# Innovation and labour



## MWagner (Aug 5, 2015)

I'm starting this thread in response to a comment in the Uber vs the Taxi Industry thread.

While Uber is a case where I welcome innovation supplanting an outdated business model, I don't think we should be so sanguine in assuming that innovation will provide new jobs for everyone displaced. In the case of Uber,  it's only a temporary transition anyway, before driverless cars puts all taxi drivers (and all commercial drivers) out of work. In Canada, commercial driver is the 5th most common job for men. Driverless cars might provide work for some designers and software developers, but at a ratio of 1 for every 100,000 drivers put out work.

Alarm bells are being raised that today's era of innovation is simply not providing new jobs at anywhere close to what earlier eras of innovation saw. Kodak once employed 140,000 people worldwide. The company that displaced it, Instagram, had 13 employees when it was bought out by Facebook for a billion dollars. Even once solid professions like lawyer and accountant are under threat from automation. Software development itself is becoming more efficient, and will require fewer people to achieve far better results. We need to start addressing the very real prospect that in the coming decades innovation, efficiencies, and automation may yield a world that requires only a fraction of the labour - full-stop - that we require now. Where the most highly-skilled 10 per cent or so of the population earn high incomes, while the rest scramble for jobs as waitresses and personal trainers for those 10 per cent.

I'm not suggesting we turn our backs on innovation, or try to put the brakes on it. But I believe we're going to face a massive crisis as we move into an economy that requires far less labour. Who will buy the products and services to keep the economy spinning when 40-50 per cent of people have no place in the economy? Without some kind of mandated basic income, capitalism might very well starve itself of fuel.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

Warning - high level boring musings coming...

We're seeing a change in working patterns and they are very concerning. Put simply - technology is replacing jobs in other lines and, unfortunately, creating a job market where certain skills are valued and are not present across enough of the workplace. Less wordy - not everyone has the apitude to be a computer geek....

Two things indicate how worrisome the current UK market is:

1 youth employment is in crisis. This is two fold because of the number of jobs available - particularly full time and permanent - in traditional industries such as retail (decimated by the internet) and service (decimated by the credit crunch and lower consumer spending), and manufacturing (which is compounded further by the woeful state of traditional apprenticeships. Some ground is being made up but we are far from where we should be.) The second factor feeding into this is the non-enforced retirement age. Put simply, secession routes have been closed, preventing young people getting a job.

Which is all well and good until in thirty years time our older workers have finally been able to shuffle off and have fun on their life earnings, and we have no skilled workers taking their place. Already I've seen secession mooted as an area of increasing concern in my consultancy business, and government policy often does not help. (See above re apprenticeships, but also around their focus on job recruitment)

2 The employment algorithms that show how few jobs created are above minimum wage, permanent and full time. There is a glut of workers in certain industries, meaning employers are driving the market. This glut, particularly in retail, has been caused by the change in shopping habits. I don't have the figures to hand but have seen reports on the job creation for online retail vs bricks and mortar and it is vastly different.

So, in short, yes, I think there is a crisis looming. Whether something like the service sector can fill some of the gap - since we'll all have lots of free time, if not any money - remains to be seen.


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## Parson (Aug 5, 2015)

Interesting. The ideas here and in the articles have a ring of possibility. There is no doubt that we are in a changing business environment. What I think is the more likely outcome is that there will always be jobs, but now the workers will have to compete with machines. They will be able to compete in the "service" industries where a machine is unlikely to be built and serviced at a mere $10 an hour but a human in a communal/married setting can survive. (At least that's true where I live) But they will not be able to compete in what we now call the "trades" and factories because machines can do the work at the going rate for labor either now, or in the foreseeable future. So the result will be more of what we see now; the rich getting much richer and the poor getting poorer.

Now if history is any help we would have to speculate that this kind of disparity in living conditions will generate a strong uptake in crime, which eventually will lead to revolution. This is not a pretty picture, but one that seems to fit with available data.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 5, 2015)

MWagner said:


> The company that displaced it, Instagram,


They didn't. Digital Cameras and ability to easily show images on HDTVs and Laptops displaced Kodak. Instagram is actually irrelevant to most people taking photos. Kodak went into Ch 11 or whatever years ago.




