
Confessions of A Job Destroyer - lkrubner
http://decomplecting.org/blog/2013/03/11/confessions-of-a-job-destroyer/
======
columbo
The first job I automated out of existence was by incorporating a "print all"
button into an existing application. We had to hire someone, full time, to
open each document and print it.

I don't think anyone really knows what the future will look like in thirty
years. All we know is the genie is out of the bottle and nobody is going to
put it back in.

Maybe we're headed for a dystopic corporatist future where everything is
monitored, calculated and automated to such a degree that people are simply
told what to buy at regular intervals. Mass acceptance will lead to computers
dictating through goal posting, achievements and leaderboards the vast
majority of each individual's lives.

Maybe we'll simply have 80% unemployment; towering concrete skyscrapers that
would rival the soviet era Paneláks with automated trains sending food in and
taking waste out. Like a human powered coal plant. The vast numbers of
unemployed will churn daily riots and huge sections of the country will be
under military control. There will be an unspoken but utterly clear separation
between the decision makers and those in the bread lines.

Maybe we'll come up with entirely new sectors in biology, space and automation
which will usher in the real space-age of humanity.

My hope: We'll make some breakthroughs in science, mathematics, medicine and
technology. New sectors will be created that nobody ever thought of, a few new
billionaires will be added to the pile, our quality of life will improve and
the threat of our complete and utter demise will have been greatly
exaggerated.

~~~
jcampbell1
> Maybe we'll simply have 80% unemployment;

We already do depending on how you look at it. 150 years ago 95% percent of
the population worked on providing basic needs, like food, shelter, clothing,
etc. In modern economies like the US, less than 3% of the population works in
agriculture. We already live in this so called dystopia where people work on
making social networks, inventing treatments for obscure diseases, or making
triple soy lattes. All of these things are pointless for survival.

The "dystopia" you describe is already here, and it is a wonderful place to
live.

~~~
waterlesscloud
What happens when automation completes all tasks more efficiently than humans?

~~~
beatpanda
At that point, it will be obvious that coming up with ever-more-difficult
tasks for the robots to complete, just for the sake of them having something
to do, would be ridiculous.

Then, time will stand still, as this 'obvious' fact becomes a mirror for human
society, in which we'll see the destruction and pain we've wrought for
basically no reason, and weep.

And hopefully, at that point, we'll use the knowledge in automation we've
gained to dramatically downsize civilization, and hopefully spend a lot more
time swimming, because by the time all this happens it will be fucking _hot_
outside most of the year.

~~~
sageikosa
> we'll use the knowledge in automation we've gained to dramatically downsize
> civilization,

I'm pretty sure that's where the kill-bots come in. And we can always make
more kill-bots.

------
simonsarris
In the idle moments of any day my brainpower eventually leads to these sort of
questions that we will have to ask ourselves about the future of societies.
(this CS + Philosophy degree I "purchased" has been a very expensive anti-
sleep aid...)

The anthropological world has gone through several ages as far as I can see
it, from an Agricultural to Industrial to Mechanized (post WWII) to Digital
(post 1990). I made up the names, but I'm sure the paradigms are obvious.

I want to make it clear that this "crisis of abundance" is not exactly a new
question. Even moving to agrarian living had growing pains. The best example
philosophically detailing this, I think, is the work by Thomas Paine called
Agrarian Justice. (that's the same Paine as Common Sense, Rights of Man, and
Age of Reason)

Agrarian Justice is a short pamphlet that I think everyone should read. It
details in simple terms how civilized society is different from those who live
off the land (such as some Native Americans of the time). Civilization clearly
makes some people much better off, but others in civilization seem to be much
worse off, condemned to lives of destitution, pollution, etc.

Land ownership and development is a clear plus, but in agrarian societies
people "lose" their natural inheritance of the land because of this ownership,
and land taxes should be levied to make up for the loss of a natural
inheritance.

In effect Paine advocates for a _guaranteed minimum income,_ way back in 1795.
That, to him, restored justice to agrarian society.

Nothing was done in 1795, and little to the same effect is being done today,
though ownership has become a lot more pronounced (we are no longer largely
farmers after all). Unfortunately, I think society today would think the idea
far more radical than those of Paine's generation, not least of which we owe
to certain political elements.

A copy of the pamphlet is hosted on - where else - the official US Social
Security website. I really do recommend you give it a read, it isn't long!

<http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html>

(If we want to discuss the pamplet itself in depth, we might want to do so on
another thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5360056>)

~~~
wwweston
> In effect Paine advocates for a guaranteed minimum income, way back in 1795.
> That, to him, restored justice to agrarian society.

Another Marxist philosopher, eh?

Forced contribution backed up by violence of the state doesn't sound like
justice to me, and is fundamentally incompatible with the liberty envisioned
by America's founding fathers. If only we'd listen to them, we'd _all_ be
better off.

Edit: my delivery is either a bit too deadpan, or HN readers have encountered
enough would-be libertarians who are completely unaware that Paine is arguably
a founding father and Marx wasn't borne until 1818 that my attempt at satire
has already been beaten by reality. I'll hope it's the former.

~~~
skyraider
Milton Friedman also advocated a universal minimum income.

The thing is, he advocates a minimum _income_ , not a minimum set of social
services. There's a huge difference in the economics between goods or services
that are (ideally) competitively purchased on an open market and good and
services that are delivered by a monopoly (whether the monopoly is in the
market or is government itself) or monopsony (in the case of some govn't
welfare programs, which can be thought of as single entities that negotiate
pricing for arrays of goods and services).

A hybrid between Milton Friedman-style minimum income and more socialist
notions of welfare is something like the US food stamps program, where you
have to spend the money on food-related goods, but where you can shop at a
larger set of providers and still deliver the benefits of competitive
purchasing to the food market.

~~~
nitrogen
I think you'd need a combination of both minimum income and minimum services
that goes beyond your food stamps example to be successful. If you only have a
minimum income, then monopoly/oligopoly providers will raise their prices to
absorb the entire minimum income. This is already happening in the form of
healthcare prices rising significantly faster than inflation.

~~~
skyraider
You're quite correct about them raising their prices, but then again,
healthcare is competitively purchased only the loosest and least meaningful
way. There really aren't strong competitive forces emanating from the demand
side - it's more like a demand-side oligopoly of buyers setting prices. In
healthcare, we are arguably seeing the expected outcome of a lack of
meaningful price competition.

The government _could_ take action to enable competitive individual purchasing
of care instead of monopsony or group buying. It could provide cash incentives
for people who shop around for basic, easy-to-understand care. It could fund
patient education for more complex care. And if this model proves successful,
it could be expanded to harder-to-understand care gradually and with caution
to see how consumers react.

In other words, competition can only work if it's allowed to. Today, food
prices are raised for various reasons, but I am not aware of a school of
economics that faults this on a demand-side government-funded competitive
individual purchasing program (not that you said that either).

------
beatpanda
I want to zoom in from the big picture and look at something more local. Let's
say you're like me and you're a well-paid knowledge worker in, say, San
Francisco, and lets further suppose that your industry is creating an
incredible stratification of wealth in a very small, volatile space.

And let's say you're like the OP, and you're feeling a little bit guilty that
you're putting people out of work, and making it harder for people to meet
their own basic needs in other ways.

