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It's Not Technology That's Disrupting Our Jobs (nytimes.com)
The history of labor shows that technology does not usually drive social change, argues Louis Hyman, director of the Institute for Workplace Studies at the ILR School at Cornell. On the contrary, social change is typically driven by decisions we make about how to organize our world. Only later does technology swoop in, accelerating and consolidating those changes. From a report: This insight is crucial for anyone concerned about the insecurity and other shortcomings of the gig economy. For it reminds us that far from being an unavoidable consequence of technological progress, the nature of work always remains a matter of social choice. It is not a result of an algorithm; it is a collection of decisions by corporations and policymakers. Consider the Industrial Revolution. Well before it took place, in the 19th century, another revolution in work occurred in the 18th century, which historians call the "industrious revolution." Before this revolution, people worked where they lived, perhaps at a farm or a shop. The manufacturing of textiles, for example, relied on networks of independent farmers who spun fibers and wove cloth. They worked on their own; they were not employees.
In the industrious revolution, however, manufacturers gathered workers under one roof, where the labor could be divided and supervised. For the first time on a large scale, home life and work life were separated. People no longer controlled how they worked, and they received a wage instead of sharing directly in the profits of their efforts. This was a necessary precondition for the Industrial Revolution. While factory technology would consolidate this development, the creation of factory technology was possible only because people's relationship to work had already changed. A power loom would have served no purpose for networks of farmers making cloth at home. The same goes for today's digital revolution.
In the industrious revolution, however, manufacturers gathered workers under one roof, where the labor could be divided and supervised. For the first time on a large scale, home life and work life were separated. People no longer controlled how they worked, and they received a wage instead of sharing directly in the profits of their efforts. This was a necessary precondition for the Industrial Revolution. While factory technology would consolidate this development, the creation of factory technology was possible only because people's relationship to work had already changed. A power loom would have served no purpose for networks of farmers making cloth at home. The same goes for today's digital revolution.
The Industrial Revolution didn't start in the 19th century, it started in the 18th century.
This isn't a real story. It is a story about an academic who selected some niche terminology to make normal stuff sound like something new. But a new phrasing is something new in the present, not something newly discovered about the past.
So, it's not the technology, but the people that no longer need to hire people that are 'at fault'... lovely. Thanks for that insight!
The whole point isn't who to blame. It's the fact that technology is exposing a deep, deep flaw in the structure of our society.
If folks don't need to use other people to make money and own virtually everything, the economy itself is useless for any meaningful society.
And if technology makes it so that anyone that gets ahead can almost automatically build to the point where they break the idea of a meaningful economy.. then basing that society or economy on people being paid for things that can be automated is a losing move in the larger game.
If society at large seeks to actually serve to expand human experience beyond just the needs of the ultra-rich, then it likely should seek to use that same technology to get people to legitimately help other people, rather than just have the rich monetize more aspects of their lives.
The whole idea of corporations is kind of a new idea historically - we can invent other ideas, with more forethought than the way courtrooms defined the things we have running the world right now.
But we do have to understand why technology will end the good things about our current economy, beyond just finding folks to blame.
Ryan Fenton
This is an example of learning too much from history. Pick one or two examples that fit nicely into a theory, declare it a law or principle, and then use it to judge or predict other events. Other events may or may not fit the pattern, so it's still a crap shoot whether you can use this to predict or understand anything else.
Uber was enabled by technology, not by some sort of social pattern.
Uber was enabled by a pattern of companies getting away with skirting regulation, calling it "disruptive" tech and pretending they aren't really just taxicabs. That's a social pattern, the tech just enabled the app. Don't be stupid.
... money has been decoupled from productive activity and investment seeking the highest returns and so gone largely into speculation and basically sophisticated forms of rent seeking and fraud. Let's be honest, technology just speeds this along by enabling big compaies to engage in labour arbitrage. Taking advantage of the huge wage differences of people across the globe thanks to the internet and most people don't have the money or are incapable of moving from where they are at from different reasons. This naive idea that human beings are fungible widgets has put a serious strain on society.
Let's not forget the concept of dead money, corporations are sitting on billions they are not investing in anyone or anything. We're experiecing total failure of capitalism and nobody noticed. AKA money is pooling in the hands of ceo's and the ceo's are just sitting on it, at sane society woud intervene and just start investing in people, tools and jobs if the corporate fatcats won't do it. So it's pure politics and mass political ignorance that's at the root of our problems. Basically people are rotting on the sidelines because our corporate leadership is an emporer with no clothes.
https://www.theglobeandmail.co...
What social phenomenon preceded Uber that enabled it? Unemployment? If that's the answer, then this pattern predicts everything and thereby predicts nothing.
People leaving restaurants and having to stand in the rain yelling at cars to flag down medallion cabs, and pondering, "There has to be a better way of doing this..."
You could make the case that taxicab rent seeking created an environment where the public was very poorly served. And that was the social phenomenon that led to Uber. But then every business opportunity caused by incumbent businesses offering poor service fits the pattern and we are back to this theory predicting everything.
that it wasn't a bullet that killed JFK, it was the person who fired it. Which sounds reasonable, except that in the absence of said bullet he'd still be alive and that it was the accuracy of modern firearms that made the shot possible...
In the last 50 years America has doubled it's manufacturing output while cutting manufacturing jobs by 1/3. Our public policy has almost completely ignored that. The end of large scale manufacturing jobs as the primary employer is more than anything what killed Unions, and most economists agree that loss of bargaining power is why wages aren't going up even though unemployment is low.
This entire article strikes me as yet another attempt to fit the square peg that is corporate capitalism into the round whole that is society's well being. It's working backwards from it's conclusion.
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Simple minded view which indicates blindness to the complications which have arisen.
It starts out that to consume resources, man must invest and work to gather those resources.
Next, trade enters the picture and individuals exchange resources and both are better off.
Then banking enters the system, and rather than storing valuable resources, a placeholder is stored, an I.O.U. of sorts. Wealth is no longer perishable, it can be accumulated or saved over time.
Then those that save wealth, who store favors, gain a disproportionate advantage over those that don't. They are able to acquire ownership over greater means of production, and take a larger share of the resources, or the stored value of those resources.
Next the wealthy are then able to incentivize the workforce to engineer more effect means of production. Which allows them to gain more resources for less effort.
Then things start to break down. A growing population requires more resources. Those who control the means of production can do so at such high levels of efficiency that they do not need the laborers. Without a need, there is no incentive to redistribute resources. Any resources the workers provide only dilute the value of those resouces, and thus reduces the resources gained in return.
The next stage is one of two things, either those who have optimized the means of production begin giving generously from their capacity, rather than according to supply and demand economics, or the there is a layering effect, where the classes become separate economies or even nations. A third world country living amongst a first world country, potentially warring for the resources contained within.
Apparently you are ignoring the fact that Uber makes the roads more congested for everyone else. More cars means more wear and tear on the roads and more pollution. Many passengers who would have taken a bus or train or walked or biked, now use an Uber. You may be happy you can get a cheap ride, but since Uber also operates at a loss, you are being subsidized by tax payers, drivers, and Uber shareholders. Don't talk to me about not caring about the public.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.