I learned a long time ago, that success on any project is learning to manage change.
For whatever reason, software tools just keep changing.
1. Separate your layers. As others have said already (MVC...) 2. Try not to use special functionality in a particular choice of technology. This will make getting off that particular technology choice easy when porting to a different vendor or technology. You can be a bit of a pain enforcing this, but ultimately, it is good. It requires good judgment. For example, I personally would have avoided using lamda expressions in any language prior to it being availabe in c++/Java/.NET. 3. Learn to use bridges. Sometimes you can't port something due to a lack of resources or time or whatever. Don't be afraid to throw computing power at the problem. I have a simple rule that will probably annoy people. If enough time has passed to outdate your technology choice, chances are computing power has increased enough that you can ignore many performance concerns you had at the time you developed the product. Throw up a webservice proxy or whatever between components. 4. Keep your APIs simple! This one, I can't stress enough. If at all possible, keep your APIs simple between components. If you can stick to basic strings and int or whatever, more power to you. Just try to keep it simple. It will make interoperability a million times easier. 5. Stay away from all encompassing frameworks that give you everything. 6. Keep some skilled staff on board for the build process and who know the ins and outs of frameworks.... I think you get the point.
While interesting, my main point was to consider the difference in mentality between healthcare, education, and transit.
Historically, education and healthcare have also had significant pay per use models.
But in this age of large government, I just find it strange that healthcare and education get tossed into the government should pay for it bucket, no matter how much you use or your ability to pay.
Yet, transit, gets tossed into the pay per use bucket.
Maybe pay per use is better or more efficient. Maybe government pays and organizes is better or more efficient. Who knows.
I just find it odd that transit gets treated so differently in the minds of the modern populace.
Why is it that transit; for both roads as well as public transit always gets hit by people talking about pay per use. As if it is somehow natural and obvious that transit should be pay per use.
Yet, healthcare... oh no... for that it should be universal (I'm Canadian) or even in the US it should be covered under insurance.
Or education, it should be public and everyone gets it.
The irony of it all is that the cost to support transit and roads is miniscule compared to the costs of healthcare and education.
I'm in Ontario (Canada) and my province spends something like 40% of its budget on healthcare. Transit and roads gets a fraction of it all. Yet, when it comes time to budget. It's always... increase transit fares or put tolls on drivers...
Transit/roads is something people use day in and day out every single day. If there is such a thing as a public resource, transit and roads are it.
Yet, it seems these days everyone thinks it is 'logical' to that have it pay per use.
I'm not against various kind of pricing on things. But I just find it curious how transit/roads get tossed in the bucket of pay per use, but education and healthcare, which consume so much money get thrown into the the government should pay for it bucket.
Let us suppose it is the most efficient, it doesn't change the reality that healthcare is highly unaffordable.
The basic NHS model of providing medical care without asking what can we afford is not a good one. It is good for doctors and medical staff who get to operate in a world of ignorance.
This mentality highly permeates the public sector. Whether it is healthcare, education, military, police.. They just want to do 'good' and of course the money for them to do good should just appear.
In the end, healthcare is just expensive. Doctors, nurses, drugs, devices... cost a lot of money. Taxes and public insurance can help a bit. But in the end, it just cost a lot of money. Surgeries cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. If during your old age, you get hit with ailments and have to go through a few major surgeries or a bout of long term care, you're probably have more healthcare dollars spent on you than you earned during most of your life.
That's just not sustainable.
So things like end of life talks (Which I know NHS is better at than most countries), palliative care, rationing, 'death-panels'.... are inevitable.
Unfortunately, governments have largely sold the healthcare bucket to the public, not as a public insurance system which is going to have to deny some people treatment, but as a hey 'you get free healthcare'. If there is a treatment, people want it and they expect it because they paid for it and it is a public system.
Healthcare in its current form is going to drain all governments. This is not an attack on the efficiency of systems. I'm Canadian, and ours is pretty good. It doesn't change the reality that almost 50% of my province's tax dollars goes to healthcare. That's not really sustainable.
You can't just blame it on 'ideological' reasons. Healthcare is unaffordable in its current form in pretty much all industrialized countries. This doesn't mean it can't be changed to make it more sustainable. But there will have to be some very substantial changes. Most of it having to do with end-of-life care and rationing.
Corporate tax in the global world is very complex.
On the one hand, you have global companies who create products/services in lots of countries.
So where do they 'book' their profits? The ability to choose a place to book profits is something that has to be done.
Now, this of course has resulted in companies doing little/no work in certain countries, yet picking it as the country to 'book' their profits due to the low rate.
This is not a complete game. For example, Apple pays US corporate taxes on the income it gains inside the US. The issue is generally, what does Apple do with the profits it earns outside the US.
Nonetheless, let's say Apple does almost all it's work in the US. Yet, it sells iphones in say India. I can bet you there are a bunch of Indians who would then see Apple taking their country's money overseas, So they of course think, they should get a slice of Apple's corporate taxes as well
There's no real moral absolute to say that Apple should book it's foreign income earned in India to the US so the US government benefits.
Quite frankly it's a giant game. And almost every loophole probably has a legitimate use case somewhere.
Well sure. That's one way to look at the world and for the moment, let us suppose it is just which assholes get richer.
I'd much rather some asshole get rich providing me with a service/product that I actually want to use.
Yes, I'd rather some asshole get rich providing me with good transportation, communication, housing, shelter, food... you know all the things you want/need in your life.
Better still, a rich asshole who interferes the least with my life.
It absolutely matters who that rich asshole is and what he does. Even if you take this rather rich asshole view of the world, you'd be a food to treat all rich assholes equally.
At least with the government running things, they can enforce cost controls, have people in it for the long term...
But long ago, people found out that was just not innovative enough and wasn't as productive as many private sector outfits.
So what did the US... and many other countries do. They try and get the best of all worlds, and end up with the worst of everything.
They try and control and run it via government, while pushing production to the private sector.
