I remember in college when we got taught that early economists thought capitalism and increasing productivity from innovation would lead to less work and effort needed from people and not more.
It must have been nice to be that optimistic and not having to see how it’s actually playing out.
Economists typically point to this phenomenon when people talk about the relatively stable working hours over the last 50-60 years. I've seen some of them argue it's an issue of supply/demand, and that if people truly wanted to work less we'd see more of demand for such careers. I think this ignores that retirement/medical benefits are almost exclusively tied to jobs expecting you to work 40 hours a week.
> we got taught that early economists thought capitalism and increasing productivity from innovation would lead to less work and effort needed from people and not more
Keynes wasn't wrong. The issue is macro-level productivity is orthogonal to personal effort and productivity. And what Keynes was talking about was macroeconomics, not individuals.
For example, it takes 10% the workforce it took in early 20th century to produce the same amount of agricultural output in the US in the 21st century.
Similarly, end-to-end automotive manufacturing via industrial robots has reduced the need for a line worker who's job was to screw in a door on an assembly line.
The economy is much more productive and efficent today than it was a century ago, but automation leads to a subset of workers specializing and a larger set of workers deskilled or unemployed because they didn't upskill when they had the chance.
It's interesting to watch the same class of people who told coal miners "they should learn to code" back in the early 2010s now getting the same comeuppance.
Frankly, American SWEs got lazy and lost their competitive edge especially during the early 2020s.
>It's interesting to watch the same class of people who told coal miners "they should learn to code" back in the early 2010s now getting the same comeuppance.
There are millions of software engineers in the US alone. Don't put all of them into a single bucket.
> It's interesting to watch the same class of people who told coal miners "they should learn to code" back in the early 2010s now getting the same comeuppance.
When I told people to learn to code in that situation it was with pity and I would talk to them about how I felt forced to do so after I graduated with a useless degree during the Great Recession.
It was more of a “here’s one of the few growth areas left that are feasible to self teach”, rather than contempt for people not being on the same class as me.
> Frankly, American SWEs got lazy and lost their competitive edge especially during the early 2020s.
If “competitive” edge at this point means needing to get a masters on top of needing to train unpaid on your free time I think it’s more that corporations in America have gotten to the point of wanting increasingly rare or expensive to acquire skills in their labor force, while simultaneously deciding that they will be paying approximately $0 in any and all training costs.
AI is only accelerating that as every manager and exec is drooling at the mouth at the idea of never hiring juniors again. It’ll be some other assholes problem like their future self who has to deal with what happens after the lack of people in training finally catches up to the industry.
> It was more of a “here’s one of the few growth areas left that are feasible to self teach”, rather than contempt for people not being on the same class as me
> If “competitive” edge at this point means needing to get a masters on top of needing to train unpaid on your free time...
Doesn't it suck when being asked to completely retool and reskill in the middle of your career.
I never said it didn’t. I also wanted tech workers to unionize while we had the power because I expected this the second it was feasible, but alas we have no more leverage.
> I also wanted tech workers to unionize while we had the power
You could, but that does nothing to prevent job losses, as can be seen with Hollywood completely offshoring to the United Kingdom [0][1] despite SAG-AFTRA and WGA dominating the entertainment industry.
Or even the loss of the entirely unionized coal industry.
The economics of IP-driven industries require an entirely different approach from manufacturing industries.
You can't ignore economics. This is what globalization looks like.
Yea, I remember hearing corporations say that threat and then everytime they tried to outsource overseas they got trash that they had to live with or throw out and redo.
It is global, which means that talent that was good enough already was able to command high prices. If we had unionized we could have at least extracted some worker protections or stop shit like the Jobs anti poaching cabal.
The coal industry was lost because the technology has been nearly obsoleted, but if you're going to cast tech work as being part of an IP-driven industry then please don't mix in resource extraction to the conversation.
I'm not opposed to unionizing - in fact I think cooperative models are underutilized in the tech industry.
What I am saying is unionizing wouldn't stop offshoring. The reality is the world in 2026 is much more developed than the world when you graduated (I'm guessing 2009).
As such, skills that were worth a premium in 2011-16 aren't viewed as differentiators and more as table stakes knowledge.
