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Destroying The "Technology Always Creates More Jobs Than It Destroys" Meme
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
While many hope that every low-skill person can become a high-skilled worker, training people doesn't create jobs for them.
One of the most appealing beliefs about technology--that it will always create more jobs than it destroys--is no longer true. It was true in the first and second industrial revolutions, for one simple reason: the new industrial revolution created vast numbers of low-skill jobs that offered displaced workers abundant opportunities for work that did not require more than entry-level skills.
It only took a few minutes to learn one's job on an assembly line in the first industrial revolution, and many workers recoiled from the sheer boredom and physical repetitiveness of this work. This is one reason why Henry Ford famously raised his workers' wages to the then-princely sum of $5/day: the high turnover of people quitting was killing him.
I covered this in The Alienation of Work (April 15, 2014):
After the success of the moving assembly line, Henry Ford had another transformative idea: in January 1914, he startled the world by announcing that Ford Motor Company would pay $5 a day to its workers. The pay increase would also be accompanied by a shorter workday (from nine to eight hours). While this rate didn't automatically apply to every worker, it more than doubled the average autoworker's wage.
While Henry's primary objective was to reduce worker attrition--labor turnover from monotonous assembly line work was high--newspapers from all over the world reported the story as an extraordinary gesture of goodwill.
In other words, labor had scarcity value. This is no longer true, as we shall see.
The second industrial revolution (telephony, radio, consumer marketing) required more training, but there were tens of millions of relatively well-paying entry-level sales and paperwork positions created for people who were automated out of factories. For example, my father made enough selling appliances at Sears in the 1950s to buy a house, support a wife and four kids and pay for luxuries such as modest family camping vacations.
This is simply not true in the third industrial/Digital Revolution: the jobs being created are not entry level or low-skill, except for informal menial jobs like running into Target to do some shopping for a highly-paid person who will pick up their items from you on the curb.
These menial service jobs are often awarded to the lowest bidder, while the enterprise that operates the auction skims a significant chunk of the revenues.
Believers in "technology always creates more jobs than it destroys" also overlook the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (and others) who identified the job-killing trend that cannot be reversed: the cost of labor is rising for systemic reasons that supercede supply and demand of labor.
In other words, the total compensation costs of labor rise even when labor is abundant or in over-supply.
Wallerstein identifies three long-term forces that are undermining capitalism's key function, the accumulation of more capital:
1. Urbanization, which has increased the cost of labor.
2. Externalized costs (dumping private waste into the Commons, environmental damage and depletion, etc.) are finally having to be paid.
3. Rising taxes as the Central State responds to unlimited demands by citizens for more services (education, healthcare, etc.) and economic security (pensions, welfare).
I explain these in more detail in Is This the Terminal Phase of Global Capitalism 1.0? (February 8, 2013).
In other words, the costs of labor paid by the employer are rising for structural reasons, even while supply and demand is reducing the wages paid to employees. This is why labor costs have tripled in China, while take-home pay hasn't tripled.
Labor overhead is all the labor-related expenses paid by employers: the vast majority of pundits, most of whom have never hired a single employee with their own money, tend to overlook the overhead costs paid by employers: workers compensation insurance (soaring), healthcare insurance (soaring), disability insurance, unemployment insurance, 401K or pension contributions, etc.
The "solution" in the Digital Revolution is to eliminate all labor overhead and transfer all these risks and expenses onto the free-lancer. As a free-lancer/self-employed worker, I am well-acquainted with these overhead costs: it costs $15,300 annually to purchase stripped-down healthcare insurance for my self-employed wife and I.
This is $7.66 per hour for a 2,000-hour work year. The total value of the labor overhead paid by employers for someone of my age and experience exceeds the $15/hour being trumpeted as a minimum wage.
In other words, it would cost an employer $30/hour to pay me $15/hour.
The net result of reducing labor to auctioned-off surplus is that the state, and thus ultimately the taxpayer, is paying the overhead costs. The person being paid $5 to shop at Target (or $50/day to deliver whatever the high-earners didn't order through Amazon) for a top 5% earner can't possibly afford $15,000 a year for healthcare insurance, much less all the other benefits paid by employers.
