
Are jobs obsolete? - ekm2
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete/index.html
======
tjstankus
_The opposite, libertarian answer (and the way we seem to be going right now)
would be to let those who can't capitalize on the bounty simply suffer. Cut
social services along with their jobs, and hope they fade into the distance._

Reminds me of this quote from Jello Biafra:

 _Some day, even the experts will figure out, that crime is not caused by rap
music...or even my music, but by a power structure of self-absorbed property
owners so brain dead and stupid they won't even see that if you're too goddamn
greedy to pay taxes for schools and services, they're not going to be any good
any more! And that uneducated time bombs are a very poor investment as a
future work force. And if you go on teaching people that life is cheap, and
leave them to rot in ghettos and jails, they may one day feel justified in
coming back to rob and kill you. Duh!_

(Source: <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jello_Biafra>)

~~~
johngalt
We spend more per student than we ever have in history. Why wasn't the country
in chaos when there weren't public schools at all?

Teaching the kids that they are owed something merely because they have less
than someone else? Seems to justify theft to me.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Totally agree. My kids have gone to the public high school and a large
fraction (more than 20%) of the students there _could_ be getting an education
but they _choose not to_.

I don't know why this is, but I know of no counter argument that supports why
an individual, who gets to school, has the books and supplies provided for
them, and teachers willing to help them with any issues they are having,
choose not to learn. These are not kids who just don't do homework, they do no
work at all. They are disruptive in class, they harass other students outside
of class, why? It is not because they 'lack jobs' (which they aren't helping
by not applying themselves to learning), it is not because their home
situation is untenable (they could be homeless for all I know but they are at
school and have all of the equipment they need to participate there).

No amount of 'money' is going to change this population of non-students. Their
burdened cost is higher as other students get less done because of their
antics.

~~~
hackinthebochs
The problem is pretty simple to identify in my opinion. These people live in a
culture of anti-education. This is going to take _a lot_ of money to counter.
The cheapest way to counter it is probably to simply pay students for good
grades, starting as young as possible. Create an external motivation to learn
and apply yourself where there otherwise would be none.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I guess I'm less willing to generalize than you are that the roots are an
'anti-education' culture. It hasn't been my experience that these 'slackers'
(for lack of a better term) are disproportinally represented by any
specifically identifiable group. They express a common 'you can't make me do
this' kind of attitude but beyond that much of the correlation seems to fall
off.

There is clearly a 'too cool for school' factor, but this could just be a
rationalization. And there seems to be some correlation with family engagement
as well. I really don't know what drives this attitude. My view of it
externally is that there is no physical, mental, or equipment related barrier
to their participation in the education process, they just don't. And what
alarms me is that they seem to represent such a large fraction of the total
population at the school.

I suppose we could come up with an experiment where we offered a cash
incentive to some and none to a control group to see how it affected their
participation. Something to put forward at the next PTA meeting.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Check my response to your sister comment: someone did actually do a controlled
experiment. Engagement went up a great deal.

The anti-education culture definitely isn't isolated to minorities; it's
spreading through the broader culture. Perhaps it was always there, its just
recently it's becoming so not having a good education is a life sentence of
menial dead end jobs so its getting more attention. Although I would disagree
that it isn't disproportionately represented in minorities. Minorities
experience it much more intensely because there aren't any competing ideals to
help steer them in a positive direction.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Thanks for the link, I was also looking at some work that was recently
published about measuring peoples ability to forego reward. There appears to
be a genetic component.

This is a bit harsh I hope " its just recently it's becoming so not having a
good education is a life sentence of menial dead end jobs" I certainly try to
support programs that facilitate people furthering their education and
'catching up' as it were. I've heard great things about programs like Homeboy
Industries [1] which try to give people a chance to take a different road.

[1] <http://homeboy-industries.org/index.php/about-us>

------
jswinghammer
I'm not sure the Post Office's problems are related to technology. Their union
negotiated a "no layoff" provision in their contract just this year. Why would
you agree to that as an employer? Then there is the problem of defined benefit
pensions where you end up keeping people basically on staff long after they
stop working for you. The Post Office needs to go bankrupt and clear these
contracts out and move forward without a union ideally. They might need to
wait for Obama to leave office before doing that.

As for jobs there's always work to be done. There's an infinite amount of work
in fact. In a free market involuntary unemployment should be zero because
someone would always be willing to pay something for a given amount of work. I
have work I need done now that I just do not have time for. I also know
finding someone to do that job for what I'm willing to pay is very hard since
people seem to get by without working via means I do not fully understand. I'm
at home today caring for my family who are basically all sick and I'm seeing a
lot of men just wandering around doing nothing. I'm going to guess that the
incentive to work is absent in their life for one reason or another.

Not sure libertarian means that you want people left out of the system and
starving though. I am a libertarian and I've spent 90% of my time post college
life running or helping to run a food pantry in my spare time. Seems silly to
suggest that libertarians don't care about such things.

~~~
jbooth
Every union "no layoff" provision I've ever seen was a case of the union
choosing to forego contracted CoL raises and some various health benefits in
exchange for keeping jobs. Typically it will be cost-neutral compared to
layoffs and keeping benefits.

The employer wouldn't sign up to it if it was a pure money loser. They're not
crazy :)

Also, Obama already suspended Saturday delivery. So not too sure what he has
to do with a perceived unwillingness to shut down the post office. (He also
cut taxes, stepped up immigration enforcement and didn't close gitmo).

~~~
CWuestefeld
_Obama already suspended Saturday delivery._

There was apparently a rogue delivery person four days ago, joyriding in the
mail truck and asking me to sign for a delivery.

~~~
jbooth
Sorry, my fault. They're going to end it soon, according to Obama's postmaster
general and the legislation to do so is being filed by a democratic senator.
[http://www.businessinsider.com/say-goodbye-to-saturday-
mail-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/say-goodbye-to-saturday-mail-
delivery-postmaster-says-2011-7)

Point still stands that "fox news said this about obama" does not correlate at
all to what he's thinking or even doing. In fact you can usually assume the
opposite.

~~~
bradly
> They're going to end it soon.

That isn't exactly true. The Postmaster General has been trying to get
Saturday delivery canceled for a while now, but congress has not been willing
to let it happen.

~~~
jbooth
So, the original contention was that Socialistobama would never, ever, ever
consider reduction of service.

The truth is that his appointee is actively pursuing it. Regardless of whether
Congress (ironically, mostly rural district republicans in congress) are
impeding him as usual.

