Bullshit and buzzwords go together like pick-up lines and Jagermeister. And the bullshit buzzword of our times it seems is disruption. Being disruptive used to get your mom called into school for a conference with the teacher; but ever since Clay Christensen published The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1989, we’ve been fascinated by the disruptive kids, especially the ones who play with tech toys — even when they fail. In fact, as Jill Lapore points out in this piece in The New Yorker, Christensen’s study of disruption (and she points to some flaws in his work) is a study of business failure. In her summary, Lapore writes, “Disruptive innovation is a theory about why businesses fail. It’s not more than that. It doesn’t explain change. It’s not a law of nature. It’s an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it’s the manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by change, it’s blind to continuity. It makes a very poor prophet.”
The first thing to hate (or at least distrust) about buzzwords is that their meanings are diluted because they are buzzwords. I remember when MTV’s reality programming was a relatively new thing and video producers working in New York would ask a shooter or an editor to make something edgy. But if every project is edgy, then we lose any context for what edgy actually means, and so it means whatever edginess looks like to whoever is in charge. Cameramen and editors would smile and nod, thinking, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you’re happy, and I get paid, we’re good.”
The word disruptive has produced an aroma of ambiguity to say the least. In fact, I’d say the term is getting rather gamey the more it is applied to just about any proposal (i.e. tech startup) that breaks convention, even if we maybe don’t want the convention broken. For instance, we probably do not hope to foster a culture in which, say, armed robbery is reframed as “disruptive finance.” Admittedly, Kickstarter is a virtuous example of disruptive finance, although it may be too soon to say for sure that crowd-funding is here to stay. As Jaron Lanier points out in Who Owns the Future, “Kickstarter continues to produce some wonderful success stories and a huge ocean of doomed or befuddled proposals. Maybe the site will enter into an endless game with scammers and the clueless, as it scales up, and render itself irrelevant.” And as if on cue, I see in my news feed that a young man has raised about ten thousand dollars on Kickstarter to make potato salad. Not life-saving potato salad. Just potato salad.
In truth, I’m not picking on Kickstarter; I hope the site continues to evolve as a positive force, and so does Lanier. But I am also by nature skeptical of religion, even apparently secular religions that see magic in technology and the social engineering promoted by its entrepreneurs. And in the words of the silicon prophets, we will one day all be entrepreneurs. And it will be good. A new venture in robotics may one day disrupt truck drivers out of their jobs, but not to worry because other disruptive innovations like Uber and Lyft offer a new way to make a living in transportation, right? In reality, only sort of, and for a select few individuals in certain markets. And these few are likely making supplementary rather than primary income. Meanwhile, as we cheer for disruption sector by sector, and get a little buzz off the initial cool factor and implicit independence of an entrepreneurial society, we overlook the fact that we’re disrupting accountability, liability, and a network of social safety nets that were largely constructed in the late 20th century. These include everything from insurance and pension funds to environmental regulations.
If you think you’re angry that certain investment bankers didn’t go to prison after the housing crisis, stand by. It can get worse in a market that disrupts thousands or millions of jobs into obsolescence with the false promise that we can all be networked entrepreneurs. And again, as Lanier points out, many of these disruptive innovations built on networked systems he calls Siren Servers rely on making the servers unaccountable. So, when we consider the larger implications of unregulated taxi services, for instance, it isn’t as simple as labeling such caution mere stodginess begging for unfettered disruption.
It is tempting these days to get high on the narcotic of tearing down systems and apparent empowerment of taking what feels like control via networked servers. We forget, however, that these networked servers are not necessarily designed with said empowerment in mind despite what the marketing messages say. They are designed to make money right now for the relatively small number of individuals whom we revere for being disruptive innovators. But networked systems want efficiency, while democratic societies that support the well being of a majority of its population are notoriously inefficient. And that’s not always a bad thing.
David–
“In her summary, Lapore writes, ‘Disruptive innovation is a theory about why businesses fail. It’s not more than that. It doesn’t explain change. It’s not a law of nature. … Transfixed by change, it’s blind to continuity. It makes a very poor prophet.'”
Do people look to it as making predictions? My understanding has simply been that having acquired possession of a market niche, either by making it or by forcing the previous occupant out, one should be on guard for the same thing being done to them. In particular, if the niche was acquired through a better technology or service than what came before, it is entirely possible that an even better technology service will be developed, resulting in one’s own displacement.
This means that there are three strategies: First, assume that your technology or service cannot possibly be improved upon, and that you therefore have nothing to worry about. Of course, hubris is generally thought of as a bad quality. Second, expect that someone can beat you, but do nothing about it. This ensures failure, yet it’s surprisingly common. Third, expect that someone can beat you, so at least attempt to be that someone; rather than allowing someone else to replace you, replace yourself. No guarantees that this will work, and it will drain your resources faster than doing nothing, but if you can pull it off, you’ve held on for another round of the Red Queen’s race.
While we think of this as centering around industry, I’m sure that good cases can be made for deliberately avoiding stagnation if you look to the history of war, sport, or other competitive fields.
“a market that disrupts thousands or millions of jobs into obsolescence”
Fine with me. Work is for suckers. I’m a big believer in a leisure society in which people generally don’t have to work because we’ve cleverly mechanized and automated it. Containerized shipping allows a couple of crane operators to do in a few hours what gangs of longshoremen used to take many days to do. Clothes are cheaper now than they were, say, 500 years ago, when everything from shearing on had to be done by hand or with muscle-powered tools, taking up a lot of time and effort. Even something more recent, like the telephone, is a lot handier with direct dialing automated switching equipment instead of having to have operators place calls for you (or many operators, in the event of a long distance call). And then there’s how powered farming equipment has resulted in only a small number of people being needed to grow food, instead of the vast majority of the world’s population.
