[thatfrenchguy]

> The actual output of society is produced by a relatively small minority of skilled individuals that are not easily replicable

This speaks personally to me as why tech workers (and multi-generation urbanites) are seen as widely disconnected: being persuaded a small number of people "create value" while forgetting about the people building your stuff, growing your food, extracting your oil (and killing the planet in the process), moving your stuff around, nursing people, building your house, installing your AC, shipping your amazon packages, and all the other ultra-necessary jobs (that are usually underpaid) that I don't even realise exist.

Without the drivers, Uber does not exist. Without Foxconn and its army of underpaid labor, Apple does not exist. It's not a small number of people creating value, it's a small number of people capturing all that value thanks to shitty wages and work conditions for everyone else.

We can all pretend "automation" will replace people, but it's obvious the complexities of those tasks will always mostly done by humans.

[roenxi]

> while forgetting about the people ...

You might be reading the comment slightly sideways. My read was that the people you list are from small businesses creating value, and most of the tech workers are creating very little value with a few peakers who do amazing things.

> Without the drivers, Uber does not exist.

Personal bugbear, there is as yet no evidence that Uber is creating more value than it destroys. It has a pretty basic business model, trivial positive externalities and is making loss. It looks like it is slow-burning value until someone goes broke.

Uber could be cited as evidence in favour of the idea that most people don't by default know how to create value.

That might be the core disagreement here. There are a lot of people doing activities that are useful. I struggle to think of them as value creators because what they are actually doing is whatever someone tells them - there is a lack of agency in deciding what they do, so I have difficulty attributing outcomes to them. They are fungible, but the people telling them what to do are not. If you tell them to do something stupid, they will do it (as seen with Uber).

Not a comment on personal worth; economic value isn't everything. But the people who make decisions are just more important than laborers. Small businesspeople in particular are a backbone of society in a way that most workers really are not.

[fao_]

> That might be the core disagreement here. There are a lot of people doing activities that are useful. I struggle to think of them as value creators because what they are actually doing is whatever someone tells them - there is a lack of agency in deciding what they do, so I have difficulty attributing outcomes to them. They are fungible, but the people telling them what to do are not. If you tell them to do something stupid, they will do it (as seen with Uber).

I think this speaks to your own lack of understanding of these jobs. Just because the general goal is set by someone higher up, does not mean that there is not hidden variation for the exact task, as well as a lot of places for 'hidden mediocrity'.

Take cleaning the toilets, for example. The general order given is "clean the toilets". Think, however, about how this task has to be broken down. The small things like cleaning the tap heads, under the rim of the seat, etc. that most people might not explicitly think of without being reminded. The person has to do those small tasks, possibly hundreds of times, while dealing with any unexpected obstacles.

Or take something less unsavory, like baking bread. Anyone who has baked bread understands that, while the general instructions _sound_ simple, there is a lot of complexity that is not accounted for, and a lot of room for variability of skill.

Sure, anyone can train for a month and play X tune on the guitar, but are you going to pay for someone who has spent simply one month training, or someone who can really play the tune that has been playing for years? If they are interchangeable then there needn't be thousands of threads submitted to hacker news about how to hire "10x developers".

> Small businesspeople in particular are a backbone of society in a way that most workers really are not.

The matter of fact is that once a company has been established, it can float for a long time without the business owner contributing much whatsoever. I can think of more than a couple of companies that have changed CEOs three times in the last 5 years, while the actual inputs and outputs of the company remain steady. Direction only matters in a vague sense until you hit bad economic times. The ultimate truth is that 'fungibility' has nothing to do with 'value'.

