It's Not Technology That's Disrupting Our Jobs (nytimes.com) 128
The history of labor shows that technology does not usually drive social change, argues Louis Hyman, director of the Institute for Workplace Studies at the ILR School at Cornell. On the contrary, social change is typically driven by decisions we make about how to organize our world. Only later does technology swoop in, accelerating and consolidating those changes. From a report: This insight is crucial for anyone concerned about the insecurity and other shortcomings of the gig economy. For it reminds us that far from being an unavoidable consequence of technological progress, the nature of work always remains a matter of social choice. It is not a result of an algorithm; it is a collection of decisions by corporations and policymakers. Consider the Industrial Revolution. Well before it took place, in the 19th century, another revolution in work occurred in the 18th century, which historians call the "industrious revolution." Before this revolution, people worked where they lived, perhaps at a farm or a shop. The manufacturing of textiles, for example, relied on networks of independent farmers who spun fibers and wove cloth. They worked on their own; they were not employees.
In the industrious revolution, however, manufacturers gathered workers under one roof, where the labor could be divided and supervised. For the first time on a large scale, home life and work life were separated. People no longer controlled how they worked, and they received a wage instead of sharing directly in the profits of their efforts. This was a necessary precondition for the Industrial Revolution. While factory technology would consolidate this development, the creation of factory technology was possible only because people's relationship to work had already changed. A power loom would have served no purpose for networks of farmers making cloth at home. The same goes for today's digital revolution.
In the industrious revolution, however, manufacturers gathered workers under one roof, where the labor could be divided and supervised. For the first time on a large scale, home life and work life were separated. People no longer controlled how they worked, and they received a wage instead of sharing directly in the profits of their efforts. This was a necessary precondition for the Industrial Revolution. While factory technology would consolidate this development, the creation of factory technology was possible only because people's relationship to work had already changed. A power loom would have served no purpose for networks of farmers making cloth at home. The same goes for today's digital revolution.
Uhm, duh (Score:4, Insightful)
The Industrial Revolution didn't start in the 19th century, it started in the 18th century.
This isn't a real story. It is a story about an academic who selected some niche terminology to make normal stuff sound like something new. But a new phrasing is something new in the present, not something newly discovered about the past.
Re:Uhm, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been happening for centuries:
A programmable punch card loom replaced the need to have a group of four or more artisans spending weeks making one garment, and where no two were perfectly identical. The punch card operator just needed to make sure that the thread reels never ran out and even that was automated. That led to the Luddites. One that battle was over, looms could be powered by waterwheel power, then steam engines, then by electricity. Punched cards were replaced by electronics and then digital media. It only takes one Photoshop artist and a technician to operate 15 digital looms.
Automated traffic lights replaced the need for traffic police. Automated elevators replaced the need for elevator operators. Automated telephone exchanges replaced the need for telephone operators.
We had the Wapping dispute where print workers refused to modernize. They had left it so late to catch up, that by the time the management wanted to introduce new technology, those print shops consisting of copper drums, boilerplate and teams of men adding and removing metal print would be replaced by a commercial laser printer running PostScript and no-one was needed to convert journalist shorthand into metalwork. Their jobs had been vapourized overnight. This was before the internet so they couldn't retrain as web page designers.
In the 1990's, there was the goal of the "paperless office". By using high resolution large screens, there was less need to print documents out. The other advantage was that they could flatten management structures by going from a 1:3 ratio of directors:managers:supervisors:engineers down to a 1:10 ratio. Those managers either took retirement or moved into the financial industry.
The next phase is that engineers want to focus on one particular skill or set of skills, while project managers like to push engineers "outside their comfort zone" so that no one person is irreplaceable. That just leads to engineers choosing to be freelancers and contractors so that their duties are tied down in writing and they don't get nudged out of the way as new employees arrive.
Re: (Score:2)
Before phones there was the telegraph, and before that messengers on horseback or on foot.
