The solution to average people becoming less relevant in the economy (which I don't dispute, btw) can of course never be to make everyone above average as that is by definition impossible.
It's a feel good message for average folk that papers over the truth, which is that average folk that used to make a decent living doing average work will become poor. All of them, eventually. How poor exactly? Well, you could do worse than to look at Chinese factory workers for an indication of where things will end.
Of course it's more complicated than that: if the average man has become as poor as a Chinese factory worker, he will no longer be able to afford expensive gadgets and value added services, so it'll be in the interest of at least some sectors of the economy (think Apple and Google) to keep the impoverishment of the middle class down to a minimum. On the other hand there are other sectors of the economy (think McDonalds and Walmart) that will do just fine even if everyone is poor, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
But, like I said, this article is ridiculous. Giving everyone a PhD won't solve a thing.
"The solution to average people becoming less relevant in the economy (which I don't dispute, btw) can of course never be to make everyone above average as that is by definition impossible."
It's not as impossible as you might think. The idea here is to be above average in a specialty, not in everything.
It's even more within reach when you start thinking about how narrow a specialization can become. I remember Scott Adams's reflections on this... that you can become "elite" by being the very best at one thing (like Roger Federer at Tennis), or by by being good at an interesting blend of different things. The first is out of range for most people, but the second is a possibility for mere mortals. Scott Adams's personal reflection was that he was good but not great at drawing, telling jokes, and commenting on business, but all three together made his comic strip unique.
Even this approach will require a substantial amount of education and hard work, but it is a possibility.
The solution is none. There is no "solution" because it, in itself, is not a problem. The problem is that everybody feels entitled to a top 10% salary and many would kill for "their fair share" when nowadays even the lower 10% have their basic needs covered and some left for leisure.
The problem is that a society where everybody have similar incomes is somehow fairer, when there is no logical chain leading there and to top it off it causes ruination. Did cause it already just after industrial revolution, when this disparity in productivity first became natural, and does more and more now.
Having everyone highly educated would solve many things. Not salary disparity though, as it isn't a problem in the first place. The problem is having a significant chunk of the population hungry or homeless. This can perfectly be eradicated "even" with a higher disparity.
It's not ridiculous but I think it wasn't very well presented. The argument isn't that everyone should have a PhD. That wasn't even mentioned. Access to higher education was mentioned but that means college in this context (most likely even an associates degree).
The argument being made in the article isn't about making everyone above average it's about shifting what average is. Times have changed but sadly education and job training for most people has not. The person who used to stand on an assembly line and pop rivets all day is no longer a middle class wage earner. Why? Because popping rivets "at scale" isn't a problem anyone even thinks about anymore. But for people who don't have any other marketable skills or education past high school this is a big problem.
All countries that have been around for a long enough period of time go through this, the US is young enough that we're entering the phase now and we do have opportunity to try to make things as good as we can for as many people as we can. This is not to say that we'll ever stop unemployment because we won't. Our focus needs to be on education and job training in a big way. If the digital/IT age is driving the global economy and a factory can comfortably employs thousands of people the US should be building those kinds of factories. Eventually the places the US outsources to will become too expensive and jobs (some of them) will move back to the US. This is already happening. The middle classes that have been and are being built overseas will by definition grow past the point where paying them to install glass screens in cases will be good enough for them.
I could be wrong, but he's talking less about "shifting" average to include a PhD, to shifting how average people are going to have to fend for themselves - which is to fight to be above average. As another commenter pointed out, this is impossible (if everyone's special, no one is), but it's also good to mention that you get to choose whether or not you want to be average. Sure, you can rely on being a cog in a machine, but if you do that, you just jumped into a super-competitive market dominated by machines and cheap overseas labor.
So, you can either relegate yourself to that fate or choose something different.
I believe his point was that there's a shift in the past could escape with being average because it was localized and there was less overall competition for jobs because of geographic limitations.
