Comment by VengefulCynic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VengefulCynic | Hacker News Reader

The real interesting point in all of this to me is how hard it is to innovate in this space on account of state legislatures essentially subsidizing car dealerships.

"So, after several dealers’ associations complained that TrueCar was violating various laws, regulators from several states told TrueCar that they questioned the site’s business practices. Honda Motor Company also protested loudly, threatening to cut off marketing dollars to dealers that did not follow its guidelines when promoting its brands on TrueCar’s site."

While I know that there are a lot of people employed by local dealerships in the sales department, I can't help but thinking that a lot of these jobs essentially add a percentage cost to new cars with no value added. Which, of course, means that since innovation is a threat to these old business models, most of these dealerships will only be doubling down on legislation and protectionist policies that stop or slow genuine innovators like the guys at CarWoo and TrueCar.

If they don't, there's another 1.2 million jobs lost to technology in a country that has no answer to the growing imbalance between working-age population and gainful employment opportunities. Progress can be a very damaging thing for society on some levels.

I'm tempted to delete this comment because of the quick downvotes, but I'm not going to. I think it's a valid thing to think about at the very least.

If people want to bring back the Works Progress Administration, so be it. But special legal favors for certain industries distort the economy (even though they may help).

I feel like that is the way this has to go in the end. When almost all our needs are taken care of through automated processes, and only a few people have the skills to contribute to the creation and maintenance of that automation, we are going to need a large orginisation (logically government) to provide the rest of the population with livelihood.

I think about it all the time. Especially at the supermarket when I see the automated checkout line.

Then I head directly for the automated checkout line and tell my wife that the main reason I use those is because I like the idea of computers putting unskilled labor out of work, because I'm a bastard like that.

All the more reason we need to support education from an early age and more importantly get back to supporting journeyman and trade education -- so we have less unskilled labor.

This worldview presupposes that there is and will remain enough skilled-work jobs to employ the entire working age population now and in the future. Whether that is safe to assume is what nags at me from time to time.

If for every 4 cashiers replaced by self-checkout, the self-checkout companies only create 1 job, what's the end game? Will we figure it out before millions get aged out of the workforce in their 40s and 50s, too soon to have accumulated a means to retire?

If we get to a point where we can do all the work we want to get done with, say, 1/4 of the workforce, then everyone can work less, or the average amount of one's life that one works can go down, etc.

There isn't necessarily value to "having a job" (especially when you talk about all the unskilled jobs that are going away, which are often jobs that people are doing purely as a means to support their life); there's value to being able to live and have the life that you want. If getting everyone they life they want takes less and less work, cool.

But really, people will likely just keep wanting more and better and we won't run out of work to do

It's tempting to think that technological progress can lead to a reduction in the number of hours worked or allow us to retire sooner, and I agree that in theory it is possible. But our economic, political, and social structures will never allow for it.

Who is going to pay people the same to work less? Indeed, as we need less and less labor, there will be downward pressure on wages, which will make the situation (for the average worker) worse, not better. The economic actors who benefit most from technological progress are those who own the most capital, and their earnings from that capital are taxed at such low amounts that it won't provide money for the government to sustainably pay people to work less either.

Despite the huge advancements in productivity and technological advancement, we still have a lot of pressure to end or cut back on things like unemployment insurance. Despite the number of unemployed people, we still have pressure to increase the retirement age. Even as we are rapidly approaching the point where many industries could still be profitable with 30 hour work weeks, we push more and more jobs into exempt status, making it far, far more likely that you'll work a 50 or 60 hour work week long before you work a 30 hour week.

I'm not advocating purposely slowing technological progress, but we do need to be aware of the ramifications of it and figure out ways to deal with economic conditions where we require significantly less labor than is available. Our current economic and social constructs aren't really setup to deal with this sort of situation.

"If we get to a point where we can do all the work we want to get done with, say, 1/4 of the workforce, then everyone can work less"

That, I doubt. The work that remains requires highly-skilled labour. I think there is a fraction of the potential workforce that will never reach a level at which it can work the remaining jobs. I also think that fraction grows as automation increases (human dishwashers? Gone. Bank tellers? Gone. Bus drivers? Not gone yet, but that could change in ten years). Net effect: there is less work, but we cannot distribute the work that remains over the same fraction of the population.

