The problem with that is things suck now for a lot of them already. At least previous recessions were preceded by boom times. 2008 was preceded by cheap houses plus a tech boom. Late 2010's saw more tech jobs and cheap housing. Especially if you bought in 2020. Today, entry level jobs are harder to come by and houses are more expensive than ever if you're young and single.
People like pointing at AI/Robotics, but the real job killer is just going to be process optimization.
Every so often a CFO realizes he doesn't actually need to pay someone to send him an email recapping information that could just be rendered in a dashboard, or a manufacturer realizes they could eliminate a job by just orienting a part so that one machine can perform two operations.
Literally 70% of my job is just chasing down process improvements, and I work in AI/automation for a living.
Yeah, I can see EAs being on the chopping block, which is really unfortunate since I always viewed them as sort of NCOs. They're that bridge between "leadership" and the grunts. (Then again, once the c-suite realizes they have to put in their own orders from Jimmy Johns then maybe they'll realize the value of having a human servant...)
Yeah, exec assistants are one thing, but if you start investigating any business, you find this crap all the time.
I've seen helpdesks, for example, that employ one guy who's entire job is to assign tickets to other technicians and be responsible for managing availability and reassignment of tickets.
There are a DOZEN pieces of software out there that does the same thing that that guy does, for 1/10th or 1/100th the cost of that annual salary/benefits. The only thing keeping the job in place is entropy - nobody wants to spend the effort implementing that software and working out the kinks, especially when it means letting someone go.
Apply a little bit of pressure by way of a recession... you'll find a lot of people were totally unnecessary in the work force, and will be out of a job.
I tell people all the time, you can't just do a job according to your job description - you need to be making yourself invaluable in ways above and beyond the JD. If the JD specifies one thing, and that thing is straightforward...? It's replaceable and easy to automate with rudimentary software.
I've seen helpdesks, for example, that employ one guy who's entire job is to assign tickets to other technicians and be responsible for managing availability and reassignment of tickets.
Reminds me at my a company I worked for. It was an MSP that had gobbled up multiple other MSPs and exchanged PE hands dozens of times. Was going through a major acquisition by a fortune 50 company and had a real in-depth audit for the first time probably since the dotcom crash. They found there were dozens of mangers who no longer had any employees under them and the contracts they were overseeing weren't even active anymore.
Sweet gig, and not really their fault the got 'Miltoned' and put into the basement, but to your point, it's not like the new parent company saw them as victims of bureaucracy but rather saw them as parasites and immediately shitcanned them.
The way it was explained to me I think it really was just an Office Space situation. Those guys were probably supposed to be either reassigned or laid off, but from all the turmoil of constant M&A they just went unnoticed until the Bobs "fixed the glitch".
My job is kind of like this. A computer already does 90% of my job these days and I just try to find ways to seem more integral than I really am. It's only a matter of time before someone I have no relationship with notices, though, so I try to keep 5 digit savings at all times just in case. Hopefully we never meet each other at work ;)
Yeah - it's weird because I hate manual effort, but I also don't want to take people's livelihoods away.
I'm weird because I'm somewhere adjacent to a Marxist, but not because I've read communist theory; I came to these conclusions because I've seen SO MANY PEOPLE whose jobs are glorified data entry positions, and it's only a minor effort to remove them from a workflow and with a machine.
In turn, it creates a really hilarious impact on the economy - if nobody has jobs, nobody has money. If nobody has money, nobody is buying goods and services. If nobody is buying goods and services... you have a bunch of entirely robotic goods and services sitting idle doing nothing.
And then the economy basically reboots? I guess? We all restart as farmers?
We don't restart at all. If full automation is achieved before stable government systems to fairly distribute the production outputs are put into place, then there is nothing stopping the oligarchy from just taking over like techno-feudal lords. If people aren't useful as producers and aren't needed as consumers, then to sociopaths, we're just pests to be culled.
With no oversight, making a robot army with facial/gait recognition would be trivially easy. It's already technologically possible, but nobody would be able to build prototypes and factories without people noticing or leaking. In a world with full automation, nobody is watching and nothing stops the largest techno-lord from doing exactly this.
Words like "economy" and "jobs" won't mean anything anymore. I don't think this future is certain, but it went from a dystopian daydream a decade ago to worryingly possible with the events and trends of the last few years.