Instead of arguing that we should all pay more taxes, _tax yourself_. Tip
heavier. Shop local (and pay local taxes, and the local markup for the local
minimum wage) instead of using your Amazon Prime membership. Consider taking
on roommates and paying a higher proportion of the rent.

It's called Noblesse Oblige. It used to be a thing. It ought to be again.

~~~
smsm42
But you miss the important point. It's easy to do what you think is right (at
least when it comes to spending money that you have), but what's the use of it
if others keep behaving in the ways you consider wrong? The whole point of it
is to control other people so that they would behave right too! And if you
don't have to persuade them but actually can force them to comply using the
threat of violence - even better! What enlightened and liberal person wouldn't
want everybody to act as he likes under the threat of violence?

~~~
beatpanda
I guess you're being sarcastic? I'm not really sure. What you're describing is
the reason I'm not a "liberal", but I also think it's bullshit that so many of
San Francisco's service workers have to live on the other side of the Bay when
there's so much money in this city.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Why is it "bullshit"?

Due to space constraints, someone needs to commute for an hour. What's wrong
with the person having a lower hourly productivity being the one stuck with
the commute?

~~~
bobwaycott
> _What's wrong with the person having a lower hourly productivity being the
> one stuck with the commute?_

The productivity of labor is not determined by wages. Period.

What is _right_ with the person having a lower hourly wage being the one stuck
with the commute? What is wrong with the person with the higher hourly wage
being the one stuck with the commute?

Due to space constraints, what argument is there for preferential treatment of
those already economically better off? It is far less of a hit on your
pocketbook to shoulder the expensive commute than it is on someone making 50%
of your wages. Perhaps the social expectation should be that the more money an
agent makes, the greater his social responsibility to give up conveniences to
those making less to better balance the equation?

There is far more reason to be found in those with higher wages being 'stuck
with the commute' and living in less convenient areas than there is in an
elitist notion that one ought to have the benefit of both higher wages _and_
maximum convenience. Unless, of course, higher hourly wages also bestow upon
the bearer an inherent right to misanthropy and rejection of a social
obligation to produce greater equality across humankind.

------
minimax
This is a facile take on the economics of technology. Productivity increased
steadily throughout the 20th century and while in the short term that may have
eliminated certain (mostly unskilled) functions, it didn't lead to widespread
unemployment. Improvements in technology move the world forward, there's no
reason to feel guilty about it.

~~~
aaron695
The concept we can keep consuming to keep ourselves out of trouble is naive.

We can not sustain the growth required to replace lost jobs, it's just not
mathematically possible, the world is finite.

Concepts around consumption composing of the arts(Attempting to loophole
limited resources) are also misplaced, already we are seeing computer
generated actors and artists.

~~~
chatmasta
Sincerely, Adam Smith

------
DanielBMarkham
Sigh.

"...We (programmers) all are, on some level or another; we’re taking mundane
repetitive tasks and automating them with code..."

Yes, and no. I have been programming or improving things all my life. That
means, if you don't look too deeply, yes, I am a jobs destroyer.

But if you're not going to look too deeply, just don't bother looking at all.

We programmers take inefficient things and make them efficient. Old, bloated
code gets streamlined. What used to take a person an hour takes five minutes.

You'd think -- if you kind of squinted your eyes the right way -- that
eventually we'd just make the entire universe efficient and there would be no
more jobs. You'd think something and it would come into existence. Many people
are able to think this far ahead, and it scares them. Along, presumably, with
many other things.

The problem is that such simple-minded projections of the future never pan out
that way. Over and over again we make something more efficient, take away
entire categories of jobs, and still people have more to do than ever. Why?
There's a book in that response, but let's just say in deference to Jurassic
Park, "jobs find a way". An economy is a complex system where people are
always wanting something -- even when they're fed, clothed, housed, and taken
care of -- and other people are always providing it. They trade, and it's this
species-programmed pattern of trading that led us out of the Savannah and onto
the moon.

This is the nth article along the same lines -- the future is devoid of jobs.
I'm very sorry that our educational system in many western countries is ill-
preparing many for work, and they face long periods of unemployment made worse
by debt. It's a travesty and a scandal and we need to fix it. But don't
extrapolate current unfortunate structural unemployment with the end of life,
the universe, and everything. Don't flatter yourself. You are not a jobs
destroyer. You're just some schmuck doing his job like the rest of us.

~~~
yairchu
That's because we haven't _yet_ produced a general-purpose quality AI which
can do everything humans can do and more cost effectively than they do it. But
when this happens, pretty much everything, even creative work like graphical
design - everything will be cloudsourced.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You are confusing _things_ with _value_.

Most commenters seem to confuse _needs_ with value. They think that once we
are all fed and housed there will be no more jobs.

At least you've taken it to the next step -- tangible things. Congrats.

You need to ask yourself a question: why do rich people create things for each
other? A millionaire grandmother may make a scarf for her grandchild. A
middle-aged man may take time to create a scrapbook for a friend that is
retiring. A billionaire may go to yard sales and haggle over the price of a
toaster.

It's not about needs, and it's not about things. It's about trade, creation,
giving, social interaction. These things are not going anywhere, no matter how
many AIs there are. In another 100 years we're just all going to be the
equivalent of today's billionaires. That means having purpose and creating
things, ie, continuing in some form of semi-structured creation and trade
process.

Look at it this way. Describe the life of an early 21st century person to
somebody from 1000BC. They will have no idea why you work. Guaranteed meals
every now and then? Communicate with anybody on the planet? Water, sewage, and
light for the dark -- all without effort? We live in an incredible far-fetched
place beyond dreams. There's no point in working. From their perspective.

But that's not the way things panned out.

~~~
randallsquared
Giving and social interaction (of at least some kinds) are not immediately at
risk. What's at risk is the participation of some large groups of people in
trade. Ultimately the value of a person's labor depends on scarcity, just as
the trade value of things or experiences do, and we've seen how lack of
scarcity makes trade value crash. (The value of the Humble Bundle and Cory
Doctorow's books depends on "giving" more than "trade", and the latter at all
only due to information asymmetry.)

The storm coming is that when we have duplicable, cheap, general AI, the value
of any act of production will plummet to the cost of copying a mind and
running it. Actually, that's already the case, but the cost of producing a new
mind is quite high, now. :)

When people talk about automating everything we now do (or can do), pro-
automation people often say "well, comparative advantage means that there will
always be something for humans to do to live", but comparative advantage
depends on scarcity of productive agents. If copying and running an AI to
solve a problem is cheaper than employing an already existing human, humans
are in trouble, economically.

Dunno what to do about it, though.

~~~
loup-vaillant
The actual storm coming is most probably very different.

When we have a general AI, it is likely it will start to optimize the world
according to its programming. One such optimization would be to code an even
more efficient AI (we assume the AI is a better programmer than its human
fathers and mothers). And so on, until FOOM, we have a super-intelligence,
capable of taking over computers, convincing humans, build companies, take
over means of production, _inventing_ means of productions, and basically take
over the world.

And of course, it will be unstoppable.

