
What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around? - petethomas
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/07/21/what-if-there-just-arent-enough-jobs-to-go-around/
======
maxharris
First, there are plenty of jobs, but not enough people that have decided to
develop themselves enough to have the skills to do them. For example (a real
life one, unfortunately for me): I need a biopsy of a mass near my heart, but
the current waiting time for this procedure here in Seattle (at both major
hospitals) is two months.

What we do have is plenty of regulations that constrain the supply of
physicians, services, medical supplies, insurance, and everything else needed
to perform operations. It is one of the most _un_ -free markets in America,
with predictably disastrous results. Sure, those laws prevent _a few_ people
from being duped by charlatans, but they also prevent _people like me_ \- who
are willing to sit on the phone for hours and days, and willing to do research
for weeks on end - the possibility of a longer life.

\--

There are also plenty of regulations that are limiting career mobility, both
in medicine and in other fields. An example of this is that anything that
makes it hard for employers to fire people also makes it more costly for them
to hire different people (because that new person is an unknown, and therefore
risky, as the employer has to hold onto them longer, even if they aren't
willing/able to produce.)

\--

EDIT: I'd like to add that the idea that some people are destined to be
doctors (and some aren't) is completely wrong. I was a premed in college
(molecular biology degree, worked in a research lab on campus full-time for
two years after graduating), and I gave up on the MD track after talking to a
few younger doctors. They all told me to quit while I could because they were
all in 200k+ in debt, and couldn't switch out of their careers because of it,
_and_ they were miserable (tons of useless paperwork, not a lot of progress
either in research or with patients). So I went into software, where you don't
have to convince a committee to give you permission to make a new app.

~~~
david927
That's like saying there's plenty of room for musicians if you're Mozart.

The amount of investment required to develop yourself for a target field has
grown astronomically, but that's been coupled with a push down in wages. I
know lawyers who spent a fortune for their degree, passed the Bar, and make
barely more than minimum wage.

Regulation isn't causing this; automation is causing this.

~~~
maxharris
There is no robot that can knock me out (safely so that I wake up when
everything is done), snake a thing down my windpipe, poke through the exact
right spot in my bronchial tube and into my mediastinum (a name for the bag
that my heart), and retrieve a chunk of whatever surrounds my aorta.

But here I wait, while people capable of doing this (or at least capable of
learning how to do it - and that's _a lot_ of people) also wait. That's
regulation.

~~~
david927
My view is that the times when Capitalism has been a long leash it ends up
being wildly destructive. I love fire for cooking, forest fires not so much. I
certainly don't think that the reason we don't have more jobs in America is
that businesses are so hard pressed with labor laws. I just don't see that.

What I have seen, over and over again, are that employers are realizing that
they're now in the cat seat and become nothing less than abusive, deeply
abusive, to their employees as a result. Once they see how many people apply
for new openings and realize how unlikely it is that current employees will
quit in this environment, they become mini-dictators. It's an interesting
phenomenon.

All that aside, I do wish you good health and hope that you can get the
treatment you need soon.

~~~
maxharris
_All that aside, I do wish you good health and hope that you can get the
treatment you need soon._

Thank you (and I mean that quite sincerely).

Practically speaking, though, _how_ will I get treatment? Intervention from
the government is the only reason I'm waiting for care right now. (See my
comments in other posts on this thread - I establish this in great detail if
you consider my posts together.)

------
criley2
Is the "infinite work hypothesis" finally ending??

The answer to "what happens to workers being replaced" has always been
"they'll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create
other new jobs", what I've seen called the "infinite work hypothesis" where
there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not
demand.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
No, the problem is misallocation of labor.

There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level,
from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around
the world, to community-level support work.

It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but
the most difficult design and management elements.

They're not done because the metrics of Wall St deem them "not profitable" \-
which means traders can't make quick gains out of them.

Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can
profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to
strategise an economy.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can
> profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to
> strategise an economy.