Sadly, most of the things that make the private sector work are absent in government due to the government controlling it.
free-competition - not there... replaced by a single purchases with a complex bid process failure - well government can't fail, so it's not like if they make bad choices/purchasing decisions that they are out of business. simple transaction - nothing is simple with the government. It is not just about getting the job done at a good price. It is about various other mandates (propping up this or that group, meeting untold regulation if they are needed or not,....)
It's going to be interesting, but there are still a few key functions the local dealer provides
1. A place to test drive the car. I don't know about you, but i'm not spending 30k on a car without test driving it. This is going to require some kind of showroom/test drive area which has to be staffed. Now maybe, the manufacturers like Tesla set these up on their own and get rid of the middle man. Or maybe people get used to not test driving it.
2. Service. Some people have a higher degree of trust for the dealer when it comes to repairs. They might cost more, but they're probably more reputable than an unknown shop. Sure not better than the rare quality honest mechanic you find. And this has to be local.
While all true, you assume the free market has to serve efficiency.
In truth, the base for the free market is simply that 1. sellers sell whatever they want at whatever price they want 2. consumer purchase what they want, from whoever they want, and the price they agree to
In the grand scheme, it has tended to benefit consumer via lower prices. But I wouldn't say that is the goal. Producers/sellers are just as much people as any body else. If they can charge more by convenience fees... more power to them.
Now yes, there are various things that get added to this equation... monopolies, externalities, fraud, standards.... that we use to make sure things are accounted for and some extreme restrictions. But at the end it is merely the choice that matters.
If it is inefficient... it's all 'good'. It just means the producers are getting a better deal. And it's easy to think of producers as 'nameless' corporations. But they include workers as well.
Ask anyone who has worked in a protected field, or a field with certain restrictions on who gets in, or maybe just a rare skill that they don't each other people... and chances are they enjoy better labor and pay conditions than others.
In short... efficiency... whoever said that should be the overriding goal of the world? I'm not saying it is good to be inefficient. I'm just saying... efficiency isn't a trump card to say... that is the way we should go.
There are loads of other goals like good pay for labor, stability, knowledge...
yes, the industrial revolution caused all kinds of unrest.
Some might even claim communism and fascism as political movements were directly related to the industrial revolution. That's some mighty big political changes. In my view, both arose because it became possible for leaders to see organizing society in production as a viable way.
In any case, what the OP points out is what makes 'tech' different. And 'tech' definitely has some big differences. As he rightly points out, in the 'new industries' there isn't a 'spiderweb' of mass jobs created. There are relatively few highly skilled positions available.
Tech also replaces 'educated' and 'middle class' labor. Something our politicians love to say are things we need to keep.
Who knows what changes are needed to 'stabilize' the new world. Maybe it will be more organized. Maybe it will be a guaranteed income. Maybe it will be a return to a free-market libertarian world. Maybe we'll just keep chugging along with stimulus for eternity. Maybe it will be a shorter work week and job sharing.
It's not about going back to a 'pre-industrial' world or a 'pre-digital' world. But it is about seeing what is changing and thinking about it.
You can't just assume 'things will work out'. We don't even live in a free-market anymore where that could possible be used on an intellectual level. So much of the economy is government or central bank driven that it's not about passive adjustment. It is about active adjustment whether people like it or not.
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Muslim Disclaimer: There's lots of interpretations of Islam. I'm just telling you my history with it
However, the intelligent design stuff if very familiar to me. In Islam, we were always taught that there is no conflict between science and religion. This makes us different from Christianity. God made gravity. God made plants. If there's aliens, God made aliens. The sun and the moon all rotate perfectly because of God's amazing creation.
Whenever a new scientific fact came up, religious leaders rushed to find any kind of vague wording that would show that Islam thought of it first... or that it is perfectly compatible.
The key point here is that in my life with Islam, there was never a conflict between science and religion. All the science existed because God created the universe and all the rules and mysteries...
So why are people hell bent on teaching intelligent design? Well, at the core, it takes all the scientific facts of evolution... and then says... God guided it. It tries to remove the grand inconsistency between science and religion.
Now, let me be clear, I understand the nuances of the differences. Intelligent design makes it's case on showing that gaps in the evolutionary history point to an intelligent designer. This is a huge point.
However, look at it another way. Intelligent design is basically evolution with a little disclaimer saying 'god did it'. It is certainly better to teach intelligent design than to teach creationism. At least you get some into the actual science of evolution, the fossils, the species, the mutations...
It helps the god-fearing folks to come into the world of science without losing their faith.
I think you really need to step back and look at the big picture.
Education is something that ultimately raises kids. You cannot separate education from values. This is why every tyrant, every political group, every parent, every culture... wants control of education. You control education, you control the kids.
In the case of evolution, sure, you might think it is all about science. But in terms of the greater social battle for our kids, you'd be naive to think it is just about teaching science. The schools are always a battle ground for the values in society. And it will be fought there.
I'm not saying, we shouldn't teach outright evolution in schools. I believe it to be absolutely true. I'm just trying to explain why it is such a threat and why intelligent design is to tempting to teach. You could even see it in a more structured way. That it is a way to bring a scientific concept to a religious community. It helps reduce social tensions and battles for the schools. It helps transition away from the view of pure creationism.
Value based changes take decades and often multiple generations. Let's not pretend otherwise or ignore that evidence.
I'm not even going to pretend to know what the op means by rockstar except a really really really good developer.
One of the interesting problems is should you hire people just good enough to do the job?
On first glance, many people would answer yes.
But this brings a structural problem. There are 'hard' problems that need to be solved. That might be a new architecture, optimization problem, integrating a new product...
But all you have are people who are 'good' enough to do the basic problem.
Whenever you run into one of these problems, you now have to scour and try and poach a 'rockstar' or perhaps hire a consultant. This is a very hard task. Also considering you have only hired 'average' developers, how is your organization going to be qualified to know who is the right 'rock star'?
