There's only so many jobs you need to create. The US have a population of about three hundred million. Not all of them work.
So, let cut it in half. You have a labor force of one hundred fifty million people.
But they're not all employed. Some of them have great jobs, some don't. Their wages are sometime shit, the working condition's terrible. Some people sucks at keeping a job. Some just don't have the skills.
Businesses aren't exactly the paragon of efficiency either. They find it easier to just reject an entire category people, such as convicts.
So, you have this massive inefficiency where people who wants job can't get them. High demand job can't be filled because they can't train the right people or they reject too many suitable candidates, such as old programmers.
Other factors conspire to make living more difficult. For example, real estate costs mean your cost of living is high, and you need to make X amount of money to have a roof over your head. Pressure is often not relieved because of housing policies and local politics.
Everything else gets cheaper to an approximation. Though it seemed that the price of computer remain constant, meaning your dollars buy more bang for its buck rather than decreasing in nominal price.
Here's a though experiment I came up with several years ago:
Say one day you created a copy of the Earth and with that copy, it had the same population as the current Earth, and they were connected so you can travel between them easily.
I can see that these two worlds would need twice as many barbers as the current world. Would these two new worlds need twice as many Google/Facebook/etc. employees?
Having twice the market would allow specialization into technology we don't have now because they are not profitable; division of labor works better the more people you have.
Intel would never be possible in a world with 1mm people; their fab centers are spectacularly expensive fixed costs.
So no, we wouldn't need 2x the Google employees, but there would be a need for employees in a market that doesn't exist now.
> Intel would never be possible in a world with 1mm people; their fab centers are spectacularly expensive fixed costs.
I think that's an interesting point that's the continuation of OP's line of thinking + Ford's original thinking. Facebook/etc (to return to the pure-digital companies) would not be possible in a world without X people with disposable income. It's tough to make money on people who can't afford things. How's MySpace doing vs Facebook?
Which imho is a rebuttal the opinion that these kinds of "pure tech" jobs do scale -- true, but only in relation to the number of other jobs people are already earning income from. You can't squeeze blood (revenue) from an (unemployed) stone.
People often forget that jobs are an expense, not a benefit. We should celebrate that society can do more with less. If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential.
Except for the fact that a job is a prerequisite to affording a comfortable lifestyle. Until something like basic income is implemented (which simply isn't politically practical in the US currently) I don't blame anyone for trying to artificially create jobs to keep people busy and allow them to earn some money.
What happens when we start replacing men with electronic minds?
There is a particular class of problems of a 'machine economy' where machines produce products for machines, the machines can use the economic product more efficiently (at making the capital owners more profit), and humans are cut out of the loop.
The last chapter of the essay points out the issue, not that machines take jobs, that machines can and will evolve faster than their human counterparts can causes issues with employment certainty, something that is very dangerous for economies.
I think that we underestimate our value as physically dextrous beings. Imagine a world where robots do large-scale work in difficult environments, in return for human-produced bodies - which themselves lack the dexterity to reproduce themselves. (And it's not an artificial lack, either: I strongly suspect that general fine-motor control will be THE engineering problem for AIs for a very long time, perhaps forever.)
> There is a particular class of problems of a 'machine economy' where machines produce products for machines, the machines can use the economic product more efficiently (at making the capital owners more profit), and humans are cut out of the loop.
Or, as the SSC poetically puts it[0]:
I broke my back lifting Moloch to Heaven, and all I got was this lousy Disneyland with no children.
The post quotes Bostrom considering exactly this scenario, where in the end the economy, having optimized humans out of the loop, keeps running and generating wealth, with no conscious mind to enjoy it.
Encouraging rich people to fritter away their money on ephemeral objects instead of investing in technologies and equipment which would improve per captica productivity would be good?
No, wealthy people invest their money in all aspects of the economy to both benefit themselves and others, from their own businesses (whose objects vary, but are generally positive in terms of human welfare), to startups (which advance new technologies), to municipal loans (which finance infrastructure), and even many donations which pay for university research.
When costs go up, they tend to get passed on-- Especially when everyone is subjected to the same cost increases. An example: Look at what happens to restaraunt prices when the minimum wage is increased. (I'm not endorsing that we should not raise the minimum wage, I'm just using it as a substitute for a land value tax as both will be applied uniformly).
Our current economic system holds that people don't deserve food, shelter, medical care, or dignity if they don't have a job. If you believe that we should stick with the current system then the proposition "everyone should have a job" follows from "everyone should have food, shelter, medical care, and dignity".
Well that's a disagreement between positive and negative rights:
> A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group; negative rights permit or oblige inaction. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action or another person or group; positive rights permit or oblige action.
You may believe in positive rights, like I have a right to food, shelter, etc. Others may believe in only negative rights, like I have the right to not provide you food, shelter etc. It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea.
It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea.
Not really, it's an irrelevant distinction. If you have the right deprive me of food, shelter, etc. then I have the right to kill you in order to take those things for myself.
Then I must have the right to kill and loot you after you get done killing and looting them.
This is starting to sound like Fallout. Or maybe we should get onto welding spikes all over our vehicles and wearing hockey masks and assless chaps and go for a more Mad Max vibe.
Yep. And civilization is not a natural thing. It must be preserved and maintained. The State of Nature is ever present, threatening and chipping away at society from within.
It's easy to miss if you're born in a functioning civilization, because it feels that peace and order are the natural state - so maintaining civilization feels like unnecessary effort, and damaging it for your own benefit feels like a good deal.
"deprive of" is not a synonym for "not provide". It's completely consistent to say that you have an obligation not to actively hinder someone someone from obtaining food/shelter/etc., but no obligation to provide it to them. Stealing someone's lunch is generally considered worse than not giving them your lunch.
This distinction falls apart when you include the notion of privately owned land. If you are born into a world where all land is owned by someone else, what choice do you have but to either work for your food or steal it? What if nobody permits you to work for them?
This is exactly the kind of problem that framing your ethical system in terms of "rights" tends to obscure (I'm more of a utilitarian). I think that you are morally justified in stealing to keep yourself from starving, and at the same time, every individual land owner (if they obtained their land by legitimate means) is morally justified in not hiring you to work for them. There doesn't need to be a moral winner and moral loser in every situation.
