andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2017-07-24 12:00 pm
andrewducker) wrote2017-07-24 12:00 pm
Entry tags:
- acting,
- awards,
- bias,
- bug,
- crime,
- cyborg,
- debt,
- drwho,
- employment,
- epicfail,
- europe,
- games,
- gender,
- goodnews,
- history,
- homeopathy,
- hugo,
- immigration,
- internet,
- jobs,
- labour,
- language,
- law,
- lgbt,
- links,
- nhs,
- ocean,
- ohforfuckssake,
- photos,
- regulation,
- research,
- safety,
- science,
- scotland,
- students,
- technology,
- transport,
- uk,
- usa,
- voting,
- windpower
Interesting Links for 24-07-2017
- How to view and download ransomed Photobucket gallery images, on a per-image basis
- (tags: photos internet )
- Labour would take Britain out of the EU single market, Jeremy Corbyn says
- (tags: immigration Europe Labour OhForFucksSake )
- Jeremy Corbyn: Student debt write-off not a commitment
- (tags: debt students labour )
- People to be allowed to pick their own gender without doctor's diagnosis, under Government plans
- (tags: gender law uk )
- An interesting snippet of an interview with Jodie Whittaker, in light of her casting as Doctor Who
- (tags: drwho acting gender )
- "My father-in-law won't become a coder, no matter what economists say"
- Pssssst, basic income...
(tags: employment jobs Technology ) - How are things going with the Hugo Award attempts to deter slates?
- (tags: voting awards hugo )
- World's first floating wind farm emerges off coast of Scotland
- (tags: Scotland windpower ocean )
- Many of the best Scrabble players are Thais who don't speak English
- (tags: language games )
- 'A misuse of scarce funds': NHS to end prescription of homeopathic remedies
- (tags: homeopathy NHS GoodNews )
- Etobicoke "park stairs" story is a perfect example of the anti-regulatory nonsense that led to the Grenfell disaster
- (tags: regulation safety )
- How 1967 changed gay life in Britain: ‘I think for my generation, we’re still a little bit uneasy’
- (tags: lgbt UK history )
- 18yo arrested for reporting a bug in the new Budapest e-Ticket system
- (tags: crime bug OhForFucksSake transport epicfail )
- Wisconsin Company Offers to Implant Microchips in Employees
- (tags: technology cyborg usa )
- Why Brilliant Girls Tend to Favor Non-STEM Careers
- (tags: gender science research bias )
Re: "My father-in-law won't become a coder"
We are perhaps tantalisingly close to a situation where your house is watching you and if you want a thing your house orders it, a machine receives the order, makes the thing, a machine carries it to your house which receives the thing and money is exchanges, perhaps without you actually being aware that you wanted the thing or any actual human beings being directly involved in the process - loo roll and pasta just turns up.
And that might happen quickly and very comprehensively and displace tens of millions of workers.
Observations from previous industrial revolutions suggested that there was more boosting of human abilty and less replacement of human ability and that the boosted humans got paid more and this created demand for other boosted humans to do different work and mostly everyone was better off. At the same time more products became available, either because their manufacture was now possible, or now cheaper or because there was enough extra wealth to create useful demand. Things like antibiotics, glassware or newspapers become mass market.
I think there is a risk this time round firstly the pace and depth of change catches unawares. (I fear this in particular because my take away from the de-industrialisation I've seen in the UK and the Rust Belt of the US suggests to me that it's much, much harder and longer for communities to bounce back from industries moving out or de-manning.) I have a fear that this time round we have more replacement of humans than boosting so there are fewer newly boosted humans earning boosted wages. Thirdly, I fear that therefore the proceeds of the next industrial revolution end up with owners of capital who (when private citizens) have less marginal propensity to consume and therefore we might get fewer jobs created where human character is an integral and distinctive part of the product. Art, works of artistic craft, counselling, advise and guidance, performance, science.
What might happens is a citizens income by the back door where a large number of the current middle class discover that the returns to capital are so high and goods so cheap that they are able to join the idle rich on a modest monetary inheritance. We are looking in this scenario at deflation running at double digits for a decade. These people then leave the labour market or take up paying hobbies.
Or we might get a middle ground where deflation of goods happens and this allows lots of people to pay for extra human-in-the-loop activities.
But I'm not at all sure this is guaranteed.