The math is that the market for average has been commoditized over 7 billion people + machines, rather than the 300 million people we used to. That brings the level of average much, much lower for certain types of works. So, the solution isn't to try and raise your qualifications level in a pool of average people, but rather jump in a different pool altogether, where your value as a worker is not so easily commoditized (knowledge workers, developing fields & emerging tech).
Actually, everyone can be above average if you have multiple scales. Some people could be above average at singing, others at mathematics, others at running.
The unfortunate losers in this situation are the people who are uniformly below average.
By above average he means specialised skills in a specific talent or skill. Thus being above average in that specific talent or skill; however below average in everything else. Division of labour.
There's another way to "raise" the average and it's already beginning to happen. It is the organization of workers into unions and other democratic labor organizations. It parallels the movements that occurred in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Except it's happening in China (and other "globalized" competitors).
Chinese workers will not put up with unsafe, low-pay factory conditions forever, despite what everyone seems to think. Most of China's population doesn't have access to reasonable healthcare, for example, and many of these factory workers live in slum-like dormitories located on the factory campus. This is to say nothing of the literal death-traps that exist in day-to-day working conditions.
The Arab-spring is evidence that, even in the 21st century, or perhaps more-so in the 21st century, collective action can provoke change. It's odd why so many see the process of globalization as a race to the bottom. In the short-term, yes, but in the long-term, no way.
Transportation, energy and other transaction costs could make it costlier to produce in China what can be produced in the United States when labor costs approach parity. At worst, the workers in China and the "average" workers in the west will meet somewhere in the middle.
not everyone can be above average, but a whole lot can. Just like currently a lot more than 50% earn less than average. You are confusing average with median.
But also, the context of the article seems to imply that he was thinking about international competition, so that "We will have the best-trained American people in the world." You just have to make sure the below average ones are somewhere else.
I'm sensing quite a bit of schadenfreude here, and no substance. Surely america can use its considerable resources to educate and train its populace to do work that will be in high demand in the 21st century.
Is your point that the "average person" is just too stupid to learn to do these jobs?
“Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly-line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the [Chinese] plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. ‘The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,’ the executive said. ‘There’s no American plant that can match that.’ ”
Ah yes, at midnight I'll just go walk over to my "dormitories" on my "plantation" and wake my "employees" and tell them to get to work harvesting cotton. In exchange for their 12 hour work day (and a comfy dormitory in which to live) I'll give them tea and a biscuit!
I don't understand why the "Average" American won't come work for me given these perks.
This is fascinating. I think the big (and scary) meta-trend is this:
The population is increasing and the requirement for people is decreasing.
This gap is made wider by increased birth-rates and better automation. More people are being born into a world where fewer are required. That is quite a scary thought. Computers and machines automate and replace people everywhere.
I have some anecdotal evidence of this:
At my last business we used to follow-up twice via email with all of the people who had not responded to a quote that we had sent them. We had 50-100 enquiries a day so the follow-ups soon mounted up. I tried every CRM and mail-list manager out there. I could not find one that would trigger an email from my Gmail account if a contact had not responded. I was spending 3-4 hours a day doing the follow-ups. So were my staff. It got to the point where I wanted to hire someone to do it. Eventually I learnt more about the software and read up on ruby on rails. I hired a small software house to help with the backend, built the front-end myself and a month later, a machine replaced the humans and prevented a new hire. That is just one job at a tiny 5-person company. At scale, computer-based automation creates huge efficiencies. The flip-side of that are huge deficiencies in employment.
In parts of the world where there is a lot of automation birth rates are basically either flat or declining below replacement level. Maybe this is a natural response to increasing automation or at least understanding there is a need for less people.
> a machine replaced the humans and prevented a new hire
I think it's more the case that a machine made your small business more efficient and more likely to still be in existence a year from now. Was there really any benefit to have someone sitting at a desk performing a dull, repetitive task?
I think it's also a matter of what kind of world we want.
For example: Do you choose to use software instead of employing a person because you prefer the software, or would you prefer to hire a person but choose software because it is cheaper (which helps the company survive) and kind-of can do the same job?
