The Internet is destroying work

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/12/the_new_proletariat_workers_of_the_cloud/

by jusben1369 • 13 years ago

38 69 13 years ago

jusben1369• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if the Internet is destroying or just amplifying current general trends.

ds92• 13 years ago

Whenever technology advances, industries based on the previous ways of doing things must die off, and the next generation of workers will work equally long and hard at new occupations. Horses vs. cars, domestic workers vs. washing machines, it has happened over and over.

It's inevitably hard on the disemployed workers, as many will be unable to retrain for whatever the new jobs demand. But this is only an argument for a "social safety net", not for resisting progress.

Unfortunately this is not the whole explanation of the shrinking of the middle class. The internet is only one factor and not the biggest. The main cause is corporate takeover of governments, leading to "financialization" (i.e., make money by trading things that are only indirectly based one real goods, without producing new value) [1], oligopolistic, rent-seeking industries [2] and lack of popular influence on governments.

1. e.g. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/financializatio... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

kasey_junk2• 13 years ago

That's not true. As we've made technology advances historically we've removed working hours. It just hasn't happened with the new digital revolution.

ds92• 13 years ago

Working hours were reduced only in the 20th century, and mainly then due to the influence of unions. There was very little reduction prior to this era - basically it was dawn to dusk on farms, then with the industrial revolution, dawn to dusk or even longer in factories, mines and other industries.

Reformers have always argued, "New tech lets us produce the same output with less work, so let's have more leisure time" - but capital owners see it instead as an opportunity to work their employees (serfs, proletarians, then "at will" employees) the same hours and make more money.

dragonwriter4• 13 years ago

As we've made technology advances historically we've removed working hours.

Not at all true; up until the 20th century and the influence of labor unions, technological advances mostly increased working hours. Technology removes barriers that limit working hours (artificial lighting is pretty much the textbook example of this, but is very far from the only example), and increases in productivity due to technology increase the expected marginal output of each working hour, which increases the incentive to work (or, where the value of the output is captured by someone other than the worker, to employ/compel work.)

homosaur• 13 years ago

I'm not going to remark on the topic of Internet job annihilation because I feel like I have nothing else intelligent to say, but I wanted to add I do feel the Fancy Hands thing. Something about that entire proposition struck me as disturbing from the beginning.

"Not an elite? Then pretend you're one with your very own anonymous slave!"

How much clearer could it be that even those anonymous slaves will be replaced by robots the second that it's technically feasible.

Zikes• 13 years ago

That technical infeasibility is precisely why the business exists. If it were technically feasible, a person could purchase their own device or system to manage such tasks and Fancy Hands and similar services would become obsolete, or graduate to more complex tasks that are still as yet technically infeasible.

zanny• 13 years ago

Good? It is clear people using this service don't want to do the task, but likewise don't value having it done either. Though the examples given in the article seem more like things one would want to interact with themselves.

If people are willing to take money for this work, and someone else wants it done, that is economics. The broader question is "does raw human labor possess value anymore?" and if the answer is no, in the sense that a working human with no domain skills is laboring below a living wage, then it is time to rethink our economic model, and minimum wage is just a hatchet to stymie the bigger issue - the systemic devaluation of human output. Because machines are better at it.

xwowsersx2• 13 years ago

What's with this obsession with jobs? If all we wanted were "jobs", we could create 100 million real quickly. Just go destroy a bunch of stuff and get people to work, rebuilding everything again.

akama• 13 years ago

Doing that doesn't increase value though.

Tharkun• 13 years ago

We're a long way away from this yet, but eventually we likely will run out of work. Some jobs are harder to automate than others, and some arguably will never be (robotic artists seem a little silly?) automated. At some point in the future we're going to have to ask ourselves the question: what the hell do we do with ourselves? Working less would probably be a good start. But then what? Do we turn into a dystopian planet of hedonistic oafs?

127001brewer2• 13 years ago

Do we turn into a dystopian planet of hedonistic oafs?

I guess you haven't seen any of the recent reality TV shows lately...

kasey_junk2• 13 years ago

We've been through this before, many many times. The agrarian revolution, the industrial revolution, etc. Each time we keep getting more time off (the 40 hour work week would sound ridiculous to someone in 1860).

The problem as I see it is that we haven't lowered our standard work week to match our new productivity. We should be working around 27-30 hours at most.

127001brewer2• 13 years ago

The article is trying to highlight two different types of "jobs": ones that can provide a family with a "comfortable lifestyle" and ones in which people struggle to make ends meat.