The problem we’re facing isn’t that we’re automating jobs into non-existence, but that we’re misallocating the economic benefits from doing so. We don’t need to create a bunch of new jobs to accommodate the people who get laid off. We should instead pay them whether they have a job or not. (Which would also work out well for artists, who would no longer need to either have a day job to support art which can’t finance itself, or a need for copyrights and the exploitation thereof to support themselves)
However, what really drew my attention to this post was this:
“It is tempting these days to get high on the narcotic of tearing down systems and apparent empowerment of taking what feels like control via networked servers. We forget, however, that these networked servers are not necessarily designed with said empowerment in mind despite what the marketing messages say. They are designed to make money right now for the relatively small number of individuals whom we revere for being disruptive innovators.”
Which reminds me a lot of something else I read here recently:
“One of the trade-offs we make for better convenience and flexibility with prices as low as they already are, is that we forego the option to sell these files in a secondary market that would actually threaten the primary market.”
I wonder if disrupting the existing model of first sale, and pretending that it does not apply to downloadable media could be described as an example of ill-conceived disruptive change, which is not necessarily designed with the empowerment of of the public in mind, but instead to make money right now for the relatively small number of individuals who would benefit from the loss of this long-standing right.
I like that last part, Anonymous. It’s trixy. Although I don’t think it’s copyright advocates who seek to “disrupt” the model of first sale but technology that has inherently disrupted it. We can expand the doctrine, but I predict it will have negative longterm, economic consequences.
And I just have to seize on this comment: “We should pay them whether they have a job or not.” I assume you’re serious, but I’m having a hard time imagining in what reality this happens.
David–
“We can expand the doctrine”
We don’t need to expand the doctrine (though it would make it easier), we just need to stop interfering with it. First sale applies to lawfully made copies. Copies lawfully made through authorized downloading are no less lawfully made than those pressed into plastic in a factory.
Downloading to a server, and buying and selling the portion of the storage medium that it resides on (probably in conjunction with the access credentials) would work fine. But adhesive contracts that tend to get employed in conjunction with downloads usually prohibit this.
The alternative involves space shifting, and may or may not work as fair use. There’s a yet-unanswered question as to the timespan at issue for fair use: Does a use simply have to be fair at the time it is made, or does it have to be fair even in light of later circumstances, which may or may not be known at the time the use was engaged in.
For example, if it’s fair use to rip a copy of a song from a lawfully purchased CD onto an iPod via a computer, the copies on the computer and the iPod are lawfully made and enjoy first sale. If you try to sell the iPod containing the music, would a court reach back in time and retroactively declare that the use is not fair? Would it matter whether the person who made the copies was thinking of later resale at the time, or not?
Congress could make that situation clearer, and support first sale, but the server thing, but for contracts attached to the download, is entirely doable right now.
“I assume you’re serious, but I’m having a hard time imagining in what reality this happens.”
Last year the Swiss got enough signatures on the question of a basic income that it’s going to be on a public referendum there.
It’s been advocated for for decades in a number of places around the world, including the US. (In the 60’s, MLK called for this, and the Nixon White House looked at it, but couldn’t make headway on it due to Congressional Democrats, ironically) India has been running a couple of pilot projects with good results so far, I hear. Brazil has it on the books but is being very slow about actually implementing it but what has been rolled out also is already having good effects.
Really, there’s only two sensible ways to go. Pursue a policy of full employment (which worked really well in the US from the 30’s to the 60’s, though it caused inflation), or pursue a policy of healthy minimal employment. Most people don’t like the idea of indolence, but they also don’t like the idea of busywork. In practice, it appears that even among people who have the option of not doing work, people remain active, just at something that doesn’t compensate them; just because it isn’t remunerative doesn’t necessarily make it bad to do it.
John Henry may have been very noble, but he had a shitty job.
Where is all this theoretical money going to come from to fund your “basic income”… and wouldn’t that have a bigger affect on inflation than anything else? Assuming you’re still allowed to earn above and beyond this pittance, what would motivate beyond boredom and greed? And if you are allowed to earn more than your allowance (otherwise you’re looking more and more like the failed USSR), that still doesn’t solve the problem of certain individuals or companies from funneling off money they didn’t earn, ala what we have now in the “disrupt” bs. It does not solve the problems you proposed.
Where is all this theoretical money going to come from to fund your “basic income”
Maybe by taxing the fuck out of the same people who are funneling off money from the economy? I don’t know it might come as a surprise to you, but we are actually on the same side. Well, assuming your goal is actually sustaining an equatable society and not just advocating pre-information age economics that are entirely dependent on some kind of artificial scarcity existing.
Anonymous, so when I said I’m having a hard time imagining in what reality minimum basic income happens, the reality you propose is one that is no longer the United States as we know it. I’m okay with that maybe, but I’m cynical on the matter. The president proposed fixing healthcare, which is still broken, and lunatics who don’t know what’s good for them showed up at town meetings with guns. (This is separate from what I think of the ACA in its ratified form). I don’t care if it makes sense, the America I believe will still exist by the time I leave this world isn’t going anywhere near that concept. Regardless, Minimum Basic Income is not a solution to the economic hazards alluded to in this post. It’s just welfare with a new name. And I believe in having welfare, but it’s not an economy. Frankly, I think the whole “leisure economy” notion is elitist. It sounds good to people in positions of relatively secure (or very secure) comfort, but it forgets to look at the broad spectrum of people in society. Millions of people have jobs because they are not entrepreneurial. But you’re suggesting that if we wipe out many of those jobs, it won’t be a problem if we can replace middle-class income with subsistence welfare.
