- People are doomed after driverless system breakthrough
- 5 diploma requirement for a new job
- only rich with benefit from technology
- whoever thinks this is not neat thinks they are smarter than average Joe
How does one even address this?
The most important part to understand is that systems operate on a “use it or lose it” principle. This is why no one looks like Arnold while sitting in a chair all day, even if they eat all the protein.
If we stop being useful nothing can stop what we created from chewing us up and spitting us out. And all this while everyone involved may have the best of intentions even.
And most people can’t adapt that fast or at all to this situation. It has happened before, many times and it keeps happening at larger and larger scales, in shorter and shorter periods of time.
The Aztec and Inca didn’t adapt to the European tech and get “jobs”. They went extinct.
I agree with everything the OP has written. I had a similar revelation myself not long ago. I think that I’m one of the smart ones and that I’ll okay, I’ll thrive even. But what about stupid people? Stupid people deserve to have happy lives too.
History shows you to be wrong. It doesn't take a high IQ to use a machine to hugely increase your productivity. And in some cases the machine is easier to operate. I'll take a car over a horse any day.
Salaries for low skill jobs in the US are going up. UPS drivers now get paid close to $200k. The labor shortage is not just for highly skilled, high IQ people.
New technology has only ever resulted in people doing more productive work. That might change. No one can predict the future. But based on history we will continue to see quality of life improve thanks to productivity increases, and employment to stay high.
The one change I would like to see is workers organizing to capture more of the profit and productivity changes they help create. UPS drivers did it. More of that means we all share in the wealth of productivity increases.
We are more interconnected and more surrounded by tech. This is not the same as higher quality of life. It means more tech. Which is the subject. Oh I can watch someone pretend to be NPC on the other side of the globe on a pocket box. Quality of life.
I think it’s telling people want a vacation away from tech and “modern life”. Why would they go for lower quality of life as a vacation?
Productivity has increased by a lot. It's up to voters and workers to get their fair share of those gains. The uber wealthy are not going to willingly give it up.
The key being that UPS drivers are unionized.
If your argument is that the increasingly obsolete humans need to band together and take wealth back from the owners of the robots, then I agree.
My point is, that theory and practice differ, and when they differ it’s not the practice that is wrong, but the theory.
Every time people banded together to take the means of production, it resulted simply in destruction, instant corruption and a new autocratic regime built around the toughest thugs. The utopia does not occur. So clearly this is not the solution for solving our problems. There are problems. And there are solutions. But you need to search elsewhere.
Your union leader is not necessarily on your side. Even if they are, not for long. The system decides how they act, and power corrupts. Watch the strike in Hollywood. Watch how the previous strike in 2007 caused the present situation in 2023, and watch how the union will end up dissolving itself as more and more people will start leaving it. I’m not happy about this. I think workers need to be able to band together in groups and negotiate in groups (called companies, for example). I’m not convinced it should be one all encompassing mob-like group with no alternatives, but that’s just me.
I've worked union jobs and I've worked non-union jobs: the union jobs paid better and came with better benefits than their non-union equivalents. QED.
Humans are into humans. But capitalism isn’t, that much. It doesn’t care about what substrate it’s made of. Its soul is made of money.
Unions make things better for workers in the short term because a business can’t adapt that quick. It’s like a racket. Same like when a lone worker faces few gigantic corporations and they all offer bad jobs. It’s like a racket. But rackets don’t last. Adaptation kicks and the layers shift. And AI is the biggest adaptation ever. It adapts us out of being necessary. Human leverage drops to near zero and with it the union leverage, also.
I wish more people on HN would understand this. Capitalism isn’t your friend. It give you short term wins but in the end, the negative externalities can add up hurt everyone including the vast majority of those who were winning initially.
At first, in all transactions, A and B win at the expense of C. Ancaps only look at A and B being better off. But in the end, almost everyone is a C, and the externalized costs add up for them all.
We need to switch to a more sustainable system before it’s too late. Capitalism’s negative externalities are also destroying the environment and running up an ecological credit card that future generations will have to pay.