And yet, this turns out to be the most succesful strategy civilization has
used so far.

~~~
jfoutz
Well... we don't have a real long track record and past performance isn't
indicative of future gains. I agree with you, but we are kind of speeding into
the unknown. Which like any adventure is risky.

Hunter gatherers were real stable for a long long time. One person, or even a
fairly large group of people couldn't cause much trouble.

We're moving much faster, which again i think is cool, but it's much riskier.
An obvious one, there are enough nuclear weapons to wipe out humans in a few
hours. I don't think nuclear war is coming any time soon, but we've only been
at this 'high tech' stuff (i'm picking agriculture, neolithic revolution) for
about 10,000 years. Wealth of nations is around 250 years old - traders are
much older of course, but 10k seems like a good upper bound. Can we avoid
nuking ourselves for 10k years? I sure hope so.

Anyway, there are existential risks, and other, less dangerous things like
world wars that have the potential to be much worse than a guy with a club.

Also, there's not much incentive in the system to not wreck the system. For,
example "The big short" is a fun movie. "Too Big To Fail" is a much more in
depth look.

I guess, my point is, That strategy is a powerful tool. It's not a pat answer
to all the world's woes. It's wise to treat it like any other dangerous piece
of equipment. Be aware, be alert. It's ok to take a little more time with
power tools to avoid cutting off an arm.

~~~
eric_h
> It's ok to take a little more time with power tools to avoid cutting off an
> arm.

This is what I find interesting about the Amish. They are not, as I understand
things, truly anti-technology, they are anti-adopting every new thing as soon
as it's available.

I wonder if they're the ones who are going to have the last laugh if/when this
house of cards tumbles (although in all likelihood it'll probably be the
Sentinelese).

~~~
dredmorbius
I like to think of them as the trailing edge of the late-adopter curve.

They consider the _social_ and _lifestyle_ impacts of technology. Which can be
quite profound.

There are also differences among Amish settlements, with the Swartzentruber
Amish, of Michigan, the most conservative: [http://amishamerica.com/who-are-
the-swartzentruber-amish/](http://amishamerica.com/who-are-the-swartzentruber-
amish/)

(The site generally has a great deal of information on the Amish.)

------
wrong_variable
People forget History.

The two times where labor was more valuable than capital.

1 | After the black death in Europe

2 | After the second world war

Most of history's default was the gilded age, the roman empire survived for
600[1] years with having worse inequality than in the modern times.

Usually the only way to reverse the trend is by a large scale elimination of
significant portion of young people.

[1] EDIT : correction

~~~
krapht
Or, we simply wait out the next few centuries. Reproduction rates in many
developed countries have dipped below replacement. Maybe the total world
population will decrease in our time.

~~~
mc32
Except now people expect retirement and pensions... Not something people back
then counted on when populations of people working declined...

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
This is the problem with our current first world financial system, it is
predicated on constant growth. Even the slightest hiccup in growth leads to
serious consequences for the over leveraged and make no mistake most of our
safety nets are over leveraged and dependent upon unrealistic gains when faced
with a stagnant to declining population.

The Great Aging is underway, the EU last year had more deaths than births and
will for the foreseable future, Japan has been there for a little while and
China's working age population is already in decline. Africa, the Middle
East/India and parts of South America are the only places experiencing actual
population growth, when immigration is not taken into the equation. With
Demographics and Automation deflation is the likely outcome. The Central Banks
are trying all they can to prevent this from happening in the near term by
spending Trillions of dollars to prop up economies and drive interest rates
lower to eek out some inflation. They seem not to care whether growth is
actual demand growth or simply a mirage in terms of inflation. The central
banks are doubling down their efforts and will be even more accomodative in
the next few years when the growth they continue to state is right around the
corner never materializes.

Unfortunately I do not see a way out of this without the developing nations
taking care of themselves.

------
njharman
Honest question: Is it not widely accepted that

1) Eventually, and probably pretty soon (within 100years), that there
obviously won't be jobs for everyone. Automation, progress(efficiency gains)
and increasing population makes it inevitable.

2) That a general "goal" of society is do away with jobs. In any traditional
sense. To me we've been approaching that ever since agriculture provided
ability to support specialists (those who don't spend time gathering/producing
the food/resources they need). Such as scientists, artists and soldiers. The
jobs keep moving "up" the ladder (away from production). Previous low-rung
jobs get reduced in number by efficiency or replaced via automation. The end
of this trend is that all basic needs are met by 0 to a tiny fraction of a
percent of human labor and rest are all free to pursue specialist activities
such as science, art, and killing each other.