Not only is this bad for the individual company doing this, it is actually bad for the industry at large. If most companies simply hire average developers, there is no one to grow potential into being a rock-star and most likely, many opportunities simply go unmet. The people capable of being rockstars simply leave the field.
I'll liken this to say the medical profession. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that 90% of what your family doctor does can be done by a nurse, some looking up on textbooks/websites, and be pretty standardized. Heck, the way some family doctors work, it might as well be a pre-made tech-support script. Have this and that ailment, order such and such test...
Now the question is should we then allow nurses and others to perform the job of a family doctor? On first glance, again, my answer is yes... as it would save lots of money.
On the other hand, you have to look at it from the doctor's perspective. Why would a talented individual invest a decade in a career where if they didn't make it to be 'top surgeon or specialist', that they could not just be a family doctor?
It's largely the same in tech. More and more talented people are unwilling to make the investment to become rockstars; especially rock stars in specific fields (graphics, networking, database...).
As to arrogance and working well with others? It just depends on a person by person basis. Some are worth it, others not so much. Quite frankly, part of the problem is professionalism. Without a proper apprenticeship or professional training, many developers don't get to learn the people side of things. When you learn from a mentor, you don't just pick up technical skills. You also learn how to act.
One of my friends is on track to be a doctor. He's just one of the guys. But when he was doing his schooling and residency, they teach them what to wear, how to address people...
I'm sure there are doctors who are complete jerks. But I think their training allows them to function well enough to hide their jerkiness.
Most mid life people would gladly take lower pay after spending many years in industry.
The core problem is that entrenched teachers already have the teaching spots so the new teacher can't get in.
Or the new teacher has to enter a system filled with such bureaucracy that it doesn't work.
I'm one of them. I've been in industry for over 10 years now. I have my Bachelor of education and would love to teacher math or computer science. During my degree, we had to spend about half a year in class, and I absolutely loved it and the kids loved it too.
Now I try getting a job in education. Well (in Ontario, Canada), there is a scarcity of teaching jobs. It pays very well and unless you get in right away after graduation, you are likely to spend years on the supply list before getting in. Once in, few people leave.
Not to mention the heavy union atmosphere in the schools.
Like I said... so long as there is a single job that needs doing... we have to be concerned with jobs.
I'm not arguing that governments don't print money and give it out to which ever group they want.
Giving people a basic income that would give them a decent life (good housing, food, internet...) and any work that HAS to be done will have a hard time being done.
Sure, a lot of the 'nice work' will get done. Research will get done. Some education, some healthcare, some art...
But who would pick fruits, sew mass clothing, work in the mines for lithium to power rechargeable batteries... when there is a basic income that provides a decent life?
So long as there is a single *job* that has to be done by humans, we all have to be concerned with jobs.
This is one of the reason why I'm a big proponent of work sharing as opposed to welfare.
Just picture yourself as one of America's corporate workers today. Slugging it out in brutal competition, 50 hour work weeks, being push and push to squeeze out every last ounce of productivity... and then being told... we need to tax you more to give some people free money... hey relax... it's good for you, they will buy things and stimulate the economy which is good for your company.
That's not going to sit well. Whereas, if you told this corporate worker, maybe you could work 20 hours / week and share the load with this other worker and you can both live a more comfortable life... let less wealthy life, they'd be more up to it.
I fully agree with you that in some ideal world where robots do all the work, we should embrace it.
I'm more addressing the mentality that comes with people saying to not focus on jobs and instead on food.... That typically means people thinking we should be handing out free money to people. And sadly, it is these free-money people who don't think that we still have jobs that are done by people.
Be it the civil unrest in Greece, where fruits still need to be picked; and they're picked by nameless migrant workers.
Or be in in North America, where people want free money to buy clothes; made by nameless textile workers in Asia.
Re:Meanwhile, back at the bean counting dept.
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Cisco Slashes 4,000 Jobs
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I can't help but laugh at this.
My wife is an accountant and boy does she like to argue about these things. We live in the city and often take the subway, especially on weekends. One day, I mentioned that they should try and do something to get people who would otherwise drive to take the subway. For a network system, once it is up and running, the cost of adding people on it is 0.
The subway is going to run every 5 minutes whether there are 50 or 100 people on it.
Man, she jumped on that statement like a pitbull. Took my by surprise, as I just said it in passing. She would not let the idea of a 0 additional cost stand.
Acknowledged that the system still has be funded... that potentially the paying users are subsidizing others... but my only point was that if you could get someone who would have otherwise driven to take the subway which had excess capacity, the additional cost would be 0.
She would have none of it.
I even tried to use the internet example. Once the network is built, it doesn't matter how much people use it (except for transit charges), so pay per GB are a scam. They can control their network for congestion, but beyond that, it is just a scam. She had less trouble with this one, but still fought the idea of 0 additional cost.
I suspect the same mentality is there for business. In reality, the company is playing employees a salary. They're going to come to work and be there. If you have excess capacity of work (to use such a term), why not use it for something productive. I guess the alternative is to get rid of the excess capacity... but if you don't plan to do that or can't do it (work can't be split up...) then make use of it for 0 additional cost.
I'm all for knowing about cost and figures and planning... But it's almost like they learn a few methods and formula and then think that is all there is to business no matter how much reality differs.
Water leaks into basements. Many times, the solution is to use a sumppump to pump the water out rather than a very costly rebuilding of the house and surrounding terrain.
I've bought many products in my life (just recently a car tire pump) that tells you not to run it for more than 15 minutes. It might over heat.
Many people have cars that start leaking oil as they age. They don't spend the money to fix it as long as they can just add enough oil to keep it going.
Now let pay attention to this thing called EARNINGS. This is a company losing money.
Do you expect it to act like the government and magically go into more debt and print money and tax other people to keep itself going and pay its employees?