Re:Uhm, duh (Score:5, Insightful)
The Industrial Revolution didn't start in the 19th century, it started in the 18th century.
This isn't a real story. It is a story about an academic who selected some niche terminology to make normal stuff sound like something new. But a new phrasing is something new in the present, not something newly discovered about the past.
You are right there is a big problem with this guys story - though not quite what you are saying.
I have been a student of the Industrial Revolution, and how it started, for a long time. And the concept of the "industrious revolution" has some validity I think, but it is nothing like what this guy describes.
In the industrious revolution, however, manufacturers gathered workers under one roof, where the labor could be divided and supervised. For the first time on a large scale, home life and work life were separated. People no longer controlled how they worked, and they received a wage instead of sharing directly in the profits of their efforts. This was a necessary precondition for the Industrial Revolution.
This. Didn't. Happen. There is no other way to put it. No, textile workers were not gathered into big pre-industrial workshops to spin thread, or weave cloth. They did this at home. The "industrious" part was the high degree of organization that this distributed textile industry achieved -- "putters out" distributed raw cotton to households, collected the thread that was spun, passed it on to homes were weaving was done, then collected the cloth. Businessmen in London financed this vast operation, and would later put their capital into factories. This large scale system of central organization, and the increased output it generated are the real "industrious revolution", along with the growing sophistication in the mechanical arts, which was the prerequisite for building factory machinery.
This was a necessary precondition for the Industrial Revolution. While factory technology would consolidate this development, the creation of factory technology was possible only because people’s relationship to work had already changed. A power loom would have served no purpose for networks of farmers making cloth at home.
Quite so. Which is why it wasn't invented until textile factories had been in operation for 15 years (1785) and first factory to use them wasn't built until 1790. The first factories didn't weave cloth, they spun thread, a much simpler process. Thread spinning factories put everyone did it on a spinning wheel out of work in the 1770s. The spinning jenny was invented in 1764, and factories using it (and Arkwright's water frame) started going up by 1770.
Home weavers took it on the chin full force 1810-1820 when weaving machines that could handle the many weights of fabric and weaving patterns became available. It was around 1811 that the Ned Ludd legend arose, with the Luddites.
And yes there was a pre-existing process that was changing the relationship to work. It was called "enclosure". Common fields that had been used by farmers for centuries were reorganized into estates that could be sold (or mortgaged), which created a new class of unemployed people - who could be put to work in factories.
The problem for the textile craftswomen and men of England was not that they were herded into workshops or factories, it was that factory equipment was something like 100 times as productive as spinning wheels (and later looms), so it required very few people to operate. Everyone else was simply put out of work.
Seriously this guy's article is a fun-house mirror version of real history. He is "an economic historian"? Dear Lord.
Re:Uhm, duh (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed I just looked up the key paper defining this concept (in English) which is De Vries, J. (1994). "The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution. The Journal of Economic History", 54(02), 249–270 (doi:10.1017/s0022050700014467, you can get it with Sci-hub).
There is nothing in this paper about workers being herded into workshops. Instead the claimed "industrious revolution" is asserted to be increased intensity of work in the home for market (as I described above) to purchase goods from outside. Here is a key statement of this from the paper (p. 262):
A shift from relative self-sufficiency toward market-oriented production by all or most household members necessarily involves a reduction of typically female-supplied home-produced goods and their replacement by commercially produced goods. At the same time, the wife was likely to become an autonomous earner.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You would enjoy journal club.
In academic circles it is commonplace to have a journal club organized around your specialty. A group of researchers and graduate students meets to discuss journal articles relevant to their field. Sometimes it is exciting because you get to talk about someone opening a new area of inquiry or finding an interesting new fact. Other times it is exciting because you pick apart a paper that is completely unsupported by the results included in the paper.
Those are actually the best
Re:Even if his history was right... (Score:5, Interesting)
The kinds of social decisions we can make, that is to say, the kind that are practical, are determined by the technology available.