MWagner said:


> In the case of Uber, it's only a temporary transition anyway, before driverless cars puts all taxi drivers


Maybe driverless cars are a fantasy, but Uber doesn't replace Taxi Drivers, it needs more of them, but many part time. It's a disruptive parasitical model because ultimately to succeed part of the drivers or customers money has to go to Uber. Perhaps there will be competing apps.

The biggest changes are in Manufacturing, Mining, Agriculture etc, not Internet based companies, except for certain kinds of Retail (video libraries are really dead, many retail shops need to adapt to compete with Online sales, which is just a more instant shopping experience than Mail Order (big since 19th C), the issue with Online shopping is delivery time and cost).

Practically speaking it's possible to have no jobs in manufacturing related only to assembly, only sales, management, maintenance etc. This process started becoming more rapid actually from 1930s. Actual Production Lines and Mass Production dates perhaps to 1820s, and predates Ford, he just realised existing techniques used for small things could apply to cars.

There is disruption all the time since industrialisation started in the 18th century.



> The Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers (or self-employed weavers who feared the end of their trade) who protested against newly developed labour-economizing technologies, primarily between 1811 and 1816. The stocking frames, spinning frames and power looms introduced during the Industrial Revolution threatened to replace them with less-skilled, low-wage labourers, leaving them without work.



Textile workers were destroying industrial equipment during the late 18th century, prompting acts such as the Protection of Stocking Frames, etc. Act 1788.

So we are seeing more developments that started really in 1750s.

Margaret Thatcher is accused of "destroying" Manufacturing in UK in 1980s. But only partly true. Many of the businesses were Dinosaurs.  Some manufacturing has returned to UK from China were it's not depending on Chinese suppliers as there is now no labour cost advantage and having the finished goods near the market is an advantage.

I don't have any answers, but really nothing is apocalyptic, nothing is changing overnight and we have now had 250 years to think about it.

There is no doubt that more than ever before there is no "job for life" and there is a problem with the sort of training and support unemployed get. If you are out of work maybe more than a year and over 40, unless you are a "consultant" and get a job in Management due to management track record the only alternative might be a minimum wage job at a checkout or stocking shelves.

But it's nothing really to do with companies like Instagram or Uber, they are a blip in the overall changing landscape of jobs. Uber has rented space in Limerick City allegedly for 150 "Tech Jobs" (according to media) and maybe 150 more (everyone says that). Except it's for "Customer Service". Likely to take advantage of nearly zero enforcement of regulation. I'd bet they are crammed in Tele/Call centre staff (the building is small) on minimum wage with scripts from a screen.


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 5, 2015)

MWagner said:


> Kodak once employed 140,000 people worldwide. The company that displaced it, Instagram, had 13 employees when it was bought out by Facebook for a billion dollars



Kodak is a great example of a business that never adapted to modern technology. Kodak had the ability to develop digital technology, but refused to do so, for fear of damaging its traditional business. The company didn't even begin to seriously attempt to move into digital until the turn of the 21st century - by which time, it was almost too late.

That's something that has especially been underlined to me in recent years - the need for business to adapt to the modern digital informational age. And even within that world, technology moves fast, and business needs to move faster to keep on top of the game. The ones that refuse to embrace new technology, especially the internet, invariably disappear. 

I'm not familiar with Uber's taxi service - but I've been to enough airports to know that a number of them run their own little protectionist rackets, where you are only supposed to be able to use an officially designated company, and their screwy fares. Again, an example of outmoded business practices.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 5, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> Kodak had the ability to develop digital technology, but refused to do so