By all means, let's lobby government to fund engineering jobs and bailout companies the same way we fund the public sector and other fields (healthcare, education...). Let's lobby government to keep out competition like lawyers do. Bbut how do you get angry at a company for layoffs when they're losing money and have been for a long time... and get +5 insightful?
I honestly wonder if these politicians are really ignorant, or if they *get* all the issues and just play politics to try and manage the country.
Like Amazon does provide many *good jobs*. There are a lot of engineering/customer service/managers/sales/product/design jobs that pay very well.
Indeed,building a very efficient, automated fulfillment warehouse will definitely provide SOME very good paying jobs.
Now, here's the big but. As they are automated and make use of scale/computers, that means it will provide a few jobs for some skilled people, but not nearly enough to replace the mass jobs of warehouse workers.
Kind of like 3d printing might make some new jobs in design or 3d printer design... but not enough to repalce the mass assembly jobs.
So, does Obama realize this and is basically accepting the futility of mass jobs and just praising progress and the small number jobs that come with it. You can't escape technology so lets praise it when we can, and play politics to ensure government is big enough to help people affected?
Or does he really think the policies/conditions that worked during the industrial, post WW2 age are eternal? New invention comes, creates new industry... mass jobs created... cycle continues.
And please, don't tell me about the horse and buggy... and how the automobile replaced it and we created many more jobs. Things are always the same, until the different. Scale matters. Automation matters. The degree of use of both matters.
We're now even at a point where even new technologies are unlikely to bring about mass jobs. They're being designed to be highly automated in their manufacturing. There might create enough jobs for a small number of people, but not for the masses.
Just think about America as a whole for minute. Even during Silicon Valley's best times, it was a great center of innovation and provided many many many good jobs... but did it provide enough jobs and money to sustain the United States and its ~300 million people? Heck, I don't even think Silicon Valley generates enough jobs to sustain California:P And now with a more global world and more of the world capable of innovation, this situation isn't going to get better.
Honestly, I don't think pay is really that big an issue for engineers. It's an issue, but not that big of an issue. Most of us make a pretty good living in North America (70-100k) I'd say is there for a decent person. Top stars make more. Some grunts make less. Yet, that is a pretty good upper middle class job.
But I do think the pay has an impact on the top of the line. The field is definitely not attracting top of the line engineering leaders. We're basically running off the last people properly trained in the old companies. In Canada, it's the Nortels, Bells... The result is a total lack of leadership. Everything from management to executive people on the engineering side.
I'm certainly not thinking of leaving the field due to pay. It is more the working conditions. Combining and getting rid of of jobs has most places I've worked at just barely getting things done. Very little in the way of quality or anything you can stand by.
Due to outsourcing, no job security, and decline in prestige, the quality of work and people has declined in most places to the point where I feel I am running around with a fire extinguisher all day. Like a home renovator whose whole job it is to fix botched home repair jobs. Yes, it's fine once in a while. But it's a huge frustration most of the time.
This is engineering. Things should work and run well. Sure, there have always been period of transitions, uncertainty, frustration, new things, bad management... but these days it seems that is all there is apart from a few hyper innovation places which is great for the few hyper innovators in those areas, but that is simply not the vast majority of the work out there.
So yes, I'm definitely thinking of leaving as most of the people I graduated with have. Probably more into the business side.
Yes, increasing efficiency is almost always a good thing.
Where do you find 1 million gainful jobs?
Some will find work in new industries. Some will find work in current industries, probably sharing the time with the other works.
All this automation was supposed to free us up to have more free time.
Now, by no means do I suggest this transition is going to be easy. How do we cope with our dependence on economic growth/stock market? How do we cope with entrenched special interest like public sector unions and bankers who will not let others share in their privilege?
But the problem is not a 'lack of jobs'. The problem is the 'distribution of jobs' and the 'position of privilege' that many are used to.
If the day should come that the government is sending people 'welfare' money and we can all live a decent life off that money... many of us would call that utopia.
Actually, I went to a pretty technical university in Canada (Waterloo) and one of the best courses I took was a philosophy course as an elective. It was a great course.
But what surprised me was the poor quality students in the class. I'm an engineering students and the teacher was impressed with my essays and exams...
I think like many of the comments here, I fully agree that the humanities would be great for engineers. Psychology, sociology, philosophy... all great.
In a similar manner, science, logic, math... would be great for humanities.
But, like many, I think the state of the humanities at most schools is in such poor shape and of such poor quality that it is a waste of time. I remember that philosophy course because it was the exception.
I took a history course on WW2 that was mainly just memorization. I took an anthropology course where the major point the professor got across was that people in Jamaica don't have normal families... they have children with lots of women... and this is known as having a baby mama... and this is as good a way of life as any other. I kid you not, and that is not an exaggeration. I remember some Arab kid going nuts over it trying to argue with her. It was all rather comical.
They should up their standards in the humanities instead of being a catch-all for anyone wanting a university degree.
Ah yes... because nobody has been jailed, it is a red herring.
The threat of force has been so successful is what you're saying.
If it is a red herring, then remove the threat of violence... and make it not-mandatory... can't do it... of course not.
"An accurate census is fundamental to any government that's interested in actually governing. Without it, all your decisions are just shots in the dark. You can't set any metrics that determine success, because you don't even know what problems you're supposed to be solving anymore."
And that is ideological. If you believe government should be managing everything (an ideological position) then yes, you need massive amounts of data by scientists.
If you don't believe government should manage everything, then you have no need for such data and it is a waste of resources to fund it.
A simple census based as the conservatives have done fits in very well with their view on how much government should do.
Hey, you seem to operate on the idea that it is a given that government should manage all problems. The least you can do is acknowledge your own ideology instead of claiming it to be simple science.
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I learned a long time ago, that success on any project is learning to manage change.
For whatever reason, software tools just keep changing.
