Not all that great for the people who now can’t get jobs.
Take me for example. I like to think I’m a pretty good software engineer. And I actually enjoy it. I’d be a pretty bad doctor and an even worse teacher (I’m also a man so that would limit me to teaching teenagers and older anyway, nobody wants men near children in education).
Don’t give much of a fuck about the companies, but a lot of people are now denied a career path that might’ve been THE thing they’re great at and enjoy doing. This is about several different fields, of which mine is one. I’m quite lucky I got in when I did. Otherwise I’d have to start considering suicide by now because I can’t stand manual labour or customer service.
Don’t you think that’s a bit much? People committing suicide because they can’t get their favourite career path? I have never heard of it being a problem. Before computers existed there were people like you and they didn’t all commit suicide. They chose the jobs that were available. Sure it takes some adjustment and it may not be a string of everlasting highlights, but let’s not get carried away here.
It’s all about the rate of change: neoliberal globalization has brought down wages across industries, so fewer good jobs are left, and the not-so-good ones barely keep up the same standard of living.
From a neutral historical perspective, some serious pearl-clutching about jobs is not ill-founded.
As you say, people in the past facing these circumstances didn’t all commit suicide. Yet some did it explicitly, some did it indirectly with alcohol or other vices, others just lived less fulfilling lives than they otherwise would have. Nonetheless, we are very much encouraging deaths of despair en masse with our current societal outlook.
Society will adapt. It always has.
People can make much more meaningful contributions to society than working at a desk in some software company. Let the AI do that. Humans are way too valuable for that. Meaningfulness of the work one does is one of the most important features of work satisfaction. Not everyone needs to be a doctor, nurse or teacher. Those are just the most common examples, but there are many more meaningful jobs where you are not simply an AI in human form slaving away at a desk job.
It is also simply not true that things like suicide and addiction rates were higher in the recent past. For example, look at drug overdose rates that have risen sharply in the past decades.
You’re sweeping a lot under the rug with that first sentence: Society will adapt. Yeah sure, barring global catastrophe, it will. Doesn’t mean people won’t die and suffer in the process.
I’m making no claims about good vs. bad jobs here; people can self-actualize however they like in my book. Nor was I making any specific point about epidemiology of deaths of despair in the recent past, but I think that trend serves to illustrate the overall point.
What am I sweeping under the rug? I’m not saying that change will be easy, but I’m talking about the end result. Too many people have made the wrong choices and got fooled by companies dangling big paychecks in front of their noses to work shitty office jobs.
You insinuated that in the past, people killed themselves more and had more addiction problems due to the fact that they couldn’t get the job they wanted. That is simply not true and just guessing at things you can’t back up. I’m simply showing you that the opposite is true. The data only shows that deaths of despair are getting worse than before we had all these bullshit jobs. Whether that is because of them or not cannot be said, but it shows that what you’re saying is not true.
Find me a meaningful and challenging job that doesn’t get boring over time, that I don’t need a degree or any sort of artistic talent for.
I doubt you’ll be able to. The only job I ever held before my current career was refurbishing laptops and I can tell you most of us wanted to kill ourselves. Half the guys were on antidepressants.
What do you mean? There are plenty of jobs in health care alone that don’t require extensive training at all. They don’t get boring since you meet new people every day and it is meaningful work, which in turn is a big part of why people are satisfied with their jobs.
Not all that great for the people who now can’t get jobs.
Take me for example. I like to think I’m a pretty good software engineer. And I actually enjoy it. I’d be a pretty bad doctor and an even worse teacher (I’m also a man so that would limit me to teaching teenagers and older anyway, nobody wants men near children in education).
Don’t give much of a fuck about the companies, but a lot of people are now denied a career path that might’ve been THE thing they’re great at and enjoy doing. This is about several different fields, of which mine is one. I’m quite lucky I got in when I did. Otherwise I’d have to start considering suicide by now because I can’t stand manual labour or customer service.
Don’t you think that’s a bit much? People committing suicide because they can’t get their favourite career path? I have never heard of it being a problem. Before computers existed there were people like you and they didn’t all commit suicide. They chose the jobs that were available. Sure it takes some adjustment and it may not be a string of everlasting highlights, but let’s not get carried away here.
Not really.
It’s all about the rate of change: neoliberal globalization has brought down wages across industries, so fewer good jobs are left, and the not-so-good ones barely keep up the same standard of living.
From a neutral historical perspective, some serious pearl-clutching about jobs is not ill-founded.
As you say, people in the past facing these circumstances didn’t all commit suicide. Yet some did it explicitly, some did it indirectly with alcohol or other vices, others just lived less fulfilling lives than they otherwise would have. Nonetheless, we are very much encouraging deaths of despair en masse with our current societal outlook.
Society will adapt. It always has. People can make much more meaningful contributions to society than working at a desk in some software company. Let the AI do that. Humans are way too valuable for that. Meaningfulness of the work one does is one of the most important features of work satisfaction. Not everyone needs to be a doctor, nurse or teacher. Those are just the most common examples, but there are many more meaningful jobs where you are not simply an AI in human form slaving away at a desk job.
It is also simply not true that things like suicide and addiction rates were higher in the recent past. For example, look at drug overdose rates that have risen sharply in the past decades.
You’re sweeping a lot under the rug with that first sentence: Society will adapt. Yeah sure, barring global catastrophe, it will. Doesn’t mean people won’t die and suffer in the process.
I’m making no claims about good vs. bad jobs here; people can self-actualize however they like in my book. Nor was I making any specific point about epidemiology of deaths of despair in the recent past, but I think that trend serves to illustrate the overall point.
What am I sweeping under the rug? I’m not saying that change will be easy, but I’m talking about the end result. Too many people have made the wrong choices and got fooled by companies dangling big paychecks in front of their noses to work shitty office jobs.
You insinuated that in the past, people killed themselves more and had more addiction problems due to the fact that they couldn’t get the job they wanted. That is simply not true and just guessing at things you can’t back up. I’m simply showing you that the opposite is true. The data only shows that deaths of despair are getting worse than before we had all these bullshit jobs. Whether that is because of them or not cannot be said, but it shows that what you’re saying is not true.
Find me a meaningful and challenging job that doesn’t get boring over time, that I don’t need a degree or any sort of artistic talent for.
I doubt you’ll be able to. The only job I ever held before my current career was refurbishing laptops and I can tell you most of us wanted to kill ourselves. Half the guys were on antidepressants.
What do you mean? There are plenty of jobs in health care alone that don’t require extensive training at all. They don’t get boring since you meet new people every day and it is meaningful work, which in turn is a big part of why people are satisfied with their jobs.