“The bill always comes due!” - Mordo (great philosopher)
Slavery and child labor were once common and economically lucrative, today they're very rare in the developed world. It's simply not true that humans can never choose to collectively reject an economically compelling option.
Everyone should be aware of the TTV of these activities (“Time to Venezuela”) and refrain from unionizing.
</sarcasm>
Your socio-economic theory is at odds with what happened in the so-called western world over the last three centuries, but to understand why, one would need to step away from over-generalizing just the most dramatic parts of history, and study the boring bits as well.
It’s like you’re eager to win an argument, you want that reward, so you’re posting, but you’re too lazy to actually make an argument. So you kind of keep posting half way and declaring yourself a winner because “everything around” proves you right about… something. It’s kind of funny.
As for evidence, frankly like this other guy says "it's all around us" but you need to translate what happens to systems (species, civilizations, ecosystems, nations, companies, industries) in smaller scale, and translate it to a globalized economy. Indeed, by the time we have evidence that our entire species is potentially screwed... we'll no longer have use of the evidence.
It's the same story as climate change. I actually think it's quite poetic both of those are hitting us at the same time. COVID was a bit early and a bit weak, but I'm sure another will come, to make the perfect triple storm.
The real world during the 1900s, if anything proved the opposite. It's not that all unions by definition always are great, that could be said for anything and should be obvious. It's that treating workers as an integral part of the business, with the obligations that come with rights, wins in the marketplace every time.
All rich countries, at least in the western hemisphere, became rich because of worker's movements, not in spite of them. Other countries have been pushed into the businesses with the slimmest margins where there is no innovation.
The truth is that innovation and worker's rights won. When arguing that an ideological map is right despite real world data, at least make those arguments against the same reality as we live in, so everyone involved will have a chance to understand how the ideal system measures up against their experience.
"By the end of the new contract, full-time UPS delivery drivers will make an average of $49 per hour, which works out to nearly $102,000 per year, assuming a 40-hour workweek, 52 weeks a year. Those employees are guaranteed an eight-hour workday, a UPS spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.
Drivers also receive $50,000 in benefits that include health, welfare and pension contributions, the spokesperson said."
I think a base salary of $100k is a decent living for non-skilled labor. And the pension contributions, whatever they are, are reasonable to include. I'm also noting that the end of the new contract is in 5 years, so maybe it won't be as good of a living as I'm thinking, depending on inflation.
In any case the important point is that UPS cut earnings forecasts because of this which means that workers did capture more of the profits that would have gone to owners. I consider it a win. Could it have been a bigger win? If most other workers were organized, I think so. With so many workers negotiating as individuals in the US, companies still have the upper hand as a whole. Workers continue to underestimate their value to the economy both in terms of labor and as consumers. The rich need labor, the rich need consumers. We should be getting a bigger piece of the huge profit pie that productivity increases result in.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-drivers-170000-pay-benefits...
Exactly the point I was making. They’re making $100K which is decidedly not almost $200K. This isn’t to say that it isn’t good, but every well paying job includes pension or 401k matching, paid time off, health insurance, sometimes education reimbursement, etc. It’s (intentionally, on the part of “journalists”) misleading to quote $170K when that is not how compensations are compared in the US. Rounding up a fudged number to $200K is even more misleading. Quoting a number including 5 years of merit increases and inflation is even more misleading. The numbers are good and impressive on their own, there is no need for this fudgery except to drive clicks.
Right of you to call out the rounding up though. The article was exaggerating with $170k, and to remember that number I had mentally noted almost $200k. I looked for the article later to refresh my memory. You're right that any discussion on this deserves more accuracy than I started with.
The important thing to me is for us workers to recognize how to get a fairer share of the increased productivity. Unions have delivered throughout history.
Sure, some humans will be more productive, but then we’ll need less of them. And with AI, it’s easier to just have the AI learn the new “irreplaceable” skills much faster than retraining millions of humans.
Horses and oxen were very useful throughout history, until the car and tractor was invited. Today the number of horses and oxen is at an all-time low. No amount of unionizing by horses would change that.