Actually the problem was more complicated. They did in fact do ground breaking work in developing Digital Imaging and did come to market early with Digital cameras. They first demoed one in 1975. They did do very little marketing for 20 years of digital till 1995 as the quality / price of consumer digital was wrong.
*They made a lot of money from printing film for Cinema*. Digital Projectors killed that. T*he changes in Cinema distribution was a major issue.*
Also there is no repeat income from a Digital camera other than batteries. That's why they got into selling Inkjet printers. The repeat sale market for Digital Cameras ...
Except their printers were rubbish and increasingly people either used local shop to print a set or never printed them, showing them on TV and Tablet etc.
*So Kodak's failure was there was nothing to actually replace film revenue.* They probably never made money on film cameras.
By 2005, Kodak ranked No. 1 in the U.S. in digital camera sales that surged 40% to $5.7 billion. But there was almost no profit compared to repeat film sales for film cameras. They sold off the dying film business and outsourced for any remaining customers
They were selling poor quality  Inkjet printers at a high price with cheap ink. This didn't compete with Lexmark, Brother, HP, Epson cheap printers (sometimes good quality) and profitable ink. While Kodak named home printers as a core business as late as August 2012, at the end of September declining sales forced Kodak to announce an exit from the consumer inkjet market.
*Then they decided to close:*
December 20, 2012 Kodak announced that it plans to sell its digital imaging patents for about $525 million to some of the world’s biggest technology companies.

Kodak still exists, but they are doomed.


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## Parson (Aug 5, 2015)

*Ray, *That's all true, but the point remains that there were many, many, good jobs associated with the old technology of film cameras; and there are far fewer good ones with the technology of digital cameras. ---- Which by the way I think will also die out save for the really up scale SLR cameras because cell phone cameras are good enough for the normal photo which is all that most people aspire to.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 5, 2015)

Parson said:


> there were many, many, good jobs


Agreed.
My points are:
1) This has been happening for 250 years now.
2) Instagram is  nothing to do with Kodak's woes
3) It's not specifically really to do with the "Internet" except in a limited sense. Shift in markets, technology, products & services etc  has been happening a long while.
Fuji unlike Kodak wasn't a one trick pony. They were very diverse. So demise of film wasn't an issue. If no-one bought any more Fuji digital cameras they'd survive that too.

Apple is getting 92% of smart-phone profits, though they have a shrinking minority market share. They are incredibly vulnerable compared to Sony and Samsung who make little from phones because Apple has almost only ever succeeded at one product at a time. They are really a US marketing company selling Apple badged Chinese made commodity product at inflated price. They never invented the iPhone. All 3rd party pre-existing products, even the User Interface bought in. Their iPod line is near dead (again it was marketing, late to market with a more limited more expensive product). The iPad sales are falling off a cliff due to tablets 1/5th price and market saturation. The Apple Macs are an expensive niche.  Sony is more diverse. Samsung is incredibly diverse.

Apple did a game console once, the Pippin. Their Newton had great potential, but when Steve Jobs came back he didn't want anything not his idea and didn't want diversity. He killed it.

I'd bet on Samsung selling many different SOMETHINGs in twenty years and Apple being history. Phone market is saturated and Apple is massively overpriced. They really have no other viable profitable business. They nearly went bust once before and Microsoft rescued them. That won't happen again. Like Motorola Phones, Apple may end up just a badge.

Nothing stands still any more.


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## MWagner (Aug 5, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Agreed.
> My points are:
> 1) This has been happening for 250 years now.



But the wave of innovation we're seeing today _is_ different. The new industries aren't providing jobs in anywhere near the number of the industries they're replacing. Creating phones apps will not employ people on a mass scale. The world only needs so many personal trainers and sushi chefs. The amount of labour - of any kind - required in the modern economy is far less than in the past. This isn't speculation, it's demonstrable fact. 

Sorry, I simply don't have blithe faith that something will just come along to employ the 10s of millions losing jobs to automation in the coming decades, just because it has in the past. We need to start thinking about what a world without work for most people will look like.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

MWagner said:


> But the wave of innovation we're seeing today _is_ different. The new industries aren't providing jobs in anywhere near the number of the industries they're replacing. Creating phones apps will not employ people on a mass scale. The world only needs so many personal trainers and sushi chefs. The amount of labour - of any kind - required in the modern economy is far less than in the past. This isn't speculation, it's demonstrable fact.
> 
> Sorry, I simply don't have blithe faith that something will just come along to employ the 10s of millions losing jobs to automation in the coming decades, just because it has in the past. We need to start thinking about what a world without work for most people will look like.