~~~
winstonewert
Aren't specialist activities like science, art, and killing each other jobs?

~~~
njharman
Job is kind of a hard definition. Being compensated seems to be the main
difference between job and; hobby, charity (working for "free").
Entrepreneurial endeavors lie in a muddy middle ground.

With increasing efficiency and automation "needs" will become increasingly
cheap, approahing free. I believe without needing compensation just to
survive, many will chose not to have jobs. They may, and probably will, still
work.

------
arcanus
The TL;DR: "A new paper says the problem is not supply. It’s that firms just
don’t have enough demand for labor."

Here is a press release from the folks who authored the study:
[http://rooseveltinstitute.org/demand_side_dynamism/](http://rooseveltinstitute.org/demand_side_dynamism/)

And here is the paper (warning: pdf): [http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/Dec...](http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/Declining-Entrepreneurship-Labor-Mobility-and-
Business-Dynamism-A-Demand-Side-Approach.pdf)

------
chrisbennet
For anyone who has a theory that involves making new jobs and retraining
people, consider these cases:

A) 50 something factory worker whos job along with the other 100 folks he
works with, have been eliminated by automation or some other sort of
efficiency.

B) 30 something software engineer who's field (except for research) has been
eliminated by AI.

"A" is something most of us have the luxury of had waving away with "retrain
them to be surgeons and leave their homes behind and move to someplace else
for work".

"B" hasn't happened (yet) but what would _you_ do if it does? It's not so easy
easy to dismiss is it?

Lack of work is a _structural_ problem. The landed gentry of our time don't
even need the surfs anymore so it's even worse in some ways.

~~~
bagacrap
Well if AI can replace software engineers then it can probably obviate many
other jobs as well, meaning there would have to be greater societal
restructuring than just some out of work engineers finding new careers. If you
are 30 and you're worried your job will be automated away before you retire
(but before universal income), perhaps you should get a head start by learning
new skills that are harder to automate.

I wonder what your alternate theory that fixes the unemployed 50 something
factory worker is? Legislation that ensures job security? Pension? Severance?

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Pension? Severance?

Yes, funded by a tax on automation revenues.

------
pixie_
I feel like ancient civilizations a lot of times turned to art once their
societies leveled off. Large structures, pots, roads, figures, clothing, etc..
I believe art is unlimited resource and we could have an economy running
purely on art. Isn't a large portion of the economy already running off of
art? Movies, games, tv, media, events. I actually feel there even a lack of
art right now in terms of food, furniture, products in general. I'd pay for
objects with more thought put into them, but there isn't enough people today
to dedicate their time to art. With all these menial jobs taken up, maybe even
more people will turn to custom crafts and trades. Where what I'm paying for
is the creativity and uniqueness of the objects I'm buying.

~~~
kiba
I doubt that's sustainable, especially given that you have people like
'starving artists', 'starving writers', and of course game programmers who
throw themselves at projects working eighty hours per week.

Anything that people likes to do tended to be oversupplied.

~~~
chris_va
At the moment.

In a world with no demand for labor, there is an implication that the cost of
goods would be dominated only by supply scarcity. For commodity goods, they
would essentially be free.

200 years ago a real shirt would cost you ~$2000 in today's currency (land ->
sheep -> farmers -> spinsters -> dyers -> weavers -> tailors). Now a decent
shirt costs $40.

Eventually artsists won't starve, even with minimal income. Ideally,
hopefully.

------
Animats
Both the article and the paper aren't very good; they're trying to infer too
much from macroeconomic data. They implicitly assume that labor is more
fungible than it is.

Reality is that we just don't need that many people to make all the stuff. US
manufacturing output is at an all-time high (output has recovered completely
from the 2008 recession). US manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. Imports
are 26% of US consumer good consumption.