1. Separate your layers. As others have said already (MVC...) ...
2. Try not to use special functionality in a particular choice of technology. This will make getting off that particular technology choice easy when porting to a different vendor or technology. You can be a bit of a pain enforcing this, but ultimately, it is good. It requires good judgment. For example, I personally would have avoided using lamda expressions in any language prior to it being availabe in c++/Java/.NET.
3. Learn to use bridges. Sometimes you can't port something due to a lack of resources or time or whatever. Don't be afraid to throw computing power at the problem. I have a simple rule that will probably annoy people. If enough time has passed to outdate your technology choice, chances are computing power has increased enough that you can ignore many performance concerns you had at the time you developed the product. Throw up a webservice proxy or whatever between components.
4. Keep your APIs simple! This one, I can't stress enough. If at all possible, keep your APIs simple between components. If you can stick to basic strings and int or whatever, more power to you. Just try to keep it simple. It will make interoperability a million times easier.
5. Stay away from all encompassing frameworks that give you everything.
6. Keep some skilled staff on board for the build process and who know the ins and outs of frameworks.
I think you get the point.
While interesting, my main point was to consider the difference in mentality between healthcare, education, and transit.
Historically, education and healthcare have also had significant pay per use models.
But in this age of large government, I just find it strange that healthcare and education get tossed into the government should pay for it bucket, no matter how much you use or your ability to pay.
Yet, transit, gets tossed into the pay per use bucket.
Maybe pay per use is better or more efficient. Maybe government pays and organizes is better or more efficient. Who knows.
I just find it odd that transit gets treated so differently in the minds of the modern populace.
I'm really curious as to the mentality of people.
Why is it that transit; for both roads as well as public transit always gets hit by people talking about pay per use. As if it is somehow natural and obvious that transit should be pay per use.
Yet, healthcare... oh no... for that it should be universal (I'm Canadian) or even in the US it should be covered under insurance.
Or education, it should be public and everyone gets it.
The irony of it all is that the cost to support transit and roads is miniscule compared to the costs of healthcare and education.
I'm in Ontario (Canada) and my province spends something like 40% of its budget on healthcare. Transit and roads gets a fraction of it all. Yet, when it comes time to budget. It's always... increase transit fares or put tolls on drivers...
Transit/roads is something people use day in and day out every single day. If there is such a thing as a public resource, transit and roads are it.
Yet, it seems these days everyone thinks it is 'logical' to that have it pay per use.
I'm not against various kind of pricing on things. But I just find it curious how transit/roads get tossed in the bucket of pay per use, but education and healthcare, which consume so much money get thrown into the the government should pay for it bucket.
Let us suppose it is the most efficient, it doesn't change the reality that healthcare is highly unaffordable.
The basic NHS model of providing medical care without asking what can we afford is not a good one. It is good for doctors and medical staff who get to operate in a world of ignorance.
This mentality highly permeates the public sector. Whether it is healthcare, education, military, police.. They just want to do 'good' and of course the money for them to do good should just appear.
In the end, healthcare is just expensive. Doctors, nurses, drugs, devices... cost a lot of money. Taxes and public insurance can help a bit. But in the end, it just cost a lot of money. Surgeries cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. If during your old age, you get hit with ailments and have to go through a few major surgeries or a bout of long term care, you're probably have more healthcare dollars spent on you than you earned during most of your life.
That's just not sustainable.
So things like end of life talks (Which I know NHS is better at than most countries), palliative care, rationing, 'death-panels'.... are inevitable.
Unfortunately, governments have largely sold the healthcare bucket to the public, not as a public insurance system which is going to have to deny some people treatment, but as a hey 'you get free healthcare'. If there is a treatment, people want it and they expect it because they paid for it and it is a public system.
Healthcare in its current form is going to drain all governments. This is not an attack on the efficiency of systems. I'm Canadian, and ours is pretty good. It doesn't change the reality that almost 50% of my province's tax dollars goes to healthcare. That's not really sustainable.
You can't just blame it on 'ideological' reasons.
Healthcare is unaffordable in its current form in pretty much all industrialized countries. This doesn't mean it can't be changed to make it more sustainable. But there will have to be some very substantial changes. Most of it having to do with end-of-life care and rationing.
Corporate tax in the global world is very complex.
On the one hand, you have global companies who create products/services in lots of countries.
So where do they 'book' their profits? The ability to choose a place to book profits is something that has to be done.
Now, this of course has resulted in companies doing little/no work in certain countries, yet picking it as the country to 'book' their profits due to the low rate.
This is not a complete game. For example, Apple pays US corporate taxes on the income it gains inside the US. The issue is generally, what does Apple do with the profits it earns outside the US.
Nonetheless, let's say Apple does almost all it's work in the US. Yet, it sells iphones in say India.
I can bet you there are a bunch of Indians who would then see Apple taking their country's money overseas, So they of course think, they should get a slice of Apple's corporate taxes as well
There's no real moral absolute to say that Apple should book it's foreign income earned in India to the US so the US government benefits.
Quite frankly it's a giant game. And almost every loophole probably has a legitimate use case somewhere.
Well sure. That's one way to look at the world and for the moment, let us suppose it is just which assholes get richer.
I'd much rather some asshole get rich providing me with a service/product that I actually want to use.
Yes, I'd rather some asshole get rich providing me with good transportation, communication, housing, shelter, food... you know all the things you want/need in your life.
Better still, a rich asshole who interferes the least with my life.
It absolutely matters who that rich asshole is and what he does. Even if you take this rather rich asshole view of the world, you'd be a food to treat all rich assholes equally.
And this sadly, is the worst of all outcomes.
At least with the government running things, they can enforce cost controls, have people in it for the long term...
But long ago, people found out that was just not innovative enough and wasn't as productive as many private sector outfits.
So what did the US... and many other countries do.
They try and get the best of all worlds, and end up with the worst of everything.
They try and control and run it via government, while pushing production to the private sector.