I only support property "rights" because I think they lead to better overall welfare in the world-that-is. If in some future state of the world they turn out to be harmful on net, then I have no qualms with saying that we should scrap them.
It's not my ethical system. My original point is that the distinction between positive and negative rights is irrelevant. Throughout this whole discussion I've seen examples by different people which seem to bear that out.
Even the most simple, basic, negative right to not be killed flies out the window if you just kill somebody and then ask the question "now what?" Well, without positive rights, the answer is "not much".
These terms have plenty of meaning in the abstract but no direct real world applicability. Their main use seems to be rhetorical: specifically by ideologues who support the status quo while denying a status quo bias.
> It's completely consistent to say that you have an obligation not to actively hinder someone someone from obtaining food/shelter/etc., but no obligation to provide it to them.
Preventing someone from making use of food and shelter that exists is actively depriving them of it. If there is a (negative) right to freedom from interference with the acquisition of food/shelter/etc., it conflicts with the (positive) right to exercise exclusive dominion over particular items as "property".
I respect your intensity, but if you were to come home one day finding your home has been broken into by a unfortunate soul demanding that you house and feed him, would you oblige? He may see you as depriving him of food and shelter by not opening your home. Would you be willing to bare this burden?
This is a ludicrous hypothetical in response to a very simple question: do you or do you not believe all people have a right to the basics of survival and some element of dignity?
I, personally, would like to think, given a nonthreatening human being being discovered in my home, that I would help said person.
I was arrested once, way too fucked up, in someones car. They eventually lended me sandals because I had no shoes or socks.
I am, of course, far more understanding of those in ridiculous situations, having been in many myself. I've calmed down a lot, but unless someone is threatening to kill me, I'll treat a person as someone who has had decades of experiences I have not had.
One day, I hope we can all do that for eachother. We're all human beings. We're all animals. We all deserve to be able to eat, sleep, and have social contact.
Good analogy. You've framed it in a way that makes it sound like this person has infringed my rights. But what right of mine is he infringing, specifically? The right to own property and keep it secure when I am not around? That's a positive right, not a negative one.
Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right, so you seem to be defining the concept in a non-standard way.
I think the names are poorly chosen, though. A "negative" right is one for which a specific "violater" can always be identified. If you are stolen from, then someone stole from you. A "positive" right is one in which the only identifiable culprit is "everyone" or "society". If you don't have enough to eat, it's because society didn't provide a way for you to feed yourself; it's not that specific person's fault because they didn't hand over their sandwich.
This seems to be the main point of disagreement between us. You seem to be saying that if someone doesn't have enough to eat, then it is everyone else's fault individually. My point of view is that it's possible for someone to go hungry without it being anyone's fault in particular; it's just the result of a bad system. Maybe you're morally obligated to try to improve the system, but you're not morally obligated to give away everything you have to anyone who asks.
> Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right
That property rights -- which are the state-protected privilege to exercise exclusive control of some abstract or concrete thing and restrict others freedom of action with regard to that abstract or concrete thing -- are often cast as a negative right is a perfect illustration of the fact that the distinction between "positive" and "negative" rights is far less fundamental than many people try to portray it, and is in many cases purely an artifact of the language chosen in a particular description of the right.
> If you don't have enough to eat, it's because society didn't provide a way for you to feed yourself; it's not that specific person's fault because they didn't hand over their sandwich.
Conversely, if I have a right to acquire the necessities of survival, I can identify a specific violator: whoever it is that actively prevented me from acquiring the existing thing that was necessary.
The positive/negative right distinction, even recast as a "specific identifiable violator" distinction, isn't really all that useful: you still have to define which rights exist (even if you've decided which classes of descriptions of rights are acceptable, whether its "only negative" or "only those with specific identifiable violators"), and you still have to deal with the fact whichever rights you decide should exist are likely going to conflict.
> This seems to be the main point of disagreement between us. You seem to be saying that if someone doesn't have enough to eat, then it is everyone else's fault individually. My point of view is that it's possible for someone to go hungry without it being anyone's fault in particular; it's just the result of a bad system.
Unless there doesn't exist enough food to eat, the only reason somebody doesn't have enough to eat is because someone else -- either individually or collectively -- has actively taken steps that deny that person access to the food that exists.
Okay, you've convinced me that the distinction between positive and negative rights is not airtight. I still think it's a useful categorization, though, even if the boundaries are little fuzzy.
Property rights are the prototypical example of a negative right
In what way? Suppose a piece of land is unowned. How am I to obtain this land without the positive right to do so? If I decide to obtain this land and the local population ignores my decision (and attempts at enforcement) and continues making use of the land (for hunting, fishing, exploration), who is the "violator": Me or society?
> You may believe in positive rights, like I have a right to food, shelter, etc. Others may believe in only negative rights, like I have the right to not provide you food, shelter etc. It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea.
The distinction between positive rights and negative rights is a lot less clear than is often presented. Sure, the right to food, shelter, etc. is framed in the language of positive right, but the right to not be obstructed in the pursuit of food, shelter, etc., is a framed in the language of negative rights.
Simply dividing things into positive and negative rights and saying that (as is one common argument) only "negative" rights are valid resolves nothing, even then there is considerable debate about which negative rights exist and, when they conflict, how you determine which has priority.
I think this separation doesn't work, and you could trivially transform positive/negative laws into their counterparts of opposite polarity. In a world of positive-rights-believers, you may believe in a right to food, but if everyone else believes in the right to keep their food (and property, in general), you're still out of luck. As usual, the interesting things happen at the boundary between various people's rights and wishes.
Most of the budget goes to defense, social security, and medicare.
None of these primarily provide food, shelter or medical care to the unemployed.
A large portion of the budget goes to provide these things to the elderly but a very small portion of the budget goes to provide these things for the unemployed.
Large parts of those segments representing health care and social security represent money that is paid out to people who are working -- that is, it's a direct subsidy to employers who don't feel like paying their workers enough to cover their grocery and housing bills.
Medicare (21%) - healthcare for retired people who don't work
Medicaid (21%) - healthcare for low income, including people who don't work
"safety net programs" (9%) - for the unemployed or disabled
Medicare is an insurance program. You don't get it unless you've already paid into it. It's administered by the government, but it really isn't paid for by the government.
Yes, I think that's why inequality is getting worse. The system is broken - It's a winner-takes-it-all system. Even though the person who came second place delivered as much value (if not more) for society (in terms of innovation), the winner might end up with millions but the second place might get nothing at all.
