Good post. A lot of the robots-are-taking-all-the-jobs thinking ignores the reality of how hard automation usually is in a real-life environment. There is also too little understanding of the point that automation isn't just something that started happening lately; it's been going on for a long, long time...and today's and tomorrow's labor-productivity improvements are a continuation of a long-running process, not a sharp upward break. See my post series (3 parts) Attack of the Job-Killing Robots:
It goes back long before that. There's a possibly apocryphal story that Elizabeth I rejected a request for a patent on the stocking frame because she didn't want to throw knitters out of work. It did get adopted, however, and helped make the UK a major exporter of stockings. Here's how it worked: https://youtu.be/WdVDoLqg2_c
Huh, didn't realize the Elizabeth I story might be apocryphal, thought it was documented. In any case, The Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters got a nice coat of arms out of it:
The problem with generative LLMs is that they are going to be used in businesses where the bosses have no idea of how to measure output or productivity. If they could, they'd have provided the data as ammunition in the WFH/RTO debate. As Cory Doctorow explained, AI doesn't have to do your job better than you do; it just has to convince your boss that it does.
Great piece that covers so much with an economy of words. Helping displaced workers is, indeed, a hard problem and does require more than money. One problem is the government is worse at doing all of those “more” things than it is at collecting and redistributing money, making, in my mind, UBI the least worst option. Staying in “declining” towns could be reframed as spending more time in towns in which more people have the chance to do more human things such as building personal relationships, personal knowledge, and personal skills to support the advancement of humanity. Central control does not help with that. Individuals having enough to live comfortably while doing those things doesn’t guarantee it either, but seems better than any obvious alternative.
It's not just the farm workers who were displaced, it was the smaller farmers, the sharecroppers, renters and small owners, who were left behind in the race to get bigger. See "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" for the whites, but many of the black farmers who lost their land since 1920 (an issue getting much attention now) were cotton farmers.
There's an interesting book on the cotton gin in the 1793-1860 time frame which touches on the interwoven effects of mechanical ginning, improvements in cotton varieties, and changes to the spinning process required to make the outcome acceptable. Similar interdependencis as those described by your grandfather.
“The federal government heavily subsidized and coordinated the mechanization of cotton production but failed to absorb the adjustment costs of those harmed by the results.” The same can be said of globalization, no?
Good post. A lot of the robots-are-taking-all-the-jobs thinking ignores the reality of how hard automation usually is in a real-life environment. There is also too little understanding of the point that automation isn't just something that started happening lately; it's been going on for a long, long time...and today's and tomorrow's labor-productivity improvements are a continuation of a long-running process, not a sharp upward break. See my post series (3 parts) Attack of the Job-Killing Robots:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54252.html
It goes back long before that. There's a possibly apocryphal story that Elizabeth I rejected a request for a patent on the stocking frame because she didn't want to throw knitters out of work. It did get adopted, however, and helped make the UK a major exporter of stockings. Here's how it worked: https://youtu.be/WdVDoLqg2_c
Huh, didn't realize the Elizabeth I story might be apocryphal, thought it was documented. In any case, The Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters got a nice coat of arms out of it:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/55377.html
The problem with generative LLMs is that they are going to be used in businesses where the bosses have no idea of how to measure output or productivity. If they could, they'd have provided the data as ammunition in the WFH/RTO debate. As Cory Doctorow explained, AI doesn't have to do your job better than you do; it just has to convince your boss that it does.
Good grief:
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3841547-cathie-wood-says-ai-could-lead-to-50-gdp-growth
Great piece that covers so much with an economy of words. Helping displaced workers is, indeed, a hard problem and does require more than money. One problem is the government is worse at doing all of those “more” things than it is at collecting and redistributing money, making, in my mind, UBI the least worst option. Staying in “declining” towns could be reframed as spending more time in towns in which more people have the chance to do more human things such as building personal relationships, personal knowledge, and personal skills to support the advancement of humanity. Central control does not help with that. Individuals having enough to live comfortably while doing those things doesn’t guarantee it either, but seems better than any obvious alternative.
It's not just the farm workers who were displaced, it was the smaller farmers, the sharecroppers, renters and small owners, who were left behind in the race to get bigger. See "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" for the whites, but many of the black farmers who lost their land since 1920 (an issue getting much attention now) were cotton farmers.
There's an interesting book on the cotton gin in the 1793-1860 time frame which touches on the interwoven effects of mechanical ginning, improvements in cotton varieties, and changes to the spinning process required to make the outcome acceptable. Similar interdependencis as those described by your grandfather.
“The federal government heavily subsidized and coordinated the mechanization of cotton production but failed to absorb the adjustment costs of those harmed by the results.” The same can be said of globalization, no?