Can you give an example? I'm trying to think of how that would apply to the typical Uber driver. Do you mean they would be working during surge time more because they get paid more?

An Uber driver sees a job come in. The customer wants to go from point A to point B. The customer want this to happen in the next ten minutes.

The Uber driver has the choice of taking this job, or not. The Uber driver cannot decide to do the job in three hours time.

The customer can also choose to not give the job in 3 hours time and give it to someone else, app or not.

Or they can learn some skills and work for a different employer or start their own business. The options are always going to be limited for those with the least skills that aren't learning new skills. It's 2017. Never before in the history of mankind has so much knowledge been accessible for so many at such a low cost (typically just the cost of a computer and internet access).

This isn't a viable option for a 40 year old man with limited computer skills (and maybe not even a high school education) and is spending all their free time doing uber to feed and house a family. We can't simply dismiss people for "not working hard/smart enough" when the system is actively working against them to keep them in low-pay jobs

I'm not sure what you mean by "the system" and what prevents a 40 year old man from gaining basic computer skills? It's not rocket surgery and being 40 means they have been around computers basically their whole adult life. But more interesting question is what "the system is actively working against them" actually means? Who is "the system" and what actions do they take?

Most full time TNC drivers I've spoken to only work 50-60 hours a week, which is about the same as what I work at my job. It leaves plenty of time to learn new skills.

The truth is that most people regardless of education and job don't realize how they utilize the 168 hours per week that we all get to split between sleep, work, eating and leisure. When I used to teach, I had students give me the excuse all the time that they didn't have enough time to complete the assignment. I would ask others in the class how long they spent on average and then ask the students making the excuse to give me a rough breakdown of how they spent their last 168 hours. After account for sleep, other classes, other work, meals and liesure, they would routinely be unable to account for about ~40 hours. Most hours are squandered.

Yes, that's normal life.

You have to be very clear and ready to tell people that they have to give that up if they want to survive.

Because in the end that's what people want. A normal life.

Not everyone is passionate. Or driven, or interested in those things that can pay well.

Which means that those hours must be stolen from a whole constellation of distractions (which get better at keeping you engaged) and interactions with other people.

So people have to be made aware that they are going to be more unhappy not doing the work, than if they did do it.

Most people aren't going to think like that.

    Most people aren't going to think like that.

But is the rest of society responsible for coddling those unwilling to contribute? For the record, I have no problem with society supporting those who cannot support themselves by providing those people with welfare. There is a difference between being unable and unwilling to contribute.

Well you have to be the one to tell people, that normal life is no longer ok. That being normal is no longer enough to count as contributing.

That people will mix up normalcy for being coddled.

So your kids have to take a STEM course, because that's the only option to earn enough money (ps earning money != contributing to society).

Or you have to learn to code, even though you don't have the ability or aptitude to do it.

do note that this is not at all about coddling, which is a luxury long lost. Making it about coddling is straw manning the argument. There's massive numbers of people who are unviable today, and can't be retrained in any practical amount of time.

"Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated." - Thomas Sowell

Earning money != equal to contributing to society, but prices are society's most effective way to communicate which contributions it considers value.

Using coding and STEM as your sole examples is a strawman. Mike Rowe, for example, has demonstrated on many occasions that we have a skills gap for many jobs which society needs done that you don't need higher education to perform. There are many jobs that society wants done that aren't STEM or software engineering.

https://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/young-americans-have...

Once many of these and other in-demand jobs are lost to automation, I'll buy the argument that massive numbers of people are unviable, but until then, there are many that still are very much viable that just aren't looking at prices to determine what contributions society finds valuable.

I agree strongly with you

> prices are society's most effective way to communicate which contributions it considers value.

But its not perfect. Its vastly imperfect - for a variety of reasons involving joins/intersections of various systems.