However, there are economies of scale. As we get used to more leisure time we look to spend it in ways we enjoy. I see a lot moving into service, where a robot doesn't deliver the same feel, if you like. I think things will adapt, but it's the model they adapt in I'm not sure. Ray mentions 40 year olds only getting jobs shelf-stacking - frankly, even now, they'd be lucky to get such a job. Which means, sadly, I see things going Parson's way - and it's already happening - where the gulf between rich and poorer expands and more and more people will be living on the minimum wage.


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## MWagner (Aug 5, 2015)

Parson said:


> What I think is the more likely outcome is that there will always be jobs, but now the workers will have to compete with machines. They will be able to compete in the "service" industries where a machine is unlikely to be built and serviced at a mere $10 an hour but a human in a communal/married setting can survive.



The problem there is assortative mating. Back before women entered the professional world in numbers, you often saw a sharp disparity in wages of a couple. Husband might be an accountant and wife might be a secretary. Or an engineer and a stay-at-home mom. Or a doctor and a nurse. Today, accountants marry other accountants, doctors marry other doctors, and a woman in the lower half of the income scale probably doesn't have a stable partner at all. Women are outperforming men in school and already have firm majorities in most of the graduates of the high-income professions these days, including law, medicine, and even accounting. And women very rarely marry down. It's vanishingly rare to see a female executive married to a guy who works in a cubicle, or in the trades. They remain single rather than marry down.

So we have couples where both are highly skilled, high-earners. And we have couples where both are in the kind of low-paid work you're talking about. But few couples (and even fewer going forward) with one of each. Assortative mating is maybe the most overlooked factor in the widening disparity in household incomes in the West.


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## MWagner (Aug 5, 2015)

Jo Zebedee said:


> However, there are economies of scale. As we get used to more leisure time we look to spend it in ways we enjoy. I see a lot moving into service, where a robot doesn't deliver the same feel, if you like.



Service with a human touch is an area where we are seeing growth. However, do today's high earners actually have more leisure time? Not that I'm aware of. The upper echelons of the economy are highly competitive. And an increasing share of the pie is going to the superstars, the small fraction of people who hit it massively big. How is that money spent in a way that generates employment? Maybe we'll see a return to a model where the rich have many personal servants. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg will employ dozens of gardeners, house cleaners, personal trainers, lifestyle consultants, chefs, and pet groomers.


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 5, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> So Kodak's failure was there was nothing to actually replace film revenue



Strong companies diversify. Heck, remember when Microsoft was mainly known as a computer games developer, and Apple as a computer manufacturer? Neither are main markets for either, now, because they ensured that they diversified into areas related enough to use their expertise. Kodak could easily have invested into related digital technologies, but they didn't - they're focus was too narrow. 

Kodak's failure was a management one, simply that.


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## Nick B (Aug 5, 2015)

Shouldn't we be working towards a time when innovation _replaces _labour? We have the technological means to automate huge amounts of the work people do today, why are we stuck with the 'working for pay' model?

Because of course anything else would disrupt the status quo, the state where the rich own and the poor work. 

People say that without the need to 'earn' money, by working, people would become lazy. I disagree, once people got over the initial shock of actual freedom, people would start doing what they love; arts, sciences, crafts, agriculture etc.
Imagine the advances in scienc, crafts, technology and art if _everyone_ who wanted to could do a degree, or further training and was free to put their time into something they love rather than working at a necessity simply to survive.

Sorry to derail. As you were.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

@MWagner  - actually some couples have an Alpha female and Beta male. It's not true to say women don't marry down - many professional women I know (including myself) are very happy to have a partner in a less demanding job, especially once a family comes along, otherwise there'd no balance in our family life.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 5, 2015)

MWagner said:


> The new industries aren't providing jobs in anywhere near the number of the industries they're replacing.