I think society puts too much focus on capturing value and not enough on creating value. Innovation is all about value creation and this is not being rewarded by society. The way things work now is a lottery.
Yes, I think that's why inequality is getting worse.
Inequity is the result of math. The rich get richer. Without progressive income redistribution, increasing inequity is inevitable.
This is why game shows have bonus rounds, mooting the first 1/2, so that people continue watching.
Further, creation of the middle class is a deliberate, explicit policy decision. Not the natural outcome of Freedom Markets (tm). The USA has previously chosen to nurture a middle class on three separate occasions. We're overdue for a 4th restructuring, say by 20 years.
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich
Of course you can. Dignity is a concept that makes sense only in context of a group of people (a society), and social norms are what gives dignity. If the norms change, the dignity can be taken away.
Neither you can give someone laughter, but through your actions you can still make them laugh.
Same for dignity, maybe you can't give it directly, but when you treat others with dignity...
"Human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away."
"if your job can be done more cheaply without you, and the only reason you have it is because people would feel sorry for you if you didn’t, so the government forces your company to keep you on – well then, it’s not a job. It’s a welfare program that requires you to work 9 to 5 before seeing your welfare check."
That's only bad if you have a bad conception of "welfare program". If you think society should provide for the welfare of all its members than it's not a bad connotation.
The post argues that this back-door form of welfare is inferior in just about every way to just cutting people a check, but that we tend to do it this way exactly because "welfare" has negative connotations:
'With all these advantages of “Simple Check”, what exactly is the “Sneaky Job” condition good for that makes it so popular? As far as I can tell, it is good for fooling people. People do not like paying welfare.'
We should work on fighting this perception. Welfare is actually good.
There was a time in the past ('30s-'70s) when welfare wasn't a bad word. People liked the idea of welfare. It was a positive idea.
That we're still all talking like this, like welfare is a handout to worthless losers, etc is a testament to the success of Reaganite conservative politics. We all talk like Gordon Gekko now.
The main problem with this line of thinking is that it is materialistic. People get more out of their jobs than money, and just shovelling cash at the unemployed does not make them happy.[1] Most people are happier with a job that pays minimum wage than a welfare program that pays significantly more.
> and just shovelling cash at the unemployed does not make them happy.[1]
It's worth reading the paper past the initial TL;DR bullet points. It goes into interesting discussion about what exactly it is about unemployment that makes people unhappy. Some quotes from the middle of the article:
"There is plenty of evidence in support of the hypothesis that the evaluative component of
well-being depends on how much one conforms to or deviates from the norms of the
social group one associates with. For unemployment, this means that the harmful effect of
unemployment on life satisfaction is larger the stronger the prevailing norm toward work is. (...)
There is additional evidence in support of the importance of social norms to the degree of
life satisfaction of people who are unemployed. A German study finds that unemployed
people report a substantial increase in life satisfaction when they retire, although other life
circumstances remain largely unchanged [10]. The study interprets retirement as a switch in
the social group with which one identifies, from the working-age population to retirees, and
thus to a change in the social work norm. Once an individual has retired, not working no
longer violates the social work norm, and life satisfaction consequently increases. (...)
The potential felt scarcities and worries associated with unemployment are manifold. They
include fewer social contacts, less social recognition, less money, a less structured day, less
control of one’s life, and less certainty about what the future will bring. Indeed, although the
effect on happiness of temporary income reductions during unemployment is not very large,
people who are unemployed worry about their future economic uncertainty."
--
I think it's still possible that unemployeds' unhappiness is caused by the work-centric culture and economy. Being shoveled money at is problematic, because you're getting for free what society expects you to get by work. Consider the ultimate welfare we all get - sunlight, breathable air. No one feels inadequate or sad because they're receiving it for free. It's part of the environment. We assume air and sun are always there, will always be there, and are available to everyone without having to work for it. I think food and shelter are things we should actually try and push to the environmental level, i.e. have it available for free and to everyone, unconditionally.
> not working no longer violates the social work norm, and life satisfaction consequently increases
Yes, this is critical. There is much stigmatization of nonwork. As we automate away more jobs, (as we should!) there will be less and less work to go around, and eventually not enough work for everybody who wants it. We might already be there.
I agree that people get more out of work than money, but that's not really the question (and also what if your job sucks? I'd rather have money and no job than money and a terrible job). The question is what do we do about the people for whom there is no job? Right now what happens? There's always roaming around San Francisco panhandling I guess. Or crime. It's not a coincidence that societies with robust welfare states have far lower crime and low or no homeless.
I'm all for people working if they want, but "Get a job" isn't a real solution for a destitute person, or even for the working poor who already have a couple of jobs and are still broke. Or even really for somebody with a job he'd rather quit.
There have been some good discussions on HN around basic income, too. I think that would be an even better solution, really.
Anecdote: I've used welfare before and although having "cash shoveled at me" didn't automatically make me happier, it did make it much easier to pay for food while I was in school with a garbage side job. I certainly wouldn't have been happier without it.
>If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential
One of the 3 main goals of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is to achieve maximum employment. This is why politicians harangue on "putting country x back to work". The idea that "the devil finds work for idle hands to do" is deeply ingrained in the fundamental assumptions of political economy.
As far as can tell, the redeeming social value of Netflix, if there is one, is keeping of the peace. I would say that making work to prevent antisocial behavior is deeply ingrained in civilization itself, and is perhaps at its core; The Prince calls for make-work projects to mandate full employment to keep the peace and it must have been a primary effect, intended or otherwise of pyramid building and other group rituals. The Nietzschean/Emersonian counterdream of everyone retiring to their own homes as gods leaves no peacekeeping force or incentive. The spiderweb on US paper bills symbolizes the intent of economic interdependence as a positive incentive for peace. Without economic interdependence, one could promote peace by propoganda, genetic engineering, medication, and many other ways, but as the population unNEEDed by others increases, I find it hard to see how that population's safety could increase indefinitely. The manufacturing of needs, of "increasingly sophisticated consumer tastes" in the Fukuyama-esque formulation, is probably reaching a breaking point (or at least I personally have stopped wanting any new consumer products) but don't fail to see the wisdom in an idea just because the devil metaphor can be taken in a manner so literal it offends your sensibilities.