Sadly, most of the things that make the private sector work are absent in government due to the government controlling it.
free-competition - not there... replaced by a single purchases with a complex bid process
failure - well government can't fail, so it's not like if they make bad choices/purchasing decisions that they are out of business.
simple transaction - nothing is simple with the government. It is not just about getting the job done at a good price. It is about various other mandates (propping up this or that group, meeting untold regulation if they are needed or not,....)
It's going to be interesting, but there are still a few key functions the local dealer provides
1. A place to test drive the car. I don't know about you, but i'm not spending 30k on a car without test driving it. This is going to require some kind of showroom/test drive area which has to be staffed. Now maybe, the manufacturers like Tesla set these up on their own and get rid of the middle man. Or maybe people get used to not test driving it.
2. Service. Some people have a higher degree of trust for the dealer when it comes to repairs. They might cost more, but they're probably more reputable than an unknown shop. Sure not better than the rare quality honest mechanic you find. And this has to be local.
It will be interesting to say the lease\t
While all true, you assume the free market has to serve efficiency.
In truth, the base for the free market is simply that
1. sellers sell whatever they want at whatever price they want
2. consumer purchase what they want, from whoever they want, and the price they agree to
In the grand scheme, it has tended to benefit consumer via lower prices. But I wouldn't say that is the goal. Producers/sellers are just as much people as any body else. If they can charge more by convenience fees... more power to them.
Now yes, there are various things that get added to this equation... monopolies, externalities, fraud, standards.... that we use to make sure things are accounted for and some extreme restrictions. But at the end it is merely the choice that matters.
If it is inefficient... it's all 'good'. It just means the producers are getting a better deal. And it's easy to think of producers as 'nameless' corporations. But they include workers as well.
Ask anyone who has worked in a protected field, or a field with certain restrictions on who gets in, or maybe just a rare skill that they don't each other people... and chances are they enjoy better labor and pay conditions than others.
In short... efficiency... whoever said that should be the overriding goal of the world? I'm not saying it is good to be inefficient. I'm just saying... efficiency isn't a trump card to say... that is the way we should go.
There are loads of other goals like good pay for labor, stability, knowledge...
yes, the industrial revolution caused all kinds of unrest.
Some might even claim communism and fascism as political movements were directly related to the industrial revolution. That's some mighty big political changes. In my view, both arose because it became possible for leaders to see organizing society in production as a viable way.
In any case, what the OP points out is what makes 'tech' different. And 'tech' definitely has some big differences. As he rightly points out, in the 'new industries' there isn't a 'spiderweb' of mass jobs created. There are relatively few highly skilled positions available.
Tech also replaces 'educated' and 'middle class' labor. Something our politicians love to say are things we need to keep.
Who knows what changes are needed to 'stabilize' the new world. Maybe it will be more organized. Maybe it will be a guaranteed income. Maybe it will be a return to a free-market libertarian world. Maybe we'll just keep chugging along with stimulus for eternity. Maybe it will be a shorter work week and job sharing.
It's not about going back to a 'pre-industrial' world or a 'pre-digital' world. But it is about seeing what is changing and thinking about it.
You can't just assume 'things will work out'.
We don't even live in a free-market anymore where that could possible be used on an intellectual level. So much of the economy is government or central bank driven that it's not about passive adjustment. It is about active adjustment whether people like it or not.
medcine, law, banking, government work, education...
More professionalism and stability and experience makes you more valuable.
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Muslim
Disclaimer: There's lots of interpretations of Islam. I'm just telling you my history with it
However, the intelligent design stuff if very familiar to me. In Islam, we were always taught that there is no conflict between science and religion. This makes us different from Christianity. God made gravity. God made plants. If there's aliens, God made aliens. The sun and the moon all rotate perfectly because of God's amazing creation.
Whenever a new scientific fact came up, religious leaders rushed to find any kind of vague wording that would show that Islam thought of it first... or that it is perfectly compatible.
The key point here is that in my life with Islam, there was never a conflict between science and religion. All the science existed because God created the universe and all the rules and mysteries...
So why are people hell bent on teaching intelligent design? Well, at the core, it takes all the scientific facts of evolution... and then says... God guided it.
It tries to remove the grand inconsistency between science and religion.
Now, let me be clear, I understand the nuances of the differences. Intelligent design makes it's case on showing that gaps in the evolutionary history point to an intelligent designer. This is a huge point.
However, look at it another way. Intelligent design is basically evolution with a little disclaimer saying 'god did it'. It is certainly better to teach intelligent design than to teach creationism. At least you get some into the actual science of evolution, the fossils, the species, the mutations...
It helps the god-fearing folks to come into the world of science without losing their faith.
I think you really need to step back and look at the big picture.
Education is something that ultimately raises kids. You cannot separate education from values. This is why every tyrant, every political group, every parent, every culture... wants control of education. You control education, you control the kids.
In the case of evolution, sure, you might think it is all about science. But in terms of the greater social battle for our kids, you'd be naive to think it is just about teaching science. The schools are always a battle ground for the values in society. And it will be fought there.
I'm not saying, we shouldn't teach outright evolution in schools. I believe it to be absolutely true. I'm just trying to explain why it is such a threat and why intelligent design is to tempting to teach. You could even see it in a more structured way. That it is a way to bring a scientific concept to a religious community. It helps reduce social tensions and battles for the schools. It helps transition away from the view of pure creationism.
Value based changes take decades and often multiple generations. Let's not pretend otherwise or ignore that evidence.
I'm not even going to pretend to know what the op means by rockstar except a really really really good developer.
One of the interesting problems is should you hire people just good enough to do the job?
On first glance, many people would answer yes.
But this brings a structural problem. There are 'hard' problems that need to be solved. That might be a new architecture, optimization problem, integrating a new product...
But all you have are people who are 'good' enough to do the basic problem.
Whenever you run into one of these problems, you now have to scour and try and poach a 'rockstar' or perhaps hire a consultant. This is a very hard task. Also considering you have only hired 'average' developers, how is your organization going to be qualified to know who is the right 'rock star'?
