This is Hayek 101, and I agree with it strongly in terms of society being a 'complex system' that is difficult/impossible to do much about in a centrally controlled way.

Where I get off that train though is the idea that we should just dump the human leftovers of "creative destruction" (ok, that's not Hayek, but another Austrian, Schumpeter) into the garbage. No government support, no health care, no education, no nothing. They failed, they can go die in the streets, unless "private charities" happen to step in, but by all means let's not create a society-wide system to prop up the inevitable losers in a market-based system to minimum sustenance levels.

I much more strongly identify with Warren Buffet's way of thinking: by all means, get the government mostly out of the way and let markets do their work. But then step in and give people who didn't come out so well a helping hand to get back on their feet. That's not "central planning", that's a safety net.

> Take a look at the comments on this thread. Everybody gets out their favorite political pinata and beats on it. Is this a very productive type of article for this site?

Absolutely not, let's please flag it and ask the moderators to ban these kinds of articles, as they beget political discussions, where we go round and round and round: you can look up very similar sorts of discussions on usenet from the 1980ies if you do some poking.

That isn't Hayek either, though. Some Hayekians, yes, but Hayek himself was in favor of safety nets, and even argued positively for them in a number of places. He grouped basic healthcare along with fire protection and a police service as the minimal services a state should provide, and also supported a subsistence-level guaranteed minimum income (as a direct transfer payment, rather than as some complex combination of food stamps, rent control, housing subsidy, unemployment insurance, etc., etc.). One of his arguments was that a background safety net promotes individual freedom by lessening tribalist instincts--- if there's no safety net, people will cling to things like their church or ethnic group for a safety net, out of fear of being left out in the cold.

I think we all take these models too far -- including fans of Hayek. I wasn't saying that everybody should subscribe to some school of thought. All I was saying is that when politicians use the terms "jobs" and "education", they mean certain things. For "job" they mostly a 9-5 job paying taxes, perhaps with some kind of benefit package, usually with some larger-corporation. When they say "education" they mean some sort of accredited institution that produces degreed folks. Not always, but a lot of the time. We've created these complex, well-funded, intricate, and powerful systems around the "normal" usage of these concepts. With lots of vested interests. Not bad people, or any of that. Just big systems to understand what these words mean and control how we relate to them.

The problem is that a huge swath of people are finding places to create value that don't involve working 9-5 at the mill any more. And an even greater number of folks are getting educated in ways that didn't even exist ten years ago.

Yes, if you a want a social welfare net by all means advocate for one. All I'm saying is that when some guy gets on TV and says we need to spend more money on education in order to produce jobs for the 21st century? Those terms are so far out of whack with what's actually happening as to make the solution worse than the initial problem. Unless your mental model has some small degree of fidelity with reality, your conversations and solutions will never work.

So I think it's entirely possible to separate creating a model of how things actually work -- which may have parts from Hayek or anybody else -- and applying that model to political discussions to get what we'd all like in a society. I had no intention of taking the discussion towards Hayek and letting the sick and poor die in the streets. I'm just pleading with authors like this to at least pick up some ideas from some other folks and take a look to see if the models -- words and relationships -- you are using actually reflect what's happening. Model creation is different from model application. It has to be.

A system that produces 10 year behind laws is fine for an economy that grows over decades, but if there really is a "technological revolution" that can greatly boost economic growth so it doubles not in decades but in years, then the 10 year old laws will become untenable. Unfortunately, this'll have to happen before we even think about the possibility of changing how Presidents, Congresses and Parliaments work.

I worry though, the industrial revolution happened after political, cultural change. "Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market there based on the management of the national debt by the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private financial investment in industrial ventures." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

At the moment, just as then, the governing system is the biggest roadblock to societal growth. In 1688, the parliamentarians overthrew the king of england. Today, however, it'd be lucky if we had a single dictator we can overthrow which would solve all our problems. (Except for some of us from Egypt, etc.)

The irony of my point is... Since our political systems are so entrenched and unchangeable we're unlikely to ever see the sort of societal changes you speak of. The things that've started to happen, will stagnate and stop growing. Therefore, 10 year behind laws will continue to be sufficient for our needs.

The point of the class is to get people to go from "What do I want to be when I grow up" to thinking "How can I add value to some process that people will pay me for." This puts the responsibility for job creation on individuals, not governments, schools, societies, communities, or business.