Now let's just hope that the original such AI have _no_ bug, especially in its
goal system, and let's hope further that it's initial goals are _exactly_ in
line with humanity's. We wouldn't want clippy to tile the solar system with
paper clips. Or Smiley to do the same with molecular smileys (as a proxy for
human happiness). Or Hal9000 to do the same with ultra-efficient computing
devices so it can solve the Riemann Hypothesis… Which would have the
unfortunate side effect of killing us all.

To the extent you don't believe in intelligence explosion, Robin Hanson
describe the kind of world we could have. I dare say, it's not pretty.

~~~
randallsquared
I'm more-or-less in agreement with this (Hanson's ems are the kind of mind I
was imagining, above), but I was assuming something of a best case, where it
turns out that there are hard limits to mindlike complexity. If it turns out
that there aren't, none of this will matter. I don't have any particular hope
that Eliezer, et al, will construct a bugfree, airtight Greater Wish.

~~~
loup-vaillant
I'd say hard limit isn't the real criterion for rejecting the Intelligence
Explosion hypothesis: there _is_ a hard limit, but most likely well above
human level: a human-made substrate could most certainly think way faster than
evolution-made neurons, and the software could probably at least get rid of
biases.

What really matters is whether intelligence is likely to explode or not. I
think it would be really foolish to count on it _not_ exploding, unless we're
positive it won't. The stakes are too high.

As for MIRI (as it is called now) actually pulling it off, especially as they
are now, I don't have high hopes either. However, they do look like the
current best bet. And they do plan to grow (they need money). And maybe, maybe
they will convince the other AI scientists to be wary of new powerful magic.
For once. If not them, maybe the Future of Humanity Institute.

~~~
randallsquared
> there is a hard limit, but most likely well above human level

I suppose you're thinking of the speed of light, but I meant a somewhat more
prosaic limit of having nowhere to go. If at some point an intelligence of
level n can't do much better than chance at finding an improvement to n,
intelligence growth might be very slow. I was wrong to refer to this limit as
"hard", but it seems like a pretty plausible scenario to me. Our current
software industry suffers from this problem. In this future, the most
intelligent agents might be only a few standard deviations above the brightest
current humans.

> a human-made substrate could most certainly think way faster than evolution-
> made neurons, and the software could probably at least get rid of biases.

I don't expect either of those to produce much effective increase in
intelligence.

Speed increases aren't really the same as intelligence. Speeding up a dog's
brain by a million times will not produce a more intelligent dog, only a
faster one. (I'm not knocking faster thinking, by the way; it's just not the
same as being able to think more complex thoughts).

The most intelligent things people do tend not to be the product of conscious,
rational thought, but of loading up your mind with a lot of details about the
problem you want to solve and waiting for systems below conscious thought
deliver answers. Therefore, learning how to be more rational will help only
incrementally if you're already fairly rational.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Ah, _that_ hard limit. Eurisko did flatten out…

> _In this future, the most intelligent agents might be only a few standard
> deviations above the brightest current humans._

Current methods of doing software are reaching their limits. That doesn't mean
we have reached _the_ limit yet. See Squeak, and more recently the Viewpoint
Research Institute's work:
<[http://vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm>](http://vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm>).
When I see Frank (basically a personal computing suite in 20K lines, compilers
included), I see a proof that we just do software wrong. The actual limit of
what humans can program is probably still far.

Fast intelligence isn't a panacea, but still: imagine an Em thinking 10 times
faster than meatware, on a personal computer, capable of copying itself over
the network. That alone would be pretty dangerous. Now give it perfect
dedication, and enough common sense to avoid most obvious mistakes… Now we
_could_ stop it… With another such Em. And then Hanson is back.

~~~
randallsquared
Eurisko is more legend than history, at this point. As far as I know, the
source code was never available to anyone except Lenat, and most of the claims
about how effective it was at the beginning were sourced directly from Lenat,
as well. The fact that we've never seen anything similarly small and effective
(and that Lenat abandoned the entire approach in favor of Cyc) makes me wonder
how much of what Eurisko is reported to have done is exaggeration.

Your scenario with the Em that's copiable and ten times faster than a human is
exactly what I started this with. :)

------
contingencies
Laudable for its social concern. A call for basic income, dare-I-say it... a
socialist ideal. Will socialism emerge from our globally, militarily exported
democratocapitalismywayorthehighway technocracy? Perhaps, but decentralization
of political and mass-media control needs to be won back first.

Where does the western world want to go today? The government surveillance
dyastopia and endless drone-wars of Assange's _Cypherpunks_ introduction
(<http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm>) or some kind of free
education, basic income guaranteed, relative socialist utopia? A false
dichotomy, for sure, but extremely worrisome in its validity nonetheless.

In short, it is fantastic and timely (as always) to see programmers thinking
about social impact of their actions. More of this!

~~~
jboynyc
> More of this!

Then you'll want to read "Four Futures."[1] It isn't by a programmer, but it
has sci-fi references and the author talks about 3d printing. It's so
brilliant I can never recommend it enough.

    
    
       [1]: http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/

------
zanny
There seems to be a good bit of "if you are in the unemployment camp, you
aren't contributing to society and are effectively worthless" that I get from
some comments in this thread.

I know for a fact if a basic income surfaced I would jump immediately into
solving a long-run "big problem" like learning robotics, brain-computer
interfaces, etc. Without the burden of having to seek someone to pay me for my
time to eat, I'd go tackle what _I_ cared about more than what people with
money to feed me cared about. I think that would have pervasive implications
on everyone, and with a _necessary_ cultural shift away from consumption
towards conceptualization and self actualization, we might be able to get a
majority of people taking up creative endeavors to improve the world in ways
our current economic engine doesn't come close to promoting.

------
trippy_biscuits
Why is making a job obsolete destroying a job? I see it as progress. It frees
up a human resource to find a more rewarding opportunity. Any worker(s) made
redundant certainly don't feel that way at the time of impact because they get
the opportunity to evolve by trial. One observation I've made regarding
replacing people with technology is the inherent brain drain: all the details
get abstracted away into the new technology or system and no one remembers or
thinks about them anymore. When something goes wrong, those details matter.
That creates a different demand and the cycle continues.

------
CurtMonash
Let's start by pulling this discussion apart into three questions:

1\. What effect will technology-based efficiency gains have on total wealth?
2\. What effect will technology-based efficiency gains have on the
distribution of total wealth? 3\. What should we do about #1 and #2,
especially #2?

The answer to #1, IMO, remains very favorable. And I think that's obvious so
long as you measure wealth by the value and owner-/consumer-perceived quality
of what is owned and consumed, rather than by market prices.

As for #2 -- a rising tide is clearly lifting a lot of boats worldwide. In the
richer countries, that's more debatable -- but I think it's still true. Dollar
incomes may be flat, inflation-adjusted, but electronic entertainment (for
example) is a lot better than it used to be.

But it's hard to deny that income disparities are on the rise. And it's
reasonable to think about those income disparities in part by counting numbers
of "good" jobs (probably down) and (of which there are fewer) "great" jobs
(probably up).

Historically, "good" jobs have arisen to more than make up for those lost,
perhaps after an uncomfortable transition period. If that's what's going on
again, we can muddle through without great answers to #3. But if This Time
It's Different -- and it well may be -- then we need to reorganize our
economy, our work practices, and everything else, rebalancing work/leisure in
the way some people (often socialists) were already (and falsely) arguing was
necessary decades ago.

\--------------------------------------------

And finally -- at a minimum, we're causing problems that society needs to deal
with in terms of general job loss. We're also causing other problems, such as
privacy threats. So it's our duty, as very fortunate individuals, to also put
some effort into alleviating them, or in some other ways of improving the
world.

I, of course, have put some effort into the privacy issue.
(<http://www.dbms2.com/category/liberty-privacy/page/2/> \-- more coming
soon). Others may look at general economics (e.g. the OP here), or censorship,
or the need for better STEM teaching, or in unquestionably beneficial
applications of technology, or whatever. But we all should be thinking of
what, personally, we can do to try to help.

