
Economists Suggest Silicon Valley Startups Aren’t Really Creating Many Jobs - Libertatea
http://recode.net/2015/12/07/economists-suggest-silicon-valley-startups-arent-really-creating-many-jobs/
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justin2004
“The nature of these companies is what’s changed.”

Jaron Lanier calls this nature "sirenic." Shrinking markets is the business of
Siren Servers.

We mostly notice how these companies seem to do more with less (with
automation) but Lanier argues that the shrinking of markets is more closely
associated with incomplete accounting of value (and its origination).

Think about all the users of "fake free" systems contributing value without
formal compensation.

It's not simply that automation is obviating human effort but rather humans
are contributing value (e.g. by being monitored and tallied or uploading
creative work) and absorbing most of the risk of the venture.

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rorykoehler
I thought this was obvious. Why else would they be worth so much unless they
were more efficient than traditionally structured firms. Silicon Valley got
rich through automation of previously manual processes. Automation is about
removing people from previously man-hour heavy processes. Less man hours
equals less jobs. Productivity is now almost totally decoupled from man hours.
It's not rocket science.

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Scarblac
That's a shame isn't it, if all they do is do existing things more
efficiently?

One would hope there would be more startups that made entirely new things
possible, things we couldn't do before.

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rorykoehler
We stand on the shoulders of giants. Everything is a iteration of something
old. Sometimes a pretty big one, which we call innovation. That's not to say
that they aren't on an order of magnitude better and more efficient than
previously but that's exactly the point. We do way more with way less these
days. I do believe new industries will emerge from the ashes of old ones but
there will inevitably be a transition period where things will not work very
well for those not working on the cutting edge of tech.