So they end up getting social welfare benefits for low-income people such as Medicaid, food stamps, Section 8 housing subsidies, etc. In other words, this form of menial labor is ultimately subsidized by taxpayers.
The person paying someone a menial sum to perform some service may think they're "hiring" that person, but in reality the taxpayer is footing the majority of the costs--the real "employer" is the taxpayer.
In other words, this informal "work" is a simulacrum of paid employment. All the costs being offloaded onto the informal worker end up in the taxpayer's lap.
How can this be lauded as a functioning system of employment? It can't, because it isn't.
Those who believe the Digital Revolution will create more work also overlook the realities of risk when it comes to employing people. Once again, I wonder how many of these people have ever hired a single person on their own dime, i.e. with their own money, paid the overhead costs of an employer and took the risks of hiring employees.
Here's one example from real life: you hire a fellow cash-only (informally or through some sort of labor auction exchange) to clean the roof gutters on your house. He falls off your roof and is seriously injured. You may think your insurance will cover you, or the labor auction exchange's claim of coverage will protect you, but guess again: you could be on the hook for a huge settlement/judgment that will not be paid by your homeowner's insurance or the labor exchange.
Labor laws don't disappear just because you've hired someone informally. Anyone violating labor laws is also exposed to lawsuits and claims, exploratory "fishing" or otherwise. How about claims of ethnic, religious or gender discrimination? Those don't disappear just because you're an informal employer.
Many people seem unaware that a $10,000 claim for violating labor statutes may cost $10,000 or more to defend in court (or in pre-trial legal expenses). You're out $10,000 either way.
Few pundits seem to put themselves in the shoes of those performing menial tasks for their "betters" for minimal compensation. What are the risks and rewards for managing an injury (real or faked) for those auctioning off their labor for a few dollars?
Those within the insurance industry know that there is an entire class of people who claim injuries in department stores, etc. so they can settle for $5,000 each "incident"-- and they get the settlement because it will cost the corporation far more than $5,000 to contest, investigate, go to court, etc.
How good a job will you get when the worker bid so little to get the work? Once again, few pundits seem to put themselves in the shoes of those performing menial tasks for their "betters" for minimal compensation. You want to supervise people who are rushing to finish the task so they can hurry to their next low-paying gig? No thanks; be my guest. From my experience, it will cost me more time/money to re-do the work that was done poorly than it would to have done the work myself and forget hiring someone for the lowest bid.
This is why I will never hire anyone again, no matter how low the wage or cash payment: the risks are way too high and the rewards far too modest. Anyone who's been a "real" employer like I have knows the realities, risks and costs. Those who've never hired a single employee with their own money are ignoring the realities.
When I need some real work done, I hire licensed contractors who pay all the labor overhead costs and pay for liability and disability coverage. These are very costly, so the service is costly. But you get what you pay for.
As for hiring someone myself--I can't afford the true costs or risks. It literally makes no financial sense to hire someone if you pay the full freight. I will hire formal enterprises that pay the full costs of their employees, but only when I can't do the work myself.
Setting aside these issues, the ultimate killer of jobs is scarcity and surplus.
The reality of capitalism is that profits and high wages only flow to what's scarce, and as Michael Spence et al. explain in Our New Robot Overlords & The Third Type of Capital (October 18, 2014), conventional labor and capital are no longer scarce.
Conventional low-skill labor has no scarcity value in the Digital Revolution, and its value is heading to zero, regardless of what we may believe or hope. The same is true of conventional financial capital, which is why the superwealthy are buying existing income streams rather than investing in new (and risky) production.
Believers in "technology always creates more jobs than it destroys" never address the knotty issues of taxpayer subsidies, secular trends of higher labor costs, the eradication of low-skill jobs that pay enough to live on without taxpayer subsidies, or the structural surplus of conventional labor and capital--the scarcity value of both are dropping to zero.
While many hope that every low-skill person can become a high-skilled worker, training people doesn't create jobs for them. As I have often noted, churning out 100,000 PhDs in chemistry doesn't automatically create jobs for these experts. Indeed, there is already a surplus of highly educated/trained workers in a great many fields.
The truth is we need a new system--one that deals with the realities of labor, capital, scarcity and surplus head-on. The need for a social economy rather than a merely financial one is why I wrote my new book.
* * *
This entry is based on my new book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All.