~~~
aspensmonster
I think you've already highlighted an interesting signal that This Time It's
Different: in the U.S., productivity has increased while wage gains have flat-
lined. Workers aren't sharing in the additional created wealth. Sure, the
aggregate amount of wealth to the poor has increased over time. I'd think
that's a given. If that hasn't happened something has gone horribly wrong. But
its value relative to other wealthier groups has steadily declined. That's a
bad spot to be in. The workers' increasing productivity is earning themselves
a smaller return over time. Indeed a shrinking return. The nastiest
consequence of this in my observation has been political; when a large
majority of the population has relatively little wealth to toss around (even
taken as a whole) it's easy for their political representatives to become
unresponsive.

Now, whether It's Different This Time because of characteristics inherent to a
steadily improving economic system, or simply because of self-destructive
tendencies that wealth-hoarding tends to exhibit, is a question I'd love an
answer to. But I'm sure there will be others to tell me that this time is just
like all the others too. Maybe I'll hear a decent explanation that allays my
concerns.

~~~
smsm42
If you can get a flat-screen TV for $300 today, you're sharing the wealth -
never before you could get anything close to that, let alone for so little
money. If you compare the things accessible even to somebody who is considered
"poor" today - in terms of quality of food, shelter, gadgets, etc. - it has
never been more. 62% of people considered "poor" have two or more TVs. 48% own
a computer. Look here: [http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/01/news/economy/poor-
income/ind...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/01/news/economy/poor-
income/index.htm)

The average household defined as "poor" in 2005 had air conditioning, cable TV
and a DVD player, according to government statistics cited by Robert Rector, a
senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. If there were children in
the home, the family likely had a game system, such as a Microsoft Xbox or
Sony PlayStation.

If you go back 50 years, would any poor person have access to anything like
that? Would many middle-class ones? If this is not sharing the created wealth
- albeit unequally, but undeniably - then what is it?

~~~
chime
Almost everything you listed can be bought for under $1000 total and others
rented for very little cost. That does not mean they're sharing the wealth.
That just means economies of scale and planned obsolescence works and makes
things cheaper over time. Things you cannot import from China are still
prohibitively high - education, healthcare, insurance etc. Giving people $300
gadgets does not make them wealthy. Even having a $99 iPhone with $40/mo data
plan does not mean you are rich. It means you have $99 and can afford $40/mo.
Anyone on minimum wage can theoretically do that.

I don't disagree with you that quality of life has improved due to
technological progress for almost everyone but I would hardly define that as
sharing the wealth. I would define sharing the wealth as not having to declare
bankruptcy when your kid has cancer. Or not having to take whatever job is
available in any field instead of your speciality just to pay rent because you
cannot collect unemployment anymore. Or not being stuck living in a city you
want to move away from but can't because the house you purchased has fallen in
price through no fault of yours and will barely make 50% of your mortgage in
rent. I don't see how adding a $300 TV or air conditioning to this mix would
make one feel like they're sharing the wealth.

~~~
smsm42
>>>> Almost everything you listed can be bought for under $1000 total and
others rented for very little cost. That does not mean they're sharing the
wealth.

Of course it does. What would be the point of having $1000 if you can buy
nothing for it? And if everything costed $0.0001, wouldn't somebody with $1000
be rich? Wealth is how much stuff you can buy (stuff meaning not only physical
goods, of course, but other things you want too). If you can buy more stuff -
you're more wealthy. If things got cheaper - you become more wealthy even if
amount of money didn't change.

>>>> Anyone on minimum wage can theoretically do that.

Practically, they'd just get an Obamaphone "for free" (paid by taxpayers, of
course), but that's besides the point.

>>>> but I would hardly define that as sharing the wealth.

That's because what you mean doesn't seem to be sharing the wealth, it seems
to be envy. If you get a lot, but the neighbor gets more, you're envious - why
he has more and you don't? Probably because he's not sharing! If you stop
looking at Joneses and look at each person as he/she is, you'd see the wealth
is being constantly shared.

>>>> I would define sharing the wealth as not having to declare bankruptcy
when your kid has cancer.

This has nothing to do with sharing the wealth. This has everything to do with
parents not having adequate insurance. That's what insurance _is_ for.

>>>> I don't see how adding a $300 TV or air conditioning to this mix would
make one feel like they're sharing the wealth.

What you mean by "sharing the wealth" is "I don't want anything bad happen to
me and don't want to ever have money trouble or suffer consequences of either
my poor foresight or unexpected circumstances, because there are people around
who don't". Sorry, this has nothing to do with sharing the wealth, and the bad
news are - nothing can do that for you. Shit happens, and nobody can be fully
guaranteed from it. You can, however, be reasonably prepared and reasonably
cautious - such as not buying a house on the peak of the bubble, but renting
for 3-4 years and then buying when the bubble pops and Joneses have to sell
because they can make barely 50% in rent. For each one of those there's one of
those who rents for 50% of the mortgage. That's who you want to be, not the
other guy :)

~~~
Retric
What your failing to take into account is there are plenty of finite resources
people want. For example Land. As your relative share of total wealth
decreases then your ability to buy land where you want it also decreases.

~~~
smsm42
Land is much less useful resource than before, despite all claims to the
contrary. You can become billionaire without ever owning a single slice of
land - something that wasn't possible not so long time ago. I have hard time
seeing how you _need_ any land more that it takes to build a modest house. Of
course, you may want a private island - but that's way beyond "sharing the
wealth".

------
smsm42
Fixed lump of labor fallacy detected. Counterfactual statements about politics
(many republicans signed "no tax raise" pledge - which of course includes
everybody's - including author's - taxes) detected. Calling unbased hypothesis
"common sense" because the author couldn't find any proof - detected. Unbased
assumption about how drastically raising taxes would generate tons of new
income - instead of widespread evasion - detected. New and useful ideas - not
detected.

~~~
scotty79
Lump of labor of course grows as economy develops but it doesn't have to
always grow faster than automation reduces it.

Given that we automate things faster and faster and economy needs time to grow
to increase lump of labor there might be time where lump of labor starts
shrinking.

Lots of currently held jobs are pretty much useless already but can't be
removed in business as usual mode due to various social agreements.