"People often forget that jobs are an expense, not a benefit. We should celebrate that society can do more with less."
Not until such time that people don't need a job to survive. As is, a job is currently required to pay rent and buy food.
"If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential."
So how do you plan on housing and feeding all of the people who's jobs are displaced through technology?
> Not until such time that people don't need a job to survive.
People need an income to survive. Most people get incomes through jobs, some get them through capital holdings, a few get them through other means.
> So how do you plan on housing and feeding all of the people who's jobs are displaced through technology?
Jobs being displaced through technology means output is produced more effectively without the job than it would be with the job, and someone is capturing the value of that output.
The issue becomes one of distributing the value of the output.
"People need an income to survive. Most people get incomes through jobs"
Exactly, which makes any quibbling to my statement nothing but worthless pedantry.
"Jobs being displaced through technology means output is produced more effectively without the job than it would be with the job, and someone is capturing the value of that output."
Which has absolutely nothing to do with my question.
"The issue becomes one of distributing the value of the output."
> Exactly, which makes any quibbling to my statement nothing but worthless pedantry.
No, it doesn't. The job is not the need, its just the most common way of satisfying the need.
The need is the income.
Automation of jobs because automation is more efficient means that the economy becomes better at producing output which can be distributed through other existing means of providing income, notably, tax-funded social benefit programs.
I'm sorry, but I find that a whole load of horse shit. Especially in today's political climate in the US, I see there being absolutely no benefit to the people who's jobs are displaced. Basic income is a non-starter, especially basic income to the level where one could actually raise a family on, as many of these people are family people.
Sounds a little bit like the Long Earth series by Pratchett and Baxter. Though there it was an infinite number rather than just two, they were initially unpopulated, and there were sharp limits on moving material between worlds. (Cool premise mediocre execution IMO.)
Anyway re: your original thought experiment I'd say no. If you look at the rapid growth phases of those companies, I don't think the employee growth rate was as fast as the customer growth rate. I think that's what people mean when they call something a scalable business.
I loved the premise of that series. Great source of worldbuilding porn, less great source of story arc and character development.
I recall that in the expansion between worlds people with skills like medical training, agriculture and craftsmanship were valuable to settlement parties. In contrast, Helen Green's programmer father had to retrain in something like farming to be a viable member of a settlement party.
The flow rate between planets will dictate the number of barbers you need on each. So saying you see 2x barber jobs is not accurate.
IF on-par everything that each GOOG and FB need, then OK - sure... but assume GOOG and FB are mutually exclusive to each planet?
If all services equal? THEN yes
Are all resources and land masses in the same spot? Then you would need to regulate how any new natural discoveries are made -- and exploited... you dont want carlyle group plundering BOTH Earth-A AND Earth-B...
Actually one should be depopulated and maintained as a plentary-level-nature reserve.
The same basic logic explains the folly of reducing unemployment by demand stimulus and the "consumers are the real job creators" mentality. If producing twice as many widgets requires (at least) twice as many workers, you're doing something wrong.
I was careful to say "present consumption", which is not the only thing we care about. If your economic model only cares about that, you will incorrectly focus on it at the expense of other things. Yes, the goal of all production is (some species of) consumption; that doesn't justify economic policies that artificially goose present consumption.
I mean, I'm not suggesting that we should stop innovating and continue employing people for jobs that can be automated, but at some point we do have to realize that we will replace humans with machines.
The real problems begin when machines become competent enough to do most of the jobs which currently humans do. The system of job-to-earn-money-to-live wouldn't work. Either money or jobs wouldn't have any significance for humanity for pure survival. Political systems will then change to accommodate human survival. Star trek's model of post scarcity economy would probably be the norm.
The lack of jobs growth doesn't seem that surprising, but the lack of productivity growth does.
Is it just that new technologies aren't really all that relevant to increasing productivity? Are we just not adopting technologies that would make us more productive? I'd love to have a glimmer as to what the root cause of that is.
Productivity has grown tremendously since the 70s in non-construction segments. The largest improvements have been made. Arguably, in the last 5-10 years, tech improvements have been only incremental compared to the last 15+.
It may be that the core problem of production is one that was already solved by hardware at the end of the industrial revolution. Software can now be used to solve the 2nd part of the problem, which is distribution.
>In technology's "invisible" world, inventors continually increase the quantity and quality of performed work per each volume or pound of material, erg of energy, and unit of worker and "overhead" time invested in each given increment of attained functional performance. This complex process we call progressive ephemeralization. In 1970, the sum total of increases in overall technological know-how and their comprehensive integration took humanity across the epochal but invisible threshold into a state of technically realizable and economically feasible universal success for all humanity
-Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants
Our means of production have already served to produce a renewable surplus of all the physiological needs of humanity (food, water, shelter etc). The problem is in distributing it fairly which is why almost 50% of the world population struggles to obtain these necessities.
>The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.
We're really using 24-year periods of time to determine what jobs were created by technology? I mean, I didn't expect rigorous statistical analysis, but this is nothing.
For comparison, software developers make up about 0.7% of the labour force (2012)[1]. It is always surprising to me how small the industry actually is.
"The magnitude of workers shifting into new industries is strikingly small: in 2010, only 0.5% of the US labour force is employed in industries that did not exist in 2000…"
Pretty sure we had computers prior to 2000... Considering the whole millennium bug scare..
So "Software Developer" isn't part of the statistic.
Optimists argue that throughout the history of capitalism, new technologies
have always led to new jobs in the long run. But pessimists say that this
trend isn’t guaranteed to continue, and the chance that we are in an era
where wealth is created without jobs raises very thorny questions about how
that wealth will be distributed fairly.
Nothing keeps the populace employed as good ol' agriculture does!
Sure there are "new jobs" but job creation doesn't have a fundamental law analogous to the law of conservation of momentum. Efficient tech is at it's very heart a job destroyer. So with growing population and shrinking meaningful jobs what we end up with is civil unrest. Hence we have people employed doing busy works who come home to constant stream of "news" and "entertainment" and another section doing the busy work churning out these contents! Apart from breeding inequality it also breed discontent. Perhaps evolutionarily humans are wired to feel satisfaction at the end of a hard days work.
