A new paradigm on workers and productivity

[Cardinal Fang]

The bottom line to all of this is that the reason for work is evolving away from a necessity to provide food, clothing, and shelter through labor....the reason to work is evolving away from creating goods and services we need and want, to a necessity to feel as if we're contributing to society. Working is in and of itself a human need, as people tend to destructive and self destructive behavior when they have nothing worthwhile to do.

Are you sure there is such a shortage of worthwhile things to do? Does every imagineable 501(c)(3) already exist where you are? Are there no classes that could be taught at your local community center that presently aren't? Are there no suitable activities that have not already been provided to seniors in nursing homes (or hospices) in you area? If you were freed from the necessity to work in order to acquire the basic necessities of life, would you really not be able to find anything else worthwhile to do?

Have you ever seen the film Ikuru by Akira Kurosawa? If not, go rent it. Watch in the film's final minutes as Mr. Watanabe softly sings while rocking back and forth alone in the snow on a swingset in the tiny children's park that the ceaseless efforts of his life's final few months alone had brought into being. Then come tell me how there is nothing worthwhile to do.

 

[What if...?]

Are you sure there is such a shortage of worthwhile things to do? Does every imagineable 501(c)(3) already exist where you are? Are there no classes that could be taught at your local community center that presently aren't? Are there no suitable activities that have not already been provided to seniors in nursing homes (or hospices) in you area? If you were freed from the necessity to work in order to acquire the basic necessities of life, would you really not be able to find anything else worthwhile to do?

Have you ever seen the film Ikuru by Akira Kurosawa? If not, go rent it. Watch in the film's final minutes as Mr. Watanabe softly sings while rocking back and forth alone in the snow on a swingset in the tiny children's park that the ceaseless efforts of his life's final few months alone had brought into being. Then come tell me how there is nothing worthwhile to do.

Ive known some people in the "living simply" movement.

They are minimal consumers and often end up not needing to work as much as they did previously.

Almkst all of them find something that means something to them to do with all the extra free time.

Amazingly content and happy people.

 

[imagep]

Ive known some people in the "living simply" movement.

They are minimal consumers and often end up not needing to work as much as they did previously.

Almkst all of them find something that means something to them to do with all the extra free time.

Amazingly content and happy people.

Ya, we probably al remember the median coverage about the report that identified Denmark as the "happiest country in the world". Shortly after that I saw a documentary on Denmark, and several of the "experts" suggested that the report confused "happyness" with "contentment". But contentment still looks like a lot better way to live than the mess that most humans live in. Most humans live most of our lives in the state of turmoil. If I can't find true happyness, I'd be be satisfied with contentment. Contentment may be the best state of being that humanity can achieve.

 

[Slartibartfast]

The electronic age is here.

As a result, more and more tasks that once were done by human labor are now done by machine, thus relieving us from drudgery and, at the same time, leaving us with less work and therefore fewer opportunities for employment.

Where do we go from here?

Simply providing food, shelter and clothing for the no longer employable (the welfare state) isn't the answer. Idle hands and all that, people need something useful to do.

Trying to educate and train more and more people to be the brains behind the machines is only a partial answer. Not everyone is trainable in this way, for one thing. For another, only so many brains are needed behind the machines.

We (humanity) are at a crossroads in history. We have a golden opportunity to begin a revolution equal to or greater than the great change from hunter/gatherer to a civilization based on agriculture and animal husbandry.

Where do we go from here, thinking long term? Any predictions?

This is probably going to be our biggest challenge going forward, the stupidity gap. Some people are stupid and will not be able to make it in a world where machines are more and more intelligent. This is quite different from past revolutions where the machines were still simple.

Honestly, I don't know the answer.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

If we grant the masses the "privilege" of raising children, making major purchases such as cars and houses, and allow them to have checks and credit cards, then certainly we can expect them to make at lead a somewhat informed decision as to their own personal healthcare.

Not to be a stickler about it, but the question was over whether some free market was being unduly disturbed by health insurance, when one side of that market is by all accounts ignorant of what it entails and how it operates. There cannot BE a free market under conditions of such hopelessly imperfect information, and that actually IS covered in Econ 101.

As long as we do not have unlimited resources, then yes, rationing is necessary, and rationing healthcare via the free market system is as logical as rationing everything else.

One size fits all? This is what leads people to lighting a match when trying to find a gas leak. You might need to do better than this.

Although I am fairly liberal on some issues, I am a huge believer in the free market capitalistic system overall. Now if (or when) resources become unlimited, then maybe you will have a valid point.