For example - media will always move towards the grosteque or attention grabbing. The feedback loop between

AD -> Money-> Attention competition -> More Attention grabbing ads -> Repeat,

is near guaranteed to spontaneously create the echo chamber effect because of human neurology.

Other examples - the failure of environmental protection, which also involves the direct manipulation of the information by vested interest who spread and maintain FUD.

Not to mention the straight up impact of concentration of wealth, and the ability of a few to then signal value disalgined with the values for the majority.

I've also seen the various examples for other industries, and they too will fail because re-training itself is a torturous and difficult process- even when you have all the time and resources you need.

Tech is a good example because its one of the easier and better covered fields.

Just pointing out that your list of "sleep, work, eating and leisure" included no time for raising or supporting a family.

Seriously. Kids awake 12 hours/day when they're young, overlapping with work during the week which makes that calculation easy. 12x7 = 84. You can kind of do other productive stuff during that time, but not much. 8hrs/night sleep is 56 hours/week, assuming you don't need some time to wind down for sleep (most do).

84+56 = 140. 168 hours in a week. That's 28 hours left for everything that's not kids, work, and sleep. Fixing stuff around the house, keeping your relationship with your partner healthy-ish, prepping for the next day so you aren't constantly running late to everything, cleaning, entertainment, learning, everything. In practice you'll have an average of 2hrs/day that's actually free, maybe, without neglecting sleep, and they'll be your worst, lowest-energy, lowest-motivation hours (work gets all of the best hours 5 days/week, kids do the other 2 days)

Maybe don't have children unless you can afford it? I've put off having children until I have the financial resources to raise them. What is stopping others from doing the same?

It's healthier to have children at younger age.

Irrelevant point. Whether it's fiscally prudent or not is what's at stake. Generally it would seem it's not a good idea (financially) to have kids. If you must, wait until your career is at a point where you can be assured you won't have to raise them in near poverty-like conditions.

So where on your list does going to your daughter's soccer games go? Where does playing catch with your son fall?

So what's going wrong? Why do we have so many people who, in times gone by would have been working semi-skilled or skilled blue-collar jobs, now scrabbling for unskilled work? Why aren't they all learning how to be chemical engineers by reading about it at their local library's internet PC? Clearly just having this knowledge available doesn't work.

I don't ascribe the entire failure to this, but we've put significant barriers in the way of a self-motivated learner.

Chief among these is the arbitrary requirement of many employers that a college degree, and particularly a degree specialized in the career field, is mandatory before any employment can occur.

Not only does this incur significant financial cost, but it also incurs a completely untenable time cost for most people aged 25+, who need to provide both physically and emotionally for themselves and their families.

While one could argue such credentials are important for life-or-death fields like engineering and medicine, the fact of the matter is that most college grads come out with a degree in a soft skill that doesn't really hold a strong relevance to the job they go on to fill in the workforce.

In reality, a college education functions as little more than a class filter. If we want improve accessibility for the self-taught and make merit more meaningful, we should stop demanding arbitrary credentials for jobs that don't really need them.

You would hire a self-taught chemical engineer? Nothing that can possibly go wrong with that.

Right, and education results in MOOCs remain as abysmal as before.

Time, opportunity, survival needs, many things curtail the ability of people to study.

Just the cost of a computer and internet access.

Which I pay for with money from...where, exactly?

Cheap new laptops are in the sub-$200 range. Most educational content is text or simple videos, both of which can be consumed on a cheap laptop. The cheapest broadband plan from Xfinity in my area is $40/month.

That being said, most people participating in the gig economy need access to the Internet to even participate, so most likely already have both a company and internet access.

The people you should be worrying about are those that have no under-utilized assets to capitalize on such as a car or spare room.

>Cheap new laptops are in the sub-$200 range. Most educational content is text or simple videos, both of which can be consumed on a cheap laptop. The cheapest broadband plan from Xfinity in my area is $40/month.

200 bucks a lot for some people, and you have to pass a credit check to get xfinity access.