Essentially, Unionization doesn't help if it doesn't also increase barriers to entry.
I have no incentive to hire someone in NC or IL for a premium who isn't actually a top performer, when I can gladly hire someone of better caliber for less in the UK or Switzerland even with supposed workers benefits (though in action, they're largely comparable for SWEs across North America and Western Europe).
Frankly, I would much rather hire a CS new grad from TU Munich over a CS new grad from Random State University even if this means I have to deal with German labor laws, because the calibre I am getting from the TUM student is on par with what I'd get out of Stanford or MIT for a fraction of the cost.
Additionally, most countries are expanding their subsidizes to incentivize companies to build R&D centers and bring IP-driven industries there. American state and local governments have largely quit that game in order to concentrate on culture war politicking (my experiences with NC's state government left a really bad taste in my mouth after attempting domestic inshoring in the late 2010s and early 2020s).
So in this kind of world where companies are perfectly fine decamping to other jurisdictions who give the red carpet, what is the solution? It isn't unionization (it isn't a blocker from a hiring perspective for IP-driven industries but it also doesn't stop offshoring), but it's about stable governance and risk management at the state and local level, which is where companies interface the most.
It will also require accepting that developer salaries have to reduce significantly - I can't justify training someone from scratch at US$100K TC, but I can at US$75K TC.
If you were worried about Biden’s mental decline but looked at Trumps behavior and statements as from someone mentally competent and not also slipping into dementia, then you just wanted Trumps politics and vibes your way into thinking it was ok.
I’m so excited for the future where nobody apparently voted for Trump and never backed him, the same way everyone mysteriously didn’t vote for GWB after his fuckups got too big to ignore
Because while there have been a few noticeable rejections, such as the tariff ruling, its been a majority of heads he wins, tails his opponent loses, with this court.
> while there have been a few noticeable rejections, such as the tariff ruling, its been a majority of heads he wins, tails his opponent loses, with this court
While "the Supreme Court overwhelmingly sided with the Trump administration," it has been far from the "control" rhetoric posited above. Most of this was on the emergency docket. Major cases have been decided against Trump, from reimbursements for DOGE cancellations to restricting Trump's use of the Alient Enemiest Act and National Guard [1].
Those notables are not consistent with a fascist court, but a very right-wing one. Between those two are a lot of ground.
> Those notables are not consistent with a fascist court, but a very right-wing one. Between those two are a lot of ground.
That’s an opinion you can have but that I don’t share. I also would posit that the current SCOTUS thinks they still can maintain control while ceding further and further power to an imperial presidency when Trump is in charge.
The existence of some major cases being decided against Trump when the majority have been decided for him and the opposite logic is applied to presidents on the other side, are only part of why this current conservative government keeps checking off the 14 points of ur-fascism
> I refuse to believe anyone in the decision chain would move forward if they believed kids were going to be killed. If you do - how can you? Why would they?
Because they’re openly callous and contemptful of anyone they don’t consider a heritage American? Because the admin has already abused children to lure out parents in their anti immigrant push?
And that’s before getting into the Epstein file allegations and if he raped and killed kids already.
I’m gonna throw it back on you, how can you believe that this admin cares if foreign kids die?
we are speaking politicians who make a habit of bluster and liking "shows of force" and are openly contemptful of the lives of those who don't agree with or look like them
some of them believe that it is their religious duty to start this war and make it heinous enough to start ww3 and bring forth the return of jesus christ
I think you are ascribing a level of systems thinking and care about consequences which one cannot simply assume is there
if you were to, say, start with an assumption that some of the actors have the mental patterns and world model of an angsty, self-centered teenager, or younger, then you might draw different conclusions
You have evidence in front of you on a weekly basis of these people being that evil and that stupid, and we’re coming up on 2 years of that playing out.
Because the capital owning class in America commonly has an aversion to labor.
Labor is other humans and all their social hierarchy monkey brain bullshit activates in a way that a machine doesn’t. That’s why you’ll see companies spending equivalent or even slightly more money for a tool to do a job over a human being.
Walmart employs this amount of workers only because it is subsided by food stamps and other government assistance. The minute they were forced to actually pay for the labor they employ would fire a lot of people
You are suggesting that if the government gives you a tax break, your boss would lower your salary? Why does your boss wait for the tax break or handout and doesn't just lower your salary now?