You can't choose to have a city, and to have zero slave labor, if you tech level is only what the Romans had. The choice to abolish slavery was made only after the tech level made people productive enough that the city could function on the effort of paid laborers who are free to choose their own jobs.
And so on.
Actually, the Romans had access to a whole bunch of technology that could have replaced a lot of the slave labour but chose not to use it. They 1) thought it would be a bother to have a lot of jobless slaves and 2) figured slaves were cheaper in most cases. In other cases, they just didn't see the technology as something that could be useful for work and production, since they had slaves for that and didn't think there was any need to tinker with that.
Just like today, there are a lot of things you could easily automate (the technology exists), but it's still cheaper to have people do the work...especially if you can outsource the labour to a cheap and poor country. You can see today when you go from a country where labour is cheap to a country where labour is expensive, that in the latter, there is a lot more automation.
As for whether slavery was necessary in Roman society to build its cities...well, ancient China also had large cities, was technologically similar to Rome, but was much less reliant on slaves. Slaves existed yes, but were usually a much smaller portion of the population than in the Roman Empire and many emperors actively tried to ban slavery or reduce it.
Re: (Score:3)
It amazes me that the USA offshores the transcription of medical notes and prescriptions to India, where in the UK, we just have our doctor print out the medication. In Norway, it's sent direct to the pharmacy.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It amazes me that the USA offshores the transcription of medical notes and prescriptions to India, where in the UK, we just have our doctor print out the medication. In Norway, it's sent direct to the pharmacy.
I live in the US and my doctor contacts my pharmacy directly when I need a prescription. Then I go pick it up. If there is particular urgency, it is available within the hour. This has been going on for at least ten years. So perhaps your information requires updating.
Re: Even if his history was right... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That seems a glib and useless take on the subject. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it's not the technology, but the people that no longer need to hire people that are 'at fault'... lovely. Thanks for that insight!
The whole point isn't who to blame. It's the fact that technology is exposing a deep, deep flaw in the structure of our society.
If folks don't need to use other people to make money and own virtually everything, the economy itself is useless for any meaningful society.
And if technology makes it so that anyone that gets ahead can almost automatically build to the point where they break the idea of a meaningful economy.. then basing that society or economy on people being paid for things that can be automated is a losing move in the larger game.
If society at large seeks to actually serve to expand human experience beyond just the needs of the ultra-rich, then it likely should seek to use that same technology to get people to legitimately help other people, rather than just have the rich monetize more aspects of their lives.
The whole idea of corporations is kind of a new idea historically - we can invent other ideas, with more forethought than the way courtrooms defined the things we have running the world right now.
But we do have to understand why technology will end the good things about our current economy, beyond just finding folks to blame.
Ryan Fenton
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. The reason people don't want to hire people to do the work is because Technology is overall cheaper.
While it makes good business sense to do so, if those now unemployed workers can't find a job because other people aren't hiring people, then eventually there will be few people left to buy goods and services. Peak capitalism looks horrible.
Re: (Score:2)
"If I had mod points, I'd mod you up."
Necessity is the mother of Invention/Technology (Score:3)
The government mandated various thing like workers and public liability insurance this could be dealt with too it affected everyone and could be shown to clients and the better employers had it anyway, actually levelled the pla
Peak capitalism looks horrible (Score:3)
Especially when everyone thinks they should "get ahead".
Re: (Score:3)
The employees of a business do not produce enough value to keep the company viable. By their very definition, they get less for their labor than what the company gets in value. So they can never afford more than what their company continuously produces; employed or not.
Additionally, lets say the market demands drop because of earnings shortages. What happens is either the service ends or the company gets replaced by a cheaper running solution to reduce their market price. Such as lower wages for the emp
Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an example of learning too much from history. Pick one or two examples that fit nicely into a theory, declare it a law or principle, and then use it to judge or predict other events. Other events may or may not fit the pattern, so it's still a crap shoot whether you can use this to predict or understand anything else.