Sure, but we can't predict the future, so it's the best model we have.
> Today, both sexes work long hours just to afford a tiny apartment, they have to switch jobs every couple years and even started doing the gig economy on the side to get by.
What you've missed is that productivity (as measured by GDP) has gone way up. Someone captured those profits. Which is why we see such massive wealth gaps.
> Sure, some humans will be more productive, but then we’ll need less of them.
This has never happened before. I could be wrong and maybe it will happen, but the most technologically advanced country in the world has companies competing for workers and salaries going up. This is in the face of massive automation.
> And with AI, it’s easier to just have the AI learn the new “irreplaceable” skills much faster than retraining millions of humans.
> No amount of unionizing by horses would change that.
If horses were the ones buying your products and creating your wealth, then they would actually have a pretty big say. What us workers fail to understand is just how essential we are to the economy. We need to organize and demand our fair share of the productivity gains.
Exactly! That is what happens under capitalism. Which is why we need safety nets in place that can grow and be funded by taxes on automation. The safety nets should redistribute money equally to all citizens. We can also fund them by other pigovian taxes, like those on fossil fuels at the point of extraction — Alaska does exactly this with its Permanent Fund.
> This has never happened before
AI that can replace humans at most tasks within a couple years of R&D hasn’t happened before.
But when it came to machine labor, the farms were all automated and the factories were all automated. We know what happens. It’s not like humans got the windfall — because the only way regular get money in capitalism is through wages.
> If horses were the consumer
The ones unionizing are the labor producers, so not a valid analogy
We've seen absolutely massive automation in manufacturing, and as you noted even in farming. And no massive unemployment as a result. I just won't believe that AI will do anything more than hugely increase productivity until I see the unemployment. People have predicted massive unemployment with every new technology advance. They were wrong every time.
> The ones unionizing are the labor producers, so not a valid analogy.
They are also the consumers. How are the wealthy supposed to get that way or even stay that way with no consumers?
Compare pictures of farms before and after automation and count the number of farmhands. Before automation, 20% of American jobs were farm-related!
Read Grapes of Wrath and other books by John Steinbeck… you won’t say there was no unemployment after that.
The Great Depression was largely caused by loss of farm jobs. As the farmhands migrated to the cities it took a decade to build up the manufacturing centers to give them all jobs. In the meantime, one third of the banks failed and the money supply they issued. The Fed didn’t bail them out and we got a depression.
Oh, and the hugely increased productivity led farmers to be engaged in a race to the bottom, trying to make up for falling prices with ever-larger harvests. The land became depleted and this led to the Dust Bowl as it simply blew away in dust storms.
Capitalism does this around the world. TODAY, one third of arable farmland has undergone desertification, likely due to similar economic factors.
This is wayyy more pressing than global warming: https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/12/third-of...
> How are the wealthy supposed to get that way and stay that way with no consumers?
The wealthy can get that way without needing to pay much to human PRODUCERS. That’s the point.
If the only way an average person can get money and be a consumer is to sell their labor, then they will get less purchasing power over time. Yes things might get cheaper due to technology, but not everything (eg rent) and also the money supply could be inflated so prices could also rise due to that. The government COULD be giving all that money to people as a UBI but it usually exacerbates inequality by propping up stock markets etc.
Also, if wealthy people control all the resources and infrastructure then they can easily extract rents from all kinds of ecosystems. But even if the people on the ground barely have any money, the wealthy can just pay corporations for their own needs (eg robots doing their work). The owners of the corporations are wealthy and they cover the cost of robots.
We already see this in rising inequality … the wealthy didn’t need the poor to consume their products. Many of them could just have the middle class and wealthy consume them. (Look up Plutocracy.)
Having said that… if the automation could be made accessible to all, then everyone would be increasingly a consumer of products made by robots. Tax the robots, and give the money to the people unconditionally, so they can consume more.
It wasn't caused by a big advance in technology. [1]
"There is no consensus among economists and historians regarding the exact causes of the Great Depression. However, many scholars agree that at least the following four factors played a role."
