
Welcome To Extremistan, Please Check Your Career At The Door - BIackSwan
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/
======
JamesArgo
One of my first comments on this site pertained to this issue:

>As computers begin to become capable of more and more jobs, the demand for
human labor will decline. Automation is qualitatively different from
mechanization. Education is a thin gilding on an impressive but non-optimal
brain architecture. To say education will cure the ills of automation is a bit
like saying fitness training could have saved workhorses from obsolescence.
Workers of the world, you're fucked.

My opinions haven't changed much since. Though years off yet, we are heading
into uncharted territory here. Sure, the labouring classes survived, actually
thrived, after the economic obsolescence of their muscles; I doubt we will do
well after the obsolescence of our minds. If a body's worth a penny a day, a
mind a nickel, and it costs a quarter to eat - we will not survive even if the
lump of labour fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy. It's entirely possible to
starve to death while never once wanting for work.

~~~
rphlx
> It's entirely possible to starve to death while never once wanting for work.

Perhaps on an individual basis, but not in large groups. An economic and
social system in which most humans are starving will rapidly collapse, and be
replaced - if necessary, through violent revolution - by a system that at
least keeps most people fed, assuming there's still sufficient real resources
to produce and transport the food.

Food stamps exist not out of genuine compassion for the poor, but because
those in power know very well what happens when starvation becomes too
widespread.

~~~
gerbal
>Food stamps exist not out of genuine compassion for the poor, but because
those in power know very well what happens when starvation becomes too
widespread.

someone needs to cc that memo to the right wing American Oligarchs.

~~~
imaginenore
Right wingers solution to unemployment/poverty is exactly that - let them
starve and blame them for not being able to get a job.

~~~
zo1
"imaginenore", I see you like straw men, here is another one for you:

And on the other side of the coin, we have a legion of well-fed, opinionated
individuals who, from the comforts of their warm home, tell the poor: "You can
not help yourself, only we can help you, using the state. Don't mind me and
how I got here, that's irrelevant, what's relevant is that WE are the only
ones that can help you!" \- With the implied assumption that the poor are
pathetic and can't help themselves.

~~~
imaginenore
How is it a straw man if your leadership announced the intention to make deeps
cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program?

~~~
zo1
Instead of picking just one, here's an entire google search term for you to
ponder over:
[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=illegal+to+feed+homeless](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=illegal+to+feed+homeless)

------
rthomas6
>It seems likely that, considered as a whole, Extremistan is far more creative
and productive than Mediocristan. But while its economic pie may be much
larger, it is also much more unequally distributed.

Consider what would happen if the pie was 1000 times larger and was
distributed 100 times more unequally than now. Is this ideal? No, but the
worst off would be 10 times better off than right now. This is something very
important to consider when we think about increasing industrial efficiency. To
bring out an old argument, the freezer eliminated the entire ice industry and
put lots of people out of jobs, yet everyone was better off for it.

~~~
lukasm
Exactly. Inequality is not a problem - poverty is. I'd much rather be in a
place where I'm a millionaire between trillionaires, than having little and be
between millionaires.

Sadly, envy and need for the social status are very strong.

~~~
withdavidli
Missing how economics work here. Prices will be adjusted to what the market
can bare. There's still a 10^3 difference. That's being work like being worth
$1,000 when everyone else is a millionaire.

Edit: sorry, was calculating for billion. it's a 10^6 difference. $1 vs
$1,000,000

~~~
Dewie
I think people are talking about wealth here, not money per se. If everyone
can afford at least two houses, three boat and 12 cabins, they are certainly
more well-off than most people are today, no matter what relative money-wealth
is being discussed.

~~~
withdavidli
Yes, but in that vein we can say that even America's poorest are better off
than some middle class in other countries, or even the wealthy over 100 years
ago.

It's hard to objectively define "well-off" because psychologically people will
be comparing what they have and don't have to those around them. So if a
person owned 2 houses , 3 boats, and 12 cabins think they're well-off if
everyone around them owns double/triple what they do, or would they think they
are poor?

Just a different perspective.

