The Software Revolution

An anonymous reader writes: Y Combinator president Sam Altman writes about how the third great technological revolution — which he calls the software revolution — is affecting the world economy. He says, "It appears that the software revolution will do what technology usually does—create wealth but destroy jobs. Of course, we will probably find new things to do to satisfy limitless human demand. But we should stop pretending that the software revolution, by itself, is going to be good for median wages.

Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea. Trying to find new jobs for billions of people is a good idea but obviously very hard because whatever the new jobs are, they will probably be so fundamentally different from anything that exists today that meaningful planning is almost impossible. ... The second major challenge of the software revolution is the concentration of power in small groups. ... I think the best strategy is to try to legislate sensible safeguards but work very hard to make sure the edge we get from technology on the good side is stronger than the edge that bad actors get."

Comments

Or how about no jobs?

[rsilvergun]

What are we gonna do if there are no jobs for the rank & file? We aren't all geniuses ya know? I kept hearing biotech was gonna replace lost manufacturing jobs, but I never once heard anyone say what that meant. It always felt like what you tell the rubes to keep them from getting scared about losing their livelihoods...

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[__aaltlg1547]

Even if we were all geniuses, it wouldn't matter. You'd have legions of unemployed geniuses.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[pepty]

I kept hearing biotech was gonna replace lost manufacturing jobs, but I never once heard anyone say what that meant.

Wait, what? The only thing I ever heard that was even close to that was from the lobbyists pushing for state spending on biotech parks, and even their overinflated job estimates didn't approach that. Within pharma though, dose for dose, new biotech (biologic) drugs are much more labor intensive than traditional small molecule drugs: the manufacturing process for biologics doesn't scale up very well.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Tablizer]

My conservative relative insists "the market will find a way if you simply get gov't out of the way". I ask for examples of types of new jobs replacing those being lost to offshoring and machines, and he/she just says, "I don't know, but the market will just find a way if you just let it. Entrepreneurs will appear out of the woodwork if barriers to entry are kept low enough."

Nor is he/she clear on what regulations to get rid of. We both agree some A.D.A. (Disability Act) regulations and endangered species regulations seem overkill, but tuning those alone won't significantly change the big picture.

His/her other gov't-trimming suggestions risk health and safety problems. I don't want the US to become a dump to compete with the 3rd world. Maybe more would have jobs, but more would also be sick or injured. It's closer to a Mad Max dystopia than an improvement.

If you just have blind faith that "the market will find a way" I guess there is not much to argue about. It seems part of his/her religion. I don't get the conservative "solution". Anybody else want to try explaining?

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

While the sheeple were sleeping the farm was sold to the corporates.

This is EXACTLY what they have always wanted. Its called a "flexible workforce". It means when you are lucky to have a job at all and are willing to do anything to get one or even part of one. Think the contractor picking up illegals on the corner or the day-job hiring during the depression.
That is the capitalist utopia for all "non-essential" workers.

No rights. No Unions. No Voice. No Protections.

In the US they are almost there.

The joke is that it will ultimately backfire and in fact already is.

If there are almost no wealthy workers who is going buy all their plastic junk???

And even sheep will stampede given enough incentive.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Krishnoid]

You'd have legions of unemployed geniuses.

Pfft, big deal. There will always be work to do. Those roadrunners aren't going to catch themselves, you know.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's up with using the awkward "he/she" construct for a person you know? Is that what your relative prefers?

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[ArmoredDragon]

If we truly ran into an era where there was no need for jobs, then I think we'd reach a currency-free society similar to what Star Trek has. I don't think that will be the case though. Technology always has a funny way of creating new industries after it kills old ones.

Remember that 200 years ago, some 90% of the US population were all farmers. That wasn't exactly flowers and roses either.

Also we need to get out of this stupid mindset where everybody defines wealth by income.

See this, starting at 4:30 and at least to 7:00.

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that nobody can know what jobs there will be in the future. There will be jobs nobody thought of, whole industries even. It is a trap to think, oh, the solution is to get government to plan or even worse, create jobs, because those jobs and plans will be artificial, and last only as long as taxpayer funds ( including these days future taxpayers' funds), are diverted to them. The myriad of different kinds of jobs and Industries didn't arrive because it was planned for. Those jobs did in fact fill a need in a market.
And if the 20th century taught anyone anything, it is that central planning doesn't work.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[mikaere]

Has your relative never heard of the term "market failure" ?

There is research to suggest that people with conservative beliefs tend to be less intelligent. They basically like to be told what to believe, which explains your relative's misplaced faith in The Market.

In my experience, right-wing principles (market knows best , regulation is bad) tend to be based on thought experiments, whereas left-wing principles (income inequality is bad, socialised benefits are more efficient etc) have empirical evidence supporting them. Not that this matters to most voters, since most people do not research/analyse the data, they make their minds up on sound-bites.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to point out that your relative of apparently indiscriminate gender is not a conservative, but sounds more like a libertarian. A conservative would try to prevent the loss of existing jobs, through tariff protection, subsidies and restrictions on hiring and firing. Because they want to conserve the existing world. A libertarian is more interested in entrepreneurial activities and the risks and rewards associated with breaking down old orders.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Tablizer]

There will be jobs nobody thought of, whole industries

What if they are slow to come? Do we let people stay unemployed for decades until they come? "Jobs" programs will come inevitably: wars and mass riots. WWII probably wouldn't have come about if not for the market crash of '29.

And if the 20th century taught anyone anything, it is that central planning doesn't work.

But that's yesteryear. No guarantees past trends are also future trends. Some things change quickly, some slowly, but things still change. Patterns that lasted 100 years may not last 1000.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Tablizer]

The terms are overloaded in actual usage. I generally go by the usage of "conservative" meaning less domestic gov't intervention in the economy.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Crashmarik]

No we can be pretty sure that central planning doesn't work. People who keep insisting on it just prove insanity by repeating the same actions and expecting different results.

We can also be pretty sure that if people don't have a way to earn a living provide for themselves they will take it out on society.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Dutch Gun]

"The market will find a way" is a reasonable truism, but I'm not convinced that people really know what it means. What many people misunderstand, I feel, is that the market is as viciously Darwinian as biological evolution is. That is, "the market will find a way" may bankrupt companies, or even entire industries, leaving many people out of work. It's not a promise of a positive outcome, but if given a chance, people *may* find new markets and opportunities for themselves. Note that, in fairness, there's no reasonable way to answer your question, because that's like trying to predict future inventions or trends - just like it would be impossible to predict what evolutionary trends would be successful until they're tried out.

Anyone who has any sort of understanding how cruel nature is can also understand why we can't leave *everything* to the tender mercies of the market, because it values profit and efficiency above everything else. That's fine, so long as we understand that capitalism is exclusively an economic system, and doesn't really concern itself with humanitarian or other non-economic issues.

As such, we have to put reasonable rules, limits, and restraints on the market, in order to make sure things we value aren't sacrificed on the alter of profit. The trick is to find the proper balance between over and under regulation. Over-regulate, and you quash innovation and genuine enterprising spirits that would otherwise generate wealth and prosperity. Or, you can simply price yourself entirely out of global markets that choose not to regulate as you do. Under-regulate, and you allow exploitation and shady practices to flourish, because cheaters have an inherent advantage against those who don't choose to cheat.

I think that many conservatives, having grown up in an era with fairly strict government regulation over most of industry, tend to see many areas of over-regulation that comes from the natural growth and spread of nearly any large bureaucracy like the government, and see what harm it causes in massive waste and inefficiency. This is especially true if you run your own business, or are involved in the running of a business. It's no real surprise that small business owners tend to be politically conservative. However, they probably haven't really seen first-hand what businesses would do without fairly strict governmental oversight, as has happened in the past here in the US, or still happens in other parts of the world.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Tablizer]

Again, you are using the past to predict the future. Extrapolating the past with a different technology profile to predict best future fit is a very imperfect tool.

You need to do a better job of explaining why you are so certain those economic patterns will continue. A 100 year history of them is not good enough to conclude they will last another 100.

The new "replacement" jobs were pretty clear in the past. They are not this time around.

And patterns of human behavior are not necessarily the same as economic patterns. Human nature has NOT changed over the last 100 years, technology has. Our brains' are the same, our machines are not.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[khallow]

His/her other gov't-trimming suggestions risk health and safety problems. I don't want the US to become a dump to compete with the 3rd world. Maybe more would have jobs, but more would also be sick or injured. It's closer to a Mad Max dystopia than an improvement.

And what's the trend here in the US? It's to declining employment and declining quality of employment in a world which is going the opposite way. It's not working. You say you don't want a dump now? Well, I don't want a dump in fifty years.

My view on the matter is that most of the social safety net and most of the regulations we implemented to make our lives better are now rebounding on us and dragging us down relative to the rest of the world. It's time to make some sacrifices, to make the present a bit more dumpy in order to have a better future.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Crashmarik]

You need to brush up on your economics or control theory.
Central planning was proved not to scale far back as 1915 by Von Mises. If you want something more current, take a look at any parallel processing system. If you insist on having a central control node the Your parallelism is going to be limited by the ability of that node to process information from the other nodes.

TLDR; Central planning doesn't work because it discards the efforts of almost all the population except the central planners. Unless the inventiveness and vision of the society is overwhelmingly concentrated in the planners. Do you know many innovative bureaucrats ?

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[nbauman]

I've noticed that too. Conservatives use theories, but unlike scientists, they don't bother to see whether their theories are confirmed by reality. If reality does contradict their theories, they just assign some conservative intern to come up with an explanation of why it actually works. "The economic actors weren't following the rules!" Or "This economic boom is the long-delayed consequence of the Reagan tax cuts."

One of the most memorable examples of a conservative economist was Sam Peltzman, a University of Chicago professor who wrote studies of the pharmaceutical industry. He testified before Congress that government regulations would prevent life-saving drugs to reach the market. The congressman running the hearings asked him to give an example of some of the drugs. Peltzman said, I don't know, I'm an economist, not a pharmacist. In other words, he predicted this effect of regulations, but he didn't actually go out into reality to see whether the world actually behaved the way he said it did.

For somebody like me who was raised in the scientific tradition, it took me a long time to realize that this is what they're actually doing.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Tablizer]

I didn't mean to imply that micromanaging all production is the only possible solution or experiment. We can tax the wealthy more, for example. I agree that we need a certain degree of market incentives. It's not all or nothing.

Do you know many innovative bureaucrats ?

I haven't seen any good survey to confirm or deny their numbers. The Internet and World Wide Web came about mostly from gov't research projects, I would note.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Crashmarik]

I haven't seen any good survey to confirm or deny their numbers. The Internet and World Wide Web came about mostly from gov't research projects, I would note.

That would be DARPA
  The D is for Defense, you really want the D.O.D running the economy ?

Anyway the internet is more a counter example than a supporting example to your point. The initial internet was meant to be a military communication system that could operate when large numbers of links were destroyed. Almost all the growth in the internet and it's usefulness comes from things that couldn't have been planned for or foreseen at its creation.

Don't think so ? look at I.P.V4 4 billion addresses were plenty (not accounting for overhead etc etc ) Hell NAT wasn't even supposed to be a thing.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[silentcoder]

>Technology always has a funny way of creating new industries after it kills old ones

I know you think you just made a logical point but you really did not. Extrapolating from past events is inductive logic, not deductive, and one of the main differences between them is that inductive logic has no guarantee of truth.
If all my premises are true, and I follow the rules of deductive logic properly, it's impossible for my conclusion to be false.
With inductive logic that is simply not true - even if I do the same experiment a hundred billion times - I STILL can't be absolutely CERTAIN that it won't fail on the hundred billion and first time.
Inductive logic can be reliable, but it's never guaranteed.

It gets worse, what you did wasn't EVEN inductive logic, it just LOOKS like it - so the above is a best-case scenario you don't qualify for. To have ACTUAL inductive logic absolutely ALL factors must be controlled during each test. Any factor that changes, ANY factor - and the reliability plummets, with every subsequent factor it gets less reliable.

You can't MAKE a statement like "what technology always does" - you're talking about a bunch of events where, at every run, almost EVERY factor was different.
So there is absolutely ZERO reason to believe the pattern you think you spotted will hold true, there is no evidence whatsoever to support your extrapolation.
The last time we had a major technological revolution there was less than half as many people on the planet - so less than half as many people wanting jobs (technically - wanting a way to earn a living, for which "sell your labour" is the only viable option most people have).
Even if next generation automation and software does generate new jobs in other sectors it would need to do so at almost 8 times the rate any previous revolution did to satisfy the demand that now exists, there's no evidence to suggest it would and the data so far suggests the opposite -it's creating far fewer new jobs than previous revolutions did.
Secondly you have to consider the requirements for GETTING those new jobs. This revolution is NOT creating new low-skilled jobs, because it's very essence is to destroy low-skilled jobs from every sector up to and including itself.
All the jobs it IS creating require enormous technical training - robotics designers, electronic engineers and programmers. The simple truth is most people lack the skills to do these jobs and even if that changed - you just don't need a lot of these people even for massive automation.
A 20-man co-op in Texas is one of the largest automation robotics companies on earth - supplying hundreds of industries. That's not new job growth.

So your pattern is already breaking down and this is still the dawn of it, who knows how much worse it will get. It also spells a major problem for the industries automating. They won't feel it YET - but if they automate too much, and enough other companies do it, they'll reach a point where they can make ultra-cheap goods - but nobody can buy them because they've put all their own customers out of work.

Destroying your own demand is bad economics - while fostering it is the path to wealth (as Henry Ford understood - on the other hand he was a Nazi sympathiser so take his ideas with a grain of salt).

Where does that leave the future ? There are many options - but it's fairly obvious that the current concept of "you must earn your right to live by working" is simply not going to be practically feasible much longer (in fact- I would argue it hasn't BEEN feasible for over 3 decades ALREADY - it's just not been bad ENOUGH for most people to figure it out yet). Buckminster-Fuller saw this coming and I've seen no evidence that he was wrong and a lot of evidence he was right.
Either way - whatever the future holds - I'm damn sure it won't resemble 20th-century capitalism much if at all.
The fact that phycisists are saying the ONLY way to maintain economic growth for more than 50 years (assuming we could use 100% of all energy from the sun which we can't) would be for over 90% of the population to be in pure service jobs - which are of course, being automated away.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[cpt kangarooski]

The initial internet was meant to be a military communication system that could operate when large numbers of links were destroyed.

No it wasn't; that's just an urban legend. The ARPAnet was a way of allowing researchers to share resources. Thus, a user in San Francisco could use a computer in Los Angeles, and wouldn't even need a new, dedicated terminal to do it. Its resilience has more to do with the poor state of telecommunications at the time demanding it, and certain design features that allowed for a useful combination of efficiency and flexibility.

As for why it was funded by DARPA, that was where there was money.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Crashmarik]

If you are going to go around correcting people at least get it right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started, claiming that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET; only the unrelated RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks.

Also nobody was talking about WHY DARPA funded it.But it's good to know in your universe that's the only place with money.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't stampede very well when your legs (and arms, and torso, and head) are blown apart by high-velocity rounds and explosive shells, can you?

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[davester666]

Star Trek wasn't currency-free.

And those with large amounts of currency today will seek to ensure that

a) they keep the currency they have, and to keep acquiring more and more of it, relative to everyone else
b) that it is necessary to live

They have [at least a little] seen how the rest of us live, and have no desire to join us.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Tablizer]

you really want the D.O.D running the economy

It was a general example. I didn't mean it as selecting a specific agency to collect tax or whatnot.

Almost all the growth in the internet and it's usefulness comes from things that couldn't have been planned for or foreseen at its creation.

Again, I am not promoting mass micromanaging as a solution.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[tigersha]

Right wing theory vs left-wing science??!! Have any of you kids ever read actual left-wing stuff? Theory, theory, theory.
Go and read serious left wing things from a world socialist website or even Lenin's works. It is at about the same as the old theological debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

The Soviet Union with all its horrors was created by a bunch of intellectuals. In the end, the only non-intellectual Bolshevik, Stalin, was left standing.

See any liberal arts curriculum involving political philosophy for more examples. The left is just as theoretical as the right, if not more so.

As for quoting Monbiot on the intelligence of people? What next? Hitler claiming that Aryans are more intelligent than Slavs? Staling calling all Capitalists stupid for not understnding Lenin? Bakr al-Baghdadi calling all non-Muslims stupid because they do not understand the Koran?

Calling a whole group of people less intelligent because of their political beliefs is really the worst kind of bigotry. I can well imagine that that particular snob would do this, yes. George Monbiot is one of the most radical columnists alive, he is a nutcase.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[tigersha]

The internet (and a lot of research in general) came from a goverment program that gave money to fairly free universities and research institution. Academic Freedom is a important principle for this reason.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Tablizer]

Funny you mention small businesses. My conservative relative and I both agreed that small business interests are often overshadowed by large business interests because large businesses have much more political power, and sometimes prefer to put laws in place to benefit large businesses over small ones to kill their competition.

It's not "socialists" doing it, but crony capitalists legally bribing politicians to put barriers up against their smaller competition.

Our patent system is arguably a result of that: it favors those who can collect a war-chest of fuzzy patents to do battle with other large companies. The smaller companies get machine-gunned with patent suits and have to fold or pay huge royalties or lawyer fees.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Tablizer]

They could tell you why DARPA funded it, but then they'd have to kill you :-)

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[sjames]

The problem is that very long period where we need a lot less jobs but not no jobs.

Consider, we could wipe out our unemployment problem RIGHT NOW if the average work week was cut to 35 hours a week. But notice how it isn't happening. I'll probably get several replies screeching about how civilization will crumble and we;ll all end up living in caves if we cut back even 1 hour a week.

I would love to get rid of the wealth=income thing, but that darned grocery store keeps wanting money for food. Way up on the high end of the income distribution, it is possible to make a change, but it seems that section is populated mostly by people who think things are good the way they are and might be better if people were twice as desperate for work.

The change is unlikely to be entirely voluntary.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[umghhh]

Housing, food, drink and entertainment - one still need that and I do not see how this is going to be provided to people that have less work as he over-occupied uber-class (the one just below the owners of it all). If you do not provide that you will first need some powerful security forces - these could be quite automated so not so much occupation for a joe sixpack who will miss his sixpack altogether probably. Still even if masses cannot reach the 1% they still cause enough mayhem to make life of 1% unpleasant. So at the end - whatever happens there will be some jobs at controlling of the masses involving beating up the crap out of them and dealing with corpses. Gosh this can even be a ceiling for 'natural' civilizations.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Dutch Gun]

Yep, I'd totally agree with you there. Small business owners and large corporations are two entirely different entities, and have very different issues to deal with.

One of the big issues is that while small businesses employ a huge number of people, it's hard to to collectively represent their interests, since by nature, the power of large corporations is more easily concentrated and directed.

Regarding political power by large corporations... An argument many conservatives would probably make is that the more power you give government, the more power a bribe to a government official has. It's a tough balancing act, because giving the government the power to regulate an industry also means that a bureaucrat technically now has the power to favor one business over another in very crucial ways, and so may be more susceptible to bribery or corruption. The reason politicians or bureaucrats are bribed is because they have *power*.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[ultranova]

Calling a whole group of people less intelligent because of their political beliefs is really the worst kind of bigotry.

That is only true if political beliefs are akin to religious faith. And even then it requires the most banal definition of religion, where it's nothing but a label one applies to oneself, devoid of any content. If, on the other hand, political - or religious - beliefs have content, then of course you can be judged by choosing to adhere to them and especially for advancing their agendas.

Since you brought up Hitler, riddle me this: if someone told you they're a Nazi, would that not affect your view of them? And if they told you they admire comrade Stalin, would you not consider them either a moron or evil or both?

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[ultranova]

It's time to make some sacrifices, to make the present a bit more dumpy in order to have a better future.

Human sacrifice has never once in history saved whoever practiced it. But this time is different, because the Invisible Hand is a greater god than Tlaloc or Baal.

It's pathetic how obvious it is once you see modern economy as it really is: just another religion hiding behind claims of rationality. And one currently going through typical end-of-line panic with associated frenzy of sacrifices and penances.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Anne Thwacks]

Central control works very well for the major retail chains. When you buy something, the bar code is scanned, and the details go back up the chain to the point of creations. Analytics take good care of seasonal variation, fashion trends, etc. If I buy one extra thing, or 100, the system copes with it fine.

The supply chain is lean to the extreme, and rarely are supermarket shelves empty. Marks and Spencer can easily doo what Karl Marks could only dream of.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[khallow]

Human sacrifice has never once in history saved whoever practiced it.

You do it all the time, such as making choices or deferring a want now for something you want more later. I don't know whether it's "saved" you or not. But it's what you do all the time.

But this time is different, because the Invisible Hand is a greater god than Tlaloc or Baal.

Do we say a hammer is a greater god than Tlaloc or a screwdriver a greater god than Baal just because they're real and actually work? No. We just use them as tools. Markets are the same way, just considerably more valuable a tool.

It's pathetic how obvious it is once you see modern economy as it really is: just another religion hiding behind claims of rationality. And one currently going through typical end-of-line panic with associated frenzy of sacrifices and penances.

I consider your post part of that panic. As I see it, the developed world started engaging in a bunch of economic shenanigans after experiencing greatly increased labor competition from the rest of the world. Some of these were failed attempts to preserve the price of developed world labor while others were just parasites feeding opportunistically in the environment.

But why should we expect good things when we dump so many costs and burdens on the employers? Especially when they have the choice of employing people in far cheaper countries or automating the work?

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[matbury]

I think IT is unlikely to change the consumerit nature of our economies. After all, it's their bread and butter. Perhaps they'll destroy themselves by making so many people unemployed that there's no longer sufficient demand for their services since nobody would be able to buy their advertising clients' stuff. People would give up wasting time on the internet and paying connections fees to telecoms giants while trying to find ways to feed, shelter, and clothe themselves and their families. Mass-market, advertising and consumer service-based IT could evaporate quite easily.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[PlusFiveTroll]

>Consider, we could wipe out our unemployment problem RIGHT NOW if the average work week was cut to 35 hours a week

Well, a lot of people are getting their work cut below that point, but with none of the benefits. Part time employees with no health benefits are a growing sector. Of course this is matched by a smaller amount of salaried employees having to work even more hours. Worst of both situations : /

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[cpt kangarooski]

If you're going to go around reading Wikipedia pages, you may as well finish reading them before citing them.

