Computers, Unemployment and Wealth Creation 948
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."
Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same thing everybody else should do (Score:5, Insightful)
(a) Buy stuff. Other folks are employed making it or serving it.
(b) Invest. This results in capital for businesses to hire more people employed making or serving stuff.
This method works. Simple, really.
* Within ethical and/or legal standards, of course.
Very true (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Basic economics (Score:5, Insightful)
For a start, a 3-year sample isn't big enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. We're just in the down phase of the economic cycle, that's all. Smart people salted away some of the high salaries and bonuses that were easy to come by in the recent boom years, when shortness of staff drove up the price of labour. Now, some people look for blame - but it's hard to see how some of these can be blamed. Wars and conflict drive up employment in the engineering and aerospace sectors. Tax cuts can't increase unemployment except amongst government workers, and there have been no reports of government layoffs - if anything, the government is busily hiring.
Let me make this clear: wealth is not created by governments. It's created by risk-taking entrepreneurs. Right now, the markets need to recover from excessive risk-taking in the late 90s. This is perfectly natural. When sufficient capital has become amassed, the cycle will begin again and there will be another boom.
But capitalism is atrocious at distributing the fruits of innovation
I was in a store the other day, I saw a 3-megapixel digital camera for GBP 99, a DVD players for GBP 49. 5 years ago, these products cost hundreds of pounds. That's what capitalism delivers: more and better for everyone. The "poor" in a capitalist society are far better off than the "poor" in any other system - and capitalism generates the surpluses that fund the entire welfare system.
Each labor-saving device means the idling of thousands of people, wasting their years of experience, rigorous training, and practical insights.
Yawn, they said exactly the same things when the car started to replace the horse drawn carriage, when mechanical looms replaced hand-operated looms, when automation was introduced to farming, in fact whenever any technology has revolutionized an industry. Getting laid off is always a little disconcerting (yes, it has happened to me so I know what I'm talking about) but unemployment is what you make of it.
And meanwhile governments, businesses, venture capitalists (what are you doing with all that money your pets in Congress and the White House brought you, tails all awagging?),
Ah, now we see the author's real agenda - I should have realized when I saw the words "tax cuts". I will merely point out that the dotcom bubble economy was created under a Democrat president and began declining in mid 2000 - there is nothing Bush or Greenspan could have done to prevent it bursting.
Re:The same thing everybody else should do (Score:0, Insightful)
Privatizing strategic resources like railroads, health care, prisons or energy production has always been a disaster (why do you think the military has never been privatized - because it wouldn't work!).
Complete rubbish (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not my goal to place restrictions on investment or innovation; it is only to present a new way of thinking that some people may find stimulating.
Here's looking forward to some creative new thinking...
Write free software for individual industries
What the f***? How is that supposed to help reverse falling unemployment?
Slashdot - if you're going to post links to economics related subjects, can you please make sure it is written by someone with a clue about economics?
Re:Average people? (Score:3, Insightful)
A wealth hoarding population creates a lack of wealth a creation of classes and ultimately a failure of the system.
earn more money by clicking these links! (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporations, though, don't spend in the short term on warm bodies. They are cautious about economy fluctuations. They do love to take advantage of cost cutting benefits though. It just seems to the pencil pushers that cutting costs starts with eliminating workforce.
Re:Anyone who writes programs or plans system .. (Score:1, Insightful)
Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good grief... (Score:3, Insightful)
Does he not undersand?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Putting more people to work means paying more people which means lower profits unless those people are able to increase efficiency or sell more product. How can you expect any business to strive to spend more money if there is an alternative? It may work for the government, but if businesses go out to their way to use more workers and pay more people they won't be around very long. There needs to be an economic reason (aka an incentive) for businesses to hire people. They are not going to, and can't, do it out of the kindness of their heart.
This article scares me... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a plea to socialize the software industry. Don't work on what you want to work on, work on what society NEEDS you to work on. But do it for SOCIETY, that is, do it for FREE. This will allegedly help a struggling 'cutting-edge' business grow. Give them free software, and all will work out.
This is hogwash. And the article goes all over the place. It starts off with blaming "financial scandals, wars, tax cuts, stagnation" on why people have lost jobs "or had to accept menial ones". But then concludes "there is little doubt that a large contributor to rising unemployment is rising productivity". We see this every new age. This guy is bordering on a Luddite. He's also overly dramatic which makes me dislike him even more "I can no longer avert my eyes from the consequences of the field I have chosen" so noble. "... and no one else who programs, administers, or promotes the use of computers can morally avert their eyes either" oh jeez.
It gets worse, "The gigantic combine of capitalism has always obsessively pursued effiencey..." yeah, that's the point. That's why it works. No, Capitalism is atrocious at GIVING AWAY the fruits of innovation. It doesn't reward people who don't partake in it. That is why it's so efficient. Add _YOUR_ efficiency to the overall efficiency and you will be paid for its value.
This really frightens me: Great, lets all make inefficient processes and software to run those processes so that costs will skyrockets, and we'll be beat by someone with a more efficient process. You can't do that in a free market. It's the whole point of the free market. The market balances between efficiency, cost, and quality. If you artificially try to create more jobs by making it take 5x as many more people to assemble a car, you will collapse that business.
gut instinct huh? Thanks for sharing that. I'm sure we can all base decisions on your gut instincts.
So his solution boils down to three ideas:
1. Write free software for individual industries (ie, give custom built small business software away for free). His thinking is this will help the small business get started and they will in turn hire more people. But damn the person who wrote the software, he's SOL. But it was for the 'good' of the 'people'.
