I agree with everything in this article right up until the proposed solution. Yes, people need to feel useful, and UBI does nothing to address the fundamental social problem. However giving everyone tech jobs is not really going to work—I agree anyone can learn to write code to some level of competence, but the problem is that there is not really a big market for the basic level of competence. If you don't have the fundamental curiosity, systematic thinking and famous programmer "laziness", you will never attain the level necessary to go beyond the "bullshit job" level of coder. For example, anyone can learn to code HTML and CSS, but not anyone can build Squarespace, and yet even at minimum wage, it's not cost effective to pay a mass of individuals to create sites manually because it'll be more expensive and lower quality than just using Squarespace. More abstractly: top programmers are capable of automating away the work of lesser programmers, and this balance will worsen significantly if we start trying to push everyone into programming as a basic job.
I know this comes off as elitist and dismissive, but I've been mentoring and training junior programmers for 20 years, and it's just a fact that not everyone is cut out for programming. It's not even about intelligence–there's just something intrinsic that people need to be able to create significant value from programming. And if we assume some kind of general AI or singularity is coming, eventually we will reach a point where no human programmer can create any value over machine-written code. We're not sociologically equipped to deal with these changes, and I think it's going to get a lot uglier before it gets better.
LOL. There is so much "demand" for technically skilled people, yet try finding a job as an entry level dev in this market.. employers reject people left right and center for the tiniest of reasons. They want to take 0 risk of hiring someone who doesn't already have every skill they need, 0 risk of hiring someone who has made mistakes in their career, 5 leetcode rounds, 5 references, 3 past internships, 5 github projects and the list goes on. Anyone recently graduating from CS will tell you they apply to 100s of jobs to get 10 callbacks and a shot at landing 1.
The problem with hiring is employers, and they just don't need to change. As much as they would like more employees, they either don't really need them as urgently as they claim, or they would rather go out of business than take a risk.
Schools produce Computer Scientists, but companies want Software Developers. When interviewing new grads, the CS questions are just weed out questions like a hard sophomore level class.
But if you don't how to build a passable REST API, when to use an event queue instead of a database, or experience with a build system you are far from my ideal candidate.
In all reality, my advice for anyone in college today is to get an internship during school, and try to convert it into a full time position. Good luck getting a position with no internship experience.
This is not actually true, at least at average universities in the United States. Schools have a degree called "Computer Science" but the standards are shockingly low.
Disagree, most employers are so desperate for somebody who can show up every day and throw some code together that they will make all kinds of excuses for the candidate. Plus most interviewers know jack and are easily impressed. That said, everybody has their own understanding of "entry level." I think the market is great for entry-level/junior developers, and glutted for true senior developers. Most companies have no need for somebody's 10+ years of real experience so the ceiling is quite low, and you are "senior" after a few years.
Either they can afford to be picky because there are plenty of candidates that fit the bill or they will eventually loosen their criteria.
The problem isn't with labor demand, but with a mismatch of labor supply x demand with so many people trained for "entry level [insert current year's language / framework of choice] developer" since it requires so little effort.
Jobs. Work. Church service. Community service. Or simply helping some other alcoholic out of the hole that he or she is in. All fit. Sitting at home collecting a check doesn’t.
This doesn't make sense. Church service may give someone a higher purpose, but it won't put food on their table. Guaranteed basic income would make it possible for people who want to devote their lives to community service or helping other alcoholics to do so without becoming homeless.
> Many Native Americans are given something like a guaranteed minimum income on the reservations America gave them and what has that brought them? Higher rates of alcoholism, for one.
I'm not an expert on Native American history or alcoholism, but I have a hard time believing that guaranteed income from Tribal revenue is the primary driver of substance abuse issues within that community.
> Time will solve a lot of problems. Within three years we are getting new computing devices that will help us learn a lot faster than the computers you see above in the photo I shot in the current school.
I'm honestly not convinced of this. Learning is not about technology, it's about people. I worked on some educational activities and have been knee deep in this personally.
If this were true, then I feel like since the 90s, we should be at least twice as smart given all the technological improvements. But if anything, American students are falling behind compared to the rest of the world, and we are a technology leader!
People are people, have been, and will continue to be. The issues about learning aren't about technology to show us the way, it's about getting understanding as a person. This means things like knowing how to teach concepts well to people who think a certain way, such as understanding learning styles (which we're not good at).
I know, right? I met him a few times back in the 2000s and didn't see why he got so much attention back then. I think he is regurgitating some of the common talking points amongst the valley anarchists about how we live in a bubble. I don't disagree with the overall message but nothing new to see here.
Thanks for posting this. It's a very compelling read.
I've been saying this for ages and I can't understand why folks don't see it as clear cut as I do: if you want economic prosperity for the average person, invest in education. It's the best use of our tax dollars because the long-term return on investment is higher than you can measure. Those tax dollars can be put to use through free education provided directly by the government or via tax credits for private enterprises that provide standard education services subject to a high degree of scrutiny and measured through standardized exams and KPIs
I don't necessarily agree that we don't need teachers. That may work for certain skills and jobs. But in fact, I think we can provide real wage growth to lower income workers simply by paying teachers twice as much as we do today today so we actually attract top talent.
Isn't retirement a counter-example? Yes, a lot of new retirees have trouble redefining their identity and finding purpose in life. But, on the other hand, many retirees are very happy despite not having a supervisor or any customers.
Anyway, BI directly addresses poverty. Providing job training opportunities will not completely cure poverty. So why ignore the poverty problem in your haste to advocate for more educational opportunities for everyone? Surely there is room to improve learning opportunities and also alleviate material suffering (without troublesome discontinuities/perverse incentives).
> Now we are facing a new age where many people will find themselves jobless due to automation ... More than a million truck drivers, for instance, will lose their jobs in the next decade or two, maybe less.
Just to be clear, the premise of this article is that a new wave of unemployment will come sometime “in the next decade or two,” the example given is truck drivers, and the debate is what to do with all these future unemployed truck drivers (specifically, whether to just give them welfare directly or whether to help them find jobs by retraining them).
Everybody is currently conditioned to think they have to stand up on a stage and give a TED talk/I Have a Dream speech -> drum up enough support and you are on your way right?
Wrong. Because everyone else is playing the same game.
It's an arms race for peoples attention. And mass attention is highly scattered and diffused over all kinds of things in the spectrum of useful to bullshit.
I know this comes off as elitist and dismissive, but I've been mentoring and training junior programmers for 20 years, and it's just a fact that not everyone is cut out for programming. It's not even about intelligence–there's just something intrinsic that people need to be able to create significant value from programming. And if we assume some kind of general AI or singularity is coming, eventually we will reach a point where no human programmer can create any value over machine-written code. We're not sociologically equipped to deal with these changes, and I think it's going to get a lot uglier before it gets better.