Uber was enabled by technology, not by some sort of social pattern.
Kohath disregards history, thinks nobody needs it (Score:2, Insightful)
Uber was enabled by a pattern of companies getting away with skirting regulation, calling it "disruptive" tech and pretending they aren't really just taxicabs. That's a social pattern, the tech just enabled the app. Don't be stupid.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
You're proving my point, it's not a new thing. Disruptive regulation-skirting existed, the tech was what lowered the cost of entry into delivering the service. Otherwise they'd need call centers and dispatchers, like taxis.
Re: (Score:2)
That was their business model and why they succeeded where others were driven out of business by the taxi cartels and corrupt local governments. But that’s not a broad social phenomenon.
The technology enabled the service. Defeating corruption kept it from being destroyed by rent seekers.
What social phenomenon preceded Uber that enabled it? Unemployment? If that's the answer, then this pattern predicts everything and thereby predicts nothing.
Re:Kohath disregards history, thinks nobody needs (Score:5, Insightful)
What social phenomenon preceded Uber that enabled it? Unemployment? If that's the answer, then this pattern predicts everything and thereby predicts nothing.
People leaving restaurants and having to stand in the rain yelling at cars to flag down medallion cabs, and pondering, "There has to be a better way of doing this..."
Re:Kohath disregards history, thinks nobody needs (Score:4, Insightful)
You could make the case that taxicab rent seeking created an environment where the public was very poorly served. And that was the social phenomenon that led to Uber. But then every business opportunity caused by incumbent businesses offering poor service fits the pattern and we are back to this theory predicting everything.
Re: Kohath disregards history, thinks nobody needs (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Under the 'corruption' people were making a living wage. Now those people are comitting suicide as teenagers do their jobs. The teenagers in the meantime used to make better wages at fast food restaurants. I'll take that corruption any day of the week.
Note how you don't care about the public at all. That's why Uber wins, because you guys think the public exists to provide someone with "a living wage" rather than ride services existing to serve the public at a market wage. The public decided they wanted to ride, not be ridden.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Buses shut down for 58 days of the year (Score:3)
Many passengers who would have taken a bus or train or walked or biked, now use an Uber.
People in my home town wouldn't have taken a bus today because today is Sunday, one of the 58 days of the year when the bus drivers are at home with their families. (Source: fwcitilink.com [fwcitilink.com])
Re: (Score:3)
Many passengers who would have taken a bus or train or walked or biked,
Or just drove home drunk.
now use an Uber.
Yeah, they get to choose instead of corrupt governments choosing for them. That's why Uber wins — by serving the public.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"The team delved into whether ride-hailing affected crash rates in four cities: Las Vegas, Portland, Ore., Reno, Nev., and San Antonio, Texas — American cities in which Uber, the nation's largest ride-sharing company, launched, ceased, then resumed operations. And the results were mixed. Crashes involving alcohol decreased as Uber resumed services in Portland and San Antonio, but not Reno. And in no case did Uber's resumption of service result in fewer total injury crashes
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cheaper, easier alternatives to driving drunk mean fewer people driving drunk?
We're going to need some carefully designed "studies" to deny something like that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Kohath disregards history, thinks nobody need (Score:1)
Are you kidding, bro? Uber has done more in a few years to reduce drunk driving than all the public service announcements and all the police jackboot crackdown campaigns ever in history.
There are big problems with Uber's business model and their abusive labor practices. (How can they be the uncontested market leader, set their own prices, grossly underpay their workers, externalize their capital costs onto their workers - and still lose billions every year? Good old fashioned embezzlement??) But that do
Re: (Score:2)
That's why Uber wins — by serving the public.
No, Uber wins by receiving massive subsidies from the government. In the form of the roads Uber drives on, and the welfare programs Uber drivers can turn to when they make below a living wage.
So good news! You're paying Uber whether or not you use their service.