2. "Make devices more responsive and easy to customize", he request: "I would like a computer to plan ahead for me, track things that are too much trouble for me to remember, and combine inputs to suggest efficient courses of action" OK so he wants smart agents. What this has to do with this article is beyond me. I think he just threw it in there because he wanted to.
3. "Create a truly public key infrastructure" I don't understand why he feels the need for a 'truly PKI is so important. It seems to go along with his socialist viewpoint. I guess it would make on line filing of unemployment that much easier when he plans leads to the failing of a nations economy.
He ends it with more FUD: "We don't have all the time in the world. And meanwhile governments, businesses, venture capitalists (what are you doing with all that money your pets in Congress and the White House brought you, tails all awagging?), universities, and NGOs seem paralyzed in the face of this economic disaster"
Re:The same thing everybody else should do (Score:5, Insightful)
People complain that politicians are evil and corrupt, yet want them to run everything? Only people who'll benefit are the ones with ties to the government officials.
"Investing" rarely is (Score:4, Insightful)
a) Participate in the IPO
b) Buy bonds directly from the company during its offering
Trading stocks with other stockholders doesn't give any money to the company. It's like trading baseball cards. Sure there are some side effects of having stock prices go up for a company, but usually a high stock price doesn't give any financial benefit to a company (except for subsequent stock issues, which don't happen that often).
If you really want to invest in a company, buy bonds when they are issued (don't trade bonds, because trading them just gives money to the bond holder - not the company whose bond it is!).
That said, the best form of investing in a company is to purchase their product.
Urrr....but, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, if competition is the engine of capitalism, then surely efficiency is the fuel.
Editor Mod -1(Off Planet)
It's never about computers (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally don't focus my attention on 'computers' or any other tool I work with. It's all about creativity and good ideas - getting the job done. Has the computer changed my way of doing things? Yes, and so did the invention of the gun powder - we use what we can - but in the end wealth creation depends on people not tools.
Re:The same thing everybody else should do (Score:1, Insightful)
Overhaul is OK, but that does not necessarily mean privatization. If health care is privatized, how do you guarantee equal care for each and every citizen (which they do deserve simply based on human rights).
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:2, Insightful)
In a global economy should there be an industrial approach for all markets.
Is it McDonalds world wide
or is it each local restaurant having the technology to minimise its costs to compete with the industrial produced goods. To have communication systems to purchase at best cost up to the minute. To have the accounting and in house automation to reduce its staff to lesson its cost and increase its profits. To create many companies in the many markets that exist in a global economy, instead of trying to shape the global economy around the markets of already existing businesses.
Re:Complete rubbish (Score:3, Insightful)
What the f***? How is that supposed to help reverse falling unemployment?
Most businesses are small businesses that can't afford (until very recently) SAP and similar software, so creating free systems that target their needs is a way of lowering the bar to increased effiency and productivity, therefore helping them grow.
Or it could be bollocks. I don't know, I'm just a clueless programmer.
Rubbish (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is typical example of the lump of labour fallacy, which usually goes something like this: we produce all this stuff to make society run. Now, if we find a way to make the same amount of stuff with less people (using computers), we'll end up with less employment.
If this was true, almost everybody would have been out of work by now. 2000 years ago the work of almost everybody was needed just to grow enough food for everybody. The truth is, that there is no limit to the amount of possible work. What matters is total production of society and how we divide it. Computes will raise total production of society, so it could make us all richer. If we succeed in distributing the wealth in any kind of just way, employment could rise. Or we could choose for a society where the rich have a lot and the poor are unemployed. But that choice does not have anything to do with the amount of efficiency improving computers do.
- - - - towards a lawyer free interent [douweosinga.com]Re:wealth creation (Score:5, Insightful)
Write free software for individual industries
The increased productivity caused by computers is one of the reasons cited for rising unemployment rates. Isn't this new software likely to replace efforts now being done by hand and make the situation worse, not better?
Create a truly public key infrastructure
Assuming that we did manage to get corporate communications online, what happens to the current infrastructure that grew up to support widespread business travel? Airlines, hotels, etc.
The argument is that increased productivity causes unemployment, therefore we need to increase productivity so that small businesses can function more efficiently and cut costs, thus paving the way for more small businesses. I don't think you can have it both ways. Increased productivity can't be both our bane and our salvation.
Re:The same thing everybody else should do (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, americans don't all have the best insurance, or any at all for that matter - but the care you get uninsured for $40 at the outpatient clinic down the street is vastly better than what most of the world gets.
Competitive privatized industries have -never- been a disaster.
The simplest example, is comparing price/performance and advancement of the rail industry (government sanctioned monopolies) with the airline industry (competitive free market).
the 'disasters' you must be referring to regarding privatized prisons and energy production are not examples of privatized industry at all. They are the examples of a private company operating in a government funded monopoly. Privatized power generation in California hasn't hit a snag since the conversion was completed (which was caused by government imposed limits on power generation which were enacted before sufficient alternative companies had their generation online).
And while the bulk of the military itself has never been privatized (for the same reason the government hasn't - to keep policy decisions out of the hands of private industry and to keep soldier loyalty directly under the decision-makers), you would probably be amazed at how much -has- been privatized. The government hasn't made its own weapons (or commandeered industry to do it) since WWI - and the improvements in weapons and decreases in cost have been astronomical. Compare american military technological advancements to that of any other nation on the planet. These are all due to private industry research and development.
Private industry air and ship capacity is also used to transfer military personnel and equipment overseas in times of high need. Then there's military body armor, telecommunications gear, medecine, reconnaissance, etc.
Contrary to your claim, free-market privatization has proven to be the biggest asset of every American endeavor it has been a part of.
