad.
Engineers were being laid off in droves and I was actually counseled to study journalism instead of engineering because there were no jobs. Newspapers were creating jobs faster than available graduates.
Four years later when I graduated with a degree in Journalism there were no jobs and engineers with a 2.0 GPA were fielding multiple offers. The young should not listen to anyone advising them to go into one field over another because they're more likely than not to be receiving bad advice.
Engineers were being laid off in droves and I was actually counseled to study journalism instead of engineering because there were no jobs. Newspapers were creating jobs faster than available graduates.
Four years later when I graduated with a degree in Journalism there were no jobs and engineers with a 2.0 GPA were fielding multiple offers. The young should not listen to anyone advising them to go into one field over another because they're more likely than not to be receiving bad advice.
No, the parent is right. Being able to evaluate choices and take reasonable decision is extremely more important that being "guided" in life.
> If kids are not taught the concrete realities of adult finances and vocations when young, it tends to never really stick
citation needed.
> If kids are not taught the concrete realities of adult finances and vocations when young, it tends to never really stick
citation needed.
[deleted]
I disagree entirely. Yes, someone has to service the robots. But it will be significantly fewer people doing that than were doing the job that the robots took over.
Bootcamps/Treehouse can be a thing, but while you do that bootcamp, you still have a mortgage to pay, a family to feed and clothe, etc. Where's that money gonna come from?
Basic income is going to be required in the future. Otherwise we're going to be in an Hunger Games dystopian future.
Bootcamps/Treehouse can be a thing, but while you do that bootcamp, you still have a mortgage to pay, a family to feed and clothe, etc. Where's that money gonna come from?
Basic income is going to be required in the future. Otherwise we're going to be in an Hunger Games dystopian future.
Someone also has to design, program, update, coordinate, and negotiate things around the robots. I admit that I haven't built out a map of a person + support services vs a robot, but I don't think it's suddenly an order of magnitude less jobs, it's just that the jobs will be different. There are some societal standards which are hard to change, such as the preference of some to have a human cashier ring them up at the grocery store. I personally prefer the scanner tables, since I can do it quickly and there's typically less of a line, but at e.g. Safeway and Home Depot, half the time they're out of order. Target doesn't always have them and Whole Foods doesn't have them (in ones I've been to). Self-checkouts have been in stores for at least 15 years ( http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/15/business/fi-scanner1... ), yet there aren't replacing many cashiers, and the trend I've noticed lately is away from them.
My point is that it's fun to think about, but I think we're many decades away from having to worry about robots replacing a majority of minimum-wage jobs, and it might not even be worth it to automate some of these things until minimum wage is much higher. Another example I can think of is a table busser at a restaurant. It'd be hard to make a robot who could operate as smoothly in tight quarters as a human, not spilling stuff everywhere and making lots of noise. You'd basically need design a restaurant around automation, not the other way 'round. You could also just design a counter-service restaurant where people take their own dishes to a tub, which is a lot less involved than maintaining a fleet of dish bots. Diners might also scoff at (or be amazed by, or both) robots cleaning stuff around them while eating.
Industrial robots I've seen aren't very pretty or clean. Do you think that the Knightscope bots clean and wax their own exteriors? At that point, do you pay someone to clean the robots or just have them clean the tables? Or clean the robot with another robot-washing robot. This might work in Star Wars, but even there, Chewie and Han did the wrenching; R2 just helped them diagnose it.
Again, my point is that I doubt there will be less stuff to do in the future, just hopefully higher-value stuff. If you look at history and as other commenters have mentioned, e.g. the move from subsistence farming to increasingly more automation, workers go from picking vegetables to other hopefully more desirable jobs (maybe driving a fork lift to load the boxes of produce into trucks).
My point is that it's fun to think about, but I think we're many decades away from having to worry about robots replacing a majority of minimum-wage jobs, and it might not even be worth it to automate some of these things until minimum wage is much higher. Another example I can think of is a table busser at a restaurant. It'd be hard to make a robot who could operate as smoothly in tight quarters as a human, not spilling stuff everywhere and making lots of noise. You'd basically need design a restaurant around automation, not the other way 'round. You could also just design a counter-service restaurant where people take their own dishes to a tub, which is a lot less involved than maintaining a fleet of dish bots. Diners might also scoff at (or be amazed by, or both) robots cleaning stuff around them while eating.
Industrial robots I've seen aren't very pretty or clean. Do you think that the Knightscope bots clean and wax their own exteriors? At that point, do you pay someone to clean the robots or just have them clean the tables? Or clean the robot with another robot-washing robot. This might work in Star Wars, but even there, Chewie and Han did the wrenching; R2 just helped them diagnose it.
Again, my point is that I doubt there will be less stuff to do in the future, just hopefully higher-value stuff. If you look at history and as other commenters have mentioned, e.g. the move from subsistence farming to increasingly more automation, workers go from picking vegetables to other hopefully more desirable jobs (maybe driving a fork lift to load the boxes of produce into trucks).
Yep. Think of it this way: in order to have a functioning consumption economy in any sense, people have to have an economic vote. It becomes their 'job' to select which things thrive within the market-based system.
This has its own problems, but the ideology isn't really as dependent upon each person serving a necessary role inside the 'production of goods' system as you think. It's as if power was generated only by exercise bicycles hooked to dynamos, and then solar was invented. Or if transportation was powered only by humans and animals such as horses, and then the internal combustion engine was invented. We literally don't even have as many horses living in the world as we used to: no need for 'em. And those that do live, live under generally better conditions, because their labor is worthless and they're valued for other reasons (and in smaller numbers).
The future might look more like that. Steady attrition of humans, and improved conditions… but as pets and exotic animals, not as beasts of labor.
This has its own problems, but the ideology isn't really as dependent upon each person serving a necessary role inside the 'production of goods' system as you think. It's as if power was generated only by exercise bicycles hooked to dynamos, and then solar was invented. Or if transportation was powered only by humans and animals such as horses, and then the internal combustion engine was invented. We literally don't even have as many horses living in the world as we used to: no need for 'em. And those that do live, live under generally better conditions, because their labor is worthless and they're valued for other reasons (and in smaller numbers).
The future might look more like that. Steady attrition of humans, and improved conditions… but as pets and exotic animals, not as beasts of labor.
Added thought: the downside of this is obvious. In that robot future, why would we have to give a crap what HUMANS thought of goods and services? Things might evolve to suit what the robots and AIs like, in which case human input is about as useful as asking horses about highways.
"This sucks, it makes my hooves hurt!" um, it's kinda not meant for you, Dobbin…
"This sucks, it makes my hooves hurt!" um, it's kinda not meant for you, Dobbin…
> Ryan Carson from Treehouse. He said that our universities are graduating 400,000 programmers a year but we need over a million.
He sells programming education. That's a self-serving claim if ever there was one.
> Sorry @sama but I just don't see a need for basic income, the jobs will be there but they just haven't been invented yet.
There will come a day when faith won't be enough to sell people on this idea. I tremble to think of how bad things will have to get before then, and how many ugly, poorly thought out, desperate "solutions" we will go through before finding something workable.