~~~
ovi256
>Socialistobama

That label and the level of discourse it represents are not welcome here. Be
civil.

------
DanielBMarkham
Let me see if I understand this reasoning correctly. Old, fragile and stiff
huge organizations like the Post Office cannot provide the numbers of jobs
they used to. The economy is changing. Therefore -- some hand-waving here --
the very idea of jobs is out-of-date.

Ouch.

But it gets better. We should pay folks not to work. After all, there's no
jobs for them, so why should we expect them to do things that are impossible?

This is very reminiscent to me of all the hare-brained articles about
capitalism being dead that came out right around the banking crisis. Yes,
things are way screwed up, but capitalism remains. You could make any kind of
wide-spread social change you wanted and capitalism would still remain. People
like to trade stuff.

The crazy thing here is, like most of this tripe, there's a nugget of
something useful in there. We cannot predict how the labor force will evolve.
To do so is folly. The answer to this is not to announce the death of jobs,
it's to create systems where new job roles which are unforeseen by us are
created. To promote flexible adaptation in our businesses and governments.

What's dead is our big boxes of generic labels to stick on things -- all those
labels and boxes have been stretched so far they don't work any more. Trying
to continue to create policies around those labels and boxes is idiotic. We
all need to adapt -- not in a lets-bring-some-academics-on-tv-to-talk-about-
the-knowledge-economy sense, but in a real, live policy sense. If your terms
and generalizations are bad, your conclusions and policies will never work. I
understand that's frustrating and that you are out of ideas -- but a mental
model with a huge impedance mismatch the reason, not that we've suddenly been
thrust into a 27th century scarcity-free economy.

Take a look at the comments on this thread. Everybody gets out their favorite
political pinata and beats on it. Is this a very productive type of article
for this site?

~~~
davidw
> We cannot predict how the labor force will evolve. To do so is folly. The
> answer to this is not to announce the death of jobs, it's to create systems
> where new job roles which are unforeseen by us are created. To promote
> flexible adaptation in our businesses and governments.

This is Hayek 101, and I agree with it strongly in terms of society being a
'complex system' that is difficult/impossible to do much about in a centrally
controlled way.

Where I get off that train though is the idea that we should just dump the
human leftovers of "creative destruction" (ok, that's not Hayek, but another
Austrian, Schumpeter) into the garbage. No government support, no health care,
no education, no nothing. They failed, they can go die in the streets, unless
"private charities" happen to step in, but by all means let's not create a
society-wide system to prop up the inevitable losers in a market-based system
to minimum sustenance levels.

I much more strongly identify with Warren Buffet's way of thinking: by all
means, get the government mostly out of the way and let markets do their work.
But then step in and give people who didn't come out so well a helping hand to
get back on their feet. That's not "central planning", that's a safety net.

> Take a look at the comments on this thread. Everybody gets out their
> favorite political pinata and beats on it. Is this a very productive type of
> article for this site?

Absolutely not, let's please flag it and ask the moderators to ban these kinds
of articles, as they beget political discussions, where we go round and round
and round: you can look up very similar sorts of discussions on usenet from
the 1980ies if you do some poking.

~~~
_delirium
_Where I get off that train though is the idea that we should just dump the
human leftovers of "creative destruction" (ok, that's not Hayek, but another
Austrian, Schumpeter) into the garbage. No government support, no health care,
no education, no nothing._

That isn't Hayek either, though. Some Hayekians, yes, but Hayek himself was in
favor of safety nets, and even argued positively for them in a number of
places. He grouped basic healthcare along with fire protection and a police
service as the minimal services a state should provide, and also supported a
subsistence-level guaranteed minimum income (as a direct transfer payment,
rather than as some complex combination of food stamps, rent control, housing
subsidy, unemployment insurance, etc., etc.). One of his arguments was that a
background safety net promotes individual freedom by lessening tribalist
instincts--- if there's no safety net, people will cling to things like their
church or ethnic group for a safety net, out of fear of being left out in the
cold.

~~~
davidw
Sure, good points, I was speaking of "that train" to mean the hard-core "no
government" people.

------
ryandvm
It's a fact that computers/automation are going to continue to obsolete human
jobs. Nothing short of a technological apocalypse is going to reverse that.
And I agree that we shouldn't really lament the reality that a trucker who
used to spend 50 hours a week vacuously staring at the highway no longer has
to do that. But that's a triumph. One more human mind freed up for greater
accomplishments.

That said, I'm dubious of his suggestion that we all turn to purely creative
pursuits. At least, it will be a very, very long time before automation gets
us to that point. I'm more interested in what we do in the meantime. What are
we supposed to do with hordes of workers that are freed up in the coming
decades as menial jobs disappear at an exceeding clip?

My guess is that this is a problem the labor markets will solve on their own.
That is, the solution to a disappearing amount of work is that, on average, we
all simply work less. Why pay 3/4 of the population to work 40 hours a week
when we could pay all of them to work 30 (then 20, then 10)? Of course, we're
going to need to reduce per employee costs/benefits to make this work, but
that's a good idea no matter what. Making the employer responsible for health
care and retirement caused more problems than it solved anyway.

~~~
ippisl
Without some regulation , why would the work week become shorter ? for many
people , working a 40 hour work week barely covers their expenses. why would
they want to work less ?

~~~
colanderman
I've always thought that a 30 hr work week _should_ be regulated, forcing
employees to demand higher wages in order to survive, forcing employers to
raise wages, and _forcing CEOs to be paid less_ , thus reducing the income
gap.

~~~
pemulis
If that sort of thing was effective, income inequality would have dropped over
the past 60 years as government regulations raised the minimum wage and
shortened the work week. Instead, it dramatically increased.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg)

~~~
hackinthebochs
The problem is that minimum wage has never overtaken inflation. So in fact the
minimum wage has effectively fallen over the last 60 years. Plus, the gains in
production due to automation has worked to concentrate wealth at the top. The
point is we can't say regulation wouldn't be effective considering trends of
income distribution.

------
commanda
This article skips discussing one reason why jobs are in a sense ends to
themselves: the feeling of being useful. Retired people often complain that
they don't know what to do with themselves after leaving the workforce, so
they go do things like volunteering. A friend of mine recently took 2 months
off between jobs and nearing the end of that time, she started becoming very
depressed and realized it was because she wasn't contributing to society or to
herself. I think most people work not only to pay the bills or to acquire
luxury items, but to have a sense of self-worth.