1. The stock market crash of 1929. 2. Banking panics and monetary contraction. 3. The gold standard. 4. Decreased international lending and tariffs.
Nowhere are technological advances mentioned. You can probably find an article that mentions it, but productivity increases as a cause are considered heterodox theory.
> If the only way an average person can get money and be a consumer is to sell their labor, then they will get less purchasing power over time.
Not if they are as organized and lawyer up like the folks they are negotiating with. And the numbers say you are wrong. Purchasing power has stayed about the same over the past 40 years. [2] The real problem is that workers increasingly negotiate as individuals against an organized management team who has the goal of extracting more profit for the owners, and less profit for the workers. Organized workers have far more negotiating power, but workers fail to join in and use this advantage. Who is to blame for that other than us workers ourselves?
If workers had become more unionized over the past 40 years, they would have captured more of the profits and wealth gaps would be smaller. We can see exactly this with UPS announcing lower earnings for owners in the coming years due to unions winning higher salaries.
> The wealthy can get that way without needing to pay much to human PRODUCERS. That’s the point.
How? Where exactly is the money going to come from if the producers don't have any money to spend? From where does this money magically appear and who is buying the products that the wealthy are selling?
[1] https://www.britannica.com/story/causes-of-the-great-depress...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/01/stiglitz-depression-...
There are just as many "one salary sustains an entire household" jobs today as there ever were in the past. More in fact. The factory job that provides enough for the whole family was only ever a reality for a tiny, tiny portion of humanity. The vast majority of people, even the vast majority of americans did not have access to those jobs. Even the "glory days" of american manufacturing were filled with abject poverty.
> Horses and oxen were very useful throughout history, until the car and tractor was invited. Today the number of horses and oxen is at an all-time low. No amount of unionizing by horses would change that
This ignores that horses have zero political power. No one is working to make their lives better.
The average income across all occupations in the USA today is $61,900. The average household incomes averaged to $87,864
According to recent data, the average price for a home in 1950 was just $12,000, while the average price for a home today is upwards of $540,000.
It turns out that a typical “household” back then had one breadwinner make the vast majority of the money. Today the households are often single-parent, or both parents working
So I don’t think that only a factory job could provide for a whole family back then. But my point is that whatever the corporation was (law firm, or whateve) they weren’t going to lay people off because the automation and AI wasn’t there. Now there increasingly is. The number of people who hold a job for 20-30 years at the same company is much smaller than back then.
I guess the main factor is the diminishing returns of a glut of products (crops in the farm example, or AI-generate content now) which devalues that specific industry’s products and makes everyone in a race to the bottom, so humans are priced out of a job. If you do this across enough industries (and many today are electronic or manufacturing) that means humans are no longer cost-effective to employ for any except a diminishing number of positions. What will we do with the growing unemployed class?
Relatively speaking, it’s the best it has ever been in the history of humanity.
Of course it’s hard to measure happiness and we’ll never be perfect but we have greater safety, lower violence, more food, more work, etc etc.
I wonder if people had succeeded in stopping the tractor because it displaced workers.
Of course it displaced workers. Workers who now do more valuable work. Or even less work altogether.
100 years ago, retirement was very rare. Now people retire and live 10-30 years without work.
Robots and automation will help this trend, not hurt it.
Of course as a programmer I’ve been making myself obsolete for decades and just moving onto cooler problems. Only stupid programmers worry about “job safety” and creating brittle software that requires them to be around forever.
We have more pollution (air, water, noise, light), more cancer, more heart disease, more obesity, more addiction, more suicide, much worse environmental impact, and so on (though these are the worst that I can think of off the top of my head).
Your points about safety, violence, money, etc, are all good, and there are many other really positive things about the present, for sure, but it is not clear to me that we are absolutely better off than at any time in the past.
There were some bad times, and there is too much nostalgia by well-off people for past times when they were well-off while most others were not.
I think that things are in general pretty good right now. Modern medicine alone makes me prefer to live now than wish I were some scruffy medieval peasant. We have microplastics miles up in the atmosphere. We should recognize that we have paid a huge price for how we live now, and that price might not have been worth it. I don't know how we judge one way or the other.