It is markets that are important. Free markets are only one extreme form. We don't actually have very many of those because they don't work very well. As has been well known since the days of Adam Smith and before, it is only a matter of a little time before connivers and schemers seek to exploit free markets in contrivances to enrich themselves and impoverish the public.

And you haven't accomplished explaining why the government knows more about my personal healthcare needs than I do.

That claim has never been made and won't be. The fact is that YOU don't know a blasted thing about your health and health care and are essentially a sitting duck if left alone in any health care market at all. What would you do if I told you your glomerular filtration rate was 94? What would you start or stop doing? I might as well be talking to Elly May Clampett here. Of course, in an age of hyper-specialization, EVERYONE having not hyper-specialized in some field or form of medicine is an equivalent to Elly May Clampett. That's kind of the problem.

What the government does at last involve itself in via PPACA is not health care, but health care INFORMATION, health care DELIVERY, and most importantly, health care FINANCING.

I perfectly well understand the function and importance of health insurance. I'm not against health insurance and I have written many post on the merits of a government paid for but privately implemented, health insurance system. I've presented the details of the "imagep national health care plan" on this forum, other forums, and in a one-on-one meeting with my local congressman.

Wonderful. If it adequately addressed the problems inherent in a for-profit, fee-for-service model that fails to provide coverage to nearly 50 million people, perhaps it will get somewhere.

 

[imagep]

This is probably going to be our biggest challenge going forward, the stupidity gap. Some people are stupid and will not be able to make it in a world where machines are more and more intelligent. This is quite different from past revolutions where the machines were still simple.

Honestly, I don't know the answer.

Thats true, and it is an issue. I suspect that there will always be some jobs that machines may not do a great job at, or at least where there needs to be a human operator, or that humans may be cheaper than than technology, so there will always be at least some need for low skill labor. The issue is probably that the amount of labor hours needed in low skill jobs won't be as many as in the past, thus to be able to provide an income source to every low skilled worker, those workers may need to work less to share the work available.

But in the future world where scarcity has been reduced, that doesn't have to mean third world incomes, it just has to mean that we allocate resources differently than we have in the past, where compensation has mostly been base on supply and demand plus negotiating skills and power. This may be where minimum wage comes into play. I've always been fairly neutral on minimum wage. Libertarians believe that the law of supply and demand always results in the best allocation of resources, and thus they are against any government mandated minimum or maximums of anything. Unfortunately, what may seem to be best for our economy is not necessarally best for the individual or society. In a world of plenty, there is no reason that workers should be paid slave wages, and thus a minimum wage is necessary to maximize the quality of life of all humans, and not just the most powerful or smartest or most attractive.

I think that as far as low skilled workers go, I can see a much higher minimum wage so that they have a decent income, but are able to earn this income in a minimal number of hours, not actually creating more low skilled work, but more low skilled jobs and opportunities. Income advancement will not come from working more hours, it will come from working more smartly.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

Ive known some people in the "living simply" movement. They are minimal consumers and often end up not needing to work as much as they did previously. Almost all of them find something that means something to them to do with all the extra free time. Amazingly content and happy people.

I would claim to know a whole lot of those. But it can take some time to whittle life down to what really matters.

 

[imagep]

Not to be a stickler about it, but the question was over whether some free market was being unduly disturbed by health insurance, when one side of that market is by all accounts ignorant of what it entails and how it operates. There cannot BE a free market under conditions of such hopelessly imperfect information, and that actually IS covered in Econ 101.

OK, I get it. What you are saying is the free market only works perfectly when everyone has access to perfect information and understands it perfectly. That is certainly true, but government doesn't work perfectly either. Nothing is perfect. Now lets say that we had socialized healthcare or totally free socialized insurance that covered 100% of all medical costs - exactly how would that provide me with any better information or understanding of that information than the free-ish market does?

One size fits all? This is what leads people to lighting a match when trying to find a gas leak. You might need to do better than this.

No, in the free market everyone make their own personal decision on which size fit's them best. Do you really think that government can make that choice better?

That claim has never been made and won't be. The fact is that YOU don't know a blasted thing about your health and health care and are essentially a sitting duck if left alone in any health care market at all.

You are being absurd. Ya, maybe I don't know anything about my health, but I do have access to tons of information, just as much as the government does. What the heck does the government know about me?

What would you do if I told you your glomerular filtration rate was 94? What would you start or stop doing? I might as well be talking to Elly May Clampett here. Of course, in an age of hyper-specialization, EVERYONE having not hyper-specialized in some field or form of medicine is an equivalent to Elly May Clampett. That's kind of the problem.

What the government does at last involve itself in via PPACA is not health care, but health care INFORMATION, health care DELIVERY, and most importantly, health care FINANCING.