Additionally, if we were to transition from the condition of wealth consolidation we have now to a guaranteed minimum basic income, that translates into some of the unsavory barons of our time directly paying citizens to stay alive. Yeah, I know we’d do it through taxes and re-channeling the funds, but that won’t matter. We’re already talking about people who resent “their money” going to (insert societal need here). This concept sends chills up my spine and conjures images that make Hobby Lobby look like a trifle.
There are also psychological and cultural hazards inherent in this concept. When we reject the idea that human labor – intellectual, physical, functional — has economic value that translates into “the pursuit of happiness,” we abdicate human dignity. I believe in welfare for those who need help, but an economy is an ecosystem. As such it demands diversity, which can only be had in a society with a majority of people living sustainable middle-class lives from their labors, whatever those labors might be.
I don’t consider universal basic income welfare. Welfare is as you said, an income for people falling on hard times. Universal basic income is universal, for everyone. Like the roads for instance. Having roads isn’t typically considered welfare. It is basically like socializing basic necessities, nobody would have to “work for a living”.
Based on the hypothetical posed — a time when certain types of jobs have simply been eradicated without replacing them with jobs of equal value — I maintain that providing subsistence income for some percentage of people who may never work again is essentially welfare. Call it what you want, you’re welcoming a dystopian future.
Hmm. Well, David, what is wrong with being able to do whatever you want with your life? A world where nobody has to work for a living, a world full of leisurely individual pursuits. Personally I don’t view this to be dystopian.
No, M, that sound idyllic. But it’s a complete fantasy. We’ll have jetpacks sooner. A minimum basic income would not allow people to do what they want in society right now; it’s not nearly enough money. So, you’re implying a completely new economic and political structure, and this would be neither democratic nor free. It is a world where people like Eric Schmidt and the Koch brothers wield absolute political power. So, you’ll be able to do “what you want” within the confines of what the authority feels you should do lest your means of survival be taken away. Are you really that naive about human beings? The best hedge against human nature is a diverse, middle-classs with collective power spread across the majority population of a society. Without it, we’re at the mercy of the fact that humans are vicious, corrupt, and violent little creatures.
Well I’m not seeing any movement towards that by those fostering tech. All I see is them vacuuming up wealth from those least able to protect themselves, and then using that wealth to manipulate the legal system. If you want a world where “nobody has to work for a living, a world full of leisurely individual pursuits” then you need to break the backs of the wealth and privilege wherever it occurs. Sucking at its teat won’t do it.
[you’ll be able to do “what you want” within the confines of what the authority feels you should do lest your means of survival be taken away.]
AKA Feudalism.
Yep. Tribes. Cults. Public executions. You know, progress. But at least there won’t be any copyrights so the people will have access to all the world’s . . . Wait. Never mind.
John,
Technology is improving in all areas. Automation, check. The technology of computer networking and storage, much to the chagrin those who believe in the economics of artificial scarcity. Check.
The fact is, if we continue to towards this path, it leads nowhere else but a world where human labor is redundant. There is no unknown here, only that we might destroy ourselves before we get there. But that’s the only end game. There is no other end game.
What the world will do with that scenario is anyone’s guess. That’s the unknown, of course.
Ted Kaczynski was a serial killer and what not, and I’m not comparing him to you all, just his philosophy. His entire philosophy is was that Silicon Valley and [mostly] computer scientists involved in technological development are leading to world towards a dystopia with them at the top. He did not believe scientists were evil mind you, just the idea of science for science’s sake leads to evil. He was also very distressed by the observation that he witnessed: no time during human history, no matter how much damage technology has done, was there ever a time where technological developed could be seriously reversed. Only slowed.
On the other side, there is Ray Kurzweil’s philosophy that technological development will lead to a utopia where human consciousness converges towards the most perfect equilibrium of existence that is possible within the confines of the Universe. Or at least, if there is a remote chance of it, we should welcome it.
Now these are end games of course.
On the way there, you will find it increasingly difficult to make a living as a filmmaker or a musician or quite frankly anything that relies on limiting copies via copyright law. (Fun fact: Google/most tech companies these days rely more on the fact that their code is non-accessible). Of course, you don’t have to rely on copyright law. You just want to. This kind of idealism for how things used to be, you know it’s a kind of idealism. The most unrealistic of sorts.
Perhaps you missed something – I am a computer scientist, I’ve been at that particular game for 35 years. There is a good change that at some point today you will touch something that my software helped create. Technology per se isn’t the problem, it is how it is used that is. Cheap storage units aren’t an issue, fast broadband isn’t an issue, companies that provide cheap storage. access, and distribution to content that neither they nor their users bought is.
John,
The the issue is free/private communications. Without visibility into the information being shared, there is no way to determine if that information is illegal or not.
Worse yet, copyright itself is not an attribute of information. For instance, if I buy a song from iTunes and store it on my music player, even the most ardent copyright advocate wouldn’t call that illegal behavior. But if I take that same music and put it on my friend’s music player, suddenly that is copyright infringing content. But here is the thing, the content itself didn’t change one bit.
At the most basic of levels copyright is an abject failure.
We know exactly what is being ripped off. It doesn’t require any snooping of private communications because the links and a description of what the files contain are being published.
John,
Two things.
You are making the assumption that the stuff you can see is the only filesharing going on, or that it is even the most significant avenue.
Also. As long as people have the ability TO publish stuff, they will will publish copyright infringement stuff. The reason copyright is so broken is because copyright is an industrial law trying to be applied to the ordinary behaviors of human beings. It worked when publishing was an industrial activity. When it all takes to publish something is to [advertently] or [inadvertently] check a box on an upload form, copyright can not work. The Internet and computers in general simply make it too easy to share information.