Not only is this bad for the individual company doing this, it is actually bad for the industry at large. If most companies simply hire average developers, there is no one to grow potential into being a rock-star and most likely, many opportunities simply go unmet. The people capable of being rockstars simply leave the field.
I'll liken this to say the medical profession. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that 90% of what your family doctor does can be done by a nurse, some looking up on textbooks/websites, and be pretty standardized. Heck, the way some family doctors work, it might as well be a pre-made tech-support script.
Have this and that ailment, order such and such test...
Now the question is should we then allow nurses and others to perform the job of a family doctor? On first glance, again, my answer is yes... as it would save lots of money.
On the other hand, you have to look at it from the doctor's perspective. Why would a talented individual invest a decade in a career where if they didn't make it to be 'top surgeon or specialist', that they could not just be a family doctor?
It's largely the same in tech. More and more talented people are unwilling to make the investment to become rockstars; especially rock stars in specific fields (graphics, networking, database...).
As to arrogance and working well with others?
It just depends on a person by person basis.
Some are worth it, others not so much.
Quite frankly, part of the problem is professionalism.
Without a proper apprenticeship or professional training, many developers don't get to learn the people side of things. When you learn from a mentor, you don't just pick up technical skills. You also learn how to act.
One of my friends is on track to be a doctor. He's just one of the guys. But when he was doing his schooling and residency, they teach them what to wear, how to address people...
I'm sure there are doctors who are complete jerks. But I think their training allows them to function well enough to hide their jerkiness.
Forget about the initial low-pay.
Most mid life people would gladly take lower pay after spending many years in industry.
The core problem is that entrenched teachers already have the teaching spots so the new teacher can't get in.
Or the new teacher has to enter a system filled with such bureaucracy that it doesn't work.
I'm one of them. I've been in industry for over 10 years now. I have my Bachelor of education and would love to teacher math or computer science. During my degree, we had to spend about half a year in class, and I absolutely loved it and the kids loved it too.
Now I try getting a job in education. Well (in Ontario, Canada), there is a scarcity of teaching jobs. It pays very well and unless you get in right away after graduation, you are likely to spend years on the supply list before getting in. Once in, few people leave.
Not to mention the heavy union atmosphere in the schools.
yes... and when we have robots that can do those tasks, then it will be easier to have such a utopian society.
Until such a time, the basic income needs to be thought out very carefully.
Like I said... so long as there is a single job that needs doing... we have to be concerned with jobs.
I'm not arguing that governments don't print money and give it out to which ever group they want.
Giving people a basic income that would give them a decent life (good housing, food, internet...) and any work that HAS to be done will have a hard time being done.
Sure, a lot of the 'nice work' will get done. Research will get done. Some education, some healthcare, some art...
But who would pick fruits, sew mass clothing, work in the mines for lithium to power rechargeable batteries... when there is a basic income that provides a decent life?
The details are very important.
So long as there is a single *job* that has to be done by humans, we all have to be concerned with jobs.
This is one of the reason why I'm a big proponent of work sharing as opposed to welfare.
Just picture yourself as one of America's corporate workers today. Slugging it out in brutal competition, 50 hour work weeks, being push and push to squeeze out every last ounce of productivity... and then being told... we need to tax you more to give some people free money... hey relax... it's good for you, they will buy things and stimulate the economy which is good for your company.
That's not going to sit well. Whereas, if you told this corporate worker, maybe you could work 20 hours / week and share the load with this other worker and you can both live a more comfortable life... let less wealthy life, they'd be more up to it.
I fully agree with you that in some ideal world where robots do all the work, we should embrace it.
I'm more addressing the mentality that comes with people saying to not focus on jobs and instead on food.... That typically means people thinking we should be handing out free money to people. And sadly, it is these free-money people who don't think that we still have jobs that are done by people.
Be it the civil unrest in Greece, where fruits still need to be picked; and they're picked by nameless migrant workers.
Or be in in North America, where people want free money to buy clothes; made by nameless textile workers in Asia.
I can't help but laugh at this.
My wife is an accountant and boy does she like to argue about these things. We live in the city and often take the subway, especially on weekends. One day, I mentioned that they should try and do something to get people who would otherwise drive to take the subway. For a network system, once it is up and running, the cost of adding people on it is 0.
The subway is going to run every 5 minutes whether there are 50 or 100 people on it.
Man, she jumped on that statement like a pitbull. Took my by surprise, as I just said it in passing. She would not let the idea of a 0 additional cost stand.
Acknowledged that the system still has be funded... that potentially the paying users are subsidizing others... but my only point was that if you could get someone who would have otherwise driven to take the subway which had excess capacity, the additional cost would be 0.
She would have none of it.
I even tried to use the internet example. Once the network is built, it doesn't matter how much people use it (except for transit charges), so pay per GB are a scam. They can control their network for congestion, but beyond that, it is just a scam. She had less trouble with this one, but still fought the idea of 0 additional cost.
I suspect the same mentality is there for business. In reality, the company is playing employees a salary. They're going to come to work and be there. If you have excess capacity of work (to use such a term), why not use it for something productive. I guess the alternative is to get rid of the excess capacity... but if you don't plan to do that or can't do it (work can't be split up...) then make use of it for 0 additional cost.
I'm all for knowing about cost and figures and planning...
But it's almost like they learn a few methods and formula and then think that is all there is to business no matter how much reality differs.
It's hardly a weird world.
Water leaks into basements. Many times, the solution is to use a sumppump to pump the water out rather than a very costly rebuilding of the house and surrounding terrain.
I've bought many products in my life (just recently a car tire pump) that tells you not to run it for more than 15 minutes. It might over heat.
Many people have cars that start leaking oil as they age. They don't spend the money to fix it as long as they can just add enough oil to keep it going.
And who hasn't used duct-tape to seal leaks?
It's hardly a weird world out there.
Let's have a look at ALU stock
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AALU
Price: 2.51
EPS: -1.62
Now let pay attention to this thing called EARNINGS. This is a company losing money.