[gnarlee]

I clean trains (includes lots of toilets) the hilarious story to share is that long long ago one would just show up at the trainstation and be hired to clean by annother cleaner. Paid in cash every friday. Over time a truly insane number of madly overpaid deskjokeys was tagged onto the process to do countless completely nonsensical tasks. From a really well paid job and really good cleaning, in 70 years, things moved to really shit pay and half the employees. The work didnt change at all but everything is measured to the detail. Apparently the combination of shit pay and more work than one can do makes employees unreliable enough to justify tons of desk work. The hr and countless job agencies are completely overworked. The measurment of bad results triggers countless meetings. The ppl making work schedules are tasked with a completely and utterly impossible mission. But it gets truly hilarious where the cleaners bring new employees into the 3rd party job agencies, when we dont like it change the work schedule and carefully compare salaries with hours worked. So nothing has really changed at all. The only new thing is that for every 1000 euro in actual cleaning there is now 2500 euro in administrative tasks.

[throwayEngineer]

Because making the tech that is safe and reliable enough for technician's to use is the hard part.

I can teach anyone how to clean a mold.

I can't teach just anyone how to design a mold.

And if you designed a mold before, you have been stressed AF designing and reviewing it. For some reason that is disconnected? I still work 40+ hrs

[Avshalom]

the appearance of disconnect thatfrenchguy is talking about is the idea that designing the mold is the actual output of society despite the fact that designing the mold no matter how few people can do it is completely useless without a massive web of interconnected labor that, yes anyone can do but, must done in order for society to actually output anything.

It's not a swipe at engineers, it's a swipe at engineers who think they few highly skilled individuals are the engine of the world.

[thatfrenchguy]

That was the idea I was trying to convey, albeit said in a much better way thank you :-).

[qrian]

Not trying to critique anything, but it seems like engine itself is also useless without the rest of the parts.

[Avshalom]

That is point. The wheels, the engine, the frame, hundreds of other things... You can't point to one part a car and say "that's the bit that actually gets us from point a to point b"

(It's also a jab at the intellectual bankruptcy of Atlas Shrugged)

[qrian]

I am still confused. So are you implying the engineers who think they are the engine of the world incorrect or not?

[Avshalom]

Oh, Sorry. It's a really shaky rhetorical flourish if you don't instinctively associate "the engine of the world" with Atlas Shrugged, Galts Gulch and the criticisms thereof.

In plainer English: it's not a swipe at engineers, it's a swipe at engineers who think they few highly skilled individuals produce the majority of the economic output of the world.

[jp555]

So if you get a degree, it’s really the book publishers, librarians, and coal burning electricity plant that kept the lights on who deserve most of the credit?

[Avshalom]

Their contribution was necessary, I mean it's utterly facile but: you weren't gonna get a degree from a university if the university doesn't exist. There's a billion or so people in addition to them and a few billion more that got us to this point.

It's not that there is no such thing as individual achievement it's that there is no "small minority" skilled or unskilled that the modern economy can be reduced to.

[jp555]

Sure as a whole, on average.

But there absolutely is a small minority of extreme producers in most domains.

[unionpivo]

If you take out truck drivers and train operators, most modern cities die in a few weeks.

If every star programmer/engineer died, a lot of things would stop working, but people would at least live long enough to maybe deal with it.

[someguydave]

That fails to respond to the point that there exists skilled necessary work that armies of unskilled workers can not replace.

[Avshalom]

And there exists unskilled necessary work that armies of skilled workers can not replace.

But even beyond that there's armies of skilled necessary work that skilled workers can not replace either but seem to forget exist.

Apple doesn't exist without massive sophisticated logistical support but no one ever points out that the naval architects at Maersk or the welders at their shipyards are one piece of the process that allows any one to actually buy anything from Apple.

[kjsbfkjbf]

It would also be nice to frame "necessary" and "unnecessary".

I would think developments like saving the environment, healthcare research, improving public transportation, energy consumption, etc. are all "necessary" work. Building Uber or Twitter or Facebook? I'd lean more towards "unnecessary".

HackerNews is so close to arriving at the conclusion that most jobs (including their own prized "skilled" engineering) are worthless outside of capital accumulation. :)

[dahfizz]

> And there exists unskilled necessary work that armies of skilled workers can not replace.

I think this is false. Unskilled work is easy to teach and learn, by definition. All you need is an "army" and the unskilled work can be easily fulfilled.

[ionised]

I'm thinking you haven't done much 'unskilled labour'.