The only thing keeping the film afloat IMO is the fact that films are still hard to copy. Hard to copy in the sense that you can fit maybe 1 1080p film on a 16 GB flash for instance. Photography and music for instance, have copyright hopelessly broken.
With photography, respect for copyright is so broken that it’s beyond hilarious and ironic. It’s gotten to the point that even pro-copyright bloggers will snip random photos without permission because that’s just such a natural thing to do. David is actually the only one so far that I haven’t caught doing this, he actually uses cheapo stock photos. But he’s using a free culture blogging platform (WordPress) which he probably didn’t pay a dime for. Which is interesting. Nobody is ‘pure’, I guess. 🙂
If one walks into a bar, 90% of the clientele are under age and of those all are drinking alcohol one doesn’t conclude the bar is serving alcohol to adults. In any case if a file says Avatar.avi and the first 5 minutes of it is indeed Avatar.avi one doesn’t generally conclude that its someone’s holiday video.
Copyright on photos and music isn’t hopelessly broken, what is broken is an effective way to enforce the right. This won’t last, legislators are slow to act but they will do so. There is too much economic activity behind IP for them not to. Also the general public does not hold much of candle for copyright violations. They almost always hit infringers with large sanctions.
Personally I DMCA any commercial reuse of my photos that I find.
John,
Photo filesharing is super mainstream. Every popular mainstream social media network is FULL of it. Yes, copyright is completely broken here. Not arguing about this, it’s pointless.
Music is a little more complicated. I would say artificial scarcity around music is super broken. You’ll point out some obscure ass LP from the 70s that isn’t on YouTube. Sure. But the only reason that is the case is because nobody gives a shit about it. Any music that more then a tiny handful of people care about is available on the Internet, on demand, either legally or quasi-legally. For free.
Film is an outlier here. Arguably, there is still a kind of market for it. But my theory is because a typical HD film consumes as much data as a high quality (double-blind) rip of you know, 3000 songs, or roughly $3000 worth of music versus like, perhaps $20 worth of movie. The technology for filesharing movies, you can say, is not as good as the technology for filesharing music.
AudioNomics–
“Where is all this theoretical money going to come from to fund your ‘basic income'”
Part of it comes from removing other forms of welfare, which the basic income supplants. E.g. If people are provided enough money to buy groceries, they don’t need food stamps along with the money. The reduction in bureaucracy (money is flexible) also provides a modest savings. Otherwise, it’s handled like anything else: a combination of taxes and collective ownership (e.g. the Alaskan Permanent Fund).
“and wouldn’t that have a bigger affect on inflation than anything else?”
Efforts so far haven’t been observed to. However, I don’t view moderate inflation as a problem anyway, especially in the US where people generally have minimal savings but a lot of debt.
“Assuming you’re still allowed to earn above and beyond this pittance, what would motivate beyond boredom and greed?”
It shouldn’t be a pittance. (IIRC Switzerland is looking at around US$34,000 per year) There’s no reason not to have people free to earn money beyond this. Some jobs will have to increase their pay substantially, because they’re unappealing and people would no longer feel obligated to take them for lack of alternatives. Others might pay relatively little, since it’s just gravy for people who don’t otherwise need it. And some jobs would continue to pay quite a bit, if they were very important, not yet subject to practical or affordable automation, and desirable.
OTOH some types of jobs would probably die out. Killing off telemarketing as a thing that people do seems worth the trouble all by itself to me.
Anyway, the only motivation you’re adding to the mix of boredom and greed, by not providing aid for people is death: Work at a job or we’ll let you starve in the streets. Doesn’t strike me as a very humane approach.
“that still doesn’t solve the problem of certain individuals or companies from funneling off money they didn’t earn”
That isn’t the goal. Income inequality is a serious issue, and the funding for a basic income can target this, but the point behind a basic income is less about equality and more about ensuring that there is an acceptable minimum standard of living without either imposing impossible demands (find a job when there are no jobs) or insisting on pointless busywork.
As much as I admire the WPA, CCC, and other alphabet soup agencies of the 30’s, they prioritized hiring people over everything else. For all the excellent things that they produced: electrification, arts programs, park facilities, even the building where I went to high school, we could’ve had even more cool stuff if they could have prioritized making things over employment.
I’d like to see something like a national high speed rail network, but if we have to build it using lots of guys with shovels to keep them occupied, rather than with modern equipment, it’s going to take a lot longer.
OK, I’m on board with the getting rid of telemarketers…lol.
And hey, I’ll even agree that we can afford more gracious welfare, instead of having people live in squalor if they are unable to work (i know people on disability.. and they can’t even afford to live in a cardboard box).
But, i’m not the one you would need to convince. This proposal of yours is a pie in the sky, never gonna happen type delusion that is a distraction from solving the problems we actually have right now.
How about this: if and until your proposed system is in place, we just pay people for the work that we consume? I know you’re trying to weasel your way around from having to do that, as paying for your entertainment somehow insults you soo much that you’d rather put up government housing projects for an entire nation… but wouldn’t that be the easiest and fairest thing we could do as of now?
Sure, it sounds pie in the sky now. But look out 10, 20, 30 years from now. The information age has produced technology that improves technology, recursively improving technology.. making this more efficient, more automated in most industries and supply chains. How are you going to keep an economy that fundamentally depends on ridiculous # of people giving up their labors for 40+ hours a week?
