Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

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> One solution can be for a union, government, Amazon etc, is to put aside money for a fund that will invest in training these employees so they could one day not depend on these kind of low-leverage jobs.

Unions have negotiated with companies that outsource or automate its members' jobs to secure compensation for the workers who were affected.

However, I think this is a problem that requires a larger solution. There needs to be compensation plans for workers as they're automated away or outsourced. Perhaps it can be a buyout, or a shared ownership scheme where workers get shares in the company or the automation itself that pay dividends. Or a tax on automation or outsourcing that gets returned to workers.

We're heading towards a world where most work is done by machines, and only a handful of people will own, control and profit from them. I think a tax and a shared ownership model would help prevent a world where workers and their progeny are relegated to peasantry.

> We're heading towards a world where most work is done by machines, and only a handful of people will own, control and profit from them

People keep saying that but we are no closer than we were 50 years ago. A lot of jobs have been replaced but new jobs have been created and society has absorbed the increased productivity (cheaper goods, foods, and much more complex high end goods (iPhone, airplanes, etc).

> A lot of jobs have been replaced but new jobs have been created and society has absorbed the increased productivity.

Not in every case. You can look at workers in the Rust Belt. Their well paying jobs with benefits were "replaced" and new jobs never came, unless you think working at Walmart for close to minimum wage is one of those new jobs.

Even when, say, manufacturers come back and produce domestically, they've reduced what used to be a 1,000+ person job to one that requires 40 engineers and a handful of maintenance people. It's not like any of those factory workers who were laid off in the past were later rehired as engineers, either.

It isn't "society" that's absorbed absorbed increased worker productivity, but employers and those who own the automation. Worker productivity in the US increased dramatically over the last 20 years, and even more over the last 40. Despite that, worker compensation hasn't increased, and has roughly remained the same over those same 40 years[1].

[1] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

> Not in every case. You can look at workers in the Rust Belt

And the old coal mining towns in Northern England (and South Wales).

I think your source is just bad here. Productivity hasn’t increased, process streamlining has. This is usually thought up, created, and managed by the same higher earners that your “source” is saying is the cause of all of the worlds problems.

With wages the minimum wage in 1980 was $3.10, while the last increase from 2009 rose from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour

> It isn't "society" that's absorbed absorbed increased worker productivity, but employers and those who own the automation.

What society has "absorbed" is an expectation that stock markets will continue rising at a pace that significantly outstrips inflation and (related) wage increases. Pension funds and individual retirement savings (401k, RRSP) heavily rely on employers pocketing the bulk of productivity increases for themselves and continuing to exploit labour. It'd be interesting to see the chaos that would arise if governments decided at some point that workers should get an equal share of that.

> It isn't "society" that's absorbed absorbed increased worker productivity,

Yes it has. Food is way cheaper now. Clothes are way cheaper. Transportation is way cheaper. Housing is way better (and cheaper if you want what passed for housing in the 40s).

Employment rates aren't the issue IMO, wealth concentration is. And that's increasing.

It's important because wealth is essentially power, so concentration of wealth inevitably changes the balance of power in society. And that in turn creates a feedback loop where the wealth and powerful can undermine thelaws and regulations intended to keep the distribution of wealth and power from becoming too lopsided.

This is why I view the current everything-as-a-service model that takes things people used to own and turns them into things people rent pretty skeptically.

Do you think the centralization of power in the federal government is a problem? Do you think famous people are a problem? Or is it only wealth that's a problem?

Power, as in the ability to alter others lives, is the “problem” IMO. Wealth is only a problem in that it’s intrinsically linked to power.

Really I think it’s a balancing act. Since we can’t just get rid of the concept of power, we try to regulate its use. This is pretty difficult.

The government is, to a certain extend, chosen by the people.

But it doesn't represent the people, which is the problem: https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem/

That wealth is power is a correlation that few realize.

It’s why these wage debates get so heated - they threaten the core social power of people.

And it absolutely is a feedback loop. Something about absolute power corrupting absolutely.

People keep saying that but we are no closer than we were 50 years ago.

People have been saying it for far longer than 50 years:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

The trouble is, both sides of the argument are correct. When disruption occurs, many people are badly disadvantaged even if society as a whole moves forward. It would be best to find ways to reduce the impact on the affected people without holding up automation and other improvements which have been shown to be beneficial to productivity in the long term.

And luddites were right because pre-industrial level of worker compensation, in real terms, was only achieved by the early XX century.

Actually compensation for most workers went up dramatically from the outset of the industrial revolution. There just wasn't that much wealth to go around prior to industrialisation.

http://nws-sa.com/rr/Inequality/Lindert.pdf

Counting workers is misleading, you don’t replace a 40$ an hour jobs with a 15$ an hour job without consequences. Beyond that looking at the percentage of Americans employed shows a net drop even accounting for retirement etc.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001

Yep. Back in the hand-written letter days people must have thought “think how much time we would save if all this was automated and letters were delivered instantly!” Nope. We just send 10x more.

Yeah but we read 100% fewer of them.

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