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Comment by darkwater | Hacker News Reader

> We invented compilers, word processors, templated document generation, code generators, DSLs and things like that which were all labour reduction technologies for describing systems and information. These were net positives for society but wiped out full administrative and technical professions.

Asking seriously and not in a provocative way: are you then implying that without those inventions we would have much more people employed as white collars? Employed people that would live a better life in economical and life/work balance terms.

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We would yes. I'm mostly reflecting on the historical grounds for the current situation. New technology didn't mean the swathes of the population that were made redundant got magically hoovered up into other professions. The redirected revenue went straight into leadership and investment pockets.

My mother is a good example. She was a corporate typist for years, on typewriters. Eventually word processing took over. Good fortune for her that she invested in this privately, but many people didn't because they didn't have the capital to buy a computer to learn on and the corporation didn't provide training. They saw it as a way to reduce that department cost by the 10:1 improvement. She got kept on, 10 people didn't. And most of them ended up as unemployed housewives or moving back in with their parents under serious financial consequences.

Because the invention of the compiler brought software and tools outside of million dollar IBM computer rooms. Which in turn brought more productivity elsewhere and thus a positive economical impact. This argument fails with AI because if everyone can do it, nobody will pay for it.

If we did the same work but didn't have those things, we would need more people employed to make up for it. But if we didn't have those things these days, we probably would have less companies doing this sort of thing.

If we didnt have word processors or templated document generation, we would have people who write things properly, typeset documents etc. If we didnt have compilers etc, we would have people who translated higher level languages into machine code

That's what I also think. Without those inventions, we would more or less have the same number of white collars, only doing another type of job. I don't really know the economic and social consequences of this other reality, but from my naive point of view employment rate are a function of the economical activity, and not of the specific type of work done.

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