There is only really a few options on the table as I see it:
(1) “broken glass fallacy” style jobs where people do useless bullshit (this is already happening arguably, and there is physiological studies that doing jobs that have no purpose leads to depression)
(2) Mass riots due to high unemployment and no social safety nets
(3) Universal basic income
This is a great discussion and, IMHO focuses on the crux of what appears to be a looming disaster on the horizon…
Just a brief background…I spent about 2 years trying to make a documentary about the social ramifications of the technological revolution…in other words, “How would all this wonderful technology we see coming down the pike affect the way we live together?” I spent 2 years interviewing the people who I felt might have the best insights into a few answers to that question…who were Scientists and Science Fiction writers.
Needless to say, their answers covered a lot of territory but a couple of things seemed to emerge: The first being that people were going to be required to work a lot less hours in most businesses. Some industries (like sales and marketing) might require many more hours, but technology and automation, robotics, etc will probably make actual physical labor less necessary…OK, we all know this…
But it begs an interesting question or two…”What will people do with all that extra time?”, and “Why should an employer pay a 40 hour wage for a 20 hour week?” So then you have to ask…”How will people make a living?” And across the board…it looks kind of bleak.
Some people will undoubtedly get even richer than they are now, but most of the really rich people get richer manipulating their money rather than creating anything. Obvious exceptions to this, particularly in the tech sector where a new product or even creating a clever app can bring in a truckload of money. But how about the rest of society? What do they (or we…because I’m not rich) do to survive going forward into what is likely to be a much colder, crueler world?
Part of the evidence can be seen today on our southern borders as loads of kids (and some parents) are desperate to come to a place they perceive may offer them a slightly better life than they live now. Some of these people actually are political refugees and are fleeing drug gangs or persecution, but the vast majority of them are economic refugees trying to get to a place that may offer them the opportunity to clean toilets for far less than minimum wage and take a job away from an American citizen who might belong to some collective bargaining entity that would require the employer to pony up a real wage…there is no level upon which I can be convinced this is a good situation…but in all likelihood, it will get much worse.
If you live in a “first world” country, you’re not all that likely to be aware of the millions of masses of people that live in dire circumstances almost every other place on earth. In America, we are already sharing much of our wealth with people in those places. As we become a society far less able to create wealth, but instead to either live on it (as is discussed here – and remember that Switzerland is a very tight-knit homogeneous population and we are the opposite), we will be able to share less and less with those people even as their numbers increase and they demand ever more and more.
We are likely to have 8 billion people on the planet before the end of this century, and the math is fairly simple…we either reduce our population voluntarily, or Mother Nature will do it in a much more cruel and drastic way…and there will be little anyone can do about it.
I know, I know…what does this have to do with a discussion of how artists might get paid for their work? It does in a couple of ways…the first being that, if we do somehow implement the dole (excuse me – the “basic income”) it’s likely to create even more of a glut of “artists” than Garageband and iMovie, who will not have much of a need to get paid beyond having their egos stroked…and the other is that – in this new age of media consolidation and foreign profit centers for American medias companies – it may turn out that content creators can only demand a smaller and smaller piece of the pie from larger and larger corporate entities who will make it harder and harder for the creator to pursue justice in a court in a foreign country.
Just my opinion…but I don’t see much of a chance for a “full-employment” society anymore. I only really believe in 3 things: Supply and Demand, Cause and Effect, and the Law of Unintended Consequences. If a commodity costs less (such as labor), why should anyone pay more?
Overpopulation is certainly a problem that will resolve itself…hopefully with voluntary measures as you say..otherwise we will be shaken off ths planet like a annoying tick biting on mother earth.
I believe half the problem we face today (at least in the States) is unfettered and deregulated unabashed greed. The average worker isn’t being put out by technology or robots, but by greed. Corporate profits are skyrocketing, yet companies are “downsizing”… not for some dire need, but to make the CEO and owners ever more money. Wages have been stagnant for three decades, yet the average worker does 90% more work. This is a symptom of Capitalism run amoke. This country’s best and most prosperous days occured when the top marginal tax rate was 90%… and still we had super rich like Carnegie and the Rockefellers.
I find it painfully ironic that the folk clamoring for a “sink or swim” free market are the first in line for a handout (sorry “bailout”) when their bank or investment firm is going under.
A “fair” market should be the goal… we see what “free” market gets us.
I believe half the problem we face today (at least in the States) is unfettered and deregulated unabashed greed. The average worker isn’t being put out by technology or robots, but by greed
The technology/automation and robots are the things that are enabling the “downsizing”. If the people were useful to the company, they wouldn’t be laid off.
The reason they were employed to begin with was they were at one point doing useful work, but some new business process (usually driven by improvements to technology) made them redundant. Hence the common & troubling “layoffs while the company is making record profits” situation.
What else is the company suppose to do? Keep them on the staff? For what purpose? This is a broken window fallacy and it’s inhumane to the workers. It’s a horrible existence to spend most of your life forced to do something that isn’t helping anyone, that isn’t useful work. A much better idea is to allow people peruse other interests and useful works if they aren’t needed anymore and give the the financial means to do so.
We write software for manufacturing and yes over the years what was skilled work has been de-skilled somewhat. For example we put together a system that reduced the work involved in creating one part for a jet from several weeks to a few minutes. Last year we put together a system that will reduce the cost of jet engine by a few 100K. I was looking at a system last week that will dramatically reduce the damage caused by a bird getting sucked into an engine. In general we can reduce the machining time of a part from an hour or more to 10-15 minutes.
What happens here is that companies that are producing low value parts, start to move into more high value parts, and the low value work moves overseas. The work doesn’t necessarily reduce it changes. The major problem with US engineering is that the workforce is aging. I hear reports that about 60% are due to retire within the next 10 years, and engineering companies are looking to software to capture that experience and skill set before it is lost.
