
Workers will try to survive, rather than prosper, as tech takes over the economy - eplanit
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/workers-will-simply-try-to-survive-rather-than-prosper-as-tech-takes-over-the-economy-2016-10-24
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fnbr
I believe that the article is spot on. The problem facing the developed world
today is that there are only so many productive skill sets. I have a BSc in
Math. There's very little value [1] in someone who has a math degree with poor
grades- there is a lot of value in someone with a STEM degree who understands
the material, but there is very little, even negative, value in someone who
does not.

Consider a poor mathematician- an inaccurate mathematical model is often worse
than not having any model. Or consider a typical software engineer- if one
team member is particularly bad at writing code, they can drag down the entire
product they work on.

As a result, I find it difficult to believe that there will be jobs for
everyone. Certainly it's possible, but for whatever reason, my experience has
been that there are very few people who try to learn the subject that they're
interested in well, and instead, a majority of people who do so poorly.

[1] Where value is defined in the economic sense- the amount of additional
output that that person creates. This is arguably a terrible definition of
value.

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squozzer
"Globalization never embraced the free movement of people." Precisely the
principle globalization rests upon. Everything mobile but the workforce.

"Connections, beauty and brains will permit upward mobility." Plus ça change,
plus c'est le meme chose.