True in 1790s
It's not different really.
We need to pay people to work shorter hours, have 3x as many Teachers (here anyway) etc and pay some people to do nothing.
Productivity has been increasing since 1760. That means less people to produce the same amount of stuff.


MWagner said:


> We need to start thinking about what a world without work for most people will look like.


yes. We are along way off yet, but it's been happening progressively since 18th C.


Brian Turner said:


> remember when Microsoft was mainly known as a computer games developer, and Apple as a computer manufacturer?


No. MS was always most dependant on Business and OEM customers. I don't EVER remember them even being remarked as a computer games developer, though they were and are involved. Win95 is designed as a games platform. But most games on it were not by MS
Apple never more than a Niche computer maker (my first computer was an Apple).


Brian Turner said:


> Kodak could easily have invested into related digital technologies, but they didn't


They spent a lot on Printers. But really it's nearly impossible for a one product company to diversify.

We have a problem. Its a getting worse problem. It's been coming for a long time.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 5, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> Strong companies diversify


I think it's  the other way around, early in growth they diversify and as a result they are strong.
My first company diversified early and in the end was successful at something I had envisaged and wasn't interested in, so I left Belfast and became a design engineer for a US company in Shannon (that was 33 years ago). They outlasted De-Loren .


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## MWagner (Aug 5, 2015)

Quellist said:


> Shouldn't we be working towards a time when innovation _replaces _labour? We have the technological means to automate huge amounts of the work people do today, why are we stuck with the 'working for pay' model?



Some kind of guaranteed basic income is probably where we're headed, if only because without it there won't be enough consumers to keep the wheels turning. The question is how long, and how much strife, it will take to to get there.



Jo Zebedee said:


> @MWagner  - actually some couples have an Alpha female and Beta male. It's not true to say women don't marry down - many professional women I know (including myself) are very happy to have a partner in a less demanding job, especially once a family comes along, otherwise there'd no balance in our family life.



I didn't mean to suggest it never happens. But statistically, it's uncommon, with only 22 per cent of married women 30 to 44 years old earning more than their husbands.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 5, 2015)

MWagner said:


> Some kind of guaranteed basic income is probably where we're headed


Lots of countries do have that. They do not give out food stamps etc. Just cash every week.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

MWagner said:


> Some kind of guaranteed basic income is probably where we're headed, if only because without it there won't be enough consumers to keep the wheels turning. The question is how long, and how much strife, will it take to get there.





I didn't mean to suggest it never happens. But statistically, it's uncommon, with only 22 per cent of married women 30 to 44 years old earning more than their husbands.[/QUOTE]

Yes, but those who do - do they have partners in comparable levels or considerably lower? That was my point - that women in that position (the Alpha position, if you like) don't neccessarily have a problem with husbands in a less well rewarded job. Women, as a sector of society, still earn less so of course most earn less than their husbands, but the question is if those who earn more do so in comparable levels in terms of income split. There's no easy answer of course, but statistics showing women earn less as a whole, tells us little about the demographics of partnerships where they do. ( I hope that makes sense...)


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> I think it's  the other way around, early in growth they diversify and as a result they are strong.
> My first company diversified early and in the end was successful at something I had envisaged and wasn't interested in, so I left Belfast and became a design engineer for a US company in Shannon (that was 33 years ago). They outlasted De-Loren .



No, mostly what they have is a structure which allows rapid response to the market. It's one of the strengths of the early Apple structure - they never allowed themselves to become a hierarchy, which are notoriously slow to change. (Role culture - Charles Handy). Branson is a good eg - he sheds to retain a certain size of company which allows him to remain as a 'spider' in the centre. So it's not to do with the stage of growth, per se (although few young companies start as a hierarchy, therefore are more open to innovation and diversification) but size and structure - which have an effect on each other.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 5, 2015)

Jo Zebedee said:


> It's one of the strengths of the early Apple structure


Apple is VERY bad example.
Nearly went bust.
then iMac bumped them along bottom till iPod when they simply got lucky at end of 2001.
Then they were able to do iPhone using comodity parts with bought in multi Touch & Fingerworks gui and it succeed because (1) Existing smartphone UI was a mess and (2) No-one could afford Data plans. Apple persuaded Operators to offer cheap data with iPhone only.
So in nearly 40 years: luck 3 times* and one brilliant insight about smart phones (the Data plans).
Not at all EVER any sort of good management structure.
*The first luck was visicalc making the Apple II a success.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

Sorry, Ray, your view on Apple is out of synch with most management theorists. Their luck came from their structure which allowed innovation. With any company following that structure there is a high risk of failure - it's the downside of encouraging innovation. Structure and culture played a huge part in their success - the same structure and culture could have played the same part in their collapse if the innovation had not worked. 

(But I suggest we don't derail the thread on a tit for tat about it, as I know your views on them are very clear.)


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## alchemist (Aug 5, 2015)

Quellist said:


> Shouldn't we be working towards a time when innovation _replaces _labour? We have the technological means to automate huge amounts of the work people do today, why are we stuck with the 'working for pay' model?
> 
> Because of course anything else would disrupt the status quo, the state where the rich own and the poor work.
> 
> ...



Anybody remember Robohunter in 2000AD? Robots did all the work, leaving humans to relax on the beach. About the only humans who worked were the robohunters who took down rogue bots!


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 5, 2015)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Sorry, Ray, your view on Apple is out of synch with most management theorists.


Then they have bought into Steve Jobs' Reality distortion field.
I bought Byte Magazine with 1st review of Apple II.
I've followed the Industry since 1973.
I've worked in the Industry since 1980.
If Microsoft hadn't baled them out they would never have survived 1990s.
Even today Mac sales only are as big a niche as they are due to unbelievable incompetence in Microsoft since 2004.
Three Product successes ever.
Apple II due to Visicalc
iPod due to iTunes and Mac image
iPhone due to the insight of the data plan.

We are at Peak Apple. They have no strategy, they never have had one. Only lucky breaks.
Apple Innovation is a illusion. The Newton was their only really innovative product, which was a failure for Apple, but helped get ARM off  the ground to be a massive UK success and in virtually every phone, tablet, set box, router etc in the world.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

And I've been a management consultant for most of Apple's fall and rise. We're agreeing (you just don't seem to have taken on board my last post.)  Their structure was not based around strategic growth but innovation. For every company that goes stellar under that structure, more fail. So, yes, they got lucky. But only because they had the structure to enable that luck by allowing creativity.

I really don't want a tit for tat, but I also find it hard to not comment on a view that takes no account of management structure and its links to creativity and risk, on a thread that is talking about structures of work.

Could we agree to differ and drop it now?


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

alchemist said:


> Anybody remember Robohunter in 2000AD? Robots did all the work, leaving humans to relax on the beach. About the only humans who worked were the robohunters who took down rogue bots!



Now that's a structure I can live. Can I bring a notebook to the beach?


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## alchemist (Aug 5, 2015)

As long as you don't get paid for it!


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 5, 2015)

alchemist said:


> As long as you don't get paid for it!


Heh. Same old then....


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## Nick B (Aug 5, 2015)

MWagner said:


> Some kind of guaranteed basic income is probably where we're headed, if only because without it there won't be enough consumers to keep the wheels turning. The question is how long, and how much strife, it will take to to get there.



That simply feeds the consumerist culture that got us where we are. Planned obsolesence, false lifespans, poor manufacturing etc. We are already at a place where we don't _need_ money. However, we will always have it simply because it is a system of social control.


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## Parson (Aug 6, 2015)

MWagner said:


> Assortative mating is maybe the most overlooked factor in the widening disparity in household incomes in the West.


  This could be true. I had never thought of this before and my experience would point in this direction, with about a 25% push against the grain. Do you have any statistics to back up this assumptions?



Quellist said:


> Shouldn't we be working towards a time when innovation _replaces _labour? We have the technological means to automate huge amounts of the work people do today, why are we stuck with the 'working for pay' model? ...... Imagine the advances in scienc, crafts, technology and art if _everyone_ who wanted to could do a degree, or further training and was free to put their time into something they love rather than working at a necessity simply to survive.