US economy used crisis as an excuse to shake off lots of them. Output regrew
fast after crisis but jobs didn't come back.

~~~
smsm42
Automation does not reduce available labor - it reduces only the number of
specific workplaces available, but since it frees the resources by doing it
and produces more value, this value can - and will - be turned into buying
work of somebody else. Maybe instead of buying services of a clerk, the owner
of the company would buy services of a Ford dealer and Ford workers by buying
a new car. So what? I have no reasons to prefer clerk's job for Ford dealer's
job - the only difference is that people apparently need the latter but not
the former. Transition can be painful for the individual, but beneficial for
the economy as a whole.

~~~
scotty79
> it frees the resources by doing it and produces more value, this value can -
> and will - be turned into buying work of somebody else.

Or maybe the owner of the company will just buy more automation for the money
he saved that will cause further savings? After all he's business owner and
increasing productivity of his company even further is his priority.

You might argue that eventually he'll buy all the automation for his company
that is available on the market, and then he'll spent all of his freed
resources on something labor intensive, but new, cheaper to use, automation is
developed as he upgrades his company so it's possible that he will never be
able to buy all automation. Besides labor intensive things he would spend his
money on might get much less labor intensive until then due to their own
automation.

~~~
smsm42
_Or maybe the owner of the company will just buy more automation for the money
he saved that will cause further savings?_

Maybe. That would then create job for automation creators - and for somebody
to mow the lawn of automation creator because he's now too busy to mow it
himself, creating the automation. The point is - more productivity creates
value, not destroys it. Even though the value created may be allocated
differently - so if $100 of value were created, it may end up (grossly
simplifying, of course) that somebody would have $150 and somebody -$50. If
you think in human terms, getting -$50 sucks, and I can totally understand
that and there may be talk how to help that particular unfortunate man to deal
with it, of course. But if you switch to economics terms, it's still +$100.

It's the reverse of the famous Broken Window Fallacy. If the world worked like
the author of the main post thinks it does, you could create wealth just by
breaking and destroying things - which "creates jobs" both for breakers and
for somebody who would the restore them. I think it is obvious that no value
is created this way.

~~~
scotty79
> That would then create job for automation creators

That would be significant for labor market only if creating next level of
automation required more human labor of roughly same skill level than was
freed by implementing previous level of automation. Which is possible but
unlikely since most automation tools can be used in development of next
version of automation. Robots are building robots and new software helps
create newer software.

> The point is - more productivity creates value, not destroys it.

I agree. But value is not jobs. We will have more and more wealth altogether
but less opportunities to get employed.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's awesome. People work way too much. I'm just
saying we'll have to do with abundance of automation in more mature way than
we currently do.

~~~
anarchotroll
Humans will always figure out a way to combine the resources they have to
generate additional value. It doesn't matter if these resources are wood,
sand, oil, water, steel or software.

In the example given above, the owner of the business buying more automation
is actually an explicit example of an enterpreneur __REINVESTING __. A manual
job is being traded by a specialized job. Demand for specialized jobs is being
created. I fail to understand where on earth that would be a bad thing.

When resources are reallocated, some people lose their jobs on the way, that's
just the way life is. A responsible individual doesn't take a job for granted
and saves so that he or she can go through bad times.

By visiting a third world country it is very easy to observe the lack of
automation employed by its society. Yet, quality of life is ridiculous. Can
you explain why?

~~~
scotty79
My point is:

1\. Automation is lowering amount of available jobs at lower skill levels.

2\. New markets created by automation no longer manage to suck lower skilled
level workers back in before those markets themselves get automated.

3\. Government can't allow for high unemployment as it causes civil unrest due
to jobs being most common way people get money to fulfill their basic needs.
Government then makes up some jobs and finds pathological ways to provide food
and shelter for some people. Lots of new government entities were created or
strengthened over recent years. Prison population is as always growing.

My conclusion:

We need to deal better, more honestly with inflow of unemployed that will not
subside. 50% (or higher) unemployment is perfectly fine and eventual
inevitability. But we shouldn't lock half of these people up and pay some of
the rest to guard them and the rest of the rest to do some fake paper-pushing
or citizen groping government jobs. I think basic income guarantee is good
solution especially implemented together with sponsored, high quality
education that can help some unemployed (those who can and are able) to make
the jump into future highly skilled workforce that will architect, manufacture
and implement further automation.

~~~
smsm42
1\. It doesn't really - it changes them. Changing from horsepower to cars
eliminated the jobs of people that hauled horse manure - but created myriad of
jobs for caring for, fixing, maintaining, selling and otherwise dealing with
cars. The mistake here is that people see where jobs disappear, but don't see
where they appear since they don't know where exactly to look.

~~~
scotty79
I don't really see how car can be seen as exemplary labor saving invention.
Steam engine, electric engine, radio communication, computer, internet sure,
but car?

It's just a technology that allows you to build artificial horse that drinks
stuff you can mine from underground and shits in the air you breathe instead
of on the street you walk on. It surely saves some labor, but it turns so much
on its head by increasing mobility and allowing for actions that were
previously impossible that this labor saving part is pretty minor and is
easily offset by paradigm change that car brought by.

------
darrenrogan
This posting just spoke to me on so many levels. I've personally had a beer
thrown in my face by someone who's job I destroyed. I really believe we are
have started to eat our own tails.

Approximately 70% of the current jobs can (and will) be automated but what
does that mean for my grandkids. How will we as a society cope with >20%
unemployment never mind > 40%.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Isn't the answer to reduce population?

I'm not suggesting mass genocide. If family planning is right for a family
then surely it's right for a nation and for nations together?

If we keep increasing the population at this rate it seems that it won't end
well.

~~~
learc83
Please explain to me how a smaller population help with unemployment?

Jobs are performed primarily to benefit people. Less people means less jobs.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Two things.

There's a fixed amount of resources. So you can only manufacture, grow and
produce to a limited extent - even if all the production is automated. You can
use the greater quantity of resources per person to provide more affluent
lifestyles to everyone.

Think of it this way: if there is enough energy to support 80% of the people
in a typical USA suburban lifestyle, but you have instead 60% of the people.
The excess can be used to give the people more per capita. Providing "more" in
whatever sense requires greater productive output.

That's the first thing, resources.

The second is occupation of time. Not all people need to be employed all the
time but with an excess of resources one can concentrate on attaining a higher
level of education, healthcare, etc.. These things in turn require more focus
on training, more intelligent input to push on to give a greater quality of
life for everyone.

Yes, more people create greater needs. But with resource limitation and wealth
being focussed with a small group those needs simply don't get met, there is
not so much more employment as is needed to meet those needs with a degree of
quality. Instead what happens is resources get stretched - austerity measures
and such.

There's also the corollary of economies of scale. Greater production requires
a decreasing number of additional personnel. Going the other way this means
there is a point at which even if you produce less you still need a similar
number of people to do it.

[Would be happy to get feedback on holes and flaws in this thinking though.]

~~~
learc83
Your resources argument is sound, for a certain time frame, i.e. long enough
that we are worried about running out of resources on earth, but short enough
that we haven't developed the technology to extract resources off of earth.

However, unemployment is not currently (and isn't likely to be in the near
future) caused by limited by natural resources, so I don't see how freeing up
more resources will help with unemployment on any reasonable time scale.

Furthermore, more resources don't solve the problem of _unemployment_. More
resources per person may allow us to provide a better quality of life for the
remaining people, but it won't create jobs.

