
Are regular folks doomed? - lukaseder
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2013/11/28/are-regular-folks-doomed
======
spindritf
I'm guessing this is about Tyler Cowen's _Average is over_? (The site is down
currently.)

If so, there are other ways of looking at the same data that Cowen uses to
determine, and then extrapolate, a trend of increasing inequality,
[http://cafehayek.com/2013/11/when-facts-arent-
facts.html](http://cafehayek.com/2013/11/when-facts-arent-facts.html)

Russ Roberts (the author of the above piece) also interviewed Tyler Cowen on
EconTalk where they discussed the case of compensation to (book) writers,
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/tyler_cowen_on.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/tyler_cowen_on.html)
Cowen argues that superstars eat an ever larger share of the total
compensation while Roberts notes that the average is being dragged down by the
fact that there are few, if any, barriers to entry for new writers and writers
who would have done well in the past (due to their talent, education, ability)
still do well today.

~~~
praxeologist
Cowen has no credibility on economics:
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1880544](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1880544)

~~~
yetanotherphd
How does the fact that Austrian economists disagree with Cowen about his
criticism of Austrian economics, translate to Cowen having no credibility?

~~~
praxeologist
Well, we could talk about something substantive and then see... I think that
anyone who is buying into Cowen's new piece should also read The Anti-
Capitalistic Mentality by Mises especially regarding automation.

~~~
yetanotherphd
Posting things for other people to read, is not the same as having a
substantive discussion. In fact, criticizing Cowen's credibility rather than
his arguments is not a product way to argue in the first place.

~~~
praxeologist
The paper is a resounding refutation of Cowen's other work. Given how terrible
he has proven himself in the past, I am happy to reject this new work out of
hand. From what little I read, I again suggest people to read Mises' Anti-
Capitalistic Mentality regarding the ludicrous notion that machines are a bad
thing.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
But the fact remains that your argument against Cowen is merely and simply an
appeal to authority.

The intellectually honest comment to have made in the first place would have
been "Certain economic theorists assert that Cowen [has no credibility|is an
idiot|whatever they assert]".

That might have been a useful start to a discussion. Or not. Who knows. YMMV.

As it is, the comment is nothing more than gainsaying based on information you
are either unwilling or incapable of summarizing and sharing.

It's really not much better than "Cowen's an idiot, neeyah".

In the interests of full disclosure, I know next to nothing about the OP and
the topics discussed between the OP and this comment.

Sadly, I don't need to in order to comment usefully on your comments, so empty
of content they were. Nothing personal, eh?

~~~
praxeologist
I did not make an appeal to authority. That would be if I said Cowen is wrong
merely because Block and Barnett said so. I am saying that Cowen is a joke for
the reasons spelled out in Block and Barnett's paper. Those reasons are not
merely "neeyah" and the arguments therein are not somehow invalid or cease to
exist because I don't care to regurgitate them for you.

------
coldtea
> _Cowen goes on in his new book to explain that regular folks are doomed. The
> economy will only need the top 10% of us._

That's pulling the cart before the horse.

Economy is not supposed to be some natural force that people and states have
to obey. It was supposed to be the result of conscious, deliberate action, by
the people (and their organizations, representatives etc), to advance their
means of living.

So, "economy will only need the top 10% of us" means: we are not in control of
our state, we are merely slaves and resources to be used as it pleases some
outside force.

Which goes contrary to the very notion of democracy (as it was developed in
ancient Athens), which was all about empowering people over external forces
(Gods, nature, the will of the King, fate, etc).

~~~
rayiner
Absolutely agree. Our society is whatever we want it to be.

Unfortunately, democracy is out of vogue these days. The popular trend seems
to be toward seeing society in terms of "natural" economic forces inexorably
leading towards a certain fate.

PS: I also take strong exception to the concept of "the top 10% of us." The
top 10% among what metric? Athleticism? Leadership ability? Creativity?
Courage in war? Obviously not any of these things. Our society favors some
mixture of above-average intellect and ability to do boring detail work for
long hours. The people in the "top 10%" would certainly never be recognized as
such in the kind of society that existed just a couple of hundred years ago.

~~~
lisper
> Our society is whatever we want it to be.

Not quite. Our society is whatever we choose to make it. It is far from a
foregone conclusion that what we choose will turn out to be what we want.

------
yetanotherphd
"what Cowen failed to consider is that most of us haven’t been needed in a
long time. Maybe economists can’t even consider such a possibility"

Economists consider such a notion to be flawed, because if the jobs that
currently exist aren't needed, why are their employers paying for them? We
live in something very close to a free market. The author's idea that
currently jobs are provided by society in order to preserves social order is
100% wrong.

~~~
onebaddude
>We live in something very close to a free market.

Hiring and firing is more difficult than you imagine, I think, due to
transaction costs and emotional/social barriers.

I've read theories that suggest that unemployment and labour force
participation remain stubbornly high (and may remain persistently high) as the
Great Recession allowed the private sector to clean out "dead weight"
employees it has maintained for longer than it needed to. In other words, it
became _easier_ and _more acceptable_ to fire people.

~~~
yetanotherphd
I never imagined that hiring/firing was not difficult, that is not really
important for my argument.