I think the article makes a far leap to say the internet is responsible for the decreasing middle class. There are many factors, such as manufacturing automation, in our changing economic conditions.

Overall, I do not think the internet will be huge catalyst for job growth - in terms of providing millions of new jobs. But it will always be a huge catalyst for economic growth.

The following was insightful:

"It suddenly occurred to me," wrote Packer, "that the hottest tech start-ups are solving all the problems of being twenty years old, with cash on hand, because that’s who thinks them up."

Hopefully those twenty years old developers will solve more meaningful problems than sharing cat photos.

As an aside, I'm surprised that any discussion on "basic income" - you know it's coming - hasn't mention the Star Trek economy. Seriously, how do people in Star Trek universe survive in their economy?

2pasc• 13 years ago

"Hopefully those twenty years old developers will solve more meaningful problems than sharing cat photos."

The truth is that cat photos are mostly shared by people in the middle class that is being destroyed. 20 year old developers solve problems they know, and sometimes this involves their mom.

Roboprog2• 13 years ago

Ugh. There has to be a happy medium somewhere between serfdom and welfare-dom.

In my mind, both extremes involve leaches wanting money for nothing, whether its because there are a few aristocrats, er, capitalists collecting "rent" for assets they inherited, or many people (I believe by Kiwi friend calls them "dole bludges") who simply expect a monthly welfare payout for nothing.

I'm so old, I remember a period in this country's time when we rejected the idea of an aristocracy, taxed the hell out of the well off, and used it to pay for maintenance of the commons. This maintenance involved people in many walks of life, whether it was filling pot holes in roads, or researching rocket science and brain surgery. This made work that paid well enough for many people to do things that were helpful to society as a whole, but that which it was hard to get a single person to pay for. Forcing those who benefitted most from the structure of society to contribute to its continuation is NOT the same as expecting a free ride. OTOH, I'm pretty sure that handing out "basic income" to everybody would greatly stagnate society, as 60 to 90% of the population would do nothing :-(

dragonwriter4• 13 years ago

As an aside, I'm surprised that any discussion on "basic income" - you know it's coming - hasn't mention the Star Trek economy. Seriously, how do people in Star Trek universe survive in their economy?

The descriptions (or, perhaps more accurately, "indicia") of the economy in Star Trek are so wildly inconsistent that its a really, really bad basis for any kind of discussion, even among fictional settings.

flyinRyan7• 13 years ago

Seriously, how do people in Star Trek universe survive in their economy?

That's pretty simple: they have replicators. Food shortage? Gone. There never was a real land shortage, we create that with capitalism. Get rid of money and there is no longer any reason to rent out property. Rent it out for what? If everyone has a place to stay and you can replicate anything else, what would you use money for?

edkennedy• 13 years ago

Ahh, you mean like the parable of the broken window? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window)

xwowsersx2• 13 years ago

Right.

rasur• 13 years ago

Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns The Future" is worth reading on this subject too, fwiw.

diydsp• 13 years ago

Hmmm. This title says "working class," but the title of the linked article is "The Internet’s destroying work — and turning the old middle-class into the new proletariat." (capitalization as in the original, btw). Get prepared for another mental jerk when you read the subtitle of the article, which puts the responsibility for destruction on the new _economy_, which is distinct from classes. (Which aspect of the economy, deficit spending? new welfare laws? reduced military budget? bailouts? who knows, who cares! -it's all about people with money and power that I don't have, so they're Bad-) Someone needs to get their terms organized...

The article itself is full of phrases like "seems like" and other wishy-washy half-assertions. Before we get up in arms and wield terms like "destroying," let's see if we can clearly document the changes the internet is creating... Oh, but then we wouldn't have sensationalist web-magazine articles to validate middle-class guilt... :)

SO, with that in mind, perhaps we can narrow the discussion down from leviathan topics like "internet, economy and classes" to the topic of "Fancy Hands," which is the web-facilitated service referred to in 90% of the paragraphs of the article. So often, that one would be forgiven for believing this article was ghost-written by FancyHands.com in the first place.

seiferteric• 13 years ago

I think these discussions are always funny, the internet has not killed the working class. The working class was destroyed by the loss of manufacturing to other countries. What does the internet have to do with this? Its more about globalization.

cpursley• 13 years ago

Please change the nonsense and purposely divisive "workingclass" title to that of the actual article.

This is a politically-charged phrase that implies that nobody else actually works, or that they don't work as hard.

geebee• 13 years ago

I agree. This article is a worthy submission to HN, but there's absolutely no reason to change the title.

mempko4• 13 years ago

working class is a term that is very specific and it is used correctly by the OP.

working class are those that don't have capital. Does not mean those with capital don't work.