If it's the first, there's a good reason to be scared. If it's the second, then market forces might eventually balance out and make hiring people an attractive choice again.
Ideally, tools such as computers will go back to being tools, "human helpers" and not "human replacements".
I do not like to think about an automated, antisocial world in which less and less humans are needed because machines have taken over. Isn't that self-defeating anyway? When did we start putting our tools above ourselves?
> I could not find one that would trigger an email from my Gmail account if a contact had not responded.
You might want to look into a more powerful email client. Gnus (a part or emacs) could be programmed to perform such a task. Setting it up to download your gmail over IMAP and the running a process filter would probably do the trick.
It was only a few centuries ago that we paid this exclusive, elite upper class in society called scribes to write and transcribe things for us, because we weren't literate enough to do it ourselves. The parallels are pretty surprising today: we're paying an exclusive, elite class called programmers to write in the languages understood by computers. Software is eating the world, jobs are being displaced, and the demand for technical talent is as high as its ever been.
Scribes were reasonably well off, sure, but to call them an "exclusive, elite upper class" goes beyond stretching it. Scribes were decently paid clerks that worked for scheming, sword wielding thugs who only gradually became literate themselves.
I don't think we're an elite, upper class now either. We're decently paid clerks that perform an essential task for our scheming, private jet flying, yes, thuggish overlords that for now at least haven't become computer literate themselves. Yet.
But the day will come that they will have, or at least will have become computer literate enough to operate the software that has displaced us.
If that day comes after I've died, I don't mind. Otherwise it'll be a problem.
Is programming that elite though? wages seemed to have hardly changed in the U.K. in the last 10 years (accounting for inflation). Also programming pays a similar amount to other jobs requiring a degree and is certainly a lot less than jobs like accountancy, finance, law and medical doctors.
Everybody can talk, but few people can be successful salesmen. Anyone could learn to play a musical instrument, but few people are actually doing it and even fewer people are good at it.
Related to scribes, even if mostly everyone knows how to read or write, that doesn't mean that book authors are obsolete. Writing novels and technical books is an endeavor that requires much more than simply being capable to read and write.
So I don't really get why this analogy is being made. Well, actually I do. It's for the same reason why recruiters are doing keyword matching on resumes.
The author's sudden and poorly supported conclusion doesn't really fit. Because people with bachelor's degrees have the least unemployment, it is imperative we pass a GI Bill to ensure everyone gets a bachelor's degree?!
He's getting the causality wrong. It's not because they have bachelor's degrees that they're getting jobs. They're getting jobs because they're (minimally) bright and (minimally) ambitious.
Printing 100 million bachelor's diplomas "solves" the unemployment problem in much the same way that printing 100 trillion dollars solves our financial problems: not at all.
Although your argument is perfectly valid, one should not underestimate the value of the Bachelor's degree as just a piece of paper. I'm not trying to be facetious but a lot of employers filter, and sometimes hire, applicants based on their education level. In these cases, some employers assume these people have the skills. The important point here is that skills can be acquired in post-secondary education or on your own. However if done on your own, you face a hurdle of not having the college degree.
I think he's right about many things there: manufacturing jobs are leaving and not coming back. Automation is becoming more and more advanced, particularly if you factor advances in robotics and ml since 2006 or so.
Things move faster and average just doesn't seem to cut it when you can manufacture excellence. Hell, lawyers and doctors will be next, how about faux ai that can write simple web apps or come up with good designs? Give generative models a few more years to advance, we'll see how far fetched that is. Some people will get very rich from all that. But that wealth will go to those who control what amounts to the means of production and they'll be able to defend those means with patents. I guess workers could strike back in the day, good luck with that now, the little guy has even less negotiating power.
All this to say, I think these trends and the shift they bring are going to be the most fundamental shift in economic organization since the industrial revolution. Not sure what the answer is, but I'm concerned that those in power dont even recognize the issues (they're not "nerds", as they say.) Time will tell, but I'm not all that optimistic about the average joes out there.
