

Why Startups Are Helping The Economy More Than You Think - esharef
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/14/are-startups-empty-buzz-or-a-way-to-kickstart-the-economy/

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Sambdala
I don't really like the fact that this article more or less accepts at face
value the metric of "jobs" as being the relevant measure of "helping the
economy." This might have been more or less the case when the output from the
vast majority of jobs rarely deviated more than an order of magnitude from the
average job, but that is far from the case these days.

Instead of an intelligent and creative person joining an assembly line or
becoming a pit trader, they have the opportunity to create something of value
from nothing and give access to it to the entire world.

The fact that paradigm shifts are accelerating isn't a bad thing in my
opinion. Within a few generations, the idea that the world is more or less the
same place when we leave it as it was when we entered it will likely not be an
automatic assumption people will make about the world.

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esharef
Sambdala, I'm one of the ppl who wrote the article. I actually agree with you
that today's jobs have a higher potential to really affect the world.
Technology lets us outsource tedious tasks to computers so we can focus on
more meaningful and creative things. I think people who just say "technology
is destroying jobs" are missing the fact that technology is creating
completely new opportunities (as you say "to create something of value from
nothing and give access to it to the entire world")

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abbasmehdi
I think "people who just say "technology is destroying jobs"" should just be
ignored, like their predecessors were when they decried plant robotics
replacing assembly line workers.

This is the circle of life, just like the newest wave of immigrants takes the
shittiest jobs in the economy, the shittiest (mindless) jobs in the economy
are eaten up by technology. This has been going on in this country (US) since
the beginning of the industrial revolution.

P.S. Great article btw.

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Sambdala
This was basically my point.

I enjoyed the article, but I think arguing against the point without
questioning the underlying assumptions takes effort and attention away from
building the future rather than reassuring those who are scared of it.

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ippisl
The article claims that "Over 400,000 new jobs have been created by Apple’s
App store.", but that's just shoddy accounting. What about mcdonalds in europe
installing thousands of touch screen replacing cashiers and the tons of other
apps that replace people, does that go into that accounting ?

And what about the intense price competition between workers that online,
global platforms create ?

Will those 2 million needed technical jobs cause more job losses ?

My problem with this article is that it tries to create a rosy picture of a
big change our economy is going throught, while in reality we just don't know
how things are going to turn out,whether we will have enough jobs for
everyone, and how rough and long the transition period is going to be, and it
does so just to sell a product(which might be valuable).

It's just like reading medical research done by pharmaceutical companies.

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carterschonwald
first:good job Nick (long time friend)! Also Elli, though we've never chatted.

I think the meta pattern of the examples in the article are in some ways
examples of startups that are creating "market-like" mechanisms for more
effectively helping businesses and people. Hireart's doing that from the lens
of jobs/candidate search, and the education startups are allowing people to
spend the coin of time into investing in their own knowledge/skills.