Wall Street burned up a lot of its goodwill with the public with the various financial scandals. Certainly, they're still in business and will be in for the foreseeable future. But can Silicon Valley have the foresight to preemptively defuse future backlash against job destruction brought upon by automation? Perhaps it's time to get some major tech CEOs pushing forward proposals for basic income. Certainly some VCs have already been making public statements about it.
Silicon valley doesn't produce much hardware like it did in the past. Instead it creates businesses with questionable customer value such as social networking, personal assistant services, short term house rental services, and other software-as-a-service businesses. There will be an implosion of these SAAS businesses at some point. After the dust clears, it will be interesting to see if Silicon Valley still is able to produce goods which customers want, or if some other area of the world will take over (e.g. Bangalore, Shenzhen).
Nothing is ever done for free by businesses (Even though it appears like it is free, you do pay for it indirectly) At some point the profit motive will drive businesses to take things too far and threshold will be crossed. This will either result in customer defections, or increased government regulation. A shakeout will ensue, and only businesses strong enough be profitable will remain.
* silicon valley doesn't produce much hardware (evidence for this being true? obviously we hear a ton about software, but what about tesla, intel, nest, apple, google, etc?)
* businesses such as social networking, personal assistance services, short-term house rental services, and other saas have questionable customer value (why?)
* there will be an implosion of these saas businesses (why?)
>silicon valley doesn't produce much hardware (evidence for this being true? obviously we hear a ton about software, but what about tesla, intel, nest, apple, google, etc?)
Consider the amount of hardware that a modern smart phone replaces such as the calculator, phone, video camera, television, radio, clock...
They are producing less hardware because hardware is becoming increasingly integrated as software:
>The hardware world tends to move into software form at the speed of light.
I do partly agree with you, but there are still some fundamental things going on in Silicon Valley. On-line education, I think, has the potential to be very transformative. Self-driving electric cars could also have a very positive effect on the world as well (including solving the "last mile" problem with train travel). There's also a lot going on of course with bioengineering, and while I wouldn't necessarily equate this with silicon valley, Stanford, Berkeley, and UCSF are of course highly relevant research institutions. And let's not discount the advances in distributed computing in making all of the above possible, some of which did come from silicon valley companies.
Of course, just because these things may greatly improve the quality of life doesn't mean that they'll create jobs. They may destroy them, and while so far people have found new industries and jobs to replace the ones that become obsolete, I suppose there's no guarantee this will continue to be the case in the future.
I was referring to a time when Silicon Valley was all semiconductors, electronics, and computer hardware. There are probably 10 SAAS business for every one producing something tangible. This is the problem.
It doesn't have to! In fact, it should be driving everyone OUT of a job. It should be driving us to evolve away from the way we survived in the past, by trading time for money.
This article doesn't actually seem to provide any evidence to support its claim - the actual factoid at the heart of the article is that Total Factor Productivity (TFP) has fallen since the 90's, which is irrelevant.
The only pieces of evidence supporting the "No Jobs Growth" claim are Facebook's employee count from _2013_ (which has since grown by almost 50% to 12000 [0]), and the claim that "in 2010, only 0.5% of the US labour force is employed in industries that did not exist in 2000", which has nothing to do with "Silicon Valley" since the industry existed in 2000, too.
Does it really take 12000 people to run a site where people write about what they're doing, and upload some photos and videos? Instagram had 13 employees when they were acquired by Facebook.
A huge amount of infrastructure is needed for Facebook's scale. People have to create, manage, and maintain that infrastructure. And that's ignoring the multitude of complex user-facing products Facebook has (the number of which has grown significantly over the last few years).
I don't think people should have downvoted you for this, it is a reasonable question to ask! Consider that their core application's user facing functionality is not the most complex in the world, but they deploy it for over 1.5 billion people. There are numerous complications and logistics involved with doing that. Think of it this way, how many organizations can reach billions of people with just 12,000? We already take for granted that technology can do incredible things like this that haven't been possible in the past. One other thing is that facebook has contributed to some awesome open source projects and their technology blog has some interesting insights on this https://code.facebook.com/posts/
You make a valid point. I would also to add that most tech companies that are consumer facing also tend to create a "halo effect" and drive additional job growth in parallel markets. For example, take Ad Tech. The number of jobs that have been created in the advertising sector as a result of tech is large:
"Another big loser: the American worker. While tech companies try to maintain their status as job creators, the facts show another story. For example, it takes six people at Facebook, eight people at Google, and 60 to 70 people at an ad agency like Publicis to generate $10 million in revenue."
If you had a chunk of savings and you invested in a business - would you optimize on needing to hire more people as the business grows? Or prefer that the growth of your business doesn't scale linearly with employee head count?
Every time I hear people make these complaints, I wonder, "Would you prefer to get your cash from an ATM, or wait in line for a teller?"
This article resonates with my observations. I think most of the companies which have been making a lot of money are entertainment companies.
Facebook is an entertainment company, it probably delivers negative economic efficiency growth - Today it's common for employees to check their Facebook and instagram during work hours (which reduces their productivity).
People also spend more time playing games (there are so many options available; social games, virtual reality, iPhone apps...). Then there is YouTube which helps create jobs for more entertainers and at the same time it lowers productivity efficiency in the workplace - It's a tool for procrastination.
Even enterprise companies aren't delivering efficiency improvements. Docker has gotten a lot of hype but I am yet to see it deliver efficiency improvements in industry - Particularly on the deployment side. I dont see how hiding complexity inside containers actually reduces the overall complexity of the system. Maybe the real solution is to use fewer tools which have simpler boot logic?
You could argue that Docker is great for PaaS, but then you have to ask the question of whether PaaS itself delivers efficiency improvements? Maybe platforms like Amazon Lambda will deliver, but so far what I've seen is that big companies in general don't use PaaS.
I think companies which deliver real efficiency at the moment are being ignored by the market in favour of companies which have a large marketing budget.
Youtube, facebook, twitter, instagram have all created jobs in my organisation. People are hired to create content and maintain the accounts. They have made/forced the organisation to be more customer facing and friendly.
Youtube, facebook, twitter, instagram have all created jobs in my organisation. People are hired to create content and maintain the accounts. They have made/forced the organisation to be more customer facing and friendly.
With the latest trend of hiring employees who are already masters of their craft, it really becomes a process of regurgitation. You don't train up new employees, you hire them. Thus no job growth IMO.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadSo, let cut it in half. You have a labor force of one hundred fifty million people.