PS I wish the answer was everyone will start their own business, but honestly I just don't think that will be practical.
>how about faux ai that can write simple web apps or come up with good designs?
A major class of workers that software has a tendency of replacing is programmers themselves. Bespoke solutions are replaced by what used to be called shrink-wrapped applications. In the web area, look at how services such as Squarespace replace bespoke sites by providing easy to use site design tools.
In the case of a "everything is automated, only a small portion of people are needed to produce essentials and even advance" society, would we just be better off with a system that relied on the altruism of the few to make the lives of everyone better and everyone else could just exist?
That sort of society has a slew of issues that could be better explored in futurist science fiction (things such as psychologic issues for the non-producers, the sustainability of altruism, etc.). But it is a consideration that I have thought about.
Capitalism isn't going to be subverted that quickly, though. The system will right itself and any revolution of that caliber will be long and hard fought. The world superpower will be a capitalist system in 2050 and probably 2100.
I thank many of the people in power do recognize the issues, which is why transforming education has become such a hot focus lately.
Broad advances in education were essential in allowing the "average" person to find employment in an industrial society; the modern average person is far, far more educated than they were 500 years ago when most average people were illiterate and farmed for a living.
We will need a new transformation in education to allow future average people to find good work within an information-based economy. This means, for example, that the average person might be able to program computers at an average level in the future.
I think he meant "ordinary" not "average". Average has a specific meaning and as many have pointed out, you can't make everyone above average.
What we've got to figure out is how to keep the large mass of ordinaries from being made into Eloi by a combination of welfare states, machine productivity, and wealth disparity.
Or, failing that, find a way to prevent the Morlocks from eating the Eloi when it suits them.
Folks are harping on the meaning of "average," but it's clear to me that in the article, "average" here is a euphemism for "unskilled."
When you've been working as an semi-skilled laborer in a textile mill for 20 years, and suddenly your job is made redundant in favor of automation- your mill training becomes worthless. You don't need to become "above average," you just need to learn a different semi-skilled trade. Like pushing around excel spreadsheets.
It's a pretty good read. It has an interesting take on a future where machines do the majority of the work. With the way things are headed, I'd say a society like the one described in Player Piano might not be to far off. I'm still undecided whether that's a good thing or not.
a) corporate profits are up
b) hiring isn't happening, or is seeing a skills mismatch
then where exactly are all these profits going? If they're going to capital goods for the company, that just moves the question on down the line. If they're going to shareholders, then what are those shareholders buying? And if it's just sitting in the bank, where is the bank lending it out?
Many of the profits were earned overseas, and are being left there. If they bring the profits home to the US, they will be taxed. Essentially, the US is levying a tax on (certain) foreign investment, specifically investment by Google Ireland in Google USA.
Additionally, most of the private sector is deleveraging and building up cash reserves to use in lieu of debt financing.
" Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. " - This is true in the actual times, since China (no matter how they want you to forget it) is living under very harsh communist regime, but that will change when chinese workers start demanding better working conditions, more time for family, better salaries, etc..as far as I know, it's China who's living in a bubble.
I think that should be the flip side but aside from 2009-2010 (the bulk of the recession), inflation has remained constant over the last ten years. Inflation adjusted wages have continued to decline to record numbers. The jobs that are returning in the current recovery have been primarily low paying ones (clearly IT is exempt from this).
What has been going up is corporate profits. Apple's latest figures are mind boggling. A billion dollars in profit a WEEK. Someone up higher in the comments wrote that we are at peak-capitalism and headed towards Marxism/Socialism. While I doubt that's going to happen (Wall St too strong, progressive politicians too weak) I think America needs to go that way.
As Elizabeth Warren said 'There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own'. I feel that corporations (they are people right) and "The 1%" need to pay as much or more of their income in taxes to repay society for their success. This money should be used to address the problems in this article. The US needs to make higher education and retraining free/affordable, make health care free, and provide better social safety nets. With these things in place, Americans will be able to start getting competitive again.