Here's what the very same Wikipedia page says, one paragraph after the one you quoted:

The ARPANET incorporated distributed computation (and frequent re-computation) of routing tables. This was a major contribution to the good survivability that the ARPANET had, in the face of significant destruction - even by a nuclear attack. Such auto-routing was technically quite challenging to construct at the time. The fact that it was incorporated into the early ARPANET made many believe that this had been a design goal.

The ARPANET was in fact designed to survive subordinate-network losses, but the principal reason was that the switching nodes and network links were unreliable, even without any nuclear attacks. About the resource scarcity that spurred the creation of the ARPANET, Charles Herzfeld, ARPA Director (1965â"1967), said:

The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried.

Which agrees nicely with what I said in my earlier comment.

You then went on to say:

Also nobody was talking about WHY DARPA funded it.But it's good to know in your universe that's the only place with money.

No, they weren't the only place with money. But ARPA was founded in 1958, and it wasn't until 1973 that they were required to only spend money on defense-related projects. Before that, they had a habit of giving money to all sorts of interesting projects. JCR Licklider, an obscure, yet tremendously important person in computing history, wanted to build computer networks and was a higher-up at ARPA in the 60's. His successor was Ivan Sutherland, who should need no introduction, and Sutherland brought in Bob Taylor, who finally got a network funded and built. Since you like Wikipedia, here's a passage from Taylor's entry:

Among the computer projects that ARPA supported was time-sharing, in which many users could work at terminals to share a single large computer. Users could work interactively instead of using punched cards or punched tape in a batch processing style. Taylor's office in the Pentagon had a terminal connected to time-sharing at MIT, a terminal connected to the Berkeley Timesharing System at the University of California at Berkeley, and a third terminal to the System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, California. He noticed each system developed a community of users, but was isolated from the other communities.

Taylor hoped to build a computer network to connect the ARPA-sponsored projects together, if nothing else to let him communicate to all of them through one terminal.

When ARPA got out of the business of spending money on interesting work, the National Science Foundation was supposed to pick up the slack, but this never happened. While I can understand how some people might cast aspersions on projects that used military funding, even if they're not meant for military applications, the money spends well enough.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[Crashmarik]

Now you are saying darpa doesn't do interesting things.

Otay.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[sjames]

The second part is the key. If salaried workers went to a 35 hour week, it would be a different picture.

A related issue might be limiting just how 'flexible' a part-time employee's schedule can be. If you're not going to give someone enough hours to live on, you have to accommodate their need for a second job by not expecting them to show up at odd hours or at the drop of a hat.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do it all the time, such as making choices or deferring a want now for something you want more later. I don't know whether it's "saved" you or not. But it's what you do all the time.

Making choices or deferring a want isn't human sacrifice. That's just people exercising their freedom of choice. They're making decisions for themselves, deferring their own wants.

Human sacrifice, in common parlance, is when you make decisions for other people, sacrificing them as opposed to yourself.

What you call economic shenanigans later is human sacrifice in action. Everybody wants to sacrifice somebody else. Nobody wants to give up theirs. Nobody wants to take the blame.

Do we say a hammer is a greater god than Tlaloc or a screwdriver a greater god than Baal just because they're real and actually work? No. We just use them as tools. Markets are the same way, just considerably more valuable a tool.

No, markets are not the same way, because markets are not a tool. Markets is an idea. Ideas share some characteristics as tools, but ideas are much more than that.

For example, we don't need to have an entire field of study with people dedicating their entire careers researching on whether or not a hammer exists, or what conditions are best to allow screwdrivers to form.

That's another difference there. With tools, there's no preference to one certain tool. And no moral implications of using certain tools. People don't tend to argue that we "should" be using hammers, and those who don't want to use screwdrivers as evil commies looking to enslave others.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part time employees with no health benefits are a growing sector.

Which is why Obamacare put a cap on your ratio of part time to full time employees without being forced to start providing health insurance.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[david_thornley]

Technology does create new industries. One problem is that these are going to be increasingly capital-intensive, meaning that capitalists will have more and more control and bigger shares of the wealth, while the opposite is going to happen to labor in general. The end game is one where a small part of the population lives like kings, a considerably larger gets well paid but most with little job security and demanding working conditions, and a larger part gets screwed.

Some countries will be able to deal with this, but US culture is going to have a great deal of difficulty adapting.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[david_thornley]

Speaking as a liberal, the Left has a lot of unsupported theories also. Some people on both sides do question the theories, but many don't.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[david_thornley]

GP didn't mention human sacrifices, just sacrifices. I, for example, have a certain amount of my pay shoved into my 401(k) automatically, so I don't get to spend it now. I believe it will help me in the future. That's a sacrifice that does help me in the long run.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[nbauman]

The question of whether the left or right is worse in science is an interesting one. Chris Mooney wrote a book called The Republican War on Science, and he certainly got a few good shots.

I agree that you have to question everyone. I don't trust the left either. I once caught Robert Knight on WBAI lying. He was talking about an article in Science magazine. I had the issue open in front of me and it didn't say what he claimed it was saying.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[khallow]

Human sacrifice, in common parlance, is when you make decisions for other people, sacrificing them as opposed to yourself.

When everyone can't have everything, then why isn't every possible outcome of an economy a "human sacrifice"? Everyone has to give up something for everyone else.

No, markets are not the same way, because markets are not a tool. Markets is an idea. Ideas share some characteristics as tools, but ideas are much more than that.

So it's a tool that happens to be more than a tool. I'm ok with that especially since it doesn't change my argument.

For example, we don't need to have an entire field of study with people dedicating their entire careers researching on whether or not a hammer exists, or what conditions are best to allow screwdrivers to form.

Markets are easy to observe, there's no question about their existence. And there are enough people who figure out the best conditions for screwdrivers to form, we call them manufacturers.

That's another difference there. With tools, there's no preference to one certain tool. And no moral implications of using certain tools. People don't tend to argue that we "should" be using hammers, and those who don't want to use screwdrivers as evil commies looking to enslave others.

But if it were advantageous to their ideology or interests to portray screwdrivers as evil, a lot of people would do so. That's just human nature.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[khallow]

Making choices or deferring a want isn't human sacrifice.

No. It still is a sacrifice and since we're speaking of humans, it automatically becomes a human sacrifice though not a kill someone on an altar human sacrifice. I get your point about sacrificing third parties interests for our own, but don't redefine the English language just to argue a point.

Re: Or how about no jobs?

[cpt kangarooski]

No, they fund things that have a military application, some of which are interesting. But it's not like the good old days, when they'd fund things that were interesting, regardless of military value.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[ultranova]

Human sacrifice has never once in history saved whoever practiced it.

You do it all the time, such as making choices or deferring a want now for something you want more later. I don't know whether it's "saved" you or not. But it's what you do all the time.

So were you suggesting rising taxes to pay off the national debt, thus giving you less disposable cash? Or perhaps you meant cutting military budget, thus sacrificing world power? No. You specifically mentioned "social safety net" as what you want cut. Which means you're sacrificing weaker members of society for this "better future" for yourself - in other words, human sacrifice.

At the very least honor your would-be victims enough to admit what you're trying to do.

Do we say a hammer is a greater god than Tlaloc or a screwdriver a greater god than Baal just because they're real and actually work? No. We just use them as tools. Markets are the same way, just considerably more valuable a tool.

Nobody talks of sacrifices in regards to a hammer or a screwdriver. Nobody insists hammer is the ideal and human beings need to adapt to it. Nobody starts think tanks just to speak against the use a nailgun or a cordless drill.

Market is a tool, obviously, but it's become far more than that to our culture. It has become a false god, before who's displeasure mere mortals are utterly powerless and which must be placated by sacrifice.

But why should we expect good things when we dump so many costs and burdens on the employers? Especially when they have the choice of employing people in far cheaper countries or automating the work?

Why do we give employers the choice of using slave labour in third-world shitholes while still doing business - or even residing - in the first world? Because the market demands it. Why do we have anything at all to do with dictatorships like China? Because market demands it. Why do we not simply rise toll barriers to remove the price advantage of slave labour? Because the market forbids it. Why are the unemployed made to live in poverty? Because the market has determined them as worthless. Why do people say things like "My net worth is $100,000"? Because the market values everything in dollars. Why do the worst fanatics try to reword even fundamental human rights in terms of (self-)ownership? Because that is the most important - and often the only important - concept to them.

The false god will fall, and then we can put the market into work as the useful tool it is, rather than a force that determines human fate we're treating it as. Assuming, of course, our civilization can take the associated forced readjustment of its mythological structure that's already underway.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

When everyone can't have everything, then why isn't every possible outcome of an economy a "human sacrifice"? Everyone has to give up something for everyone else.

I already explained it. Human sacrifice in common parlance doesn't just mean any human being giving up something for somebody else. The person giving up something also didn't choose to give it up themselves. The implication here is that coercion was involved. Not every possible outcome involves coercion, thus not every possible outcome is a human sacrifice.

So it's a tool that happens to be more than a tool. I'm ok with that especially since it doesn't change my argument.

No, I'm saying it's not a tool at all. It just happens to share characteristics of a tool. Not everything that shares characteristics with X is an X.

A dog has two eyes and a mouth
You have two eyes and a mouth
Are you a dog?

Markets are easy to observe, there's no question about their existence.

But there's much more to question on what type of markets is existing in a particular society at the moment, how much of it is there, how much "should" there be, how do get there, etc. Questions that need not be asked for those simply interested in the existence of hammers or screwdrivers

And there are enough people who figure out the best conditions for screwdrivers to form, we call them manufacturers.

No, manufacturers figure out the best conditions to manufacture stuff. They make whatever tool makes them money (aka what the market wants). The screwdriver is just a means to an end for them.

For those who study markets, the market is the end. They can't just make whatever the market wants. That would equate to telling people whatever they want to hear. They, if they have integrity, are about discovering knowledge, a type of idea.

But if it were advantageous to their ideology or interests to portray screwdrivers as evil, a lot of people would do so. That's just human nature.

You're making my argument for me. The screwdriver is only labeled evil because there's a preference to an ideology or interest. There's no preference to the screwdriver itself.

With markets or ideas, the preference is to the idea of markets itself. The guy saying markets are good (or its competition evil) isn't saying it to promote some non-market ideology. They're saying it to promote market ideology itself.

No. It still is a sacrifice and since we're speaking of humans, it automatically becomes a human sacrifice though not a kill someone on an altar human sacrifice. I get your point about sacrificing third parties interests for our own, but don't redefine the English language just to argue a point.

Other way around. You're the one arguing in semantics. I said it already that I'm using human sacrifice in common parlance. It's not like you don't know what that means, with your reference to killing someone on an altar. You and you alone choose not to use that definition, and picked definitions that make my/GP's message have the least sense.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[khallow]

So were you suggesting rising taxes to pay off the national debt, thus giving you less disposable cash? Or perhaps you meant cutting military budget, thus sacrificing world power? No. You specifically mentioned "social safety net" as what you want cut. Which means you're sacrificing weaker members of society for this "better future" for yourself - in other words, human sacrifice.

I don't mind the first two though there really isn't a need to raise taxes once you've dealt with military spending and excessive entitlement spending IMHO. For the US, military spending and entitlement spending make up two thirds of the US budget, including "off budget" stuff like Social Security.

At the very least honor your would-be victims enough to admit what you're trying to do.

I think this is fundamentally dishonest. Everyone should have to cut back a little. Not just the wealthy. Not just the poor or disadvantaged.

Why do we give employers the choice of using slave labour in third-world shitholes while still doing business - or even residing - in the first world? Because the market demands it.

I think rather because it is better for everyone in the long run. This whole situation is driven by a vast disparity between the developed world and everyone else along with the ability to trade globally and allow the various parts of the world to use their advantages to best improve themselves.

The current economic system is quickly making the rest of the world as wealthy as the developed world. I think within a human lifetime, we'll have eliminated almost all poverty globally.

Why do we have anything at all to do with dictatorships like China? Because market demands it. Why do we not simply rise toll barriers to remove the price advantage of slave labour? Because the market forbids it. Why are the unemployed made to live in poverty? Because the market has determined them as worthless. Why do people say things like "My net worth is $100,000"? Because the market values everything in dollars. Why do the worst fanatics try to reword even fundamental human rights in terms of (self-)ownership? Because that is the most important - and often the only important - concept to them.

And why do you bring up this rather than the obvious observation that global trade makes the few problems you note better? Don't like "slave" labor, third world shitholes, dictatorships, unemployed, or poverty? The current economic system is fixing those problems. I don't consider the rest of what you think of as problems, worth discussing.

The false god will fall, and then we can put the market into work as the useful tool it is, rather than a force that determines human fate we're treating it as. Assuming, of course, our civilization can take the associated forced readjustment of its mythological structure that's already underway.

We already do that now. It's already solved, assuming it's even worth the bother of promoting this to the status of a problem.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[khallow]

I already explained it. Human sacrifice in common parlance doesn't just mean any human being giving up something for somebody else. The person giving up something also didn't choose to give it up themselves. The implication here is that coercion was involved. Not every possible outcome involves coercion, thus not every possible outcome is a human sacrifice.

This is not the meaning of coercion. And I find it interesting how coercion means removing entitlement benefits which can be done without force, but coercion doesn't mean forcing someone to pay for those entitlement benefits.

No, I'm saying it's not a tool at all. It just happens to share characteristics of a tool. Not everything that shares characteristics with X is an X.

No. If a thing has the characteristics of being a tool, then it's a tool. You admit markets have the characteristics of being a tool, hence, you admit markets are tools. It doesn't matter that you feel differently for some reason.

I'm not interested in yet another attempt to redefine the English language to fit the rhetoric of the moment.

And there are enough people who figure out the best conditions for screwdrivers to form, we call them manufacturers.

No, manufacturers figure out the best conditions to manufacture stuff. They make whatever tool makes them money (aka what the market wants). The screwdriver is just a means to an end for them.

Again, yet another argument where you claim to disagree with me, but don't actually disagree.

For those who study markets, the market is the end. They can't just make whatever the market wants. That would equate to telling people whatever they want to hear. They, if they have integrity, are about discovering knowledge, a type of idea.

Notice what you actually claim here. Anyone who studies markets came to the same conclusion: markets are wonderful enough to elevate to the alleged status of religion or myth. Since you don't hold to this, that means you haven't studied markets.

Maybe you should study markets too then since it appears once again that your arguments are based a combination of ignorance of what markets are combined with abuse of the English language.

With markets or ideas, the preference is to the idea of markets itself. The guy saying markets are good (or its competition evil) isn't saying it to promote some non-market ideology. They're saying it to promote market ideology itself.

We're smart enough to separate our interests from those of promoters. And I'm not going to decide on your side just because the other side has a promoter you don't happen to like.

Other way around. You're the one arguing in semantics. I said it already that I'm using human sacrifice in common parlance. It's not like you don't know what that means, with your reference to killing someone on an altar. You and you alone choose not to use that definition, and picked definitions that make my/GP's message have the least sense.

I don't see the problem here. The argument was broken on semantics grounds since you weren't using common parlance. Hence, my rebuttal is on those semantics grounds where your argument becomes invalid. Pretty simple.

And really, I don't see the term, "human sacrifice" as being a relevant description at all. Sure, due to the vagaries of having to compete with those who work for far less, the price we command for our wages has declined and will continue to decline for some time to come and sure, we're for the most part human. But that doesn't mean our sacrifice is human sacrifice in the typical sense of the work. It's just sacrifice.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[ArmoredDragon]

Consider, we could wipe out our unemployment problem RIGHT NOW if the average work week was cut to 35 hours a week.

Actually that's very much false. You're subscribing to the lump of labor fallacy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

We already have real world examples of this type of policy being applied, and in 100% of those cases, the unemployment rate increased as a result of capping working hours.

Korea and Japan are two countries with no rules about how many hours you can work in a week, and...what do you know? Both countries have unemployment rates below the natural rate of unemployment (expected unemployment from people between jobs, frictional unemployment, etc.)

I'm not sure where you got the idea that we could wipe out unemployment if we capped working hours to 35, but the real world examples say it's a big fat lie.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[wellsdm]

What were the biotech jobs? Lab rat?

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[sjames]

Japan is in the midst of a cultural crises based on the loss of job stability and young people with no meaningful chance to enter mainstream society due to a decaying jobs situation.

Perhaps that was a bad example.

But in any event, it is only called a fallacy based on economist hand-waving. Properly that is not a fallacy at all. It is based on a straw-man claim that it requires demand for labor to be inelastic. In fact, it only requires that the reduction exceed the limited elasticity of the demand for labor.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[ArmoredDragon]

Perhaps that was a bad example.

No. In spite of recent turmoil (including recession,) Japan remains with a low unemployment rate. That said, it continues to serve as a valid case for why the lump of labor concept is a fallacy, and why having increased working hours for everybody doesn't result in higher unemployment.

In fact, it only requires that the reduction exceed the limited elasticity of the demand for labor.

You're working on the rather bad assumption that if you reduce working hours with all other things being equal, then the demand for labor will not change. As I already mentioned, this is both mathematically false and is historically proven false. France is actually a really good example of why a 35 hour work week increases the unemployment rate.

It's been done, and in 100% of the cases where it has been done, the economic results have been rather bad. The debate on this is very much over and settled as even very liberal economists agree (including left-wing favorite Paul Krugman) that this is a bad idea in the making, that said I'm not going to mention it any further in this thread, I just responded to tell you why you're wrong.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[cwsumner]

All of this is assuming that jobs come from the government, or big monopolistic companies.That is "propaganda" spread by people that want to control the world. In reality, most jobs are with small companies started by one person or a small group. And they can find things to do if they try, because they are doing that now.

What do people do when robots take jobs? Make the plastic spacers used in the robots joints. Or maybe make the same product as the robots, advertise it as "hand made" and charge twice >>> three times as much. People find ways, and then they hire others to help.

P.S., Don't drink the coolaid!

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[cwsumner]

The second part is the key. If salaried workers went to a 35 hour week, it would be a different picture.

A related issue might be limiting just how 'flexible' a part-time employee's schedule can be. If you're not going to give someone enough hours to live on, you have to accommodate their need for a second job by not expecting them to show up at odd hours or at the drop of a hat.

Y'all sound like you could fix the world, if you could just get control of the world.

No, you couldn't. It's been tried, repeatedly, and the results were really B.A.D. 8-)

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Krishnoid]

Consider, we could wipe out our unemployment problem RIGHT NOW if the average work week was cut to 35 hours a week.

Done. Is it working? (In reality, I'm sure this example has multiple other factors to consider).

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[sjames]

You're working on the rather bad assumption that if you reduce working hours with all other things being equal, then the demand for labor will not change.

Stop right there and re-read what I wrote again. That is patently false.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[sjames]

From the Wikipedia article:

In their view, the reluctance of firms to take on new workers has instead simply increased per-hour production quotas[citation needed]. According to right-wing parties and economic commentators, the main reason why French firms avoid hiring new workers is that French employment regulations around labour flexibility make it difficult to lay off workers during a poor economic period.

Not really an issue in the U.S.

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[sjames]

And there's the screeching...

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not the meaning of coercion.

Oh yes it is.

http://www.merriam-webster.com...
http://www.merriam-webster.com...

1
: to restrain or dominate by force
2
: to compel to an act or choice
3
: to achieve by force or threat

When you are coerced to do something, any choice you made wasn't from your own free will, it was done under force or threat. You were compelled. Ergo, you didn't actually have a choice.

And I find it interesting how coercion means removing entitlement benefits which can be done without force, but coercion doesn't mean forcing someone to pay for those entitlement benefits.

Where did I say that? I think you're confusing me with the other poster ultranova.

No. If a thing has the characteristics of being a tool, then it's a tool. You admit markets have the characteristics of being a tool, hence, you admit markets are tools.

No, you sharing traits with a dog doesn't make you a dog. Admitting you share traits with a dog doesn't mean I admit you're a dog.

It doesn't matter that you feel differently for some reason.

Speak for yourself. Markets aren't tools, regardless of how you feel for some reason.

I'm not interested in yet another attempt to redefine the English language to fit the rhetoric of the moment.

This wasn't another attempt. There wasn't even a first attempt. Regardless of how you feel

Again, yet another argument where you claim to disagree with me, but don't actually disagree.

Except I did actually disagree with you. The fact you think I didn't says more about your lack of understanding of the English language than mine.

Notice what you actually claim here. Anyone who studies markets came to the same conclusion: markets are wonderful enough to elevate to the alleged status of religion or myth. Since you don't hold to this, that means you haven't studied markets.

What makes you think I don't hold on to that? Again, I think you're confusing me with ultranova.

Maybe you should study markets too then since it appears once again that your arguments are based a combination of ignorance of what markets are combined with abuse of the English language.

My understand of markets and English is fine, sir. How things "appear" to you is detached from the truth.

We're smart enough to separate our interests from those of promoters. And I'm not going to decide on your side just because the other side has a promoter you don't happen to like.

That's nice to know, but that has nothing to do with my point.

I don't see the problem here. The argument was broken on semantics grounds since you weren't using common parlance

No, I was using common parlance. I even clarified what I mean by common parlance, just in case what passes for common for you isn't the same as me (hey, it can happen, communication is not a simple matter). But you continue to insist I mean something else and am wrong because an argument using that other definition is wrong. That's a strawman, hence your accusations on me are invalid

And really, I don't see the term, "human sacrifice" as being a relevant description at all.

That's what we're here for (well, me, I can't speak for ultranova), to open your eyes so you can "see" better.

As I said, "human sacrifice" has the connotation that you're forcing somebody else to give up something. Not all "sacrifices" are like that. You recognize yourself that "sacrificing" entitlement payments is different than "sacrificing" employers to pay for those entitlement pa

Re:Or how about no jobs?

[khallow]

1 : to restrain or dominate by force
2 : to compel to an act or choice
3 : to achieve by force or threat

Exactly my point. Those do not apply. You merely claim they apply. For a good example, we aren't coerced to live on the same planet as seven billion other people, most whom will work for much less than anyone in the developed world. It just happened. Similarly, we live on a world where robotics and computers can do some jobs better than us. We aren't coerced to be worse workers for these tasks, it just happened. This is the fundamental reason anyone thinks the markets are broken these days.

Speak for yourself. Markets aren't tools, regardless of how you feel for some reason.

Why don't you quote the definition of "tool" like you did for "coercion". Then I can show you where you are wrong and we can move on.