In fact while you may have some arguments for a better quality of life with
fewer people (assuming resource limitations and ubiquitous automation, and
assuming that 10 people living at X standard of living is inherently better
than 100 people living at less than X standard of living), none of the
arguments directly address solving unemployment. I was specifically
challenging the previous poster on that point. Will population reduction solve
unemployment. It may solve other "problems", not unemployment.

------
jkonowitch
150 years ago the agricultural sector employed roughly 80% of American
workers. Today, it employs less than 3%. It may be hard to imagine looking
forward rather than back, but dynamic economies are capable of experiencing
such dramatic shifts AND of absorbing and reallocating the labor towards more
productive uses. They key thing to understand is that once certain modes of
production become less efficient relative to alternatives, often because of
technological advances, it frees our resources and productive energies to
engage in new enterprises. It's true that employment dislocations that occur
from rapid technological advancement can cause great transitional distress;
that is why it's important as a society that we find humane and efficient ways
of supporting people through these changes. However, the net result of
progress is that we are all better off. No one can say exactly what the
baristas or the project managers of today will become, no more than anyone
could have predicted what would have become of the farmworkers who were
displaced in the great migration towards a service economy. But, the last 150
years have seen a veritable explosion in the specialization and profusion of
occupations which were previously economically unviable. I see no reason why
we should not expect the same kind of evolution going forward.

~~~
wvenable
What happens when machines are stronger, have greater endurance, and are
cheaper than humans? What happens when machines are smarter, faster, make less
mistakes, and are cheaper than humans?

The "same kind of evolution" is no longer ours -- it belongs to the machines.
How does your optimism work when most human effort is simply obsolete?

------
canweriotnow
Wow, I wrote this post and it's gotten more points than my cumulative HN
karma. But it's also gotten better discussion than anything I've ever posted
to HN, so I'm totally okay with that. Thanks, guise, this is fun.

~~~
ar4s
Hi Jason,

I've been reading a few of these articles lately, and I really enjoyed your
first person perspective on what is otherwise being dubbed "Technological
Unemployment".

I'm wondering if you think that a re-localized economy, namely one created
around the local production of food through urban farms could be a viable way
to offset the growing problem of unemployment.

------
smartician
Instead of job destruction, you could say we're just becoming more efficient
at doing things. This is nothing new, it's a trend that started with division
of labor in the Stone Age. Then we invented currency to distribute the fruits
of this divided labor somewhat evenly among the participants. Now we're seeing
that the value and income gap between professions is becoming wider and wider,
and it's developing into a real problem.

Some proposed fixes like raising the minimum wage will only work temporarily,
as it increases the pressure to become more efficient. A basic income might
indeed be a better approach, but the problem is that we'll have a lower class
of bored, but somewhat poor people. It'll be interesting to see how this plays
out. I think Europe's "social market economies" with high taxes and high
benefits are in a better position to handle this than the US's gung-ho
capitalism.

And to say that higher-level languages and open source products are making
software engineers obsolete is a bit short sighted. Sure, languages and
frameworks have become more powerful, but the problems to solve have become
orders of magnitude harder, and new problems have arisen. You still need
people proficient in lower level languages to build those high level tools and
frameworks.

------
wsc981
I wouldn't worry too much about destroying jobs - at least as far as the tech
market is concerned. For every tech job that's destroyed, is seems at the very
least 1 new job is created. Engineers should be flexible to take advantage of
these new job opportunities.

For example once the mobile market started booming, lots of people wanted apps
for their devices, ergo lots of jobs were (and still are) "created" to build
those apps. Eventually the mobile platform as we know it will whither and some
other platform will take it's place, requiring many new applications build
with different technology and techniques (computer languages, design
paradigms, etc...).

~~~
ar4s
I keep hearing people say this... yet I'm confused. The operational goal of
companies (and industry) as a whole is to continually increase efficiency to
reap more profits.

If you take a step back, and just look at the entire machine, it seems
frivolous for any industry to make investments in technology, given that your
statement is true.

The big telecom I worked for was trying to automate their customer service, I
highly doubt they would make the investment in the technology if they expected
rehire the equivalent amount of layoffs.

Anyway, if I'm off point or misunderstanding some key mechanism at play, I'd
love to be a bit more enlightened, because your opinion seems to be the
dominant one.

~~~
rsofaer
The idea is that they or other businesses will spend their new surplus on
hiring workers to do what can't be automated.

~~~
ar4s
This would have to be in a different industry though, no? Inherently the point
of automation is to shrink the amount of labor required to do a task. So as to
your comment and in my example of customer service, employees laid off from
company A would need to acquire technical skills to manage the new automation
in that industry (likely that company B has already, or will adopt), or move
to a different industry completely.

The problem I see is that everyone is automating though. Or is it assumed that
enough tasks can't be automated to actually effect unemployment?

~~~
crazygringo
It could be. The surplus flows to the owners of the company.

They can choose to a) re-invest it in the company, creating new jobs there, b)
re-invest it in new/other companies, creating new jobs there, c) spend it,
creating new jobs wherever the money is spent.

But yes, retraining is generally required to some degree -- as jobs become
more productive, people need to learn how to do those jobs!

------
jvm
My thinking about this is that people are both sellers of a product (their
labor) and human beings. I think this is what got way too mixed up in the
Marxist framing of socialism and needs to be unwound.

I don't think people should have rights qua producers. Acer doesn't have the
_right_ to have people buy their products, their purpose in our society to
produce a good value proposition for computers. If nobody wants what's on
offer, they can and should go out of business. Otherwise they're wasting
resources that could have gone to their superior competitors. The same goes
for a redundant worker.

But qua humans, I think people should have tons of rights! I think people
should have equal opportunities (I'm thinking especially of children and how
unfair life is to those with poor parents), and in addition, I honestly don't
think someone should have to go hungry or homeless no matter what they do.

A basic income serves not to replace capitalism with socialism (in the Marxist
sense) but to work in concert with capitalism to make sure nobody is ever
dehumanized by a process that makes us all richer.

------
kevinskii
By this logic, anyone who improves anything is a job destroyer. One small team
of factory workers can ruin thousands of blacksmith careers. One good
therapist may wipe out an entire local industry for divorce lawyers. A single
medical research scientist could prevent countless would-be morticians and
undertakers from ever discovering their true calling.

The solution to joblessness seems simple: We just need to ensure that no one
ever does anything important.

------
hkmurakami
_Sure, we can’t destroy all the non-Job Destroyer jobs… yet. Burger King and
Starbucks still need human subjects employees to make Whoppers and skinny
lattes, but how long before these jobs are deskilled to the point they can be
done by machines — i.e., by software?_

Interestingly, there is a robotics company in SF (Momentum Machines) that is
trying to automate fast food (burger) assembly.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/burger-robot-could-
revolution...](http://www.businessinsider.com/burger-robot-could-
revolutionize-fast-food-industry-2012-11)

------
100k
I will always remember my first project at my first job out of school. The
project manager sat down the team to explain the goals of the project. My
company made digital asset management software, and it had sold a license to a
major client.

It was pitched to the team like this: "The client has already announced to
shareholders that this project is going to lay off 20 people, so we need to
get it done by such-and-such date."

I felt really awesome about those poor smucks who got unemployed partially due
to my work. As programmers at our best can create whole new industries, but
most of what we do is automate repetitive tasks.