The working poor, created by organizations such as the iPod factory quoted in the article, still can't afford anything, because the living costs are rising faster than their income.
We need to stop subsidizing companies that offload the costs of their labor onto the rest of us.
Average is looking less attractive than it did 10 years ago
There will always be a place for average. However, I don't think it's going to be as attractive of a place to be as it has been. It's going to be much more costly to try and coast through life.
I can't believe those Presto touchscreens at restaurants are $100 per month. I love gadgets and technology, but much prefer dealing with a server and think most people do. My kids like the games and nag incessantly to play the "pay" ones, but I hardly think this is the end of waitresses and waiters. (I hope)
Great article. This illustrates a fundamental mistake that many believe which is that just because they have a college degree they deserve a certain job, income or lifestyle.
More bachelor's degrees won't increase the number of exceptional people, it will just mean more average people with bachelor's degrees. A side effect of this will be that the number of jobs for average people with bachelor's degrees will increase. Some of the most stable and best paying jobs are in education, law enforcement, state and local government, school and health care administration and so forth. Basically anything that is full or partially funded by tax dollars.
In many places there is already an attitude of why would you be so dumb to subject yourself to the logan's run of working in private enterprise when you can get an easy job with a pension by simply working directly or indirectly for the state.
[+] [-] mtts|14 years ago|reply
The solution to average people becoming less relevant in the economy (which I don't dispute, btw) can of course never be to make everyone above average as that is by definition impossible.
It's a feel good message for average folk that papers over the truth, which is that average folk that used to make a decent living doing average work will become poor. All of them, eventually. How poor exactly? Well, you could do worse than to look at Chinese factory workers for an indication of where things will end.
Of course it's more complicated than that: if the average man has become as poor as a Chinese factory worker, he will no longer be able to afford expensive gadgets and value added services, so it'll be in the interest of at least some sectors of the economy (think Apple and Google) to keep the impoverishment of the middle class down to a minimum. On the other hand there are other sectors of the economy (think McDonalds and Walmart) that will do just fine even if everyone is poor, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
But, like I said, this article is ridiculous. Giving everyone a PhD won't solve a thing.
[+] [-] geebee|14 years ago|reply
It's not as impossible as you might think. The idea here is to be above average in a specialty, not in everything. It's even more within reach when you start thinking about how narrow a specialization can become. I remember Scott Adams's reflections on this... that you can become "elite" by being the very best at one thing (like Roger Federer at Tennis), or by by being good at an interesting blend of different things. The first is out of range for most people, but the second is a possibility for mere mortals. Scott Adams's personal reflection was that he was good but not great at drawing, telling jokes, and commenting on business, but all three together made his comic strip unique.
Even this approach will require a substantial amount of education and hard work, but it is a possibility.
[+] [-] muyuu|14 years ago|reply
The problem is that a society where everybody have similar incomes is somehow fairer, when there is no logical chain leading there and to top it off it causes ruination. Did cause it already just after industrial revolution, when this disparity in productivity first became natural, and does more and more now.
Having everyone highly educated would solve many things. Not salary disparity though, as it isn't a problem in the first place. The problem is having a significant chunk of the population hungry or homeless. This can perfectly be eradicated "even" with a higher disparity.
[+] [-] shaggy|14 years ago|reply
The argument being made in the article isn't about making everyone above average it's about shifting what average is. Times have changed but sadly education and job training for most people has not. The person who used to stand on an assembly line and pop rivets all day is no longer a middle class wage earner. Why? Because popping rivets "at scale" isn't a problem anyone even thinks about anymore. But for people who don't have any other marketable skills or education past high school this is a big problem.
All countries that have been around for a long enough period of time go through this, the US is young enough that we're entering the phase now and we do have opportunity to try to make things as good as we can for as many people as we can. This is not to say that we'll ever stop unemployment because we won't. Our focus needs to be on education and job training in a big way. If the digital/IT age is driving the global economy and a factory can comfortably employs thousands of people the US should be building those kinds of factories. Eventually the places the US outsources to will become too expensive and jobs (some of them) will move back to the US. This is already happening. The middle classes that have been and are being built overseas will by definition grow past the point where paying them to install glass screens in cases will be good enough for them.