As I said, "human sacrifice" has the connotation that you're forcing somebody else to give up something. Not all "sacrifices" are like that.

Unless the human sacrifice is voluntary. Then it doesn't involve coercion. Again, not common parlance.

You recognize yourself that "sacrificing" entitlement payments is different than "sacrificing" employers to pay for those entitlement payments. Hence the "human" to differentiate.

No, we use the words "coerced" or "forced" to make that distinction, eg, employers are "forced to sacrifice".

mispoke

[Anonymous Coward]

...create wealth BY destroying jobs...

Re:mispoke

[bondsbw]

The only way to increase wealth by reducing the number of jobs is to increase the worth of the remaining jobs or to increase material trade.

Jobs are a form of trade (trading your services for money). Every trade/transaction provides both parties an increase of value or worth; the employer deems the services received to be worth more than the money, and the employee deems the money to be worth more than his or her time. Throw billions or trillions of transactions together, you have an economy.

So reducing the number of jobs (transactions) directly negatively impacts the economy.

Fine, but if the jobs are better and/or material trade increases, doesn't that build wealth?

Even material trades rely on jobs. Every bit of wealth in our economy can be traced back to some physical labor. Gold, oil, food, and all materials are worthless until someone harvests those items. Many items also are refined or otherwise made more valuable by labor, such as sewing cotton to make a shirt. So it all goes back to jobs.

I doubt the loss in number of jobs will be offset by how valuable the remaining jobs are. Even if it is, scarcity will eventually become a factor, as material possessions lose value (due to consumption or depreciation) and only the elite robot owners/operators will have replacement items. Those elites will have all the wealth, and more and more of the remainder of the human population will lose wealth.

So I highly doubt wealth is innately created by destroying jobs, and even if it is, it will only serve to increase the chasm between the rich and the poor.

The Second Machine Age

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the book you are looking for that covered all this last year is called The Second Machine Age

Re:The Second Machine Age

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if you can't be bothered to read a book, CGP Grey turned it in to a video which incedentally Salshdot already covered.

Think of the people

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing we can do is to try and reduce the numbers of disaffected people who have nothing to loose by listening to those who tell them to go out and destroy things. We'll never get them all but we can make a lot less work for the next level of protection.

it's also democratizing

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody starts understanding how to build software, but (so far) the barriers to entry are very close to zero. Anyone can download GCC and a Linux distro for free, and it'll run on a $50 Rasberry Pi. That's quite adequate to learn to code. It's close to how I learned, except that the RasPi wasn't available yet so it was a different kind of computer.

Of course some projects are so large it takes a big team to do them, but there's also no end to the small one-person projects that can be done, and people can and do make a living like that, here in 2015.

The problem will come about if the established players manage to raise the barriers to entry, so that not everybody having a dream can do it. Some have started down that road already with code signing requirements and vendor lock-in stores. If we get to a world where software is only developed with permission that will be akin to books only being written with permission. It's critical that we preserve the open nature of software development. Yes, it means there is a lot of crap, just like for every Lord of the Rings there are a hundred thousand drek novels not worth the paper they are printed on.

Re:it's also democratizing

[exomondo]

but there's also no end to the small one-person projects that can be done, and people can and do make a living like that, here in 2015.

Yet even some of the most popular projects that are used by both FOSS and proprietary products and companies are woefully under-resourced (OpenSSL) and underfunded (GPG).

Citations?

[Jane Q. Public]

I don't say this a lot on Slashdot, but sometimes it's called for. TFA:

The previous one, the industrial revolution, created lots of jobs because the new technology required huge numbers of humans to run it. But this is not the normal course of technology; it was an anomaly in that sense.

Citations? Evidence? That second sentence is actually the whole basis of his argument... and it's just baldly stated with no supporting evidence anywhere.

I am sorely tempted to call bullshit. I'm not positive it is but I strongly suspect it is.

Re:Citations?

[Maxo-Texas]

Actually... the industrial revolution resulted in a severe disruption for workers with many dying homeless, of starvation or exposure.

Then the generation AFTER them did okay and we simply forgot about those who literally died of effects of the industrial revolution.

This could be very similar. A generation of misery and then the one after that has different expectations and training.

The trend has been pretty ugly- lower share of societies benefits for most- higher share of societies benefits for the very few- often related more to their parents success (50%) than their own ability. I mean- a lot of the better jobs are practically inherited these days.

Re:Citations?

[Anonymous Coward]

Citations? Evidence? That second sentence is actually the whole basis of his argument... and it's just baldly stated with no supporting evidence anywhere.
I am sorely tempted to call bullshit. I'm not positive it is but I strongly suspect it is.

Here's your citation.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6976905&cid=49070227

And WHY THE FECK DOES /. LOG ME OUT WHENEVER I TRY TO COMMENT ON A STORY!

Re:Citations?

[Overzeetop]

The industrial revolution allowed us to make things less expensively. What took 100 man-hours could be produced in 10, or 1. With it came the rise of unions and a power struggle between the robber barons and the working classes. The standard of living of most people in the industrialized world skyrocketed, with a good deal of the wealth trickling into the new "middle class". Industrialization made things, but required manpower to run them.

The rise of technology has made manpower obsolete. We're not making things with software but rather learning how to eliminate service people (technology in general, this is really all one wave and Y-C thinking software is somehow divorced from the IT revoultion that's been in progress for 40 years is bullshit). The end game isn't really "more stuff" but "automated services". We don't need more people to ramp up production - once the software is running it merely needs maintenance and a very small incremental staff to serve 100, 1000, 10000x it's original purpose.

That's where people are getting crunched. Now that the industrial revolution has spread to more of the world, there's international competition for those "factory" jobs, and so the Man can simple take operations to a cheaper location. But there's nowhere for the factory workers to go because all the service jobs are drying up too, thanks for software. The wages on the inside are good, but the inside is getting smaller and smaller as tech takes over more positions. That leaves a large, unemployable population.

Re:Citations?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument does not hold water.

Slashdot is not a peer-reviewed science journal. Other people here are not your under- or un-paid research assistants. Or chimpanzees for that matter.

When you are spoon-fed relevant material and shown where you can find much more VERY EASILY, it's time to quitcherbitchin'. Nobody is being paid to shovel the information down your throat, just because you're too lazy to do it. You don't get to claim it's not there just because you won't look at it.

Re:Citations?

[towermac]

No, I like your gut instinct. There is no evidence that the Industrial Revolution was an anomaly in job creation. As Maxo points out, it wasn't all just job creation anyway. Lots of craftsmen and all kinds of people were out of business and disrupted.

But there were no little craftsmen making giant bridges and buildings; that was new stuff and new jobs that didn't exist before. There will be new stuff and opportunities in the next technological revolution.

Re:Citations?

[Tablizer]

it's just baldly stated with no supporting evidence anywhere. I am sorely tempted to call bullshit.

The opposite also shouldn't be taken on faith: that new technology creates at least as many jobs as it replaces (with roughly equivalent wages). There is no mathematical proof either way that I am aware of. We can only observe history, not the future, to verify any "principles of economics".

If the economy is humming at full capacity, then indeed it perhaps may find a way to employ everybody; but as we keep seeing, recessions and bubbles derail hot economies and gum up financial systems. Thus, relying on a fully-cranked economy(s) to do such is probably not realistic.

Re:Citations?

[Jane Q. Public]

There is no mathematical proof either way that I am aware of. We can only observe history, not the future, to verify any "principles of economics".

Right. But I don't know of any historical trend showing that technological advances = fewer jobs and lower standard of living.

I'm not arguing with his point that software will do that. Maybe it will; I have my doubts. I'm saying that the premise on which he bases his whole argument seems to be little more than a blue-sky assumption. I don't think it's even taken on "faith".

Re:Citations?

[Jane Q. Public]

I know exactly where this came from.

Slashdot is not a peer-reviewed science journal. Other people here are not your under- or un-paid research assistants. Or chimpanzees for that matter.

That's right! That's exactly why I wrote "I don't say this often on Slashdot."

When you are spoon-fed relevant material and shown where you can find much more VERY EASILY, it's time to quitcherbitchin'. Nobody is being paid to shovel the information down your throat, just because you're too lazy to do it. You don't get to claim it's not there just because you won't look at it.

There was no "spoon-fed material" here. There was when I wrote that, but there wasn't any here. I know you're trying to snark at me for saying that before, but the context is so vastly different it just doesn't fly.

Re:Citations?

[Anonymous Coward]

quitcherbitchin'

Re:Citations?

[Tablizer]

Economics is a "soft" science, unfortunately. We cannot fork the Earth and try different things to see what happens at fixed levels of technology advancement. Economists thus have to tease patterns out of multiple variables changing at the same time.

And we might have to just experiment with actual economies. What worked for the last 100 years may NOT work for the next.

Re:Citations?

[DerekLyons]

Funny... the grandparent suspects the article is wrong because it provides no citations. Your answer? To assert the article is wrong, without providing citations.

Re:Citations?

[micahraleigh]

People who inherit wealth without skills and discretion lose wealth very fast ... often to the more deserving.

Re:Citations?

[roman_mir]

The trend has been pretty ugly- lower share of societies benefits for most- higher share of societies benefits for the very few- often related more to their parents success (50%) than their own ability. I mean- a lot of the better jobs are practically inherited these days.

- one of the reasons that people work beyond what they need in their own lives is to improve quality of life of their immediate families. Of-course if you start a business you will want your kids to inherit it, that's the most natural thing and there is nothing wrong with it at all.

Not sure it's software anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

We keep hearing about software, robots, efficiency killing all the jobs. We never really hear about the fact that these systems we setup were built in about the 70's when the global population was about 2.3 billion. It's currently at about 7-8 billion, a rise that nobody saw coming. Third world countries are 3rd world because of lack or resource which snowballs into lacking everything else.

I want more robots and I want more software and I want a hell of a lot more advancements. I want these things because I believe I can bootstrap them to myself for my own selfish survival the way apocalyptic fetishists think of guns as family protection. Computers mean I can operate in the new economy and save myself.

It is a problem snake eating its tail.

Re:Not sure it's software anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

They came into my workplace and destroyed it. It allows managers to micromanage every last minute you spend during a day. Most of the good employees left after that. It was a disaster and I'm sure somebody got rich off of it.

Sufficient new jobs are no longer created

[cjonslashdot]

The assumption that "we will probably find new things to do to satisfy limitless human demand" has no substantiation. In fact, the rate of job replacement is now higher than the rate of job creation. Unemployment will be rising inexorably and at an increasing rate.

Re:Sufficient new jobs are no longer created

[BarbaraHudson]

And worse, that's with a dropping participation rate. If the workforce participation rate were what it was, unemployment and under-employment would look even worse.

Re:Sufficient new jobs are no longer created

[bigdavex]

There are thousands of years of substantiation. And the alternative is that no one will want anything. I don't agree with doom & gloom on this point.

Re:Sufficient new jobs are no longer created

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly there is little or no chance for the actual economic model to sift to a post scarcity model without trouble and the usual suspects will suffer and die until a new stable state is reached
the time and endeavour of the people can be focused in science, arts or spend the time in politics via direct democracy or any other activity beneficial to society but the old oligarchy will cling to their position in power and old economic models, while automation and advances in computing will result in increased efficiency and cost reduction by eliminating the need for costly humans and advanced manufacturing may result in manufacturing on site cheaply enough rather than in far off countries eliminating the cost of long haul transportation of manufactured goods, sadly this will result in increased divide between the rich and the rest due to increased unemployment and that traditional corporations wont see the need to invest in people they don't need anyway
Obviously the crisis must reach a tipping point and resolve itself, if people has not money to spend doesn't the matter how cheap is your product and the economic model must change one way or another
society today has the rooted belief that a person must work and earn a wage to be worthy, that must change
also two other problems must be resolved if we want a post scarcity society cheap energy by fusion, solar or any other viable method it found, and resources if we find a way to mine cheap enough the solar system that will be solved, in any case no mater what, if these two problems are not solved we will be all fucked in a hundred years anyway

Re:Sufficient new jobs are no longer created

[guruevi]

So millions of people stopped working altogether and stopped collecting unemployment? How are they making money? How are they surviving? Why have I not heard about this and how do I stop working and put food on the table?

Re:Sufficient new jobs are no longer created

[BarbaraHudson]

So millions of people stopped working altogether and stopped collecting unemployment? How are they making money? How are they surviving? Why have I not heard about this and how do I stop working and put food on the table?

Yes They're not. Head in the sand? Welfare or a partner who works or early retirement or living in your car or being homeless.

Lowest participation rate in almost 40 years.

Democratizing? Hardly. Just look at Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get how you can say that open source software is "democratizing". Look at any of the major projects today, including the ones you listed. A small number of them are "benevolent" dictatorships (like Python, or the Linux kernel). Others are controlled by a very small number of people making up a "steering committee" or a "core team" or even a corporation (like GCC, or FreeBSD, or Firefox, or Chrome). Others are utterly dysfunctional, with mind-numbing politics and faux voting and illusions of democracy (like Debian).

The recent shenanigans involving Debian and systemd, or Firefox and its UI changes, really go to show how undemocratic open source projects are today. Here we have cases of thousands upon thousands of users saying, "No! We don't want that!", yet the developers go ahead and do exactly what so many users have specifically asked not be done.

Just look at Mozilla's own feedback collection stats for their Firefox products. Currently, 86% of people have filed "sad" reports, and only 14% have filed "happy" ones! If Firefox were truly developed in a democratic fashion, we wouldn't see so many unhappy users, even when we consider that unhappy users are more likely to say they're unhappy. If democracy were at play here, we wouldn't see the developers constantly going against the wishes of the users.

Get real. There's nothing special about open source projects that somehow makes them more democratic. They're just as totalitarian as anything else that involve governance.

Re:Democratizing? Hardly. Just look at Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's democratizing because the barriers to entry are so low they might as well be zero.

Sure, only a small number of people work on the Linux Kernel, but that's not what the entire subject is. The subject is jobs, and anyone can learn to code on their own and produce software to sell, or hone their skills and get hired by a small or large company. I know, because that's how I got started. It took work and dedication: learning about complex algorithms, reading Knuth, etc, but there was no gatekeeper. Everything I needed was out there to use for free. I didn't have $200 to my name when I learned to write code using GCC.

Saying that "not every project is a democracy" completely misses the point. The point is that you can start your OWN project, without anyone's permission, without blessing from Apple or Microsoft, without permission of your local government. Just grab the tools, learn, and go.

That's the nature of it being democratic. You have an idea and want to make the world a better place? Go for it! We're not talking about millions of people all working on the Linux kernel, we're talking about anyone being able to build their own software with nobody to tell them they can't. Of course, it's better to build something that other people will want, if you want to make money at it. But that's true of just about everything in the entire world, it's not specific to software.

Re:Democratizing? Hardly. Just look at Debian.

[Crashmarik]

Most independent app developers lose money these days.

So really 4 billion dogs fighting over 1 bone ? I don't think that's the democracy anyone wants.

Software is the wrong villian here.

[complete loony]

It appears that the banking sector will do what they usually do—extract wealth and destroy jobs.

The most serious problem our economy faces is the mountain of private debt we have accumulated in the past 50 years. And the huge wealth imbalance this has caused.

The banking sector has successfully transformed most asset markets into heavily leveraged ponzi-like schemes. Each new entrant to the market pushing up prices with borrowed money, so that other people can cash out. This borrowed money caused asset prices to rise, giving the appearance of creating wealth. But debt levels end up rising faster. When the market runs out of greater fools, the bubble collapses, leaving the mountain of accumulated debt mostly intact.

While the bubble is rising, the economy begins to depend on the creation of new debt just to continue functioning. Once the debt gravy train slows down, it doesn't even need to stop, the flow of spending money in the economy dries up. Companies that were pretty much already insolvent go bust, others survive by tightening their belts. It is the workers losing their jobs that suffer the most for the problems that the financial sector created.

We can't repay the debts the financial sector lent out. The only question left is how we choose not to pay them.

We need a huge shift in how we create and manage money. We need to drastically shrink the parasitic financial sector, wipe out the loans that represent most of our money supply. And replace the money created with credit cards and home loans with government fiat currency, given directly to the people.

Managing the flow of money is essential to keeping people employed.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[UnknownSoldier]

> We need a huge shift in how we create and manage money. We need to drastically shrink the parasitic financial sector, wipe out the loans that represent most of our money supply. And replace the money created with credit cards and home loans

Indeed.

What's funny is that there _already_ are solutions to this problem in other sectors, **thousands** of years ago, that we blindly ignore the wisdom off, all in the name of greed.

Ask any farmer if they constantly have their land produce or if they allow it lay fallow one year so it can regenerate.

Jordan Mechner in this "How I applied my life to making games" says "Burnout can be a good thing. It allows your creativity to recharge".

> with government fiat currency, given directly to the people.

Fiat currency is exactly part of the problem, not the solution.

**Every** fiat currency has failed. Why do you think "this" time will be any different??

* http://dailyreckoning.com/fiat...
* http://mises.org/sites/default...

The 2 biggest problems with the financial sector is:

* Usury
* No debt forgiveness every X years, where X is 50 or 100 years, etc.

  Wipe out usury and we'll be making a step towards a stable economy, not magically pulling money out of our asses that can never be repaid.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anonymous Coward]

and don't forget the other parasites. lawyers, career politicans, lobbyists, and IP middlemen (RIAA, MPAA, patent trolls, etc

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[Tablizer]

The most serious problem our economy faces is the mountain of private debt we have accumulated...

But countries with tighter regulations on debt are still facing the same middle-level job problems that debt-heavy countries have. While debt may be a contributor, it's probably not the main cause.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree to a large extent that we are using 19th century models and structures for 21st century situations, and attempting to close the gap is destroying us.

Even worse that the obvious fixes are spread throughout the political spectrum that getting consensus for even mild change isn't going to happen as party lines are even more obsolete. Ending the minimum wage and instituting basic income could work, but best of luck finding any political party to bring it to the floor as a whole.

Regardless change will come either measured and planned, or a frantic hard scrabble. Apparently we prefer the latter, squeezing every last cent from the old structure means people are willing to risk losing it all in the chaos that ensues after.

Will be a wild ride.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[complete loony]

I assume you mean "countries with tighter regulations on government debt" eg anywhere in Europe. That's a symptom of what I'm talking about. When the private debt bubble collapses, taxes fall and government debts rise. If you try to limit government spending through austerity measures, you take even more spending money from the populous, making the problem worse.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anonymous Coward]

And as William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech shows, indebtedness didn't suddenly come into being 50 years ago.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing: Islamic sharia law prohibits usury.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[towermac]

Your premise hinges on the debt gravy train, which you say just 'slows down', but then you leave it there like it's already been explained.

You leave out all that borrowed money. It still exists. Where is it? Yes, the the flow of newly borrowed money may dry up, but what happened to all that money that was already borrowed? Who has that money now?

What you're missing is that the 'financial sector', which is not the monolithic entity that you make out, has little choice in the matter. The biggest borrower will not be denied. Who it is, that has that money now; the biggest borrower; is the US Federal Government. They're up to borrowing about 80% of the wealth generated each year; leaving 20% of new, real, first generation money to flow into that bubble you describe above. Just enough to keep it humming. Hopefully...

Your answer to that, is to give them everything, rather than pull them back. Let's say you did; you could only do it once. All that fake bank money is gone, and what's left is honest, simple, trade and business. I guess I'm an agrarian farmer now, because my company was financed by that fake bank money. How much currency did I get fiated, exactly? 'Cause I got $815 due next month, and although I'm onboard with the Glorious Revolution, I'm questioning my ability to raise sorghum or corn on this quarter acre lot. But I guess the HOA is gone at this point, so thanks for that at least.

Instead of all that, we could, you know, You and I, just borrow a little less each year. As opposed a little more each year. Or a lot. It'd be a lot easier than your way. It would still sting a little. But that's simply because we're used to living on more than we make. When I say make, I mean everything that exists, that can possibly be borrowed against. Well, what was left after taxes.

Can we try that first? Just cut Federal spending a bit?

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting. The real problem is summed up in you statement that when the bubble pops the debt remains. It should not. Debt is another mans savings, and if he invested them poorly he should lose them. The trouble is that those who own the debt are the ruling class, so it is the man on the street that gets pummelled because of the Ponzi scheme.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[complete loony]

Money isn't a commodity like gold. When a bank issues a loan, they create an asset and liability at the same time. When you pay a loan back, the asset and liability are cancelled out. Most of our spending power is based on ledger records in a bank's double entry book-keeping system. But as an entire country, we haven't been paying back our loans at all. Each year we've borrowed more than we've repaid, even when you take inflation into account.

If you're running a business, your income is based on what your customers spend from their income plus new debt. Therefore the growth in your income is based on the growth of your customers income and the *acceleration* of their debt. If the acceleration of debt slows down and turns negative, even if the velocity of debt is still positive, your flow of income will reduce. If income is growing, you'll probably hire more people. If income falls you'll be forced to let people go.

So if we can extrapolate this to an entire economy, we should see a strong correlation between employment and the acceleration of debt. This, IMHO is the smoking gun.

For similar reasons I'd expect to see similar relationships between mortgage acceleration and house prices, or margin lending and share prices.

Private debt drives the economy. And yet economists have convinced themselves and us that we can safely ignore the role of banks debt and money. This situation is absolutely insane.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Pfhorrest]

Christian law also prohibited usury for the longest time. (Until around the Protestant Reformation).

It's the reason Jews were villainized as greedy schemers: Christians (in Christian lands) were legally prohibited from lending at interest, but Jews (not being bound by Christian law) could, meaning that they were the only ones doing it, and getting all the flak for it.

Even then though, and still today in the Muslim world, there were complicated work-arounds involving a combination of an "interest-free" loan, insurance, and rental, which created in effect a loan at interest, and is part of why the Christian world eventually let up on prohibitions of usury, because it was effectively happening anyway despite the prohibition of it. The loophole there, as I see it, was failing to see that rent is precisely the same thing as lending at interest, or rather, that interest is a special case of rent: it's just rent on money.

In any case you're lending capital temporarily in exchange for a permanent transfer of even greater capital back to you, which causes the problem of wealth concentration, redistributing wealth from those who have less of it (and thus need to borrow it) to those who have more of it already (and thus can afford to lend it out), which has the secondary effect of requiring those with less of it to labor for those with more of it in order to continue borrowing to survive, in effect creating perpetual servitude of a working class to an owning class.