~~~
zasz
It might not be "feeling useful" so much as the social stimulation. The days
when I work from home and don't talk to anyone at the office are soul-
crushingly lonely, sometimes, even if I'm very active over IM.

~~~
nickik
Very much agree its a social thing. "The West" looks down on people that don't
work does they feel bad and usless. All these people that will not have to
work for money anymore have more time and they should be encouraged do good
things. Take care of your parents, look after there children, study a new
field, go out and talk to people about politics ....

------
jneal
As time goes on, and technological abilities improve, more and more jobs will
fall to "robots" or computerized replacements for real jobs. There will always
be need for creative jobs, engineers, etc, but the non-skilled labor jobs will
be less and less. I don't see how anyone could disagree that there is already
a problem here, and in the future, there will be an even bigger problem. The
only people able to get jobs will be educated/skilled. The lower class will
grow lower and lower. Aside from that, in the "old days" women stayed at home
and took care of the family. "Nowadays" women are going to work, and I think
that is absolutely great! However, that is more people working, therefore less
jobs available.

I'm sure we'll come up with a solution. Although I think the first step is
admitting there is a problem. Innovation will come, it will just take time.

Imagine a self-sufficient world far more advanced than ours. Imagine a world
that practically runs itself and leaves us to care for each other and blossom
with nature. The only problem is, this imagination world would never be
allowed by multinational corporations and big business. Wealth would be more
evenly distributed, they can't have that.

~~~
billybob
'Aside from that, in the "old days" women stayed at home and took care of the
family. "Nowadays" women are going to work, and I think that is absolutely
great!'

Another way of looking at this is, "in the old days, a household could be
supported by one parent's work and the other could raise children. Now, both
have to work to pay the bills, and children get less time with parents and
more time in institutions."

~~~
jcromartie
> Now, both have to work to pay the bills, and children get less time with
> parents and more time in institutions.

I guess I'm not the only one upset by this trend.

------
jganetsk
Policy adjustments for maintaining capitalism in the post-employment era:
provide a minimum guaranteed income to all citizens and abolish minimum wage.
This was Milton Friedman's idea.

This would create a massive market for a standard "life package": a
combination of food, shelter, and healthcare for one person with cost equal to
the minimum income. We could even have cities organized around the concept.
Then, people can go to work in creation spaces where they get micro-paid
exactly what their contribution is worth. Getting $5 for a blog post I write
sounds great if I enjoy doing it and am not hungry.

~~~
msluyter
This is also Marshall Brain's idea:

<http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm>

IIRC, he advocates a 25k stipend for all americans, which incidentally, given
~300M people would cost 7.5 trillion. That's approximately double the entire
federal budget for 2012. Factoring in state/local spending gets you to near 6
trillion. Given that fact and our current political climate, I don't think
it's going out on a limb to say that it'll be a quite a while before adopt
such a solution. ;)

Brain suggests lots of ways of raising the money (some rather implausible)
here:

<http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm>

~~~
jganetsk
A guaranteed minimum income is not the same thing as a stipend. If the
guaranteed minimum income is 25k, and your personal income is over 25k, the
government doesn't owe you anything. You would owe the government something.

------
pnathan
My introduction to Rushkoff was Cyberia [1].

He's much more temperate now than he was in Cyberia. He has a great point,
though. Restated, it's as follows: _If we have abundance, why are we working
for more, instead of sending the abundance to those who need it?_

He seems to fall down in the mechanisms of distribution though in this article
and hand-wave through it.

[1]
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cyberia_(book...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cyberia_\(book\))

~~~
patrickyeon
I very much like how you restated his point. I felt myself agreeing, nodding
my head when he was following that thought, then I had the image of Rushkoff
tripping and falling flat on his face once he tried to figure out how. I think
it would've been a much stronger article had he ended with "I don't know how
to make this happen, only that it needs to happen." As it stands, he's just
suggesting a different job for these unemployed toll collectors to take up, as
opposed to toll machine repair.

~~~
ddw
Except those people wouldn't be burdened by having a "job" because in
Rushkoff's world "food and shelter are basic human rights."

That's where people will get tripped up; in our current economic system we
don't believe such an idea is true.

------
philwelch
_We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for
higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix
and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way,
since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace._

And, more to the point, a toll collector isn't necessarily bright enough to be
a toll robot technician. Sometimes progress flows the other way; now the
supermarket checker doesn't have to calculate your bill anymore or even know
how to make change, so he can be completely innumerate. But for the most part,
we're replacing less skilled jobs with more skilled jobs. We have not enough
engineers and too many workers without useful skills, or in many cases the
ability to gain them.

~~~
randomdata
> We have not enough engineers and too many workers without useful skills, or
> in many cases the ability to gain them.

Separation of concerns is our current solution to that problem.

In software development, for example, good developers are hard to find, so we
split the job up to add a designer role into the mix. Still finding it hard to
find good people, we're now seeing the UX role come in. By giving each person
less to do, the knowledge required to the job is reduced. You don't have to be
a genius to be a part of the team.

In agriculture, another industry I am close to, you have the same thing. One
person drives the tractor, one person tends to the animals, one person repairs
the equipment, etc. because it is hard to find a good farmhand that can do it
all.

We will eventually see the same shift for robotics as they become more and
more prevalent. You'll have one person to diagnose the problem, one person to
replace the part, etc. as the labour needs dictate.

~~~
philwelch
If you push separation of concerns far enough, you start finding roles that
can be played by computers and robots rather than humans.

------
efalcao
It's very interesting to think about cases where digital darlings have "killed
jobs."

Before: Thousands of jobs all over the country working for the classified
section of a newspaper. Marginally profitable business.

After: Craigslist destroys that whole market. Tons of jobs lost and the
revenues shift to one company. Hugely profitable business, but probably a
smaller total market than used to exist with just newspapers.

Should we feel bad about it? Hell no. Are we marginally worse off? Maybe?

~~~
bryanlarsen
I think part of what Rushkoff is saying is that the transition from classified
ads to Craigslist should be a win for society without caveats.

People placing ads are better off -- they don't have to pay to place the ads,
and their ads are more widely seen. People responding to ads are also better
off -- they don't have to buy newspapers, and have much better search and scan
capabilities, et cetera.