[+] [-] joelrunyon|14 years ago|reply
I could be wrong, but he's talking less about "shifting" average to include a PhD, to shifting how average people are going to have to fend for themselves - which is to fight to be above average. As another commenter pointed out, this is impossible (if everyone's special, no one is), but it's also good to mention that you get to choose whether or not you want to be average. Sure, you can rely on being a cog in a machine, but if you do that, you just jumped into a super-competitive market dominated by machines and cheap overseas labor.
So, you can either relegate yourself to that fate or choose something different.
I believe his point was that there's a shift in the past could escape with being average because it was localized and there was less overall competition for jobs because of geographic limitations.
The math is that the market for average has been commoditized over 7 billion people + machines, rather than the 300 million people we used to. That brings the level of average much, much lower for certain types of works. So, the solution isn't to try and raise your qualifications level in a pool of average people, but rather jump in a different pool altogether, where your value as a worker is not so easily commoditized (knowledge workers, developing fields & emerging tech).
For anyone familiar with Seth Godin, this talk isn't very new at all - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/04/no_to_averag...
[+] [-] shalmanese|14 years ago|reply
The unfortunate losers in this situation are the people who are uniformly below average.
[+] [-] UK-Al05|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdlegg|14 years ago|reply
Chinese workers will not put up with unsafe, low-pay factory conditions forever, despite what everyone seems to think. Most of China's population doesn't have access to reasonable healthcare, for example, and many of these factory workers live in slum-like dormitories located on the factory campus. This is to say nothing of the literal death-traps that exist in day-to-day working conditions.
The Arab-spring is evidence that, even in the 21st century, or perhaps more-so in the 21st century, collective action can provoke change. It's odd why so many see the process of globalization as a race to the bottom. In the short-term, yes, but in the long-term, no way.
Transportation, energy and other transaction costs could make it costlier to produce in China what can be produced in the United States when labor costs approach parity. At worst, the workers in China and the "average" workers in the west will meet somewhere in the middle.
[+] [-] lutorm|14 years ago|reply
not everyone can be above average, but a whole lot can. Just like currently a lot more than 50% earn less than average. You are confusing average with median.
But also, the context of the article seems to imply that he was thinking about international competition, so that "We will have the best-trained American people in the world." You just have to make sure the below average ones are somewhere else.
[+] [-] jberryman|14 years ago|reply
Is your point that the "average person" is just too stupid to learn to do these jobs?
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steder|14 years ago|reply
Ah yes, at midnight I'll just go walk over to my "dormitories" on my "plantation" and wake my "employees" and tell them to get to work harvesting cotton. In exchange for their 12 hour work day (and a comfy dormitory in which to live) I'll give them tea and a biscuit!
I don't understand why the "Average" American won't come work for me given these perks.
[+] [-] hello_moto|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardburton|14 years ago|reply
The population is increasing and the requirement for people is decreasing.
This gap is made wider by increased birth-rates and better automation. More people are being born into a world where fewer are required. That is quite a scary thought. Computers and machines automate and replace people everywhere.
I have some anecdotal evidence of this:
At my last business we used to follow-up twice via email with all of the people who had not responded to a quote that we had sent them. We had 50-100 enquiries a day so the follow-ups soon mounted up. I tried every CRM and mail-list manager out there. I could not find one that would trigger an email from my Gmail account if a contact had not responded. I was spending 3-4 hours a day doing the follow-ups. So were my staff. It got to the point where I wanted to hire someone to do it. Eventually I learnt more about the software and read up on ruby on rails. I hired a small software house to help with the backend, built the front-end myself and a month later, a machine replaced the humans and prevented a new hire. That is just one job at a tiny 5-person company. At scale, computer-based automation creates huge efficiencies. The flip-side of that are huge deficiencies in employment.
