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Comment by reallydude | Hacker News Reader

> There's zero evidence that "creating jobs is slower."

Opportunity for innovation in the market is far less than opportunity for innovation (ie automation) in business processes.

Given a hypothetical business equilibrium (business growth has stabilized or slowed to a small linear function) I have 2 employees. 1 employee writes a program to automate the other employee's job. Now I have 1 employees.

In order for me to have another employee, I have to have a new product and/or process or a whole new business.

I have personally automated people out of a job. Like, they got fired and never replaced. Maybe 5 in my career.

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Job creation doesn't require that much innovation in the market. It just requires demand.

People want better coffee and pastries, suddenly there are hundreds of thousands of jobs for baristas, bakers and managers.

People grow older and need care, suddenly the number of employees in home care expands drastically.

And so on. Maybe for you to need another employee you need a new product/process/business... but most business are just trying to meet existing demand in simple small ways.

The demand is the equilibrium I mentioned. Businesses have largely grown to meet demand, or they would be bigger in a small timeframe.

> Maybe for you to need another employee you need a new product/process/business..

The "I" in the example, was for simplicity, try not to take it too far. The candy vendor family at the fair goes to lots of fairgrounds. They are living on the demand that exists, or he would have more employees than his family. The idea that there is some phantom demand, not being met, is at odds with reality of existing businesses as they exist (if there was more demand, there would be growth). New markets necessarily come at the expense of old markets, by-in-large because the disposable income available does not serve new demand, but is the lever that allows for it. Unless adjusted wages spike, the measurable loss of jobs will outpace the growth in every timescaled window where the related events occur.

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