As a Calvinist I do not believe that this would be the end for the vast majority who do not work. I would guess that the life of the vast majority would instead look a lot like the entourage of a "king." (Think of the Court of Louis XIV) Living in a kind of vast soap opera where score is kept by conquests, put downs, and the "smiles" of the king. Not to say that there wouldn't be a few, but examples of people who truly did not have to earn a living, doing things which improved society with little gain to themselves are much more scarce than I would like to admit. I really want to think of most people as good, honest, and responsible, but I am often disappointed.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 6, 2015)

Quellist said:


> That simply feeds the consumerist culture that got us where we are. Planned obsolesence, false lifespans, poor manufacturing etc. We are already at a place where we don't _need_ money. However, we will always have it simply because it is a system of social control.



I'd love to know how we're at a point where we don't need money. With two kids to feed, I sure do.


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## Nick B (Aug 6, 2015)

Because money is a complex falacy anyway Jo, what is it? Where is it? If the bank cmtrols the value of money (which it does) and controls interest rates (which it does) then what value is it? The BoE in the UK and the Federal Reserve in the US literaly control the value of your life. So what is it exactly?

As for why we dont NEED money as a society, we could easily have a resource driven economy, rather than a money driven economy. It is complicated, but possible. Sadly, the rich want to stay at the top, it isnt enough to have everything they need, the powerful people need to have a majority of the population to have less than they do, otherwise they are not the 'top'. Sad but true.
Look up The Venus Project if you are interested . I dont think it would all work, it is very utopian, but the values are right and the concept would work except for one element- the human need to have more than other people.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 6, 2015)

Jo Zebedee said:


> I'd love to know how we're at a point where we don't need money.


Possibly when no-one has jobs ... but even then money may be the best solution.

Realistically never as Barter quickly breaks down for trade.

This is related and interesting.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/02/gig_economy/

A single currency using IBAN* for any electronic transactions is the way to go. But we are not ready for it. We will first see Blocs:
Maybe over next 10 years:
North America (Mexico before Canada)
Asean group move toward a single currency
African south of Sahara
Russian sphere of influence
South American
Independents

Later 
Some Africans join Asian Bloc and some Europeans
Some South Americans join US, some join Europeans
UK joins Europeans or North Americans
Russia alone
More independents join Asian / American or European

Later
Three currencies with some independents of no significance.

So is any Government admitting and planing for a future of only 30% employment?

(*It's crazy that USA doesn't use IBAN, but maybe they think Extortionate Western Union, Visa, American Express, PayPal etc are better than an International virtually free service?)


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## Nick B (Aug 6, 2015)

If there was a single currency, regulated by an unbiased body who have zero to gain, then money is fine. While independant businesses control the value of currency it is a broken, corrupt system.


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## MWagner (Aug 6, 2015)

Parson said:


> This could be true. I had never thought of this before and my experience would point in this direction, with about a 25% push against the grain. Do you have any statistics to back up this assumptions?



The researchers estimate that assortative mating has increased our Gini coefficient—where 0 is perfect equality and 1 is perfect inequality—from 0.35 to 0.43 compared to a world where we married like we did in 1960.

http://www.economist.com/news/unite...tween-rich-and-poor-households-sex-brains-and

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...harry-met-sally-i-explains-inequality/283517/


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## MWagner (Aug 6, 2015)

Presumably the ructions and grief over Greece's financial crisis have left a lot of countries questioning the merit of shared currencies. The state is the highest form of effective polity we have. Giving up control of your own currency takes away a significant amount of sovereignty, and leaves a country exposed to the kind of pressure that has pushed Greece into crisis. Whatever momentum we may have seen towards shared currencies has suffered a pretty serious setback.



Ray McCarthy said:


> Lots of countries do have that. They do not give out food stamps etc. Just cash every week.



I don't mean the meagre amount given to cover food and rent in the form of welfare. I mean guaranteeing the kinds of income we have now across the board so we can sustain broad participation in the economy. We've driven interest rates close to zero in a desperate attempt to encourage spending. When automation cuts back incomes substantially, economies will stall altogether. Guaranteeing every American $1,200 a month if they're not working will do little to sell houses, cars, TVs, etc.