Dare I suggest it - part of the problem here is the minimum wage. I'm pretty ambivalent about even writing that, but before you downvote me, think about it. The only way it makes sense to hire a human is if you expect to make more money from having them than you pay them in wages. Which means (in the US) that human labor has to be worth more than about $10 (including taxes and benefits) per hour to even consider. It's just not worth hiring a human dishwasher at that rate. Would it be at $3/hour? Perhaps.

The trouble, of course, is that we've already been on the automation train long enough that it's not quite so simple as just removing the law now. Is not like flood of low-paying (but greater than zero-paying) jobs will materialize out of thin air.

I agree that, if full employment is the goal in a free market, wages have to go down and/or capital costs have to go up.

Capital costs will rise when we run out of cheap energy, but I doubt that will be sufficient.

IMO, the ethical way to get there is through a basic income guarantee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee).

With it, minimum wages could be abolished. Then that flood of low-paying jobs will materialize, not out of thin air, but out of China. It will, likely, also bring back jobs in shoe repair and the like.

Google search for Moving Forward, the video contains the solution.

Is a pain in the A. to use the automated checkout line though. It just ends up taking me longer so I don't really see the benefit.

This. I HATE the automated checkout lines, even though I love technology for the most part. In this case, the human wins over the metal.

The main benefit for me is that because most people are afraid of them or don't see the benefit, the line is shorter. When the regular line is shorter, I still use them.

If you have two or three items sure. But when you do a full shopping is a pain.

This is probably a style thing - I shop 3-5 days a week on my way home, which means I never buy more than a bag or 2 of grocs and the automated machines are always faster. It also keeps things lighter on the walk home, and food fresher.

This is probably not a choice i'd make if I didn't live in a city and commute by bus and bike.

I LOVE the automated checkout line. The queue is shorter, my yoghurt isn't packed next to the hot roast chicken, and a cashier isn't there to sneeze on my lettuce or silently critique my snacking habits. Not to mention the irrational fear of embarrassment when you're walking out with feminine hygiene products or lube or something -- it doesn't matter when you're packing it yourself.

That is simply ridiculous.

If they don't, there's another 1.2 million jobs lost to technology in a country that has no answer to the growing imbalance between working-age population and gainful employment opportunities.

Let me re-cast your comment, circa 1900 (or 1800):

"There's another one million agricultural jobs lost to technology in a country that has no answer to the growing imbalance between the working-age population and gainful employment opportunities. 'Gainful' employment doesn't mean that you yoke yourself to someone else's factory somewhere; it means you own your own plot of land and work it."

I'm tempted to delete this comment because of the quick downvotes, but I'm not going to.

The reason you'll get downvoted is because your comment fails to account for productivity and other gains from trade or specialization; taken to the logical extreme, ensuring that no jobs are "lost to technology" means that we all live as hunter-gatherers, since any level of further technological development will put someone "out-of-work," even if that work is of no value.

This is going to sound harsh, but if you don't want to be downvoted, learning some economics first (and I'm talking about micro-econ—the stuff that works).

I understand the economics. I'm not against progress. I just commented that the real suffering it can cause people is something to be aware of.

I'm watching my parents, aunts and uncles struggling to even get interviews after months of unemployment following decades of gainful employment at companies that downsized during the recession. These are mostly white collar workers that never had trouble finding a job with a few days or weeks of searching all their lives; suddenly they don't even hear back after applying to dozens of companies.

It's the productivity gains technology continues to create that allowed hundreds of thousands of businesses to lay off workers during this latest recession while maintaining and growing their profits. Society progresses, yet a significant portion of it suffers during these changes nonetheless.

Your comment admonishing me for being somewhat troubled by this shows a lack of empathy.

While I agree with you that the change brought on by progress can be very damaging to the elements of a society that have been made redundant, I think you have to step back and take a look at the big picture.

As I see it, when you are presented with a change that adds efficiency to an area of the economy (and thus reduces the amount of labor required to get to the same level of output), you've got a choice to make. Either you can attempt to maintain the inefficiency (in this case, redundant car salesmen) in order to keep those workers in a job or you can attack the root of the problem and put those workers to work doing something that adds value to the economy.

I'm not saying that there aren't moral and ethical arguments in trying to keep a job for those workers, because there, especially from a societal standpoint. But from an economic standpoint, maintaining those inefficiencies typically leads to systemized exploitation of artificial inefficiencies (case in point: smuggling to bypass protectionist tariffs) and that wastes additional effort that could be adding value to the economy.

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