It amazes and frustrates me to see people who think their craft is so special that they think they should be paid because they are a good designer, programmer, artist. No! You're not paid because you're good at it, you're paid because you create value. Being good at it is only a secondary consideration.

Some where along the line the wires got crossed and basically people became professional whatevers instead of value creators.

They generally teach kids how to make some thing very simple which can actually be sell-able or used to solve a problem.

I and my other friends like 5 other kids had made some 5-6 door mats from cigarette packs alone. And then we were taught how to go and sell them. I remember we had made some thing like 200 rupees back then(A pretty a big amount for kids). There were many such small projects, Many had woven designer baskets. Or some kind of a trivial sofa using cardboard.

Unfortunately I heard, these days that subject is no longer being taught for more fancier things like karate, or learning parts of a computer.

In short, in school they taught us how to hack. Generate wealth.

If it costs me nothing to make a copy of something, then I have no incentive at all to pay money for it. It has no "value" to me. I can copy it instantly for free. And frankly, why should I pay money for it? Sure, someone had to do work to create it in the first place, but once it's created it takes on a life of its own.

And, often, the people doing the creating will do it whether I pay them or not. They do the creating because they want to. Musicians make music because they want to make music. As a programmer, many of the programs I write are ones I want to see exist. Were it not for the necessity of having money to survive, I would happily keep creating and giving away.

The necessity to make money to buy the goods and services I need to survive may be built into the current system. But as we automate more and more and produce a greater and greater surplus it's entirely possible that it could be removed from the system. It will take a change of culture, but there may come a point when we are efficient enough to produce everything we need simply by allowing people to pursue the creative endeavors that interest them and then sharing the results.

We don't have starfleet replication technology. But with digital media, 3d printers, and modern construction means we're pretty damned efficient.

Also, I pay for things I could have gotten for free all the time. Sometimes this is to reward or encourage the person providing it and then it is called a tip or gratuitity (or sometimes donation, though that evokes charity in my mind rather than voluntary payment for something provided). Sometimes it is because paying for it is just more convenient than going out of my way to get the free version.

[Edit: Slight rewording for clarity]

You're right that something can be free and abundant and still be of enormous value. I think my point is more that we should think about ways to restructure society around the sharing of valuable abundance.

Scarcity is still there. You can copy adobe photoshop, but you wouldn't be able to build it from scratch in your basement. This is the scarcity: the intelligence, creativity, and man-hours it takes to build it.

You can copy it easily for free now, but the industry will eventually change. Internet is getting faster and faster and eventually (because of the people that feel they deserve software for free), we will only have software services.

I am a developer and I don't create software applications anymore..only services. It's funny because if this wasn't the case, people could buy my apps for a flat-fee. Now they need to pay me money every month to use it.

You shouldn't try to get paid to do something that someone will do for free or cheap all day long. However, that doesn't mean you can't create value by being a musician, artist, programmer or designer. You just can't do it through the old way of scarcity. Maybe you give away the product, but the support or the t-shirt or whatever costs money.

What used to be the product and scarce is now free or almost free. New products and new forms of scarcity will pop up as people focus on creating value instead of being good at being professionals. The problem is that we've been framing our value creation in terms of "I do x" instead of "I do whatever it takes to create value. I do x, y, and z when it is needed"

Guess what. No retirement! Its a frigging ponzzi scheme! The fact that that isn't foremost on peoples mind as well as other corruptions is proof they're idiots!

I'd say "lingers" is a better choice of words, here.

Which is to say, 'job' might just be one of those labels.

This is _about_ redefining terms and generalizations.

What we're going through is not substantially different from what happened during the industrial revolution, or the invention of the loom. We're talking about the complete obsolescence of an entire group of skilled tradespeople due to automation.

People will continue to work for other people, doing certain things - which is pretty much the definition of "job". In time - possibly not in time for this current generation of unemployed - society will find new jobs for people to do. But jobs they will be.

Coincident with a huge increase in unemployment and a saturation of educated workers without employment, this means a _broad swath_ of the workforce across many strata is simply _going unused._ This is unsurprisingly making us wonder if the concept of everyone having a job is going to die.

The continued existence of jobs wouldn't contravene the death of employment as a societal universal.

which is to say, I'm not saying that there won't be jobs, I'm saying that _what we're actually discussing_ is exactly the deconstruction you recommended.

It won't happen. America will continue to sink against china et al counties with no regulation. I have no mercy.. Don't take my advice. Go out of business

There is NO solution without real pain/sacrifice..