I'm not naive about how difficult a transition to a guaranteed middle-class income will be. I doubt it will happen until we've experienced widespread unrest over mass unemployment and underemployment - worse than what we're seeing in Greece, and across most of the developed world. Probably decades of crisis, rioting, and corrosion of civil society. It's a question of whether the transition will be a sharp and painful one of only 20 years or so, or whether it will drag one for more than a generation.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 6, 2015)

MWagner said:


> Giving up control of your own currency takes away a significant amount of sovereignty,


I'd argue it's a slight and delusional amount of sovereignty. More often abused than what the people want. The UK has yet again left unchanged near non-existent interest rate due to factors beyond their control.   Certainly not significant amount of sovereignty.


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## MWagner (Aug 6, 2015)

Quellist said:


> I dont think it would all work, it is very utopian, but the values are right and the concept would work except for one element- the human need to have more than other people.



We're status-seeking animals. Money is the most popular ways of marking status, but in the absence of money other ways would come to the fore, just as pre-money societies all had markers of status, whether it's the number of a eagle feathers in a head-dress, how high up the hill your home sits or marriage and kinship connections to leaders.



Quellist said:


> If there was a single currency, regulated by an unbiased body who have zero to gain, then money is fine. While independant businesses control the value of currency it is a broken, corrupt system.



When I was 10 years old, my school set up a phoney currency to allow students to buy privileges on Friday afternoons. So for completing assignments during the week, you were given a prescribed amount of this currency. On Friday, these fake paper bills, called Nahanni Nuggets, could be exchanged for activities of varying costs, with gym time being the costliest, library time a little cheaper, quiet time in the classroom quite cheap, and if you had no money, you had to do class work while everyone else played. I suppose the administration thought this would be a fun way to encourage kids to do their assignments on time.

Well, they got the fundamentals pretty wrong, because the brighter kids earned more of this currency than they could possibly spend. And one particularly bright and unscrupulous kid, my buddy Gord, set up a shadow economy, where his surplus school currency was exchanged with struggling students for real-world goods, such as bubble-gum, hockey cards, and choice items from lunch bags. Gord then sold some of these goods to other students with a surplus of the currency, in order to establish a near-monopoly of Nahanni Nuggets. He also engaged in usurous loans, and other unsavoury practices. And sometimes he simply gave the phoney money to pretty girls in order to impress them. Eventually other kids raided Gord's stache of Nahanni Nuggets, and some struggling oafs threatened him with physical violence to secure the phoney bills, so he had to pay those oafs to be his bodyguards. For a couple months there Gord was cock of the walk.

The teachers eventually twigged on to the fact that strugglers were routinely paying the big bucks for gym time, and realized something wonky was going on. They discontinued the program after about half a year. But it was a salutary and enduring lesson about money and the diverse ways it can manipulated to secure food, goods, and status.


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## Nick B (Aug 6, 2015)

That just sounds like the UK today.


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## Parson (Aug 6, 2015)

MWagner said:


> The researchers estimate that assortative mating has increased our Gini coefficient—where 0 is perfect equality and 1 is perfect inequality—from 0.35 to 0.43 compared to a world where we married like we did in 1960.
> 
> http://www.economist.com/news/unite...tween-rich-and-poor-households-sex-brains-and
> 
> http://www.theatlantic.com/business...harry-met-sally-i-explains-inequality/283517/



Thanks! That made for interesting reading. (I did not subscribe where indicated.) But they did let me see that the ideas were based on research. I would note that even the article read in full said that it was a contributing factor to economic inequality but did not explain the highest degrees of it. As your long interesting post on an unintended lesson on economics in elementary school pointed out, good ideas can support bad outcomes.


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## Ray McCarthy (Aug 9, 2015)

Some thoughts about Automation. Where did the people that used to work the land go?
(Flippant answer is cemetery )
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/09/tax_dodging_road_trips


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