Capital doesn’t give a shit about allowing people to persue different interests, it didn’t in the late 18th century, it didn’t in the 19th century, it didn’t in the 20th century, and it sure as hell won’t in the 21st century either.
When technological advancement really changes a process, there’s no reason to fight it, even if jobs may be lost. That is progress. When a new business venture uses software to simply bypass what might be wise regulations or to artificially drop prices on goods or services whose value is still tied to human labor, that’s not necessarily innovation or progress.
David,
When technological advancement really changes a process, there’s no reason to fight it, even if jobs may be lost. That is progress. When a new business venture uses software to simply bypass what might be wise regulations or to artificially drop prices on goods or services whose value is still tied to human labor, that’s not necessarily innovation or progress.
I know. It’s called reality.
The Utopian idea that we will all work less but still receive reasonably comfortable income with which to enjoy our free time is a scenario I have heard my entire life (and sadly I’m not that young anymore) . It’s always to occur sometime in the future, sort of like flying cars, but never seems to materialize in the present. The effect of “disruption” on employment and overall economic activity is not fully appreciated. Check this graph, keeping in mind MZM velocity is the broadest measure of economic activity in the US. Note the trend, and tell me our best days are ahead of us if we remain on course.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MZMV
Just my $0.02.
What resonates most with me in this article is the calling for an end to the reverential treatment of Silicon Valley. Yes… tech has done insanely wonderful things for this world – the development of the internet itself has been like the discovery of fire or agriculture, and will have vast positive effects throughout human history. However, this does not mean that there should be no accountability and that it should be assumed that all tech creations are for the common good. Silicon Valley now financially and organizationally dominates the modern world, and so the institutions there should be treated in the same way any other seemingly omnipotent organizations are treated – with a certain level of skepticism and oversight at all times.
Though this wasn’t the central issue of the article, I just thought it worth pointing out!
There’s a lot to be said for the citizen’s basic income proposal. I’d certainly encourage people who support it to actively campaign for it.
However, it’s still very much a minority position. It’s not currently politically tenable in much of Europe. Unfortunately, it runs smack bang into the current neoliberal austerity agenda and national narratives about benefit scroungers. (The Swiss are somewhat of an exception, because their per capita wealth is quite so high. If there’s movement anywhere else, I suspect you’ll be looking at the Nordic countries first).
And its prospects in Europe are positively rosy in comparison to the US, where hostility to state involvement in these issues is heavily ingrained in the political status quo. Look at quite how heavily limited state involvement in healthcare has been attacked. Then ask yourself how people would react to the state providing everyone with a basic income.
The real political issue here is that the basic income is a social democratic proposal, at a time when social democracy has been on the back foot for decades. You’d need a political sea change for it to have any chance of getting in.
So yes, it would change the parameters of many of the debates we have here. As would the glorious people’s revolution/the rapture/ascension to the next level of evolution/everybody getting uploaded into a mainframe.
But until that time arrives, or at least is somewhat plausible, we have to base our arguments on how the world is, not how we’d like it to be.
Exactly. Nothing wrong with being an idealist, i was one before i grew up. But, those things will never happen in this decade..and being a realist, i won’t try to predict the future; as some are so willing to base (everyone else besides themselves.. which is convenient for them) todays economics on some disjointed un-thought-out marshmallow bubblegum fairy dust notion of what may happen in some distant yet cant describe how we would ever get there future. M, and his older brother like to change the subject to their cults tenants, meanwhile its only them that dont know they are just wasting time as they dont have a clue how the country’s political system works…
I don’t see it happening in the short term. More like a 10-20 year thing. Automation/technology will continue to kill off more and more jobs, and there will be some kind of breaking point.
There are other ways too of course. I suspect scientific research funding will continue to increase globally. Scientific research has no upper limit as far as employment opportunity is concerned. There is a growth in STEM fields at the college levels, specifically, computer science student representation is skyrocketing.
We’ll see increasingly “pointless jobs” too being fabricated out of thin air, like people in office buildings bullshiting around all day without getting anything done. Probably mostly government jobs but also large conglomerates.
But I think yeah, we’ll see a basic income before long. It’s just the most sensible way with dealing with the issue of massive permanent underemployment.
M says to ‘basic income’ ..”I don’t see it happening in the short term. More like a 10-20 year thing. ”
ROFL. That IS the ‘short term’ as far as political movement goes. Look, i get that you are passionate. You are still quite young, if your writing is any reflection.. maybe one day someone will sit you down and tell you how it really is..maybe you’ll learn it over the course of a lifetime.. but as of now, I’m not seeing your utopian future. And even if you and your brother anon have the SillyCon version of the magic eightball, your 20 answer widget doesn’t get society.
Again, until your utopian future is neigh, lets agree to pay for entertainment we consume. Don’t worry, if your prediction comes true, we’ll all laze around the public pool drinking watered down drinks together. In the meantime i won’t be holding my breath.
And even if you and your brother anon have the SillyCon version of the magic eightball, your 20 answer widget doesn’t get society.
…
Again, until your utopian future is neigh, lets agree to pay for entertainment we consume.
It’s as if two different people composed these sentences despite them being together.
I guess you are still hedging your bets that people will buy $15 CDs in a world where you can hold an entire record store worth of music in your pocket and transfer as much in less than an hour?
Maybe I don’t subscribe to your sort of “idealism”. That’s why I understand that the chances of the record music business ever recovering are close to nil. The best we can do is work with the world as it is, and that’s where my apparently “utopian” ideas come from.
