Paying a few more bucks an hour is dubious grounds for massive layoffs at multibillion dollar international corporation.
The video I’m responding to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQFVw1AzoaM
I hope you enjoyed the video!
Help buy me time to make more content! You can use Patreon or Subscribestar. All linked below!
Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/AlexWeir
SubscribeStar
The closing paragraphs of ‘The New Yorker article, ‘Machine Hands’ (John Seabrook), contain this little nugget:
“It’s also possible that this second wave of A.I.-based mechanization will automate the farmer’s job long before it removes the need for hired labor. In the indoor farms I visited, the brain work of farming-when to plant, irrigate, fertilize, and harvest-has been automated, but not the grunt work.”
This is something I’ve long suspected and have recently blogged about:
“I dunno how well versed these journalists and talking heads are in robotics but the level of sophistication required for a machine to load a UPS truck or do road work is insane. Fine motor function is a tricky business.” (Everyone should Code?)
While I hate to play Freud I think this all has to do with libido. The folks proposing a labor apocalypse delivered on the chrome horse of automation might know a bit of Java. They’re ‘men of letters’, socially savvy (read manipulative), and pathologically concerned about abstract futures.
It’s sexy to worry about the peasants not being able to keep up with your ability to write a Vox article.
But perhaps the effete should be worried about themselves.
Not about being accidentally racist, or sexist, or spilling their lattes on the latest issue of Entrepreneur.
They should be worried about their jobs.
Honestly, it should have been obvious from the start. Which tasks lend themselves to mechanization?
“The repetitive ones that those sweaty truckers and stockers do! You know the kinds done by people who make boner jokes. O shit is that the HR lady…I was using boner to describe how the lower classes talk…”
No, my precious orchid.
The sorts of jobs that lend themselves to automation are computational. They’re things with decision trees that don’t require the trees to sprout hands. In a nutshell: brain work.
Stuff that requires the fast and accurate scanning of vast reams of data, the analysis of that data, and a decision. Sure, QuickBooks hasn’t made accountants obsolete. It has however necessitated a bit of scurrying:
“Technology is rapidly reshaping the accounting industry, making certain skills and knowledge obsolete but at the same time creating opportunities for accountants to offer new services in the marketplace. For future accounting leaders, perhaps the biggest determinant of success is staying ahead of the technology curve so new innovations enhance one’s business, not replace it.” (https://quickbooks.intuit.com/ca/resources/pro-taxes/new-skill-sets-future-accounting-leaders/)
This suggests that it’s not truckers that will be thinner on the ground but research assistants, HR people, and stockbrokers.
Basically people who have to repetitively dig through data and perform basic logic. Things that a robot (computer) can do much better faster and cheaper than it can pick a strawberry.
This article isn’t here to gloat about folks losing their jobs. It’s here to point out that we need to think more deeply about what we value as a society. About what brings purpose to people’s lives.
Why haven’t we seen Glenn Gould in decades?
The answer is people define themselves through their jobs. Their self-worth is wrapped up in the ability to do work that’s more sophisticated and important than the schmuck in the truck (hence student loan crisis). Society values an insane mechanized orgy of buying and selling where Universities serve as bargaining chips rather than bastions of cultivation.
All the while engaging in self-congratulatory pity for the class of people who can actually change the oil.
Whoda thunk that the finesse of picking a strawberry just right is akin to the finesse of sawing a violin bow on a string? Whoda thunk that boolean operators handled statistics better than a hungover analyst?
Automation is inevitable. Let’s not let class pretensions blind us to where it’s most likely to happen. Now that we are getting a grasp on how to feed, clothe, sanitize, and house our teeming billions maybe we can start getting pre-industrial.
No, I don’t mean going Amish. I mean a return to craftsman culture. The sort of attention to detail, originality, and quality that flourished in Benjamin Franklin’s day. The sorts of activities that enrich lives and communities while being fulfilling in a specifically human way.
This isn’t writing code, or optimizing SEO, it’s the manipulation of matter. Manipulation – manus – doing it by hand. Hands honed by experience and guided by well-trained human minds and well trained human hearts.
The future is ‘The Goldberg Variations.’
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
Minds | http://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
SubscribeStar | (Under Construction) https://www.subscribestar.com/TFJ
Support the Journal
Make a donation via PayPal to help zazz things up.
$1.00
Not Just Zazz…but Pizzazz
Too high class for regular Zazz? Help Pizzaz up TFJ!
$5.00
I’ve heard several people weigh in on a series of articles describing troubles faced by men and boys (eg). These articles point out the higher rate of suicide, the unemployment, the crime, and the failure to form relationships.