And when technological revolutions make labor less valuable, that kind of class division becomes unsustainable, and either the working class has to just die off, or take some capital for themselves by force —unless everyone can see the undesirability of either of those outcomes, and change the system somehow to let the capital flow back from the leisure class to the labor class, as it naturally would without such concentrating influences as rent and interest.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anonymous Coward]

A certain bank in Oz has worked out a way of providing interest free home loans to muslims by incorporating the interest rate into the capital to be loaned. Therefore the loan repayment is much higher, but (so far) is not considered to be usury.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Pfhorrest]

So are they basically just selling the house at a much higher price? Does the bank then have to buy the house from the seller first and then resell it to the buyer to accomplish that?

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anne Thwacks]

Then it is over 1,000 years behind the rest of Islam, which has been doing this for a very long time.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anne Thwacks]

So when the man that owns the debt is China and the man that borrowed is America?

Has anyone managed to invent a blood proof carpet yet? (check on Alibaba would you!)

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[prefec2]

And? It is also forbidden in Christianity. That's why it was outsourced to jews. And then they were blamed for it. I love my culture it is so full of hypocrisy.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[godrik]

I had never looked at rent as interest on borrowed property. That analogy is interesting. Thanks.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Pfhorrest]

Glad you like it. :-)

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[roman_mir]

lending capital temporarily in exchange for a permanent transfer of even greater capital back to you, which causes the problem of wealth concentration, redistributing wealth from those who have less of it (and thus need to borrow it) to those who have more of it already (and thus can afford to lend it out), which has the secondary effect of requiring those with less of it to labor for those with more of it in order to continue borrowing to survive, in effect creating perpetual servitude of a working class to an owning class.

- nice propaganda you are pushing here.

1. Nobody forces anybody to take loans.
2. Nobody is forcing you to survive.
3. Nobody owes you anything free, just because you are born you are not automatically somebody else's responsibility except for your parents.
4. Without interest there will be no loans to people unknown to the lender. I would not lend any money to somebody I don't know at all if I couldn't hope to get more of it back, it's a risky proposition to give somebody money, they may never pay back.
5. What you call 'usury' is a rate of interest, which is the cost of borrowing, which helps to allocate scarce resources in the most efficient manner for the overall benefit of the entire economy.

Without having a cost to borrowing, borrowing couldn't be prioritised (even if somebody was willing to give you any money whatsoever without a promise of a return on the investment). Without having a cost of borrowing all of a sudden an unproductive type of lending that is used for personal consumption has the same potential borrowing priority as some productive type of lending that can lead to more production, which in turn is what is supposed to provide a legitimate return.

Borrowing money to consume and borrowing money to produce are not the same game at all. Taking a risk to lend money for production is one thing, lending money for consumption is much more risky, unless there is already a proven source of income (like a job that you have to have if you want to buy that car or that house with a huge mortgage).

The problem that exists today is not due to the concept of interest on an investment, the problem that exists today is due to the destruction of real money, real capital savings in lieu of fake money (paper fiat) and fake interest rates set by government and pseudo government entities, like the Federal reserve for example. Fake money and fake lending rates combined with the welfare state ideology is what is killing the economies around the world. Real money and real interest rates and dissolution of welfare state restarts economies and allows people to build up wealth, thus truly fighting poverty.

Without lending and without interest that can be generated on lending poor people have much harder time getting out of poverty.

Oh, and nobody owes you anything just because your parents decided to fuck and you were born into the world. You are a nobody's problem but your parents.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[UnknownSoldier]

> It's the reason Jews were villainized as greedy schemers:

It is actually worse then that. Amongst each other Jews were _commanded_ to have loans interest free, but they could charge Gentiles interest.

i.e. Leviticus 25:35 and Deuteronomy 15:8, 23:20 Jews are to lend a fellow Jew money for free.

So if a brother believes the same as you, you treat him with kindness.
If he believes differently, you're allowed to screw him over financially ??

That's not really showing compassion for your brother.

If the Torah wasn't so hypocritical then maybe it would be looked upon better.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Pfhorrest]

1. Nobody forces anybody to take loans.

Not on money, no, but it is effectively illegal to be homeless — there is nowhere you are allowed to even exist without paying someone for the privilege — so people are forced to borrow land "at interest" (renting it), and in almost all cases, if they every want to escape from that perpetual debt and trade it in for a temporary one that will eventually be paid off, there are not other options available but to borrow money.

2. Nobody is forcing you to survive.

Now I know you're just trolling. "You can always just kill yourself. That is an option. Would save us all a lot of trouble if we proper folk didn't have to deal with you rabble."

3. Nobody owes you anything free

I never said they did, and you seem stuck in the Marxist mindset that any criticism of capitalist exploitation entails a rejection of free markets and advocacy of forced wealth redistribution. There are other solutions besides state socialism, and just because you don't like that solution doesn't mean you can flatly deny the problem entirely.

As for most of the rest of your post, you're also confusing "investment" with "lending at interest". True investment is a purchase of equity: you buy into a business venture you think will be profitable and take a share of the risk and a share of the potential reward. That is the trivial solution to how capital can get allocated to productive ventures without having to involve interest at all. Nobody's going to buy a share of "Roman Mir Wants A Big-Screen TV, Inc.", but they might buy into "Roman Mir Widget Company" if they think you can turn a profit (for you and them both) with the money they pay you for shares in your company.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[towermac]

Isn't money (the US dollar specifically) a commodity, and very much like gold? Limited, finite supply, high demand, ... In fact, not too long ago, the dollar was backed by gold, and so they were exactly the same thing, as far as this conversation goes. That is no longer the case, but they are still very much alike.

I understand your premise is that very little of that real money backs our current economy, and most of the 'money' is multiple generations of debt against the original money. You're right, in that all that debt can't be covered if it is called early, or the least little thing goes wrong.

But that's a symptom, not the cause.

The cause, is that you and I service about $15 trillion in debt on $16.5 trillion of income each year. Here in Feb of 2015, it's probably past 1:1. Own it.

How big is the credit market? I'll tell you: In a given year, it's about as big as all the money that was made that year. Any amount lent over that, is by definition unsecured and risky. But the whole GDP is basically borrowed against, before we, the public, even get to the credit market. Everything we borrow has already been borrowed against.

Why do you think interest rates are zero? There is no more money to be borrowed. And the moment new money comes online, it is borrowed against by the government. Those bankers are doing us a favor, in the short term, keeping the economy going as best they can on the fumes you describe.

I can't argue with any particular point of yours, but you're wrong on the overall premise. If you and I stop borrowing the whole GDP; before people, workers, bankers, whoever; can even take their income, then real first-generation money (the kind that acts a lot like gold) will flow through the economy again. That money definitely displaces the debt that you're on about.

Speaking of government, they are the ones making the banks do this stuff. The banks agree with you, and know they shouldn't be lending all this money. But the government makes them, and if they don't lend enough, then it's negative interest rates, which Europe has done. It costs you money to keep it in the bank, so you have to lend it out, or lose some.

You're right about the situation being insane.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[roman_mir]

Not on money, no, but it is effectively illegal to be homeless

- and for a good reason, go, be homeless somewhere in the woods. I don't want your homeless ass on my property and as far as 'public' property is concerned, it shouldn't even exist, it is an oxymoron. It is not property without a real owner and government is not an owner. Sure you are allowed to be homeless, but not in a developed place where people are maintaining it and you are leeching off of that labour and capital while bringing your dirt there.

Now I know you're just trolling

- wrong, I never troll, there is no reason for it. You have your options. None of them should be using government force to steal from anybody.

There are other solutions besides state socialism, and just because you don't like that solution doesn't mean you can flatly deny the problem entirely.

- as long as your solutions do not force me into any group behaviour by using threat of government violence, be my guest.

As for most of the rest of your post, you're also confusing "investment" with "lending at interest".

- all lending with interest is investing. It doesn't matter to me much HOW you are going to pay me back my principle and the interest as long as you do, however if I have a choice between lending for consumption and lending for production, in a normal free market capitalist economy I choose to lend for production. What we have today with FAKE money being brought into existence by the power of the State and this fuels consumption binges while creating enough inflation (expansion of the money supply) that mis-allocates scarce resources in such a way that productivity is stifled and production stops and a former biggest creditor nation in the world is now the biggest debtor nation specifically because of all the fake money that is created and then lent out at fake interest rates, which props up consumption binges that inflate the bubbles in various markets. Be it stock market, housing market or now government itself (bonds, dollars, trust), it doesn't matter one way or another, none of it is a real economy. Yes, in such an economy you get huge displacement of resources, of productivity, of jobs and thus you get bigger and bigger disparity between those who can produce and thus profit from production and those who cannot produce anything and cannot profit from it. They are still profiting on the sidelines from the consumption, crumbs of which they are getting, but eventually their lives will be destroyed by it. They allowed it to happen by creating the government monster that promised them free and easy life and of-course there is nothing more expensive than anything that government promises for free.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Pfhorrest]

- as long as your solutions do not force me into any group behaviour by using threat of government violence, be my guest.

Wonderful, then we have no disagreement because I haven't advocated that.

- all lending with interest is investing.

But not all investing is lending with interest. Just like all capitalism is free-market but not all free markets are capitalist. Basic set theory here.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[complete loony]

Cash is a real thing, bank deposits are just numbers on a ledger. There are some limits to the amount of money banks can create, but there is no mystical stock of money that they lend from. The stock of money has very little to do with how often that money flows around the economy each year. Don't mistake the level of debt and money, with the flow of that money as we measure it in GDP.

If you really want to understand how money is created I suggest you read this report from the Bank of England. Though there's probably a lot in there I'd disagree with.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Prohibitions on lending at interest are contained in the Old Testament, not the New Testament. That means that if any group is to be bound by this prohibition, it should be Jews, not Christians.

This post isn't worth much without references, and I don't have time to look them up--but I specifically remember one of the prophets containing condemnations of Israel because they were lending at interest. I think Nehemiah mentioned that also.

Re: Software is the wrong villian here.

[Pfhorrest]

Someone else who responded to me already pointed out that Jews were actually prohibited from lending at interestto each other. But lending to gentiles was allowed. Christians also follow the Old Testament, and there's the famous scene where Jesus flips his shit over the money-changers in the temple, so there's also basis for Christians prohibiting it, though why they'd still allow Jews to do it in Christian lands, I'm not sure.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[doom]

Private debt drives the economy. And yet economists have convinced themselves and us that we can safely ignore the role of banks debt and money. This situation is absolutely insane.

You appear to have convinced yourself you can completely ignore those "economists" and figure out what they think via telepathy.

Personal opinon: on economics, you're better off reading Krugman than slashdot.

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[complete loony]

Krugman thinks that banks are mere intermediaries between patient people and impatient people. Have you ever seen your bank balance drop when the bank creates a loan?

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[doom]

And it would be really cool if you guys would start using an [MMT] tag in the subject headings.

"MMT is a great halfway house for recovering Austrians." -- Noah Smith

Re:Software is the wrong villian here.

[complete loony]

MMT? They have some ideas I would agree with, but they don't recognise the current importance of the banking sector IMHO. Though government spending is important, it's the banking sector that has created most of our spending power by issuing loans. I'd like to see that balance shift back towards fiat currency in the future, but we need a working model of the actual economy. A model, consistent with the practice of double entry book-keeping, that is capable of predicting our most recent crisis and warning about the next one.

The GPL is democratic.

[duckintheface]

That's the point of the GPL. It doesn't matter if one or many projects are disfunctional. The code they produce is available to everyone so they still contribute to progress on software that belongs to everyone. What could be more democratic?

Re:The GPL is democratic.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point of the GPL. It doesn't matter if one or many projects are disfunctional. The code they produce is available to everyone so they still contribute to progress on software that belongs to everyone.

That's true in theory but it ends up creating fragmented effort and even to the point that we have with systemd where there are enormous maintenance overheads in dealing with compatibility when people decide they want to do things differently.

A revolution isn't needed, if the free software ideology is indeed as beneficial in practice as is theorized then it should result in superior products and thus supplant non-free products naturally. The problem is that in reality that free software only works successfully in niche cases so I think there is a place for both free and non-free software. If you want free software to become even more successful then stop pontificating and theorizing and actually start innovating. We have PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones and various wearables (google glass, microsoft band, fitbit, the as-yet-unreleased apple watch) and free software has been at the forefront of none of those innovations, so to get it in the minds of people it needs to actually create something rather than just being a slow-follower.

Why find new jobs?

[Singularitarian2048]

Why do we always have to find new jobs? If technology can do everything humans used to do, can't we just stop working?

There's this constant assumption that "finding new work to do" is the right answer.

Re:Why find new jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

The efficiency that progress brings is immediately siphoned off by the powerful and few elite, so the common man's struggle always remains. If it weren't for evil, we could all be living in a utopia.

Re:Why find new jobs?

[drkich]

Who pays for the technology that replaces all those old jobs? Who pays for the maintenance and up keep? Though the technology does replace certain niche jobs, it does not replace all jobs. Until we can create what ever we want, food, clean water, gadgets, etc... just like replicators in Star Trek, you will always have a labor force. And just like any organization, you need leaders to provide direction, you need people to do the work and you need people to do the support work that has nothing directly to do with the job at hand.

Re:Why find new jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because capitalism. As long as you can't afford to live modestly with a minimum-wage job, there's always going to be pressure to work longer, work harder, just to pay your bills.

Re:Why find new jobs?

[s.petry]

There is no Utopia anywhere in the world, never has been and never will be. Human nature prevents such a system. Sure, I think the majority would be up to share, but there is a minority of people that would take without contributing to society, and the other end of the spectrum would contain people that abused that system to get more than their share.

Re:Why find new jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Until we can create what ever we want, food, clean water, gadgets, etc... just like replicators in Star Trek, you will always have a labor force.

We are almost there. We have 3d printers, food that magically appears on supermarket shelves (tomatos in the middle of winter??!!!), unlimited water from a tap.
It's good times until it's not anymore...

Re:Why find new jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

The efficiency that progress brings is immediately siphoned off by the powerful and few elite, so the common man's struggle always remains. If it weren't for evil, we could all be living in a utopia.

If all the world's wealth were redistributed evenly, we'd all be living like what, middle class Indian, Chinese, at best? That's probably way too optimistic.
Shit, middle class America is nice and all, but utopia it is not. If living off what you grow in your back yard is utopia, much of the world is pretty well off.

If unicorns farted rainbows we could all be living in a utopia too.

Re:Why find new jobs?

[ToasterMonkey]

There is no Utopia anywhere in the world, never has been and never will be. Human nature prevents such a system. Sure, I think the majority would be up to share, but there is a minority of people that would take without contributing to society, and the other end of the spectrum would contain people that abused that system to get more than their share.

Wait, in YOUR utopia you have to work for stuff? In mine we all float down a river on inner tubes with endless supplies of sunblock and limeade.

Service Sector

[ranton]

There will be work in the service sector for a very long time. As the gap between the upper middle class and working class grows, it will become more common for people to afford maids, nannies, lawn care guys, etc. My household income is in the upper 5% and I currently have a maid who comes in every other week and someone who takes care of my yard. Still don't have enough for a nanny (while still saving for retirement that is), but that is what I currently have planned for my next $20k bump in salary. 20 years from now someone in my current economic bracket will probably be able to easily afford a maid to come to his house a few times a day and take care of laundry, dishes, cooking, etc. instead of just cleaning floors and bathrooms a couple times a month.

If I had my guess the middle class as we know it today will not be here 30-40 years from now. It will be replaced by an increasingly large upper middle class and a much larger working class. The working class will survive on a combination of governmental redistribution of wealth and abundant resources from ever increasing worker productivity.

Re:Service Sector

[Joe_Dragon]

The jail / prison system can take up the slack free room and board, no doctor bills, no student loans, etc.

Re:Service Sector

[jelizondo]

It is so sad that you are right, I could cry...

The middle class is going away and with it the American Dream; there will be only well-to-do and poor people in a few years...

Will there be a revolt then?

Re:Service Sector

[ranton]

The middle class is going away and with it the American Dream; there will be only well-to-do and poor people in a few years...

Will there be a revolt then?

The middle class going away doesn't mean the American Dream is gone. The American Dream will actually become even better for the few who reach it. But the number who reach it will be less of course.

The 1% isn't the only group making gains in today's economy. The top 5-10% contains the VPs, directors, doctors, lawyers, senior engineers, etc. who are making out like bandits (although admittedly not as well as the 1%). The upper middle class barely existed 30 years ago, which is why you don't find many 50 year old McMansions. The deterioration of the middle class has gone both ways, with most people falling to the working class and a select few moving into the upper middle class.

Even if/when most jobs are gone, the top 20% who are still worth employing will be doing very well.

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

The middle class is going away

This is because you're making the very bad mistake of measuring middle class by money. Before I proceed, let's get something clear: MONEY IS NOT WEALTH. If you define class by wealth instead of income, the middle class is growing rather than shrinking.

Watch this (start about 4:30 in and watch to at least 7:00 in)

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

there will be only well-to-do and poor people in a few years...

Will there be a revolt then?

False, false, and false, I understand that it's the common talking point among socialists/liberals/communists (yes I know they aren't one and the same, but they all like to make the same argument here) that the middle class is dying and by making everything cheap, we're in a big giant race to the bottom. But that's a big fat lie.

Stop playing the Obama talking point game, and start paying attention to wealth rather than income. It paints a much different (and more accurate) story. Money does not equal happiness. What money buys often does however. While incomes have been declining, overall wealth has not, which is mainly a symptom of nice things becoming less expensive.

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Amazing that you can twist an impending failure of capitalism and the predictable consequent social upheaval to follow as somehow the fault of "socialist" social engineering and something those socialists have been trying to cause, rather than something they've been warning about and trying to avoid.

The only way society can continue to function as there is less and less value to human labor is for the productive capital to become more evenly distributed. There are lots of ways that could happen, from one extreme of just letting the poor die so only the wealthy capital-owners and the robots that support them remain (with the capital more evenly distributed amongst that now-smaller population), to another extreme of those poor rising up with their torches and pitchforks and taking the productive capital by force (the bogeyman you're afraid of), and a lot of less terrible possibilities in between those extremes.

But one way or another, an economic system that hinges entirely on one class trading their labor for the temporary use of the capital of another class (capitalism) simply cannot continue to function when the value of labor drops toward zero.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

You're right that wealth isn't money and that classes are defined by wealth not money, and I don't have anything to say about whether the middle class as defined by actual wealth is shrinking or growing, but it is very clear that a majority of people are not middle class in terms of wealth, and that's a present problem, whether it's getting worse or better.

The middle class are those who have enough productive capital to make their own living without having to constantly borrow it from others at the cost of their labor — that is, those who aren't pure subservient laborers, those who own their own homes and businesses and such outright, who are their own "bosses" and "landlords", independent of others in those roles — but who yet don't have so much capital that they can subsist entirely off the labor of others in exchange for the lending of that capital, and still have to labor themselves — that is, those who aren't capitalists (in the original sense of "owning class", not "supporter of capitalism").

It's terribly difficult to find statistics on how many people own their own homes at all (much less own them outright), as the most common figures speak only of how many homes are owner-occupied (which is not the same thing), but it's clear just from looking at some monetary statistics — the median income is about $25k, and the median home price is about $200k — that most people cannot afford their own homes, and so are not by any measure middle-class.

Re:Service Sector

[ranton]

but it's clear just from looking at some monetary statistics — the median income is about $25k, and the median home price is about $200k — that most people cannot afford their own homes, and so are not by any measure middle-class.

First off median household income is $51,939. Household income is a better measure of what a household can afford in housing. On top of that, someone with median income is not buying a median price home. Since a large portion of the lower income population rents, the median home buyer makes more than median income.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Since a large portion of the lower income population rents

Those people are by definition not middle class, as they are having to borrow capital — land to live on — from those who have more capital than them (their landlords), and labor for others with more capital than them (their employers) to get the money to pay for that. They don't have enough capital to just labor to obtain the resources they consume; they also have to labor extra to borrow capital from others. That a large portion of people are stuck in that situation, and thus not middle class, is precisely the point I'm making.

Re:Service Sector

[ShanghaiBill]

The "revolt" will be peasants with pitchforks against ED-209.
The boardroom scene at the beginning of Robocop is one of my all time favorite movie scenes.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Capitalism is not the 'temporary use of another class's capital.' It is a system where property is freely bought and sold.

You're conflating capitalism with a free market. They are not synonyms.

A free market is a system where property is freely bought and sold.

Capitalism is a system where the shape of the market is determined primarily by the prior distribution of capital; loosely put, where having wealth makes it easier to keep and obtain wealth, and lacking it makes it harder to keep or obtain it, automatically perpetuating that wealth disparity and leaving the less-wealthy perpetually subservient to the more-wealthy.

For a trivial example of a free market which is not capitalist, consider any market that deals exclusively in labor services, such as an virtual market online (without copyright interfering to create artificial scarcity) or a hypothetical post-scarcity market in the future; anywhere that capital is either freely and infinitely replicable or else just irrelevant. Because capital is not involved, the market is not shaped by capital distribution, and is thus not capitalist. But it can nevertheless still be a free market, with the prices of the services being traded determined entirely by voluntary agreement with no redistribution of profits or anything.

Less trivially, a real-world market, dealing with goods and services both, that had an even distribution of capital would not, at least initially, be capitalist, as nobody would have a capital advantage over anyone else to exploit. The open question is whether such non-capitalist freedom is sustainable, or whether we're forced to choose between either sacrificing freedom or accepting capitalism.

Free markets are the kind of thing that early liberals (what would now be called "libertarians") like Adam Smith and John Locke advocated.

Capitalism is something that was first identified and named by Marx, who in turn claimed that it was an inevitable consequence of free markets, a claim that the state socialists who followed in his wake accepted and spread further.

Even more distressingly though, their opponents in defense of free markets also tacitly accepted that claim (that free markets inevitably lead to capitalism), and just disagreed on which side of the resulting fork to choose: reject free markets to avoid capitalism, or embrace capitalism to preserve free markets.

Meanwhile, nobody noticed (and today most people can barely even conceive) the libertarian socialists who disagreed with Marx's claim that you can't have free markets without capitalism, who have been to this day discussing (not that anybody else is listening) possible ways to prevent capitalism without sacrificing the free market.

Just thought you'd like to know that when you say things like "[capitalism] is a system where property is freely bought and sold", you are tacitly buying into Marxist rhetoric.