...what planet is he from? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's alot of wealth, but at present the western system is optimised to cause wealth to drift up and get locked-up in the economic upper-crust.
There's tons of work that needs to be done! Examples - teaching arts and music, daycare, senior care, cleaning and renovating neighbourhoods, rehabilitation of ecological damage... but the powers refuse to see these as priorities or raise the minimum wage so that a person can actually make a living at one of these jobs.
The author first slams us for being clever and writing efficient stuff, then tells us the answer is to just run out and program more/ charge less. Oh, and let's run everything on scripting languages too. That'll help...
+5: Socialism Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
How sad is it when people are encouraged to take other people's wealth instead of create their own?
Why beat around the bush and just come out and suggest that everyone forks their paycheck over to the government so that they can give everyone an equal share (minus whatever government believes it is entitled to)? That's really what you're advocating, so why not come out and say it?
It's easy, become a conservative. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The same thing everybody else should do (Score:1, Insightful)
Decided by whom? The insurance company who has the bottom line, not the best of the patient, in their mind.
I like to compare the abuse of a health system to the crime: we can never get rid of it.
Hence, when it comes to crime, the western civilizations have adopted a stance that it's better to let a thousand guilty go unpunished than unfairly punish a single innocent.
This, to my mind, fits perfectly the abuse of a health or any other social security system, too.
The abusers, like criminals, will always be a minority. Yes. The abuse will cost the tax-payer (me!), but it's still better an alternative than a system where someone who really needs the treatment does not get it because of a suspicion he/she might be lying and thus hurt the insurance company. It's a price worth paying.
Re:Anyone who writes programs or plans system .. (Score:5, Insightful)
that you only need to think of yourself. That you make money in a vacumn. That is the central problem with the current conservative movement. You can see how they are taking the money and running. From the head of the New York Stock Exchange to World Com, to Enron. Its all part of the same irresponsible attitude. And its killing us.
The latest, I'll take my money and run" trend is to move all the jobs offshore. Good for them but not good for us. Where are those Republican patriots? I guess they figure why not ME why can't I just pull the plug on all the jobs in a town. Let them find another job somewhere else, I'm going to make a bundle shipping computer work to India. So what if you worked for me for 20 years, and have a house and children to take care of. So what if you can't find a job because all my other CEO buddies at the country club are doing the same thing. We laugh about how much we are making over golf. So what if you end up on welfare and homeless. And Oh Yes I'm going to work real hard to market the idea to you that we should get rid of welfare and social security. Why should I pay for that. Thats your problem.
exhale...
Having worked for several family run business I know there is another way to run a company. Another way to make money with a community of people working together. This cras objectifiction of business has got to stop before our whole economy colapses under the weight of the weathy company owners. Let start teaching real ethics and morality in the schools again. We may have to start it in the kindegartens and work forward, because I think most of those comming out of business school today are a lost cause when it comes to community responsibility. (some notable exceptions)
Re:Or.... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you make more jobs? (Score:2, Insightful)
- Companies invest in computers
- Company Automates one or more tasks
- Company downsizes part or all of skilled workforce
I have noticed that, given the choice of a small number of skilled workers or a larger pool of unskilled, most companies tend to go for the unskilled - they may even cost slightly more (in aggregate) than the skilled workers would, but each individual is more easily replacable, and at much shorter notice, so that they can't leverage their company's dependence on them to get higher wages.This incurs an immediate cost that the company has to recoop somehow
As automation makes tasks either easier or faster, this leads to
part if the new job still requires skill, all if replacement with the same or lesser number of semi-skilled (cheaper) workers is possible.
Changing the "loss and deskilling" trend would take changing the attitude of big corporations (particularly those currently "outsourcing" remaining technical jobs to the far east) who don't seem to realise that the pay they give skilled workers today is what is used to buy these largely luxury items tomorrow.....
Re:"Investing" rarely is (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, stocks and credit ratings hardly behave in a logical, rational, deterministic manner; they behave the way they do in a disturbingly self-fullfilling and self-realizing fashion. (loosely tied to the performance of a given company or industry).
Hrm. Actually, it's funny that solid companies are required to pay less return on bonds, since that return is guaranteed; you'd think [investors] would want to extract a higher rate from companies with better profits. Ah, wait; didn't I already say that it wasn't rational?
Jobs and efficiency: cause/effect? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I'd argue that there's some causality going in the other direction too. The lousy economy has caused plenty of companies to cut back on their workforce through layoffs, and typically they've just forced the survivors to pick up the slack by working harder and for longer hours. In this sense, it's the loss of jobs that's forcing an "increase" in productivity, if you can call it that. People just grin and bear it, because no one wants to lose their job in today's economy. However, I'd hardly call working longer hours to cover your former coworkers' job responsabilities as well as your own the fault of computers; rather, it's a byproduct of the market downturn. Once companies start hiring again and work is more evenly distributed, you'll see this effect go back down again.
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you talking about? In capitalism the only way to get ahead is to fulfill the needs of others, by selling them goods and services. They'll do the same for you.
Why do you think that famine is practically unheard of in capitalist countries? It's because the farmers want to make MONEY! Why do you think that in non-capitalist countries starvation is widespread - like say North Korea? Because their farmers work for "the good of society".
Cut taxes on labor (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:3, Insightful)
You oversimplify quite a bit . . . capitalism by its nature requires competition, which means massive duplication of effort. Additionally, it requires both "winners" and "losers" . . . the "winners" experience the wealth creation you're tooting about, and the "losers" do not.
Another unfortunate consequence of capitalism: since it uses "creating wealth" as a proxy for "productivity", you end up with lots and lots of people "creating wealth" from dubious or useless endeavors (Internet porn link farmers come to mind), then tooting about how they're somehow improving society through this "wealth creation".