He sells programming education. That's a self-serving claim if ever there was one.
> Sorry @sama but I just don't see a need for basic income, the jobs will be there but they just haven't been invented yet.
There will come a day when faith won't be enough to sell people on this idea. I tremble to think of how bad things will have to get before then, and how many ugly, poorly thought out, desperate "solutions" we will go through before finding something workable.
The uncertainty of the future causes me quite a bit of moral dilemma around if it's "right" to create new humans who will exist in that uncertain future. It's been thought over forever, but still: do you "save them" and never have children, or does the future need them despite how they might suffer (and continue the cycle of suffering, potentially for many generations)?
> we will experience a lot of uncertainty in the next few years but come out the other side with full employment.
You've hardly given an argument to support these hand wavy claims.
Yes, _some_ people will have jobs servicing "the robots of the future and the driverless car software" but that hardly means full employment.
> Sorry @sama but I just don't see a need for basic income, the jobs will be there but they just haven't been invented yet.
The jobs will be there, the climate mess will be fixed and structural economic imbalances will all be corrected.
The future sounds awesome.
(Don't get me wrong. I'm an optimist but this kind of miracle thinking that avoids acknowledging the issues raised by GP is kind of disturbing.)
You've hardly given an argument to support these hand wavy claims.
Yes, _some_ people will have jobs servicing "the robots of the future and the driverless car software" but that hardly means full employment.
> Sorry @sama but I just don't see a need for basic income, the jobs will be there but they just haven't been invented yet.
The jobs will be there, the climate mess will be fixed and structural economic imbalances will all be corrected.
The future sounds awesome.
(Don't get me wrong. I'm an optimist but this kind of miracle thinking that avoids acknowledging the issues raised by GP is kind of disturbing.)
> He said that our universities are graduating 400,000 programmers a year but we need over a million. He's arguing that education needs to change.
The lack of salary rise disagrees with this.
The lack of salary rise disagrees with this.
I don't think we're all going to be buying disposable kettles every day. Think about the infrastructure that had to exist to replace that kettle before. We had to build a network of brick and mortar stores all over the place and keep them supplied with kettles and all kinds of other things in case someone needed them. When a replacement was needed, the person who needed it had to drive there alone and get it.
Now we have a warehouse (which the brick and mortar stores had anyway) and instead of millions of individuals making trips alone, we have delivery van that is driving around anyway bringing things to whoever needs them that day. Overall, I think we've gained a lot of efficiency and reduced the amount of resources necessary to get goods to people who need them.
Now we have a warehouse (which the brick and mortar stores had anyway) and instead of millions of individuals making trips alone, we have delivery van that is driving around anyway bringing things to whoever needs them that day. Overall, I think we've gained a lot of efficiency and reduced the amount of resources necessary to get goods to people who need them.
"That kind of consumption is insanity and just think of the carbon footprint." Here here! I was doing well at amazon interview for IOT when I suddenly blurted out "but why would I want to work on this? Do we really want to encourage people to buy a fridge connected to the internet?" Couldn't help myself. Boy, you could see the manager's blood pressure rise. I didn't get the job..
Thank you for your honesty at the interview. We really need more people to point out to people in management that some ideas are just stupid and simply should not be done.
A lot of people don't like regulation on general principal, but it's important. We need laws to stop people just taking stuff from stores and we need laws to stop companies destroying rivers or putting employees at risk.
One driver for globalisation has been to evade regulation, whether that is the globalisation of money with tax havens or hands off supplier networks that don't follow even local labour law in pursuit of higher margins.
Governments have not figured out how to deal whith this. Regulation could drive automation so that long working hours in dangerous conditions were not necessary. Or incentivise products that made in ways that don't damage the environment (see German vs Chinese solar panel manufacture).
But they don't. As long as African children are cheaper than robots and no one is saying no, we don't get no robots.
What could help with this? Possibly international systems like TPP, possibly better informed consumers. Ultimatum I dont think either of these are enough abs don't know what is..
One driver for globalisation has been to evade regulation, whether that is the globalisation of money with tax havens or hands off supplier networks that don't follow even local labour law in pursuit of higher margins.
Governments have not figured out how to deal whith this. Regulation could drive automation so that long working hours in dangerous conditions were not necessary. Or incentivise products that made in ways that don't damage the environment (see German vs Chinese solar panel manufacture).
But they don't. As long as African children are cheaper than robots and no one is saying no, we don't get no robots.
What could help with this? Possibly international systems like TPP, possibly better informed consumers. Ultimatum I dont think either of these are enough abs don't know what is..
Amazon's success is remarkable, and yes it is adding jobs at a high rate, both internally and via contractors, third-party sellers, etc.
But the bigger question is whether the Amazon job increases offset the jobs that are lost elsewhere, as retail outlets close, Amazon's direct competitors fail, etc. Amazon and its satellites are growing, but is the job market as a whole?
I don't know the answer, and it might be hard to estimate. But the optimism of the article requires a leap of faith without that information.
But the bigger question is whether the Amazon job increases offset the jobs that are lost elsewhere, as retail outlets close, Amazon's direct competitors fail, etc. Amazon and its satellites are growing, but is the job market as a whole?
I don't know the answer, and it might be hard to estimate. But the optimism of the article requires a leap of faith without that information.
Amazon is the next iteration of Walmart
In what way?
You see any more bookstores around, besides the rare, exceedingly perosnality driven ones?
If I were to guess: Wal-Mart has a very bad reputation for sucking the wealth out of a community; money spent at a locally-owned store is more likely to circulate in the community, while with Wal-Mart the money's spent once and no one but the Waltons ever sees it again.
Amazon might be a little bit like that: a fountain of wealth for Seattle (and check out real estate prices there if you think that's an exaggeration), but pumping that wealth out of all the rest of the globe.
But I see a weakness in this argument: Wal-Mart mostly displaced existing chain stores, which had similar wealth-pump effects -- and which had much higher prices than Wal-Mart, partially because they wanted higher prices but mostly because they didn't have Wal-Mart's hyper-efficient supply chain. And the old corner groceries and general stores had supply chains that were even worse than the previous generation of chain stores, and therefore even higher prices and even smaller variety...
So: you hear the wealth-pump argument, wealth pumps do sometimes exist, and I'm pretty sure the previous poster was accusing Amazon and Wal-Mart of both being wealth pumps; but I'm not entirely sure that that's what's going on with either business. If it is going on, of course, it's a problem. (Have there been any studies on Wal-Mart's effect on areas where it opens?)
Amazon might be a little bit like that: a fountain of wealth for Seattle (and check out real estate prices there if you think that's an exaggeration), but pumping that wealth out of all the rest of the globe.
But I see a weakness in this argument: Wal-Mart mostly displaced existing chain stores, which had similar wealth-pump effects -- and which had much higher prices than Wal-Mart, partially because they wanted higher prices but mostly because they didn't have Wal-Mart's hyper-efficient supply chain. And the old corner groceries and general stores had supply chains that were even worse than the previous generation of chain stores, and therefore even higher prices and even smaller variety...
