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World Bank Says Internet Technology May Widen Inequality (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Somini Sengupta writes in the NY Times that a new report from the World Bank concludes that the vast changes wrought by Internet technology have not expanded economic opportunities or improved access to basic public services but stand to widen inequalities and even hasten the hollowing out of middle-class employment. "Digital technologies are spreading rapidly, but digital dividends — growth, jobs and services — have lagged behind," says the bank in a news release announcing the report. "If people have the right skills, digital technology will help them become more efficient and productive, but if the right skills are lacking, you'll end up with a polarized labor market and more inequality," says Uwe Deichmann. Those who are already well-off and well-educated have been able to take advantage of the Internet economy, the report concludes pointedly, but despite the expansion of Internet access, 60 percent of humanity remains offline. According to the report, in developed countries and several large middle-income countries, technology is automating routine jobs, such as factory work, and some white-collar jobs. While some workers benefit, "a large share" of workers get pushed down to lower-paying jobs that cannot be automated. "What we're seeing is not so much a destruction of jobs but a reshuffling of jobs, what economists have been calling a hollowing out of the labor market. You see the share of mid-level jobs shrinking and lower-end jobs increasing."
The report adds that in the developing world digital technologies are not a shortcut to development, though they can accelerate it if used in the right way. "We see a lot of disappointment and wasted investments. It's actually quite shocking how many e-government projects fail," says Deichmann. "While technology can be extremely helpful in many ways, it's not going to help us circumvent the failures of development over the last couple of decades. You still have to get the basics right: education, business climate, and accountability in government."
The report adds that in the developing world digital technologies are not a shortcut to development, though they can accelerate it if used in the right way. "We see a lot of disappointment and wasted investments. It's actually quite shocking how many e-government projects fail," says Deichmann. "While technology can be extremely helpful in many ways, it's not going to help us circumvent the failures of development over the last couple of decades. You still have to get the basics right: education, business climate, and accountability in government."
The same argument could be made for reading.
Surely there is hope yet for technological solutionism! Maybe they need VR goggles? Wearables? IoT devices?...Teledildonics? There must be some gadget that can magically allow people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Industrialisation itself.
It is believed that modern society in the West developed by the upper-middle and upper classes' excess kids effectively outbreeding the lower classes over hundreds of years, resulting in gains in health, IQ and longer time preferences. That's a fusion of nature and nurture reinforcing one another.
What have we done for the last 2 generations? We've inverted it with the more intelligent having fewer and fewer kids. Now we have an economy where getting a good job increasingly depends on biological factors that are not being selected for in our reproductive habits as they once were, resulting in the virtuous cycle of the previous centuries becoming a vicious feedback cycle.
It's actually quite shocking how many e-government projects fail
It's obvious: the current e-government projects demand sustained and high infrastructure costs allocated usually to the citizens directly or via taxes. The combination of efficient tax collection and high average income is not so common in the wider world. For the rest of the world, the basic building blocks of the projects should be redesigned, which is something the technology companies involved surely resist to their death.
Take this for what it's worth (I'm just one person), but as a programmer, all we're doing really is taking information in, analyzing it, and spitting it back out in a different form most of the time. That's good for logistics, banking, insurance, and government program analysis. However, how many people could take what we do and apply it to something like farming, set up robotics to do things, etc? I'm currently taking a basic electrical certification - I still have a huge lack of mechanics aptitude to deal with there too. I'm eyeing machine learning nanodegrees as well. The problem is, we're mostly helping a small percentage of people maximize their own wealth, and this article is right, it's not trickling down.
What you should try is:
youtube-dl
http://rg3.github.com/youtube-...
A lot of people post here [at the Official Tor Blog] saying with each new TBB release, "Flash still doesn't work!" No kidding? We don't know that already?
Check youtube-dl's list of supported sites at their website. You don't need a browser plugin/addon/extension for this.
I don't know if torify/torsocks is included in the TBB*, but in TAILS I run at the command line (after downloading youtube-dl and a quick verify of the md5/sha1 or sha256 checksums):
chmod a+rx youtube-dl
^ the chmod command only once, then:
torsocks ./youtube-dl URLtovideoorpagewithvideo
Easy. There are other options such as the "User Agent" you may wish to use.
Again, if you use TBB instead of TAILS, programs like youtube-dl may need an additional option, the website for youtube-dl explains it very well.
The problem now is that the brilliant minds that create entirely new occupations mostly focus that creativity on occupations that are directly dependent on the latest technology. This is natural, as where would you find new occupations easier than in new technologies?
However, we need a brilliant mind that finds new occupations that, while using the new technologies, don't depend on them. We need someone to find a way to use the excess workforce created by automatisation in such a way as to not require from that workforce the very fact that made it replaceable by automatisation.
The question that needs to be answered isn't "what new jobs are created by the new technological environnement" as the answer to that will make you fight for workers with every other innovator.
The question is "what new jobs can be done by those who the technological environnement made superfluous." So, essentially, what can I do with a million people whose previous occupation is automatisable?