Nope... (Score:5, Insightful)
Productivity Software (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.freegis.org/
but nothing approaching what open-office.org does for office software as far as cross-platform deployment, usabitlity and compatibility. A lot of the mathematics for all engineering fields are similar. Excluding Boolian Logic. A universal engineering software platform would do wonders for everyone from your home engineer building his own off- the grid power system, to an Architect trying junp-start his career.
Rinse, Repeat (Score:5, Insightful)
What no one seems to remember was that very quickly there was a surge in self-employment (duh, what else are you gonna do with all that spare time?). Naturally, all those fledgeling companies grew and started hiring (well, some did and some died). The unemployment rate slowly fell and people stopped complaining.
My pet theory is that this is all a normal swing of the economic pendulum. High employment leads to low productivity (how many cumulative hours did you spend doing watering-hole-like things at the office, last time you were employed?). High unemployment just wakes people up and starts getting them motivated and productive again ("Oh, that's why I needed that 'paycheck' thingie [that was auto-deposited, out of sight and out of mind] to pay these 'bill' thingies [also auto-withdrawn].")
Bottom line: Get a job! Can't *get* a job? Make one up! We did, and we haven't missed a financial beat, yet. My spouse is also "unemployed", but works FT for our startup business. Recently we started outsourcing work to a couple of out-of-state freelance developers, part time. Soon we'll have more work for them than they can handle. If you're still employed, start a business anyway. You're just fooling yourself if you think it's "permanent" employment.
When I lost my cushy day job, three months ago, we had no spare cash reserve, either, no nest-egg (how completely American employee is that). What we did was just to scramble as fast as we could to get business. You really would be shocked at how much business there is in the SMB sector. Just dress up a bit business-like, read a good book on how to sell things (e.g. Socratic Selling by Kevin Daley comes to mind) and get out there and do what you used to do for "The Man", just do it for yourself, now.
Oh, and find the best attorney and accountant your money can buy, first! And by all means write those miles down (I still have a hard time with that, but they do add up so fast).
Re:It's easy, become a conservative. (Score:5, Insightful)
Under the tutelage of presumably "good conservatives," we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing the "defense" industry and using it to conquer a major Third World petroleum producer. The latter not only also a multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy for the energy trading industry, but also one of blood. Nearly 200 American soldiers dead, and over 1500 wounded, to say nothing of the thousands of dead Iraqis and tens of thousands of wounded. How you see this as being against big government eludes me completely.
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. You, like most, have fallen into the trap. It is not about liberals or conservatives, Republicans vs. Democrats, Hawks vs. Doves, Right to Life vs. Freedom of Choice, etc. It is about the actual day to day mechanisms of political action. Who do politicians pay attention to? To whom are they beholden? What segment of society drives political action in our country? Do they represent your interests, or do they consider you an expendable "Human Resource"? Is your employment status of any significance to them, or is it at best figured into some large-scale economic indicator? Wake up, my friend, we are all in the same boat.
Today's stolen sig:
The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging.
Re:wealth creation (Score:4, Insightful)
If there was a software package that helped restaurants with inventory, ordering, advertising, etc. that helped them get the business end right...
There are. A great many of them. And yes, they're somewhat expensive but they aren't a significant percentage of the start-up cost of a restaurant - the real estate, the appliances and the supplies cost much more. Restaurants are high turn-over businesses. Most of them will fail, and no amount of software will change that.Constructive Ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to help people cope with the fact that advances in technology have rendered them redundant, either supply or support education. If you have a valuable technical skill, look into opportunities for teaching it to others. If you're not the teacher type, find ways to support local technical education programs, especially those that target people who might not have the means to pay for a college education. The goal here is not to maintain the number jobs in any given field, but to make the transition from an old field to a new field as easy as possible.
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:3, Insightful)
The current mode of our capitolism (in the US and most likely elsewhere) does not place the advantage in the hands of those who possess the intelligence, skills, and ideas, but rather favors those who either have inhirited the capitol from previous generations (Gates, Perot, Walton, Bush, Allen, etc) or those who were lucky enough to befriend those who already posessed that wealth (Can't think of any off hand). Even then you have situations where the cost for these "deals" is rather high in terms of personal integrity, as demonstrated by Mr Dan Greer's co-founders at @stake who have been mysteriously silent about his firing despite being well aware of the correctness of the research that got him fired.
The truth of the matter about wealth production is that efficiency does not crate wealth, it retains it. One of our famous Republican presidents summed it up very well when he was asked to outlaw strikes in industries that were supportin the ciountry at war by answering that "All capital is the product of labor." (If you know who that was you get biscuit).
I won't shed a tear. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, folks, but I will avert my eyes. Histroy doesn't shed too many tears for those who lost transcription jobs after the invention of the printing press, nor the buggywhip manufactures during the dawn of the automodible. This equation gets it all wrong.... From the view of the recently unemployed, they lost a job where their role was easily and reliably replaced by technology. Looking at the big picture and the history of innovation, the world loses little when this happens, because the population as a whole can better utilize human resources whenever there is a surplus of unutilized people.
A simple example.... Without modern advances in farming, all of the great technologies and techniques that came about over the last 2 centuries, I think it is reasonable to say that billions of people would spend their lives working framland rather and that advances in education, medicine, and technology would not have been remotely as great as they are today.
Re:"Investing" rarely is (Score:2, Insightful)
The shares floating around on the market are a percentage of the total shares. The company (and insiders) keeps/holds the majority of the shares and can later use this as "cash" to buy other things. And so thats why you get companies buy other companies through stock.
But you mostly are correct.