Jeez.. when will you understand. You aren’t passing the Turing Test again…
What does speed or storage space have to do with anything? Just because you have a (unnecessary) 500GB iPod or whatever… doesn’t mean you need to fill it.. What does $15 dollar CDs have to do with legally obtained entertainment?
Unlike you, i can seperate “technology” from people. I dont look at The Wizard of Oz and think “magic”, i think ‘person hiding behind curtain’…
What does speed or storage space have to do with anything? Just because you have a (unnecessary) 500GB iPod or whatever… doesn’t mean you need to fill it.. What does $15 dollar CDs have to do with legally obtained entertainment?
You have a lot to learn about human nature.
The “Internet Economy” is an unsustainable bubble. At least the part that relies on ad-rev. We’ve (err some of us born before this century) seen this before too with the dot-bomb bubble.
The sick thing is that they are going to take the rest of us down with em. If more and more things are going to rely on ad-rev, and less and less things are going to be physically made… where do you think the ad-rev money is going to come from? it doesnt just internetmagically appear… it relies on People .. people with actual goods and services to sell that want to advertise.
Maybe youd like to see how big that space really is? read here:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/is-silicon-valley-investing-in-the-wrong-stuff-1404688048
Here’s a dystopian future for you, just to cleanse the palate. I foresee maybe ten years out the streaming services, looking to boost profits further, will start employing algorithms to write user-directed songs for computers to perform, mix and master.
Everybody says they like listening to music. Fact is, the majority like “hearing” music, not listening. Give them the ability to input that they want a song in style X with chord progression #345 at 60 beats per minute with guitar solo #152 in the middle and they’ll be happy as clams. All with no messy royalties to pay!
You may mark my words. It will at least be attempted.
I 100% agree that this will be attempted (reference all the recent news about the mastering algorithm now being offered online for artists on a budget). It may never work, or catch on, but I agree that within the next decade something of this sort will be out in the world.
Oh definitely. I know some of the musician readers will vehemently disagree with this, but all the value in the music business these days is almost entirely branding anyway.
Autotune already removed the need for real talent as a singer to be a success. I’m not saying having talent is a bad thing, But it is no longer a strong prerequisite. Because it’s a different kind of talent? Maybe you have to have a good “auto-tunable” voice? Ke$ha’s voice for instance, I think does well autotuned. That might be a reason for her success? But regardless, I think the barrier has lowered significantly here as what counts as “singing”.
Of course it doesn’t end at singing. Digital instruments replacing physical instruments, beat correction, loops. You have DAWs that are coming really close to basically spitting out the track for you. You can put together a very listenable track in maybe a couple hours using cheap software and not a whole lot of training.
I’m not saying like full on EDM artists eg, Skrillex et. al. don’t have talent. They do. But look, YouTube and sound cloud is FULL of EDM artists that put out IMO some really good stuff. What separates Skrillex from them is not the music, but the title Skrillex before the track.
So what, branding has value. Maybe the branding is earned through talent? You have situations like Psy where again, he has a ton of talent. But why Psy is a global superstar? Nobody knows. But he just kinda popped into the international scene by accident – even he can’t explain it. That takes out a lot of the romance from the music biz.
Trust me when i say that real musicians and songwriters don’t feel threatened by Autotune or band in a box… That’s like saying physicists should be scared because of Fisher Price telescopes… it doesn’t make sense.
Except that successful musicians are using autotune and band-in-a-box. You know, musicians as in those who are actually making money in the industry. They aren’t “scared” of it, on the contrary, they ARE it. Computer-corrected music is the mainstream face of the modern music industry.
it’s just a tool… you still need to have something worth listening to…
it’s like your saying that filmmakers are worried because their editing program has an ‘auto-color-balance’ button.
rofl. please if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t need to say stuff just to have the last word.
The point is, you don’t need talent to be a musician.
Case in point. 🙂
I’m more optimistic as far as the future of music. If you’re a fan of shows like American Idol, you probably can’t tell the difference between “soul” and “show”. Music and entertainment are not the same and even though entertainers make the big bucks, and movie sequels are what the studios look for…every once and awhile something sneaks thru to touch us emotionally and remind us why they call it “art”. So I think there’s a future for music. It may be smaller, but there is no substitute.
But I’d like to go back to something John Warr said before about the loss of valuable skill sets. When I was shooting my doc, I interviewed a few people in the aerospace sector about the US Space Program…or rather, what has become the lack of one. We had the space shuttle, which operated for some 20 years, and then we retired it. There was another program that was supposed to take its place, but that got axed due to budget constraints. Then we heard President Obama give a speech about how America was going to Mars and beyond. Great speech…all bullshit. Right now, the only way we can get to space is to ride on Russian rockets.
So Elon Musk builds the Falcon and it looks pretty good. On Paper. He runs a public company (Space X). That means that at some point he needs to make a profit otherwise he gets shut down. His other company (Tesla) loses money on every car it sells. He came into these companies with deep pockets, big dreams, and a heart that was in the right place…just probably not the marketplace. I can’t predict the future, so I won’t even guess how it will all work out, but it looks a little shaky.
The people who made NASA work are all mostly retired, dead, or aged out. If we wanted to fly the shuttle again, there’s no one left who knows how to glue the tiles onto the nose so it doesn’t burn up on re-entry. Our infrastructure was built two generations ago and I don’t see us investing in new infrastructure. When people go to college, they want to learn new technology because that’s where the jobs are and the ladder for advancement. Learning an old skill is just not that inviting. What happens in another two generations? We use infrastructure that”s FOUR generations old?
The future described in H.G. Wells “The Time Machine” doesn’t look so far away anymore…with the Morlocks keeping things running and the Eloi being the result of a few generations of a “Basic Income” utopian ideal where we can contemplate our navels and not have to do much. Of course every now and then the Morlocks need to be fed.