I believe those new jobs will come in the form of "computer assisted individual aimed art.", like, for example, "painting pretty environnements and props for VR semi-custom games" or "supporting actors in personal movies in which the customer is the protagonist"
completely uncomplicated
The problem is that for many there is a complete lack of a social safety net and adequate programs to help them get to where they need to to become productive members of society. We need good social programs and the legalization and legislation of recreational drugs. If you do the latter first you'll have the money for the former.
Of course this requires us to get our collective heads out of our asses, so it probably won't happen. Blaming Internet technologies is not seeing the big picture.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
A lot of threats from a guy who spends his day playing WoW and facebooking on his Apple phone.
You'd never rise up because (a) you have it too good (b) you're easily manipulated by media (c) you're fundamentally lazy
China is the top country for poor people moving into the middle class. A lot of that movement is from millions of people setting up mom and pop shops. Cell phones are very important to the functioning of this segment of the market and cell phone are a window into the Internet. So I'd say they have it backwards. They are focusing on the small number of tech lottery winners and ignoring the major improvement cell phones has had on ordinary people's lives.
That would be par for the course.
ACKSHUALLY it's an android phone
I worked in automation equipment for many years. Companies would typically come to use when they needed to expand capacity. When we would work up a quote we would look at their current process and come up with several options from very simple conveying system with manual tool stations for the operators to fully automated systems. Obviously there was a huge capital cost difference between these options. Two big factors that went into the recommendation were the labor rates and interest rates. The companies were looking for a specific return on investment. In a free market when interest rates are low and labor rates are high due to low unemployment and lots of savings it is better to automate as the interest on capital costs are low. When the interest rates are high and labor rates are low due to high unemployment and low savings it is much better to hire people and go with manual stations. This is as it should be and would lead to sustained growth.
But when the Central Banks lower interest rates way below the market rates it makes automation cheap no matter what is going on in the economy. This is the situation we are in. It is cheaper to automate even though labor rates are low and there is low workplace participation. Allow rates to return to their market levels and this will change and we can go back to sustainable growth. Of course we won't do this because it would hurt the Wall St. Banks and politicians pocketbooks.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It must mean exactly the opposite. EG "The internet makes the bars and door of their guilded cage visible."
Anytime you provide society with a productive enabler, those who are more eager to build wealth will use it to, you guessed it, build wealth. The lazy of society will not use it to build wealth.
There are always people who are more willing to work, more willing to produce, and more eager to build wealth, than other people. This is what so-called social scientists do not understand about human nature. People are not all the same, and the only way to make them so is to DISABLE the eager beavers (which are the vast minority of people).
It is easier to prohibit someone being productive than it is to force someone to be productive. Enforcing a policy of equal poverty (except for the ruling elite, of course) has been the goal of the leftist ruling elite since the dawn of human civilization.
allways whinning about inequality from the top of the money tree.
"Hoarding" is not the problem.
The problem is the newly generated "wealth" due to inflation goes to those that are already hoarding it - that money in a way is worth more than ours because economic inflation doesn't happen until they start spending, the value of those dollars doesn't go down until after they are spent. These people are always increasing in dollars "hoarded" even if they are spending - and spending it hurts the rest of us.
The solution is to stop printing more, starve them into loss mode.
The game is rigged.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
A lot of threats from a guy who spends his day playing WoW and facebooking on his Apple phone.
You'd never rise up because (a) you have it too good (b) you're easily manipulated by media (c) you're fundamentally lazy
Ad hominem attacks are no way to go through life son...
It is believed that modern society in the West developed by the upper-middle and upper classes' excess kids effectively outbreeding the lower classes over hundreds of years, resulting in gains in health, IQ and longer time preferences. That's a fusion of nature and nurture reinforcing one another. ...
Interesting, but I'm not buying that at face value.
First of all, it's the working/lower class that has the most children throughout most of human history. Only a lot died early, while others developed pathogen resistance which led to the ancient population of the americas dying out (google "Guns, Germs and Steel").
Second of all, there is the effect called "Wohlstandsverwahrlosung" in German which roughly translates to "Neglect/deterioration by wealth". In short it describes the phenomenon that wealth does not automatically mean better education or better childhood - it also can mean the opposite. A rich kid might be good off because he went to a high-profile school and has a high rank in current society, but a poor kid might have had kind parents and self-taught skills that the rich kid totally lacks. A rich kid can also experience neglect at the same rate as a poor kid. Under circumstances even more so, if the parents rather by the kid a new toy that dealing with it.
Another point against your case: History is filled with geniuses that lived as bums, didn't get a girl (or themselves were a girl and thus rarely got acknowleged at all) or even children and, once they died, are recognised as ultimate geniuses in their field. Van Gogh, by just about all measures, was a miserable whiny and stuborn bum in his lifetime. Today he's one of the greatest painters that ever existed. He did not get the chance to have children. Leonardo Da Vinci is somebody simular, all though he was somewhat respected.