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

but it is very clear that a majority of people are not middle class in terms of wealth

I think this is the key point of your entire post, and being honest, it doesn't say a whole lot.

What metric are you using to define middle class, and furthermore, where exactly does the goalpost reside, and how often does that goalpost change?

Remember that in terms of income, the goalpost is always rising, even in the absence of inflation. For example in one year you could have $20,000 being defined within the scope of middle class, and then the next year it could be defined as poverty, even though the person making $20,000 a year has not become less wealthy. Sure the dollar value may have gone down, however the purchasing power may very well have stayed the same.

As an example for that last sentence: Even though, due to inflation, food prices have gone up over the last few years, however the real cost of food (that is, adjusted for inflation) is presently the lowest it's ever been.

http://www.aei.org/publication...

And before you say that it's because food is less healthy or because everybody buys junk food, that is also wrong:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

People who claim otherwise are usually members of the Church of Organic Food, who seem to believe that organic food is the only healthy way to live, when in reality it's just a big fat waste of time and money (and also the organic food lobby, which is very wealthy, loves you to believe in that bullshit.)

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

What metric are you using to define middle class, and furthermore, where exactly does the goalpost reside, and how often does that goalpost change?

The bulk of my post was explaining this.

Middle-class means you're neither in the exploited labor class nor the exploitative capitalist class. You've got capital enough that you're not dependent on the capital of others, and can work only for the resources you consume, not to service debts to those wealthier than you; but you don't have capital enough to live off others who are dependent on you for it, and have to work at least for the resources you consume, even if not to services debts to those wealthier than you.

Income has nothing to do with it. Income is a side-effect. It's about assets.

Re:Service Sector

[Pinky's Brain]

I think living standards is a better word for the ability to consume. I count wealth in m2, not in the ability to consume. Land generates rent ... iPhones do not. When land ownership shifts to the top, government has to make up the difference through redistribution to not let everything snowball up.

IMO we have been able to improve median living standards through increasing government redistribution ... do you disagree? If not, are you willing to let that redistribution continue to increase?

Re:Service Sector

[ultranova]

Amazing that you can twist an impending failure of capitalism and the predictable consequent social upheaval to follow as somehow the fault of "socialist" social engineering and something those socialists have been trying to cause, rather than something they've been warning about and trying to avoid.

Not really amazing, once you realize that economy is basically a secular religion. Capitalism has its temples (banks, stock exchanges), priests (economists) trying to discern the will of the gods, those gods themselves duking it out in heaven (stocks, futures and associated financial instruments going up and down in value in a "market" largely disconnected from the real world) and myths (Invisible Hand knows best).

Soviet economy had its equivalents, and ultimately collapsed when people lost faith; its major failing was being apocalyptic (it predicted worldwide revolution) with no means of surviving the failure of the promised imminent implosion of capitalism. Ironically, the very collapse of Soviet Union seems to have kicked that implosion underway due to the resulting lack of threat of revolution to curb the worst excesses. Communism couldn't survive competition; capitalism can't survive without it.

So of course true believers blame the whole thing on human sin ("financial irresponsibility") and wish to placate the angry gods through chastising the sinners (austerity). That such measures only make the problems worse is irrelevant, because people operate on religious archetypes they project into what's ultimately accounting. Thus things like debt become huge, crushing problems rather than a largely irrelevant number somewhere far away from the flow of goods and services that make up the real economy.

Re:Service Sector

[roman_mir]

Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property.

Free market is a market free from government regulations, a market based on free (not impeded by an external violent government force) voluntary exchange of goods and services.

Freedom (non violent or free from government) is a virtue and lack of freedom (oppression) is a vice.

Free market capitalism is the most moral (not coerced by the violence of a state) and efficient (when it is allowed) system of wealth generation and distribution that we have discovered to date.

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

If it was only people with hands competing with people with shovels there would be no problem. The problem has more to do with the systematic protection of those with shovels, to insure that those with hands have to rent shovels and pay penalties and fees to keep using the shovels while usually paying out of pocket for repairs and normal wear and tear. The shovel owners have warehouses full of shovels that they hoard and keep adding too, while they only rent out the worn out shovels that the renter is forced to repair and upgrade. Everytime a shovel renter manages to buy a shovel the existing shovel owners edge them out of the market so they can't rent that shovel out and they are eventually forced to sell their shovel at a loss.

Meanwhile the shovel owners pretend that the vast amount of law enforcement needed to keep their boot the necks of the shovel renters, and the vast expense of courts to deal with shovel contracts and other legal framework that clearly benefits the shovel owners, is free to them and should be payed for by shovel renters. They are too busy amassing and counting their excess shovels and they would rather pay for nice shovel shelves then contribute to anything that might benefit anyone beyond themselves.

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

Too true...

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

Yes, neither income coming in or wealth accumulated measure middle class. Middle class refers to a group that has both disposable income and leisure time. If your making a ton of money that all goes out with no ability to save, you aren't middle class, even if it looks that way from the outside. If your forced to sell off possessions at loss every month, you aren't middle class.
Middle class refers to and requires stability.

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

For example in one year you could have $20,000 being defined within the scope of middle class, and then the next year it could be defined as poverty, even though the person making $20,000 a year has not become less wealthy.

Yes, they are poorer. everything is always increasing in price. Mainly due to the rent seeking our capitalist system encourages. Alot of people think it's due to the lack of a gold standard, but it's an inherent flaw in the system. Look at cost tables from centuries ago and you see that the cost of a chicken was the same for generations. Now the cost fluctuates wildly, but always creeps up slowly. There are people alive who remember nickel candy bars. Vending machines carried them for 50 cents when I was little and in a decade or two they have doubled in prices.

This is 90% due to rent seeking of those with capital. They have money and they need to make it grow.

Re:Service Sector

[micahraleigh]

We have no way of knowing what the outcome of austerity is since it hasn't been tried. At least not in Europe, anyway.

Remember: austerity means less money spent than previous years. If that's happened in Europe it's before anyone can remember.

The name "austerity" implies a lot less money spent, but nothing couple be further from the truth.

Re:Service Sector

[Anonymous Coward]

your definition of capitalism is arbitrary and wrong.

Lookup Capitalism in a dictionary, and you will find that free market captialism is a synonym.

Re:Service Sector

[Anonymous Coward]

First, that's never going to happen. People have children even when they don't want them. Second, the whole problem here is that working class people are being replaced by robots. If these people commit mass suicide, as you suggest, the ruling class will simply shrug their shoulders and say "thanks for saving us the trouble". What use are working class people when you have created a race of silicon slaves?

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Dictionaries are terrible sources for technical definitions.

Dictionaries accurately report that many people use them as though they're synonyms.

They have nothing to say about whether that use is right or wrong, just that it happens.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Thank you, you took the words out of my mouth.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Capitalism is not just private ownership and operation of property. That's propertarianism. You can have that, and a free market, and still not have capitalism, if capital ownership doesn't create an exploitable advantage in the market. (How to do that is an open question, but it's conceivable).

Re:Service Sector

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yes, because spending less than you make is such a terrible idea. Especially for countries that have gone broke through excessive spending and can't even manage to make debt payments.

By the way, market economies don't go away when you stop believing in them, something that can't be said for religion or the Soviet Union.

Re:Service Sector

[roman_mir]

Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property. That's all it is.

Capital that you build up over your life time will give you an advantage in terms of being able to acquire more capital over somebody who is only now entering the work force. That is a consequence of being able to own and operate property, it is not the definition of capitalism in itself.

Of-course you have an advantage when you own something over others, who do not own something. As to 'exploitable', that is just propaganda and nothing else.

I hire people because I spent a lot of time working myself and saving money rather than spending it like many others people did and do. So I forgo that extra entertainment or vacation and save.

Savings are capital.

I used my capital savings to live off of for a few years while I was building my own first systems and I used it to find a client. Then I found another client. Now I have 2 offices in 2 countries with employees who build things that I want to build and I pay them salaries that are competitive in the marketplace.

From your definition I am 'exploiting' something, from my definition I am making myself more productive by using higher level tools (employees) to build products that I want to build and now that I can do so with many more hands than just my own 2 hands, I can produce much more than is needed just for my own survival.

I build products that my clients want and I hire people who want to work for me, I train them and pay them what I can and if they find a better job they leave, while others come working for me.

Thus by denying myself the entertainment and higher level consumption earlier in life I built something that allows me higher level of consumption later, but even more importantly it allows me freedom to create what I want to create and do so at a much faster rate than I ever could if I was doing it by myself.

If I just kept going as a contractor, I would only be building things that other people envisioned, as is I am building what I want. Saving and not spending so as to invest is all about making yourself more productive, and being productive can benefit society much more than simply following an easy and safe path of being a normal worker, like everybody else.

I will never agree that this is in any way 'exploiting' something, since that word has a connotation that implies some sort of devious or evil process in play. Quite the opposite, I know others who also started and run their own businesses by denying themselves a simpler and safer lives and I think those are much higher quality people and if anything, they are the ones being exploited by the society that sees the result of their harder than normal work and wants to steal it from them. That is not just 'exploiting', as far as I am concerned, that's theft and the hight of immorality.

AFAIC free market capitalism is the most moral way to run a society, a society of people free from being exploited by the jealous desires of the mob.

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

Yes, they are poorer. everything is always increasing in price.

No, it's not. Sorry but this is another one of those socialist fabrications and it's just not true.

I already showed you that food is going down in price, furthermore material goods are also going down in price and improving in quality at the same time.

For example, in the 80s you were one rich fat cat if you had a car phone. Now basically everybody owns something much MUCH better (a smartphone.)

In the 80s, having a 50" TV meant you were rich. Now they are so inexpensive that everybody owns one, and furthermore they're of such higher quality these days (1080p vs 480i of yore) consume less power, and last longer.

In the 80's, having a personal computer was something only upper middle class people could afford. Now I've seen homeless people carry a laptop to starbucks where they get free internet access...something even most rich people didn't have in the 80s.

It's not just technology. Clothing, food, cars...everything really.

The only thing that varies in price are commodities such as gasoline and real estate. Sometimes they're more, sometimes they're less. Though it seems that both of them aren't presently at their peak. In the 70's, gas (petrol) approached $4.50 a gallon in today's money. Right now it's about $1.89 per gallon.

The house I resided in during the 90's was purchased by my dad for $105,000 during 1993. We sold it in 2007 (near the end of the housing bubble) for $244,000. It just sold to somebody else for $140,000. After you adjust for inflation, that's roughly $87,000. So that house is now cheaper than it was in the 90's by about $17,000.

You'll have to excuse me if I don't feel the need for glorious violent socialist revolution. Every place this glorious revolution has occurred has turned into a second world shit hole.

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

So then because I have no debts, you'd define me as middle class? But if I borrowed (picking a random figure here) $100,000 for a house, then I'm poor?

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

Sorry disregard the editing error I made with the $17,000, should be $18,000 (I initially posted the actual numbers but later decided it would be easier on the readers if I just rounded it.)

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

Your adjusting for inflation, which is what makes things more expensive to the person earning the same money year in and year out, like your earlier example. Inflation is built into our system and it's designed to funnel money to the capital holders at the expense of the labor. You can't just wave away inflation, which means a real dollar difference in what things cost people.
Even small managed inflation causes rent seeking to make sure your money isn't eroded away. Your economic theory is sound, but your real world experience is slanted...

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

You can't just wave away inflation

I'm not. I'm showing that even after you adjust for inflation, things are still getting cheaper. My example about the person's income not changing from year to year is also inaccurate as most individualls typically have a steadily rising income.

But even failing that, even assuming that individual incomes have been decreasing overall (which they have) the reality is that material goods (read: wealth) have been declining in price.

Go back to the TED link I posted for example, and specifically look at the number of people who could afford to fly to a far away location. The number of people who can afford that is now higher than ever.

Re:Service Sector

[david_thornley]

A market free of government regulations would be pretty darn far from being a free market in the economics sense. It would have huge information asymmetries, given no restriction on lying, labeling, or what goes into that box of baby formula. It would have coercion, without any neutral force to stop it. There's probably more problems, but these will do.

The only way you can have a classic free market in a modern economy is government regulation.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property. That's all it is.

No, it is not. Read a fucking history of economics. You plugging your ears and insisting "capitalism just means a propertarian free market" doesn't make it so.

The rest of what you wrote is completely non-sequitur to anything I've been saying. I have no objection to some people paying other people to do jobs, and complex businesses of people all working together to be more productive than any of them individually. That is not "capitalistic exploitation"; that is just free trade of services. It's not capitalism until you get to talking about unearned income: someone making money simply by virtue of having money (or other capital), without having to actually work for it. If you're making money by working, including paying other people to work for you, and directing and coordinating them, that's great, that's the wonderful free market at work, but that is not capitalistic, except to the possible extent that you might be able to pay your workers less than they would really be willing to accept for their labor if they weren't bend over a barrel by other factors elsewhere — like rents and other debts. Those are where capitalism begins, people accruing wealth simply from letting others borrow their wealth, with no work required. Marx and his criticism of the workplace as exploitative was looking at the wrong end of the equation; the only reason people are desperate for work and can be taken advantage of by their employers is because they are beholden to the real capitalists elsewhere, their landlords and creditors.

Re:Service Sector

[david_thornley]

The middle class are those who have enough productive capital to make their own living without having to constantly borrow it from others at the cost of their labor

I make good money. I have investments. My wife and I own a house. We're middle class, by most definitions.

However, I am employed by a company that uses my work to control hundred-thousand-dollar machines to make things, and sells those things to make its money. There's no way I could set myself up in that business myself, without a lot of investment money. I'm also in a position where I could easily move to another industry, perhaps with lower capital requirements.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Ok, you sound squarely middle-class by my definition. I don't see why you'd think you wouldn't.

Re:Service Sector

[david_thornley]

Good definition, although we have to make a distinction between being forced to spend your money and just spending your money because you don't like saving. I consider the middle class to be essential to democracy, as they have the time to pay attention to what's going on and a significant investment in the system. The poor have relatively little to lose, and the upper class can't be numerous enough to support a good democracy.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Do you rent? That is a debt — an infinite debt in fact, one that you will never be done paying off. That makes you working class, unless you have other investments counteracting that (e.g. stock dividends sufficient to pay your rent), and don't have to constantly labor just to pay someone for the privilege of existing somewhere.

If you own a house already, and borrow $100k to buy a more expensive house, but already have enough equity in it that you could always fall back to a less expensive house again if necessary, then I would say you're still middle class. Having debt doesn't knock you out of the middle class; having to have it does. If you don't have enough capital to have any option but to constantly borrow it from others, you're working class, not middle class.

Re:Service Sector

[roman_mir]

It's not capitalism until you get to talking about unearned income: someone making money simply by virtue of having money (or other capital), without having to actually work for it.

- wrong.

Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property. How that property came to being is secondary. I also own some stocks in other companies and I own some other income producing assets and my company is growing in value due to accumulation of wealth generated here (code base, client contacts, experience, name recognition).

people accruing wealth simply from letting others borrow their wealth, with no work required.

- work was already done and nobody forces anybody to take loans and nobody would be risking their own money by giving it to anybody if there was no promise of return, thus preventing people from starting their own companies. I built mine by saving myself, other people take loans and promise to return the money with interest, which is a payment for getting access to the savings accumulated by others in the first place.

Do you get free bread from a bakery? Why shouldn't you be able to get a loan from a lender if you are willing to pay back the loan with interest? Interest is the cost of taking that loan, not anything more than that.

Money makes money and that is a GOOD THING, otherwise our ability to accumulate savings would always be bound by the amount of labour that we can add as value. Money SHOULD make money. As you said earlier, by owning a property and lending it to somebody you are making a return on that investment.

As to Marx, keep it to yourself, I came from the former USSR and I am one of the fewer people who come from there who have no patience for Marxism, Leninism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism or any other form of collectivism whatsoever. I do not collaborate or cooperate under the barrel of a gun and nobody should be forced to do that.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

"Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property."

"As to Marx, keep it to yourself"

All I hear here is "la la la I can't hear you". You're arguing against things I'm not saying and ignoring the things I am saying. I'm done here. Except:

Money makes money and that is a GOOD THING, otherwise our ability to accumulate savings would always be bound by the amount of labour that we can add as value.

The amount of savings people can accumulate being proportional to their labor is a GOOD THING. If you are making money just by having money, without working, you are accruing the product of someone else's labor. Money sitting in a pile by itself doesn't magically multiply itself; people working with the things it buys is what generates new wealth. Every bit of new wealth generated is generated by someone, and if you're getting wealth that you didn't generate, you're getting it at someone else's expense.

(And because you apparently can't read: the above is not saying the market is a zero-sum game. Do not try to interpret it to mean that. Pay attention to the word "generate". New value is being made all the time. It's just a question of who keeps the value that who makes).

Re:Service Sector

[roman_mir]

If you are making money just by having money, without working, you are accruing the product of someone else's labor.

- first of all, clearly you don't have any money to manage, because you would know then that keeping money and growing it is actual work. If you do not do it correctly, you lose it, history is littered with people who had huge fortunes and blew them with poor management.

Secondly capital and labour are in competition to each other in the free market economy at all times. Supply and demand are very simple concepts, the more labour there is, the cheaper it will be. The less labour there is the more expensive it will be. The more capital there is the cheaper (lower interest rate) it will be. The capital savings there is the more expensive (higher interest rates) it will be.

What we have today is *ABSENCE* of real savings in the face of a huge debt and deficit by modern Western economies and total willing to destroy value of the fiat money further by printing it/creating it electronically into existence by the central banks, who then 'loan' this money to banks with the explicit purpose of 'loaning' it back to the so called 'Treasury' (should be called Debtory, there is no treasure there, only IOUs). That's not wealth, that's not savings, that's not capital, that's a huge black hole that will swallow the economy that is spiralling into it.

Real free market capitalism should have people with more and more accumulated savings, which then act as *TRUE LENDERS* to the economy and that's their extremely important role. Not governments, governments do not earn money, they spend stolen money, they have no concept of working at all. People who come to money by either working or by chance of being born to wealthy parents have much more respect for money and they really do not want to lose it, they are the best *STEWARDS* of capital savings, that's their job - they control and manage their own capital, allowing people to dip into those resources but only under voluntary circumstances.

You think that it is a bad thing to have many rich people, I think it is a *WONDERFUL* thing, it is a bad thing to have many poor people.

Re:Service Sector

[F9rDT3ZE]

statements with "is" about complex social phenomena with multiple definitions always strike me as quite bizarre. capitalism has multiple definitions depending on the source. as a ballpark definition that conforms with most Economics texts, Wikipedia isn't bad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism):

Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industries, and the means of production are largely or entirely privately owned and operated for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labour and, in many models, competitive markets. In a capitalist economy, the parties to a transaction typically determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.

Since all economic systems are descriptions created by scholars & advocates, there is no "real" definition of capitalism beyond what various people think. I tend to agree with the above posters, and Wikipedia, that "capitalism" as it is used in most economic and political discussions today does entail the ability to collect, store, and earn income from market transactions, and that this is conceptually distinct from markets. what I don't agree with is that empirically these things can ever be separated, apart from very limited and highly constrained circumstances. any relatively free market allows participants to hoard, causing supply/demand imbalances; that hoarding eventually turns into capital, if by no other power than by the hoarder's ability to loan out his supply and receive interest income (aka "rent") from the party lent to. i am completely unconvinced by the libertarian socialist arguments for free markets without capitalism, especially given the libertarian commitment to (at best) a "night watchman" state: without constraints on hoarding and manipulation, and without some worldwide and unimaginable resetting of the economy so that everyone starts at 0--a resetting that itself would be an amazing political event that would probably obviate any need for this kind of political strategic discussion--those who already have a lot will always be able to use that to their advantage, to corner markets and manipulate supply/demand imbalances. so while "free markets" and "capitalism" are conceptually distinct, my view is that in the real world, you can't have free markets without capitalism. whether you could have capital itself without free markets is a more complex and esoteric question--arguably, to use your example, the USSR functioned as a storer of capital in the world economy, but the international markets were not "free" by anyone's definition.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

You think that it is a bad thing to have many rich people, I think it is a *WONDERFUL* thing, it is a bad thing to have many poor people.

I think it is a bad thing to have "rich" or "poor" when those are defined in terms of necessity to work and borrow. I think it's a bad thing to have people who are "poor" in that they have no choice but to borrow, and for other people who are "rich" in that they have the choice to not work, at the expense of those others having no choice but to borrow. I want a middle-class world, where nobody has to borrow, and everybody has to work — at least, as much as anybody has to work at all, since to get back on topic, ideally technology will spare us all from work eventually. But if many people are still in a position where they have to borrow when that happens, and can only afford to borrow by working, and working is suddenly unnecessary, then they're all completely fucked, and either most of the world will just die (which you seem to think would be fine), or more likely they'll go down kicking and screaming and take you and all of civilization down with them. I don't like either of those options, but instead of focusing on how to fight the whole point of technology and make continual work for everyone (well, for those poor plebs who don't have the choice to not work), I'd rather focus on eliminating the need for anyone to borrow, and then we can all welcome the end of work and the glorious robot utopia that comes with it.

Re:Service Sector

[roman_mir]

In order to 'eliminate the need for anyone to borrow' you have to have unlimited resources that are not scarce and that are accessible easily by anybody and there is no way in hell that this Universe will provide us with such an implement, given that it is itself subject to entropy laws.

The best we can do is allow people to keep with they earn and build as big fortunes as they possibly can. They are the 'stars' of their particular solar systems, they accumulate in the most efficient manner compared to the rest, but the rest are orbiting them, sharing their centre of mass and profiting from the fact that they exist and spend their energy at all not only for personal consumption but actually to lend money to those, who need an infusion of capital to attempt their new business idea or whatever it is they need money for.

There should be many people who act as such money anchors, governments are completely useless for this role, governments have no concept of real savings or real money or real work, they cannot asses risk at all and there are too few of them in the first place, so if an idea goes bust, the rest of the society is minimally affected with large capitalists who take their own private hit as opposed to the entire economies that allow governments to 'manage' stuff.

Sure, it would be a wonderful utopia to have instant and infinite energy and stuff being produced. However that's not going to happen and there will always be stuff that we will want or need.

