In a real dev ops environment those things are all worked out in the dev environment and encoded in a module
You're living in fantasy land if you think things are going to work that cleanly. Yes, a module based approach is a good idea and will help to standardize and automate the environment in a way that increases productivity. No, it's not magic and the normal problems of complex environments aren't going to just go away in a puff of code. That's ok though, layer on as much extra complexity as you want, it just means I'll end up getting paid more to untangle the mess.
You used the term "work pool", not me. It's not a term from economics, so I had to guess at what you mean.
It wasn't my choice, a previous poster used it and I just rolled with it. Basically the "work pool" would be the sum of all jobs we'd like people to do if there were human labor available and no automation existed that could do it better. It's a superset that includes the jobs currently in the economy as well as ones that aren't but could be. Humanity has traditionally had a labor shortage that prevented us from filling all of the jobs in the work pool. For example, many manufacturing jobs were in the pool, making more shovels for example, but farming took precedence until enough labor was automated out of that sector to make it worthwhile. There are other ways to explain this phenomenon of course.
If you think that building new server instances is the main function of sysadmins then you have a very strange view of the job. I agree that the new configuration tools will make a job that VMs & scripting had made easy even easier. It looks like you're mostly engaged in a game of "rename the job" in order to show it going away. *shrug* Yes, over the next 10-20 years I expect the overall number of sysadmins to decline and the required skill levels to rise, but the job isn't going anywhere.
The sysadmin of the future is a few automated scripts managed by developers and a few call center guys clicking buttons in a browser that trigger scripts worked out by those developers.
That's extremely unlikely without significant AI. Sysadmin work is rarely rote and thus difficult to automate. There are some portions that can be enhanced using new tools and that will likely lead to productivity increases and reduced total need for sysadmins, but that's no where near what you're talking about. Scripting is not a new thing.
Yes, because minimum wage laws and other laws have increasingly priced people out of the market. That's not due to automation; automation is just the response.
That is indeed something that happens when the minimum wage is increased due to some jobs not being economic at the new minimum price. That's not what I was talking about though, technology has eliminated huge numbers of jobs. For example, you'll find virtually zero positions for humans to act as grain reapers now, yet at one time that was a huge use of labor. That shrinks the overall work pool. At the time, it didn't matter so much because the work pool was still vastly larger than the labor pool, so after a very painful period of readjustment those workers mostly moved on to other positions. (largely in manufacturing)
Yes, that's a very good point, although calling lower skilled labor "worthless" is going a bit too far.
Well, that labor will get a zero bid when tendered on the labor market due to automation being a perfect (and cheaper) substitute. I wasn't attempting to make a value judgement about their worth as a person.
Over the past couple of centuries, automation has never shrunk the available work pool. Why would it start doing that now?
False, the available work pool has shrunk enormously, it's just that despite shrinkage it's always still been larger than the labor pool. We appear to be approaching a situation where that may no longer be the case.
It increases the marginal productivity of higher value labor, which is a slightly more nuanced version of what you're saying. Labor with a value lower than that of the automation is now worthless. Over time the value of the automation keeps rising while the value of human labor has some pretty hard limits. In the past this problem was solved by the lower value labor moving to other sectors of the economy that weren't yet automated. The problem is, they're running out of sectors to move to. The resource sector is highly automated, the manufacturing sector is getting that way and now it's encroaching on the service sector. The remaining portions of the economy after you subtract those three are pretty small, it's hard to see how they're going to expand enough to absorb all of those extra people.
Most definitions of a living wage I've seen look pretty reasonable. Food, housing, clothing, utilities, basic transportation, health care, a minimal amount of recreation. That's about as low as you can go without just being human cattle.
Well the other option is to accept that there may be mass starvation, social unrest and possibly a civil war. Frankly a social safety net sounds cheaper.
Which is a serious concern for society as a whole, but not something individual employers can really afford to take into account. It's a classic market failure due to externality.
Now, who is going to take your rubbish away, fix your plumbing, repair sewers, build homes, teach your children, nurse you in hospital etc etc, if none of those people can afford to live in your scintillating wonder-city?