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No MORE CLINTONS
No MORE BUSHs
Thats not a vote, those are 2 simple mantras.
There’s one job technology will never destroy – a nicely performed blowjob. ;-)
Looney
I will bet you a penny somebody is working on a robot that'll do whatever you want without the risk of a divorce.
24/7 and never gets a headache
ZH loves this anti-technology shit. It is however incompatible to doom the fate of society at the hands of innovation because the free market will force us to pursue more efficient and more profitable processes. Unless, of course, we introduce government regulations on how effectively we can innovate.
So is ZH saying "it's different this time"? LOL. Because when the printing press, ox driven yolk, automobile, compact disc were invented, it was very good for society/jobs/prosperity. More people could do more with less and allow themselves more resources to do other shit. Because we're greedy.
Just becuase some stupid unkown manufacturing company invented an automatic burger flipper doesn't mean a). we'll buy those burgers or b.) restaurants will buy those machines. Revenues are down for most fast food joints. They can't take this new costly technology.
The irony of "it's different this time" is that it is never, in fact, actually different this time.
In other words, labor had scarcity value. This is no longer true, as we shall see.
^^^ That is hilariously stupid. He quotes someone saying that labor turnover from monotonous work was high, and then says that labor had scarcity value.
Why does the employer care if the turnover is high so long as he has people coming in? Does he care because that monotonous work is of better quality when someone who is experienced doing it is actually doing it? Could that mean that there are skills learned on the job that are of value to Ford?
Doesn't that mean the precise-fucking-opposite of what the writer is trying to say? He's trying to say that labor was scarce, but he's actually proving that on-the-job training is more valuable to the company than unskilled labor. He's making the argument for Ford actually wanting SKILLED Labor.
What a moran, needs to re-read his blog posts before making such ridiculous conclusions.
It has been a rule o thumb that labor costs roughly twice the hourly wage.
Rainmakers were premium.
Healthcare costs have put this out hte window, and are passed on to the employee.
Turnover and training cost are not a net revenue producer.
Training people does however create training jobs, and those grateful unionized parasites in turn send a fraction of what they receive back to the Democrat Party. Also, training people creates debt, dependency(ergo dependent voters), and eventually produces a supply of marketable securities that can be QE'd later.
Yeah fuck that job destroying technology!
We should ban computers, then type writers, then printing presses, that'll teach those evil innovators to come up with better ways of doing things! Think of how many jobs we will create for handwritten 75,000 page laws being enacted by our overlords!
Hey we might as well ban tractors and transportation vehicles too! Do you have any idea how many jobs we can create tilling soil and employing horse and carriage breedser/builders/maintainers!?!
Or maybe we could just ban idiotic ZH articles such as this one...
The meme might still be true today IF schools were churning out inquisitive, bright young minds, instead of "inane drones" only capable of parroting Govt propaganda!
@nuubee please tell me you are flipping burgers. Your comprehension is that of a first grader. Labour had scarcity value. Means the labour trained and experienced had scarcity value. Not the untrained which would have some value fraction of an experienced employee. This would obviously close over time.
The contradiction in the argument is if it was so easy in the past to migrate untrained labour into the production line then the scarcity value argument is diminished but not excluded.
Right, so trained labor had scarcity value, not unskilled labor. Trained labor is just that, unskilled labor that has been trained. It is ludicrous to make the argument that technology used to give unskilled labor scarcity value, whereas today it does not, when both times the difference was trained vs untrained, not skilled vs unskilled. His point is sooo poorly made, he's doing more to disprove himself than explain his position.
You can always train someone to fix a robot. It is boring, repetitive work. The skill to make a robot is something different. Charles is arguing that technology used to give unskilled labor more jobs, whereas today it does not. The problem is the example he uses is someone who wanted to retain trained unskilled labor because the monotony was causing people to quit, while arguing that today there is no scarcity of people wanting to be trained to do a job. This is absurd.
His example is stupid, and his point is poorly made.
You give me a non-GMO organic fast food burger and I am buying them.