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for your North Korea example, you seem to be getting things confused again. The number of truly non-capitalist countries in the world is very small, almost vanishingly so. They have a hard time of it, partly due to bad government (a bad politician is a bad politician regardless of his leanings), partly because of being isolated within the wider world and so not being able to trade, and partly due to a whole number of other things (like getting the crap bombed out of them every few years). Whilst the economic system may be a factor (I'm no economist, I can't say) you are inferring a causal link where there is no evidence of one. Just because a country has food problems, and is communist, does not imply that it has food problems because it is communist. Logic 101.
Re:Basic economics (Score:2, Insightful)
True, there is nothing that they could have done to prevent the bubble from bursting. However, they could have prevented it from sliding as much as it did. Bush's misserable foreign policy is to blame. Interesting to look back at 2000-2001 when Bush was pushing isolationalism and condeming nation building activties. Then 9/11 comes along and he sees that we have to be involved in the world community. Unfortunately he mistook involvment with imperialism.... If the global community does not respect the president of the US. Do you think that the global economy will do well? First step to a good recovery is to get a president that can be respected by the community. Bush's role in the White House is questionable. Who is really in charge in the White House? Rumsfeild or Rove??? The rest of the world is asking theses questions. Why aren't the people of the US???
Re:...what planet is he from? (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, under capitalism, the rich get richer faster than the poor get less poor. But it does enable the poor to escape poverty much quicker than any other economic system. Thus, your choices are to: a) Be really poor just like everyone else b) Be not so poor bu significantly disadvantaged compared to some others.
As a poor person, I would certainly pick B. As a rich person, of course, I would most definitely pick B.
Stand on Zanzibar (Score:2, Insightful)
The real issue is whether people consume resources faster than they can be replentished, which is an obvious problem in many areas ranging from water rights in the American West to the depletion of fisheries. Unfortunately, what's not obvious is precisely where those resource limits are in general. After all, you can build desalination plants to make more fresh water, but that diverts a substantial amount of energy and money from other areas. The Earth's biosystem and humanity's changing technological capabilities combine to create a complex system for which we cannot make certain predictions to the degree of precision we need to determine the planet's carrying capacity.
Dieting the business way. (Score:2, Insightful)
And why would they do that? From their POV, they've reduced their labour costs (one of the biggest expenses a business has). Their efficiency has gone up, that plus the labour savings has generating bigger profits. Throw in outsourcing, and they have no reason to lower the US unemployment rate.
Re:wealth creation (Score:3, Insightful)
This is true of most businesses. People start businesses because they know how to produce whatever the business produces. The reason they fail is that many of them don't know how to run a business.
While tools could be created to help people run a business, if they don't know how, they don't know how.
Also, keep in mind that most businesses fail in the planning stages before they ever open. That's not to say they don't open, just that they are so poorly planned that they cannot succeed. People regularly start businesses with a poor understanding of cash flow or unrealistic expectations of revenue or expenses. They being with too little capital to ride out initial losses and then crash and burn when the money runs out.
If you want to help small businesses, provide software that helps them write a business plan and then provide a mechanism for peer review of the plan.
Law of the jungle?! Nope. (Score:1, Insightful)
This shows both a deplorable lack of compassion and also a deplorable ignorance of how the 'game' (both evolution and society) actually work.
Before getting all technical on you, though, consider this: by your own theory, if I pass you on the street and stab you to death because I think you're a jerk, then you don't deserve to pass on your genes.
I'd be careful advertising that theory, if I were you; it rather seems to be tempting fate in unwise ways.
As to a few technical details: even if evolution worked in the absurdly simplistic dog-eat-dog way you claim, that still doesn't mean that's how the game of life works for us humans... we are social animals, and as such we have societies, which have rules and laws and interactions, and in better cases, compassion is part of all this.
"Survival of the fittest" in a "kill or be killed" sense is not, and never has been, the primary determiner in any social species, let alone humans. Where's that ultra-violence in the social life of bees, ants, termites? There's a certain amount of intra-specific violence in social species such as wolves, horses, and chimpanzees, but never as a daily bloodbath.
Back to evolution as such: death of less-fit individuals does function as a form of negative feedback on the gene pool, but it is nowhere near as efficient a means of evolution as is the positive feedback that comes from sexual selection, which is part of why so very many species have sexes...even plants have male and female. It has huge evolutionary advantages, and it has NOTHING to do with duelling to the death.
And in social species, evolutionary fitness has a great deal to do with interactions with other members of the species...which is why compassion evolved...and why you seem to the rest of us to be less evolutionarily fit, not more, by expressing such an annoying attitude towards your fellow species members.
Any time someone tosses out this kind of hostile "evolution justifies vicious competition to the death...too bad for you" crap, you can be 100% sure that that person has never studied evolution.
Lastly, regardless of how evolution works in the jungle, we like to modify the process in our gardens. I don't know about you, but I have a cultivated garden in my back yard, not a deadly jungle, and that's how I like it. I recommend we all nurture people in the same way...they grow better.
Dad goes to Mexico for dental work (Score:5, Insightful)
I think reality of medical care in the US is that outside of the realm of exotic disease treatment (oncology, hemotology, rheumatology, immunology, cardiology), your run of the mill medical care in most developed and many developing countries is about as good as it is here.
Also, I think that US doctors (dentists and other oral pros included) run the largest, best-financed protection scheme anywhere. You can't get most lab tests or medicines without seeing a doctor, who often has nothing to do with the lab work or the medicine.
Most of this could be done by a nurse or even self-done with the use of intelligent computer diagnoses, but these cost-saving advances are routinely blocked by doctors when they're not busy blocking liability or taking kickbacks from the pharmaceutical industry.