But they're not all employed. Some of them have great jobs, some don't. Their wages are sometime shit, the working condition's terrible. Some people sucks at keeping a job. Some just don't have the skills.
Businesses aren't exactly the paragon of efficiency either. They find it easier to just reject an entire category people, such as convicts.
So, you have this massive inefficiency where people who wants job can't get them. High demand job can't be filled because they can't train the right people or they reject too many suitable candidates, such as old programmers.
Other factors conspire to make living more difficult. For example, real estate costs mean your cost of living is high, and you need to make X amount of money to have a roof over your head. Pressure is often not relieved because of housing policies and local politics.
Everything else gets cheaper to an approximation. Though it seemed that the price of computer remain constant, meaning your dollars buy more bang for its buck rather than decreasing in nominal price.
Intel would never be possible in a world with 1mm people; their fab centers are spectacularly expensive fixed costs.
So no, we wouldn't need 2x the Google employees, but there would be a need for employees in a market that doesn't exist now.
I think that's an interesting point that's the continuation of OP's line of thinking + Ford's original thinking. Facebook/etc (to return to the pure-digital companies) would not be possible in a world without X people with disposable income. It's tough to make money on people who can't afford things. How's MySpace doing vs Facebook?
Which imho is a rebuttal the opinion that these kinds of "pure tech" jobs do scale -- true, but only in relation to the number of other jobs people are already earning income from. You can't squeeze blood (revenue) from an (unemployed) stone.
For example, creative writing communities can always use more manpower, to churn ideas, to work on stories, and to experiment, and to edit.
Not every story niches or original ideas is filled or explored.
There is a particular class of problems of a 'machine economy' where machines produce products for machines, the machines can use the economic product more efficiently (at making the capital owners more profit), and humans are cut out of the loop.
The last chapter of the essay points out the issue, not that machines take jobs, that machines can and will evolve faster than their human counterparts can causes issues with employment certainty, something that is very dangerous for economies.
Or, as the SSC poetically puts it[0]:
I broke my back lifting Moloch to Heaven, and all I got was this lousy Disneyland with no children.
The post quotes Bostrom considering exactly this scenario, where in the end the economy, having optimized humans out of the loop, keeps running and generating wealth, with no conscious mind to enjoy it.
[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Right now we have a people taking the most (much of it through rentier activity) and the rest are given make-work too keep from idle-hands.
If we had land value tax we'd be getting somewhere.
> A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group; negative rights permit or oblige inaction. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action or another person or group; positive rights permit or oblige action.
You may believe in positive rights, like I have a right to food, shelter, etc. Others may believe in only negative rights, like I have the right to not provide you food, shelter etc. It's funny how so much of political debate can boil down to this fairly simple idea.
Not really, it's an irrelevant distinction. If you have the right deprive me of food, shelter, etc. then I have the right to kill you in order to take those things for myself.
This is starting to sound like Fallout. Or maybe we should get onto welding spikes all over our vehicles and wearing hockey masks and assless chaps and go for a more Mad Max vibe.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
This distinction falls apart when you include the notion of privately owned land. If you are born into a world where all land is owned by someone else, what choice do you have but to either work for your food or steal it? What if nobody permits you to work for them?
I only support property "rights" because I think they lead to better overall welfare in the world-that-is. If in some future state of the world they turn out to be harmful on net, then I have no qualms with saying that we should scrap them.
These terms have plenty of meaning in the abstract but no direct real world applicability. Their main use seems to be rhetorical: specifically by ideologues who support the status quo while denying a status quo bias.
Preventing someone from making use of food and shelter that exists is actively depriving them of it. If there is a (negative) right to freedom from interference with the acquisition of food/shelter/etc., it conflicts with the (positive) right to exercise exclusive dominion over particular items as "property".
This is a ludicrous hypothetical in response to a very simple question: do you or do you not believe all people have a right to the basics of survival and some element of dignity?
I was arrested once, way too fucked up, in someones car. They eventually lended me sandals because I had no shoes or socks.
I am, of course, far more understanding of those in ridiculous situations, having been in many myself. I've calmed down a lot, but unless someone is threatening to kill me, I'll treat a person as someone who has had decades of experiences I have not had.
One day, I hope we can all do that for eachother. We're all human beings. We're all animals. We all deserve to be able to eat, sleep, and have social contact.
I think the names are poorly chosen, though. A "negative" right is one for which a specific "violater" can always be identified. If you are stolen from, then someone stole from you. A "positive" right is one in which the only identifiable culprit is "everyone" or "society". If you don't have enough to eat, it's because society didn't provide a way for you to feed yourself; it's not that specific person's fault because they didn't hand over their sandwich.
This seems to be the main point of disagreement between us. You seem to be saying that if someone doesn't have enough to eat, then it is everyone else's fault individually. My point of view is that it's possible for someone to go hungry without it being anyone's fault in particular; it's just the result of a bad system. Maybe you're morally obligated to try to improve the system, but you're not morally obligated to give away everything you have to anyone who asks.
That property rights -- which are the state-protected privilege to exercise exclusive control of some abstract or concrete thing and restrict others freedom of action with regard to that abstract or concrete thing -- are often cast as a negative right is a perfect illustration of the fact that the distinction between "positive" and "negative" rights is far less fundamental than many people try to portray it, and is in many cases purely an artifact of the language chosen in a particular description of the right.
> If you don't have enough to eat, it's because society didn't provide a way for you to feed yourself; it's not that specific person's fault because they didn't hand over their sandwich.
Conversely, if I have a right to acquire the necessities of survival, I can identify a specific violator: whoever it is that actively prevented me from acquiring the existing thing that was necessary.
The positive/negative right distinction, even recast as a "specific identifiable violator" distinction, isn't really all that useful: you still have to define which rights exist (even if you've decided which classes of descriptions of rights are acceptable, whether its "only negative" or "only those with specific identifiable violators"), and you still have to deal with the fact whichever rights you decide should exist are likely going to conflict.
> This seems to be the main point of disagreement between us. You seem to be saying that if someone doesn't have enough to eat, then it is everyone else's fault individually. My point of view is that it's possible for someone to go hungry without it being anyone's fault in particular; it's just the result of a bad system.
Unless there doesn't exist enough food to eat, the only reason somebody doesn't have enough to eat is because someone else -- either individually or collectively -- has actively taken steps that deny that person access to the food that exists.