But please stop pretending that Uber is some sort of innovative capitalist success story. They're just yet another case of a pig at the government trough, just with better PR.
Re: Kohath disregards history, thinks nobody need (Score:5, Interesting)
As a people we produce more everday than we need. We have more than enough for everybody, but our economic system does not value human life intrinsically.
Thus we value the individual's ability to increase production capacity and wealth stores. Not all are equally suited to such advanced thinking and foresight. In a purely evolutionary system these once strong laborers, the former backbones of our economy, the shoulders upon which we have stood, would die off due to not being able to acquire and manage the resources to compete in an ever increasingly intellectually challenging economic game.
But there are those which ask the moral and ethical questions of "what am I working for?"... Are we merely working to i crease the wealth of a "noble few", while hoping to skim enough resources off the top to survive? Or are we working for some greater purpose? Are we working to ensure that all of humanity is free to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Note how you don't care about the public at all.
Note how you do not realize that the qasi-employees are members of "the public" that you are so concerned about.
If you want to say "customers", say "customers". "The public" has interest far beyond any single business.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Go Tell it to Steam Train Engineers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
the railroads are still here. the engineers learned to drive diesel-electric
Re: (Score:2)
I missed the coal tenders and the guy in the caboose
Re: (Score:2)
the guys in the caboose were around on every freight train until the 1980s, steam had nothing to do with the lessened use of them.
yeah the guy with the shovel was hit by the end of steam.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow... (Score:1)
Talk about putting the cart before the horse... You might as well say that computers had no REAL effect on how business is done and how people work, too. No, computers were invented because the world decided it needed them beforehand, right? I'm sure it's not because they were developed initially for other purposes, then later retrofitted to meet more needs because the massive potential of automated computing was recognized... I mean, who's Alan Turing, right? 200 years ago, I'm sure people were sitting on
"Our jobs" ... Thinking like that is the problem. (Score:1)
Show of hands: Who here would switch "his job" for trying to achieve his dreams ... or just dreaming on a beach ... in a heartbeat?
Yeah... thought so.
But we believe that can't be, because to eat, we have to work. We have to give something, to get something.
True. That's only fair.
The question, is how much?
Because when you compare the actual amount of real aka value-adding work ... and the amount that is so automated that sometimes the occasional maintenance by barely over one person keeps up as much as a mas
Stop (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If people were getting free from labor from automation then working hours should be decreasing and yet the opposite seems to be happening.
Technology enables change (Score:3)
It is not a result of an algorithm; it is a collection of decisions by corporations and policymakers
And those decisions are made from a range of options. Options that are created by technology.
Until there were computers, there was no option to send email. A telegram being a poor substitute. Until there were webcams, there was no option for cheap and reliable video-conferencing. Until there were photocopiers the only option to copy documents was carbon paper or Banda copiers: poor alternatives, but the only ones.
Technology created the options that corporations then adopted. Sometimes (like with video recorders) there were multiple options and people made a choice. But before those options appeared, there was no choice.
So it is quite reasonable to say that it is technology that is causing the disruption. It is providing the options for disruption. All businesses do is choose which one to adopt.
The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
... money has been decoupled from productive activity and investment seeking the highest returns and so gone largely into speculation and basically sophisticated forms of rent seeking and fraud. Let's be honest, technology just speeds this along by enabling big compaies to engage in labour arbitrage. Taking advantage of the huge wage differences of people across the globe thanks to the internet and most people don't have the money or are incapable of moving from where they are at from different reasons. This naive idea that human beings are fungible widgets has put a serious strain on society.