[Avshalom]

Well then it'd be an army of unskilled labor wouldn't it.

[Frondo]

Much, if not most, of "unskilled" work also has a lot of hidden complexity that means your productivity starts off slow and improves over time.

There's a reason capitalists have gotten us to think of some work as "unskilled," and that's so they can pay those people far less than they should be, and no one raises a stink about it.

The farm worker is an obvious example of "unskilled" labor, but if you watch a video of what these people do minute by minute, hour after hour, for the entire harvest, they are absolutely being underpaid by criminal amounts.

Yet, because we've been convinced it's "unskilled" labor, hardly anyone cares.

[pm90]

This is a very good comment.

Some people like to do more repeatable tasks while others like to do more creative tasks and others don't want to do any tasks at all. We are told that one is better or more required than the other. If we can make a society where people can do what they want to while continuing to have a decent life (whatever "decent" means), its all good.

[petra]

Value, for people, isn't necessarily dependent on scarcity.

A good hamburger is valueable, to me. And this doesn't change depending on how hard or how easy it was to make that meal.

[ionised]

If you're talking about software development, it's not hard to learn.

You can teach someone unskilled to be a developer in around 6-12 months. Within a year or two they will be working unsupervised to a professional level.

You don't need university for it. You don't need a degree. Anyone can learn it. It's not magic, it just takes time.

[spaced-out]

>forgetting about the people building your stuff, growing your food, extracting your oil (and killing the planet in the process), moving your stuff around, nursing people, building your house, installing your AC, shipping your amazon packages,

What do you mean "forgetting"? I pay those people for their services out of the money I earn. They're not doing all those things out of the goodness of their hearts, they working for the same reason I'm working, for a paycheck.

>and all the other ultra-necessary jobs (that are usually underpaid)

Their pay, just like my pay, is set by the market. If you don't think that's fair, your issue is with capitalism. I'm actually open to the idea of moving away from capitalism, but very few people, especially in the US, are, and I have no expectation that will change in my lifetime.

[hurryskurry]

I would say, to be pedantic, that your pay isn't set by the market "really," because of market distortions of all kinds.

Like doctors are highly paid for a number of reasons one of which is cause the APA restricts the number of doctors that can be trained, but also because of the nature of the finance of healthcare in America, and the cost of training doctors. None of those is determined purely based on the market really.

[spaced-out]

A distorted market is still a market. Considering there has never in history been a market completely free of distortion due to authority figures, I don't see the distinction you're making.

[thatfrenchguy]

By forgetting I meant forgetting their contribution to society (and the value they create).

There is a lot to say about pay to show that wages are not a real market as well :-)

[spaced-out]

A distorted market is still a market. Considering there has never in history been a market completely free of distortion due to authority figures, I don't see the distinction you're making.

[agent008t]

> Their pay, just like my pay, is set by the market. If you don't think that's fair, your issue is with capitalism. I'm actually open to the idea of moving away from capitalism, but very few people, especially in the US, are, and I have no expectation that will change in my lifetime.

No, the pay of people that you pay is set by you, not by capitalism. If you think some people that provide you services deserve more pay, what is stopping you from paying them extra?

[spaced-out]

That is a good point, however, I generally don't know what percent of what I'm paying is going to the employee who's providing the service to me, so I usually can't make that determination.

[pojzon]

Unfortunately with how the world works it requires some level of slave-like population to operate.

Noone really likes to talk about that because that hits our morality itch, but thats how it is. Without slavery-like labour, our society would collapse.

[_khau]

You mean capitalism would collapse.

Society would continue on in another form.

[kjsbfkjbf]

Yes! I wish people would take a better look at history and recognize that _throughout_ history we've had the ruling class make claims about the structure and survival of society and invariably those claims require the status quo of oppressed people.

Shorter work days and society will collapse. No slavery and society will collapse. Providing worker's rights and society will collapse. We find a way to survive because... the majority of people _are_ workers.

The only thing that collapses when we get rid of a slave population is the capitalist's free lunch.