Robots fairly soon. Until then the lower classes will be pushed outwards and have to put up with long commutes. Wages will rise just enough to offset the cost and inconvenience so that they don't all move to Kansas instead, but not enough to actually make it worth it in terms of quality of life. Being poor sucked in the past, it sucks in the present and it'll suck in the future. Feel free to propose a new socio-economic system that we haven't already tried as the one we're using now is merely the least bad option rather than a perfect solution.
People who have made their lives in San Francisco, especially in the arts, have a right to stay where they are.
Apparently your education was somewhat lacking as you have no concept of the difference between a right and a sense of entitlement. If you want to stay where you are then purchase the property, otherwise if you can't afford to live there then it's time to move. Welcome to capitalism, the worst system imaginable, except all the others.
On Earth no, except the high value items though that is more than you might think. Still, there are a huge number of uses for Asteroid mining products off Earth. Most likely a profitable course of action would be to go after high value targets for shipment to Earth and then use the assorted byproducts for off Earth projects, of which there are many valuable candidates. The only real reason this hasn't happened already is the high cost of getting out of our gravity well. Solve that and you'll see an explosion of off Earth activity. There are actually a variety of solutions to that problem that don't require new science, mostly just new engineering.
The ocean is big. I mean huge. Massive. A little mineral exploration isn't going to harm it at all.
True, but if it's profitable they won't be planning on doing just a little. I'm all for it, but a bit of thinking about it ahead of time and some sensible regulations could head off a huge number of unnecessary environmental impacts.
Well, if you're going to mine raw materials in space and ship them to Earth, they would need to be high value items rather than bulk commodities. Things like Platinum, Osmium, etc. Iron would likely never make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Monsanto & Con-Agra want a piece of that action. Genetically engineered aqua farming for purposes of whale oil harvesting, what's not to like?
In a real dev ops environment those things are all worked out in the dev environment and encoded in a module
You're living in fantasy land if you think things are going to work that cleanly. Yes, a module based approach is a good idea and will help to standardize and automate the environment in a way that increases productivity. No, it's not magic and the normal problems of complex environments aren't going to just go away in a puff of code. That's ok though, layer on as much extra complexity as you want, it just means I'll end up getting paid more to untangle the mess.
You used the term "work pool", not me. It's not a term from economics, so I had to guess at what you mean.
It wasn't my choice, a previous poster used it and I just rolled with it. Basically the "work pool" would be the sum of all jobs we'd like people to do if there were human labor available and no automation existed that could do it better. It's a superset that includes the jobs currently in the economy as well as ones that aren't but could be. Humanity has traditionally had a labor shortage that prevented us from filling all of the jobs in the work pool. For example, many manufacturing jobs were in the pool, making more shovels for example, but farming took precedence until enough labor was automated out of that sector to make it worthwhile. There are other ways to explain this phenomenon of course.
If you think that building new server instances is the main function of sysadmins then you have a very strange view of the job. I agree that the new configuration tools will make a job that VMs & scripting had made easy even easier. It looks like you're mostly engaged in a game of "rename the job" in order to show it going away. *shrug* Yes, over the next 10-20 years I expect the overall number of sysadmins to decline and the required skill levels to rise, but the job isn't going anywhere.
Labor force participation rates are not a measure of net change in the size of the work pool.
The sysadmin of the future is a few automated scripts managed by developers and a few call center guys clicking buttons in a browser that trigger scripts worked out by those developers.
That's extremely unlikely without significant AI. Sysadmin work is rarely rote and thus difficult to automate. There are some portions that can be enhanced using new tools and that will likely lead to productivity increases and reduced total need for sysadmins, but that's no where near what you're talking about. Scripting is not a new thing.
Yes, those other things increase the work pool. The net change is tough to measure though.
Yes, because minimum wage laws and other laws have increasingly priced people out of the market. That's not due to automation; automation is just the response.
That is indeed something that happens when the minimum wage is increased due to some jobs not being economic at the new minimum price. That's not what I was talking about though, technology has eliminated huge numbers of jobs. For example, you'll find virtually zero positions for humans to act as grain reapers now, yet at one time that was a huge use of labor. That shrinks the overall work pool. At the time, it didn't matter so much because the work pool was still vastly larger than the labor pool, so after a very painful period of readjustment those workers mostly moved on to other positions. (largely in manufacturing)
Yes, that's a very good point, although calling lower skilled labor "worthless" is going a bit too far.