What are people doing? Here's US employment by sector.[1] It's worth spending
some time with this table. Incidentally, "information services" dropped from
2.2% in 2010 to 1.8% in 2014, and is still dropping. No, going into computing
isn't a good move. The only area with big growth is "health and social
assistance", which reflects an aging population. (Mining was up from
2010-2014, but that reflects the oil and gas boom. That's already collapsed.)

That's the reality.

[1]
[http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm](http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm)

------
epa
The United States has a very skewed view towards work and individual employee
production. At some point in time, cultures must shift to realize that two
individuals at 40 hours per week can do the work that one individual at 70
hours per week is performing. The key here is incremental corporate profits
must shift from shareholders to employees through aggregate increases in
employee costs (2x the employees, half the hours for each). Realistically -
this problem is a matter of greed at the business owner level.

------
Gravityloss
Are there lots of jobs that produce value above minimum wage? It's a tough
question...

There are ways to solve some issues in a low barrier for entry style. Finland
has mandatory return payment on all bottles and cans sold. This has resulted
in a cottage industry of bottle collectors who target public outdoor events
and places where people hang out.

So those people perform a valuable service and nobody needs to really
coordinate anything.

But it would be a very bad way to depend on for livelihood. Somehow these
worlds need to meet...

------
mathattack
It seems like there are 2 things that can be done:

1) Make it easier for new firms of all kinds to open and create job. (Less
occupational licensing requirements, etc)

2) Reduce the cost/burden of employment. (If someone has the choice to hire an
employee in SF and Texas, they'll choose Texas since the laws are more
business-friendly)

~~~
emodendroket
#2 seems more like a way to shift jobs around from one place to another than
to create them

~~~
bduerst
We did a scenario planning project where you put together human trends and
factors to try and predict several versions of the future 10 years from now.

In one of our scenarios was a future where humans bounced from job to job
(high turnover, low unemployment) and skills-based education was cheap and
easily accessible. Some of the factors leading to this was the
"established"-education bubble bursting, increased automation, and less desire
for consumers to own assets while still having access to them (variable
sharing economy).

A #2 type of future might not be that unrealistic.

~~~
emodendroket
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at but a race to the bottom among
municipalities and states to try and attract businesses is already happening
and has been for some time. My point is that this won't actually solve the
problem posed so much as redirect it somewhere else.

~~~
bduerst
#2 solution isn't about moving existing jobs, it's about lowering the barrier
to entry for new jobs, since demand isn't fixed and variability will increase.

You will always have tug-of-wars between municipalities (e.g. Applebee's HQ
between Missouri and Kansas) - but businesses in states or munis with a low
barrier to entry for new jobs can fulfill and capitalize on variable demand
faster.

------
adamnemecek
Not an economist but my thoughts on the topic are that society can make
changes to accommodate this. This isn't a catastrophe, we just need to
prepare. I think this needs to/will happen:

* labour will change from people having only one main skill to having multiple skills ("jack of all trades, master of none" will become "jack of all trades, master of fewer")

* this will be made possible by the fact that technology makes is easier to (re)educate yourself and also to tailor education exactly for your needs (c.f. university course unbundling, what if you could take different courses at different school based on which fits your needs (kinda like, mooc, yeah, I know mooc aren't the runaway success we'd hope for but give it time))

* we probably will not get rid of the issue that you have to pick a skill(s) when you are fairly young and you don't know if those skill will still be useful when you have to leave the workforce

* basically, people will have to learn a couple of skills pretty well and hope that the future jobs will require a particular combination of your skills (and if you are lacking some skills, you should be able to pick up new skills easily)

* it will become standard for people to keep learning

* i also think that the "default" unemployment rate might rise but unemployment will be more temporary for the single unemployed people

My view as someone who strongly believes in technological progress, I would
guess I would summarize my advice as "you have to know how to leverage
technology not to be outpaced by technology" but this isn't exactly anything
novel.

~~~
bduerst
The trend here is that humans will become ubiquitous learning machines, valued
for their ability to fulfill variable demand.

Automation works well through economies of scale to fulfill large, steady
amounts of demand. A.I. works well when there is a lot of existing data or
logged activity to train on. For new, variable, or niche demand markets,
Humans will be unique in that they can fill the demand faster than A.I. or
robotics.

