this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1
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People working 40 hours to make 10 things. Technology improves so that one person can make 20 things in 40 hours. People now get paid twice as much? People now only work 20 hours? Nope! Half as many people now work at the same pay. The rest have to go find something else to do.
You're right that we have more luxuries today, many that we could live without. And we have them because of higher efficiency and specialization. One person operating machines can farm what took 40 people before. One person in a factory makes thousands of shoes vs making one pair by hand. We're able to create immense value. The issue is that people who own land and buildings and machines take an oversized share of the value being created, while some workers struggle to meet basic needs. Of course there are many people who live middle class lives. There are also plenty of people who work very hard and still have a low quality of living. We should commit to meeting everyone's basic needs.
There's a kernel of truth here- yes, a lot of everything is more complex (and a lot of it, like cars that now have better safety features and standards- is just better) today than it was- but that's not the whole story behind why everything is more expensive today, particularly in terms of labor's buying power.
Today, there are things that haven't improved in power or technology or quality (looking at you, broadband cable and cell phone connectivity, and basic foodstuffs, and commodities like fuel and timber, and health insurance, and housing) but cost so much more because largely none of these markets are elastic or competitive, and there's been so much 'vertical integration' in these spaces that in years past would have run afoul of basic antitrust enforcement of laws on the books.
Speaking of things that used to be illegal and still should be but aren't, stock buybacks account for a lot of money that used to go to payroll, but which now sidesteps payroll and goes directly to capital in seriously tax-privileged ways.
Basically, that means capital has been getting regular raises since the 70s but labor's rates mostly haven't kept up with inflation- and as such, ought to be regarded to be pay cuts.
These are perfect examples of things that at scale should become cheaper but don't. Yes, there's more of it and that cost something to deliver, but the cost of delivering bandwidth per Mbps has decreased drastically (like, by 80+ percent) while the price of having a plan does not in any way reflect that. Likewise, the cost of delivering cell phone service has gone substantially down but the dollars-and-cents price of having a cell phone more than tripled between 2006 and 2020.
Sure, they're better and faster than they were, but there's no good reason for them to cost more, other than you have money and they want it
What's your counterargument when I mention that technology creates jobs and specialty positions? Especially for autistic people.
I'm pretty sure @[email protected] was trying to create a simplified example. To include a generic autistic tech we can modify the example to "40 people making 10 things an hour. A clever autistic person comes along and writes a computer script that improves efficiency. Now 19 people make 20 things an hour, the autistic tech makes 5 times as much as one of the original people and has the specialty job of maintaining the script, the business owner lays off 20 people (4x of their pay compensates the tech) and the business owner pockets the other 16x as extra profit"
The 19 people still employed don't get any more pay for their extra efficiency, nor do they get any more time off.
The 20 people who were let go at no fault of their own now apparently don't get to eat or live or have any kind of security until they reeducate themselves to a new line of work.
The autistic tech doesn't understand where their additional pay comes from, but is happy to get rewarded well for their good work.
If questioned about why the 20 people needed to be let go, the business owner will blame the scripts efficiency instead of their own decision to pocket the money.
However, to answer your question directly: it does not matter how many new jobs or specialty positions are created - if the net pay available to workers is reduced and the net jobs workers can fill are reduced, some workers are destined to get the short straw.
People have been complaining about technology forever. The south complained about machinery that would make slavery obsolete. There's no pleasing these people.
This guy wants all of the benefits of technology at a low price, but doesn't want any of the change that occurs from that benefit. What happens if you make everyone work 20 hrs in his example? Everyone makes half what they did before and can't afford anything. What happens if you fire half the workers in his example? Half the workers can afford the tech but no one else. Which one allows the company to keep selling the tech? The scenario where half are fired.... BUT How about we keep all the people like he claims is possible? Then the price of the tech must double. But this guy doesn't want that because that must be a greedy company. So how will they pay all those employees? What happens when someone else makes the tech with fewer employees and thus lower cost?
So yeah... Tech always requires some to retrain. But society always benefits as a whole.
The only certainty in life is that life is uncertain. To complain about change is just being lazy and refusing to accept change.
|What happens if you make everyone work 20 hrs in his example?
If they are paid for what they make and not the time they spend, everyone earns the same and the workers have more free time. It is this insistence that pay = time which divorces productivity gains from benefiting the worker.
Competition. Someone is highly likely to figure out how to shave costs. Then the company can't even sell the thing and the people lose their jobs.
The point of an hourly wage is that it's a contract to be paid some hourly amount regardless of how many things are sold. The company bears most of the risk. Sales are always dynamic. So how can the company pay the employees for every widget made if the things they make aren't selling for a price that covers the cost of paying the employees?
Any thing created will never sell consistently and never sell forever. So again, skill must change. Marketable skills are always changing. During tech change, the price and demand of the old product drops.
From 1900 to 1920 millions of people lost their jobs to cars. They spent their entire lives around horses. Leather work, carriages, blacksmiths, farm equipment, etc. In just 20 years the horse and carriage was toast. Everyone had to reskill for cars and other jobs because cars took fewer people to make than trending to all the horse stuff.
A modern example is computers. Until the 80s and 90s there were huge work forces processing everything with paper. It wasn't just those workers that had to reskill. The paper mills had to reduce output. Fewer printing houses. Fewer printing press repairmen. Fewer parts manufacturers for the presses. Less ink. Less forestry management for paper. And so on.
Then how do we incentivize the non-shareholders into more efficient practices? Remember, Occam's Tweezers