Re:It's a zero-sum game. (Score:5, Insightful)
A remarkably blindered view. Wealth is only zero-sum at a given instant.
Wealth is properly measured by value - what is the value of a great medical system, a great transportation system, varied and efficient communications systems? What is the value of having the time to attend your daughter's soccer games? What is the value of a multitude of research efforts into extending life and making it healthier, or of a US infant mortality rate of 6 per 1000 compared to say Angola's 200 per 1000? Did the US somehow "steal" Angola's ability to produce healthy babies or did the people of the US slowly build their wealth to one that allowed the "purchase" of a society that could provide the lower rate?
Wealth is (to some degree) exponential and viral - it is used to create more wealth for others if applied in a free market system - one in which those who offer a service or product are free to charge what they can and the buyer is free to choose WWWWW to buy. When wealth is stolen by those-that-know-how-to-spend-your-money-better (that is, tax used for social purposes) then it takes longer for wealth to grow and spread - those who had wealth now have less of it to spread through their own acquisition of products and services, and there is tremendous waste and fraud because of a lack of personal interest in seeing that value is obtained for the expenditure.
The kid next door charges more every year to cut my grass - I could look for another grasscutter or I could make some lawnmower manufacturer happy by buying their product and using it instead of allowing this young fellow to practice capitalism, but I've chosen how I want to spend my wealth (my cash) and the kid's chosen how he want's to spend his (his time). I have the luxury and wealth (and gray hair) to be lazy, and the kid trades his time and effort for my cash. This is not a zero-sum game - the world had to invent the lawnmower for the kid and the plasma TV with Angelina Jolie on screen to interest me for this transaction to have occured - else I'd have more inclination to cut my own damn grass.
This kid is using his saved wealth to buy a car, so that he can get to "a real job", so that he can save money and go to school, so that he can invent bigger plasma screens or extend the average lifespan even more or eventually bring sanitation and sane government and decent health care to Angola, or free-market education to the masses, etc.
The ability to pursue happiness mean the number of people enjoying longer, healthier lives with more free-time increases continuously, as it has. That is not zero-sum - it is the growth of wealth.
Employment is soo blue collar (Score:2, Insightful)
Or.. shave your beard, get a bow-tie, and simply become a landlord, or an investor. You don't NEED manufacturing to participate in the New Economy.
You don't see anyone "outsourcing" CEO's, investors or landlords do you? The reason THEY are successful -- and you are not -- is because of your outdated ideals.
Government should be run like a business... into bankruptcy. Just make sure you have a golden parachute, so you are sufficently mobile. Mobility is very important in the New Economy. Just ask the management of Levis, who had a very nice announcement last week.
Re:The same thing everybody else should do (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a very popular thing to say / do. On the same reasoning the governments are proposing "tax cuts" hoping / thinking that this money will make people go out and spend it.
In reality? I doubt it, most people are in debt, they want to get out of debt (if they are sane) and thus they will use any tax credit they get to pay back the money they owe (one might hope at least).
This method works. Simple, really.
Maybe, but I am just going the other way, I am trying to determine what do I really need and lately I am not buying much but some clothes, food and occasionally I do buy a book (libraries are great) mainly because I am not interrested in the rat race, nor do I believe in this "common good" like "buy buy buy, be happy, help others." that is so prevailant in todays society.
But that's of course everybodys choice, I just would like to point out that the world has no infinit resources and thus "shop 'till you drop" could mean you drop because you don't have any air to breath left (as an extreme example).
Michael
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Sahara is gradually shrinking as vegitation grows. Advances in technology and just general luck of weather over climate are likely causes. If your hypothetical farmer is allowed to have one of those Genetically Modified sacks of grain, that are designed to grow in harsh conditions (something most dictators are afraid of), then your American might stand a chance. Most African leaders who ban the GM foods repeat that the foods could be dangerous for human consuption. Perhaps its a possibility, but as long as the grains don't produce any chemicals that react in the blood stream into precpitate, the danger is very unlikely. The real and uncited danger is dependence on Monsanto grains that do not produce offspring.
In short, famine is the result of human considerations, not a matter of the land.
Re:wealth creation (Score:2, Insightful)
Here a few things that do not create wealth:
casinos
school teachers
stock brokering
Here are a few things that create wealth:
farms
residential housing construction
manufacturing of machine tools
transportation of industrial materials
These lists will perhaps enrage many, but then many think that money is wealth, even knowing about the Weimar republic. I submit that the current economic crisis is because the society is wired to sabotage real wealth production.
Fascinating (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm impressed. I'm not surprised that he doesn't have a bunch of pat answers- they don't exist within that context. But I'm impressed that he's asking the right questions, even if there aren't convenient answers.
There's no such thing as 'feed the world' under capitalism, or any social benefit from efficiency or technology: if you could generate a world-day of foodstuffs for 29 cents with a wonderful machine, capitalism is about seeing who gets to hoard as much money as possible from that situation, and politics is about controlling as many people as possible by exerting power over that cornucopia. The bounty won't feed anyone if you don't let them have it. If you have enough power to withhold that bounty, you can control the people you're depriving. That gives you more power, and you win.
This is not really very complicated or mysterious.
I guess it IS pretty cynical, but open your eyes.
The whole concept of making people better competers by giving them free software or whatever is within the context of raw capitalism- the idea is that they are then to beat up on the others who don't take advantage of these things. That's fine for the vicious and the tough and scrappy, but they would have won anyway with or without the tools- in capitalism it's not about the tools or even about the standard of living and least of all about 'wealth', it's about WHO you are as a personality. It's a structure decreeing certain social behavior. The idea is that it's less prone to being abused than a more nurturing social structure, because people will take advantage of anything nurturing. That may be true. People seem to take advantage of capitalism too, though. Pick your poison.