These are certainly problems that need addressing. Yet, the way they are addressed both by mainstream media and various gurus like Dr. Peterson is lacking. It also seems to often veer in a unecessiraly condescending direction.
Part of the problem is an inaccurate view of the modern world. Just today I heard Tim Pool quote an article that said the job market currently valued brain over brawn. Then there were some vagaries about the trucking industry.
This is an odd diagnosis when mapping the problem of male under achievement since most technology is built and operated by men. Given the level of female interest in coding/engineering/etc. it is likely to remain that way. So no males aren’t getting shafted because we’re living in a high-tech society.
Tech may be a contributing factor but it is certainly second fiddle to outsourcing, population growth, Boomers that haven’t retired, and a host of other demographic issues. There are only so many positions available. There can only be so many surgeons and there can only be so many janitors. When women, your grandpa, and Bangladesh enter the US job market you’re gonna get a little sign that says: the position has been filled.
Are Opas and ladies in the workforce a bad thing? No. But, whether competent or not they do fill positions. So, talk show windbags should consider demographics instead of whinging on and on about MUH TECH while being confused by the difference between a composter and a compiler.
It’s odd that a lack of college completion as a sign of underperformance is mentioned in the same breath as Coding. Since tech firms will hire people with demonstrable skills and a willingness to work with or without degrees.
Viewing IT and coding as the salvation of the millennial male is bizarre. To me it stinks of people who think they’re making savvy observations. ‘We understand the times you see. Automation is here and only the cognitive elite will fare well. Brawn is no longer necessary peasants.’
I dunno how well versed these journalists and talking heads are in robotics but the level of sophistication required for a machine to load a UPS truck or do road work is insane. Fine motor function is a tricky business.
Blue collar work isn’t going anywhere. Except for overseas.
And so…is coding! Cause coding doesn’t take much more than an average intelligence, YouTube, a book, and patience. Which is why lots of enterprising gents in Bangladesh are writing Java for those patriotic American businesses.
So the problem with ‘ya need moar skillsz lololoololol’ is that even if everyone learned to code….there’s only so many fucking things that you can fucking code. The salaried positions will be filled quickly and the remaining scraps will be passion projects and apps that allow you to put a baboons ass on your buddies Instagram pics.
The problem is not the march of progress leaving men behind. The problem is as it has always been a combination of carrying capacity, undervaluing the trades, and credentialed idiots.
In a previous column, I cited an article on News Forum For Lawyers titled “Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent,” which referenced an American Institutes for Research study that revealed that over 75 percent of two-year college students and 50 percent of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20 percent of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30 percent of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually to train employees in “basic English.” Many of today’s college students are not only academically incompetent but emotionally so, as well, and do not belong in college. (The Times)
Men who are financially unstable due to these economic/demographic realities often have trouble sustaining or even starting relationships. They are viewed as underachievers by people who have loaded themselves up with a lifetime of debt learning how to do Excel spreadsheets. People who inhabit make-work professions like HR departments, managerial managing management managers, and counselors. Makework professions that are often the result of affirmitive action…
Google found it paid men less than women for the same job
(For an alternative view on the Google pay situation read: Wired.com| Are Men at Google paid Less than Women? Not really)
These sorts of folks gloat about men’s romantic shortcoming citing that women have less trouble romantically. Forgetting that hookups aren’t relationships and what’s bad for the goose is bad for the gander.
Maybe just maybe brawn is just as necessary as it ever was and brains and civilization didn’t come from the professors lounge. If you like roads and you like toasters that can tickle your tits maybe you should look at the real reason men are faring badly.
The problem is cultural. The problem is demographic. The problem is condescencion by folks who have played on an entirely different chessboard.
What troubles me in all of this is that it’s not only the ideological gloaters and misandrists and corporations that are failing men. It’s also the well wishers. It’s those that want to ‘FIX’ men.
Because they tell you to clean a room that you don’t have.
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
Minds | http://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Support the Journal
Make a donation via PayPal to help zazz things up.
$1.00
Not Just Zazz…but Pizzazz
Too high class for regular Zazz? Help Pizzaz up TFJ!
$5.00
…but seriously I think this goofy thought might contain some kernels of truth. Tell me what ya think.
http://www.minds.com/Weirmellow – Social media if ya like that sorta thing
Email – mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com – I’m horrific at reading emails but I will eventually.
http://www.patreon.com/TheFractalJournal – Support an overpromising underdelivering wanker
The Fractal Journal 