I can obtain healthcare information, delievery, and financing in the private sector.

Wonderful. If it adequately addressed the problems inherent in a for-profit, fee-for-service model that fails to provide coverage to nearly 50 million people, perhaps it will get somewhere.[/QUOTE]

 

[Cardinal Fang]

This is probably going to be our biggest challenge going forward, the stupidity gap.

Heck, you think we have stupid now? Years ago, even the smart people were stupid. We have things easy in that regard today, even with FOX News et al. working so hard to buck the trend. In any case, there has always been abundant work in need of doing. But markets require that in addiition to work and a worker, there also be some minimum number of people both willing and able to pay for having that work done by that worker under already existing paradigms. That's too limiting a control valve in economic terms. It's the old story of orphan drugs. These are drugs that cure people who have diseases that are so rare that drug companies can't sell enough of them to make a profit from manufacturing them. So they don't manufacture them, and the people with those diseases all die. Until the government in theory taxes everyone to subsidize the missing production. Then the drug companies make a reasonable profit and nobody dies at all.

Since there is this lack of worthwhile things for people to do, maybe they could simply sit around and think about how the curious Rubik's Cube of our current society could be twisted around to cause more work appropriate to marginal or low-skilled labor to be demanded and done.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

OK, I get it. What you are saying is the free market only works perfectly when everyone has access to perfect information and understands it perfectly. That is certainly true...

Good. Then the point is finally esablished that there is no free market for health care that health care insurance, no matter how arranged, can be accused of corrupting, since indeed no such free market for health care actually exists to begin with.

...but government doesn't work perfectly either. Nothing is perfect.

Not every improvement makes something perfect. A better mousetrap has often been developed. There are still mice.

Now lets say that we had socialized healthcare or totally free socialized insurance that covered 100% of all medical costs - exactly how would that provide me with any better information or understanding of that information than the free-ish market does?

It wouldn't, but that's not relevant to the conclusion finally reached above. By such things as electronic medical records and comparative effectiveness databases, PPACA does intend to improve the state of medical information available to medical practitioners, and through them, to patients, but the law does not intend or suggest that it will magically turn everyone into an informed health care consumer.

No, in the free market everyone make their own personal decision on which size fit's them best. Do you really think that government can make that choice better?

Health care and groceries are not like goods. Your attempt to justify delivery of health care under a grocery store model because so few people starve to death was a big failure. This didn't qualify as coming up with something better.

You are being absurd. Ya, maybe I don't know anything about my health, but I do have access to tons of information, just as much as the government does. What the heck does the government know about me?

You already conceded the point that health care markets are not at all free markets due to the general lack of information by consumers, including yourself. What the government knows or doesnt know isn't material to that point or any other.

I can obtain healthcare information, delievery, and financing in the private sector.

Yes, at rapidly escalating costs that are already unheard of anywhere else in the developed world and have for years been threatening to gobble up much larger shares of the overall economy. Many countires are paying 8-10% of GDP for top quality health care. Is there a reason why we should pay 20% for worse? Is that going to help our global competitiveness or something?

You (and some others of course) will need to confront the fact that the US health care system as it existed prior to March 23, 2010, was one of the least effective and least effiicent systems in the world. It provided no health care at all to a significant portion of the population, substandard health care to another significant portion, and standard to high-level care to the rest only at exhorbitant cost. Where once we might have, we can no longer afford the luxury of such a dinosaur of a system. We must urgently be about the business of repairing and replacing it with a zippier model.

 

[Dittohead not!]

Are you sure there is such a shortage of worthwhile things to do? Does every imagineable 501(c)(3) already exist where you are? Are there no classes that could be taught at your local community center that presently aren't? Are there no suitable activities that have not already been provided to seniors in nursing homes (or hospices) in you area? If you were freed from the necessity to work in order to acquire the basic necessities of life, would you really not be able to find anything else worthwhile to do?

Have you ever seen the film Ikuru by Akira Kurosawa? If not, go rent it. Watch in the film's final minutes as Mr. Watanabe softly sings while rocking back and forth alone in the snow on a swingset in the tiny children's park that the ceaseless efforts of his life's final few months alone had brought into being. Then come tell me how there is nothing worthwhile to do.

Oh, I've already been relieved of the necessity to get up and go to work each day just to put food on the table and pay the mortgage. It's called retirement. In order to get to this point, I did get up and go to work for forty years. Now, I do volunteer time and money as well to worthwhile causes.

The difficulty is that younger people who haven't experienced a lifetime of working are more likely to find less constructive uses for all that leisure time. I'm not so sure I would have done any better than they do, say 30 years ago.