So: you hear the wealth-pump argument, wealth pumps do sometimes exist, and I'm pretty sure the previous poster was accusing Amazon and Wal-Mart of both being wealth pumps; but I'm not entirely sure that that's what's going on with either business. If it is going on, of course, it's a problem. (Have there been any studies on Wal-Mart's effect on areas where it opens?)
> money spent at a locally-owned store is more likely to circulate in the community
This has always been a silly argument. Locally-owned businesses tend to be in the service industry. Their primary expenses are wages, paid to people living nearby. This is also true of internationally owned service-industry businesses.
Retail businesses tend to sit at the end of a long supply chain. Their primary expenses are the goods they buy from upstream. Local staff are a minor bit of overheard, like the air conditioning or the internet connection for the credit card terminals. This is true whether the retail business is locally or internationally owned.
This has always been a silly argument. Locally-owned businesses tend to be in the service industry. Their primary expenses are wages, paid to people living nearby. This is also true of internationally owned service-industry businesses.
Retail businesses tend to sit at the end of a long supply chain. Their primary expenses are the goods they buy from upstream. Local staff are a minor bit of overheard, like the air conditioning or the internet connection for the credit card terminals. This is true whether the retail business is locally or internationally owned.
yes, but where do the profits go in each case?
To the local store owner, or to remote owners/shareholders?
The point of the local argument for me is that local owners are more likely to invest in locally owned businesses and create more local owners, whereas remote super-owners are more likely to create remote super-owners who further create more remote super owners, the net effect being that the ownership within the local community over time erodes.
The concrete facts of walmart et al as an example only support this argument..
To the local store owner, or to remote owners/shareholders?
The point of the local argument for me is that local owners are more likely to invest in locally owned businesses and create more local owners, whereas remote super-owners are more likely to create remote super-owners who further create more remote super owners, the net effect being that the ownership within the local community over time erodes.
The concrete facts of walmart et al as an example only support this argument..
In many lines of business, retailer profit margins are so thin that it doesn't really matter. But let's suppose it does.
Growing up, we had some family friends who were local business owners, albeit in the service industry.
The first place money will go is the local housing market. As a renter, this is incredibly destructive. If shopping at national chains reduces what my competitors can bid, all the more reason to do it.
The next place it'll go is luxury SUVs. As a (sometimes motor)cyclist, it might help me to get more drivers into Volvos with their safety sensors, though I do prefer to share the road with smaller vehicles. Neutral on this one.
Then it'll go to international travel. None of that money is local.
Then it'll go to investment accounts at national brokerages into multinational stocks on New York-based exchanges.
As far as I know, there is no forum where the local computer parts store proprietor and grocer invest in each other. Maybe some local philanthropy - they might be at Rotary together - but most of the philanthropy around me was driven by the handful of national companies headquartered locally.
Growing up, we had some family friends who were local business owners, albeit in the service industry.
The first place money will go is the local housing market. As a renter, this is incredibly destructive. If shopping at national chains reduces what my competitors can bid, all the more reason to do it.
The next place it'll go is luxury SUVs. As a (sometimes motor)cyclist, it might help me to get more drivers into Volvos with their safety sensors, though I do prefer to share the road with smaller vehicles. Neutral on this one.
Then it'll go to international travel. None of that money is local.
Then it'll go to investment accounts at national brokerages into multinational stocks on New York-based exchanges.
As far as I know, there is no forum where the local computer parts store proprietor and grocer invest in each other. Maybe some local philanthropy - they might be at Rotary together - but most of the philanthropy around me was driven by the handful of national companies headquartered locally.
Are your neighbors automatons? Otherwise, the first place the money will go to is the grocer and restaurants. From your description, I'll extrapolate and predict that it goes to some high end, organic food farmer's market.
Next, it'll go to Geetika Miller, formerly known as Karen, who went to India to study and came back as an enlightened yoga instructor :D
Come on, you're being a bit disingenuous. Keeping money local isn't some BS concept that has no history or evidence of success, it's how certain immigrant communities have thrive in a new country. I've seen this personally in the Detroit with the Chaldean (Iraqi Christians) community but you can also look at the history of Jewish immigrants in the US and Chinese emigrants anywhere really.
Next, it'll go to Geetika Miller, formerly known as Karen, who went to India to study and came back as an enlightened yoga instructor :D
Come on, you're being a bit disingenuous. Keeping money local isn't some BS concept that has no history or evidence of success, it's how certain immigrant communities have thrive in a new country. I've seen this personally in the Detroit with the Chaldean (Iraqi Christians) community but you can also look at the history of Jewish immigrants in the US and Chinese emigrants anywhere really.
O'Reilly confuses Amazon as a single example with the industry in general.
It's the same broken argument that people make all the time by pointing to som factory that automated and had to hire new people.
What people tend to forget here is by automating that company is gaining and advantage over others who aren't and will ultimately drive them out of business. So while the individual company might see an increase in jobs the industry in general doesn't necessarily.
It's way more complex than even this as you can be in industries with growing demand ex due to globalization.
But at the end of the day the same rule always apply. Companies in order to survive need to be more productive than their competitors and so technology will be used more and more until there isn't any jobs or only very few left.
Also another thing that is often missed by those who claim new jobs will be created. Even if that was the case those jobs will be easier and easier to fill by AI. So it's not an argument for anything.
It's the same broken argument that people make all the time by pointing to som factory that automated and had to hire new people.
What people tend to forget here is by automating that company is gaining and advantage over others who aren't and will ultimately drive them out of business. So while the individual company might see an increase in jobs the industry in general doesn't necessarily.
It's way more complex than even this as you can be in industries with growing demand ex due to globalization.
But at the end of the day the same rule always apply. Companies in order to survive need to be more productive than their competitors and so technology will be used more and more until there isn't any jobs or only very few left.
Also another thing that is often missed by those who claim new jobs will be created. Even if that was the case those jobs will be easier and easier to fill by AI. So it's not an argument for anything.
This is a very pernicious take on AI (and Amazon's usage of said AI). Amazon has hired 300000 professionals wohoo! more jobs!
All those jobs are poorly paid, very labour intensive have almost zero benefits and usually not full time. If AI is giving us these kinds of jobs for the many for the instant gratification of consumers then we are worse off NOT better-off.
Face it - the Advent of better AI (Robots, Driverless cars, etc) will lead to massive job losses and disruption of (currently) well paying jobs - the technology is advancing much faster than the ability of "blue collar" worker to retrain or adapt.
It is indeed a "massive failure of imagination" - of the author to understand the real world limitations.
All those jobs are poorly paid, very labour intensive have almost zero benefits and usually not full time. If AI is giving us these kinds of jobs for the many for the instant gratification of consumers then we are worse off NOT better-off.
Face it - the Advent of better AI (Robots, Driverless cars, etc) will lead to massive job losses and disruption of (currently) well paying jobs - the technology is advancing much faster than the ability of "blue collar" worker to retrain or adapt.