Likewise I'm sure there's a notable amount of really intelligent people around who have no interest in taking part in society. Since they're intelligent, they can live like a king while generally regarded as slackers or dropouts. Those types used to be called "Stoics" in ancient Greece (from "Stoa" - "Porch" as in "Sitting on the porch all day and discussing life"). Today they're called "the new rich" or "digital nomads" or "bohemians". Example: I work part-time. Why? Because I'm smart enough to make a living with that amount of work. The rest of the day I spend lying around, reading books, having endless philosophical discussions with friends, cooking, pondering my digital-nomad ambitions, fiddling with FOSS, doing Yoga, dancing Tango and occasionally boneing a hot cutie I picked up at one of the two latter activities :-) . A near perfect life, if you ask me. ... I guess you could count me in on the Stoic department.
Likewise again, the is a solid amount of notably dumb people and dimwits with wealth and "upperclass" rank wandering about, simply because they don't think to hard and just do and/or deliver what's in demand. Or aren't smart enough to exit the hamster-wheel.
Bottom line: While your conclusion is worth considering, I don't think it's the only valid one, as it has quite a few holes in it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The end of communism, better education, and increasing use of technology all widen inequality. They also make people richer. In free, industrial societies, increasing inequality correlates with overall increase in wealth; and while groups benefit disproportionately, everybody still benefits.
Increase taxes on anyone who makes above median wages, and have the World Bank redistribute that tax income to those earning below the median. For a cut off the top, of course - we wouldn't want our "altruistic" financial overlords to suffer for their enlightened actions!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You will NEVER solve poverty, as long as poverty is defined as being in the bottom quintile of income, as most Governments and NGOs typically do. You'll ALWAYS have someone at the bottom 20% - and thus always have "poverty". Why? It's a great way to grow Government, increase Government's own reach and power (as long as they're the ones dispensing the largesse), and have something to distract a goodly portion of the remaining 80%.
As far as access to everything, the rich can buy access if they want, but have to use their own resources to do so; the poor have access to anything the Government chooses to give to them, paid for by those same rich. Note that most of the Government poverty programs, and even Government retiree programs, are means tested. Meaning you cannot have access if you're not poor.
There's a definite benefit to Government maintaining the status quo, keeping a large section of the population dependent, and fomenting class warfare. It enhances Government itself, allows Government to claim ever-larger chunks of power "for the benefit of others", and generally enrich those who have chosen to become career bureaucrats. After all - who benefits from lobbyist trips, from very well funded retirement pensions, and big "consulting" payoffs from private enterprise? Those in Government who keep the system rigged.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
As always, addressed best by Margaret Thatcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Dreaming up make work for the unwashed masses is stupid.
But this process of replacing one occupation with another has always been slow. Society needs time to adjust to a change in required skill sets. In truth, few farmers really retrain as manufacturers and few manufacturers go on to become computer engineers. It is much more likely to be the next generation that trains into the new skill set modern society requires. The farmers’ children go on to be manufacturers and the manufacturers' children become computer scientists. But at some point, the rate of change may happen quicker than children take to grow up. At some point, the manufacturer has to retrain as a computer engineer or confront a life with no livelihood.
If the past is a predictor (anarchists, communists, fascists and other violent revolutionaries who have nothing to lose), then we're in for a rough time.
Fixed that for ya
Automation can never be so cheap that it pops up out of thin air. Some human team still has to build the robot arms for the assembly line to make the cars, etc.
What seems more apparent is that companies aren't providing opportunities and support to upskill employees that have had their position made redundant and part thereof. I have personally seen this happen when the core part of an employees job was automated and instead of offering to teach them the skills to maintain and improve the automated process the company just decided to offer them a lower income manual job and then let them off when they showed an interest in skillng up. The money saved from automation should be used to improve employee skill sets to enable them to make further contributions to the company. The problem appears to be not automation but profits getting maximised to the detriment of company health, fat cats and bottom lines being compressed.
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
There's a really easy way to turn all those low paying jobs into middle class jobs: just pay more! But we don't, because we can get away with paying less, and we never want to pay more for anything than we absolutely have to.
Technology is shifting what jobs there's demand for, but it doesn't determine how much we pay for those jobs. That's determined by economics, and politics, and social institutions. We can fix the problem, but only if we focus on the real causes. Technology won't fix it, because technology isn't the real cause.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
We are the world bank. We control your money. We'll fix that internet for you. We'll monitor every post. We'll enforce our version of equality. We won't let you be bothered by pesky facts and ideas. We'll set you free. Because freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. War is peace.
They don't hoard wealth. They just make sure that a very disproportionate amount of new wealth goes to them. If they had a lot of money, but couldn't really replace it, it wouldn't be a potentially big problem.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Not so much. Because our system is rigged for perpetual inflation, and never deflation, the value of accumulated wealth will always decrease. The general rule of thumb is that inflation is bad for people who have money, and good for people who owe money (since it reduces the value of your debt, if not the numerical amount). So if you're a person who has millions or billions, inflation is going to erode the value of your amassed dollars regardless of what or when you spend. If you're a government that owes trillions, this arrangement is just ducky.
"They don't hoard wealth"
They do, see "dead money"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/free-up-dead-money-carney-exhorts-corporate-canada/article4493091/
These things aren't problems unless you make them be!
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