I don't agree with the technology destroys jobs meme! The issue is in a free market when technology kills one form of employment the displaced workers have no choice but to find and build skills in another arena. In a socialist society where there is no life and death push to re-skill, the displaced workers simply go on the government dole, not their fault, a feature of the system. This is exacerbated by minimum wage laws. I would happily pay 5 dollars an hours to not have to weed, do laundry or the dishes, but you can't get someone to do it for under 15-20. That doesn't mean that a good entrepreneur would have to pay someone 5 dollars an hour to get my business, just develop a system to do those things in a fraction of the time it would take for me to do it. There would be such entrepreneurs if only they had the incentives, many are on welfare as I type.
Technology should displace jobs. Jobs are things people do out of necessity. They are a means, not an ends. Material wealth absent human labor is the cornucopic ideal.
[/thread]
The debate as to why automation is rapidly replacing many areas of human labor and what the economic ramifications are is a different discussion. Zerohedge is conflating the two a great deal lately.
Its not a free market when someone pulls unlimited amounts of money from their ass and sets up business to compete with you. Its not a free market when government redistributes the wealth of working people to subsidize those who are not working so they can remain customers of the business that just made them redundant.
Technology does NOT destroy jobs. banksters and corrupt governments destroy jobs. ALWAYS.
+10
So basically the solution is to legislate against technology and further research. Got it. And if you think I am exaggerating or oversimplifying things, just wait. Some idiots in congress is bound to come up with some piece of legislation along these lines.
Mandatory "make work" programs, just like the CCC and WPA, but with a whole lot less skill, intelligence and work ethic. With this Congressional "leadership", I think that you're probably dead on.
The solution is to drastically pull back on debt. I believe the reason why we are not able to absorb our technology is because the advancements in tech are being enabled by debt of a unnatural level, debt not based on assets but printed money. In a natural economy, those being sidelined by tech would either find a new job or become impoverished, which would not provide a customer for the tech. Instead, we sideline these people and then use redistribution and debt to keep them in the consumer stream, to buy the technology that had just eliminated their jobs. If this redistribution and debt was not occurring, the malinvestment in destructive tech would end. Ultimately all businesses need customers and people without income or money are very bad customers.
Lets not fear tech, lets fear destructive manipulation of our money supply that distorts and ultimately destroys everything a working person depends on. And while on the subject, tech is nothing new and ultimately has nothing to do with technology directly but with cheap labor alternatives, exactly like illegal immigrants and cheap imports. Debt is providing the same cover for these destructive factors as it is for tech. Using debt to camouflage the actual real loss in our incomes, jobs and purchasing power. When ultimate reconciliation does occur, we will find ourselves on the bottom of the heap, as we have been deluded for years by lies, corruption and ultimately theft.
#ATMLIVESMATTER
Either that or the "Jetsons" life style of working 10 hours a week and retiring at 40.
You know, the line they sold us in the 60's, where increases in productivity by machines were going to mean we had to work fewer hours.
If it ends up that 10% of the popluation working can produce enough to maintain the lifestyle of the entire population, only a form of Socialism will work.
Imagine the unemployment rate if you have world peace and fire everyone in the military and the military industrial complex, get rid of all Government waste and the industries that exist soley as a result of this waste ( think of a 10 page tax code , no accountans needed , no IRS, no Dept of Education etc)
10% Morlocks 90% Eloi. Sounds about right. Unless you think that 10% will work for no privileges over the 90%.
The only technology that will really benefit our econmy and aging society is a machine that can actually move, change, wash and dry an elderly person in a retirement village.
The next big saving to society will arise when people en masse realise that politicians are not only redundant but also harmful.
Fixed it for you. ;-)
You don't need a machine to replace them. Our common sense is enough to replace them if we woke up to that fact.
The Jacobins called that technology a gilloutine. Yankees called is a firearm. Both yield excellent results. The problem is that while both are capable of removing it, no such technology has been developed to keep it from being born anew.
Seems to me that a series of nuclear ground bursts may fit that purpose nicely.
"The only technology that will really benefit our economy and aging society is a machine that can actually move, change, wash and dry an elderly person in a retirement village. "
The same elderly person that moved, changed, supported, clothed, fed, for twenty (or more) years, washed and dried the un-thankful crumb crunchers that think like this.
My, my,,, how we forget......
Luddite bullshit. I guess we'd all be better off with horses, buggies, horsewhips, and millions of tons of horseshit on the streets. Or why stop there? I guess we'd all be better off living in caves and dying by 30.