People who work with Fancy Hands most certainly don't have capital.

jlgaddis• 13 years ago

People who work with Fancy Hands most certainly don't have capital.

You might be surprised.

One of the wealthiest people I know is the stereotypical "cheapskate tightwad" (and he'll readily admit it). He will do pretty much anything he can to earn an extra dollar and he squanders as much of it away as possible.

He plans to retire before his 40th birthday and I suspect that he will do exactly that and live quite comfortably the rest of his life as well.

theorique2• 13 years ago

This article is full of bias. The writer has an anti-business agenda and cherry picked a group of examples in order to make these kind of services wrong.

If they don't pay enough to get workers, then guess what? No one will work there!

EliRivers3• 13 years ago

I can find someone so badly off, so desperate for any money at all, that I can pay them a pittance with zero security and benefits. Doesn't make it right.

I appreciate that your ideology essentially defines the market as the definition of right and wrong. I disagree strongly.

GhotiFish4• 13 years ago

I don't know what to think, myself.

On the one hand, people are not rational, and they will not act rationally when their life is on the line. See: Negotiating for health care, what EA does to everyone working for them, your example, ect ect.

On the other hand, better that they make no money at all?

true_religion• 13 years ago

Question: is it better to not hire at all, than to hire for a pittance?

acuozzo• 13 years ago

If they don't pay enough to get workers, then guess what? No one will work there!

You clearly have no experience with people in abject poverty.

theorique2• 13 years ago

Not true, my t-shirts are made in Bangladesh. Or Vietnam. Somewhere hella poor anyway.

minikites4• 13 years ago

What a rosy Econ 101 view of the world. In reality, tons of people are desperate for money and put up with a lot of predatory business processes. Lots of people work without healthcare because they're purposely scheduled for just enough hours to make them less than full time.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2001/07/dangerous-meatpa...

marknutter• 13 years ago

A lot of businesses are desperate for good workers and put up with a lot of predatory worker behaviors.

pc862• 13 years ago

So glad you chose neutral, apolitical sources for your tangential point! /s

flyinRyan7• 13 years ago

Do you have any experience with the real world at all? If you need a job and have to get one, you'll take what you can get. You think the people who work at Walmart and get welfare think Walmart pays plenty? They have no options.

There is a massive power imbalance between companies and employees because they need us to expand and we need them to eat. If it weren't for unions we'd still be shuffling into the mines from the time we wake until the time we have to sleep again, six days a week. Do you think miners thought they were getting paid enough?

mcguire• 13 years ago

"Let them eat cake."

kenster07• 13 years ago

Linkbait title.

This author still thinks about economics in terms from over a 100 years ago.

Many technological advancement allow us to produce more efficiently, i.e. produce the same amount of output with less input cost, including labor. When we get to the point when we can produce all the output we need with virtually no input cost, and by the hands of an increasingly small % of the population, I'm not sure modern economic theory has anything to say about such a situation, because it is built on many implicit assumptions about the scarcity of resources which may not be true forever.

Joeri• 13 years ago

Demand can be artificially created, and goods can be intangible (digital). We can increase the amount of 'stuff' the average person buys by several orders of magnitude at least.

waps2• 13 years ago

This specific idea is predicated on preventing piracy. If you can't do that, it won't work. And preventing piracy means comparing what someone has on their computer with some centralized ownership database. And that requires more intrusion in your personal devices than even the NSA wants.

The digital economy depends on giving powers to the government that we don't want to give them, and frankly, powers so sweeping that they'd get abused in a second too.

Plus we've all seen how digital good concentrate wealth. The top10 games make 50% of all income ? This would make things a lot worse, not better.

tadruj2• 13 years ago

If your work is measured in lines of code or git commits, then you ARE a working class.

If you're scared about your future so much that you want to read every TC article, learn every new hip language and attend every meet-up, just to stay on top of things, while selling your LOC to some company, you ARE a working class.

Go be an entrepreneur and start creating value.

mempko4• 13 years ago

You mean by recombining other people's work and calling it your own?

tadruj2• 13 years ago

No, by combining and creating value greater than the sum of parts!

axus• 13 years ago

Don't the errand-running services only create jobs? "Waiting on hold" and "making reservations" seem like positions that didn't exist before. How many people have full-time assistants?

ankitml• 13 years ago

100 years back people said, electricity is destroying work.

The Internet is destroying work

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