That's good for productivity, but might not be an unvarnished good for society
if the gains are not distributed in a fair manner.

Paul Krugman has written a lot lately about "capital-biased technological
progress" and potential remedies.

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-
robo...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/)

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/capital-
biased-t...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/capital-biased-
technological-progress-an-example-wonkish/)

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/policy-
implicati...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/policy-implications-
of-capital-biased-technology-opening-remarks/)

------
naner
_Some coffee shops still have manual espresso machines, which require
training, skill and finesse to operate._

I worked at two different Starbucks a decade ago and have used the manual
machines. They require a tiny bit of manual labor and attention but not really
an special amount of skill and finesse. Anyone that can learn to make a
scrambled egg can do it. I was in high school at the time.

Let's not romanticize this crap. Most of these jobs we are destroying aren't
that special. And people will be forced to focus on learning more useful
skills.

I think there needs to be a revolution on training people for work and
careers. There are a lot of jobs in the US currently that cannot be filled, we
don't have enough skilled workers. It seems like displaced workers should have
the option of getting into some kind of fast-track training to enter these
roles, at no cost to them and while keeping their family fed.

The countries that figure out how to do this fairly, effectively, and without
crazy costs will be unstoppable.

Also I think moderate mental health issues are a massive economic problem that
nobody seems to notice but I don't know how to fix that.

~~~
canweriotnow
Yeah, I exaggerated the amount of skill needed to operate manual espresso
machine. But I don't think it diminishes the point about de-skilling. The
point I think most people missed reading TFA (due to my so very highly nuanced
brand of snark) is that I don't really have a problem with jobs
disappearing... I have a problem with the political rhetoric that we should be
creating more jobs. I want less work to do, or at least less _boring_ work,
dammit!

------
InclinedPlane
This meme has become an ego stroking impulse of knowledge workers but it
evinces a gross misunderstanding of economics on a fundamental level. More
than that it represents a disturbingly insulting implicit characterization of
"unskilled workers" who are incapable of adapting to a changing economy.

The economy is not static, and it has never been static. Indeed, it's actually
far less dynamic today than it has been many times in the past. And no, you
and your software are not going to change the world so drastically that
suddenly people won't be able to find work. People will still work, they'll do
different jobs than they did before. Supply and demand. Today many processes
and systems are more efficient, by orders of magnitude, than they've ever been
before. And yet at the same time a much larger percentage of the population is
active in the work force than before (since many more women work today than in
the past, among other factors). Is this a deep paradox or just simple
economics?

~~~
wvenable
> People will still work, they'll do different jobs than they did before.
> Supply and demand.

The unaddressed issue is the real possibility that the majority of human
effort is merely not cost effective anymore. In other words, human effort
isn't worth paying a living wage. You say we have more population active in
the work force ever than before but the total earnings have decreased
steadily.

I'm currently working a project to eliminating a few good office jobs. They
had a choice, hire more staff or build software to improve efficiency enough
that the staff isn't necessary. The company chose to build the software.

So I can easily see where software has eliminated jobs, I haven't seen these
"different jobs" that people are supposedly doing.

------
seivan
Those jobs should be destroyed. It's well deserved.

------
greggman
Maybe in some future world where we invent AI (could be right around the
corner for all I know)

But, right now. No, programmers are job creators. Guess how many programmers
in the world create browsers? Probably less than 10k. Guess how many jobs
browsers have created? Millions. Guess you many programmers+engineers made
networking stacks? Guess how many jobs networking has created? How many
programmers made the top illustration or photo editing packages? Now compare
that to the number of jobs of artists created using those packages.

That tide might turn someday but right now programmers are job creators not
job destroyers.

------
shurcooL
My dream is to outsource implementation details to computer algorithms.
Programmers should be designers. Just describe what you want (not necessarily
always using a programming language), and it runs.

------
tarr11
I do not understand the dig against c# being less "efficient" than Ruby or
Clojure.

~~~
largesse
He's talking about programmer productivity per line of code, not machine
efficiency.

~~~
tarr11
{programming language argument goes here}

------
ludflu
> the amount of socially necessary labor decreases with each passing year.

Isn't this Lump of Labor fallacy? There is _not_ a fixed amount of work
available because human desire is limitless. (and therefore so is human
suffering, but that's a different discussion!)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy>

------
cousin_it
When AIs or uploaded humans can do everything that flesh-and-blood humans can
do, more cheaply, then there will be more reason to pay flesh-and-blood humans
for anything. And they won't have any spare land or resources to return to
past ways of living, because technologically advanced corporations will be
able to extract more value from that land or resources, so flesh-and-blood
humans will be outbid, and subsequently perish. Basic econ 101.

(Programming seems like a task that's especially suited for AIs or uploaded
humans, because it doesn't involve any physical manipulation of mass. So
programmers should be the first, not the last, to worry. And don't kid
yourself that you'll be an uploaded programmer earning a living wage. That
honor will go to the the most productive and undemanding uploaded programmer
in the world, who will get copied a billion times. See Robin Hanson's "Crack
of a future dawn".)

One possible answer is transhumanism, making humans smarter so they can stay
competitive. But even so, the majority could still get left behind.

------
lolfallacy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy>

------
rumcajz
We need a lot more educators. We need people to take care of elderly. We need
more people to work on preserving the environment. We need much better public
services. The amount of work needed is astounding.

The fallacy of putting equals sign between work and production of commodities
is what causes this dim view of our economic future.

------
Maven911
I still think that we are a long way from a heavy technical society

Why is it that in a 100 person company, you only have 5 IT ppl and the other
95 seem to have secured jobs?

It may happen one day, but we'll still need plenty of accoutants, pilots,
truck drivers (googles driverless car is probably 40 years away from being
legalized)

~~~
scotty79
I we may do better than 40 years. Other countries develop their own solutions.
There might be as little as 10 years to pretty widespread adoption.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIX6u6qHTK4>

[http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/automated-cars-succesfully-
test...](http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/automated-cars-succesfully-tested-on-
roads-in-the-uk)

------
scotty79
When a labor saving innovation occurs people get fired, but after some time
they get rehired by new markets that develop thanks to this innovation.

But as labor saving innovations occur more and more often newly developed
markets get automated before they can soak up unemployed generated by previous
innovation.

------
norswap
I think programmers do in fact create some jobs. Programmers are really self-
replicating entities. Think about it, every time you start a project you
create a burden of maintenance. For yourself, which means you can't tackle as
much work as you could before, work which will go the way of another
programmer; or for the lucky dude who will end up maintaining your work. Of
course, the project can end up abandonned, but in that case nothing is
destroyed either.

The more we create complex systems, the more we need people to grease the cogs
at all levels, people to oversee them, people which have non-local view (or
even a global view, as far as it is possible) of the system, etc...

------
vincie
I'm in the midst of destroying the jobs of 1, maybe 2 workers right now. I am
replacing a poor quality document generating system based on MS RTF templates
with wrappers that build tex files and then calling pdflatex on them.

------
fghh45sdfhr3
I honestly believe that many decades from now, 20 to 50 years, at least one
industrialized country will have something like a Basic income guarantee.

It happened to Rome. When all of their work was done by slaves, the free
Romans got bread and circuses on the government's dime.

I think we will reach a point where unemployment will just grow despite a
growing economy. And it will steadily grow for months, then years, and over
the years we'll go through a long and painful political process which I think
will eventually result in a a Basic income guarantee.

At that point a staggering percentage of our economy will be 100% automated.