~~~
adamnemecek
Yeah, and your argument is a lot more concise. Have you read anything on the
topic?

~~~
bduerst
No. I've worked some people to try and come up with product ideas to fit this
type of future, but it's at least 5-10 years off, and dependent on factors
like the current title-based education system being replaced by something more
skills-based.

~~~
adamnemecek
Who are the people working on this?

~~~
bduerst
It was just with some colleagues.

------
doorty
Side note: If college education was "free," it might encourage faster re-
skilling and more "profitable" to society.

~~~
topspin
The operative word there is "might." Greece has free education. Their educated
youth are fleeing as fast as they can. Not very profitable. All that free
education also somehow failed to prevent their chronic debt crisis and general
decline. It's almost as if economic prosperity is more involved than just
distributing free stuff........

------
emodendroket
Then the government should either directly employ people or else provide them
with an income, or some combination of these.

~~~
noarchy
>Then the government should either directly employ people or else provide them
with an income, or some combination of these.

It is interesting to see that, in the early 21st century, communism is
becoming palatable again.

Could this be due to all of the old communist states either ceasing to exist
or (for instance, the case of China) changing into something quite unlike
their former sleves? In short, did we forget about those states?

~~~
emodendroket
Unless the US went communist in the 1930s, government employment, even for the
express purpose of creating jobs, wouldn't constitute communism.

Besides that, if there is really not enough demand for workers, and there is
never going to be, the alternative would seem to be a permanently unemployed
underclass.

~~~
sedachv
> Unless the US went communist in the 1930s, government employment, even for
> the express purpose of creating jobs, wouldn't constitute communism.

I came across this interview recently:

HG Wells:

> My visit to the United States excited my mind. The old financial world is
> collapsing; the economic life of the country is being reorganised on new
> lines.

> Lenin said: “We must learn to do business,” learn this from the capitalists.
> Today the capitalists have to learn from you, to grasp the spirit of
> Socialism. It seems to me that what is taking place in the United States is
> a profound reorganisation, the creation of planned, that is, Socialist,
> economy. You and Roosevelt begin from two different starting points. But is
> there not a relation in ideas, a kinship of ideas, between Moscow and
> Washington?

> In Washington I was struck by the same thing I see going on here; they are
> building offices, they are creating a number of state regulation bodies,
> they are organising a long-needed civil service. Their need, like yours, is
> directive ability.

Stalin:

> The United States is pursuing a different aim from that which we are
> pursuing in the USSR. The aim which the Americans are pursuing arose out of
> the economic troubles, out of the economic crisis. The Americans want to rid
> themselves of the crisis on the basis of private capitalist activity,
> without changing the economic basis. They are trying to reduce to a minimum
> the ruin, the losses caused by the existing economic system.

> Here, however, as you know, in place of the old, destroyed economic basis,
> an entirely different, a new economic basis has been created. Even if the
> Americans you mention partly achieve their aim, ie, reduce these losses to a
> minimum, they will not destroy the roots of the anarchy which is inherent in
> the existing capitalist system. They are preserving the economic system
> which must inevitably lead, and cannot but lead, to anarchy in production.
> Thus, at best, it will be a matter, not of the reorganisation of society,
> not of abolishing the old social system which gives rise to anarchy and
> crises, but of restricting certain of its excesses. Subjectively, perhaps,
> these Americans think they are reorganising society; objectively, however,
> they are preserving the present basis of society. That is why, objectively,
> there will be no reorganisation of society.

> Nor will there be planned economy. What is planned economy? What are some of
> its attributes? Planned economy tries to abolish unemployment. Let us
> suppose it is possible, while preserving the capitalist system, to reduce
> unemployment to a certain minimum. But surely, no capitalist would ever
> agree to the complete abolition of unemployment, to the abolition of the
> reserve army of unemployed, the purpose of which is to bring pressure on the
> labour market, to ensure a supply of cheap labour. You will never compel a
> capitalist to incur loss to himself and agree to a lower rate of profit for
> the sake of satisfying the needs of the people.

[http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/h-g-wells-it-
se...](http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/h-g-wells-it-seems-me-i-
am-more-left-you-mr-stalin)

~~~
emodendroket
Well, clearly that is not what happened.