Let's not forget the concept of dead money, corporations are sitting on billions they are not investing in anyone or anything. We're experiecing total failure of capitalism and nobody noticed. AKA money is pooling in the hands of ceo's and the ceo's are just sitting on it, at sane society woud intervene and just start investing in people, tools and jobs if the corporate fatcats won't do it. So it's pure politics and mass political ignorance that's at the root of our problems. Basically people are rotting on the sidelines because our corporate leadership is an emporer with no clothes.
https://www.theglobeandmail.co... [theglobeandmail.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The flip side to "Labour arbitrage" is that you think some workers have a god-given right to be compensated better than other workers. Like if you got the choice between hiring a software developer for $100k/year in Silicon Valley or $50k/year in the Midwest who have the exact same skills and can do the exact same job does it matter what the cost of living is in Silicon Valley? No. What you call arbitrage is what economic theory would call optimization, the jobs flow to where they can be done the cheapest.
Re:The reality is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dead money is mostly an illusion
It really isn't, money "invested" in stocks is money just shuffling zeroes and ones between different banks. If you're going to try to tell me the market is efficient I'd laugh in your face. Try to at least be educated enough before participating in a discussion.
Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If you're going to tell me the bottom 80% can't use more money to do more productive things I'll laugh in your general direction.
US distribution of wealth
https://imgur.com/a/FShfb [imgur.com]
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa... [ucsc.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
When has wealth not been concentrated? It has _always_ been concentrated. I'd argue that it's less concentrated today. Back in the day, some asshole of a King owned everything, including your LIFE.
We are far from the worst period in history, but that's not exactly something to be proud of. I read an article last week that looked at the amount of money made by labour versus the amount made by owning capital in the UK over the 20th century. The labour percentage was up at around 70% a few decades ago and is now closer to 50%.
Wealth will always concentrate unless you are willing to strip humans of freedom and free will.. One guy will always be just a tiny bit better at his business... He'll make just a tad more profit, save an iota more on expenses.. Slowly his fortune will grow.
Most people don't object to someone who is better at their job earning more. They object to the people with huge incomes that result from the things that they own, not from the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Be it as it may, the economy depends on people being able to buy and consume. No consumption, no economy. Funny enough, communism and capitalism had the same symptoms with vastly different diseases. In communism, the economy collapsed because there simply wasn't anything to buy. In capitalism, it's about to because while there's plenty to buy, nobody has the means to do just that.
Re: (Score:3)
Here's one of the so called failures of Communism in the Soviet Union's planned economy:
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/0... [nytimes.com]
Citing some of the thousands of letters reportedly received on the subject, Pravda said farmers were complaining that in some areas bread was being fed to cattle and hogs. A writer from Kursk said: ''I often see people walking out of a bread store with 15 to 20 loaves. Clearly it's not for them - it's to feed their pigs, chickens and ducks.'' Less Bread, More Meat
If the farmers get feed g
Re: (Score:2)
I fail to see the connection to what you replied to.
Re: (Score:1)
If our economic system depends on world stability and certainty to work, we are FUCT.
Re: (Score:2)
Interest rates skyrocketing? Where? Sure ain't where I'm living, I'm basically paying my bank to be host to my money rather than getting interest by now.
The reason nobody takes out a loan even at rates bordering on 0% is that there is nothing to invest in. When you want to run a business, you have to have someone to sell to. Producing makes you poor, only selling makes you rich.
And with no money on the demand side of the economy, well, why produce?
Re: (Score:2)
Yet most of the jobs ARE in Silicon Valley instead of the Midwest. And regardless of where you work, you get paid just enough to live there. Even if you are doing the same work. Which simply shows that it's a case or arbitrage like he said.
You know why most of the jobs are in Silicon Valley? Because that's where the CEOs live and they want to micro-manage their employees face to face.
independent farmers? (Score:2)
Sorta yes, and sorta no. (Score:3)
A little etymology.
See... Those farmers/"makers" processed raw materials into stuff and sold their stuff to people who did things with them and they were called "factors".
Then they were gathered into FACTORIES where they processed those same raw materials.
I often sneer at academics, but the level of academics has declined so far that's no fun anymore.
I expect better of NYT.