Here come the machines.
[+] [-] jf271|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edoloughlin|14 years ago|reply
I think it's more the case that a machine made your small business more efficient and more likely to still be in existence a year from now. Was there really any benefit to have someone sitting at a desk performing a dull, repetitive task?
[+] [-] wladimir|14 years ago|reply
For example: Do you choose to use software instead of employing a person because you prefer the software, or would you prefer to hire a person but choose software because it is cheaper (which helps the company survive) and kind-of can do the same job?
If it's the first, there's a good reason to be scared. If it's the second, then market forces might eventually balance out and make hiring people an attractive choice again.
Ideally, tools such as computers will go back to being tools, "human helpers" and not "human replacements".
I do not like to think about an automated, antisocial world in which less and less humans are needed because machines have taken over. Isn't that self-defeating anyway? When did we start putting our tools above ourselves?
[+] [-] kruhft|14 years ago|reply
You might want to look into a more powerful email client. Gnus (a part or emacs) could be programmed to perform such a task. Setting it up to download your gmail over IMAP and the running a process filter would probably do the trick.
[+] [-] jsankey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmtame|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtts|14 years ago|reply
I don't think we're an elite, upper class now either. We're decently paid clerks that perform an essential task for our scheming, private jet flying, yes, thuggish overlords that for now at least haven't become computer literate themselves. Yet.
But the day will come that they will have, or at least will have become computer literate enough to operate the software that has displaced us.
If that day comes after I've died, I don't mind. Otherwise it'll be a problem.
[+] [-] rythie|14 years ago|reply
For example, average programmer salary in 2004 was about £31k and in £38k http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/programmer.do and if you calculate £31k in today's money you get £38,440 [http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/His...]
[+] [-] bad_user|14 years ago|reply
Related to scribes, even if mostly everyone knows how to read or write, that doesn't mean that book authors are obsolete. Writing novels and technical books is an endeavor that requires much more than simply being capable to read and write.
So I don't really get why this analogy is being made. Well, actually I do. It's for the same reason why recruiters are doing keyword matching on resumes.
[+] [-] Dybbuk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamgravitis|14 years ago|reply
He's getting the causality wrong. It's not because they have bachelor's degrees that they're getting jobs. They're getting jobs because they're (minimally) bright and (minimally) ambitious.
Printing 100 million bachelor's diplomas "solves" the unemployment problem in much the same way that printing 100 trillion dollars solves our financial problems: not at all.
[+] [-] orky56|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dave_sullivan|14 years ago|reply
I think he's right about many things there: manufacturing jobs are leaving and not coming back. Automation is becoming more and more advanced, particularly if you factor advances in robotics and ml since 2006 or so.
Things move faster and average just doesn't seem to cut it when you can manufacture excellence. Hell, lawyers and doctors will be next, how about faux ai that can write simple web apps or come up with good designs? Give generative models a few more years to advance, we'll see how far fetched that is. Some people will get very rich from all that. But that wealth will go to those who control what amounts to the means of production and they'll be able to defend those means with patents. I guess workers could strike back in the day, good luck with that now, the little guy has even less negotiating power.
All this to say, I think these trends and the shift they bring are going to be the most fundamental shift in economic organization since the industrial revolution. Not sure what the answer is, but I'm concerned that those in power dont even recognize the issues (they're not "nerds", as they say.) Time will tell, but I'm not all that optimistic about the average joes out there.
PS I wish the answer was everyone will start their own business, but honestly I just don't think that will be practical.
[+] [-] pshc|14 years ago|reply
But from what I can tell in history, the future tends to turn out much weirder than the human imagination can conceive.
[+] [-] simonh|14 years ago|reply
A major class of workers that software has a tendency of replacing is programmers themselves. Bespoke solutions are replaced by what used to be called shrink-wrapped applications. In the web area, look at how services such as Squarespace replace bespoke sites by providing easy to use site design tools.