But thousands of people have lost their jobs in the newspaper industry, and
thus are worse off. Yet the Craigslist transition has not taken anything away
from society. Those that lost their jobs are not now contributing less to
society -- their jobs would be glorified make-work in a post-Craigslist
society. It should now be easier for society to feed, clothe, house &
entertain these people than it was before, yet they are not getting fed,
clothed, housed and entertained as well as they were before. It's also hard to
argue that they do not deserve to be fed, clothed, housed and entertained.

It is a failure of capitalism. Markets are about the distribution of scarce
goods, but do not work so well when the goods are not scarce. Capitalism is
still better than every other system we're aware of, but I believe that there
is a better system out there yet to be found, and Rushkoff is one of those
helping to search for it.

~~~
tsotha
>Those that lost their jobs are not now contributing less to society -- their
jobs would be glorified make-work in a post-Craigslist society. It should now
be easier for society to feed, clothe, house & entertain these people than it
was before, yet they are not getting fed, clothed, housed and entertained as
well as they were before. It's also hard to argue that they do not deserve to
be fed, clothed, housed and entertained.

>It is a failure of capitalism.

I don't see how that can be considered a failure of capitalism. On the
contrary, this is capitalism functioning the way it's supposed to function.
These people aren't "not getting fed, clothed, housed and entertained" on a
long-term basis. They need to find jobs doing something the rest of us are
willing to pay for.

------
extramoose
"We're living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal,
employment is."

This is more ground for the fact that we _might not_ be in a bubble with major
financial crash risk like the .com bubble. The fact is that engineers who are
building and inventing new technologies are building a societal system
(possibly unintentionally) that puts technology, rather than people, at the
top of the game (especially in terms of efficiency & profitability).

While we may, as the tech industry, be relatively safe in the foreseeable
future, this article really makes me question what we, as engineers, designers
& general tech lovers, can invent/build that will allow future society to not
only take advantage of our technologies (as end-users), but also allow
individuals to make money in an increasingly digital and on-demand world.

------
Spyro7
Why is this being upvoted? This article begins with a questionable premise and
then descends straight into misinformation.

The problems in the USPS did not begin with email. They began with a highly
questionable requirement that the USPS fund a plan to fully cover the
estimated future health care costs of all current employees. _They are the
only government institution required to do this, and it has crippled their
ability to remain profitable:_

* [http://www.plansponsor.com/Post_Office_Says_PreFunding_Retir...](http://www.plansponsor.com/Post_Office_Says_PreFunding_Retiree_Health_Care_is_Reason_for_Loss.aspx)

* Read First Few Pages Here -> <http://www.uspsoig.gov/foia_files/RARC-WP-10-001.pdf>

* <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/us/23postal.html>

They have overpaid this fund by billions of dollars, but they are not able to
use this money to address their current financial shortcomings.

Somehow the author of this piece is able to extrapolate from the fiscal
problems of the USPS to the overall job market. The extrapolation is misguided
at best.

There are so many things wrong in this article that I will not take the time
to address them all. (Most of Europe was thriving in the Middle Ages? Really?
The author needs to define the word thrive.) I just want to say that I find it
interesting that there is so much hand-wringing in these comments about jobs
being displaced by technology.

In economics, we like to call this creative destruction. Old jobs go away and
new jobs take their place. This is a natural process, and their is nothing so
magically different about the technological revolution that it will somehow
"make jobs obsolete".

Just as The Luddites protested against the loss of jobs brought on by the
technological progress of the Industrial Revolution, now some individuals
protest against the loss of jobs brought on by the technological progress of
the "Technological Revolution". Then, as now, it was all hand-wringing and
nail-biting with no serious economic analysis.

The critics say this time is different, this time there will be no new jobs,
and we should urge people to find something other to do than working. The
critics are wrong. Don't worry people. Employment is here to stay.

Side Note: The author engages in some navel gazing when he says America has
all that it needs. I'm not sure if the author has noticed it or not, but there
is a such thing as globalization and the global needs for goods and services
will increase as developing countries close the ground with developed nations.

This global recession is just another business cycle, eventually the world
will have another upswing, and then we will revert to mean again. There is no
magic here, just the march of time. I would not put too much stock into those
who believe that a single recession merits the reevaluation of the entire
modern economic system.

 _Edit: Trying to trim the size. Eventually, I will learn the art of not
making posts into walls of text._

~~~
reader5000
> _The critics say this time is different, this time there will be no new
> jobs, and we should urge people to find something other to do than working.
> The critics are wrong. Don't worry people. Employment is here to stay._

I mean this is hand-waving as well. You havent actually provided any
substantive counter-argument other than bring up the Luddites.

I think the basic argument that at some point, possibly already past, the
productive activity required for basic human survival will be virtually
entirely automated and require 0 human labor input. How do we allocate
productive output in a society that requires no labor input? The notion of the
"job" as described in the article may very well be obsolete.

~~~
mattmanser
I personally think the much bigger question is how do we allocate the profits.

As it could rapidly go very wrong with a miniscule few controlling the vast
majority of the income. And a massive income gap developing.

Kinda like what's already happening...

~~~
rphlx
That was a risk in the early 80s. It's pretty much an undisputed reality
today.

------
njharman
Most people work to get money to spend on stuff people are making.

Full employment 40+ hours a week is obsolete. Consumerism is obsolete. We
should all be working 10hrs/week or less and have/consume 1/10 to 1/4 of what
we have/consume today.

That's not gonna happen easily, but it's gonna happen _. Perhaps not in my
lifetime.

_ I'm making guess that space exploitation will not ramp up in time, it might
though.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Are you suggesting that 3/4th - 9/10th of spending is on luxury goods?

~~~
_delirium
It really depends on what you consider a luxury good. For example, some amount
of housing is a "necessity", some amount is "nice to have", and some is
"luxury", but I doubt people agree on the boundaries. The bar of what people
consider a necessity seems to rise with income, so people recategorize what
they would've once seen as luxury as non-luxury.

I was recently adding up what it would take to live in a cheap-ish place like
Pittsburgh: 1) frugally; and 2) modestly but comfortably; and the numbers are
absurdly low if you really stick to necessities. YMMV elsewhere.

~~~
learc83
Yes. My very average house today is a huge luxury compared to the very average
house my grandparents bought in the 60s.

I have a cable bill, an iPhone bill, an internet bill, a netflix bill, and too
many various SaaS subscriptions. My grandparents had none of those.

I also have a much higher power bill to pay for all my consumer electronics
and air conditioning, a higher health insurance bill to pay for drastically
better health care, an extra car insurance policy.