Not everybody has a yacht. Not everybody has a private space ship. Not everybody can live 10000 years. Not everybody has unlimited access to good sex life. Etc.etc.etc. As long as these hold true, people will be able to come up with ideas for businesses and if they don't have enough capital to run with, they can approach somebody who does and tell them what they want to do and then it is a private decision to accept that risk or not and then it is the responsibility of the person who is taking the loan to try his or her best to achieve the goal.

That's how we build the real society with real wealth, not by magic, but by voluntary cooperation between those who already built their fortunes and those who have ideas and the rest, who are just labour.

Re:Service Sector

[roman_mir]

I see how you are confused by the concept of the 'invisible hand', of-course you might be, you don't realise that it is just a combined action of many individual participants in the market. The invisible hand is a statistical approximation and result of what individuals are doing. As to banks and stock exchanges they are not 'capitalist temples'. Capitalism is private ownership and operation of property. How the property is stored and/or exchanged is secondary.

As to the economists, they are hardly priests, especially the so called 'main stream economists' of today. They are charlatans more likely.

Soviet economy collapsed when the country could no longer afford to buy stuff. I suppose you didn't live there in the eighties, but it wasn't faith that was lucking, it was PRODUCTS and SERVICES that people waited for hours and hours for in long long queues.

As to 'human sin' of financial irresponsibility, there is no such thing. However there is a sin and it's much more insidious than that, it's jealousy and desire to use threat of government violence to commit acts of theft (income/wealth taxing) and redistribution (welfare statism).

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

without constraints on hoarding and manipulation [...]those who already have a lot will always be able to use that to their advantage

Not if we stop using force to enable that advantage. If we simply didn't enforce contracts of rent and interest, hoarding would become almost useless, because there would be no reliable way to extract value from those hoarded goods other than by selling them off proper (rather than lending them out), which would make them no longer hoarded. No need to stop people from accumulating; just need to stop enabling them to leverage that accumulation. They can still try if they want, but without enforcement of the agreements necessary to do that —and with standard laws against violence in place, to stop them from enforcing their own agreements — those efforts will depend entirely on the goodwill and trustworthiness of the people they're trying to take advantage of, and so not go very far. All by having government do less, not more.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, but I think it's pretty clear that when people say "free of government regulations" they generally mean markets free of a specific kind of regulation, namely the kind obliging anyone to buy or sell anything to anyone at any specific price. But not one free of regulations against force and fraud.

In that same vein though, I think those same people generally assume that it is also not free of government enforcement of artificially created obligations, i.e. contracts, and that's a possible point of contention. A system with maximal (to use Hohfeldian terminology) liberties and immunities is consequently one with minimal claims and powers, and while plenty of free-market advocates bang a loud drum against claims more than minimal negative claims, they seems pretty gung-ho on allowing pretty extensive arbitrary power to contract, which does not automatically come part and parcel with a system that allows only the minimal claim to property and the minimal power to trade. It's an extra thing added on top of that minimal free market system.

I think it's that power to contract where all the problems with capitalism (and many other social problems) creeps in, and though I mostly make a big noise about certain specific kinds of contracts being problematic (those involving rent and interest), I've half a mind to throw contracts out entirely. The deontological half of my mind, arguing from first principles at least; that would obviously have fairly far-reaching consequences and unlike eliminating just rent and interest, I don't quite have thorough solutions to all the problematic consequences already in mind, so deontological arguments be damned, I'm not quite sure it's a good idea just yet.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Capitalism is indeed a system where the only control on who buys what is the price.

That's not what capitalism is, and it's not what I said it was either. That is just a free market. Capitalism is something more than just a free market. It's not capitalism until it is possible to make money simply by having money (or other wealth), without working for it; basically, a system where property income is possible. That is not necessarily possible in every free market, though it's an open question as to how to prevent it without compromising the freedom of the market.

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

That's an excellent point. Nothing to lose and idle rich don't make for a good democracy.

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

You bull*#@! post collapse housie example shows nothing but a blip in the market. I agree that a violent revolution is bad for everyone, and I hope our system will repair itself without need for one. I'm not sure people like you will allow it.

You also talk about "standard of living" as if bread and circuses really matter. Just because the poor have better cast offs from the rich doesn't mean their lot is really improving. Your like the guy that gives his old gucci jeans to a homeless person and pats himself on the back because they are so much better then the wranglers he was wearing.

Re:Service Sector

[david_thornley]

I was questioning your definition. I couldn't set myself up in my current job, due to lack of capital, so I'm borrowing capital daily to do my work. I'm middle class.

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

and I hope our system will repair itself without need for one. I'm not sure people like you will allow it.

Why wouldn't I allow it? Pretty sure I just described the why and how it will happen.

Just because the poor have better cast offs from the rich doesn't mean their lot is really improving. Your like the guy that gives his old gucci jeans to a homeless person and pats himself on the back

It isn't cast-off's of the rich, rather it's improvements in technology that require less work to do the same thing. That's called technology. It also invariably means that it's easier to afford nicer things.

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

Do you rent? That is a debt

No I do not. But even if that were the case, renting isn't obligatory. At least, it isn't obligatory in most places in the US (New York may be a different story, but most of the US doesn't live in New York, or anywhere like it) and in fact you'll pay out less per month on a mortgage than you would on rent. Never minding entirely that you'll also build equity in the process.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

From your earlier description I don't think I would describe you as "borrowing capital". You're laboring upon someone else's capital, but it's not like they've lent it to you and you owe it back, and you pay part of your income from your labor with it to service that debt. You're just selling your labor.

Even if using your employer's tools did count as "borrowing capital", you've also suggested that you have possible means of income that would not require "borrowing" like that, which in my book would still leave you middle-class because you're not borrowing out of necessity, you're just choosing to. It's like the difference between someone who rents because that's their only option besides homelessness, and someone who could totally buy a house at any time but rents because it's more convenient for them or something. I'd call the latter definitely (at least) middle class, but the former definitely not.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Here in California —pretty much anywhere in California I've looked — just the interest on a mortgage would exceed the cost of rent you'd otherwise be paying. I have spent the past ten years fighting an uphill battle desperately trying to get to a place where I can stop throwing money down a rent-hole and actually start buying something I can eventually stop paying for. If "most places in the US" really are like you describe, and it's actually cheaper to buy than to rent (and looking at median incomes and housing prices, I have doubts about that), then that's awesome and the way things should be, but California is the most populous state, so there's still a huge chunk of the population stuck in a situation where renting and homelessness are their only options; and since homelessness is effectively illegal and not a reasonable option anyway, that means renting pretty much is obligatory.

Re:Service Sector

[cwsumner]

The people that are considered "poor" in the US still have TVs, refrigerators, bathrooms, and such. Even the homeless have access to them when needed. Ask a person from a "third world" country how many poor are in the US and they will look at you like you have lost your mind! 8-)

How rich the "one percent" are really doesn't matter. At that level it's just "monopoly money" and does not effect anyone else significantly. If they gave all of it away to the poor, all it would do was to cause more inflation...

Re:Service Sector

[cwsumner]

... Vending machines carried them for 50 cents when I was little and in a decade or two they have doubled in prices.
This is 90% due to rent seeking of those with capital. They have money and they need to make it grow.

No, actually it is due to the politicians "printing" fiat money to push inflation, becaue they see it as a secret tax on anyone that has money. The effect on the ones that have money is just the opposite of what you think.
And if you think it is moral to "soak the rich", consider that inflation hits -anyone- with money, even the poor with a little cash in their pocket. Maybe it hit the rich for $1000 or $100,000 where it only hit the poor for $1, but that dollar hurts the poor just as much.

Re:Service Sector

[ultranova]

Yes, because spending less than you make is such a terrible idea. Especially for countries that have gone broke through excessive spending and can't even manage to make debt payments.

Not necessarily terrible, but logically impossible. The whole world's total trade balance is zero, because there's no extra-terrestial trade. That means that if you have a positive trade balance, if you are exporting more than you're importing, then the rest of the world must have a negative total trade balance, since their imports are your exports and vice versus. If having negative trade balance would bankrupt you, it'll surely bankrupt the rest of the world just as well, after which you're out of trading partner.

This is actually what's happening in the EU, and is why Greece has no hope of recovery unless it leaves the euro or has its debt cancelled through bookkeeping magic. Germany insists on both having a positive trade balance, trading mainly with other EU countries, and treating debt seriously (not letting it grow endlessly). That combination is logically impossible to maintain.

By the way, market economies don't go away when you stop believing in them, something that can't be said for religion or the Soviet Union.

Markets won't, but centering the entire society around them will. The delusion that they're somehow forces of nature beyond human control despite being a mere pattern of human action will die. That delusion is what I mean by "secular religion": people are basically perceiving the coherence between their patterns of behaviour in other people, confusing it for objective reality rather than something that can be changed at will by behaving differently, changing their own behaviour to match this perceived reality, and finally noticing that the coherent part of the pattern resembles human behaviour (because it is, even if averaged) and anthropomorphising it.

The same kind of thing happens with nations and religions and ultimately any group that spends enough time together. It's why nations used to have patron gods and nowadays have symbols that are treated just as reverently. It's why convincing someone their gods don't exist is nigh-impossible. And it's why human history is often so thoroughly irrational: people don't (can't) react to objective reality, but to their subjective one, and that's constantly being fought over by what could probably be called memetic lifeforms.

So, people behave in ways consistent with various market-based economic theories because they're constantly getting cues from other people that this is how they should behave, which in turn sends cues to other people. Should enough people start disbelieving these messages, for example because they're being screwed over by the markets, the mechanism fails: the subjective reality created by constant bombardment of messages asserting it disappears with the messages. We're close to that tipping point, if not already over it.

Re:Service Sector

[cwsumner]

That's an excellent point. Nothing to lose and idle rich don't make for a good democracy.

Except that the poor have more to lose than the rich. It may not be as much money, but they value it more than the rich do. If the rich lose half of what they have, it might not effect how they live at all.

By the way, don't believe all of what your college professors told you. To quote an old saying: "90% of anything is bullshit."

Re:Service Sector

[cwsumner]

... The name "austerity" implies a lot less money spent, but nothing couple be further from the truth.

In htis case, the name "austerity" does not mean less spending, it means less spending -by the govenment-. Unsupported government spending "sucks" value from all of the people through inflation, and thereby dampens the economy.

Government spending can only boost the economy if the spending is from stocks of value that do not cause inflation. Such as contingency funds from previous years or from gold stocks. Otherwise it is counter-productive.

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

Where in California are we talking? SF and some other places aren't going to be much better than NYC in that regard. A lot of California isn't that expensive either. In Arizona typical mortgage is roughly 60% of what rent costs, but Arizona isn't associated with a high cost of living like those places.

Those are the kinds of places where living there is inherently not affordable by most. It's a supply/demand issue. High demand for living in those areas, but only so much real estate to go around. There likewise has to be some kind of force or outward pressure to decide who can live there and who can't. When government is the force that decides that, it typically ends up being some kind of favoritism (In North Korea, Dear leader likes you and/or your family because they were part of the revolution, so you get to live in Pyongyang, and no amount of hard work will change that.)

In our capitalist system, it's whoever is willing to sacrifice the most for the privilege of living among the elite. However in my opinion, there are better places to live that don't require such a sacrifice, and as such that kind of sacrifice isn't necessary.

Also in my opinion, it isn't prudent to live in such an area even if you're middle class or wealthy. That eats away from other things you can dedicate your resources towards.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Toys are irrelevant when it comes to class and who controls the basic necessities. Take me to a future where everyone has personal Star Trek style replicators and holodecks but all of the land is controlled by a tiny handful of people so everyone else is still subservient to those people if they want to have a place to legally keep their replicators and holodecks and, you know...just exist somewhere at all...and I'll still call that a dystopia.

I'm not concerned about how much monopoly money the top 1% have compared to even the bottom 1%. I'm concerned that the vast majority of people are in one way or another forced into debt to that top 1% and can't even just sit and be poor all alone without being bothered if they want; they have to struggle constantly working for those with more than them just to justify their right to have a place to even starve to death in peace.

A poor African farmer who owns his own land with a hand-made shack on it and crops that he grows for his own food with his own tools passed down for generation is more middle-class than the waiter in New York who has a game console and a big screen TV but has absolutely no hope of ever escaping the perpetual insecurity of being thrown out into the street if he misses one month's rent.

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

I'm not talking about SF and places like that. Those are even more ridiculous. I just mean the median housing price across the entire state, which is about twice that of the country in general. I live (and always have lived and want to continue living forever) in an area with median-priced housing for the state. I make about twice the national median income, which (my income) is not much less than twice the California median income, and I have no debts (besides rent), so you'd think median-priced California housing should be affordable to me, but as it is, it would be a stretch for me just to afford the national median housing prices, and the California median is about twice that still. And the majority of other people in the state are even worse off than I am, both in terms of income and in terms of other debts.

It still seems unfathomable to be that in most of the rest of the country mortgage payments could possibly be less than rents. Can you show me some examples?

Re:Service Sector

[ArmoredDragon]

Sure. Zillow places estimates for cost of rent and cost of mortgage for different properties on the market. Here's an example:

http://www.zillow.com/homedeta...

There's an estimated mortgage cost and an estimated rent cost. Having recently looked at getting a mortgage on another house and putting my current one up for rent, I can say that the Zillow estimate for my own house (not the one linked above, mind you) is pretty accurate. For this particular house, both figures are realistic, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to have the mortgage about 5% more or the rent 5% less.

I think that mainly comes from the fact that if you rent out the house, you as the owner are responsible for certain maintenance, whereas if you buy a house, nobody cares what you do with it except for the lender who just wants it to be insured.

I.e. if your AC unit on your house breaks, YOU have to fix it, not the person renting it.

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

Yes, but the poor are often reactionary, by necessity. They don't have the time, money, or energy to shape policy.

Re:Service Sector

[pnutjam]

I agree, inflation hits everyone, rich and poor alike. However, it is very beneficial to a select few. Those are the ones pushing this policy.

Re:Service Sector

[micahraleigh]

Yes, you are right that it means less spent *by the government*.

But your point is moot because no European government spent less money in any year than the previous year during so-called "austerity".

Re:Service Sector

[Anonymous Coward]

It still seems unfathomable to be that in most of the rest of the country mortgage payments could possibly be less than rents. Can you show me some examples?

On average they aren't. Mortgage payments are higher than rents on average in the US.

This is historically odd though. Traditionally rents and mortgage payments have been about the same. They started diverging in the late 1990s. They've converged a bit since the housing crash, but I don't know that they ever got back to parity.

Link showing the average price to rent ratio: http://www.calculatedriskblog....

Re:Service Sector

[Pfhorrest]

Thanks! That's very interesting.

"Limitless" Human Demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Because every human on the planet wants 366 cars so they can be sure to drive a different car every day of the year, even if it's a leap year.

No, wait, better make that 367, what if one is in the shop?
No, wait, better make that 368, what if one is in the shop and you've got a flat?
No, wait...

Truly, demand in all things is as absurd as it is limitless.

Re: "Limitless" Human Demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it has been found this is not really true. Once people get above a certain level of wealth their demand for more drops back significantly.

Sorry can't cite a study but there has been a lot of research into this.

BWHWAHAHAH

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another bitter twisted fuck calling for the banning of the internet and personal computers. The virii this old queen contracted after getting plowed in the ass for decades are clearly raveging its brain heavily.

We're not in the "software revolution age"

[BarbaraHudson]

We're in the "war" age. The last 120 years have seen huge advances in the ability to wage war. That is what has driven world economies, and continues to do so. Look where the internet came from - DARPA. Integrated and Large-scale integrated circuits came about from military research. Space travel came from ICBMs, which came after the A4 (aka the V2) proved it was practical.

Without that stimulus, we would not have advanced anywhere near as fast.

It also serves to provide employment for a lot of people.

Re:We're not in the "software revolution age"

[towermac]

No. The last 120 years have seen huge advances in technology, and war, along with steel making, agriculture, power generation; has scaled accordingly.

War itself is not any bigger than it used to be, and might even be a bit less in this day and age. Well, the case could be made.

In any case, the Soviets really and truly scared us into inventing some of that. You can't just say, 'Let there be DARPA'.

Re:We're not in the "software revolution age"

[swell]

Sorry. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter have obviated your argument. War still exists as an incentive for innovation, but it is less prominent. Any programmer today who wants to make money or make an impression has to come up with an app that appeals to ordinary humans.

Does any programmer care about DARPA or their nasty association with surveillance on citizens, with CIA, with spyware ... ? Our time is about enabling citizens, privacy, and online freedom. There are still profits to be made in spying on citizens, but who will opt for that?

It's my futile hope that the Evil Empire has less influence on future developments than enthusiastic ideas from commercial and creative programmers in the future. Will you join me in this?

Re:We're not in the "software revolution age"

[BarbaraHudson]

Sorry. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter have obviated your argument. War still exists as an incentive for innovation, but it is less prominent. Any programmer today who wants to make money or make an impression has to come up with an app that appeals to ordinary humans.

Does any programmer care about DARPA or their nasty association with surveillance on citizens, with CIA, with spyware ... ? Our time is about enabling citizens, privacy, and online freedom. There are still profits to be made in spying on citizens, but who will opt for that?

It's my futile hope that the Evil Empire has less influence on future developments than enthusiastic ideas from commercial and creative programmers in the future. Will you join me in this?

Let me fix that for you:

"Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter ... their nasty association with surveillance on citizens, with CIA (you forgot the NSA, btw), with spyware, (invading users) privacy and online freedom. There are still profits to be made in spying on citizens. It's my futile hope that the Evil Empire has less influence on future developments."

Re:We're not in the "software revolution age"

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbuUW9i-mHs

We're living in the age of a tech revolution?

[Anonymous Coward]

One that will create massive wealth but destroy lots of jobs?

Golly. I'm glad I logged into this site today. Thanks, Mr. Altman!

Let me save you some time

[w_dragon]

I read the article. Don't bother, the slashdot conversation will probably be more informative. The guy has a paragraph on nuclear arms which is totally wrong, thinks the industrial revolution didn't kill off a lot of jobs, and totally underestimates the human ability to find shit to do when bored.

Re:Let me save you some time

[david_thornley]

What humans have typically found to do when bored has much to do with psychoactive drugs like alcohol. A couple of centuries back, sobriety was considered an important virtue, and by that they meant not drinking enough to interfere with one's responsibilities too much. I consider World of Warcraft and watching football games a tremendous improvement on that.

We need to make full time 32 hours a week or less

[Joe_Dragon]

We need to make full time 32 hours a week or less with forced ot pay maybe at 40 hours and X2 ot at 60+.

Babysit

[duck_rifted]

That's the solution. Wait! No! Don't go! Bear with me.

Suppose that we create some software that *seems* perfectly capable of replacing some specialization of attorney. All other subject matter aside, like the obvious idea that attorneys would likely move heaven and earth to put a stop to it, suppose that this tech is adopted. Yay! Cool! We can each get an attorney for the price of a AAA video game. Happy dance?

No! Bad dance! Don't do happy!

That software attorney has one immutable quality that could and absolutely should have a strong influence on how we regard it. It's not human. While it may be able to formulate expressions of law, prescribe paperwork, and maybe even construct strong arguments based solely upon a cold, mechanical interpretation of case law and legislation, it can not and never will be capable of feeling. If we exact the effect of law while sacrificing our humanity, then we become blind to the corner cases and exceptional scenarios that legislators could not possibly have been expected to predict ahead of time. This is why our judges are human beings and not just tables in a book that get checked by some clerk.

So, that machine will need an actual attorney to look over its output, at the very least. That attorney will need to know the circumstances in order to ascertain not only that the machine functioned correctly but that there's not a possible argument that the machine simply can not construct. If there's anything about the case that isn't addressed in the law itself, or if some human sense of the client's experiences is called for (such as, say, whether a suspect is remorseful) then the human attorney will need to step in and overrule the machine.

That extreme example demonstrates a principle that may hold for other jobs as well. If a machine makes your McDonalds hamburger, then you might feel more comfortable knowing that a human is on-site to make sure that it's not messing up. Maybe a machine could be made to sniff out the stink of a dirty kitchen, but we'd all feel more comfortable knowing that human nostrils are on the job. Perhaps that's a bit irrational, sure, but we're humans and the machines serve humans. We have to tend to not only our logical, analytic facilities, but also whether or not customers actually *feel* comfortable patronizing our businesses.

This will not save all jobs, but it can save all professions. We won't need as many attorneys when machines can take on a large part of the workload. With machine assistance, it won't take so many fry cooks to run a McDonalds. But this also suggests a decrease in facility size, since we won't have to accommodate as many workers, and that suggests a capacity for massive expansion. Each attorney's office may have fewer actual flesh and blood attorneys, but there can be more attorneys offices overall to compete. Each McDonalds might employ fewer people, but there can be more locations for consumers to visit. Instead of restaurants on the corner, little nooks next door to your school or place of employment. This means an increase in competition and convenience, both of which are good for consumers, and an increase in exposure and access with a decrease in liabilities, which is good for businesses.

We can't eliminate the loss of jobs to automation, but we can mitigate that effect to some extent.

Re: Babysit

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with you, there's also legions of people who will do their job mechanically due to lack of care. In those cases I'd say a machine is an improvement as at least it will pay more attention and do less mistakes.

Re:Babysit

[liquid_schwartz]

That software attorney has one immutable quality that could and absolutely should have a strong influence on how we regard it. It's not human. While it may be able to formulate expressions of law, prescribe paperwork, and maybe even construct strong arguments based solely upon a cold, mechanical interpretation of case law and legislation, it can not and never will be capable of feeling. If we exact the effect of law while sacrificing our humanity

Are you seriously arguing that lawyers are humans with feelings as regards their profession? You're too funny :-) Based on far more references than I could ever cite they long ago sacrificed their humanity in the name of war on terror / drugs / civil forfeiture / etc. The computers might at least get some of the obvious cases right like the Bill of Rights if we're being more serious or this case that the humans missed if we're looking for obvious mistakes: http://theweek.com/speedreads/...

Re:Babysit

[fisted]

That extreme example demonstrates a principle that may hold for other jobs as well. If a machine makes your McDonalds hamburger, then you might feel more comfortable knowing that a human is on-site to make sure that it's not messing up. Maybe a machine could be made to sniff out the stink of a dirty kitchen, but we'd all feel more comfortable knowing that human nostrils are on the job

Speak for yourself, I'd much rather have my burgers be produced by a machine rather than by some dude doing that with their bare hands with which they scratched their balls and explored their nostrills after going to take a dump roughly 5 seconds before making the burger.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I eat it anyway, but geez.