It is indeed a "massive failure of imagination" - of the author to understand the real world limitations.
If folks are interested in this subject, Kurzgesagt recently put out a great video on this subject: https://youtu.be/WSKi8HfcxEk
This article follows a similar line of reasoning as people who go "What global warming, look how cold it is outside!".
The author brushes off the fact that Amazon has caused (is causing) countless retail shops to go out of business all over the world.
As others have noted, 'just-in-time' consumption is insanity - cities are becoming perfectly oiled consumption and garbage making machines. I suspect (just speculating, no numbers) that this efficiency has a huge impact on climate. Similar to cars being 20% more efficient, but increasing number of cars by 50%.
As for the jobs, I wonder how many kids dream of working at Amazon fulfillment centers when they grow up... meaning that it sounds like a pretty bad job - people used as transportation units by the algorithms.
So not everything is rosy and shiny with Amazon. I try to avoid binging on it as much as possible. I applaud the efficiency and the 'You want it, you've got it', but I think the cost of that is hidden somewhere else and we all collectively pay it.
The author brushes off the fact that Amazon has caused (is causing) countless retail shops to go out of business all over the world.
As others have noted, 'just-in-time' consumption is insanity - cities are becoming perfectly oiled consumption and garbage making machines. I suspect (just speculating, no numbers) that this efficiency has a huge impact on climate. Similar to cars being 20% more efficient, but increasing number of cars by 50%.
As for the jobs, I wonder how many kids dream of working at Amazon fulfillment centers when they grow up... meaning that it sounds like a pretty bad job - people used as transportation units by the algorithms.
So not everything is rosy and shiny with Amazon. I try to avoid binging on it as much as possible. I applaud the efficiency and the 'You want it, you've got it', but I think the cost of that is hidden somewhere else and we all collectively pay it.
It's actually interesting to think about Amazon's platforms. Most often what they do, is take some part of a startup or small business, a part that is relatively safe[1], over the long term for that business, and often serves as a part of moat, and let people do it on their platform, and leaving that business with a much higher ratio of risky-tasks/stable-tasks.
The end result is that businesses are becoming much more risky(over the long term), more hit-driven, and much more hollow(job and knowledge wise).
And it doesn't seem like something good for the economy.
[1]For example, printing a shirt(and owning that printing machine). Or installing servers. Or keeping in-touch with customers and branding.
The end result is that businesses are becoming much more risky(over the long term), more hit-driven, and much more hollow(job and knowledge wise).
And it doesn't seem like something good for the economy.
[1]For example, printing a shirt(and owning that printing machine). Or installing servers. Or keeping in-touch with customers and branding.
> Amazon expects to hire another 100,000 workers in the next eighteen months, many of them in its fulfillment centers
Those are all extreme low wage jobs. Nobody can expect them to pay any substantial tax. Also jobs like these require little education, trapping children of these workers to do any better than their parents.
Those are all extreme low wage jobs. Nobody can expect them to pay any substantial tax. Also jobs like these require little education, trapping children of these workers to do any better than their parents.
Jevons Paradox in action: The more efficiently a resource is used , in this case labor, the higher the demand for it will be. This unfortunately is not something your average arm chair economist will figure out intuitively and leads to the same mistakes in analysis being made over and over again.
I'm sure the underclass will disappear any day now...
Jevons Paradox in action: The more efficiently a resource is used , in this case labor, the higher the demand for it will be.
The thing about labor is that it's not just any old resource. It's a resource whose price determines consumers' incomes. And consumers' incomes determine how much stuff they buy.
There's a common myth that technology will make everything cheaper. It won't. Some things will get cheaper and other things will get more expensive. Economic policies prevent deflation, and therefore prevent the general price level from adjusting downward. If the price of one good decreases, the price of another good necessarily increases to compensate.
Furthermore, labor can't be one of those goods whose price increases. At least not on its own. As labor becomes more efficient, the amount of money going to labor decreases for each unit of output. If we leave it up to the markets, increased labor efficency would lead to lower incomes and lower output and further lower incomes.
But we have economic policies to address that too. We don't just leave it up to the markets. Instead, we do our best to negate the efficiency (labor productivity) that technology would have otherwise enabled. This keeps people's incomes reasonably high.
Economic policies keep people employed, keep wages high, and keep labor inefficient. The Jevons Paradox doesn't really apply here... at least not in any kind of straightforward way.
Tim O'Reilly -- and many economists (armchair or otherwise) -- seem to completely miss this point.
The thing about labor is that it's not just any old resource. It's a resource whose price determines consumers' incomes. And consumers' incomes determine how much stuff they buy.
There's a common myth that technology will make everything cheaper. It won't. Some things will get cheaper and other things will get more expensive. Economic policies prevent deflation, and therefore prevent the general price level from adjusting downward. If the price of one good decreases, the price of another good necessarily increases to compensate.
Furthermore, labor can't be one of those goods whose price increases. At least not on its own. As labor becomes more efficient, the amount of money going to labor decreases for each unit of output. If we leave it up to the markets, increased labor efficency would lead to lower incomes and lower output and further lower incomes.
But we have economic policies to address that too. We don't just leave it up to the markets. Instead, we do our best to negate the efficiency (labor productivity) that technology would have otherwise enabled. This keeps people's incomes reasonably high.
Economic policies keep people employed, keep wages high, and keep labor inefficient. The Jevons Paradox doesn't really apply here... at least not in any kind of straightforward way.
Tim O'Reilly -- and many economists (armchair or otherwise) -- seem to completely miss this point.
Sure. Example: 'horsepower'. Our transportation uses more horsepower than anyone could possibly have imagined in 1902.
And no actual horses.
This is exactly the same. In the future, the amount of labor that's done will be staggering, unimaginable, a real Jetsons future. …and no human workers, and no humans being paid to do any of it. Not even management. Think about it: should be equally obvious. Labor == horsepower.
And no actual horses.
This is exactly the same. In the future, the amount of labor that's done will be staggering, unimaginable, a real Jetsons future. …and no human workers, and no humans being paid to do any of it. Not even management. Think about it: should be equally obvious. Labor == horsepower.
ummm...way to ignore all the retail jobs disappearing from e-commerce.
Don't get me wrong companies do a great job of automating things and growing.
And investors do a great job of betting on the things that have the best odds. I don't have a plausible solution. Besides lottery don't have a fair way to invest irrationally.
But, if society doesn't find a way to retrain(invest in) those people that were replaced we lose all the potential they had to offer.
Don't get me wrong companies do a great job of automating things and growing.
And investors do a great job of betting on the things that have the best odds. I don't have a plausible solution. Besides lottery don't have a fair way to invest irrationally.
But, if society doesn't find a way to retrain(invest in) those people that were replaced we lose all the potential they had to offer.
>But, if society doesn't find a way to retrain(invest in) those people that were replaced we lose all the potential they had to offer.
