Slashdot | IT Workers Not Eligible for Overtime in New Rules
Hidden within the bowls of a discussion on IT salaries and overtime is the gem in the extended entry. Copied and pasted as is from Slashdot.
This is interesting speculation to me, just where is society going. We have the end of oil - sometime in the next 75 years - and the end of the workforce. I think the latter will be a lot longer than the posters in the extended entry indicate, but again it will happen.
Just where are we going as a society? Where do we want to go?
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
by Rich0 (548339) on Wednesday April 21, @07:15PM (#8932300)
(slashdot.org/)
The Technolological progress many of us in IT are responsible for is actually increasing the world wide efficiency of the labor by about 12% a year. This is threatening to collapse the market all together.
The problem is that our system is designed around the scarcity of labor - which is becoming less the case.
Suppose we developed the technology to have robots do 100% of all physical labor, and 95% of all non-inventive labor (any kind of service which doesn’t involve very high levels of labor). In theory in such a society everyone could afford to live like a king (at least at present population levels). However, under our present system, you’d have 50 people living far better than any king in history (the 50 people who own the robots), and everybody else who can’t even afford to buy food.
The problem is that with modern technology, the need for workers is lowering every year. However, with our present system you can only obtain money by working. Anybody see a potential problem with this?
I’m not sure that communism is the right solution, however eventually something has to change. Perhaps mandatory maximum 5 hour work weeks will be the norm one day?
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* Re:Actually, this story is WRONG by cluckshot (Score:2) Wednesday April 21, @07:48PM
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:5, Informative)
by SirChive (229195) on Wednesday April 21, @08:02PM (#8932791)
Yes, this guy gets it! Society is facing structural changes in the nature of work unlike any seen since the beginning of the industrial age.
Back in the 50’s and 60’s the popular press was filled with stories predicting a future when automation would mean we could all work 25 or 30 hour weeks and still live the good life. The accepted presumption was that the wealth of society would be shared.
But under our current system of unrestrained capitalism business has found it more profitable to fire a quarter of the workforce, move a quarter of the jobs overseas and crack the whip on the remaining few workers forcing them to work massive hours for stagnant pay.
Eventually something has to give. The trouble is that Joe Pickup and Mommy Minivan still buy into the illusion of upward mobility even as their finances crumble around them and decent work disappears.
Maybe when the 30 million Walmart and Fast Food jobs get turned over to Service Robots people will wake up and start to wonder how we are going to provide the chance at a decent life to all the members of our society.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
And, in response to the first of the above:
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:2)
by cluckshot (658931) on Wednesday April 21, @07:48PM (#8932634)
Mod this guy up about 500 points he gets it! The problem in modern society is one of the purpose to which we run a society and etc. We have no problem with productivity. I would agree that Communism is not right, but the higher and higher we push productivity the less the paycheck has to do with what you did!
While his example is the reduction to absurdity it is on track and quite correct in the general direction of events.
The issue for humanity is if human beings will work for the Industrialists machines until declared obsolete or if Humanity will by require the Industrialists machines to work for them.
Using the current 12.5% per annum growth in productivity from the US Economy we could see a work week reduction on a declining balance for productivity assuming no increase in the rate which is occuring at the rate of about 2% per year (Added next year 14.5%). We could see the work week reduced to 5 hours in just 17 years and see the same productivity per worker. Assuming the same fixed rate and expecting double paychecks of the current we could easily see the same number in 22 years.
Using the actual rate of increase in productivity the 5 hour same work week happens in just 10 years and a double wage 5 hour week happens in just 12 years. But if you expect to see this in your paycheck you had better reverse the math with the current policy. In about 10 years I would expect the US Economy to see real wages for the same amount of work to be about 12.5% of the current level. This matches quite well to what is happening to the value of the dollar! So INVESTORS had best wake up! This screwing labor is screwing you!
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Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts You just stepped in it!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Deeper down we get:
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:2)
by br00tus (528477) on Wednesday April 21, @10:32PM (#8934222)
This is quite an astute observation. In fact, a recent Nation [thenation.com] article talks about disappearing manufacturing jobs, IT jobs and so forth and makes the point that, yes, some of them are being lost to Asia, but some of them are simply being lost to mechanization.
Business’s claim is that when someone is automate out of a job, another job magically pops up with the same hourly wage and so forth, although they may need some training for the job shift. This is the claim, though looking at it it doesn’t always seem to be the case.
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* Re:Actually, this story is WRONG by Rich0 (Score:2) Thursday April 22, @12:32AM
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:2)
by Rich0 (548339) on Thursday April 22, @12:32AM (#8935074)
(slashdot.org/)
I’m all for automation - it is silly to have people digging ditches when a backhoe can do the job with less risk to life and with far less effort.
The issue is that not everybody body has a 180 IQ and can make a living desiging backhoes. Some people have an IQ of 50, and back in the 20’s they’d do just fine as ditch diggers making a respectable living, and now they’re just out of a job. In 20 years computer will replace everyone with an IQ below 140. Who knows, one day they might be able to replace everyone.
This is actually a good thing. However, we as a nation need to figure out a good way of taking care of people who don’t have a 190 IQ, or aren’t born rich. And it isn’t just those unwilling to work for a living. I think I’m a pretty smart guy, but my brain is just a machine, and sooner or later somebody will invent a machine smarter than it, and at that point I will have no value as a source of labor whatsoever. Sure, probably not in my lifetime, but somebody will have to deal with this.
The problem is that as a society we only seem to value people for their labor - people have value regardless of what they do. As long as the population stays low enough (maybe even a little higher than it is now), one day we can have a society where everyone is rich by today’s standards.
However, pure capitalism will have to go away for it to work.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
And also:
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:2)
by rsheridan6 (600425) on Wednesday April 21, @10:46PM (#8934321)
What scares me the most is that the police and military would be robots too. Right now, if a government loses the support of two many of its people it will be overthrown. But robotic soldiers would do an effective job of crushing any resistance, and they would not question their orders. So we would indeed be at the mercy of the 50 rich people who controlled the robots.
Maybe I can get a job in Paris Hilton’s entourage.
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Bush 2004: Don’t switch horsemen mid-apocalypse
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Actually, this story is WRONG (Score:2)
by Rich0 (548339) on Thursday April 22, @12:42AM (#8935135)
(slashdot.org/)
An interesting point.
In theory there could still be resistance - would those in control really want to kill everyone and have nobody to rule?
On the other hand, if you had an army of robots to care for your every need, would you really need anyone else around to be happy? Indeed, some people might just go ahead and obliterate 99.9999% of the human race with their robot army just to make a little more room for themselves, and to guarantee that their kids will have plenty of clean air and oil and all that stuff…
Then again, the people most likely to be running the robot army are probably people who are power-hungry. And those kinds of people always like somebody to boss around. There isn’t much satisfaction in bossing around a robot - you could tell it to rip its own arm off and it would just do it without thought for itself. For power-hungry people to be happy you need to have humans who can ineffectively resist them just so they have the satisfaction of defeating them in the end.
So who knows what would happen if that few people had that much power. Anytime you concentrate power in a few hands you have tremendous power for good or bad - just because of the huge variation in human personality. George Washington having a lot of power helped transform some loosely knit states into a strong nation that for the most part sought the common good. Hitler having a lot of power resulted in the destruction of most of Europe. You’d probably get a mix of both.
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