We still need a strong motivation to contribute something to society, even when machines are doing nearly all of the grunt work. When no such motivation exists, all too many people spend their time getting high and spray painting walls.

 

[Cardinal Fang]

The difficulty is that younger people who haven't experienced a lifetime of working are more likely to find less constructive uses for all that leisure time. I'm not so sure I would have done any better than they do, say 30 years ago.

I'm not so sure. There is certainly a far greater emphasis in high schools for instance on doing some sort of service work in one's spare time these days that there was a generation or two ago. This is addition to expanded sports and clubs and enrichment camps and so forth. I certainly don't see a representative cross-section of 20-somethings in my work today, but I would say that the ones I do see are considerably more aware of and active in do-goodism than that same cohort was those several decades back.

 

[What if...?]

Oh, I've already been relieved of the necessity to get up and go to work each day just to put food on the table and pay the mortgage. It's called retirement. In order to get to this point, I did get up and go to work for forty years. Now, I do volunteer time and money as well to worthwhile causes.

The difficulty is that younger people who haven't experienced a lifetime of working are more likely to find less constructive uses for all that leisure time. I'm not so sure I would have done any better than they do, say 30 years ago.

We still need a strong motivation to contribute something to society, even when machines are doing nearly all of the grunt work. When no such motivation exists, all too many people spend their time getting high and spray painting walls.

I have friends in the nonprofit scene and they say we COULD raise up the third world. It would provide massive employment opportunities, exposure to other cultures, and new consumers, although ohr current consumer culture is a bit extreme for the world to support.

It wouldn't be a profitable undertaking though, so we won't do that.

 

[Dittohead not!]

I have friends in the nonprofit scene and they say we COULD raise up the third world. It would provide massive employment opportunities, exposure to other cultures, and new consumers, although ohr current consumer culture is a bit extreme for the world to support.

It wouldn't be a profitable undertaking though, so we won't do that.

It wouldn't be directly profitable, but the expansion of markets would yield huge benefits in years to come.
If only we learned to think in t he long term, just imagine what could be accomplished.

 

[Dittohead not!]

I'm not so sure. There is certainly a far greater emphasis in high schools for instance on doing some sort of service work in one's spare time these days that there was a generation or two ago. This is addition to expanded sports and clubs and enrichment camps and so forth. I certainly don't see a representative cross-section of 20-somethings in my work today, but I would say that the ones I do see are considerably more aware of and active in do-goodism than that same cohort was those several decades back.

That is a positive trend, isn't it?

 

[What if...?]

It wouldn't be directly profitable, but the expansion of markets would yield huge benefits in years to come.
If only we learned to think in t he long term, just imagine what could be accomplished.

Personally i'd like to.see.space opened up.

We have literally decades of work to do learning HOW to live and work in space.

We have to do it eventually, and could miss our "window" if we wait too long to.start.

We should have carried on what we started with the space race.

But most importantly we, as human beings, need something important to be working on. We shine when big things need doing.

Piling money up for its own sake just doesn't do it for most people.

 

[imagep]

We still need a strong motivation to contribute something to society, even when machines are doing nearly all of the grunt work. When no such motivation exists, all too many people spend their time getting high and spray painting walls.

Thats why many non-profit volunteer type organizations get me to make so many $12 wall plaques for them. "Volunteer of the Month", "Award of Recognition", "Certificate of Appreciation", etc. It may sound corny, but sometimes a plaque or even a simple "thank you" can go a long way.

 

[Dittohead not!]

Personally i'd like to.see.space opened up.

We have literally decades of work to do learning HOW to live and work in space.

We have to do it eventually, and could miss our "window" if we wait too long to.start.

We should have carried on what we started with the space race.

Agreed.

One big reason why space exploration proceeded so quickly at one time was competition between the US and the USSR. We need that sort of international competition once again, but without the threat of MAD.

 

[imagep]

I'm not so sure. There is certainly a far greater emphasis in high schools for instance on doing some sort of service work in one's spare time these days that there was a generation or two ago. This is addition to expanded sports and clubs and enrichment camps and so forth. I certainly don't see a representative cross-section of 20-somethings in my work today, but I would say that the ones I do see are considerably more aware of and active in do-goodism than that same cohort was those several decades back.

Extra curricular activites are huge at the high schools in my county. There are were nearly 250 students in his high school marching band, thats over 10% of the student body who did band. I recently printed 60 shirts for a high school fishing team, 36 shirts for a high school dance team, competitive cheerleading, archery, a high school rifle target shooting team, swim teams, golf teams, tennis, debate, chess, FCA (fellowship of Christian Athletes), FFA, you name it, they got it now.

 

[What if...?]

Agreed.