The property of the free market that I was relying on was simply that
employers only hire people that they expect, on average, to be worth their
pay. There is nothing in our economy that would induce an employer to hire an
"unnecessary" worker.

~~~
drabiega
> that they expect, on average, to be worth their pay.

This is actually a pretty huge caveat. As it turns out, information is hugely
limited and this has pretty far reaching implications for the shape of the
labor market. Firms desire to grow and hire people to that end but they're
necessarily pretty bad at guessing who will actually be profitable to hire and
it's even difficult to figure out if the employees you already have are
profitable and if so which ones. The result is often that lots of people get
hired, many in capacities to try to figure this information out, and thanks to
immense capital a few of them produce enough to employ the rest. This
arrangement works because other firms are similarly handicapped but it is far
from efficient in terms of resource, capital, or leisure allocation.

------
timje1
Automating farming and improving efficiency freed up people to take on jobs as
potters and blacksmiths.

By this article's logic, both potters and blacksmiths are abstract,
constructed jobs.

To look at it another way, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. This
is what we call 'civilisation' (possibly with a z, if one is a colonial
commoner).

------
Aqueous
Does anyone have a cached version of this?

I want to find out if regular folks are doomed or not, and I can't because
clearly this blog is hosted on a single-instance WordPress host or something.

~~~
rookonaut
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2013/11/28/are-
regular-folks-doomed/)

~~~
__derek__
Even the cached version seems to have gotten the HN kiss of death.

------
nmc
I am inclined to think this is so popular because HN readers (including
myself) consider themselves to be FAR FROM "regular folks".

(For most of us, it's even FAR ABOVE).

~~~
timje1
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They
will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either
case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go
forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those
robots."

------
donkeyd
I've been thinking about this for a while, from a technological standpoint I
agree with this story, from a sociological standpoint I don't.

People for the most part don't trust machines at the moment, which will slow
down acceptance of things like self-driving cars, which Google has proved to
be safer than human-driven cars. Another thing "regular folks" don't want is
to be talking to robots all day long. At the McDonalds counter they want to be
able to yell at the clerk for not getting the order right, and want the
satisfaction of seeing a manager reprimand the clerk. They want to make small-
talk with the cashier at the gas station, they want a human hair-dresser to
tell them what human fashion is like this year.

If the world was full of (semi)-autistic developers from silicon valley, sure,
this would be feasible. In the real world the "regular folks" themselves will
be the reason they still have their place in the world.

Also, in order to automate everything a lot of raw materials will be
necessary, which will lead to a price increase which in turn could make people
cheaper than automation.

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
I have observed the opposite in my own life: people don't seem to mind
ordering things from Amazon, which involves no small talk unless they catch
the UPS guy in the act of tossing the package towards the doorstep. In my
experience people favor using credit cards at the self serve pump over having
to talk to a cashier to pay for gas. Lots of people use the ATM in a bank's
lobby, even when the bank is open and they could go make small talk with a
teller. Does anybody go out of their way to buy a car without ABS, because
they "don't trust" the machine to do a better job of braking than they can?

------
mckee1
>The argument is essentially technological. Computers and robots are getting
much better. Soon enough, your local McDonald’s will be entirely automated

If technology is ever increasing and replacing manual jobs

>These are abstract, constructed jobs. If we had to, we could make do with far
fewer software programmers

Then how on earth is a software engineer a "constructed" job? This an awful
example.

I think the overall premise is probably correct though, as human beings we
need goals, we need structure and something to do, so we will always "make up"
jobs for society to function correctly. And there are menial jobs that aren't
going to be automated any time soon.It's pretty tough to automate a call
centre for example, human's are not going to buy a product from an automated
voice, and we're a long, long way away from AI being an effective sales person
(ie perfect human voice, able to make a "connection" with someone.)

Edit:Grammar

~~~
timje1
I've always thought that call centre jobs are exactly the kind of thing that
(google + apple + microsoft's) voice recognition software will soon largely
replace.

They're one of the few professions that could painlessly be replaced given
sufficient advances in software. Other professions, such as fully autonomous
hairdresser or shelf stacker, would require mechanical advances and
investments as well.

~~~
gaius
The problem with IVR is not that its voice recognition is bad, it that it
doesn't really do anything a simple menu driven system couldn't do. It can't
_understand_ what you want to do, something that for a human is trivial. Why
are companies so afraid of talking to their customers?

------
memracom
Let's not forget the fundamental purpose of jobs. It is to limit crime.

Before the modern age with its companies and jobs, rich people walked the
streets with swords, daggers and pistols. Even so they could not fully protect
themselves from pickpockets who slashed pockets with a knife to liberate a few
coins or even just a silk handkerchief. Average people banded together to take
down the rich folk when they could, killing in order to steal.

Some rich people realized that if they distributed cash to the average people
under the guise of jobs, there would be no more motive to rob, steal and
plunder. As a result, we have our modern and relatively peaceful world.

Unfortunately, the rich of today have forgotten the lesson learned by their
forebears, and once again we are devolving into chaos and crime.

------
chiph
Site is down for me. But I'm surprised there hasn't been a Morlock & Eloi
comparison.

------
thewarrior
Didnt Karl Marx predict the very same thing ?

------
edem
The link is broken and/or the site is down.