Well, that labor will get a zero bid when tendered on the labor market due to automation being a perfect (and cheaper) substitute. I wasn't attempting to make a value judgement about their worth as a person.
Over the past couple of centuries, automation has never shrunk the available work pool. Why would it start doing that now?
False, the available work pool has shrunk enormously, it's just that despite shrinkage it's always still been larger than the labor pool. We appear to be approaching a situation where that may no longer be the case.
It increases the marginal productivity of higher value labor, which is a slightly more nuanced version of what you're saying. Labor with a value lower than that of the automation is now worthless. Over time the value of the automation keeps rising while the value of human labor has some pretty hard limits. In the past this problem was solved by the lower value labor moving to other sectors of the economy that weren't yet automated. The problem is, they're running out of sectors to move to. The resource sector is highly automated, the manufacturing sector is getting that way and now it's encroaching on the service sector. The remaining portions of the economy after you subtract those three are pretty small, it's hard to see how they're going to expand enough to absorb all of those extra people.
Most definitions of a living wage I've seen look pretty reasonable. Food, housing, clothing, utilities, basic transportation, health care, a minimal amount of recreation. That's about as low as you can go without just being human cattle.
It all depends on how good the killbots are and of course whether or not they have a pre-set kill limit.
Well the other option is to accept that there may be mass starvation, social unrest and possibly a civil war. Frankly a social safety net sounds cheaper.
Which is a serious concern for society as a whole, but not something individual employers can really afford to take into account. It's a classic market failure due to externality.
Essential? Since when is cellular service an essential service?
Since at least a decade ago when phone booths went the way of the dodo bird, however that's not the issue under discussion, which is internet access.
Also, how is that a power imbalance? Are you claiming you can't cross out that section and get the sales agent to sign it?
LOL. Go ahead and try to negotiate the terms of your next cell contract and let us know how it goes. It's take it or leave it pal.
Right, because there are never power imbalances in negotiations for essential services.
You can't eliminate complexity with hand waving.
The purpose of modularization isn't to eliminate complexity but to compartmentalize it. This allows for design and problem resolution by mere mortals.
So far, they've been deciding they like it just the way it is.
Now, who is going to take your rubbish away, fix your plumbing, repair sewers, build homes, teach your children, nurse you in hospital etc etc, if none of those people can afford to live in your scintillating wonder-city?
Robots fairly soon. Until then the lower classes will be pushed outwards and have to put up with long commutes. Wages will rise just enough to offset the cost and inconvenience so that they don't all move to Kansas instead, but not enough to actually make it worth it in terms of quality of life. Being poor sucked in the past, it sucks in the present and it'll suck in the future. Feel free to propose a new socio-economic system that we haven't already tried as the one we're using now is merely the least bad option rather than a perfect solution.
People who have made their lives in San Francisco, especially in the arts, have a right to stay where they are.
Apparently your education was somewhat lacking as you have no concept of the difference between a right and a sense of entitlement. If you want to stay where you are then purchase the property, otherwise if you can't afford to live there then it's time to move. Welcome to capitalism, the worst system imaginable, except all the others.
On Earth no, except the high value items though that is more than you might think. Still, there are a huge number of uses for Asteroid mining products off Earth. Most likely a profitable course of action would be to go after high value targets for shipment to Earth and then use the assorted byproducts for off Earth projects, of which there are many valuable candidates. The only real reason this hasn't happened already is the high cost of getting out of our gravity well. Solve that and you'll see an explosion of off Earth activity. There are actually a variety of solutions to that problem that don't require new science, mostly just new engineering.
The ocean is big. I mean huge. Massive. A little mineral exploration isn't going to harm it at all.
True, but if it's profitable they won't be planning on doing just a little. I'm all for it, but a bit of thinking about it ahead of time and some sensible regulations could head off a huge number of unnecessary environmental impacts.
Well, if you're going to mine raw materials in space and ship them to Earth, they would need to be high value items rather than bulk commodities. Things like Platinum, Osmium, etc. Iron would likely never make sense.
we have no replacement for Capitalism at this time.
Sure we do, it's just that most of the choices suck even worse. Feudalism 2.0 anyone?