Re:Babysit

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we almost already have robo-law. Here in the UK there's a slight trend towards "online conveyancing", where you can hire a qualified solicitor to do the conveyancing on your house purchase, but never meet them, and maybe never even speak to them. They have teams of unqualified people doing all the really boring grunt work, which they review and authorise. One solicitor can now probably run dozens of house purchases, whereas once they'd probably have maxed out long before they got to double figures.

It'll be a while before the unqualified folk get replaced by robots, but it'll be probably be a long time until most of them realise their dream of getting qualified and moving up the ladder too.

Re:We need to make full time 32 hours a week or le

[Krishnoid]

That's crazy talk -- I bet you sympathize with those cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Financial is the wrong villian here.

[penguinoid]

It appears that the banking sector will do what they usually do—extract wealth and destroy jobs.

Aren't they doing that because the government/judicial system decided that bankers get to keep big piles of profits when things go well, and also when things go poorly, and also when things go criminally negligent? When they get bailout money instead of jailtime and personal fines, the incentive is to take the biggest risks since if anything goes wrong the taxpayer will rescue them.

Re:Financial is the wrong villian here.

[liquid_schwartz]

There can be more than one villian ;-)

Embarrasing ecoomically ignorant post

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the slashdot editors really this clueless?

Henry Hazlitt destroyed this stupid "technology put poeple out of work" myths in his great Ecoonmics in one lesson book...

Re:Embarrasing ecoomically ignorant post

[khallow]

Here's a link to Economics in One Lesson. And read chapter 7, "The Curse of Machinery". As to those who claim, completely without evidence, that this time it's different, well a 70 year old argument is more up to date than you are.

Service Sector Robots

[mileshigh]

You missed the point. 20 years from now, everybody in your bracket will have a 24/7 robot to do the cleaning, cook and take care of the yard. All without wondering how much to tip them, nor the nagging doubt that the servants are giggling over your sex-toy collection! (Though you can bet the robots will report what they see back to Amazon for targeting advertising, and for figuring out how to tailor your individualized pricing to what they can get away with.)

There will, however, be a thriving market for robot repair techs. And targeting/pricing data analysts.

Re:Service Sector Robots

[Culture20]

This assumes robots won't be disposable. They might be recycled when damaged and new robots built by other robots in a factory.

Re:Service Sector Robots

[pnutjam]

Sure, and we'll all fly to moon colonies with our jetpacks.

Re:Service Sector Robots

[david_thornley]

How many people will be in my bracket in 20 years?

Wrong perpetrator

[msobkow]

The problem is not the technology itself.

The problem is the banks and corporations that siphon off billions by leaving prices artificially high instead of passing along the cost-savings of technology to consumers.

Seriously. What is Apple doing except sitting on billions it's siphoned off? It's not even paying it's fair share of taxes on that money! Or the big banks, who get levied huge fines for their outrageously illegal behaviour, but just bill the consumer for the expense and see none of their executive or board members put behind bars.

Unless and until we resolve those problems, technological advances will just be a convenient red-herring scapegoat for distracting us all from those real problems.

Re:Wrong perpetrator

[roman_mir]

Siphoning? Hmmm, so you don't like the price, don't buy the product. If you think there is so much 'siphoning' happening, that's just a business opportunity for you to enter the market yourself and to provide people with a cheaper version of the phone that people want to buy. Apple doesn't siphon anything from anybody, Apple builds products that people want and people pay for without any violence being threatened to them, they are voluntarily exchanging their own money for a product they want.

Siphoning is happening when government uses threat of violence to steal money from individual or corporate income and wealth and then spends that money on whatever it wants, that's siphoning. Apple not giving up a portion of its income to that Mafia is a good thing, good for the overall economy in the world that the money made by a smart ran company stays with that company so it can use it to build more products and services that people are apparently willingly exchange for.

Before Apple (or any non-subsidised individual or business) is taxed by even 1 cent, it already creates much more for the economy than any government can or does. Products are created, income for the investors is created, investment opportunities are created, jobs are created as well. It is individuals and companies owned by individuals that create the economy, not governments or any other violent associations.

There is no such thing as a 'fair share of taxes', the rich are taxed disproportionately and it is the most unfair thing that exists. They are taxed at a higher rate of income than the poor are and that is ultimately the most unfair thing that happens after the very fact of income and wealth taxation and redistribution in the first place. The actual problems are with the people that want this theft and redistribution, not with people that earn the money and hide it from being stolen.

Farm

[pubwvj]

"Trying to find new jobs for billions of people is a good idea but obviously very hard because whatever the new jobs are, they will probably be so fundamentally different from anything that exists today that meaningful planning is almost impossible."

Return to the land. Farm. Raise up your own food and some extra. Harvest your own local fuel. Build your own house. All of these things are doable and it brings your cost of living to nearly nil. No need for 'jobs'. Be.

Re:Farm

[King_TJ]

That may be true, but there's a reason people are running AWAY from the farms in droves. People aspired to do other things besides working the land, and modern society made that possible.

I think we'd be moving backwards as a society if we essentially forced everyone to go back to agriculture in order to survive.

Re:Farm

[Pfhorrest]

How the hell are the poor schmucks stuck renting a bedroom in someone else's house going to get their hands on even bare land, much less the tools and materials needed to do anything productive with it? Land is about the most expensive thing there is. If everyone owned their own land we wouldn't be in this problem — people wouldn't have to worry about putting up with their shit jobs just to make rent and not get thrown immediately out into the street. People would have a leg to stand on, economically, and could actually bargain for a fair value for their labor because they wouldn't be entirely dependent on borrowing other people's capital (like land to live on) just to survive another day.

Re:Farm

[khallow]

Return to the land. Farm. Raise up your own food and some extra. Harvest your own local fuel. Build your own house. All of these things are doable and it brings your cost of living to nearly nil. No need for 'jobs'. Be.

But not for everyone. We're not going to get seven billion people to stay alive that way.

Re: Farm

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no alternative. The vast majority of people will have to take a hard look at themselves and accept they cannot support their lifestyle anymore. It's going to be a hard pill to swallow for many: it's the same pill a PhD has to swallow when they have to apply for a job at McDonald's. They may lie to themselves and think it's just temporary, but deep down they know that's as good as it will ever be.

Re: Farm

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed we can't. The majority of the human race will die off in the next two generations. Let's hope it's peaceful.

Re: Farm

[khallow]

Rather, let's hope it's quick.

Re:Farm

[DNS-and-BIND]

The poor schmucks stuck renting a bedroom in someone else's house wouldn't know the first thing to do with land. They would quickly find out that it's a lot of work, and it's a lot easier on the couch with an Xbox controller in their hands.

What needs to happen is that these poor shmucks gathered together in collectives, where experts can guide their work, and they can sleep peaceably night after night without worrying about being thrown out or losing their jobs. The government will do all the hard work.

Re:Farm

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally I agree. I just can't see a scenario where people didn't start trading their lots of land for other items. In which case we would simply arrive back to where we are now, after a period of time.

And all the land won't be equally as valuable, and by assuring that everyone has land, it would disperse the population by making inner city densities impossible. The latter would lead to an increase in the need for transportation, as everyone really can't be 100% self-sufficient without having some sort of material deficit.

In short, you have a good idea, but not a stably good idea. Such ideas are the reasons why so few well meant revolutions fail to establish their utopias, even if they don't get immediately sold out by their leaders.

Re:Farm

[roman_mir]

I was a poor schmuck stuck renting a room in somebody else's house at some point in life. What is your point, that somebody should come and give you something just because you graced us with your presence on this planet?

Now imagine couple of poor schmucks having offspring instead of working and saving rather than consuming, all to improve their lives later on. Let's say they have 1 kid, is it their responsibility or maybe this kid is the responsibility of the state that will stick the responsibility of paying for that kid onto actually productive people?

Let's say they have 2 kids, now it's twice as many people that the state is going to force somebody else to pay for.

Those 2 poor kids grow up, marry other 2 poor ex-kids and have their own 2 poor kids each, again, stuck in somebody's basement. Tell me, the geometric progression of poverty here, do you think it can be offset with the dwindling (thanks to the government policy of redistribution and inflation - printing) resources that are still provided by those, who are productive members of society?

Let's say there is a group of 100 people, with 1 of them being the richest and the 49 below him being the middle class and the 50 below them being the poor (it all works out that way statistically anyway). The poor have 200 poor kids, if in your society the top 50 (mostly top 10 but especially top 1) people were covering much of cost of living of the bottom 50 people, but now they are covering cost of living of the bottom 250 people. How much more do you expect to pile up on the top 50 people, 10 people or 1 guy and still call it 'justice'? Because that's what you are after, justice, right? Justice in your eyes is taking from those who have and redistributing to those who do not.

Well, that's how you create capital outflow, because that's not justice, that's the opposite of justice. Justice would be not using any force of government to control any of these people's businesses and jobs and generally lives. Real justice is only equal treatment under the same law, not unequal application of laws, such as a progressive income tax is as an example - an unequal application of law.

Re:Farm

[pubwvj]

No force involved and people are already returning to the land in droves. It's been happening for several decades now.

Re:Farm

[pubwvj]

Your lack of imagination and drive is your problem. Look for land where it is cheaper. That's what I did. Worked. The money you spend on rent each month could instead be building you an asset. With renting you have nothing.

Re:Farm

[Pfhorrest]

That is exactly the problem with rent. It's a cost that gives no asset in return, preventing people from building wealth even as they labor and earn more income than they need to pay for what they consume. How is someone who can barely make rent ever going to save up to buy any land anywhere? It's not like they can just start putting their rent money immediately toward interest-free payments that go entirely to building them equity in land. They need to save a big chunk for a down payment first, and then a big chunk of their monthly expenses is still going to interest. Rent and interest keep people from being able to get land of their own.

As for "imagination and drive" and "look for land where it's cheaper", it's completely unreasonable to expect, for example, the vast majority of the population of California, the most populous state of the union, most of whom cannot afford land there, to move halfway across the continent to places where their incomes would let them eventually escape rentespecially since, in those places, the likely would not be able to get even those meager incomes they already have, since all the jobs are in the populous and thus expensive places where people and businesses who need labor are at.

Re:Farm

[Pfhorrest]

You seem to be replying to everything I've written in this thread without reading any of it.

Nowhere have I advocated redistribution of wealth. I have highlighted problems that come from uneven distribution of it, and more importantly, problems that create and perpetuate that uneven distribution in the face of natural market forces that would normally spread it out, and I've noted that there are solutions to those problems other than forced wealth redistribution, and that criticism of the problems is not tantamount to advocacy of that one "solution". But you can't seem to wrap your head around that last point, and think that pointing out the problem has to be tantamount to advocacy of one solution, even as I keep saying over and over again that I am not advocating that solution, but trying to bring attention to alternatives to it.

Re:Farm

[david_thornley]

Land prices differ for reasons. Cheap land is going to be unproductive, for the most part.

The social safety net will have to trend up?

[lippydude]

"The social safety net will have to trend up with the development of technology.

If we extrapolate from current trends, then our owners will totally dismantle the social safety net, the former workers will turn to petty crime and then be incarcerated in the newly privatised prisons. ref

Obvious solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Dwindling demand for low skilled workers.
2. Amnesty 11mn unqualified "Undocumented Workers".
3. ??????
4. Profit!

Ways to pick good oligarchs?

[Aristos Mazer]

> The second major challenge of the software revolution is the concentration of power in small groups.

I have sometimes mused about feasible ways to make this work. In other words, just accept that tech IS going to concentrate power in small groups and just ensure that the small group is people we actually want to have that power. Republics are supposed to do that by giving the elected officials the ultimate authority -- by definition, a small group with lots of power -- but that hasn't worked so well by some measures when tech gets involved.

I don't have any good answers here, but I figure that along with brainstorming ways to prevent the consolidation of power, we might also brainstorm ways to be happy with the results of the consolidation.

I love this line about "Bad AI/Good AI"

[chispito]

If we can make a bad AI, maybe we can make a good AI that stops the bad one.

Kind of like how the NSA is doing good spying to counteract all the bad spying.

waste time inventing labor saving machines...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a small country with few people. They have weapons and do not employ them. They enjoy the labor of their hands and do not waste time inventing labor saving machines. They take death seriously and do not travel far. Since they dearly love their homes, they are not interested in travel. Although they have boats and carriages, no one uses them. They are content with healthy food, pleased with youthful clothing, satisfied in snug homes and protective of their way of life. Although they live within sight of their neighbors and crowing cocks and barking dogs can be heard across the way, they leave each other in peace, while they grow old and die...

Tao Te Ching, verse 80

Re:We need to make full time 32 hours a week or le

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to make full time 32 hours a week or less with forced ot pay maybe at 40 hours and X2 ot at 60+.

Nice idea, but why? Because France did? No, really, do you have a valid reason for this assertion or are you spouting something like a low-rent politician trying to score mod points? What economic benefit is ther to a 32 hour work week as opposed to the current 40 hour one in the U.S.? Who actually gets to benefit?

All I can see happening is corporations cutting benefits and hiring a few others to fill in the gaps to continue raping the workers while reaping huge corporate and management profits. Or, doing what some are doing now to avoid the ACA requirements for full-time employees and capping hours below the mark to avoid paying benefits altogether and again maintaining the status quo. What works in France won't necessarily work here anyway because we ahve a completely different government system, regulatory system, etc. So, again, why would you do this and who would benefit?

Tough problem, one I hope we can solve

[ErichTheRed]

This topic is near to my heart. I grew up in the Rust Belt during the early 80s. During this time, the last of the good manufacturing jobs were being automated or offshored in my home city. We're seeing the same thing happen, but this will be a different group of people. The city has tried everything to regenerate economic growth, reorganizing the economy around "knowledge work", funding he universities and what little industry is left. The problem is that the population is largely unemployed factory workers, who have no skills and are not really trainable for "new economy" jobs. The only economic mobility for these people is winning the lottery or hitting the jackpot in a personal injury lawsuit. (I would love to see sociologists prove the negative correlation between economic mobility and number of ads for ambulance-chaser attorneys on local media.)

"That's mean", you say, "The market will take care of these people." The problem is that these peoples' lives are not going to get better. My hometown back in the day used to have auto plants, steel mills and other manufacturing that ran three shifts all year round, and they employed thousands of people per shift. The workers had stable jobs, retirements covered by pensions and union deals, and made a comfortable middle class living. They were able to buy cars, buy houses, and send their kids to college. They were even able to buy the occasional nice thing and weren't living day to day.

What's different this time? Low level knowledge work is on its way out. There are no secretaries anymore, tech support is offshored or automated, and service jobs are being replaced by machines. I can't remember the last time I went into the bank since I was able to deposit checks on my phone...see, I'm part of the problem! The next logical step is going further up the knowledge worker chain. I've worked in many corporate environments (in IT mostly) and have witnessed tons and tons of jobs that can and will be replaced by software or a changed process. That's good, right? I wonder about this -- those mid level knowledge worker jobs are the last ones in the economy that pay a decent wage for something that the average person can handle. I realize I'm generalizing, but think about this - Joe/Jane Average coasts through high school, gets into college, and parties for 4+ years. At the end, they graduate with a degree in business, psychology. communications, whatever. The economy that is about to be replaced has a place for millions of these people...corporate jobs that involve taking a stack of input work, performing a process on it, and passing it onto the output stack. These millions are the ones paying taxes, buying houses, and buying cars to commute back and forth to that office park in suburban Atlanta, Dallas, New Jersey, etc. When those jobs dry up, the same "Detroit Effect" will happen - maybe to a lesser extent, but you will have a segment of the population who isn't quite able to train to make the next step. The city I lived in was a close cousin to Detroit -- the local economy dried up and the city just started rotting from the inside. Crime went up, property got neglected because no one could afford to fix it or live in it, etc.

Solving this is going to be a monster problem, and one I hope doesn't require a revolution. But really, how do you explain to people that the answer to the next phase of the economy is to have some people not work, and have the workers subsidize that? Or tell someone that the retirement savings they built up over 40 years is now meaningless? The problem is that everything is organized around wealth and work -- nothing short of a disaster is going to easily change that. The only things I can think of are a British style aristocracy where knowledge workers become servants or other low level employees, or some sort of feudal system.

Re:Tough problem, one I hope we can solve

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't read your post yet. Just a few sentences or so. But...

A carefully crafted negative income tax is one idea. Or even universal basic income. Along with other things such as single-payer universal health with prescription drug patent reform, etc.

Re:Tough problem, one I hope we can solve

[xdor]

People can and do live simple happy lives without technology. In many parts of the United States the Amish practice non-technology religiously.

However as long as people are free to make choices (and presented with adequate information) most people will choose the faster, more accurate, and more efficient method every time. Trying to limit innovation in order to continue to prop-up work that could be accomplished without manual labor is unlikely to succeed in the long run -- as the person or group who successfully innovates and uses automation will surpass those who don't.

Personally, I think the next wave of tech in the Western world must be towards independent production: 3D-printing is just getting started -- not even close to the magic of Star-Trek replicators -- but this is how the masses could gain some measure of independence. Ability to produce anything you need (given the raw materials or, where possible, ability to improvise in lieu of certain materials). If this technology is fostered: the necessity of a "regular job" might be reduced.

Re: Tough problem, one I hope we can solve

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is actually way simpler: we let Nature take its course. Those unskilled workers you talked about will worthless in the new economy. They cannot be retrained? Too bad for them. We cannot stop or even slow down progress for the sake of some chumps.

Re: Tough problem, one I hope we can solve

[Anne Thwacks]

But I am a worthless chump, you insensitive clod!

Re: Tough problem, one I hope we can solve

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Coward 6 hours ago
The solution is actually way simpler: we let Nature take its course. Those unskilled workers you talked about will worthless in the new economy. They cannot be retrained? Too bad for them. We cannot stop or even slow down progress for the sake of some chumps.

Those physically weak nerds who can't defend themselves will be worthless against the roving militias and bandits (formerly unskilled workers) who decided to take advantage of the new state of affairs after the shit hits the fan. Too bad for them.

Between killing and creating

[tepples]

Technology always has a funny way of creating new industries after it kills old ones.

Where does this leave people between the "kills old ones" phase and the "creating new industries" phase? The summary states that "the new jobs [...] will probably be so fundamentally different from anything that exists today that meaningful planning is almost impossible."

See this, starting at 4:30 and at least to 7:00.

I read the transcript. The income histogram has lost a sharp dip between $1/day and ~$30/day, shifting from Bactrian to dromedary, as more economies have begun developing. But is this "dollar" in exchange rate terms or purchasing power terms? Without correction for purchasing power, the hump is further distorted by the Balassa-Samuelson effect: areas without a history of producing goods for export will have an artificially low cost of living.

Re:Between killing and creating

[ArmoredDragon]

Where does this leave people between the "kills old ones" phase and the "creating new industries" phase?

There's a term for this: Frictional unemployment. It also isn't a new thing.

But is this "dollar" in exchange rate terms or purchasing power terms? Without correction for purchasing power, the hump is further distorted by the Balassa-Samuelson effect: areas without a history of producing goods for export will have an artificially low cost of living.

He goes into that in further detail in some of his other TED talks, such as this one:

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...

There's a few more as well (I'd have to go find the links.) But even in the situations you describe, so far the trend has been long term increase in both wealth AND welfare (e.g. physical health of the population)

Re:Between killing and creating

[silentcoder]

>so far the trend has been long term increase in both wealth AND welfare

Until 1903 the trend had been that attempts to build heavier-than-air-flight were failures - so much so that one of the greatest mathematicians on the 19th century declared it a law of nature just 5 years before the trend stopped being true !

Until 1776 the trend had been that colonial revolutions failed consistently. Then one country won a revolution and became independent and ever since then the trend has been that they were won consistently - until about 50 years ago when the trend became "that they were given independence by the colonists voluntarily leaving" in most of the remaining cases.

Until the 20th century the trend was that building cities made plagues worse and cities got hit hardest (Black death fatalities in London were massive in every major outbreak England ever had, far more per capita than surrounding rural areas), during the 20th century that trend reversed and now when major plagues happen they mostly kill people in rural areas far from good hospitals (initial spreading patterns haven't changed - but our ability to TREAT disease has - and people close to major hospitals which are common in cities get the best odds - and that combined with quarantine means that lots of people living in close proximity is no longer a guaranteed vector of infection like it once was).
As a result - in West Africa we had thousands killed by Ebola, mostly in rural villages. Meantime in wealthier countries you had maybe one or two infections and few if any deaths.
South Africa - on the same continent, which is only a little wealthier hasn't had a single case - the USA had 3 cases, all non-fatal.

Until 1998 the trend was for every generation to have higher vaccination rates than the one before. Since then the rates have gone ever further down - and that was done by nothing more revolutionary than human stupidity.

Until 1908 the trend was that the Chicago Cubs won the world series more often than not (twice in a row in 1907 and 1908) SINCE 1908 the trend was that the Cubs NEVER win the World Series.

Trends are incredibly fragile things, so fragile that it's almost always safer to bet on "end of trend" than "trend continues" if you have to bet. The sensible and rationalist approach however is to do neither - assume that trends have no bearing on what's likely to happen and does not aid prediction at all - because they don't.

Re:Between killing and creating

[Bongo]

Brilliant post, thanks!

Re:Between killing and creating

[ArmoredDragon]

Well here's why I don't see a situation coming where suddenly there's a great divide between the haves and have-nots in a world similar to Shadowrun:

If the day came where all of life's problems were solved by your personal robot assistant (including your robot assistant being able to make another robot assistant for you and/or your friends) then there'd be no point to having any money to begin with. Why? Because if you need something you just ask for it, and there's no reason to pay anybody. So at that point, what good is money?

Personally, the gloom and doomsayers, the luddites, and the socialists don't bother me when they spout most of their nonsense. What does bother me is when they start talking about glorious revolutions where suddenly the state owns everything and supposedly distributes it fairly. The reason that bothers me is because in 100% of the cases where that has happened, ALL of the people involved all suffer for it and suddenly find that their lives are measurably much worse than before the glorious revolution, but they find that they can't gripe about it because all of the glorious revolutionaries are now the ones in power, and the glorious revolutionaries don't take kindly to people talking about how they made the world worse for them, even if those other people are other glorious revolutionaries.

Also, 100% one of those countries that have had glorious revolution are now a second world shithole.

I don't know about you, but I don't live in a second world shithole, and I don't want to either.