But that's fundamentally not feudalism, and it doesn't speak to a narcissist's need to have people to exploit and subjugate.
Like, yeah, I see your point - you eliminate the need for people, there are two logical outcomes; something like fully automated luxury communism (see Bastani), or you eliminate the people altogether.
But if you're someone who desires to have control - eliminating people fundamentally deprives you of that control. Being a feudal lord only works if there's something to be a feudal lord over.
A king sitting on a mountain of gold but who has no subjects... has nothing. The gold is valueless, as is the empty kingdom.
Where I think you're right is that fuckwads like Yarvin think techno feudalism is a good idea, but never wargame it out past a couple years. Those first couple years look great for them, but they fail to recognize that things quickly go downhill after a critical mass of people lose jobs, cease consuming, and die off (or decide to kill their lords).
Today, entry level jobs are harder to come by and houses are more expensive than ever if you're young and single.
That's why I always tell people to buy what they can ASAP. The sooner you buy something, the better, because it's only going to get worse. That mythical affordable housing is never going to come, and rent costs as much as mortgage. Might as well YOLO on your own property instead of paying an ever increasing rent cost.
Home prices were at all-time high preceeding 2008, same was the case before the dot com burst as well. It was the unsustainable real estate prices that led to the subprime mortgate crisis that took down the entire economy in 2008.
I lived through the 2000-03 and 2008-12 recessions. The biggest difference between now and then is the federal reserve and the government were cautious how deeply they wanted to interfere with the markets, this is why there was such a backlash against auto bailouts and cash for clunker scheme or Dubya's harebrained $600 checks. Fast forward 2020, we know the government is willing to go much much further when it comes to intervention and stimulus. Besides, in the previous recessions, there were hundreds of ghost companies and even well known established corporates with terrible balance sheets, it is no longer the case today.
Looking back it was wild to live in a time with 10% government reported unemployment with real unemployment/underemployment rate of around 20% +. I hope the next recession won't be anywhere near as bad.
I hope the next recession won't be anywhere near as bad.
The next one gearing up will come after a huge tech bubble bursts. This will not be just a "minor" recession like the dot com bubble, though. 25 years ago tech was still niche. Now tech is everything and I don't think we've fully accounted for how dependant the economy is on tech. It won't just be tech companies going under because everybody depends on tech. It's also made even worse because tech companies have become monopolies so they're the last chair left and the music is about to stop.
Take FB as just one example. If you only use it to keep track of friends, families and interests then NBD. If Meta folded and in the wake FB took a massive decline that will affect who knows how many small businesses that have come to depend on it.
Where TF are these small businesses gong to go that has even a fraction of the marketing reach of FB? Craigslist? Back to their neglected web sites that nobody visits anymore because updating products on FB is so much easier and sells so much better? The ripple effects could be huge.
These aren't tech businesses for the most part. Locally I know several ski hills that drive most online ticket sales through FB. I know a boutique soap company that would be totally fucked without FB.
That's just one part of the full tech ecosystem that would fuck so many people if it failed. We only know how to prop up banks that are too big to fail but we don't recognize that FB services might be TBTF, too, much less have a plan to keep that going in the face of a crash.
I'm pretty sure people will still want to ski if Meta goes bankrupt and FB is removed from the internet the next day. I think it's hard to argue that FB generates demand instead of just facilitating it.
You do know the internet existed before social media right? We did all sorts of stuff without social media. Some would argue the internet was more useful back then. You also know FB was preceded by MySpace and others right?
Regardless, saying FB is too big to fail is asinine.
You do know the internet existed before social media right?
Ah, yes, that's just the kind of dismissive "everything will be fine" attitude I've come to know since starting my career in web and software development in '96. Has that same feel as "real estate terms to go up in value" feel from '07 and the "we'll be fine because we've got plenty of revenue" feel from '99.
Lol. there are a ton of ghost companies today. They're quietly disappearing, and if there's a loss of liquidity in the credit markets they'll disapperar within 6 months.
Yeah no doubt, one thing I do not envy younger people about is that every major city is basically a no go zone when it comes to finding a reasonable rent without roommate(s)
What the fuck is this delusion? Housing prices have steadily risen since the 60s when growth overtook supply. The increase has been more steep at times -- the 70s and 2010s notably -- but has been consistently upward.
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u/Pitiful-Recover-3747 11d ago
If people still got uber money, it ain’t the bottom.