In what way? Suppose a piece of land is unowned. How am I to obtain this land without the positive right to do so? If I decide to obtain this land and the local population ignores my decision (and attempts at enforcement) and continues making use of the land (for hunting, fishing, exploration), who is the "violator": Me or society?
The distinction between positive rights and negative rights is a lot less clear than is often presented. Sure, the right to food, shelter, etc. is framed in the language of positive right, but the right to not be obstructed in the pursuit of food, shelter, etc., is a framed in the language of negative rights.
Simply dividing things into positive and negative rights and saying that (as is one common argument) only "negative" rights are valid resolves nothing, even then there is considerable debate about which negative rights exist and, when they conflict, how you determine which has priority.
You remind me of some career advice I got as a kid:
"All negatives can be stated as a positive."
Most of the budget goes to defense, social security, and medicare. None of these primarily provide food, shelter or medical care to the unemployed.
A large portion of the budget goes to provide these things to the elderly but a very small portion of the budget goes to provide these things for the unemployed.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...
Large parts of those segments representing health care and social security represent money that is paid out to people who are working -- that is, it's a direct subsidy to employers who don't feel like paying their workers enough to cover their grocery and housing bills.
I get 51% from that.
I think society puts too much focus on capturing value and not enough on creating value. Innovation is all about value creation and this is not being rewarded by society. The way things work now is a lottery.
Inequity is the result of math. The rich get richer. Without progressive income redistribution, increasing inequity is inevitable.
This is why game shows have bonus rounds, mooting the first 1/2, so that people continue watching.
Further, creation of the middle class is a deliberate, explicit policy decision. Not the natural outcome of Freedom Markets (tm). The USA has previously chosen to nurture a middle class on three separate occasions. We're overdue for a 4th restructuring, say by 20 years.
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich
http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-Ame...
-- Judge Clarence Thomas
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
"if your job can be done more cheaply without you, and the only reason you have it is because people would feel sorry for you if you didn’t, so the government forces your company to keep you on – well then, it’s not a job. It’s a welfare program that requires you to work 9 to 5 before seeing your welfare check."
'With all these advantages of “Simple Check”, what exactly is the “Sneaky Job” condition good for that makes it so popular? As far as I can tell, it is good for fooling people. People do not like paying welfare.'
> People do not like paying welfare.
We should work on fighting this perception. Welfare is actually good.
There was a time in the past ('30s-'70s) when welfare wasn't a bad word. People liked the idea of welfare. It was a positive idea.
That we're still all talking like this, like welfare is a handout to worthless losers, etc is a testament to the success of Reaganite conservative politics. We all talk like Gordon Gekko now.
We should rehabilitate the word and the idea.
Say it with me:
WELFARE IS GOOD AND COOL.
[1] http://wol.iza.org/articles/unemployment-and-happiness.pdf
It's worth reading the paper past the initial TL;DR bullet points. It goes into interesting discussion about what exactly it is about unemployment that makes people unhappy. Some quotes from the middle of the article:
"There is plenty of evidence in support of the hypothesis that the evaluative component of well-being depends on how much one conforms to or deviates from the norms of the social group one associates with. For unemployment, this means that the harmful effect of unemployment on life satisfaction is larger the stronger the prevailing norm toward work is. (...)
There is additional evidence in support of the importance of social norms to the degree of life satisfaction of people who are unemployed. A German study finds that unemployed people report a substantial increase in life satisfaction when they retire, although other life circumstances remain largely unchanged [10]. The study interprets retirement as a switch in the social group with which one identifies, from the working-age population to retirees, and thus to a change in the social work norm. Once an individual has retired, not working no longer violates the social work norm, and life satisfaction consequently increases. (...)
The potential felt scarcities and worries associated with unemployment are manifold. They include fewer social contacts, less social recognition, less money, a less structured day, less control of one’s life, and less certainty about what the future will bring. Indeed, although the effect on happiness of temporary income reductions during unemployment is not very large, people who are unemployed worry about their future economic uncertainty."
--
I think it's still possible that unemployeds' unhappiness is caused by the work-centric culture and economy. Being shoveled money at is problematic, because you're getting for free what society expects you to get by work. Consider the ultimate welfare we all get - sunlight, breathable air. No one feels inadequate or sad because they're receiving it for free. It's part of the environment. We assume air and sun are always there, will always be there, and are available to everyone without having to work for it. I think food and shelter are things we should actually try and push to the environmental level, i.e. have it available for free and to everyone, unconditionally.
Yes, this is critical. There is much stigmatization of nonwork. As we automate away more jobs, (as we should!) there will be less and less work to go around, and eventually not enough work for everybody who wants it. We might already be there.
I agree that people get more out of work than money, but that's not really the question (and also what if your job sucks? I'd rather have money and no job than money and a terrible job). The question is what do we do about the people for whom there is no job? Right now what happens? There's always roaming around San Francisco panhandling I guess. Or crime. It's not a coincidence that societies with robust welfare states have far lower crime and low or no homeless.
I'm all for people working if they want, but "Get a job" isn't a real solution for a destitute person, or even for the working poor who already have a couple of jobs and are still broke. Or even really for somebody with a job he'd rather quit.
There have been some good discussions on HN around basic income, too. I think that would be an even better solution, really.
Anecdote: I've used welfare before and although having "cash shoveled at me" didn't automatically make me happier, it did make it much easier to pay for food while I was in school with a garbage side job. I certainly wouldn't have been happier without it.
One of the 3 main goals of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is to achieve maximum employment. This is why politicians harangue on "putting country x back to work". The idea that "the devil finds work for idle hands to do" is deeply ingrained in the fundamental assumptions of political economy.
Not until such time that people don't need a job to survive. As is, a job is currently required to pay rent and buy food.
"If someone thinks that jobs need to be created through artificial means to keep people busy and give them some money, then that person has a rather dim view of human potential."
So how do you plan on housing and feeding all of the people who's jobs are displaced through technology?
People need an income to survive. Most people get incomes through jobs, some get them through capital holdings, a few get them through other means.
> So how do you plan on housing and feeding all of the people who's jobs are displaced through technology?
Jobs being displaced through technology means output is produced more effectively without the job than it would be with the job, and someone is capturing the value of that output.
The issue becomes one of distributing the value of the output.