~~~
hnal943
Of course, "Bread and Circuses" is a pejorative describing the fall of Rome:
_...Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have
abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military
command, high civil office, legions - everything, now restrains itself and
anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses_

------
yaddayadda
"Sure, we can’t destroy all the non-Job Destroyer jobs… yet. Burger King and
Starbucks still need human subjects employees to make Whoppers and skinny
lattes, but how long before these jobs are deskilled to the point they can be
done by machines — i.e., by software?"

Actually it's already being done [http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/22/robot-
serves-up-340-ham...](http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/22/robot-serves-
up-340-hamburgers-per-hour/)

------
mleach
Agricultural age, industrial age, information age...

Cannibalizing our past has always been the path to creating more wealth.

------
scotty79
Societies deal currently with job destruction and unemployment in very
pathological ways.

USA criminalized, what unemployed often do, locked significant amount of them
up and hired other people to watch them. USA unemployment could be as much as
2% higher in total if they didn't.

~~~
Tsagadai
Imagine if we could outsource prison guard duties (especially the dangerous,
interpersonal stuff) to robots. And if those robots could also ensure the
prisoners work efficiently in their prison jobs.

~~~
scotty79
That's one of the reasons why putting people from highly unemployed groups in
jails is not the right long term solution. Eventually you won't even have jobs
for jailers as a side benefit.

You might always imagine that eventually all people end up in jail that will
get pretty relaxed till then and robot jailers will become just become
security beneficial mostly to prisoners since there won't be much people
outside only industry and ai-s that will have to be reasonably protected from
descendants of monkeys in mutual interest of all involved. That would be cool
idea for dystopian/utopian short story or novel.

------
curt
Why do people keep asking for the old days with the 91% tax rate? Do they
realize that today the effective tax rate is nearly the same as it was then.
Not only that but today the 'rich' carry a far larger percentage of the
overall tax burden.

~~~
Kliment
[citation needed]

~~~
chaz
The contention is that 1950s tax law enabled tax shelters which allowed
wealthy filers to heavily reduce their income tax bill.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732470510457815...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324705104578151601554982808.html)

------
protomyth
There is an amazing and unjustified arrogance on the part of the author on
what "software" can do. Add to that the author missing whole areas of our
labor force (creative, vocational non-factory, farming).

I would say the labor force makeup is changing and our schools have done a
piss poor job of picking the right trends, but we still haven't got to the
point a robot can do construction, in the field building / maintenance, or
what's left of farming and ranching. I don't see robots getting there for a
great while. I haven't seen the robot who can do even basic creative jobs.

The way forward is still humans. If you want to really help the workforce, get
micro-transactions that work. That will change everything.

------
Kequc
The comments on that article make me feel all :smith:. As if oh yea we can
keep this going, raw capitalism will totally work forever.

~~~
smsm42
Where you saw "raw capitalism" in the US? Do you know how many thousands of
pages federal regulations, state regulations, regional regulations and local
regulations are? How many new ones are created every year?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
The means of production are privately-owned, operated for-profit, using wage
labor. Also, firms' entry and exit to/from the markets is basically
unrestricted.

It's capitalism, red in tooth and claw. Doesn't have to be unregulated to be
"real" capitalism.

~~~
smsm42
>>>> Also, firms' entry and exit to/from the markets is basically unrestricted

You must be kidding me. Try entering banking or insurance market, you'd
quickly learn how "unrestricted" they are. Or, even simpler, try entering a
job market without joining a union that controls that particular market in a
particular place.

>>>> Doesn't have to be unregulated to be "real" capitalism.

The world "real" apparently has a very wide meaning for you. I guess
everything that allows people to make transactions without asking written
permission of the district market supervisor from the government in advance is
"raw capitalism" for you. No amount of restrictive regulation, no amount of
government involvement, no amount of market distortion will ever make it not
raw.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
The amount of regulation doesn't actually matter if the basic conditions for
the capitalist mode of production are satisfied.

The market interprets regulation as damage and routes around it.

~~~
EliRivers
Where for "market" presumably we read "criminals breaking the law", ultimately
to disastrous effect.

------
npsimons
_By using the most efficient possible languages (Ruby and Clojure, in my case,
rather than Java or C#) and relying on free and open source software (Postgres
rather than Oracle, for instance), I’m potentially destroying jobs in my own
sector!_

And that's where I stopped reading. Anyone who doesn't understand the
economics of OSS is probably not going to be writing very insightfully on
economics in general (hint: the large majority of OSS is produced by paid
programmers).

------
001sky
Great post,

up to ending.

Economics =/= politics.

& Politics is the supreme art.

------
jlebowski
some jobs will never be destroyed, i.e. prostitution

i still jerk off manually

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Two words: sex robots.

------
largesse
You know, I love these posts calling for high taxation by relatively young
people who are just starting their careers. Wait until you have kids about to
go to college or, if you are unlucky, alimony and child-support obligations.
Or major medical not covered by insurance.

We'll see what much higher taxation looks like to you then. It's not that more
income equality isn't a good goal, but there are plenty of people with their
backs against the wall.

I'm a strong open source advocate, but when I saw Richard Stallman years ago
talk about how all software should be free, my first thought was "Easy for him
to say. He doesn't have any dependents."

I do consulting work and my rates are high. Believe me, it's not because I'm
greedy it's because I'm trying to get by.

~~~
ori_b
You do realize the reason they're calling for high taxation is to reduce the
costs of kids going to college, child support, and the elimination of major
medical not covered by insurance?

Edit: Sorry, child support should be removed from that list; I was thinking of
the costs of raising a child, not what you pay after a divorce.

~~~
mynameishere
People are calling for high taxes to reduce child support? Do you just put
random words in a blender and dump out the results?

~~~
socialist_coder
If more of the cost of raising a child is paid for by taxes then one might
assume child support payments would go down.

~~~
largesse
In divorce, there is a settlement agreement. Once you are locked in no one is
looking at the cost of living.

------
andyl
"What one or two lone hackers can readily achieve today, once could only have
been accomplished by a team of engineers, business analysts, project managers,
and QA testers, with tools purchased from vendors that employed legions more
engineers, analysts, project managers, and QA testers"

This is true, and is the reason why I left general management to become a
developer. People don't realize just how powerful the new tools have become. I
can do by myself what once took a large team.

There is a lot that could be said about the potential industry-wide
ramifications of this power-shift. I know one thing for sure: team meetings
just got a whole lot more efficient.

------
paulhauggis
Open source developers have also been killing developer jobs for at least 5
years now.

As a business owner, why would I want to hire a software engineer when I can
hire a software mechanic? Most of what I want is already given out for free
and the hard parts are already engineered. I'm not talking about things like
PHP, Mysql, or Apache.

I just need someone to make changes to this code..and you really don't need to
find someone with that much experience to do it properly (IE: they are
cheaper).

As business owners get more and more tech savvy, I predict that this will be
the norm.