Anyway. I wish I could see the stars. I wish there was still real wilderness. I wish that PFAS weren't almost literally everywhere. I wish farmers selected for flavor rather than size or density. Etc.
Now, the 1990s! That was the best time in human history. ;)
We do also detect more cancers early, but that also makes cancer treatment look better. Aka 5 year survival rates look better when you start the clock sooner.
An increasing number of people under 30 are developing cancer. America is only 4% of global population, if you want a better picture look at China and India which have both skyrocketed pollution levels recently.
Even over 100 years ago is true incidence of cancer higher? Not to mention why we would think we have more cancer now than 1000 years ago. Or perhaps we have more cancer but that’s because people aren’t dying of other things first, so it doesn’t matter we have more cancer.
This is the kind of counterproductive examples I find people arguing about. Of course there are more vehicle accidents now, but that’s because there’s more people driving, not that cars are more dangerous.
Please share any better metrics you like for showing increase in danger.
[0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl...
[1] https://www.axios.com/2023/06/23/pedestrian-deaths-cars-suvs...
> Heart disease: can't find long term stats on this quickly, but cardiovascular mortality is way down. [8]
And these two are linked. If most people get their cancer in their 70s, but they're dying of heart attacks in their 50s, anything that stops people dying of heart attacks is going to increase the number of people getting cancer.
I was kidding about the 1990s. :)
Have you seen the maps that show where PFAS are? (Nearly everywhere.) Micro and macro plastics? (Pretty much everywhere.) Pollution (air and water) is absolutely up from pre-industrial levels.
Look, I am really not saying that now is worse than any time in the past. I think things are pretty good right now, except for a few real tragic issues and localities. All I am saying is that I am not 100% sure that now is undeniably better than at any time in the past of human history.
I think your stats make a pretty compelling case that the story is a bit mixed at the moment, especially depending on how someone might define what the best time to be alive would entail.
(Really, the 90s thing was just a joke.)
Think about it, how can there be a “SHORTAGE of jobs”, when we have over 8 billion people on this planet? Are we running out of people in general? No. Is everyone employed and happy? No.
So we are short of the kind of increasingly mythical people with 20 years experience in some tech that came out yesterday, we’re short of people with IQ 180 and above with five diplomas, people with certain increasingly higher level of requirements. PRECISELY the kind I’m talking about.
Most people do not qualify for those jobs. They never will. They can’t. They’re not seeking those jobs as they don’t understand them (the employers often also don’t), and if they saught them they would not be given to them. Do you understand what I’m talking about?
More and more people will be in the pool that do not qualify. The more “shitty jobs” you take out of the jobs pool we have available for humans, the more “shitty unemployed people” there will be. Eventually there will be billions of “shitty unemployed people”, because what passes as moderately intelligent person today will be just another shitty person 10-20 years from now, who better brush up and get those five diplomas and his IQ to 180 and otherwise how dare they ask for a job?
There is no such situation where dumb people rule over smart machines. If the machines are better then the people become useless. Many aren’t good at much. They’re decent people but just happen to be best at “store clerk”. Those are maybe some of your friends, parents, siblings, children. Your wife. They don’t get math, and find it hard to remember too much. Those people are doomed. And that’s most people.
Your elitist attitude is only further stressed by the incorrect reference to the Luddites. They embraced technology with open arms. Their bosses told them no one will be fired, only promoted, everyone will be rich. Then they got fired. They protested and were subdued with violence and prison time. That’s the story of the Luddites. They didn’t hate machines. But the machines made them useless. So they were gone from the picture.
You think you’re not like them, you’re better. You’re one of the smart ones. But you’re precisely them. Your don’t know your history so you’re doomed to repeat it.
I’m not against machines. I love machines. I make machines. I program machines. I evolve machines. I’m sympathetic to any system in this universe, be it smart, dumb, protein, silicon and metal. But it’s incredibly awkward to me to see people cheer for their own obsoletion. We really have no idea what we’re doing. We’re simply the scorpion riding on the frog’s back and following our nature. We can’t escape our nature.