Computers, Unemployment and Wealth Creation

Andy Oram writes "Anyone who writes programs or plans system deployment should start thinking, "What can I do to bring average people back into the process of wealth creation?" A few suggestions."

Fixed Link

[QuantumFTL]

I emailed the on-duty editor but it looks like they didn't catch it. There's an extra / in the link. Try this one:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3812 [oreillynet.com]

Cheers,
Justin

The problem is not with "lack of wealth"

[karji]

...as it is in its distribution.

Techies ought to focus on how to take money from the wealthy and decrease the world's dependency on corporations, or even private companies (that later become corporations), by building cooperatives and collectives.

Good grief...

[CommieLib]

Yet another cry out that changes in technology are going to "historically" destroy jobs.

I'm too bored with this line of thinking to even trot out the buggy whip analogy. Please save me the effort and just read this:

Creative Destruction, again [libertyhaven.com]

This has happened a thousand times before, but somehow, this time is different. Whatever.

Overtime

[Councilor Hart]

Want to give more people a job. Then stop forcing them to work overtime. That way, more people will have jobs and more time can be spend with the family, or doing a hobby.

Re:Jobs instead of efficiency?

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anyone's fooled, the link in NineNine's signature is not to anything interesting. It's one of those pay-per-click scams that he's trying to perpetuate on Slashdot. Go ahead, click on it if you like ads.

Re:The same thing everybody else should do

[sapped]

Why do you think every foreigner who can afford to...

How much have you actually sampled the health industried in other countries? I have had the misfortune to sample it in 4 countries. Sad to say but the US was not at the top of my list. A third world country was able to give the broadest base of its citizens a reasonable level of health care that I have not seen in the USA.

However, the interesting thing to note is that the bulk of that care was not given via the government, but via private care.

So, what is the difference you ask? Here in the US, the doctors don't seem to care about you. They would rather pack the next patient in rather than spend an additional 10 minutes talking to you - higher profits you see. This means they rely on lab tests too much and don't build up any decent history of the patient. This third world country's doctors by and large appeared to have the primary aim of actually wanting to help their patients rather than becoming rich overnight.

My summary: The health system in the USA is the most expensive system that I have come across and on average does not deliver what you pay for. (Compare: 1 child born outside USA $3200, 1 child born in USA $14500. Oh and my wife got to spend more time in hospital with the 1st child.)

Sure, capilitalism is good, but as with most things it has been taken to the extreme here in the US.

Re:The same thing everybody else should do

[Daniel Dvorkin]

1. Most corporate executives are known for giving preferred treatment to people with ties.

2. From working in the private healthcare industry, I can tell you that it has a huge overhead and a good chunk of your insurance premiums are wasted.

3. There are a large number of hypochondriacs who abuse every health care system at everyone else's expense.

I've worked in Federal government health care, city government health care, and private health care. The quality of service, overall, was about the same in all three. But IMO, overall efficiency declined in the order I've listed them.

Re:Not so fast pal.

[LurkerXXX]

Try reading the post next time. He said he LIVED in Taiwan and was just back in the states on vacation. He Lived there. You know, when you live some place, work there and pay taxes, your not 'leeching off thier system'. It's your system.

THIRTY TWO HOUR WORK WEEK

[broward]

Gee whiz, why can't anyone figure this out?

Historically, industrial revolutions have reduced the average workweek by 15-20%. Damn, for the geeks here, you can model the macro-economy as two linear equations like this -

Each person has 112 waking hours ( 16 hours x 7 days ), on average.

That time is spent consuming (C) or producing (P) products. So C + P = 112.

Using the 40-hour workweek as a base, we have
40 X rateOfP = ( 112 - 40 ) X rateofC.

Got it?
What happens as rateofP increases?

As productivity increases....

You get more production, and your equations won't balance anymore, you get overproduction and falling prices.

The ONLY way to re-balance the equation is to shrink P and increase C.

Re:The same thing everybody else should do

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is this the model we are supposed to follow?

