
Will Cloud Computing Make Everything (and Everyone) Work Harder? - mark_l_watson
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/will-cloud-computing-make-everything-and-everyone-work-harder
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patio11
A lot of things which we think are laws of nature, such as "people need to
have A Job", are in fact just effects of a peculiar-to-one-time-in-history
economic phenomena, like "transaction costs and overhead in arranging
employment so dominate returns to labor that it is more efficient to maintain
simultaneous overstaffing and underutilization of almost the entire
professional work force than it is to fill orders for work like we fulfill
orders for pizzas."

Tech has a wee bit of an effect in changing these economic underpinnings of
how the culture works. So do economic arrangements, social pressures, the
health of the alternative models, etc. (For a few decades there it was more
economical in Japan to buy/sell labor in fifty year blocks than it was to buy
it in two week chunks, like it is bought in America. That system is no longer
healthy, which makes the two week chunk option more appealing.)

Anyhow, it is by no means a given that the net result of increasing efficiency
is working harder. The Internet makes it really efficient for me to negotiate
I've-got-brains-you've-got-money-lets-trade relative to the traditional
employment system in this neck of the woods. This caused my economic output to
go waaaay the heck up and my hours worked to _crater_.

~~~
nickik
If think Society is changing and we have to change radicaly to not end up in
big social troubles (class wars ...).

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

(Im talk about a system for Switzerland)

I propose a "basic income" no strings attached (Everybody gets X$ per month
and all wages are reduced by X$ is the short version of how it works) with
this we replace all the diffrent social systems we have nowdays (money for
kids, unemployment, AHV (money for the retired ...).

This will liberate people in the sence that they don't have to hang on to
there jobs even if they are badly treated, they wont be social outcasts if
they dont have a job.

instead give them insentives to improve there education (and thereby you could
then get a job in a high tec economy), to be more entrepreneurial (find out
what people really need and trie to provid it).

A more importend example for the people here is app marked development. App
marked made it possible to start a project in a small team and make money
relativly fast. The insentive to trie something like this is much greater and
you can't fall that far.

It may not be the best model in pure economic groth terms but I hope it is a
good model for a sustainable healthy society in a world where it is very hard
to have full employment (because the economy changes to fast).

~~~
ctdonath
Most people, given a no-strings-attached basic income, will NOT use it as an
opportunity to educate themselves and become entrepreneurial; instead, they
get LAZY and fiercely protective of that state.

Not having a job isn't about being a social outcast, it's about not producing
enough value/wealth to exchange for the cost of continuing existence. As an
old book famously observed, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat";
that's not punitive, that's the economics of biology.

~~~
pi18n
What happens if you make the stipend contingent on educating yourself somehow?

~~~
randomdata
Education is a symptom of value creation, not the cause of it.

In other words, education alone brings no value to society. If there is no
incentive to create value, because you are already given an income with no
strings attached, that education will not be put to any meaningful use.

It seems to me that the stipend would need to be based on a plan to create
value for society. If some level of education is required in order to proceed
with that plan, it could be granted as part of the implementation.

This reasonably mirrors the way entrepreneurs operate, which is essentially
what we want to duplicate. The dream always comes before the education. The
education is only a means to an end.

~~~
nickik
Well education by itself creats value for you and the people you talk.

It not socialism, when you acctully learn something/do something you will be
able to get more.

~~~
ctdonath
You have to want to create value. As a teacher, I am amazed at how many
students lack the will to create, to do the work - and they fail at great
cost.

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PakG1
The issue I have with this type of question is that it assumes the transaction
costs to switch between tasks is 0 or minimal. If so, then yes, huge
efficiencies can be gained by figuring out where people are underutilized when
and making use of that capacity. If the tasks are all similar and easy to
switch contexts (i.e. the call centre in the article is probably a good
example?), then OK, makes sense.

But for a lot of things, switching contexts is expensive. Productivity drops,
and any cost savings can be easily nullified. One may argue that the capacity
wasn't going to be used anyway, so it's a waste if not used. But I find the
calculations used to estimate capacity assume that transaction costs for
switching contexts is 0 instead of some large number. Thus, they actually
overestimate capacity, thereby causing not only lowering productivity because
they jam too many contexts into the space that still need to be handled on
time, but also lower job dissatisfaction.

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ianso
I think the article is about squeezing out inefficiencies all over through
centralized IT systems, but only if you see our free time as "inefficient"
would you extend this idea to our personal lives.

The problem is that in a global economy one could argue that American workers
are competing with Chinese workers that do work 7 days a week and have no free
time.

Personally I think that there are plenty of places where the effect the
article documents could be productively put to use for the benefit of
everyone. e.g. most commuter cars have one person each. A giant centralized
database of everyones commutes could make carpooling as easy as pushing a
button on your phone over breakfast and seeing "be outside in 3 minutes" in
response.

That's just one example. I'm sure there are others, "think smarter not harder"
should be the idea in general.

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tryitnow
To answer the question posed by the article's title: No.

It will provide people with the opportunity to work harder if that's their
preference.

As for downward pressure on wages. That's only a bad thing if there is no
proportionately downward pressure on prices. Many of these services make
markets more competitive (LiveOps versus traditional call centers, AirBnB
versus traditional accommodations). So prices will probably drop more than
wages.

This also benefits people in economically weak areas. Not just globally but
also in the US, e.g. Deep South, Rust Belt, etc.

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rmc
_This kind of machine-made urgency to utilize everything, creating lower
prices (and for many, lower wages)_

Lower Prices = good for the common person.

I don't think this would cause lower wages per se, if more people are doing
less work (and getting less total pay), then this will lower the average wage.
However that's not too important. More people have more money! yay!

~~~
tomjen3
What it will properly do is to make it so that the same person gets different
wages based on which part of the job he is doing.

For example as a software developer you may make $50/hr at your main job but
at your weekend call center spare time thing you only make $10/hr. This will
not drive your wage down but it will drive your _average_ wage down.

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mark_l_watson
I was thinking about this myself: people become more machine-like, being more
fully utilized.

The article resonates with me because I work from home for several customers
and I always have work tasks queued up. It takes some discipline to take time
off.

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jellicle
The average wage on Mechanical Turk is $1.40/hour.

If we delete the "cloud computing" buzzword and instead insert "crowdsourcing
labor to the lowest cost source worldwide", and for "everyone" we substitute
"U.S. workers", then yes, it's clear that over time this will accelerate the
wage depression in the United States which has already been occurring.

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notatoad
this is the most flagrant abuse of the word "cloud" i've seen yet.