Since this article is specifically about amazon and FC employees, I think it's relevant to point out they have a program to do just that. Career Choice pre-pays up to $12k in tuition towards degrees/certificates for an in-demand trade/field, and up to 95% reimbursement on books: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/fsp92a2bhozr3wj
Since this article is specifically about amazon and FC employees, I think it's relevant to point out they have a program to do just that. Career Choice pre-pays up to $12k in tuition towards degrees/certificates for an in-demand trade/field, and up to 95% reimbursement on books: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/fsp92a2bhozr3wj
Retail jobs are growing, not disappearing, and they're expected to continue to grow.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm
Aren't retail jobs, with few exceptions, the definition of low skill, low wage labor?
Not sure where their going to be working:
http://clark.com/shopping-retail/major-retailers-closing-201...
Maybe Amazon's new retail stores.
http://clark.com/shopping-retail/major-retailers-closing-201...
Maybe Amazon's new retail stores.
I'm guessing maybe minor retailers? Some small store close to your house/school/office when you can't be bothered to wait for shipping.
I would not dare to try and open some small store and gamble on people not wanting to wait for Amazon. If you think that's still something that can be done, try it.
Better still, get a business loan to launch something like that. I'll wait. It's hard to even think of a thing more self-evidently doomed.
Better still, get a business loan to launch something like that. I'll wait. It's hard to even think of a thing more self-evidently doomed.
The last sentence is just not true. More doomed would be to invest a lot in infrastructure and economies of scale and try to beat Amazon at their own game.
So don't do that, open a small convenience store instead. Where else are all those retail jobs coming from? Not a rhetorical question, I really don't know.
So don't do that, open a small convenience store instead. Where else are all those retail jobs coming from? Not a rhetorical question, I really don't know.
This article is misleading and wrong in some of its ideas. Every company wants to employ as little expensive and unreliable-relative-to-a-machine human labor as possible. Trying to cut down costs is in fact not short-sighted or somehow "wrong", it's efficient and great (as long as you're not treating people unethically or polluting the environment, etc.). Amazon is simply growing tremendously quickly...it's not that they're trying to create jobs.
In the past 200 years there's been a tremendous increase in leisure for most people (except perhaps ironically for the best paid but that's a lot by choice), and also there has to date been no end to human desire. It used to take 80% of the labor force just to create food, now it's around 4%. It used to be 150 years ago the average American had 1 pair of paints and 2 shirts. Today the average American has 20 pairs of blue jeans.
What's creating new jobs is not that a company is trying to create jobs but that human desires keep expanding.
In the past 200 years there's been a tremendous increase in leisure for most people (except perhaps ironically for the best paid but that's a lot by choice), and also there has to date been no end to human desire. It used to take 80% of the labor force just to create food, now it's around 4%. It used to be 150 years ago the average American had 1 pair of paints and 2 shirts. Today the average American has 20 pairs of blue jeans.
What's creating new jobs is not that a company is trying to create jobs but that human desires keep expanding.
In the past 200 years there's been a tremendous increase in leisure for most people
My anecdotal observations don't align with that statement, most people I know work more than ever. It's almost madness. I would love to see some hard evidence to suggest otherwise.
While technology is supposed to be making things more efficient (and sure it can do that), it's also making certain things more complex, and I'm not sure most humans have the desire to cope with the complexity very well (nor should they). This can create a time consuming quagmire of technical debt, I deal with it daily.
A simple example of this growing complexity in society is food and beverage packaging. It's become too complex for most people to know how recycle things properly, and it's not really something people go out of their way to understand so it rarely gets done correctly, thus creating new problems.
My anecdotal observations don't align with that statement, most people I know work more than ever. It's almost madness. I would love to see some hard evidence to suggest otherwise.
While technology is supposed to be making things more efficient (and sure it can do that), it's also making certain things more complex, and I'm not sure most humans have the desire to cope with the complexity very well (nor should they). This can create a time consuming quagmire of technical debt, I deal with it daily.
A simple example of this growing complexity in society is food and beverage packaging. It's become too complex for most people to know how recycle things properly, and it's not really something people go out of their way to understand so it rarely gets done correctly, thus creating new problems.
>My anecdotal observations don't align with that statement
I can't find it right now but I did see a paper recently that showed a correlation between wealth and hours worked, rich people really do work the longest hours.
I can't find it right now but I did see a paper recently that showed a correlation between wealth and hours worked, rich people really do work the longest hours.
How many people you know are from third world countries?
Funny you should ask because I would say, more than you might imagine. I've actually spent time in third world countries volunteering and travelling and made some longer term friends out of it. The biggest problems they face are fallout from mass manufacturing and consumerism (rubbish dumps literally overflowing with western companies mess), deforestation (for palm oil) and climate change.
Apart from being less materially well off, there are a lot of happy people in the third world who seem to be living a way more relaxing lives then people I know in the developed world who are up to there eyeballs in debt and working for high profile tech companies.
But I think people just see what ever they want to see to justify their views and beliefs.
Apart from being less materially well off, there are a lot of happy people in the third world who seem to be living a way more relaxing lives then people I know in the developed world who are up to there eyeballs in debt and working for high profile tech companies.
But I think people just see what ever they want to see to justify their views and beliefs.
The kind of 'jobs' Amazon is creating in fulfillment are exactly the kind of things that we should have robotized out of existence time ago. It is only because we tolerate modern slavery that these still exist. 'Jobs' are not a good thing. People don't need 'jobs', they need a life.
[deleted]
> As long as we use the productivity gains from technology to create value for society, and ensure that value is widely shared so that customers are able to afford the cornucopia of goods on offer, we will find new ways to put people to work.
Mmm, I'm sorry but how is the example of Amazon's productivity gains from technology that uses ROBOTS in a lot of places (and not people), putting people to work?
Mmm, I'm sorry but how is the example of Amazon's productivity gains from technology that uses ROBOTS in a lot of places (and not people), putting people to work?
Something a tad irksome in the way a corporate behemoth is praised. We all use Amazon, but we all used to shop at Wal-Mart. Difference seems to be everyone always seemed to at least sligtly detest Wal-Mart, but people talk about Amazon with awe and an almost joy-like appreciation.
Some of my friends worked at fulfillment centers, and if most of these 100,000 new hires mentioned are headed to those places, the author fails to mention a very important part: retention. Since he seems very impressed by wheels, one could also compare the fulfillment centers to a gristmill, where people are ground up and discarded. Ever seen an ad for an Amazon fulfillment center hiring event? It's akin to seasonal hiring, where everyone who shows up at event is hired on the spot, knowing a lot of them will quit early on. If a job isn't retained past a certain point, it can't really be seen as a win. It would be interesting to see data about how long the average fulfillment center worker stays in a fulfillment center position.
Many of us have read about how grueling it is to work in an Amazon fulfillment center, and after hearing my friends' stories I agree.
The good thing for Amazon is that the customer never has to see this. They don't have to feel bad seeing what all went into getting them that tea kettle in under 6 hours. Sure, there is a lot of amazing logisitics and technology involved, but there is also a human element that is hidden. In Wal-Mart, you can walk right into a store and see the effects & signs of mass consumption, cheap products, and cheap labor. I think its visibility has driven a lot of the protests and blowback against Wal-Mart, successful or not.