Re:We need to make full time 32 hours a week or le

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. The workers can then use the remaining hours to better their community, improve their capabilities on the job, take care of their children and so save the government tax dollars, eat healthier diet and exercise for the same benefit, spend more during their free time to improve the nations economy and travel to the job far greater distances while living further from the cities.

Um...

[rsilvergun]

because there isn't enough work to go around, and it's the only way to force hiring and/or better wages. As for France, they didn't really do a 32 hour work week. There were so many exceptions that only a few gov't employees got the benefit. e.g. it didn't work in France because they didn't really try it.

Re:Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

because there isn't enough work to go around, and it's the only way to force hiring and/or better wages

Is that your opinion (i.e., pulled out of your ass) or do you have some references or research to back that assertion up? I have heard nary a Nobel Laureate for Economics say anything close to that, EVER!

Citation please.

complete bullshit

[khallow]

It appears that the software revolution will do what technology usually doesâ"create wealth but destroy jobs.

And create jobs too. If technology "usually" destroyed jobs without creating other jobs, then almost none of us would be employed.

It's also worth noting that globally jobs are being created just fine and wages are going up just fine. How can one comment on this while missing the biggest, most important labor trends of the past 500 years?

Don't give these oxygen thieves the time of day.

Is self-employment for everyone?

[tepples]

You are appearing to define the middle class as self-employed homeowners. A lot of industries are regulated such that self-employment is not feasible, either by the government or by suppliers who refuse to deal with startups. How does this affect the prospect of middle class membership for people trained to work in those industries? In addition, high school civics doesn't teach skills essential to self-employment. Is government responsible for the lack of a middle class in this manner as well?

Re:Is self-employment for everyone?

[Pfhorrest]

Self-employment wasn't meant to be a necessary criterion, but sort of a fast and loose way of describing a level of capital ownership, alongside things like homeownership. Stock ownership is a form of business ownership that doesn't require you to be "self-employed". For class-determining purposes it doesn't have to be stock in the business that employs you, either. Just so long as you're getting some of the benefits of being "the employer" (if indirectly by being part-owner of some employers of someone), but can't just float on those proceeds and do actually still need to work.

That's all really much less important than things like homeownership though, which is where I'm really thinking about the class division in a paradigmatic way. If you don't own real property and have to borrow someone else's to live in, and work constantly independent of whatever resources you consume just to get money to service the debt you owe (rent) on that borrowed property, you're clearly lower class. If you own so much property that you can let others borrow it (rent it out) and live off the proceeds from that to cover your consumption rather than having to work for that money, then you're clearly upper class. If you're in neither of those scenarios, you're possibly middle class, unless you're in an analogous scenario to one of those two just regarding some kind of capital other than your home.

(E.g. a homeowner who is in terrible debt otherwise is still clearly lower class because they're still having to borrow capital; a homeowner who doesn't have any rental properties but still lives off of stock dividends instead of working is still clearly upper class. And of course different positions with regards to different kinds of capital may cancel out; someone who doesn't own their home but has stock dividends sufficient to pay their rent, and otherwise has to work to cover their consumption, is pretty much as middle-class as a homeowner is.)

Re:Is self-employment for everyone?

[tepples]

Stock ownership is a form of business ownership that doesn't require you to be "self-employed". For class-determining purposes it doesn't have to be stock in the business that employs you, either. Just so long as you're getting some of the benefits of being "the employer"

...but not enough that dividends alone are enough to live on. In that case, what distinguishes someone who owns one share of stock in one company from someone who owns a substantial portfolio? Market cap divided by the number of employees a business has, or some other metric?

That's all really much less important than things like homeownership

So how should one reasonably become a homeowner in a high cost of living area such as the Bay Area or New York, NY? Does the first step involve moving to some other city where your profession is practiced but which has a lower cost of living?

the debt you owe (rent) on that borrowed property

With the shift from allodial title to fee simple, even homeowners still pay rent on property that they're borrowing from the county. Some have to pay additional rent to a homeowners' association.

E.g. a homeowner who is in terrible debt otherwise is still clearly lower class because they're still having to borrow capital

How much debt is "terrible"? Must one complete a Total Money Makeover (as Dave Ramsey called it) and begin to live off the credit grid before entering the middle class? It might sound like I'm picking nits, but if people start talking about the middle class before defining how much capital that entails, they'll just talk past each other.

Re:Is self-employment for everyone?

[Pfhorrest]

In answer to most of your questions, the division as I'm framing it is thus:

- If you have the option to not work (even if you do work), you are upper class.
- If you don't have the option to not work, but you have the option to not borrow (even if you do in fact borrow), you are middle class.
- If you don't have the option to not work, or even the option to not borrow, you are lower class.

And to be clear, I'm not just talking about borrowing money, but any kind of capital, including land, so anyone who is stuck renting their home (doesn't have the option to not rent) is lower class.

So how should one reasonably become a homeowner in a high cost of living area such as the Bay Area or New York, NY? Does the first step involve moving to some other city where your profession is practiced but which has a lower cost of living?

At present that appears to be the only option, but it doesn't sound like a reasonable option to me, and the necessity of it is a symptom of what I see as the root problem of capitalism, rent. Rent distorts the cost of real capital (and also the cost of labor) in multiple ways: it makes the capital in higher demand by those who can afford it outright, not for its intrinsic use-value but for the rents they can command by possession of it, and that increased demand increases the price and thus relative to if only people intending to use it for themselves were buying; and on the other hand, it gives a falsely "inexpensive" alternative to buying which is actually infinitely expensive in the long run, luring people who would otherwise have to buy into a trap that prevents them from becoming able to buy. In the absence of rent, say if it were just suddenly abolished entirely (which I don't advocate —I have plans for a more gradual, less painful transition), you would suddenly have a bunch of homeless people and a bunch of unoccupied homes; the unoccupied homes would then be of no value to their owners except as a useless asset to be sold off; but nobody else would want to buy those "useless" homes as "investment properties" anymore, since they can't be rented out, so the only people who would be in the market to buy them would be the people who actually want to live there themselves; most of the people who actually want to live there either already bought something there in the old market (and so aren't in the market to buy anymore), or couldn't afford to buy and so had to rent, i.e. the masses of now-homeless people; the only way the owners of those homes can get any value out of them is thus to sell them to the now-homeless former renters, which means selling them at prices and on terms (e.g. in installment payments) that those former renters could afford. And voila, suddenly it is affordable to buy housing in such places.

Of course, it might not work out quite so perfectly just like that, because not everybody who had been renting before would be able to afford even the new lower prices and easier terms of buying. But that's where the distortions of the labor market come in. Those people who couldn't afford it would be the people with the lowest-paying jobs, your waiters and store clerks and such, and if those people categorically cannot afford to live in that location, suddenly there is nobody available to wait tables or work registers, and demand for them goes up drastically. The people already living there can't take those jobs because they don't pay enough to live there and if they took them they wouldn't be able to live there anymore, leaving all those low-paying jobs still unoccupied, and the demand for them skyrocketing — in turn raising the price that will be offered for jobs in such high demand, until it reaches the level that those jobs actually pay enough for people to afford to live there.

With rent in existence, expensive places have a situation similar to a manorial lord and his servants, except spread out amongst more parties; the "servants" (the waiters and store clerks and such) are still subservient to th

Free market without capitalism

[tepples]

nobody noticed (and today most people can barely even conceive) the libertarian socialists who disagreed with Marx's claim that you can't have free markets without capitalism, who have been to this day discussing (not that anybody else is listening) possible ways to prevent capitalism without sacrificing the free market.

What introductory resources do you recommend for learning how to build a free market without capitalism?

Re: Free market without capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Equalize income taxes with all capital-based taxes (inheritance, investment, carried interest, dividends). Then it will be fair.

Now, will it be better for the economy? Who knows, but people with extra money have no other way to make more money than to invest it....

Re:Free market without capitalism

[Pfhorrest]

The Wikipedia article on libertarian socialism gives a good overview itself and has an extensive external links section with further resources. One other topic that I find particularly lacking from that though is distributism, but it's got its own good article with further reading too. I should note however that there are a lot of different variant strains of thought in that general area of libertarian socialism, and that I personally don't agree entirely with any one of them; I think they've all got some nice ideas but also their own share of flaws. I just like the general approach and wish there would be more mainstream dialogue with these kinds of ideas.

My personal flavor is essentially the same as the usual right-libertarian concept of a propertarian free market (that is to say, a market where rights to private property ownership are recognized), minus contracts of rent (including interest) —possibly minus contracts in general (besides simple transfers of ownership), but I'm less certain on that point — because I believe rent and interest are what cause the runaway concentration of wealth that turns a free market capitalistic, and that without them there would be a natural tendency for wealth to flow from those with more to those with less (the natural cost of the leisure those with more wish to enjoy); and that rent and interest can be abolished as widespread economic instruments without the use of any kind of authoritarian force, simply by refraining from the current use of authoritarian force to enforce such contracts, leaving such arrangements legally unprotected and thus unsuitable for general use as economic instruments (but still strictly speaking legal for trustworthy partners to engage in themselves if they choose).

Nope. Free Public School is Too Expensive

[xdor]

Property taxes pretty much rule this out.

Where I live taxes on the land (20 acres of rural farmland) are almost 300 USD a month! That's pretty hefty rent on property you already own.

Kind of hard to just be when you can lose the farm and everything you're worked for to the county if you don't make enough $.

Time repeats

[Anonymous Coward]

The first industrial revolution destroyed most jobs. Most people were farmers and craftsmen, and advances in technology put them out of work en masse. You can imagine how scary it was to watch the land that supported an entire community's way of life for a thousand years suddenly get pulled out from under them. Some people got so scared they founded entire ideologies based on preserving the agrarian economic systems of old

What they couldn't see in the long terms was the fact that the technologies that caused the price of food and goods to drop also made it less of a death sentence to not own land. Factory farms killed family farms, but also allowed poor people to eat like rich people. And then those out of work farmers all (eventually) got new jobs building the infrastructure the new corporations now needed. Of course there was a lot of initial panic and dramatic political upheavals because people couldn't forsee a future in which everything worked out in the end- they only saw themselves being driven off their farms by their new corporate overlords.

So even if the new technological revolution puts half of us out of work, at least unemployment will be a lot cozier. Remember when watching unlimited movies and shows on demand required coughing up more than $20 a month?

Re:Time repeats

[prefec2]

To make people jobs back in the industrial revolution we had to fight for the rights of workers. Very hard. And with a lot of bloodshed. As the industrial revolution had also destroyed old family structures where the young cared for the old, and the healthy cared for the sick, we had to invent retirement funds and health care systems. We also required to develop an unemployment protection. Furthermore, an education system was required to educate the people. In addition we got higher output from farms and industry. As we had a real demand gap, as not all people had sufficient clothes and food, an massive increase in production was a good thing to support them.

Now in the next step we will eradicate a lot of jobs which were suitable for present day humans. The new jobs which are created are all for higher education or caring jobs. However, most of present day workers could not be educated in a way to reach higher education. This is impossible. Furthermore, we have now no gap in demand of important resources in the Western world. Therefore, the workforce will be reduced. As the state is normally funded based on income tax of workers, this has also an impact on state finances. A solution would be to tax profit, but present govenrments try to avoid that.

Therefore, time does not repeat. The preconditions are quite different. The effects are different. And the outcome will be different. However, to stay in your picture. We will have to fight for our rights again. Including unconditional basic income, education towards self-improvement rather than wealth. Taxing profit, finance transactions etc. and it will cause a lot of bloodshed.

establish a base class

[paul mafinga]

Some years ago a euro country proposed establishing a base class for their humans. Essentially their plan is to replace the myriad of social services offices with one office that sends out checks to people who are out of work or underpaid.

They would establish a basic income that allows people to pay for food, shelter, and clothing. If a person earns less than the minimum, the state subsidizes the balance. if they are unemployed, they get the entire amount. As long as enough effective people are paying taxes, and enough smart people can figure out how to provide low cost essentials, it doesn't really matter if part of the population is a poor match to the needs of society in a given era, or just unlucky. Or perhaps a given era just doesn't need a lot of workers.

If the cost is roughly the same, there's no real difference, other than a reduction in complexity of the solution.

Related, some US states use 3rd grade literacy rates to predict future prison populations. Just reading with a child twice a week can double their literacy scores and dramatically increase their chances of being a revenue positive member of society. Perhaps it's part bonding with a parent figure, part linguistic stimulation.

But why do we want to find a job for the masses?

[m76]

Nobody needs a job, what they need food and a roof to live under. Instead of focusing on thumping up new meaningless jobs, we should redistribute the jobs that actually still needs humans. If new technology makes 10 out of 20 people redundant instead of firing 10 people make them work half as much. Of course this isn't viable in our "economic system". But then again, if we constantly find that the right thing to do is usually in contradiction with the system, then isn't it the system that is broken? A system that needs rules and laws and oversight commitess and oversight for oversight comittes to keep it from destroying itself is not a system worth keeping. Of course there is one very big problem with changing the system. The few that are well off in the current system have absolutely no interest in change. And the ones who are suffering or less well off, have no power to instigate any form of change.

Re:We need to make full time 32 hours a week or le

[gnupun]

Nice idea, but why? Because France did? No, really, do you have a valid reason for this assertion or are you spouting something like a low-rent politician trying to score mod points?

Why not? Many technological advances in the past hundred years have continuously reduced the cost of production. But the price of goods/services has not go down much, and in fact has risen in many cases. The capitalists benefit heavily from new technology with profits that increase 10x or more. But they are unwilling to share any of that wealth with the inventors/discoverers of the technologies, nor with their employees or customers.

This is classic case of unfair enrichment by the capitalists. And the remedy for that is increased fairness: fairness in paying people who bring them these technologies (not just paper certificates and awards), fairness in paying their employees if they go above and beyond their duty, and lastly charging a fair price to their customers instead of endless price gouging.

With higher pay and lower cost of products/services, one can easily live with 32 hours of work as well as increase the size of the workforce. But that's unlikely to happen because of massive greed from the capitalists. In which case, expect a vast difference between lives of the rich and lives of every one else. The rich will live comfortably in big cities whereas the rest will live in ghetto cities, in hundred years or so.

Legislate how?

[sabbede]

Legislation is a powerful tool, but there are limits on what it can do. Especially if the goals are so nebulous! What kind of legislation are we talking about? What exactly does the author want to legislate?

Re:We need to make full time 32 hours a week or le

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of the France bashing. I'm a US ex-service member, and it really is out-of-place and an insult to the USA to treat anyone that way.

I'm nearly of the opinion that if you don't like France, but are compelled to say something about it, you shouldn't be allowed access to antibiotics. Live by your sword, but don't chicken-shit out when it's time to die by your sword.

Productivity growth

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a standard economic measure for this; it's called productivity growth. Productivity has been increasing steadily for as long as the economy has existed. While it does eliminate some jobs, these are usually the most grueling and tedious jobs the labor market has to offer, and in general it causes wages go UP, not down. The most recent decades have been somewhat of an anomaly, however. Productivity growth has been mostly below historical trends, and what little growth there is has been distributed primarily to the top 1%, leaving most wages stagnating in inflation adjusted terms. When more equitably distributed, as it mostly has been in our history, it is more than enough to overcome the increased drain an aging population places on society. It can allow for shorter work weeks, higher wages or some mix of the two. And so on.

Economic Ignorance

[TonyXL]

If technology people get rich, they spend their money--whatever they spend it on requires jobs to fulfill.

Welcome to the new age

[DanielOom]

Future historians will find an appropriate tag for the third millennium. If the industrial revolution is over, we still live in the industrial age, though it may appear to be declining. Some historians opine that we are going through a not-much-war era.

The big question: is / was there a Software Revolution and what is it supposed to be? In the sixties the term 'Software Crisis' was coined, but has gone of ouf use. Software no longer seems to be in such short supply, but the quality of it is still problematic at best. Software is part of a process called Automation, which has been popular since Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. Advances in electronics have helped automation to progress and increase steadily during the twentieth century.

Re:Welcome to the new age

[BarbaraHudson]

If you read all the links, one makes a good argument that software creation can and will be automated. Cheaper, quicker, less buggy. The robots used during the late part of the industrial revolution allowed more output per worker because they lacked any serious capabilities wrt flexibility of the job. Today, the worker is being eliminated at all levels of the food chain. It's already started to happen with certain medical specialties.

Re:Welcome to the new age

[david_thornley]

People have been automating software development since the 1950s, when "automatic programming" (using an assembler rather than hand-generating the binary or decimal opcodes) and COBOL (intended to let typical businessmen read and write programs) were devised. Programming is a matter of creating a formal description of the program from an informal set of requirements, and as tools and languages become more powerful programmers can work on a more abstract level and be more productive. To replace programmers, we'd need machines capable of understanding the requirements, which I believe to be AI-hard.

It's conceivable that making programmers more productive will result in them becoming less valuable, but the demand for software hasn't seemed to slow down despite increased productivity for a very much increased number of programmers. Since people keep wanting new things, I don't see the demand abating any time soon.

Given strong AI, society gets changed more than I can easily imagine, so I'm not worrying about the effects on developers.

Re:Welcome to the new age

[BarbaraHudson]

While the demand for "software" has increased, the demand for "good software" has not grown nearly as fast.

Look in the consumer field - there are still only 2 desktop OSes - Windows and Apple, whereas before Windows, almost every computer manufacturer had a custom OS. There are only 2 contenders in the mobile smartphone business - iOS and Android, whereas before there were more (forget Tizen - Samsung is abandoning it, Ubuntu is a non-starter, Blackberry is ... well, Blackberry, Nokia's OS was killed by Microsoft, Java Micro Edition is gone, and Firefox OS hasn't a hope anywhere except the poorest areas - the ones that don't have much infrastructure for phones to begin with) Microsoft might come back if they keep throwing money at it for another few years, and Google or Apple stumbles.

Same thing in business - Windows with a smidgen of Apple in the front office, and Windows and Linux in the back, with a tad of FreeBSD and some specialty unixes on various hardware.

Or the various app stores - 99.5% of the apps in there don't make money - you'd be better off financially taking the time and money invested, buy yourself as much beer as possible, then return the empties for a refund. It's all turtle-crap, all the way down.

Educational software for use in the classroom? 100% crap.

Markets tend to end up being natural duopolies because people don't want choice - they want something cheap that works and that's compatible with existing gear. Henry Ford knew this - "You can have any color you want, so long as it's black."

Even programmers are getting tired of the "language of the week."

How many of those people who lost their jobs in various industries and thought "Gee, I'll go into app development (see the various ask slashdots) are going to end up richer than if they had just gone directly to "Do you want fries with that?"

The "web developer" boom went bust. The "app store developer" boom went bust. If you want to work for nothing, sure, you'll have business, but that's not a job - it's a hobby.

Predestined to fail otherwise, then?

[King_TJ]

I can't disagree with the above statement enough!

Sorry, but there are *always* alternatives. We have enough technology to perform most farming with automation anyway.

The PhD who has to apply at McDonalds? Sure, that happens... but that's a result of education not automatically equating to value in the marketplace. Quite a few PhD's and folks with Masters' degrees I've met are chronically underemployed or unemployed. The reason? They believe people "owe" them a high paying job because they completed the education. They aren't necessarily very good with people skills, or motivated to accept anything in the way of a career position outside of a very narrow, specific thing they think they want to do.

Our educational system is happy to provide an education that's largely only useful in the "work world" as a way to become a teacher .

Re:Nope. Free Public School is Too Expensive

[pubwvj]

Sorry you live in the wrong place. Pick a better location with less services and lower costs. That's what I did. Works.

Bootstrapping your capital

[tepples]

[I would ban] contracts of rent (including interest) —possibly minus contracts in general (besides simple transfers of ownership), but I'm less certain on that point — because I believe rent and interest are what cause the runaway concentration of wealth

Without rent, how would somebody new to the labor force and with no capital to his name obtain land on which to live and tools with which to work?

Re:Bootstrapping your capital

[Pfhorrest]

Buying it slowly over time. There are fairly simple arrangements of pure sales which look and feel very rent-like on the short term but become more and more like the straight-up purchases they really are in the long term, which allows for the legitimate functions that rent appears to serve to be served, while circumventing the large scale systematic problems that is causes. I can explain in more detail if you like, but the basic picture is (to use housing rent as the paradigmatic example) that you start paying monthly payments exactly like you were renting, but you gradually build equity that you can get back out of it when you move, or you eventually end up owning it if you don't move.

(How much you get back when moving depends on how long you stay there, how urgently you need to move, and what choices you've made with regards to the upkeep of the place; if you want to move frequently with no hassle and no questions and have someone else guarantee all the upkeep for you, that's probably going to cost you similarly to ordinary rental, but if you just want to live somewhere semi-permanently and treat it nice while you're there and find a replacement for yourself when you do eventually move, but simply can't afford to just buy a place, you won't be stuck renting indefinitely; over your life you will gradually build up equity until you eventually own something somewhere).

Wealth isn't "created", merely accumulated.

[DoctorBonzo]

Hearing any variation on the phrase "wealth creation" drives me right up the wall. Always sounds like someone thinks they're Rumplestiltskin.

"Economists" will never get any respect from me until they come up with theories consistent with conservation of mass and energy.

Destroy jobs?

[MoarSauce123]

Technology typically reforms the job landscape, but not destroy jobs. When cars came along it put an end to blacksmiths and horse wagon makers, but it started the rise of the car mechanic. In the beginning these were even the exact same people who quickly adapted to the new world of things. Today it is less likely that this succeeds, a factory floor worker is probably not turning her- or himself into an industrial robot engineer, but might find opportunities in manufacturing robots. What does happen is that those who do not accept life long learning as a necessity will be left behind unless they manage to escape into retirement. That applies to software engineers as well. Years ago it was easy to get hired as VB6 developer, today you are lucky if you find a place that needs that skill to maintain legacy applications. The speed of innovation is also increasing, while it used to be fine to stay on one skill level for a decade it now dropped down to a few years if that. As far as wealth goes, I agree with some of the other comments. The wealth does not grow, it is more and more unevenly distributed. That is something where legislation can help: be more like Robin Hood, steal from the rich and give to the poor. That means tax any earnings (capital gains, etc) as if it is straight out income and return back to the pre-Reagonomics tax schedules. Someone who makes 100 million a year will be perfectly fine if they have to pay 40 million in taxes. They would not have bought that second private jet anyway.