My own experience speaks to this whole situation. So you should make software to empower people? Andy, I've been doing that, in my field. I write CD mastering software- in some areas it is genuinely cutting-edge. I have a revolutionary approach to wordlength reduction and the redistribution of quantization error. I have various tone shaping adjustments that don't appear anywhere else. I've been GPLing this stuff for years now, for just the motivations you describe.
I'm starving and poor and have started dating a woman I cherish who has a 3-year-old kid and you know what, I'm sick of flushing my work. I'm sick of trying to be benevolent and being taken as useless because of my lack of greed. Nothing is going to make me a hardcore capitalist, but as far as this audio-domain program, I'm less and less motivated to help people have it for nothing. I'm not spending my own money to port it to more recent architectures, I'm not spending time and effort setting it up with a help system- by now I'm of a mind to still put it out, GPLed, make no fuss about that, but use this tool for ME and try to, basically, compete against anyone who might have picked it up but doesn't have the expertise with it. That, or not put it out at all- or put out only the source, maybe?
Capitalism means even I get beat down to the point where I can't stand trying to be benevolent or altruistic anymore. I'm unusually capable of being that, but it seems to be not even helping. The last time I talked with a GPLed audio project, they didn't even know what dither was or how it worked. We're sitting around trying to make tractors out of cabbage. It gets old.
I think as long as the context is free-market capitalism, society will be hopeless. There's no answer within the system. I'd prefer to ditch the raw capitalism. Something more like partly-cooked capitalism would suit me. Somehow manage some system where somebody does a reasonably okay job of finding people and projects that do benefit society and quality of life, and bankroll the buggers.
What's so wrong with that? That's just what happens right now, except it's Ken Lay of Enron who gets bankrolled and rew
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you read PJ O'Rourke's 'All the trouble in the world', he quotes serveral economists to make the case that there is no real link between shortages of food and famine. Rather, the problems are almost always those of distribution, often caused politically.
Re:Or.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Believe it or not the native born population of the US is still increasing. Here [cia.gov] it gives the following statistics (estimated for 2003) for the US:
- birth rate: 14.14
- death rate: 8.44
- migration rate: 3.52
- fertility rate: 2.07 children per woman
In much of Europe though, things really are much different. In Italy [cia.gov] and Germany [cia.gov] the death rate is higher than the birth rate, while the average woman has much less than two children. Some countries like Bulgaria [cia.gov] have it even worse with a death rate almost twice the birth rate in addition to a net negative migration. The populations of all of these countries look like they will either drop or remain stable for the foreseeable future.
Even from just my personal observations (I grew up in California, but live in Germany), it's noticable that there are a lot more elderly people here. In the US, it's not unusual at all to see families with 3 kids. Here, it's rare for anybody to have more than 2 and I would guess it's most common to just have 1 child now.
I've heard different reactions to this from all sorts of different people. Several Germans told me it's expensive to have kids or that a lot of people feel they have to either choose a career or a family. I remember this Pakistani guy saying something like "You know, they must really not like children in Germany. In Pakistan, everybody loves kids; they're everywhere". I don't think that Germans hate kids, but I think his comments show that the perception of children and their role in life is different in Europe than in North America or the rest of the world.
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:1, Insightful)
A country run for the benefit of the small oligarchy of corrupt politicians does not benefit the average citizen.
Consider that when you wrongly label African, famine prone, countries as capitalistic.
Those countries miss a workable legal system which is a pre-requisite for capitalism.
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:4, Insightful)
[source: Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom [amazon.com]]
Correlation or causation? You be the judge, but Sen makes a pretty good case for the latter.
Re:Wealth creation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you counting the upstream burden that's built into the price of the consumer goods you purchase? (e.g. the portion of the cost of that loaf of bread that the farmer had to charge to pay the sales taxes on his tractor and the property tax paid on the factory where the bread was baked, and the payroll, social security, and medicaid taxes of the guy who delivered the bread to the store)
Just curious, because it's probably more than 50% - didn't want to depress you further.
Re:wealth creation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The same thing everybody else should do (Score:1, Insightful)
she sets up the 'experiment' by completely isolating herself from friends or family - completely avoids -making- any friends (which could lead to a roommate, or a donation of old clothes,old blankets, etc; god forbid), and spends most of the time just describing how terrible life is without pleasantries. (duh)
She doesn't ever seek assistance in finding jobs, never goes to a placement office to try to find a job that offers more than $6/hr - never contacts a church or outreach program to look for work or find donated items (furniture, car, clothes, etc).
She describes trying to make ends meet eating fast food every day and buying name-brand items. of course stuff ain't gonna add up. You can't spend $5 on a box of cereal in that situation. You gotta get the store-brand or bulk-store-brand stuff that doesn't taste as good but is about 10x cheaper.
Life ain't -great- on $5/hr. And you probably can't afford your own place. You may work pretty far from where you live (to keep living affordable). But that kinda living isn't 'squalor'.
It isn't so absolutely terrible that people aren't -streaming- into the country legally and illegally hoping for a shot at the jobs she talks down.
When i just got outta high school me and a roommate dealt with a $500/mo apt, $50/cable modem, a used tv, and an old pc. I had a 'bed' from the salvation army. (just springs and a mattress on the floor) I shopped at big lots and spent alot of time reflecting on the subtle taste differences between spartan foods frosted flakes knock-off and meijer brand.
I had my own car. how? It was 14 years old. I got it from the purple heart for $450. yeah, that -was- a ton of cash to me, I had to save up. I had to get the brakes done a month after i bought it. (the fscker that donated it bent the wear indicators back). but i dealt.