That's in addition to all the extra stuff I have lying around. 2 cars, not
one, both of which are vastly superior and more expensive than what my
grandparents had. Superior home appliances. And 1 metric tonne of electronics.

I have so much more material wealth than all but the very richest did just 50
years ago. How could I complain that I'm not better off?

------
shoham
Thanks for sharing! Great article, reminded me of a great speech I read
recently that Paul Graham gave in 2005:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html>

The jist is the same as Rushkoff's, and Lanier's conclusion-- that people
perform better when they do something they care about enough to do it for
free. The paradox with the digital age is that consumers have grown accustomed
to not paying for digital goods -- and artists have grown accustomed to
settling for any attention they can get, which means marketing gimmicks, and
settling for the lowest common denominator far too often for authors of
original content. Lanier covers this well, for sure:

<http://edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip>

------
rmc
At first I thought this was going to be a conservative 'the modern world is
killing everything good', but I was pleased to the argument come down to
"computers are killing jobs, and this is a good thing".

Though I don't believe it's accurate to say that Europe thrived under the
feudal system. Many people did the same meaningless jobs all the time. The
author also claims that the Industrial Age & Corporations were some massive
scam to get the rich more.

~~~
danmaz74
The thriving middle age Europe stuff is really misinformed. Almost all the
people at that time worked in agriculture, and most of them (this varied by
place, but in general) worked for somebody else: The landlord. They were
usually free to organize the work, but a percentage of the produce was for the
lord. And the land was his, not theirs.

------
duairc
Oh fuck all of you capitalist scum. I really hate how much of this community
is based on this really fucked up reappropriation of the hacker ethos into
some sort of pro-capitalist thing.

Capitalism is an inherently authoritarian economic system.
([http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/The_Anarchist_FAQ_Editor...](http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/The_Anarchist_FAQ_Editorial_Collective__An_Anarchist_FAQ__07_17_.html))
And don't give me this bullshit about communism being authoritarian and then
pointing to the USSR - the USSR had nothing to do with communism, and
communism is not the only alternative to capitalism nor are they even the
opposite of each other.

------
DirtyCalvinist
Britain, the Low Countries, France and the German States all went through this
process in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Historians call it
pauperization. The only good solution seems to be keeping people from starving
to death (the above named societies often did not, incidentally) and wait
for/encourage the economy to find a way to suck up the surplus labor.

------
crxpandion
Too bad what he suggests requires skills that most people don't have, at least
not yet. To achieve this utopic vision we need to drastically change our
education from being job-driven towards being production-driven (e.g. teaching
more practical programming to younger audiences, encouraging self-motivated
thinking rather than homework burn-out). This is not an easy task.

I like his vision but I fail to see how it can work out. The reality is that
people are lazy. While making stuff because you want to is awesome, most
people would rather sit on the couch and consume. Its because they have to
feed themselves and buy nice TVs that they go to work in the morning.

------
lysol
This was such an intriguing article until he posited that our citizens who
formerly worked in manufacturing could replace their aspirations of long-term
employment in a stable economy with some generic digital goods production that
was never elaborated on in the article. I have to assume he meant they should
all make doll clothes in Second Life.

~~~
wushupork
Yeah he lost me there as well. Some of these people being displaced I feel
probably won't have the motivation to be independent and produce said digital
goods. That's why they are being displaced in the first place because they
don't have new skills and their old skills are no longer needed.

------
ChuckMcM
Pulling out a specific nit:

 _"America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate,
and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of
us actually working."_

And from an old college textbook on the definition of economics - _Economics
is the study of how society manages its scarce resources._

Here it the hard nut in the thesis, what mechanism, process, or theory, could
manage determining who works and who doesn't in a society?

We currently have a system where the wealthiest tax payers pay a grossly
disproportionate share of the total tax receipts. Some fraction of those
receipts are used to fund the lives of the least wealthy individuals. It
doesn't seem to work as well as we would like.

Consider a more communist flavored theory, if Bob's education, skills, and
work ethic allow him to generate gross domestic product which would support 5
average citizens. Do we make Bob and his four comrades equal consumers of the
GDP that Bob has generated? Would Bob continue to produce at that rate?

Enlightened self interest is a powerful thing. But taking away the 'fruits of
one's labor' to redistribute it amongst the less fortunate doesn't motivate
the high performers or the low performers to higher economic output.

I am always interested in systems which might replace capitalism as an
organizing principle. But until we have such a system we won't be able to
manage the disparity of productivity in a socially acceptable way.

~~~
Retric
A major nitpick as a middle American a disproportionate percentage of _MY_
salary is used to support the poor relative to rich people. The vast majority
of wealth redistribution in this country is though SS which the wealthy get to
opt out from. When you consider that I pay more in SS as a percentage of my
income than Warren Buffet's entire tax bill there is something wrong with this
picture. (In theory I might see some of that money back but even I nothing
changes and I live to see 120 I would still be far worse off with SS than
without.)

PS: Some people think of corporate taxes as double taxation on the wealthy but
nothing in the US tax code says you need to invest in US companies and if you
actually look at taxes paid by large companies it's vary low relative to the
stated tax rate.

~~~
Domenic_S
> a disproportionate percentage of MY salary is used to support the poor
> relative to rich people.

The operative word there is "salary". Buffet had such a low (as a %) tax bill
because most of his income isn't salary but cap gains.

Let's raise cap gains tax to 50% you say? Sounds great until you sell your
house in a few years.

~~~
Retric
There is a huge difference between taxing cap gains at 15% vs 50%. IMO, treat
it as any other income source if I am going to work and pay ~40+% of my income
in taxes why on earth should I pay _MORE_ so people making 100 times what I do
get a discount.

However, I also pay a higher percentage though many other regressive taxes.
Consider, I own a reasonably nice car and pay taxes on it, but if I make ten
times as much I don't suddenly buy a car that costs ten times as much.

~~~
Domenic_S
> IMO, treat it as any other income source

You mean treat it like salary? It wouldn't matter. People with that much cap
gains would leave investments where they are and take out low-interest loans
against it. That's what they do today. Actually, lots of middle class people
do (or have done) the same thing with HELOCs. Rather than selling their house
for a profit (and paying cap gains), buying a cheaper house, and using the
profit to upgrade the cheaper house, they took out a loan against their
equity.

> why on earth should I pay MORE so people making 100 times what I do get a
> discount.

You imply a causal relationship where none exists.