Edit: Please note that my line of thought would eventually lead to which is
better? Objectively more "things" vs psychological well being (where things
are relative to what others have).

~~~
AJ007
Are America's poorest better off because of technology, or better off because
of America's dominance over the rest of the world's resources?

My suspicion is that as the developing world becomes more educated, the poor
and middle class in the US will look poorer. Some of this might be an actual
loss in standard of living as the share of global resources the US can consume
drops. This change, induced by technology (mass education) is going to be a
bigger issue for the developed world sooner than computers-taking-away-jobs
will be.

Presumably more educated people are less likely to give away their resources
for cheap (or in corrupt countries for free), less likely to work 16 hours a
day in a factory, to accept mass pollution as a by product of manufacturing,
etc. That is just an assumption, it could be wrong and education will have no
impact on these things.

The psychological aspect -- comparatively, might have more to do with whether
an individual thinks their condition is improving as opposed to the distance
between individuals.

If you generally believe what Ray Kurzweil predicts, none of this will really
matter in 2100 as we could be well in to the post-human era. Humans, in their
natural form, could very well be relics in a zoo.

~~~
Dewie
> Are America's poorest better off because of technology, or better off
> because of America's dominance over the rest of the world's resources?

The rest of the First World seems to be doing OK, even without anything
remotely close to the US military. Though I would be surprised if developed
countries didn't continually try to suppress underdeveloped nations, maybe not
by military force but by market forces etc.

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mwsherman
If (e.g.) doctors are automated out of a job, it will mean that health care
has become dramatically cheaper, which is a widely distributed rise in living
standards. This is more egalitarian, not less.

Thousands of doctors lose and millions of humans win.

Remember, economics is not about the distribution of money, it’s about the
distribution of valuable things. In this example, health care is the valuable
thing and its distribution seems greatly improved.

~~~
Spooky23
Not necessarily.

It means that a combination of machines and lesser trained people will be
providing care. If your condition falls outside of the protocols said robots
and PAs can treat, hope there is an expensive doctor around!

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informatimago
One problem that would occur if only ellite jobs remain, is how new ellite
workers will emerge?

If mundate programming is performed automatically, how can anybody become an
ellite programmer?

If mundate laywering is performed automatically, how can anybody become an
ellite laywer?

~~~
cookiecaper
The issue in the article isn't that there will be novice programmers or
lawyers, it's that if you can even become a _novice_ programmer or lawyer,
you're supposedly already in "Extremistan". The premise is well-contained in
the quote early on that "most people are like horses" and can't operate in
fields that require primarily intellectual labor.

I'm not sure that I agree with this premise, but it means that it's not an
issue of crowding out newbies, just an expression of the popular sentiment
that "[insert highly-paid professional position here] are really, really
smart" and that to even attempt to become a highly-paid professional x is out
of the reach of most people.

~~~
rezendi
I'm afraid you have misinterpreted. (OP here.)

------
wallflower
> The best companies hire the best engineers, who, by definition, are a
> minority; the best engineers work at, or launch, the best companies;
> technology increasingly allows the best companies to dominate their markets
> like never before. Extrapolate that twenty years into the future, and what
> do you get?

I have to disagree with this statement. Even if the best engineers were all
working at a small number of companies, you still don't need the best (global
maximum). It is hard to be the best. And that is why the consulting product of
companies like Thoughtworks have suffered as they've scaled (they can't
continue their rate of hiring at the same quality they had in the previous
past).

Yes, there is a power law distribution in programming ability because you
cannot rate programming ability on a 1-10 scale (it is an exponential scale).
Where 10 is Linus Torvalds, Bill Joy and 1 is someone who does not appear to
harbor any thoughts of logical thought.

If you work to become better and what you do - and contribute back to the
ecosystem with open-source code, talking at user groups small (local user
groups) and large (conferences), teaching the next generation (from mentoring
junior developers to teaching), I believe you will receive more than monetary
compensation, you will be helping to move the field and community forward.

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hoggle
So, was Marx right all along?

~~~
probablyfiction
No, he wasn't. Marx was about the state owning the means of production, and
that isn't the case here. We have a handful of super rich people (oligarchs)
owning the means of production.

~~~
paradoja
Marx was about something else, mostly. You should probably read a bit more of
(or on) him.

------
mcv
I see a lot of this lately. The problem isn't the automation, it's that the
benefits of that automation primarily benefits the wealthy few. We need a
different economic system where those benefits are more equally spread around.

Basic Income + a (progressive?) wealth tax, for example.

------
rphlx
The predicted outcome is probably correct but technology is not its root
cause. The primary cause is the animal preference for hierarchical social
structures where the top have the largest possible amount of power and control
over those at the bottom. These structures have existed throughout human
history - certainly long before the industrial revolution.

Modern communications technologies are simply increasing their reach and
extent.

------
Dewie
Maybe it will turn out that the big middle class of the latter 20th century
was just an intermediate state between the exploited workers during the early
Industrial Revolution, and the mediocre-humans obsolescence of the later 21th
century.