One big reason why space exploration proceeded so quickly at one time was competition between the US and the USSR. We need that sort of international competition once again, but without the threat of MAD.

We need to shift to mankind "against" the universe moving forward. The world gets smaller every day.

But i agree with what you're saying.

Its a motivational thing.

And another consideration is that sitting on the couch playing vjdeo games is a pretty low resource consumption activity. They're "cheap to keep". But its not good for them or us in the long run.

 

[gavinfielder]

This is probably going to be our biggest challenge going forward, the stupidity gap. Some people are stupid and will not be able to make it in a world where machines are more and more intelligent. This is quite different from past revolutions where the machines were still simple.

Honestly, I don't know the answer.

A high standard in education seems like a good response.

Thats true, and it is an issue. I suspect that there will always be some jobs that machines may not do a great job at, or at least where there needs to be a human operator, or that humans may be cheaper than than technology, so there will always be at least some need for low skill labor. The issue is probably that the amount of labor hours needed in low skill jobs won't be as many as in the past, thus to be able to provide an income source to every low skilled worker, those workers may need to work less to share the work available.

But in the future world where scarcity has been reduced, that doesn't have to mean third world incomes, it just has to mean that we allocate resources differently than we have in the past, where compensation has mostly been base on supply and demand plus negotiating skills and power. This may be where minimum wage comes into play. I've always been fairly neutral on minimum wage. Libertarians believe that the law of supply and demand always results in the best allocation of resources, and thus they are against any government mandated minimum or maximums of anything. Unfortunately, what may seem to be best for our economy is not necessarally best for the individual or society. In a world of plenty, there is no reason that workers should be paid slave wages, and thus a minimum wage is necessary to maximize the quality of life of all humans, and not just the most powerful or smartest or most attractive.

I think that as far as low skilled workers go, I can see a much higher minimum wage so that they have a decent income, but are able to earn this income in a minimal number of hours, not actually creating more low skilled work, but more low skilled jobs and opportunities. Income advancement will not come from working more hours, it will come from working more smartly.

Minimum wage isn't going to get us anywhere before too long. The problem with minimum wage is that the demand for unskilled labor won't give a damn. Eventually, the relative opportunity costs of labor are going to rise and no one is going to value unskilled labor enough to maintain hiring, especially if the minimum wage is high. Long term, it's not a viable solution at all.

UNLESS the government is the one doing the hiring.

Let's combine this what What If's sugggestion:

I have friends in the nonprofit scene and they say we COULD raise up the third world. It would provide massive employment opportunities, exposure to other cultures, and new consumers, although ohr current consumer culture is a bit extreme for the world to support.

It wouldn't be a profitable undertaking though, so we won't do that.

In general, what I'd like to see is a government-guaranteed full scholarship for most college degrees provided students maintain consistent progress and achievement through an accredited academic program. With technology and society progressing, it is imperative that we progress education as well.

However, if the government can direct unskilled labor programs, it could give people an option of the academic or labor lifestyle, and it could do a lot of good by doing so; Like an expanded Peace Corps and WPA all in one--building infrastructure all over the world as well as maintaining what we have within the country. Because I'm sure that even if we get to a point of not needing additional infrastructure at home, (and we could even reach that point through a healthy private sector to build it all) there will be stuff to do elsewhere in the world for a long time, and why not do it? We already pretend to protect their peace and freedom, let's put our money where our mouth is and build them some freaking roads and schools.

 

[Mach]

Agreed.
One big reason why space exploration proceeded so quickly at one time was competition between the US and the USSR. We need that sort of international competition once again, but without the threat of MAD.

**** space. Space is dead via the laws of physics. We can't go FTL. We can't go very far anyway. There just isn't a lot out there and it costs a fortune to push things into that vacancy. It should continue but as a public/private trickle.

AI is where it's at. AI is like space, except that progress in it can in theory solve every other problem humanity has (every, including space). Unlike space exploration, which probably solves $1 worth of problems we have for every $100 we put in these days.

Honestly, I don't know the answer.

Start practicing your fealty oath to the machine overlords

 

[Dittohead not!]

**** space. Space is dead via the laws of physics. We can't go FTL. We can't go very far anyway. There just isn't a lot out there and it costs a fortune to push things into that vacancy. It should continue but as a public/private trickle.

AI is where it's at. AI is like space, except that progress in it can in theory solve every other problem humanity has (every, including space). Unlike space exploration, which probably solves $1 worth of problems we have for every $100 we put in these days.


Start practicing your fealty oath to the machine overlords

Which supports an Idea I've posted before: Humans are just needed as a transition from carbon based life to silicone based life, and not the end result of evolution at all.