Plus, fuck this guy using THE INTERNET to talk about why technology is bad. Hypocritical dipshit.
Let's face it. Technology that saves time and lives is fantastic. The problem is that society does not know how to deal with the excess labour.
That's retarded. It would deal with the excess labor the same way people dealt with the excess labor they uncovered when they discovered the technology called "the wheel." They re-invest in further capital accumulation and technology improvements. If that isn't ocurring now it's because of structural roadblocks introduced by the Fed and Gov.
"The surface of a planet is NOT the correct place for an expanding, technological civilization." -- R.A.Wilson
I think that the U.N. are working on that as we type!
The Luddites had a point.
Quality of life and lifespans DECREASED for centuries after the industrial revolution began. You went from village based economies with at-home workers spinning yarn, weaving cloth and making goods, locally grown food and livestock to massive UNEMPLOYMENT for the men in families with women and children earning far less in the 'new' factory jobs.
The displacement of a population that moved into crowded and dirty - disease ridden - cities led to a massive 'drug epidemic' - rampant alcoholism.
If the benefits of productivity increases were shared with workers, things would be different but history has shown that the increased profits go to the OWNERS of capital who own the factories, concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
There is no doubt that concentrate wealth has a way of making it difficult to find alternatives to its gravity. But, I will still contend that it is always our choice. Short of burning people's farms and driving them into cities in chains and forcing them to work in factories, people did have a choice. It is easy to imagine a setting of bucolic hills and pastures, and the leisurely life of a subsistence farmer, but my parents grew up in that shit and NEVER wanted to go back to it. It was a HARD life. And its not like they moved into a air conditioned office somewhere.
People have choices, and generally the ones that require the greatest immediate sacrifice are the ones that prove to be the best long run. This is NOT the choice that most make. I have been self employed almost all my life. I have had employees for the last thirty five. I just had to admonish a man 58 years old who has worked for me for twenty years for coming to work so hung over he could barely stand. Fucking choices. He could have had his own business, but instead he would rather get drunk, and then bitch about how unfair shit is. It's not my business what he does. But it IS my business when dumb fucks suggest that because I have worked my whole life to have a business, to OWN my means of production, that somehow I AM THE PROBLEM.
One should note the irony of one's avatar, and the living in caves and dying by 30 comment, thanks to.................. horses, horse whips, buggies, and horse exhaust, but definitely not technology, nor the beautiful, scintillating half life isotopes it fills our lives with.
Enough with the euphemisms for the cause of rising labor costs away from basic supply and demand. The drivers are not "systemic" or "structural"...they are POLITICAL.
If I can get a politician to vote me a raise (or higher benefits, or a pension, etc. etc.), I will do it.
Technology allows employers to (briefly) make an end run around these political forces, UNTIL they change the rules. Keep a very close eye on Hillary's comments about the "Gig" economy.
The purpose of creating and using new technologies is NOT to increase jobs it is to increase everyones comfort and wealth. Unfortunatly, the incredible rise of technological advancements has only been outdone by an advancement in government's share of production and regulations. The cost of living should be much much lower and that would benefit the less fortunate far more than any government progrsm purported to be for their benefit.
The blame is misplaced. Government has been hijacked to benefit the crony capitalists who use government for THEIR benefit.
The increased productivity adds to corporate profits - it is NOT shared with most workers. A very few profit. Most do not.
There is enough wealth in the world for everyoine to have a livable basic existence. BUT that wealth is concentrated in a very small number of hands. Society is NEVER better off when wealth is concentrated in a few hands. Society benefits as a whole when MORE citizens have share in the profits their labor creates. You will sell more Corollas, Malibus and Tauruses than Bentleys. Is society better off spending its resources to build a few castles - or 100 room estates and a plethora of hovels or providing its population with decent housing of reasonable size and quality?
The problem is that the very wealthy holders of capital want more and more - and get it by reducing the amount paid to the workers that actually do the real work - making things - in society.
Government has been used to distort the marketplace. TRILLIONS given to banks and Wall Street benefirt only a few. 'Free Trade' destroys a nation's economic base by allowing companies to pursue the cheapest possible labor anywhere in the world without consequence. The west evolved beyond the worst of the industrial revolution with child workers, endless hours and horrid working conditions to produce a viable middle calss but that is now being destroyed as that work is shiped elsewhere to be done under the worst conditions with lowest possible wages.