I think not being able to easily see the dark side of Amazon plays into Amazon's customer satisfaction in some ways. You order something and a box arrives. The only interaction you see is the one you made with your computer.
Some of my friends worked at fulfillment centers, and if most of these 100,000 new hires mentioned are headed to those places, the author fails to mention a very important part: retention. Since he seems very impressed by wheels, one could also compare the fulfillment centers to a gristmill, where people are ground up and discarded. Ever seen an ad for an Amazon fulfillment center hiring event? It's akin to seasonal hiring, where everyone who shows up at event is hired on the spot, knowing a lot of them will quit early on. If a job isn't retained past a certain point, it can't really be seen as a win. It would be interesting to see data about how long the average fulfillment center worker stays in a fulfillment center position.
Many of us have read about how grueling it is to work in an Amazon fulfillment center, and after hearing my friends' stories I agree.
The good thing for Amazon is that the customer never has to see this. They don't have to feel bad seeing what all went into getting them that tea kettle in under 6 hours. Sure, there is a lot of amazing logisitics and technology involved, but there is also a human element that is hidden. In Wal-Mart, you can walk right into a store and see the effects & signs of mass consumption, cheap products, and cheap labor. I think its visibility has driven a lot of the protests and blowback against Wal-Mart, successful or not.
I think not being able to easily see the dark side of Amazon plays into Amazon's customer satisfaction in some ways. You order something and a box arrives. The only interaction you see is the one you made with your computer.
He wouldn't have bough the cattle if it wasn't delivered same day?
And as Amazon grows, percentage of tasks done by humans shrinks. In this case and time amazon grows faster enough to employ more, but with a bit less growth and a bit better AI this caculation might be totally different.
(and as others mentioned, one has to look at the net jobs beyond amazon)
And as Amazon grows, percentage of tasks done by humans shrinks. In this case and time amazon grows faster enough to employ more, but with a bit less growth and a bit better AI this caculation might be totally different.
(and as others mentioned, one has to look at the net jobs beyond amazon)
[deleted]
[deleted]
These arguments come up a lot when discussing this topic and there's some points that don't really hold, usually because the apologist either doesn't know the world of sweatshops or doesn't want to bring it up.
The people working in sweatshops start as young children, often sold by their parents to pay debts. Often pay is withheld and they just become slaves or they are fed just enough to keep their fingers moving and their brains starved. The sweatshop may provide enough income for that child to grow up to produce more children, who then become sweatshop workers themselves, child prostitutes, or slaves, or they may just die on the job.
Nutrition deficiencies and stress get baked into their genetics: congratulations you now have a permanent underclass living worse than some animals, and similar to livestock, crowded populations, poor medical administration, and hellish living conditions result in festering and evolving pathogens that you and Paul Krugman may soon be more interested in. The result of providing just enough for them to survive to make children is not "less poverty", it's more poverty, more death, more child slavery or prostitution, and if emotional arguments don't register with you, exotic pandemics coupled with antibiotic misuse just might.
Secondly, America does not have a clothes shortage. The unfathomable amount of (often expensive) clothing thrown away by both consumers and suppliers in disgusting. Shrewd families from the lower income to the middle class buy used or keep hand-me-downs. Once or twice during move out season on campus my partner and I raid the rich dormitories and find upwards of thousands of dollars worth of designer clothing among other things. Many stores throw their out of season clothing straight into the dump.
The defense of a situation where hundreds of millions live in hell to produce mountains of goods that end in landfills, on an economic argument, is absurd.
The people working in sweatshops start as young children, often sold by their parents to pay debts. Often pay is withheld and they just become slaves or they are fed just enough to keep their fingers moving and their brains starved. The sweatshop may provide enough income for that child to grow up to produce more children, who then become sweatshop workers themselves, child prostitutes, or slaves, or they may just die on the job.
Nutrition deficiencies and stress get baked into their genetics: congratulations you now have a permanent underclass living worse than some animals, and similar to livestock, crowded populations, poor medical administration, and hellish living conditions result in festering and evolving pathogens that you and Paul Krugman may soon be more interested in. The result of providing just enough for them to survive to make children is not "less poverty", it's more poverty, more death, more child slavery or prostitution, and if emotional arguments don't register with you, exotic pandemics coupled with antibiotic misuse just might.
Secondly, America does not have a clothes shortage. The unfathomable amount of (often expensive) clothing thrown away by both consumers and suppliers in disgusting. Shrewd families from the lower income to the middle class buy used or keep hand-me-downs. Once or twice during move out season on campus my partner and I raid the rich dormitories and find upwards of thousands of dollars worth of designer clothing among other things. Many stores throw their out of season clothing straight into the dump.
The defense of a situation where hundreds of millions live in hell to produce mountains of goods that end in landfills, on an economic argument, is absurd.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14524311 and marked it off-topic.
> The result of providing just enough for them to survive to make children is not "less poverty", it's more poverty, more death, more child slavery or prostitution.
Yet, they keep on doing it. It sounds like the alternative is worse.
Yet, they keep on doing it. It sounds like the alternative is worse.
Prior to industrialization, most people made their living by sustenance farming, and trading their surplus for goods they needed to survive. Plows, pitchforks, pots and pans.
Landowners needed armies of peasants to till their land, because argiculture was very inefficient, and you needed the labour of five farm workers to grow enough food to feed 7 people.
Now that even a third-world farmer can produce enough food to feed many, many people, those farm workers have been pushed to try to find work in the cities - hence, factories and sweatshops.
You are looking at the tail end of the problem, as opposed to the root of it. The core of it is that the vast majority of people in the world need to work for someone else (Who reaps the majority of the economic windfall) in order to survive. This used to happen because a small minority of people owned most of the land - it now happens because a small minority of people own most of the capital needed to run a business.
Employee-owned co-operatives are a solution to the problem of both jobs, and working conditions. Since co-ops don't pay dividends to non-working shareholders, this is generally unpalatable to capitalists.
Landowners needed armies of peasants to till their land, because argiculture was very inefficient, and you needed the labour of five farm workers to grow enough food to feed 7 people.
Now that even a third-world farmer can produce enough food to feed many, many people, those farm workers have been pushed to try to find work in the cities - hence, factories and sweatshops.
You are looking at the tail end of the problem, as opposed to the root of it. The core of it is that the vast majority of people in the world need to work for someone else (Who reaps the majority of the economic windfall) in order to survive. This used to happen because a small minority of people owned most of the land - it now happens because a small minority of people own most of the capital needed to run a business.
Employee-owned co-operatives are a solution to the problem of both jobs, and working conditions. Since co-ops don't pay dividends to non-working shareholders, this is generally unpalatable to capitalists.
I think you are mixing up multiple things here.
Improved agriculture required fewer people to generate the same amount of food. We were lucky that industrialization happened at around the same time and could provide work for the displaced farm workers. There isn't any guarantee that some new type of labour-intensive job will be invented just at the point that AI becomes widespread.