We ARE following it, just not publicly. Hospitals are required by law to treat everybody...they can't turn people away based on ability to pay. That's why private hospitals have a hard time in metro areas - hard to make a profit when the product is expensive and you're required by law to give it away.

We need to either completely support public health or start reining things in.

Re:The same thing everybody else should do

[jslag]

Minimum wage may be vastly less than you or I currently earn, but the fact that one can afford luxuries such as consumer electronics, broadband, automobiles, their own living space, etc - on that wage, is remarkable.

It's so remarkable, it's not even close to true. Look at Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed; it's not even possible to afford housing and food on minimum wage, much less "luxuries such as consumer electronics, broadband. . ."

Re:Jobs instead of efficiency?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q =famine+working+democracy&btnG=Google+Search

first link
Nobel Prize winner, who has studied famine at length, has come up with the very compelling
discovery that there has never been a famine in a working democracy

Re:Rinse, Repeat

[Entropy248]

YOUR [google.com] pet theory?!?! It's called the business cycle, and every undergrad business student in the country hears about it their first semester! It's shape is an upside-down parabola with the first y intercept=first x intercept, with x measuring time and y measuring revenue, profit, or unemployment in its simplist form.

Why is everyone worrying about unemployment when talking about the economy? Unemployment figures are not the key to understanding true unemployment. True unemployment may be defined as the number of jobs permanently lost in the economy. For example, the horse and buggy industry's lost unemployment would NOT be included in true unemployment because those jobs will never reappear in the horse and buggy industry but the auto industry sure employs way more than the horse and buggy guys ever could. Jobs out-sourced to India are included in true unemployment because that work has been done already and does not need repeating.

The easiest way to estimate true unemployment is by taking the ratio GDP/GNP. Remember that GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is only the value of the goods/services produced within the borders of the country; GNP (Gross National Product) is the value of all goods/services produced by companies who claim the nationality of the country. Happy economics lesson everyone! BTW, soloport, how can you possibly run a business without knowing this?

Rinse, Repeat-Crystal Ball.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problems with present economic models is GIGO. That and how closely the model actually fits reality. GDP and GNP both have issues, from missing to inaccurate numbers.

Re:The REAL Problem

[Dr. Transparent]

Okay I'm stupid.

What I meant to say was, YOU'RE ALL GREEDY BASTARDS YOURSELVES.

The rest of this post is just extra text to get around the lameness filter encountered because of the all caps text. Please ignore.

Re:Rinse, Repeat

[Entropy248]

Yes. Because this only represents one industry at a time, it is called the business cycle. Every industry has five stages of growth. Initially, most new industries grow quickly and lots of new companies jump in. In a new industry, there is the highest demand for your product. Front runners will not have resources to meet this demand yet so more and more competitors will dive into the industry, lowering profit margins for all. These falling profit margins will lead to a shakeout, the period of time when competition is beginning to heat up. Weak companies will fail; an oligarchy of powerful companies will begin to form as the industry enters maturity. Now, most people who want your product own it already; new features must be added rapidly. Competition enters its fiercest phase as companies must Adapt or Die(TM). Now marketing plays a huge roles as more and more promotional techniques are needed to continuously improve the product refining it into what will become its final form. Now even some of the strong companies will begin to collapse as demand for the product is either entirely met or shifted towards substitute or alternative products. Finally, the last company will fall. Note that at any time this cycle can begin again if a new feature or new development changes the role of the product in society.

prescrip. drug prices aren't free market

[Anonymous Coward]

prescription prices are an offshoot of lobbyist control over drug-patent law. they have special provisions that keep competition out and thereby keep prices up.

it's essentially a government backed price fix. it's screwed precisely because it isn't free market.

that should be pretty obvious. just take a look at drug prices in canada and their drug-patent laws. having a government backed monopoly isn't free market. when the government listens to lobbyists, the 'free' part of the market gets removed and it's not a valid critique of the free market system to complain about it, it becomes only a valid critique of monopolistic businesses and corrupt politicians - which we already know are very bad for competition and consumers.