This is a bit like saying (Score:5, Insightful)
In the last 50 years America has doubled it's manufacturing output while cutting manufacturing jobs by 1/3. Our public policy has almost completely ignored that. The end of large scale manufacturing jobs as the primary employer is more than anything what killed Unions, and most economists agree that loss of bargaining power is why wages aren't going up even though unemployment is low.
This entire article strikes me as yet another attempt to fit the square peg that is corporate capitalism into the round whole that is society's well being. It's working backwards from it's conclusion.
Re: (Score:2)
Well said!
Re: (Score:2)
How to get and keep a job (Score:4, Interesting)
It really is that simple. Just solve more problems than you create, and you will never have trouble getting or keeping a job. Technological innovation, government policies, cultural conventions, and the opinions of the director of workplace studies at Cornell have nothing to do with it.
There are two ways of making this formula work. You can minimize the term on the right, or you can maximize the term on the left. Let's consider both cases.
The principal problem you will create as an employee (or business owner) is that you will expect to be paid. Your employer/customer does not want to do this. It will be a problem for them. This is an unavoidable problem. There are other factors on the right-hand side that are avoidable, however. You can minimize the problems you create by being a nice person. Don't be a prima donna or a jerk. There is an entire self-help industry devoted with minimizing the right-hand side of the formula, so I'll say no more about it here.
While there are limits on how much you can minimize the right-hand side, there are no limits on how much you can increase the left-hand side. So the best approach for getting and keeping a job is to maximize the number of problems you solve. Note that the better of a problem solver you become, the more income you can command without unbalancing the formula. So if you want to achieve "employment security", probably your best approach is just to learn to be a better problem solver.
So how do you learn to solve problems? Practice solving problems!
Everybody is all about STEM education these days, as they observe that people with STEM degrees tend to be better employed. My theory is this has not so much to do with the subject matter of STEM as it does with the way STEM is taught. In your STEM classes, the homework and the tests and most of what you do is solve problems. You get lots and lots of practice solving problems. And that ends up making the students better problem solvers. Courses in which you write long papers tracing the development of gender stereotypes in 17th century New England farming communities do not provide nearly as much practice at problem solving, which results in graduates who are not as good at solving problems, and who therefore have more difficulty making the aforementioned formula work.
The problems you solve need not be technical problems. Problem solving tends to be an easily transferable skill. You might develop problem solving skills in math class, or playing chess, or working puzzles, but then end up applying your problem-solving prowess to management or administrative or marketing problems.
The key is to practice solving problems. Practice constantly. Make it your lifestyle to solve problems. Make problem solving part of who you are. Do you see some litter on the ground? Pick it up and you have solved a problem. Are there dirty dishes in the sink? Wash them and put them away - another problem solved. Do you see a shopping cart that some prior patron has left in the middle of the parking lot at the grocery store? Push that cart to the cart corral, or back into the store. (Do not be tempted to say "that is somebody else's problem". Your goal should be to solve problems, not assign blame for them.)
If you dare: end each day be reviewing what you have done and detailing the problems you have created and the problems you have solved, and resolve to do better the next day. If you are very brave, you can ask your spouse/significant-other to help you with that task, as they will often be able to point out countless problems that you created or problem-solving opportunities that you omitted because
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Marketers get wealthy by creating problems.
"Your split ends look absolutely horrible, people are laughing at you, but you can fix them with our New Foo Cream 9000!"
Re: (Score:2)
There is a very simple formula for getting and keeping a job. The formula works during all eras and in all cultures. It also works if you want to start your own business - simply substitute "customer" in place of "employer". This is the formula:
Ok, so I have to stop you right there, because obviously this equation isn't right. Let's start with the simplest issue, and point out that you mention "customer" and "employer", but neither of those appear in your equation. So I'm going to assume you mean:
Right? Ok, so onto the next problem. Some problems are bigger and more important than others, obviously, so it should be:
Re: (Score:2)
Wow is your post a giant pile of trite oversimplifications that demonstrate you've never had to deal with difficulty in employment.