Nonsense. The object of the game is to turn todays luxuries into tomorrow's commodities, thus expanding the consumer base. Others will build on those commodities in the future, and produce new luxury items that will then become commodities.
CRT's, TV's then colour TV, then big screens, then flat screens, then touch screens.
In the 40's a TV cost the same as a house. Nobody is employed in North America making black, and White CRT's. Are we worse off for that?
You can talk to, and see anyone in the world for next to nothing, anytime you want. Telephone operators are obsolete, and unemployed.
You could buy a car that would get 100mpg for 5,000 today, if the government wasn't regulating the industry. How much lower could one's wages be, and still mantain the same standard of living if their car payment was $100/month?
In the end, all commercial activity grows out of agriculture. When it dies, so does everything else.
Wealth is created by ADDING VALUE in some way shape or form. Anything else is parasitic.
In its basic form, you add value by digging ore out of the ground or cutting down trees or growing crops. This is the basic third world model providing the smallest relative increase in value.
At the next level you convert ore into metals, trees into lumber and goods and convert crops into usable goods - wheat milled into flour, cotton turned into thread and then cloth
The most value is added by produsing end use goods - using metal to make cars, appliances, and other products, lumber into furniture or houses, and flour into bread, cloth into clothes.
The financial system USED to exist to manage the wealth created by these processes and allocate capital to these productive endeavors. NOW the financial system simply sucks wealth out of all other endeavors.
Price is determined during transaction. Value is much more subjective.
I might look at a rusty old bulldozer, and see a machine that can be made to do useful work. Another might see a pile of scrap, another might see an injection pump that can be sold for $1000 on ebay.
How would you quantify the value that each of these people see?
I do not disagree with your statement re: financial institutions, and government. They are parasites.
Nonsense. The object of the game is to turn todays luxuries into tomorrow's commodities, thus expanding the consumer base. Others will build on those commodities in the future, and produce new luxury items that will then become commodities
Nonsense to your nonsense. All economics is conversion of the earth to goods and services. Labor + Machines + Power do this conversion.
At the beginning of machine age, Machine + Power then displaced labor.
Labor found new use as machines were not highly intelligent.
Now that machines are becoming increasingly smart, then labor is less and less part of the equation.
The equation is then Capital as money and Capital as Machines + Earth to then make goods/services.
An example of this process: moving Jobs to China has meant that American labor is not part of increment of production, instead Chinese labor becomes the “small” labor increment.
Goods and Services make prices, and prices fetch money in the markets.
If goods and services don’t need labor to fetch money, then money vectors to the holder of capital + machines. Capital then aggregates.
Robots + Capital then make goods and services, and capitalism wants to sell its goods worldwide, to then fetch money out of world markets.
The owners of the earth, which should be patrimony of everybody as a birthright, is effectively enclosed as Capital chases after a fixed supply of earth.
This then drives up prices of earth, and labor is displaced from access to the means of production.
We will need a new economic system.
The first step is a new money system.
www.sovereignmoney.eu
Did Ted Kaczynski write this from ADX Florence, the federal Administrative Maximum Facility supermax in Florence, Colorado?
The truth is that
Jobs are created by rich people willing to spend money to reshape the world around them.
Not every rich person wants to reshape the world - many just want to get even more rich
Why else?
What's wrong with that?
I love that!!!!
It's not the same as the financial banks. I love companies that hire people!
Just not like those American companies that do it with tax money and get richer and destroy smaller companies.
The goal is not jobs. The goal is increased prosperity and wealth. The author is using the wrong measuring stick to measure progress.
Technology is inherently deflationary. Look at computer component prices, which have been dropping since the beginning of the information age.
You can now see that you can have fewer jobs but be able to afford a higher standard of living.
Even if you don't agree on the extent of increased value (which is performance divided by price) thesis, just note that the author uses the wrong measuring stick and it invalidates his thesis. He also attributes the effects of regulation to technological progress. This is clearly click-baiting and pandering to loonies.