Exactly, which makes any quibbling to my statement nothing but worthless pedantry.
"Jobs being displaced through technology means output is produced more effectively without the job than it would be with the job, and someone is capturing the value of that output."
Which has absolutely nothing to do with my question.
"The issue becomes one of distributing the value of the output."
Which is just rephrasing my question.
No, it doesn't. The job is not the need, its just the most common way of satisfying the need.
The need is the income.
Automation of jobs because automation is more efficient means that the economy becomes better at producing output which can be distributed through other existing means of providing income, notably, tax-funded social benefit programs.
Or, as the 'nostromo once wrote,
"No job is the goal. No money is the problem."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8987073
(I do actually have it on a t-shirt now.)
Anyway re: your original thought experiment I'd say no. If you look at the rapid growth phases of those companies, I don't think the employee growth rate was as fast as the customer growth rate. I think that's what people mean when they call something a scalable business.
I recall that in the expansion between worlds people with skills like medical training, agriculture and craftsmanship were valuable to settlement parties. In contrast, Helen Green's programmer father had to retrain in something like farming to be a viable member of a settlement party.
IF on-par everything that each GOOG and FB need, then OK - sure... but assume GOOG and FB are mutually exclusive to each planet?
If all services equal? THEN yes
Are all resources and land masses in the same spot? Then you would need to regulate how any new natural discoveries are made -- and exploited... you dont want carlyle group plundering BOTH Earth-A AND Earth-B...
Actually one should be depopulated and maintained as a plentary-level-nature reserve.
When we worry about the economy, we're worried about a lot more than present consumption, or else we could just eat the seed corn and call it a day.
I mean, I'm not suggesting that we should stop innovating and continue employing people for jobs that can be automated, but at some point we do have to realize that we will replace humans with machines.
Is it just that new technologies aren't really all that relevant to increasing productivity? Are we just not adopting technologies that would make us more productive? I'd love to have a glimmer as to what the root cause of that is.
>In technology's "invisible" world, inventors continually increase the quantity and quality of performed work per each volume or pound of material, erg of energy, and unit of worker and "overhead" time invested in each given increment of attained functional performance. This complex process we call progressive ephemeralization. In 1970, the sum total of increases in overall technological know-how and their comprehensive integration took humanity across the epochal but invisible threshold into a state of technically realizable and economically feasible universal success for all humanity
-Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants
Our means of production have already served to produce a renewable surplus of all the physiological needs of humanity (food, water, shelter etc). The problem is in distributing it fairly which is why almost 50% of the world population struggles to obtain these necessities.
>The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.
-Sitting Bull
Well that doesn't seem too surprising, I can't really think of many industries that exist today that didn't in 2000.
[1] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...
Pretty sure we had computers prior to 2000... Considering the whole millennium bug scare..
So "Software Developer" isn't part of the statistic.
Sure there are "new jobs" but job creation doesn't have a fundamental law analogous to the law of conservation of momentum. Efficient tech is at it's very heart a job destroyer. So with growing population and shrinking meaningful jobs what we end up with is civil unrest. Hence we have people employed doing busy works who come home to constant stream of "news" and "entertainment" and another section doing the busy work churning out these contents! Apart from breeding inequality it also breed discontent. Perhaps evolutionarily humans are wired to feel satisfaction at the end of a hard days work.
Why?
* silicon valley doesn't produce much hardware (evidence for this being true? obviously we hear a ton about software, but what about tesla, intel, nest, apple, google, etc?)
* businesses such as social networking, personal assistance services, short-term house rental services, and other saas have questionable customer value (why?)
* there will be an implosion of these saas businesses (why?)
Consider the amount of hardware that a modern smart phone replaces such as the calculator, phone, video camera, television, radio, clock...
They are producing less hardware because hardware is becoming increasingly integrated as software:
>The hardware world tends to move into software form at the speed of light.
-Marshall McLuhan
Of course, just because these things may greatly improve the quality of life doesn't mean that they'll create jobs. They may destroy them, and while so far people have found new industries and jobs to replace the ones that become obsolete, I suppose there's no guarantee this will continue to be the case in the future.
The only pieces of evidence supporting the "No Jobs Growth" claim are Facebook's employee count from _2013_ (which has since grown by almost 50% to 12000 [0]), and the claim that "in 2010, only 0.5% of the US labour force is employed in industries that did not exist in 2000", which has nothing to do with "Silicon Valley" since the industry existed in 2000, too.
Remarkably low-quality reporting.
[0] - http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/
Edit:
(Apart from sitting around and downvoting me).
Does it really take 12000 people to run a site where people write about what they're doing, and upload some photos and videos? Instagram had 13 employees when they were acquired by Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/careers/teams/
http://chiefmartec.com/2013/05/the-very-cool-marketing-techn...
How Job Destroyers and Coffee Drinkers Rule The World
L2 Inc., May 14, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D62IX-Vd9g
"Another big loser: the American worker. While tech companies try to maintain their status as job creators, the facts show another story. For example, it takes six people at Facebook, eight people at Google, and 60 to 70 people at an ad agency like Publicis to generate $10 million in revenue."
Every time I hear people make these complaints, I wonder, "Would you prefer to get your cash from an ATM, or wait in line for a teller?"
Neither of those create new jobs. If anything, they both seek to remove jobs and displace existing middlemen.
Then they draw conclusions based on the differences??
Facebook is an entertainment company, it probably delivers negative economic efficiency growth - Today it's common for employees to check their Facebook and instagram during work hours (which reduces their productivity).
People also spend more time playing games (there are so many options available; social games, virtual reality, iPhone apps...). Then there is YouTube which helps create jobs for more entertainers and at the same time it lowers productivity efficiency in the workplace - It's a tool for procrastination.
Even enterprise companies aren't delivering efficiency improvements. Docker has gotten a lot of hype but I am yet to see it deliver efficiency improvements in industry - Particularly on the deployment side. I dont see how hiding complexity inside containers actually reduces the overall complexity of the system. Maybe the real solution is to use fewer tools which have simpler boot logic?
You could argue that Docker is great for PaaS, but then you have to ask the question of whether PaaS itself delivers efficiency improvements? Maybe platforms like Amazon Lambda will deliver, but so far what I've seen is that big companies in general don't use PaaS.
I think companies which deliver real efficiency at the moment are being ignored by the market in favour of companies which have a large marketing budget.