I don't see how co-operatives help if there isn't any demand for their output.
Improved agriculture required fewer people to generate the same amount of food. We were lucky that industrialization happened at around the same time and could provide work for the displaced farm workers. There isn't any guarantee that some new type of labour-intensive job will be invented just at the point that AI becomes widespread.
I don't see how co-operatives help if there isn't any demand for their output.
Death is a better alternative for many, who are then prevented from committing suicide without resorting to gruesome means. Improvised abortions are common. Recognizing this shouldn't be controversial.
> Death
I'm sure that came off wrong. I guess, you meant the abortions, which is, to me, slightly less controversial than suicide or worse. Death by abortion might be a conflation of terms, in some value system, so the comment is confusing. I guess it's provocative on purpose. I agree, there must be better alternatives to sweatshops.
I'm sure that came off wrong. I guess, you meant the abortions, which is, to me, slightly less controversial than suicide or worse. Death by abortion might be a conflation of terms, in some value system, so the comment is confusing. I guess it's provocative on purpose. I agree, there must be better alternatives to sweatshops.
[deleted]
Some of the unwanted American clothes end up being shipped to my country, and I assume many others. It's one of the cheapest clothing in the market and poor people buy lots of those.
The system that moves clothes from rich Americans to third world stores could be more efficient, but it does exist.
Hopefully robots will eventually become cheaper than feeding slaves.
The system that moves clothes from rich Americans to third world stores could be more efficient, but it does exist.
Hopefully robots will eventually become cheaper than feeding slaves.
And because those clothes are so cheap, your country isn't able to get it's own textile industry going. Thus killing jobs.
We do have a textile industry. It mostly caters to hipsters who crave authenticity.
We also used to have a huge industry of exporting cotton to countries with sweatshops, but nowadays soy and meat are more profitable.
We also used to have a huge industry of exporting cotton to countries with sweatshops, but nowadays soy and meat are more profitable.
A lot of points but you're not really adressing the argument you're replying to - that they would be even worse off not working in a sweatshop (e.g. farms).
Reread my statement about disease proliferation and my response to mixedCase.
I can't take you seriously when you say they are better off dead and living worse than animals. You're drawing things to an absurd extreme which is definitely not true for most sweatshops. I'm not saying that sweatshops are good but they are better than working on a farm.
I said some, not all, and you don't need to take me seriously when you can go research the suicide or abortion stories among these communities. And again, if my moral outrage triggers your moral outrage we can just go with a purely disease control argument.
And yet, the countries which had sweatshops, like China, India, Vietnam, etc. have had huge success in bringing their population out of poverty. The countries which didn't, like most of Africa, did not. Population growth also tends to go down with industrialization, not up. So you are basically completely wrong when you say that sweatshops trap people in poverty.
Speaking of wrong... Suicide rates per capita are also higher in many rich countries than in many poor ones. It's the "per capita" part that people don't understand. Foxconn literally has 1,300,000 employees. At the standard US rate of 13 suicides per 100,000 people per year, we should expect 169 suicides at Foxconn per year. But people see a headline about a dozen suicides at Foxconn and think it's a crisis, because math is hard.
Despite your disgust with the poor, no major pathogen of the last few decades has been traced back to sweatshops. AIDS and Ebola came from people interacting with apes, not from factory workers. Bird Flu came from birds. So I call bullshit on your claims that the poor are breeding super-diseases.
We can all agree that capitalism has some bad aspects and maybe the governments in these countries should be doing more to help. Spreading a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how these people are worse than animals is just that, ridiculous.
Speaking of wrong... Suicide rates per capita are also higher in many rich countries than in many poor ones. It's the "per capita" part that people don't understand. Foxconn literally has 1,300,000 employees. At the standard US rate of 13 suicides per 100,000 people per year, we should expect 169 suicides at Foxconn per year. But people see a headline about a dozen suicides at Foxconn and think it's a crisis, because math is hard.
Despite your disgust with the poor, no major pathogen of the last few decades has been traced back to sweatshops. AIDS and Ebola came from people interacting with apes, not from factory workers. Bird Flu came from birds. So I call bullshit on your claims that the poor are breeding super-diseases.
We can all agree that capitalism has some bad aspects and maybe the governments in these countries should be doing more to help. Spreading a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how these people are worse than animals is just that, ridiculous.
Please don't conduct flamewars on Hacker News. We're trying for thoughtful discussion here. When you do things like the following:
> Despite your disgust with the poor
> Spreading a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how these people are worse than animals
... you're pouring fuel on the fire. Please don't do that, regardless of how correct your underlying argument is.
> Despite your disgust with the poor
> Spreading a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how these people are worse than animals
... you're pouring fuel on the fire. Please don't do that, regardless of how correct your underlying argument is.
> . But people see a headline about a dozen suicides at Foxconn and think it's a crisis, because math is hard.
Although you're being dismissive, your math and intuition is a bit off. Workplace suicides are rare in places like the US and make up approximately 1% of all suicides. That one company has a number of suicides all at one facility known to have poor working conditions does indicate a trend. So, it's not 13 out of 1.3 million, it's 13 out of 230000-450000 (estimates). Not only that, but the company adapted by implementing suicide prevention measures.
You also neglect to mention that around 150 people at Foxconn threatened to commit mass suicide in protest of the working conditions.
If there were a rash of suicides at Ohio State University and they all were freshmen or transfer students, and they all jumped from buildings, that would indicate an alarming trend, not some statistical anomaly.
Math isn't hard. We would expect the suicides to be more random. Also, and I'm just speculating, it's not crazy to think some others were covered up.
> Spreading a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how these people are worse than animals is just that, ridiculous.
I'm not the OP and that is a bad comparison. Treated worse than dogs is perhaps a better one.
> So I call bullshit on your claims that the poor are breeding super-diseases.
I wouldn't call it complete bullshit. Poor people in India who bathe in the open sewer known as Ganges, one of the most if not the most heavily polluted waterways, is a recipe for breeding a super disease. Though, this is caused by lack of education, it is not entirely, completely disconnected from poor wages.
> We can all agree that capitalism has some bad aspects and maybe the governments in these countries should be doing more to help.
Yes, we agree. We tolerate the profit off of human misery and suffering. Progress has almost always been driven by misery and suffering. And we are all responsible for it.
Although you're being dismissive, your math and intuition is a bit off. Workplace suicides are rare in places like the US and make up approximately 1% of all suicides. That one company has a number of suicides all at one facility known to have poor working conditions does indicate a trend. So, it's not 13 out of 1.3 million, it's 13 out of 230000-450000 (estimates). Not only that, but the company adapted by implementing suicide prevention measures.
You also neglect to mention that around 150 people at Foxconn threatened to commit mass suicide in protest of the working conditions.
If there were a rash of suicides at Ohio State University and they all were freshmen or transfer students, and they all jumped from buildings, that would indicate an alarming trend, not some statistical anomaly.
Math isn't hard. We would expect the suicides to be more random. Also, and I'm just speculating, it's not crazy to think some others were covered up.