------
chernevik
Mr. Rushkoff wants to "organize society around employment", but he ought to
reflect that it's going to be organized around _something_. There is going to
be a distribution of power, it's an inevitable feature of society. Do we
wanted organized around what each of us can do for the benefit of others, as
measured freely by those others? Or do we want it organized around what
everyone else thinks of us? I can do a lot more about my worries about getting
a job than I can about worries about the opinion of my local commissar.

------
peterwwillis
Next on CNN:

 _Food: Why you probably don't need it_

 _Exercise: Less of it could mean more healthcare jobs_

 _Transportation: Could rising oil prices make it impossible to go anywhere?_

 _Safety: Could banning non-Christians from entering the country make us
safer?_

 _9/11: What about the bright side?_

 _Culture: Is Lil Wayne the music genius of the decade?_

~~~
trop
Right on about food. Isn't that another fear, global food scarcities, green
revolution not keeping up, fields poisoned by industrial fertilizers... Let's
get used to having less, unless we get back on the farm.

------
beefman
If we go all the way to a technological singularity in which not even
"knowledge workers" are needed... we'll need a new way to distribute wealth.

Between 1960 and 2009, employment in IT in the US rose by a factor of 1.6,
while the population grew by a factor of 1.7

<http://lumma.org/microwave/#2010.10.17>

and many women entered the workforce, so the labor pool expanded by more than
1.7.

------
wbienek
Don't have much mercy when I read these kinds of stories. I went to a job
interview back in 2000 for a 28,000 a year job. Knew 6 computer languages and
significantly more than the interviewee and all this colleges employees. (in
my opinion) this was a small college in Michigan. They never called me back. A
few weeks later I started a small company. Today I make upwards of 250k a
year. No college education. They (college people) can all go starving on the
street like they would have left me and my two new born twins. No help from
the "establishment" for me no matter how smart I was. Let em all lose their
jib and starve.. Let em be in college debt. I smirk at the barrages who would
have let me go homeless every time I read stories like this.

No quarter wad given to me. Now that theyre expected to oroduce. Now thier
college means diddle it is my turn to watch from the sidelines.

I know that if I don't make money MYSELF nobody ----especially "college"
people will help..

Posted from an iPad I never would have had if I let the establishment guide my
life..

------
ctdonath
"I am afraid to even ask this, but since when is unemployment really a
problem? ... on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we
need. America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed,
educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a
fraction of us actually working."

This belies a gross misunderstanding of how national socio-economies work.

Yes, we could. One of my blogs is "A Buck A Plate"
<http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com> featuring sufficient meals for
$1/person/meal. A favorite study is "tiny homes" <http://tinyhouseblog.com>
where nice cozy accomodations can be had for $10,000/person. Beyond that, I've
figured one "could probably shelter, feed, educate and even provide health
care for its entire population" for just $10/day.

Are you ready to live on $10/day? is anybody?

Long story short, it would take about $1T/yr to pay everyone in the USA a
"living income" of a paltry $10/day. Note that current federal revenue is
about $2T ($4.5T including state revenues), with federal spending about twice
that.

Of a culture where the vast majority decide to vote themselves monies from the
treasury, John Adams wrote "The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush
into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share,
and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment
the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws
of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it,
anarchy and tyranny commence."

Enjoying the comforts of a culture wallowing in the height of luxury, Rushkoff
opines in effect that the source of that comfort be eliminated on the absurd
theory that enough will be produced when there is no carrot nor stick
incentiveizing people to work.

No, Mr. Rushkoff, people need not work when confiscating the hard-earned
wealth of others is enough. Problem is, those who produce will not be
appreciated, but reviled, and their incentive to produce taken away. Despite
the symbolic official $1 salary of its CEO, Apple was driven by _profit_, and
its products available only to those who in turn sought _profit_ in other
endeavors. Take away the profit motive by confiscating incomes to supply the
idle, and few of the idle will use the opportunity for lofty endeavors; nay,
most will cultivate dissatisfaction and demand more be confiscated for their
gain.

As an ancient writer opined, "if any would not work, neither should he eat."

------
joshu
Metapoint: Headlines phrased as a question are almost always best answered
"no."

Try it!

~~~
xianshou
Actually, I'm writing an article about it: "Are headlines phrased as questions
always best answered 'No'?"

~~~
randallsquared
If only you'd said "usually"...

------
tomlin
So let's start picking apart this article. And the other article that talks
about the end of capitalism. And then the next 50, 100, 1000 articles that
prey on our confused notion that capitalism is the end-game for eternity.

Watch as self-driving vehicles takeover all modes of goods transport. And
robotics and information systems remove 90% of the health care workforce. And
construction. And education. Keep telling yourself that your vision of
capitalism is exact and free from evolution.

Eventually, a grounded theory that revolutionizes capitalism will emerge. Do
we know what the evolution will be or how it will work? I certainly don't. But
I do believe in evolution and evolution in markets.

Defending capitalism like it dragged you out of a flaming building is self-
serving, not logical. Capitalism is an ideology. It can and will change, with
or without consent.

------
olliesaunders
There’s a really good book on this topic called Creating You & Co.[1] that is
all about how it’s not jobs that are important—that’s an
overspecialization—but work. And work can be done in any number of ways:
automation, out-sourcing, crowd-sourcing, etc. The book is quite old so it
only really talks about alternative human-based work delivery but it’s still
arguing for a new worldview on work and employment that is well ahead of its
time.

I have to remind myself every time I watch the news—particularly those
interviews with “experts”—that job losses aren’t quite the gloomy picture they
seem to be. And the solution isn’t necessarily to manufacture more positions
for people.

1: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Creating-You-Co-Learn-
Career/dp/0738...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Creating-You-Co-Learn-
Career/dp/0738200328/)

------
cwp
There is a nugget of useful discussion in there, in that corporations aren't
as necessary as they used to be. Better communication technology lowers
coordination costs and we don't need big organization and bureaucracy to get
big things done anymore.

But the whole "technology is destroying jobs" meme is just horseshit. What's
destroying jobs in the US is lack of demand. Other counties (no, not all of
them, but many) are doing just fine, thank you, despite technology.

I wonder if this kind of thing is a result of the high and accelerating pace
of technological change we're experiencing. We expect change to be so fast
that we don't even try to predict the future based on the past and present, we
just throw our hands up and declare _everything_ to be a fundamental paradigm
shift, rather than a cyclical or temporary phenomenon.