> That being said, most people participating in the gig economy need access to the Internet to even participate, so most likely already have both a company and internet access.

Cell service != general internet service.

Try bootstrapping yourself into a tech job with only cell phone access. That may work in the third world where the standards are lower, but not in the West.

I manage to do quite a bit during lunches with a $200 computer at places that don't have internet access. Sometimes I use my cell phone to look something up, but I can also just wait until later or check a downloaded pdf.

You don't need to have constant internet access to be able to be productive on a computer. In fact, I'd argue that often not having internet can make you more productive, by not giving you any distractions.

Well, if you know your entire domain well, at least. At work I'm constantly fighting frameworks or APIs or reaching edge cases or error messages I've never seen before that I've had to look up, so I'd be a lot less productive without internet.

But I can program for quite some time in Python, vanilla C#, and to a lesser extent Swift without looking anything up. And back in the day I knew Actionscript so well I never needed the internet to be productive (I miss those days).

Really, you need to be able to not have to context switch a whole lot. All-in-one platforms let you stay in one context; most modern web platforms force you to context switch all the damn time.

I assume that you, like myself, would be coming to the table with prior programing/technical experience. Someone very green would probably have to look things up all the time... I know I did. Also, where do you get the Python interpreter, or the C# or Swift compilers without the internet? I assume this $200 computer is windows, which comes with none of those. Maybe start with JS?

I agree with you, if you know your domain, you can probably do it (with headaches). If you don't, it's very hard or functionally impossible.

All those things can be downloaded from places with free WiFi. Stop in a McDonald's, Starbucks, or library, and download all the compilers and documentation you think you might need for the day or week or month or whatever. I am assuming you're in a part of the world where free WiFi is available somewhere, or a friend you can ask to get something for you (like I did when I was a kid and didn't have internet).

And even without compilers and interpreters, all you REALLY need is a text editor. Or pen and paper, in order to write code. Granted, it helps to verify the code works with compilers and interpreters, but it's possible to step through it manually yourself to verify its accuracy.

It's not too uncommon for me to write a chunk of code in a simple text editor, and then test and fix it up later.

If you're just getting started, download some technical books (you can find free ones online) or some step-by-step tutorials and work through them.

I actually got started programming in classrooms on my calculator, or in Q-Basic/HTML in the days of modems where I had to get permission to dial in to the internet, and everything went so slow I had to know exactly what I was going to get ahead of time, so I often went a long time before finding help online (which was pretty hard to find back then anyway).

I still managed to learn quite a bit. It's definitely possible. Not necessarily a perfect environment for coding, and definitely not ideal for a company that pressures you to perform at peak efficiency, but definitely possible.

And who will hire a 40y.o. worker with no work experience and some internet-taught skills?

More employers than would will hire a 40y.o. worker with no work experience and no skills.

Nobody is suggesting people get hired with no experience and little skill. If you create value for people they'll give you money for it, it's as simple as that.

If people aren't prepared to give you money for it, it's obviously not creating as much value as you think it is. That's nobody's fault but your own.

Ah, the good old Social Darwinism argument.

Survive or die, i am thriving because i am smart, dedicated, hardworking and you won't because likely you miss some of these things (backgrounds do not matter) /s

So how does this person feed their family, then?

They won't be able to.

How does a wild animal feed his family if he can't catch any food? He gets out-competed by more effective individuals.

Given finite resources and unbounded population growth, population must grow to the point where there are not enough resources to support everybody, and then some people have to start dying.

As much as you'd like to invoke social Darwinism, maybe they are secretly lazy or whatever, but there is one underlying issue. We are a modern civilized society. As a society, we have an obligation to prepare our children for the future. "Let them starve" means I'm going to be killed in front of my son behind a theatre by someone who's parents were allowed to starve. The solution isn't to buy a house in a gated community and pretend like problems go away.

Ok. We'll just make sure to move them all next to you while this happens.