The problem is that pesky math, which just doesn’t add up the way we like…if you have 4 people taking out $25,000 each as a basic income, somewhere along the line there has to be $100,000 put into the system by SOMEONE or else it all breaks down. If you are the EARNER that makes the $100,000, you may feel that you have better uses for the money. If you’re making a million dollars it may not hurt you so much, but if it’s cutting close to the edge it will probably not make you that happy.
If you look at some of the countries that were Communist, you could clearly see that it wasn’t working. In Hungary, for example, I once went to a restaurant (a nice but modest one) where one person showed you your table, another person handed you the menu, another person took your drink order, another person took your food order, another dessert, and still another brought you the check. Six people doing the job of one person…and of course there was a whole other economy that was based on the Black Market, and it sucked much of the money out of the “official” economy.
One thing that has been mentioned previously is the idea of investing in scientific research, and in my opinion, that’s something very worthwhile…but the last 30 years have introduced the concept of not only politicized science (note the Global Warming conversations), but the necessity of research that not only pays for itself but is profitable. Anyone who watches the pharmaceutical industry – I do – (just for one example) knows all about it.
But the research done for the Space Program had none of those caveats attached…and look what came out of it…cell phones, the Internet, all of the high-tech things that we use every day and that have created whole new industries and millions of new jobs. But like news, research must now typically show that it can produce profits or else it doesn’t get funded.
All I can conclude is that people are different now and can no longer see past their nose or their own self interests. We all like the ideal of a utopia, but we all are inflicted with a lethal case of NIMBY.
The problem is that pesky math, which just doesn’t add up the way we like…if you have 4 people taking out $25,000 each as a basic income, somewhere along the line there has to be $100,000 put into the system by SOMEONE or else it all breaks down. If you are the EARNER that makes the $100,000, you may feel that you have better uses for the money. If you’re making a million dollars it may not hurt you so much, but if it’s cutting close to the edge it will probably not make you that happy.
You are erring here because you are thinking in terms of money being a physical quantity like energy or mass.
Money can be created out of nothing, in fact, that’s how most of the money in the world came to be (see: fractional reserve banking). It is possible for everyone to get $50k right now, and not a single person pay for it.
Yes, I am aware that can have bad economic consequences. But not necessarily. There is a complex play here between resources, labor, and money. When labor is devalued, the only thing that has value is resources, therefore the economy become entirely resource based. That’s what we seem to be converging on, year after year.
M…sorry…I don’t agree. I know all about Fractional Reserve Banking. Maybe you don’t really. It means that a bank has to keep a certain portion of its assets on hand in case of a run (the simple explanation)…in some regard, you can say it was responsible for the derivative marketplace, but again…that kind of blew up eventually. Money is not created out of nothing. You can argue that DEBT is created out of nothing and that’s what we base our money supply on…and I might even agree with that. But…if money has no intrinsic value (and usually that value is determined by a good or service), and you just keep printing it, you start to devalue it. History shows us that this has happened time and again thru history.
Maybe you don’t keep a close eye on economic news, but we’ve been hearing lately that we are in an economic “recovery”…maybe we’ve added some jobs, but retailers are reporting that people aren’t spending and when I went to the supermarket today I noticed that the same 12 pack of soda costs about 25 % more than it did the last time I bought it. That says inflation loud and clear to me.
I’m not the first person to talk about this (by a long shot), and in fact, Karl Marx chose to speak of labor as a commodity…and made the case for paying workers more to stimulate the economy. Guess who took that one to heart…? Henry Ford, that nasty old capitalist.If the $5/day that he paid his workers was not worth an honest $5, do you think they could have bought his cars?
As for resources, we see them getting scarcer day by day…and we see China (who has a whole bunch of cash right now) buying them up all over the world. If their money wasn’t worth anything, would people be selling? What’s interesting is that Chinese workers are demanding more money and some of their manufacturing is starting to move offshore…just like ours did.
I still say that the numbers have to add up. Maybe you can show us a specific example of a society that prints money, is not overloaded with debt, and has full or near-full employment…
“Maybe you can show us a specific example of a society that prints money, is not overloaded with debt, and has full or near-full employment…”
Lol, that’s the opposite of his ideal (at least the “employment” part).
Hey i get it, M, mom’s basement is comfy, and she probably cooks and does your laundry too..
But there there is no numbers to add up. There is no books to balance at the macroeconomic level. The true underpinning of the economy is labor and resources, and an economy is a system that describes allocation thereof to individuals and communities. Money in itself is not a resource or unit of labor, but rather an abstraction that can and is manipulated towards various ends.
The fact that currencies can be manipulated does not on any level mean that money has no value. Money can be used to buy labor, resources, many other things. Take Zimbabwe…one of the richest countries in Africa. Enter Robert Mugabe who tries to “redistribute” the wealth more “fairly”. Today the country is in ruins and their currency is worthless because he kept printing it at an even faster rate than the US seems to be doing. Of course reverse racism had something to do with it too, but the point is that the only redistribution of wealth that seems to work is when you give a homeless person $10 or something and expect nothing in return.
And by the way, there’s no such thing as “macroeconomics” in my opinion…there are only 300 million different economies in America all going on at the same time. You want to talk about economic trends, that’s what we seem to be doing here…but I’ve seen Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism up close, and I’ll take Capitalism every time. It comes with its own set of problems, but it also comes with opportunity…something that almost all other economic systems steal from the individual.
And by the way, the proof of this is that in every Socialist or Communist country, there was/is a thriving black market…proving that people are Capitalistic by nature.