The only problem is that money men are given free money and government backing to gamble against the other people. Bank Charters SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN TO THEIVES. Capitalism works...if you don't have cronyism! Teddy Roosvelt broke up the trusts...and we had growth...until taft and wilsosn succumend to the big lobbies. BREAK UP THE BANKING TRUSTS OF CITI, JP Morgan, Goldman..., shrink government so cronyism goes away...and capitalism will work! This technology destroy thing is a joke! Havng government run by Soros is destruction.
You're right! Employees should pay their own health benefit. They should have a payroll deduction for Medicare for All.
LOL,,, That is what the Gen X and millennials thought they were getting when they voted Barry in to office,,, twice! Universal Health Care.
Barry one upped them and gave them the ACA with him and the medical community laughing all the way to the bank.
The Chinese seem to be doing fine with the technology boom. They don't seem to mind! Plenty of work for the most part.
Easy,,, Peezy,,,Just ship all the skilled work that is still required to a low wage country, import any professional labor then blame technology and the lack of skilled workers.
And those highly developed economies get to stand around staring slack jawed, and drooling waiting for their next text.
Can't beat that with a stick!
Actually the Chinese have lost millions of jobs to automation.
You can't hand solder an Iphone, all new electronics MUST be made by machine.
Slowly the automation is replacing tasks performed by low skilled workers, and the number of high skilled needed are relatively small.
I'm waiting for a fully automated factory that mines ore on one end and spits out cars on the other, perhaps impossible.... for now.
The banks, media and governments are starting to convince me that technology is bad for people.
The technology we have today has not contributed to the quality of life. I think it has detracted from the quality of life. Technology is a trap, a cage, something that appears good at first and then is corrupted in a way that harms humanity.
Maybe that is the lesson. But, do we have the strength to put technology in its proper place?
The technology we have today has not contributed to the quality of life. I think it has detracted from the quality of life.
If you truly believe that then next time you go to the hospital for an MRI or advanced cancer treatment you must refuse these.
Goddamn, this moron again?
Duh machinez r tekkin ur jebbbbbs!!!
Dimwitted idiocy. It can't possibly be that production is not aligned with the demands of consumers.
People need to take the technology worship to its logical conclusion: What is going on, is the emergence of synthetic life forms (machine and AI based). Man is literally "playing God", by creating a new life form and life ecosystem, that is being made in his own 'image', i.e. made to suit his intentions.
The fundamental FAQs you need to ask yourself and your Rulers, are:
- "Quis bono?" Who benefits the most and the least?
- How long will humans co-exist with Synthetics?
- When will the 8 billion humans go the way of the Neanderthal (where almost all were killed, and a lucky few got a genetic upgrade)?
It seems likely AI with the power to act would regard mankind as some type of cockroach.
I first read
Destroying The "Technology Always Creates More Jobs Than It Destroys" Memeas
The "Destroying The Technology" Always Creates More Jobs Than It Destroys MemeWhich seems much better.
By & large, people seem to do fairly well when left to interact and transact as they please, with whom they please, sans:
- 3rd party interference
- 3rd party regulation
- 3rd party confiscatory policy
- 3rd party involuntary servitude to the State
- And pretty much anything else that interferes, or takes away the aformentioned ability of two parties to transact with one another.
Sometimes CHS writes good stuff, and sometimes he writes trash, such as this article.
The problem here is the classic causality-correlation fallacy. Yes, we have more technology that automates basic labor, and yes, we're having increasing poverty/unemployment problems. But that doesn't imply causality. CHS is ignoring all of the harm caused by illegitimate central bank credit creation, taxes, borrowing, and the myriad of harmful regulations (minimum wage being amongst them) by the overlords put into power by the ignorant masses. Get rid of those things and watch prosperity soar. There will probably still be some Luddites (some people never learn), but it will be much harder to slam technology at that point.
ANd most important of all IMHO, offshoring.
Does everybody understand that THIS IS A COMMUNIST MANIFEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"conventional labor and capital are no longer scarce."
Post-scarcity?
Social Economy?!
You must be misteaken... /sarc
Yeah its cheap but I'm gonna have to copypasta one of my favorite futurists. Bucky was a genius and a freakshow. Way ahead of his time.
“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” -Buckminster Fuller
Wait a minute; In a way back moment did not Bill Clinton use the words "wealth without work". Wonder what he meant?
Oh forgot Robert Rubin was involved.