~~~
jcromartie
You're right: Technology doesn't kill jobs.

It kills demand.

Who wants to send paper mail, or a landline phone, or to take out traditional
classified ads? The alternatives are too appealing and the demand for the old
versions is never coming back.

~~~
cwp
Ugh. No. The financial crisis killed demand.

~~~
jcromartie
The financial crisis did not make people buy mobile phones instead of
landlines, Hulu and Netflix instead of cable TV, or Craigslist instead of
local newspaper ads, or ebooks instead of paper books. It might have
accelerated the shift, because the new technology was cheaper, but people
naturally gravitate to the better product.

These technologies split, reorganized, transferred, concentrated or
decentralized demand. Call it what you will, but people _want_ the new stuff
over the old stuff. And if they want it, they'll buy it.

------
billybob
Great! All we have to do is convince poor people to be happy living at a
subsistence level, and convince rich people to be happy supporting them!

Seriously, I agree with his point that, say, building bridges in order to
create jobs is backwards. But his plan seems to require changing basic human
motivations.

~~~
nyrath
Well, you can avoid changing basic human motivations by using an alternative
solution.

Jay Gould is attributed to have said "I can hire one half of the working class
to kill the other half. "

~~~
brohee
The current version is more akin to hiring half the working class to guard the
other imprisoned half. It's more sustainable that way.

<http://prisonvalley.arte.tv/>

------
zasz
I don't think anyone would want to pay for the art I can make. I don't want to
pay for anyone else's either. Given how much music piracy there is, and the
vast skill disparity between casual amateurs and dedicated professionals, and
the near-zero cost of replicating the bits composed by someone better than me
or any of my immediate peers, I can't believe the author thinks that trading
bits is a possible outcome. Why would I want my dad to educate me when I could
watch OpenCourseware? Why would I want my friend's painting when I could get
something much better over deviantArt? Why would I bother getting recipes from
my mom if I can get them from a 4 star Michelin chef instead?

~~~
icebraining
You might not want your friend's art, but there's plenty of excellent art not
on DeviantArt. Especially if you custom made: Kickstart and other escrow
services can fund stuff that doesn't exist yet (and therefore can't be
pirated).

Similar to what's done with TV shows (a pilot is made, then if there's
interest by any network, they fund the rest of the season), but with artists
directly proposing their 'pilots' (a first chapter of a book, a trailer of a
movie, a single song) directly to the audience and letting them fund the rest.

~~~
zasz
So if you're willing to grant the point that not everyone is going to be
capable of creating good art, then what do the non-producers do? Just sit back
and consume? The problem is that we use productive output as a heuristic for
determining how much stuff to give back to a given member of society. If the
standard changes from "making widgets" to "making art," most people are still
going to starve.

------
tibbon
In a related video that CNN linked in, it was being questioned if companies
that aren't hiring are being unpatriotic. Union leader James Hoffa was saying
that Apple is being unpatriotic by not hiring here in the US.

But, I don't quite understand James Hoffa saying that Apple isn't hiring- they
are hiring both retail and corporate jobs.

<http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/>

Yes, they employ and sub-contract a lot of people overseas, but that's just
the way things work in 2011. How many people are going to pay $10,000 for a
laptop or $1,400 for an iPhone? That's probably the difference in price that
it would require for Apple to make their products 100% here.

------
mayutana
A similar model is being followed in Europe where the unemployed, disabled,
recent mothers and the poorer people are provided some sort of basic support
by the state. The higher earning people have extra cash to live more
comfortably.

~~~
serge2k
Unfortunately you have to support not only people who are just going through
some tough times, but those who just want to leech off society. Plus those
people who go out and have kids, then waste the money they are given to feed
them on crap so their child is either starving or lives off a terrible diet.

It's really not an easy problem to solve. Ideally everyone should be
guaranteed that they get enough food and a place to live, with anything extra
being their own responsibility. But this is hard to implement in practice.

~~~
Riesling
I think this is an irrational fear. I don't think that leeching lies in human
nature. People naturally want to take part in society as long as they are
healthy. Just think about what you would do if you wouldn't have to work.
Would you stay in bed all day? I would most certainly write programs to help
other people, just as I do now.

~~~
rick888
Have you ever run any kind of business where you are giving away something for
free? People will eventually take more and more until you go out of business.

"I don't think that leeching lies in human nature"

I think many thousands of years of human history proves this statement false.
Leeching is one of the core components of human nature. Businesses (or
governments) that take this into account will be successful. The ones that
don't will fail miserably.

------
protomyth
Is there some statistics that proves there are less people worldwide doing
work / employed today than say 50 years ago?

------
rcavezza
I still think we're headed towards an era of "glocalization". I haven't heard
this term since college geography courses, but we're headed back to an age
where we are all local blacksmiths and silversmiths. We'll all be working for
ourselves, but instead of being forced to sell to people in town, we can sell
globally. Probably most of the people on this board fit into this
categorization, but a much larger percent of the population will migrate
towards this lifestyle over the next few years.

~~~
127001brewer
Your comment reminded me of this article:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/a-jobs-p...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/a-jobs-
plan-for-the-post-cubicle-economy/244549/)

------
tomlin
I am going to get downvoted for criticizing an ideology - especially
capitalism, which I would consider HN the best place for. We'll see.

These technological evolutions are not lightyears away. They are around the
corner and they are coming fast. Also, remember that with each branch of
technological evolution comes a whole subset of mashup-ability. There are
countless jobs to be had by these innovations.

Of all communities, you'd think HN would be the highest order witness to the
fall of capitalism since many of the startups and weekend projects seek to
automate, or otherwise kill off manual intervention (read: jobs). Take a few
of your favorite properties, YC or otherwise, then take a look back 20 years
and compare the industry they represent today.

What if Airbnb became a household name, do you think that will increase the
employment at Best Western? Or an open MLS system. Increase real estate
agents?

Internet businesses, in general, seek to destroy inconvenience and under the
best intentions. Just as I am sure capitalism works under the best intentions,
despite child labour and deforestation.

50 years is not so ridiculous to plan for. We're giving our parents and
grandparents flack for not taking care of our planet - "Where was your
foresight!", we say. And here we are doing no better. We've already rolled
into the same comfy cognitive dissonance.

------
orblivion
I only heard about self-driving cars last month. They're not putting taxi
drivers out of business any time soon.