------
merpnderp
In the mid-west we have programmers 2 years out of school making $100k in
places where the CPI is 90. What if we just have a massive misallocation of
resources and people should be learning how to program, nurse, become doctors,
plumbers, HVAC, or all the other jobs that pay incredibly well?

~~~
st3v3r
Training for those jobs takes time and resources. Not everyone who has lost
their existing job will be able to invest those things at possibly getting
another one.

Also, if you send a bunch of people into those fields, the cost of labor will
drop, and they won't pay incredibly well for long.

------
emblem21
At Emblem 21, we analyze not just the time, material, and energy costs for
economic activity, but also the complexity components as well. Every economic
activity consumes and yields complexity. This complexity is difficult to
measure given its contextual nature, but it is encoded into the pricing of the
transaction itself.

Currently working on very advanced neural networks to detect the edges of this
contextual complexity.

Autonomous labor doesn't destroy jobs because the autonomous labor is also a
consumer of complexity, energy, and time.

[https://s32.postimg.org/pjzgj39wz/Labor.png](https://s32.postimg.org/pjzgj39wz/Labor.png)

~~~
zghst
Your site is down. I find it a bit worrisome, looking through your repos that
many files are blank. I would like to learn more about your company.

~~~
emblem21
Greetings. Our corporate structure is undergoing a fundamental transition
(from a software contractor to a holding company) and we're still deciding on
presentation and community outreach.

...which is to say we have plenty of researchers but no social team. :)

Our primary goal is the formation of autonomous labor by helping put the
institutional periphery into place: legal review, trade agreements, economic
policy study, political and memetic steering, and financial innovation. Robots
just won't automatically take all of the jobs. Humans are very good at cutting
their own throats collectively and we very much account for this.

We have three private tech projects at this time that cover the UAV and
theoretical mathematics space.

------
ben_jones
I feel like the "infinite jobs" idea is too foundational to American culture
to be completely removed. The very definition of "prosperity" includes having
a job. The definition of "success" includes having a job.

~~~
WorldMaker
I've described it before about how deeply American culture has a "work
problem" and that it is as much a religion as anything. We don't call it a
"Protestant Work Ethic" without reason, and lot of what you hear people say
about jobs and work these days wouldn't sound much different from what the
Puritans (who get credit as some of the earliest American colonists) preached
as core to their way of life.

To some extent as the culture has gotten less dogmatic in some areas, the
dogma of work has only entrenched further. (To many people the big corporate
passive aggressive notes from belly of HR about the "good of the company" are
the closest to people's weekly and/or daily sermons that they'll see.)