Do you expect it to act like the government and magically go into more debt and print money and tax other people to keep itself going and pay its employees?
By all means, let's lobby government to fund engineering jobs and bailout companies the same way we fund the public sector and other fields (healthcare, education...). Let's lobby government to keep out competition like lawyers do. Bbut how do you get angry at a company for layoffs when they're losing money and have been for a long time... and get +5 insightful?
I honestly wonder if these politicians are really ignorant, or if they *get* all the issues and just play politics to try and manage the country.
Like Amazon does provide many *good jobs*. There are a lot of engineering/customer service/managers/sales/product/design jobs that pay very well.
Indeed,building a very efficient, automated fulfillment warehouse will definitely provide SOME very good paying jobs.
Now, here's the big but. As they are automated and make use of scale/computers, that means it will provide a few jobs for some skilled people, but not nearly enough to replace the mass jobs of warehouse workers.
Kind of like 3d printing might make some new jobs in design or 3d printer design... but not enough to repalce the mass assembly jobs.
So, does Obama realize this and is basically accepting the futility of mass jobs and just praising progress and the small number jobs that come with it. You can't escape technology so lets praise it when we can, and play politics to ensure government is big enough to help people affected?
Or does he really think the policies/conditions that worked during the industrial, post WW2 age are eternal?
New invention comes, creates new industry... mass jobs created... cycle continues.
And please, don't tell me about the horse and buggy... and how the automobile replaced it and we created many more jobs. Things are always the same, until the different. Scale matters. Automation matters. The degree of use of both matters.
We're now even at a point where even new technologies are unlikely to bring about mass jobs. They're being designed to be highly automated in their manufacturing.
There might create enough jobs for a small number of people, but not for the masses.
Just think about America as a whole for minute. Even during Silicon Valley's best times, it was a great center of innovation and provided many many many good jobs... but did it provide enough jobs and money to sustain the United States and its ~300 million people? Heck, I don't even think Silicon Valley generates enough jobs to sustain California :P And now with a more global world and more of the world capable of innovation, this situation isn't going to get better.
Honestly, I don't think pay is really that big an issue for engineers. It's an issue, but not that big of an issue. Most of us make a pretty good living in North America (70-100k) I'd say is there for a decent person. Top stars make more. Some grunts make less. Yet, that is a pretty good upper middle class job.
But I do think the pay has an impact on the top of the line. The field is definitely not attracting top of the line engineering leaders. We're basically running off the last people properly trained in the old companies. In Canada, it's the Nortels, Bells... The result is a total lack of leadership. Everything from management to executive people on the engineering side.
I'm certainly not thinking of leaving the field due to pay. It is more the working conditions.
Combining and getting rid of of jobs has most places I've worked at just barely getting things done. Very little in the way of quality or anything you can stand by.
Due to outsourcing, no job security, and decline in prestige, the quality of work and people has declined in most places to the point where I feel I am running around with a fire extinguisher all day. Like a home renovator whose whole job it is to fix botched home repair jobs. Yes, it's fine once in a while. But it's a huge frustration most of the time.
This is engineering. Things should work and run well. Sure, there have always been period of transitions, uncertainty, frustration, new things, bad management... but these days it seems that is all there is apart from a few hyper innovation places which is great for the few hyper innovators in those areas, but that is simply not the vast majority of the work out there.
So yes, I'm definitely thinking of leaving as most of the people I graduated with have. Probably more into the business side.
Yes, increasing efficiency is almost always a good thing.
Where do you find 1 million gainful jobs?
Some will find work in new industries.
Some will find work in current industries, probably sharing the time with the other works.
All this automation was supposed to free us up to have more free time.
Now, by no means do I suggest this transition is going to be easy.
How do we cope with our dependence on economic growth/stock market?
How do we cope with entrenched special interest like public sector unions and bankers who will not let others share in their privilege?
But the problem is not a 'lack of jobs'.
The problem is the 'distribution of jobs' and the 'position of privilege' that many are used to.
If the day should come that the government is sending people 'welfare' money and we can all live a decent life off that money... many of us would call that utopia.
Actually, I went to a pretty technical university in Canada (Waterloo) and one of the best courses I took was a philosophy course as an elective. It was a great course.
But what surprised me was the poor quality students in the class. I'm an engineering students and the teacher was impressed with my essays and exams...
I think like many of the comments here, I fully agree that the humanities would be great for engineers. Psychology, sociology, philosophy... all great.
In a similar manner, science, logic, math... would be great for humanities.
But, like many, I think the state of the humanities at most schools is in such poor shape and of such poor quality that it is a waste of time. I remember that philosophy course because it was the exception.
I took a history course on WW2 that was mainly just memorization. I took an anthropology course where the major point the professor got across was that people in Jamaica don't have normal families... they have children with lots of women... and this is known as having a baby mama... and this is as good a way of life as any other. I kid you not, and that is not an exaggeration. I remember some Arab kid going nuts over it trying to argue with her. It was all rather comical.
They should up their standards in the humanities instead of being a catch-all for anyone wanting a university degree.
Ah yes... because nobody has been jailed, it is a red herring.
The threat of force has been so successful is what you're saying.
If it is a red herring, then remove the threat of violence... and make it not-mandatory... can't do it... of course not.
"An accurate census is fundamental to any government that's interested in actually governing. Without it, all your decisions are just shots in the dark. You can't set any metrics that determine success, because you don't even know what problems you're supposed to be solving anymore."
And that is ideological. If you believe government should be managing everything (an ideological position) then yes, you need massive amounts of data by scientists.
If you don't believe government should manage everything, then you have no need for such data and it is a waste of resources to fund it.
A simple census based as the conservatives have done fits in very well with their view on how much government should do.
Hey, you seem to operate on the idea that it is a given that government should manage all problems. The least you can do is acknowledge your own ideology instead of claiming it to be simple science.