Also what's your counterfactual here? If Walmart fired their employees tomorrow and replaced them with robots, those ex-employees would magically no longer need food stamps nor government assistance? (Or more realistically: Walmart could pivot to the Aldi model of labour and replace many low intensity jobs with fewer higher intensity jobs. For the affected workers, the outcome is the same.)
If those ex-workers don't magically get off government assistance, if Walmart is out of the picture, in what sense is Walmart to blame for their poverty?
Conversely: if Walmart laying off these workers would magically improve their welfare, why do these workers wait for Walmart to lay them off?
> Walmart could pivot to the Aldi model of labour and replace many low intensity jobs with fewer higher intensity jobs.
Yes, this is the expected change.
> For the affected workers, the outcome is the same.
No? There are two classes of affected workers:
1. Workers who have been converted to full-time with benefits. These workers benefit from the change.
2. Workers who lose their jobs. These workers are worse off.
Your argument ignores class 1.
I don't think we'll get anywhere debating the relative merits of the tradeoff of those two groups, but I personally prefer the existence of class 1. At least with that class there are some winners.
There's practically no (1). It's a different class of workers, of people than who Walmart currently employs at low intensity and low pay.
People who prefer a higher intensity, higher paying job than the bottom rung at Walmart can already get that kind of job today. They don't need to wait for Walmart to fire everyone else.
Walmart has some of these jobs already, probably. But Aldi and other companies exist. The whole Jeff Bezo's workout at Amazon Warehouses falls in a similar category too: Amazon pays pretty well for the sector and requires no prior experience, but they expect you to stay on your feed throughout.
> Walmart employs this amount of workers only because it is subsided by food stamps
And then those food stamps are used at Walmart, its a win win for Walmart and Walmart. No other country gives their poor food stamps instead of money, I wonder why?
Because in every thread about EVs someone has to chime in with their niche gas only use case, as if that somehow matters to the overall needs of the vast majority of drivers. Cool, you area niche need. Don’t buy an ev for 10 years or so.
You know the airports are open for multiple shifts per day, seven days a week, people take vacations, people get sick, and all that nasty variability that comes into place for staffing.
We’ve been understaffed on ATCs for years. Whatever the number that currently exists is not enough regardless of whatever back of the napkin math you can come up with. We just need more ATCs.
But that costs money and why would you spend money on redundancies in your system when you could cut costs and call it efficient.
Openly corrupt markets that feature insiders with secret knowledge taking money from gambling addicts and rubes is actually good cause the crowd is now wiser.
Unironically yes. Someone bet a mid sized amount and now we all share in that potential insider knowledge. A small scale example is my spouse said that the election odds from her home country were not realistic because all the westerners were betting a candidate would win but weren’t accounting for corruption that she felt was guaranteed to happen. Turns out she was right.
Ah good. The NBA/NFL/MLB/etc should let players bet on whether they win or lose. Letting those with the influence on events being able to make money on them has never degraded a system before.
Someone must have just mistakenly put in regulations against insider trading before, for no good reason. Luckily this isn’t anything like the normal tech play of figuring out a loophole or flat out ignoring the law and hoping you get too big before the regulators catch up.
If athletes didn't face consequences for manipulating betting markets, I think you'd see people become less and less likely to bet on sports outcomes. People naturally don't like a rigged game, you don't have to tell them not to play it.
With these betting markets, do you think it's critical that they exist, but with bans on insider bets? Because I'm not sure anyone you are moralizing at is taking up the argument that it's critical that they exist.
Sports betting is specifically not a prediction market precisely because the players are banned by both law and extreme consequences from their leagues for participating.
You cannot have an open-ended prediction market with the same protections. It's just impossible from a practical standpoint, much less theoretical one.
I don't think these should be legal since it's just enabling more random gambling, fraud, etc. or even worse for no clear societal gain. But if they do exist, the only purpose for them is to lure out insider information into the open. Pretending they are just folks gambling on 'random' outcomes like a fair coin flip is naive at best.
It must have been nice to be that optimistic and not having to see how it’s actually playing out.
reply