> Spreading a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how these people are worse than animals is just that, ridiculous.
I'm not the OP and that is a bad comparison. Treated worse than dogs is perhaps a better one.
> So I call bullshit on your claims that the poor are breeding super-diseases.
I wouldn't call it complete bullshit. Poor people in India who bathe in the open sewer known as Ganges, one of the most if not the most heavily polluted waterways, is a recipe for breeding a super disease. Though, this is caused by lack of education, it is not entirely, completely disconnected from poor wages.
> We can all agree that capitalism has some bad aspects and maybe the governments in these countries should be doing more to help.
Yes, we agree. We tolerate the profit off of human misery and suffering. Progress has almost always been driven by misery and suffering. And we are all responsible for it.
> Workplace suicides are rare in places like the US and make up approximately 1% of all suicides.
This might be true, but Foxconn employees mostly live at their workplace, so all suicides of Foxconn employees are technically «workplace suicides». That doesn't really tell us a whole lot though.
This might be true, but Foxconn employees mostly live at their workplace, so all suicides of Foxconn employees are technically «workplace suicides». That doesn't really tell us a whole lot though.
I think only 25% live in dormitories where the suicides took place. I seriously have doubts that Foxconn/China aren't playing down and under-reporting this. Also, as mentioned, the company enacted a sweeping suicide prevention program, including taking measures such as installing nets in places to prevent jumpers from killing themselves.
How is that a bad thing? Most people who attempt suicide and survive say they regret the attempt.
In the US it's not fashionable to kill yourself at work, but people jump from bridges a lot, so lots of bridges have safety nets. They don't just delay suicides, they outright save lives.
In the US it's not fashionable to kill yourself at work, but people jump from bridges a lot, so lots of bridges have safety nets. They don't just delay suicides, they outright save lives.
It's not a bad thing at all. I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but it's another reason why simply looking at 13 out of 1 million as the suicide rate isn't quite right
>Poor people in India who bathe in the open sewer known as Ganges, one of the most if not the most heavily polluted waterways, is a recipe for breeding a super disease.
Cholera, to be specific
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera#History
Cholera, to be specific
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera#History
Foxconn is not a sweatshop. It's not really relevant to that conversation.
Also, no one argues that sweatshops doesn't bring money into the country. They can trap poor people in poverty and still bring in money. That would look like widening gaps between poor working class and lower middle class. Which is exactly what we see.
Also, no one argues that sweatshops doesn't bring money into the country. They can trap poor people in poverty and still bring in money. That would look like widening gaps between poor working class and lower middle class. Which is exactly what we see.
"And yet, the countries which had sweatshops, like China, India, Vietnam, etc. have had huge success in bringing their population out of poverty."
Most of the countries that have moved from 3rd to first world status have done so only after a massive wave of strikes to improve pay and working conditions in sweatshops (usually brutally suppressed).
"The countries which didn't, like most of Africa"
Correlation != causation and yes, there are sweatshops in Africa. Africa's struggle to escape from poverty is hampered by a lack of good governance and infrastructure - coincidentally two things sweatshop owners also want.
Most of the countries that have moved from 3rd to first world status have done so only after a massive wave of strikes to improve pay and working conditions in sweatshops (usually brutally suppressed).
"The countries which didn't, like most of Africa"
Correlation != causation and yes, there are sweatshops in Africa. Africa's struggle to escape from poverty is hampered by a lack of good governance and infrastructure - coincidentally two things sweatshop owners also want.
Sweatshop owners want good governance and infrastructure. That's how they protect their capital investments.
Who would open a sweatshop in a place where the government could expropriate it, organized crime could take it over, or a simple rain could make the workplace inaccessible and the merchandise stuck in a warehouse?
Who would open a sweatshop in a place where the government could expropriate it, organized crime could take it over, or a simple rain could make the workplace inaccessible and the merchandise stuck in a warehouse?
Well, exactly. However, just because they want these things and pile in when they appear doesn't meant that they should take credit for them happening.
[deleted]
> Despite your disgust with the poor
> Spreading a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how these people are worse than animals
How the hell did you turn "living conditions for the poor are appalling and must be improved" into "the poor are disgusting"?
> Spreading a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how these people are worse than animals
How the hell did you turn "living conditions for the poor are appalling and must be improved" into "the poor are disgusting"?
fellellor(1)
So I hope we all agree that meaningless work is bad, and that if the clothing is going to end up in a dump anyway then the workers should be given their pay and then left to put their feet up. That situation is indefensible.
But the argument about sweatshops is pretty settled:
* These people are not stupid, they would not work in sweatshops if sweatshops weren't the best alternative available.
* The existence of sweatshops doesn't, in any fundamental way, prevent the development of more advanced and dignified industry. Many industrial countries have a history of slavery (eg, America) and poor working conditions (eg, England) that they levered themselves out of.
* Bootstrapping an economy starting with cheap, unpleasant labouring appears to have worked stupendously well for the Chinese.
But the argument about sweatshops is pretty settled:
* These people are not stupid, they would not work in sweatshops if sweatshops weren't the best alternative available.
* The existence of sweatshops doesn't, in any fundamental way, prevent the development of more advanced and dignified industry. Many industrial countries have a history of slavery (eg, America) and poor working conditions (eg, England) that they levered themselves out of.
* Bootstrapping an economy starting with cheap, unpleasant labouring appears to have worked stupendously well for the Chinese.
What is your process for grabbing clothes that people are throwing out? Do you just go grab it out of dumpsters?
Often the dumpsters are packed to the brim with other items during move-in/out seasons, and clothes (and expensive perfume, furniture, books, and computers and xboxes?!?) are put in boxes sometimes in the dumpsters and sometimes out. Hunt down the "rich frat kid" dorms/apartments.
Do you think their lives will get better or worse if American companies disengage? What did pre-sweatshop life look like for the families who now send their children to sweatshops in these countries?
>hundreds of millions live in hell to produce mountains of goods that end in landfills
Is it better to have hundreds of millions live in hell doing subsistence agriculture? Or is that life actually less hellish?
>hundreds of millions live in hell to produce mountains of goods that end in landfills
Is it better to have hundreds of millions live in hell doing subsistence agriculture? Or is that life actually less hellish?
They mention clothing too. Clothing is an incredibly harmful industry for the environment and don't forget how it affects workers - be they seamstresses in unsafe factories in Bangladesh or inmates in cotton fields in Louisiana. I don't know why we should be happy how many clothes we can all wear now.
The big problem with automation is the trend of who really benefits most. The point is made in the article that the consumer will experience massive benefits. And this is true if you are a first world professional, like people working in silicon valley. But how much of the new employment in Amazon is in fulfilment centres? Those don't sound like the kinds of jobs we should be happy that automation is creating and they are hardly going to last long either.
I'd love if all vehicles became smart electronic driverless miracle machines and getting blood to dying mothers sounds great. I just can't support these shifts if there isn't also a big change in the class structure of the society that these changes are happening in. The wealth this creates should be less concentrated and the benefits and TRUE costs (incl. Environmental) shared more equally.