It's a concept I've considered as well, jobs are actually bad, it means that
there's something someone wants that isn't done. This guy is just a bit early,
try back in 50 years.

------
danmaz74
Technology rising productivity (and so needing less people to create the same
products) is at the base of our wealth. The real problem is that the pace of
technology innovation (and jobs transfer overseas, and other changes) can be
too fast for people to keep up with those changes. Public action to both slow
down some changes, and to help in adapting, can become a necessity in those
times.

But right now too many people believe the ideology that the market will fix
everything itself, even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. It is
just too good an excuse to just mind your own business, and everyone else be
damned, I guess...

------
tsotha
>Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have
enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

It's a little more complicated than that. The economy is a huge, complicated
machine. The reason we have enough stuff is it mostly works to convince people
go get up when the alarm goes off and go do something they'd rather not do
instead of fishing or playing video games. If we start just giving people
money because we can afford it we will quickly be unable to afford it.

------
bchjam
reminded me of RA Wilson's RICH economy

<http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/rawilson.html>

~~~
pradocchia
You know that Wilson and Rushkoff were friends, yes?

------
rohitkumar
I highly agree that the conventional 'job' is becoming obsolete. Technology is
enabling us to live in a bottom-up world where we can add value individually.
We don't have to to work for a company to add value. Imagine all the commerce
that could be happening in a 5 mile radius from where you live - all the needs
you could address to add value. And when you add value, you are rewarded
financially. There is no recession.

------
awolf
> We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work
> we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff
> that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.

This is a nice thought but it seems impossible to move forward until food and
shelter are givens for everyone world wide - not just givens for those in the
USA.

------
ddw
Long term, technology can lead to our society being more peaceful and
enjoyable than ever before. The short term is the problem though as there are
so many people without the skills to work in the future that the transition
may be too painful for society to make it to the long term.

------
grammaton
"As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no
longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange
information-based products."

This right here is my favorite piece of unintentional irony out of the whole
article.

------
brianobush
how are jobs obsolete when 91% of the working-aged population (in the US) have
one?

~~~
brohee
The last number I heard was more like 56% for the US (can't find the source
back, percentage of adults working is a surprisingly hard to find number).

Working people number ain't number of working age people minus number of job
seeking people.

It's number of working age people minus (job seeking people, people on
disabilities and not looking for a job, people in jail, stay at home parents,
people who retired early...)

------
littlegiantcap
Jobs becoming obsolete?

Yes surely just as we have never recovered from the loss of shoe cobbling jobs
or manual labor farming jobs due to the industrial revolution the internet and
technology will be the death of us all!

------
narrator
All this technology should be lowering the cost of living. Instead, constant
inflation in the money supply, via the money multiplier effect, quantitative
easing and continuously falling interest rates, eats up all the benefits of
increased technology and transfers them to the financial sector and their
clients. If there wasn't this huge parasite of debt , which is getting paid to
somebody, somewhere who doesn't have to work, thank you very much, it would be
dirt cheap to live and people would be able to get by very easily with most of
the population not having to work.

------
gills
_We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work
we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff
that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful._

So...nobody creates value (or performs work, for that matter) growing the food
or building the shelters, right? Riiiiight...

Magical thinking at it's best.

------
Hyena
Sadly, the premise going forward is that everyone should get a basic income. I
don't think the monkeys will agree until it's far too late.

------
libraryatnight
Strikes and gutters, ups and downs.

------
nicklovescode
They are great Chairmen

------
Vivtek
Oh, for Christ's sake, does _everything_ have to be the End of History
nowadays?

------
orenmazor
so… the future != the past?

------
chailatte
My theory from before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2906769>

\- In 20 years, 80% of the people in will be kept alive by welfare,
supplemented by their hourly job. Enough to get a small apartment, utilities,
cell phone, cheap but unhealthy food, and shopping at the dollar store. And
free tv/movie/music/book/sports entertainment via the internet.

\- 15% will be the middlemen, extracting value from the others via service or
thievery. They will be the new middle class. They can afford the sometimes
luxury.

\- the other 5.5% will be specialized knowledge workers. They will be the one
maintaining the software/hardware to make sure nothing goes wrong. They can
afford lots of luxury, but will be taxed heavily, as they are the only
workhorse left in the society.

\- 0.1% will be entertainers. They will make sure that people are entertained
well enough not to riot.

\- and the 0.4% will rule everyone.

~~~
silverbax88
I don't mean to sound condescending (although I'm sure I will), but your
theory about the future has already happened, and collapsed, in other
countries: USSR and China being two prominent recent examples.

~~~
akg_67
China didn't collapses, only USSR did. China learnt from USSR collapse and now
showing the world how to grow while maintaining control.

Chaillete's future seems a possibility. Provide a basic level of necessities
but beyond that you will need to earn your way. Isn't that's what Chinese are
doing?

Whether communism or capitalisms, both extremes are bad as both results in
concentration of power in the hands of a few

~~~
silverbax88
China's structure of wealth absolutely _did_ collapse. Now people who were in
charge of vast sections of China are no longer in charge, and although still
technically communist in spirit, they move farther from it every day.

------
crizCraig
I think he has a great point that the value a person creates is not easily
compensated in an information economy. Right now the information economy makes
up less than 5% of the total in the U.S.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9632169/EconomicCensus2007.html>

from

[http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFEconFacts?_event=&#...</a><p>So
advertising for the other sectors in the economy works well to support most of
the information sector right now. What happens as those other sectors become
more automated though? The smaller and smaller amount of people in charge of
those sectors will become disproportionately compensated for the value they
create. This is already happening in Wall Street for example. So we're going
to need to find some way to compensate people for their digital contributions
to things like open source, online communities like this, and other
informational public goods or we'll be left relying on the government and/or
super rich to distribute the abundance of wealth. Neither of which sound very
appealing to me.

------
drstrangevibes
money is no longer necessary, our current economic systems dont work and do
not reflect the abundance we create. I propose that everything is made free
instead, everyone just take as much as they need.

------
FredBrach
Amazing. Just amazing. I like!

------
cchurch
What a bunch of hippy bullshit.

~~~
pnathan
You are being downvoted because your statement was not a constructive comment.

------
fuzionmonkey
Ridiculous. If we had our priorities straight, there would be low
unemployment.

Our infrastructure is crumbling beneath us, yet we won't spend any money to
fix it. Instead we're fighting a handful of wars abroad that doesn't help us
at all.

We need better roads, public transportation, and faster internet.