While there are limits on how much you can minimize the right-hand side, there are no limits on how much you can increase the left-hand side
Ok, I'd like you to work 36 hours in the next day.
Hey, there's no limits, so you can do that, right?
Everybody is all about STEM education these days, as they observe that people with STEM degrees tend to be better employed.
People with STEM careers tend to be better employed. But we graduate 1.5 STEM students for every entry-level STEM job opening. If you get through that math problem, you will tend to be better employed. If you're in the 0.5, you don't get a STEM career and you get to "enjoy" lif
Remember French revolution (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And hopefully the beheadings will be put online so everyone can enjoy them.
who has control has the money (Score:2)
A case study is the agrarian movement, grain farmers in the north west USA.
Who controlled the production, storage, transport or markets.
Forming groups, forcing others out of business, manipulating the markets.
Farmers co-operatives, middlemen, large business, opportunists, monopolies, government regulation.
Different business structures formed in different states and went through a number of phases over time.
It got complicated and they played rough because there was a lot of money and power up for grabs.
Gig economy is not about technology. (Score:2)
It's about the current trend of people believing they can survive like a garage band pre record label signing.
Forest anyone? (Score:1)
So much seeing of trees here. Not much seeing of forest.
You're in a cage with a machine that gives you plastic tokens which you can exchange for food pellets when you press a lever. One day the pressing the lever gives you less tokens than you expect.
The dumber ones of you say "who's to blame for this? Stop other from pressing the lever and getting the tokens!"
The less stupid say "I should get more pellets per token!"
Most of you just press than lever harder and harder.
Almost no one says "Why am I in a CA
One Simple Test (Score:2)
The "gig economy" not growing as much as hyped (Score:2)
https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/... [cnn.com]
This and other similar stories are starting to make me wonder if the "gig economy" was at least partly manufactured as a marketing ploy by Uber and Airbnb and cousins, as a way of getting people to jump on the bandwagon.
and replace them with 60 hour work weeks and mini (Score:2)
and replace them with 60 hour work weeks and mini med Health Plans.
Re: Gig economy? More like too lazy millennials (Score:5, Insightful)
It starts out that to consume resources, man must invest and work to gather those resources.
Next, trade enters the picture and individuals exchange resources and both are better off.
Then banking enters the system, and rather than storing valuable resources, a placeholder is stored, an I.O.U. of sorts. Wealth is no longer perishable, it can be accumulated or saved over time.
Then those that save wealth, who store favors, gain a disproportionate advantage over those that don't. They are able to acquire ownership over greater means of production, and take a larger share of the resources, or the stored value of those resources.
Next the wealthy are then able to incentivize the workforce to engineer more effect means of production. Which allows them to gain more resources for less effort.
Then things start to break down. A growing population requires more resources. Those who control the means of production can do so at such high levels of efficiency that they do not need the laborers. Without a need, there is no incentive to redistribute resources. Any resources the workers provide only dilute the value of those resouces, and thus reduces the resources gained in return.
The next stage is one of two things, either those who have optimized the means of production begin giving generously from their capacity, rather than according to supply and demand economics, or the there is a layering effect, where the classes become separate economies or even nations. A third world country living amongst a first world country, potentially warring for the resources contained within.
Re: (Score:2)
You're being modded down because you're an uniformed idiot.
The US graduates 1.5 STEM students for every STEM job opening. Simple math that even you can do will show that means a whole lot of people who "did the right thing", got a useful degree can't get a real job.
"Well, they shouldn't have done that!!". Well grandpa, you just spent the last 20 years saying they should do that. In fact, "go get a degree in CS or something useful" has been your mantra for anyone who is looking for a job. Since you turne
Re: (Score:2)
Great! You have a real job for them? Why didn't you say so!
Re: (Score:2)
HR's job is to disrupt the hiring process, after you're hired, middle management is responsible.