Just old man trying to think.
The real problem is not technology, it's sending jobs and capital overseas. Charles just doesn't quite get it right. I guess he just wants good click bait.
There's a huge shortage of jobs even for the high skilled. Top grads in fields such as Computer Science and Electrical Engineering can send their resumes to firms claiming 'labour shortages' only to not even be extended the courtesy of a response. The underlying problem is that the tech companies are hell-bent on using imported workers instead of domestic talent.
There's 85,000 Jobs for low skilled, low paid, foreigners subsidized by the US government. http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/13/technology/h1b-cap-visa/
These companies pretend they have a "labor shortage" to make it look like they're justified in hiring low skill foreign "talent". It's mostly bullshit, especially for lower level jobs that most people could do without a 4 year computer science degree.
Social economy is just another term for replacing one percieved oligarch with a kinder gentler oligarch, who pretends to like you.
"conventional labor and capital are no longer scarce."
Scarcity means that if there is enough for everyone who wants. Think of beach-front property. Everyone wants one but there isn't enough for everyone. Capital and Labor are no longer scarce? That runs the opposite of your whole article. The capital cost is prohibitive so it's obiously one or the other or both are scarce. They both are.
The problem is that the situation has nothing to do with laws of economy but specific policies that result in the observed social phenomena.
There is no natural process in society that compels employment to be low and high, wages to be low or high or standard of living to be low or high, these are all economic, fiscal and monetary policies set by the ruling elite under guise of some propaganda narratives such as disruptive innovation or creative destruction or robotization or change we can believe in or other nonsense like that.
More on the propaganda of disruptive narratives that aim to fool us about true reality of our lives can be found here:
https://sostratusworks.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/the-age-of-disruption/
This article is obviously bs. The job market is kept unbalanced not by technology, but by govt imposed scarcity on some jobs. Medicine, law, electricians, plumbers, teachers, accountants, etc etc are kept artificially scarce through licensing. Nearly everything considered a "profession" is licensed. Years ago, this wasn't the case. Professions had entry level positions. Those don't exist today, not because of technology, but because of govt.
Not only does gubbamint force deliberate scarcity in such fields but they also work to make starting a business nigh impossible for all but the uber wealthy, and the universities DELIBERATELY choke off the numbers of medical/veterinary educated people they produce. Consider: it can take upwards of 7-10 years for one to gain entry to either pharmacy or vet schools. Dentistry ditto. Med skool is even worse.
Instead of making it easier to get more nurses, the wait list here is 8 years just to get into a 4 year program. WTF?
This is deliberate to keep the pay up and to keep the cost of edyookashunizing these people high.
Nuke the whole system from oribt. It's the only way to be sure.
3. Rising taxes as the Central State responds to unlimited demands by citizens for more services (education, healthcare, etc.) and economic security (pensions, welfare).
WHO is demanding more 'services?' Seems to me the gubbamint invents that shit faster and on a grander scale than any welfare trash demand it.
Quote: Wallerstein identifies three long-term forces that are undermining capitalism's key function, the accumulation of more capital:
1. Urbanization, which has increased the cost of labor.
2. Externalized costs (dumping private waste into the Commons, environmental damage and depletion, etc.) are finally having to be paid.
3. Rising taxes as the Central State responds to unlimited demands by citizens for more services (education, healthcare, etc.) and economic security (pensions, welfare).
Capitalism's key function is the creation of wealth. Accumulation of capital (i.e. accumulation of wealth) is a socialist endeavor and in the extreme form, communism. Quite clearly "dumping private waste into the Commons, environmental damage and depletion, etc." is transfer-of-wealth that is also socialistic. Not apparent how "urbanization" increases the cost of labor or even if it's relevant to defining capitalism. However inefficient the Central State might be in responding to unlimited demands by citizens, the demands are something not met in the socialistic/communistic dumping of waste, environmental damage and depletion of the Commons. Waste is grist for yet another process of creating wealth achievable through technology. Damage is inefficient process. Depletion is unplanned outcomes.
Well technology always creates opportunity for career but yes it do take some times for the process. so it's the patiences of individual to keep it up to date and grab the opportunity when it get. So it always someone or someting that can make it happen and these automotive technologies are a boon for us in all the way that gives a safe drive on road.