[+] [-] hammerdr|14 years ago|reply
That sort of society has a slew of issues that could be better explored in futurist science fiction (things such as psychologic issues for the non-producers, the sustainability of altruism, etc.). But it is a consideration that I have thought about.
Capitalism isn't going to be subverted that quickly, though. The system will right itself and any revolution of that caliber will be long and hard fought. The world superpower will be a capitalist system in 2050 and probably 2100.
[+] [-] zerostar07|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|14 years ago|reply
Broad advances in education were essential in allowing the "average" person to find employment in an industrial society; the modern average person is far, far more educated than they were 500 years ago when most average people were illiterate and farmed for a living.
We will need a new transformation in education to allow future average people to find good work within an information-based economy. This means, for example, that the average person might be able to program computers at an average level in the future.
[+] [-] noonespecial|14 years ago|reply
What we've got to figure out is how to keep the large mass of ordinaries from being made into Eloi by a combination of welfare states, machine productivity, and wealth disparity.
Or, failing that, find a way to prevent the Morlocks from eating the Eloi when it suits them.
[+] [-] ScottBurson|14 years ago|reply
Yes, you can, because there's an infinity of dimensions and each person only has to be above average on one of them.
I'm really surprised how many people here aren't getting this.
[+] [-] hammock|14 years ago|reply
When you've been working as an semi-skilled laborer in a textile mill for 20 years, and suddenly your job is made redundant in favor of automation- your mill training becomes worthless. You don't need to become "above average," you just need to learn a different semi-skilled trade. Like pushing around excel spreadsheets.
[+] [-] jharding|14 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano
It's a pretty good read. It has an interesting take on a future where machines do the majority of the work. With the way things are headed, I'd say a society like the one described in Player Piano might not be to far off. I'm still undecided whether that's a good thing or not.
[+] [-] invalidOrTaken|14 years ago|reply
If
then where exactly are all these profits going? If they're going to capital goods for the company, that just moves the question on down the line. If they're going to shareholders, then what are those shareholders buying? And if it's just sitting in the bank, where is the bank lending it out?[+] [-] yummyfajitas|14 years ago|reply
Additionally, most of the private sector is deleveraging and building up cash reserves to use in lieu of debt financing.
[+] [-] phatbyte|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclaysmith|14 years ago|reply
What has been going up is corporate profits. Apple's latest figures are mind boggling. A billion dollars in profit a WEEK. Someone up higher in the comments wrote that we are at peak-capitalism and headed towards Marxism/Socialism. While I doubt that's going to happen (Wall St too strong, progressive politicians too weak) I think America needs to go that way.
As Elizabeth Warren said 'There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own'. I feel that corporations (they are people right) and "The 1%" need to pay as much or more of their income in taxes to repay society for their success. This money should be used to address the problems in this article. The US needs to make higher education and retraining free/affordable, make health care free, and provide better social safety nets. With these things in place, Americans will be able to start getting competitive again.
[+] [-] gorbachev|14 years ago|reply
The working poor, created by organizations such as the iPod factory quoted in the article, still can't afford anything, because the living costs are rising faster than their income.
We need to stop subsidizing companies that offload the costs of their labor onto the rest of us.
[+] [-] beatpanda|14 years ago|reply
OK.
So who are we building this economy for, and why?
[+] [-] joelrunyon|14 years ago|reply
Average is looking less attractive than it did 10 years ago
There will always be a place for average. However, I don't think it's going to be as attractive of a place to be as it has been. It's going to be much more costly to try and coast through life.
[+] [-] spinchange|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaggieL|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikebracco|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exit|14 years ago|reply
in any case, it reminded me of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
[+] [-] rdouble|14 years ago|reply
In many places there is already an attitude of why would you be so dumb to subject yourself to the logan's run of working in private enterprise when you can get an easy job with a pension by simply working directly or indirectly for the state.
[+] [-] pnathan|14 years ago|reply
Who fixes your robot?
Who builds your house?
Not everyone is cut out for college, actually, most people aren't.