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Is Software Driving a Falling Demand For Brains?
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Paul Krugman writes in the NY Times that information technology seems to be reducing, not increasing, the demand for highly educated workers (reg. may be required), because a lot of what highly educated workers do could actually be replaced by sophisticated information processing. One good recent example is how software is replacing the teams of lawyers who used to do document research. 'From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,' says Bill Herr, a lawyer at a major chemical company who used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. 'People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don't.' If true this raises a number of interesting questions. 'One is whether emphasizing education — even aside from the fact that the big rise in inequality has taken place among the highly educated — is, in effect, fighting the last war,' writes Krugman. 'Another is how we [can] have a decent society if and when even highly educated workers can't command a middle-class income.' Remember the Luddites weren't the poorest of the poor, they were skilled artisans whose skills had suddenly been devalued by new technology."
This author has a completely backward way at looking at things. Income is only half of the equation. What you can buy with that income is the other half. What things can you get with the work you do. Productivity increase is good because you can create more with less work. This means things get cheaper and you can earn less and live better. This is called deflation. The problem is the financial industry and politicians refuse to let deflation happen. They see it as an enemy that must be conquered. So they inflate the money supply and give that money to politicians to spend. So what ends up happening is productivity increases are given away and the citizens are never able to gain their benefit even though their income is lower.
I like to use StarTrek as an example. They have a replicator. Once you have a replicator you never HAVE to work again. Anything you want including another replicator can be made. Are the people all of a sudden poor? Technically yes since they no work for money. In fact they are flat broke. But are they living better? Of course.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
That is not true. The target is to have no unemployment, which means having natural unemployment. That includes people between jobs, etc. and is generally thought to be in the 3-5% area.
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
What I do all day long is write/maintain/modify software that does exactly what this article is talking about. The problem is in what the article is defining as "brains." In my experience the type of worker that I'm able to replace with software is the type of person that probably shouldn't have their degree anyway. You've got the kind of person that gets their degree and does great... really knows their stuff, wins a lot of cases. Then you've got the people that barely graduated, maybe paid someone to write their term papers for them, have a degree but are actually very poorly skilled. Those people end up in what I've always called "Professional secretary" positions. They do all the menial work that the real highly skilled employees can't be bothered with. You'll find a plethora of people like this in the IT industry.
Basic income would not be welfare, everyone gets basic income, regardless of whether they have an income or not. It's a guaranteed basic income that is there regardless, no means-testing. One of the benefits of such a program is that people can if they want to dedicate their lives to a hobby that isn't necessarily profitable, they can work part time if they want to and still have enough money to get by. It also makes it easier for people to start a business, there's always the basic income to fall back on even if the business is not profitable right away.
It's a pretty old concept and has been implemented on trial basis in a few places, with generally good results. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
Odd. The PDS (the followup-party of the former SED, the GDRs state party) has its biggest successes in the eastern parts of Germany, i.e. the places that were formerly ruled by the SED. They don't really play any meaningful role in the western parts, but in the East they really bring home a lot of victories. IIRC they are even in the ruling coalition of a province.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.