There are a lot of people, pundits especially, that see work as a moral
obligation and the lack of work as a sin. I think it will take as much as
anything else a new wave of religious thinking to move American culture past
some hangups into a future with fewer "jobs" available. Or a redefinition of a
lot more hobbies and crafts as "jobs" and "work". (I'm not sure which would be
easier. There are stigmas in both directions.)

~~~
keyboardhitter
> To many people the big corporate passive aggressive notes from belly of HR
> about the "good of the company" are the closest to people's weekly and/or
> daily sermons that they'll see.

Oh wow. I've not thought about that culture in such a light. Perhaps that's
why I have always found those "sermons" a bit creepy? I think you have a great
point here.

> Or a redefinition of a lot more hobbies and crafts as "jobs" and "work".
> (I'm not sure which would be easier. There are stigmas in both directions.)

100% agreed. I know quite a few artists who are branching off into freelance,
using the internet to their disposal (patreon, gofundme, etsy, etc.) who have
been chided for not "having a real job" or looked down upon for choosing to
have a part time "real job" to make time for their craft / art. Yet, they make
respectable income. This phenomenon for artists in general may not be new, of
course. I just like to imagine how the internet may help change or eradicate
the stigma of it not being "good enough".

When my own brother decided to go down this path, I was a bit concerned, and
the truth is most of my positions as a sysadmin until recently were _very_
corporate. I was appalled at myself for even thinking things like, "But this
isn't going to build a career for him. Why is he even taking this chance? This
seems stupid of him."

I'm now wondering if my exposure to this 'corporate dogma' may be related.

------
ryanmarsh
White collar jobs get a little harder to find and people start freaking out.
Meanwhile my clients import skilled workers by the plane load.

We're a long way from autonomous strawberry pickers and housekeepers.

I don't doubt that eventually much of the economy will have no need of human
labor but we're quite a ways from that.

I mean I get it. I'm replacing some good white collar jobs with software right
now. But "jobs"? Nah. There's lots of those.

------
jseliger
The rise of automated looms and spinning jennies clearly mean that the farms
aren't going to be sufficient to provide employment for people, who are in
turn going to turn to vice and sloth. And, as we know, when the old way is
exhausted there is no new way forward. I propose that we be suspicious of the
looms and especially of the people who make the looms.

~~~
clock_tower
The Luddites weren't wrong, but they were about 200 years too early.
Technological unemployment is a thing now...

------
dsylexicus
jobs are the _cost_ of satisfying human economic desires. we want to minimise
costs, not increase them.since nobody knows what sort of jobs will exist even
5 years from today, there is no point in speculating and wringing hands. who
saw the rise of zumba dance teachers? theres atleast a million of them today
and they dont need high education or be employed in silicon valley. did
president clinton with all the information available at his disposal have the
foresight to plan for an app economy for his citizens or imagine how internet
search would be something different than what lycos offered?

~~~
Falkon1313
>jobs are the cost of satisfying human economic desires. we want to minimise
costs

That's an excellent perspective. There's a major barrier though.

Even if we produce enough that everyone could satisfy their desires and then
some with a cost of only 34 minutes work per week (<2% of a 40 hour work week
- parallel to the fact that less than 2% of the population now works in
agriculture to produce more than twice enough to feed everyone), we would
still demand that everyone must work at least a bare minimum of 40 hours or
else they don't deserve to live. That's our culture.

But there would be no demand for that work. So what would the people do? And
more importantly, why do we demand that they do it? That becomes a
philosophical question, not an economic one.

------
Mz
What if The Future is what we choose to create rather than some inevitable
road we cannot get off of because of REASONS?

------
jwatte
It's impossible that there is simply nothing in the world that needs doing.
Exactly how to make sure that things that need doing, are done, is what
economics and politics are about, but any "job shortage" is because of
inefficiencies along some spectrum, not actually ever a natural state.

~~~
saintgimp
The word "job" as used here is a technical term. It doesn't mean "anything
that needs doing". It doesn't mean "anything I find enjoyable or worthwhile".
It actually means "activities that someone will pay me money to do because I
can do it better, faster, or cheaper than anyone or anything else, including
machines." (For the purpose of this discussion there's also an implied meaning
of "someone will pay me _enough_ money for those activities that I can
purchase adequate food, shelter, and discretionary items so as to have a
reasonably comfortable existence.") That set of activities appears to have
peaked in per-capita terms and is probably on a decline which will accelerate
rapidly in the future.

So yeah, you're right that this problem is inherently an economic problem, not
an "I don't know what to do with all my free time" problem. That doesn't make
the problem any less urgent or less difficult to solve. It's actually
incredibly difficult to solve because it'll involve rejiggering our social
contracts, which will probably take several generations to complete.

------
Mendenhall
I think many of these articles about jobs or lack there of and solving the
problem dont take into account human nature. It is much more complex than just
"economy".

------
meira
What if? You create them, of course. The f..king main reason that exists
something called economy and polítics is to solve people's living problems,
not to create stupid zillionaries.

------
Apocryphon
Has anyone read Player Piano by Vonnegut recently?

