Lumifer comments on Why people want to die - Less Wrong

49 Post author: PhilGoetz 24 August 2015 08:13PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 01 September 2015 01:09:57AM *  2 points [-]

I think it's that dreaded point in the conversation when we actually have to start defining things :-/ We probably have a different idea of what the word "retirement" means.

Let me throw in a few edge examples.

Alice has a hobby farm. She mostly lives off her savings with the farm providing occasional addtional income. Is she retired?

Bill has the last name of Gates. Is he retired?

Charlie has some money, but he spends his days day-trading the financial markets for fun and profit. He doesn't have to do this, but he likes the excitement. Is he retired?

Dusty won a minor jackpot in Las Vegas and is enjoying life in the Caribbean. He has no idea what he'll do when the money runs out in a few years. Is he retired?

Elon has enough money to never work another day in his life. Is he retired?

Finnegan has a disability pension which keeps him fed but poor -- so on occasion he gets a temporary job as greeter at Wal-Mart. Is he retired?

Automation causes, almost tautologically, job loss.

I don't think this is a useful way to look at things. By this measure any kind of progress or improvement causes job loss. When the first farmers got enough food surplus so that not everyone had to work the fields, that caused job loss. When some clever fellow invented the plough, that caused job loss. A water wheel was the cause of very large job loss -- etc. etc.

Jobs are not static. They are not supposed to last forever. The world changes -- old jobs disappear, new ones appear.

Saying that progress causes job loss is like saying that evolution causes the extinction of species. Yes, it certainly does, but are we, um, short of different species today?

I believe that in the next 50 years

Would you like to provide some arguments for your belief, estimate probabilities, maybe?

Comment author: DanArmak 01 September 2015 08:26:05AM *  1 point [-]

I think of "retirement" as "a person no longer working in any field, and living off a different income source".

This has many unclear edge cases. As you point out, so does the concept of "work" itself.

The central case I want to capture is that of the person who worked to earn, and is still capable of doing so (if perhaps in a different job or reduced capacity), but decides not to (as opposed to being forced by e.g. frailty), and has enough money saved or in a pension to support them for the rest of their life.

Jobs are not static. They are not supposed to last forever. The world changes -- old jobs disappear, new ones appear.

And one of the causes of particular jobs disappearing is automation. This is useful because it helps us predict whether, in the future, increased automation might quickly eliminate many jobs.

Saying that progress causes job loss is like saying that evolution causes the extinction of species. Yes, it certainly does, but are we, um, short of different species today?

There are processes driving job loss and separate processes driving job creation. They are related by market and social forces, but they don't have to stay balanced, just as there is sometimes a mass extinction. If we have reason to think that a cause of job loss will greatly increase in the future, and don't expect any cause of job creation to also increase greatly in the same period, then we should expect mass unemployment.

Would you like to provide some arguments for your belief, estimate probabilities, maybe?

I very much would - I want to know myself how convincing a formal argument would be; maybe I'll change my mind while trying to build it. I hope to have the time to do so tonight or tomorrow night.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 01 September 2015 03:08:54PM 1 point [-]

There are processes driving job loss and separate processes driving job creation. They are related by market and social forces, but they don't have to stay balanced, just as there is sometimes a mass extinction. If we have reason to think that a cause of job loss will greatly increase in the future, and don't expect any cause of job creation to also increase greatly in the same period, then we should expect mass unemployment.

Job destruction isn't a mystery to you - you've identified the central cause as automation (there are other causes, but let's not get hung up on them too much). Is it fair to say that job creation -is- a mystery to you - given that you haven't identified a central cause of job creation?

Comment author: DanArmak 05 September 2015 03:09:33PM *  0 points [-]

It's true: I don't know how to predict job creation. Some new kinds of jobs are obviously enabled or required by new technology. But many (most?) changes are either socially or politically driven and so very hard to predict.

So it might be that enough jobs for everyone will be created for non-technological processes. But I still think it likely that job automation eventually won't leave enough room for this "jobs for everyone" scenario.

Jobs can resist automation in many several ways:

  • Require domain-specific intelligence. E.g., programming.
  • Require human interaction skills where the hard part is understanding the customer's problem or explaining to them what they must do. E.g., front desks, clerks.
  • Require physical dexterity and mobility. E.g., a waiter serving tables.
  • Legally required to employ humans, for reasons of liability (e.g. doctors), tradition (e.g. judges), or public sector make-work schemes.
  • Jobs where human customers will pay a premium for interacting with other humans.
  • A long tail of highly specialized jobs with few workers each, where the upfront cost of automation isn't worth the resulting savings. This can also be cast in terms of automated systems having insufficient flexibility.
  • Probably many other reasons unique to various sectors.

Clearly this leaves a lot of room for a future society where jobs cannot be automated away.

Comment author: Lumifer 01 September 2015 04:52:52PM *  0 points [-]

The central case I want to capture is that of the person who worked to earn, and is still capable of doing so ..., but decides not to ..., and has enough money saved or in a pension to support them for the rest of their life.

Well, that's a reasonable definition. But this particular concept of retirement is not new at all and does not mention retiring in cohorts or at a particular age. I am pretty sure some Romans retired like this a couple of thousand years ago :-)

And one of the causes of particular jobs disappearing is automation.

Since we're talking, basically, economics we might as well use the proper terminology. You are making the argument that any increase in the productivity of labor leads to job losses.

This is useful because it helps us predict whether, in the future, increased automation might quickly eliminate many jobs.

If you want to base your prediction on available evidence (aka historical data), note that other than in short term, increases in the productivity of labor have not led to massive unemployment.

There are processes driving job loss and separate processes driving job creation.

No, I don't think they are separate processes, I think they're much more like flip sides of the same coin. You can't create without destroying. For someone to become a scribe, he has to be not needed as a farmhand.

In general, when thinking about jobs, you might want to think in terms of "creating value" and "(re)distributing value". A job is not a benefit -- it's a cost (in human time and effort) of producing value.

Comment author: DanArmak 05 September 2015 05:50:08PM 0 points [-]

Since we're talking, basically, economics we might as well use the proper terminology. You are making the argument that any increase in the productivity of labor leads to job losses.

Not every increase, because the market often accommodates more production; but enough increases to cause unemployment in the longer term.

If you want to base your prediction on available evidence (aka historical data), note that other than in short term, increases in the productivity of labor have not led to massive unemployment.

This is true. I believe the future is likely to be different from the past in this regard.

No, I don't think they are separate processes, I think they're much more like flip sides of the same coin. You can't create without destroying. For someone to become a scribe, he has to be not needed as a farmhand.

More precisely, his wages as a scribe must be higher than as a farmhand, to entice him to switch. It's true that labor is finite and people who start working on something new therefore stop working on something older.

In general, when thinking about jobs, you might want to think in terms of "creating value" and "(re)distributing value". A job is not a benefit -- it's a cost (in human time and effort) of producing value.

Yes, jobs are costs, and businesses are driven to minimize costs. So as technology improves, some or all humans become unemployable in more and more jobs, because value can be more cheaply created using machines.

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