Sure, take the roommate out of the picture and I prolly woulda had to get a second job to get the car or keep the cable modem. But if you're a good worker, show up on time, pick up extra shifts when you can, and don't switch jobs every year - you don't make minimum wage for long. I was making almost $7 in under 8 months. it doesn't sound like much, but that's almost a 40% raise.
With the raise I began saving and taking community college courses. That wasn't easy either. But i did it - and now i have a better situation.
In all her research how long did ms ehrenreich stay on any one job? couple of months far as i could tell. and never the same industry twice - she never shopped her experience or played to her strengths. she always sought the worst jobs and applied as a blank slate.
so yeah, if you're a person who falls out of the sky at 50 with no family, no friends, no skills, no work experience, and an inability to hold a job - you're likely to have it as rough as her.
but as someone who really lived like that - and not for some middle-class self-discovery 'experiment' - that broad and her shoddy book is nothing more than an insult to the human spirit.
What are you? Deficient? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jobs instead of efficiency? (Score:4, Insightful)
There _may_ be a limit, but it's likely far beyond what we are at now.
"This means it's impossible for everybody in the world to have the same standard of living as the US because there are not enough trees, water, and oil to accomplish such a thing."
Based on what data? History has shown us that technology can account for a dramatic increase in the usability of existing resources.
Most projections along these lines assume that there is no advancing technology, and everything stays at the same price. For example, the estimates of the supplies of oil usually have the following incorrect assumptions:
1) The current wells won't refill (we've found that many in fact, do)
2) We don't ever find any new reserves (in fact the ocean contains a vast supply, and we continually find new reserves)
3) The price of oil stays the same (there are considerable resources that are available that we simply don't dig up because it's not profitable at the _current price_, but will be if the price would increase)
The same kind of assumptions are in most of these "we're going to drain the planet" type of predictions.
Re:The REAL Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I don't believe you.
But, for argument's sake, let's assume you really are a perfectly selfless, righteous individual looking out for your fellow man. The problem is there are still self-absorbed pricks like me in the world, and as long as there are no socialistic system can ever work.
Furthermore, everything you've just spoken of (food, home, leisure time) is a scare resource. That is, there is not enough to go around (demonstrated by the fact that not everyone has as much as they want). As long as a resource is scarce, some will have it, and some will not. In the whole history of civilization there has been one resource that hasn't been scarce: air (neglecting the obvious special circumstances of course).
"But food isn't scarce!" you cry. "Just look at those damn Americans. They have plenty of food!" Indeed we do. And we work for it. And we grow it, and we ship it to the highest bidder. And why do we ship it to the highest bidder? Because we're greedy, self-absorbed pricks who like to be able to provide the most food, shelter and leisure time for our families.
"So send some food to Africa" they say. So we send food. And what do the Africans do? They eat it. Do they grow more? Not usually. Do they try to use the 1st world soil-preservation methods to grow the best food? Not usually. So then what? They starve mostly, until more food comes their way.
So what's the motivation for the guy shipping his food to the hungry? Well in some cases it's the start those people need to get going, and they start farming and growing and bam! an economy emerges (hooray!). But too often the food is just eaten (and any other resource is just used up in the same manner), and the philanthropist is left with requests for more food, with a little less currency to acquire that food with the next time.
Basically in these cases it's coming down to the old "if you teach a man to fish...".
Which all comes back to motivation. Why give to someone else? Because it's the Right thing to do. Okay, I would usually agree with you. But how much should I give? Do I give to the detriment of my own family? If not, then who decides when "enough" is "enough." Who will decide what amount of food, home, and leisure is "fair"? You? Over my self-absorbed dead body.
Re:The REAL Problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"Investing" rarely is (Score:3, Insightful)
Couldn't be more wrong. The concept of a share market is based on trading in shares to allow investors to realize their investment without taking their money out of the company.
Consider the correct alternatives.
If I want to get out of Company X (assume I was in the IPO) I have two possible alternatives.
I can ask the company for the money back. Of course I will want to cash out the $1.00 which is the current value, not just the 10c I paid for the share. Then Company X has to go out and find someone like you to put more money in. And they will want the $1.00 per share that they are worth. Before stock markets this is what happened as a matter of course.
Now I only need to go to the exchange and sell you the share for $1.00 and the company doesn't get involved.
Do you not see that as the equivalent of the buyer putting their money into the company. After all if the aompany is liquidated the buyer expects to get the cash out. It's certainly not going to the IPO investor.
Same thing for Bonds.
That said, the best form of investing in a company is to purchase their product.
If you are going to talk about investing you should look up what it means. I cannot think of an example where buying something from someone else can be classified as an investment in the seller. It may be an investment of yours in the thing you purchased but not in the seller (not even colloquially)
Re:Creating wealth is easy (Score:2, Insightful)
You really don't need more than 10 acres and a chainsaw. 40 is wealth. 10 is a living.
You'll need to get your income up to $20k a year somehow. You can live on that if you rethink the way you live a bit and still save enough money to come up with a downpayment ( but it's really better to wait longer and pay outright. You don't want to end up being a "sharecropper" for your mortgage holder).
You need 10 acres of wooded land. It has to be wooded or it won't work. Wooded land can be had cheaper than cleared land because the owner thinks of it as "unimproved" and that it will cost a lot of money to clear it to make usable. He's forgetting that trees are a cash crop.
You're going to set aside 5 acres as a woodlot and then call in a lumber company to clear the other 5 for you. You aren't going to pay them. They're going to pay you. If you've picked the right plot you now have 10 grand cash in your pocket.
It's a start.
KFG