Bankers Publicly Embracing Robots Are Privately Fearing Job Cuts (bloomberg.com) 183
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Within the upper echelons of many financial firms, there's a lot of soul searching as executives prepare to roll out a new generation of technology. Publicly, they're upbeat, predicting machines will perform almost all repetitive tasks, freeing humans to focus on more valuable pursuits. Privately, many confide to peers, consultants and sometimes journalists that they're worried about what will happen to their staffs -- and what to tell them. There's also uncertainty. Maybe it's all overblown, executives say, because the tech will be hard to implement and humans will find new roles. Or perhaps it's the beginning of the end for legions of professionals in one of the world's most lucrative fields. Can jobs held by office-dwelling millionaires disappear like those on factory floors? The result, is that employees aren't getting a clear message on what's to come.
For a rosy scenario, look to McKinsey & Co. In July, the consulting firm published a report estimating machines are ready to assume roughly a third of the work now performed by banks' rank and file. The authors framed it as positive: People will have more time to tend to clients, conduct research or brainstorm ideas. So far, it noted, firms at the forefront aren't slashing jobs. At JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the most tech-savvy banks, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon predicted in June that his workforce will more likely grow than shrink over the next 20 years. Technology may displace workers, he's said, but it also creates opportunities. Yet in interviews, about a dozen Wall Street executives and consultants responsible for deploying technologies -- and steeped in their capabilities -- were more bearish on humans. Machines will take over task after task, they said, and banks simply won't need nearly as many people.
For a rosy scenario, look to McKinsey & Co. In July, the consulting firm published a report estimating machines are ready to assume roughly a third of the work now performed by banks' rank and file. The authors framed it as positive: People will have more time to tend to clients, conduct research or brainstorm ideas. So far, it noted, firms at the forefront aren't slashing jobs. At JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the most tech-savvy banks, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon predicted in June that his workforce will more likely grow than shrink over the next 20 years. Technology may displace workers, he's said, but it also creates opportunities. Yet in interviews, about a dozen Wall Street executives and consultants responsible for deploying technologies -- and steeped in their capabilities -- were more bearish on humans. Machines will take over task after task, they said, and banks simply won't need nearly as many people.
We all know this is comming (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm thinking we're in for a second industrial revolution. And that includes the 80 years of rampant unemployment, poverty, social unrest and war they don't talk about in grade school.
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That second industrial revolution will NOT end, it will go full throttle to a dystopia, sprinkled with mass genocide.
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The OP is unfamiliar with the various periodizations of subsequent "industrial revolutions" offered by recent historians. Only the First Industrial Revolution (beginning circa 1770) is universal and unambiguous in the historical literature.
The term "Second Industrial Revolution" as you characterize it was only offered in a standardized form in 1972 by David Landes in Prometheus Unbound and is not universally accepted among historians even today.
There is clearly a third phase of industrialization in the Twen
Re: We all know this is comming (Score:4, Interesting)
If enough land is held by the working class, they can survive. If there isn't enough land usable by the working class, that could be a real problem.
Pfft... Nobody can predict the outcome, really.... (Score:2)
"It all depends on who owns the land..." ??!
How so, when the powers that be could simply declare control over the land and seize it from private hands, just like they seize drug money today in a bust?
The *real* trick is not to let government succeed in dividing the people against themselves, IMO. Right now, we've got all of this division -- from movements like BLM creating lines based on race to people fighting the "pro gun control" vs. "freedom to own and carry guns" debate, to division based on gay/LGBT
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I think more like "the trick is to not let the oligarchs use the government to divide the people." But yeah, I think you're right.
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You write as if this were entirely about your hyperventilated political polarization about *every issue* that has to be seen through an American lens.
The issue is global, just FYI. Your nutball belief that BLM is tearing apart a country of 350 million people, (half of whom vote and 60% of whom don't watch enough news to recall what BLM is about) will have no effect on whether a lot of really good banking jobs will disappear in the City of London or on the Tokyo Exchange. It will have less effect on wheth
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Like, who the hell WANTS to own part of Utah or Nevada?
I do. I want to own Nevada because once The Big One hit California, that area will be beachfront property. I just need a way to set off the San Andreas fault.
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They could... but they won't. They'll concentrate on fucking each other out of the scraps available to them.
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and I'm guessing we're not going to do a damn thing about it because a good chunk of us can't bear the thought of somebody having a nice things in life and not working relentlessly to get it.
Nobody is ever going to get nice things without working hard to earn them. At best, they'd have their basic needs met and probably not feel much fulfillment in knowing their existence amounts to being a burden on society.
Charles Dickens pretty much nailed the conservative mentality towards this in A Christmas Carol. If those who are unable to work can't make use of the existing social services already in place, then they may as well die to eliminate their burden on society. Notwithstanding the negative s
Re: We all know this is comming (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a few issues with your logic.
I agree that people should want to be productive members of society. However, people aren't paid according to the contribution they make to society, but rather how the market values the goods and services they produce. For example, a parent who raises a child well to be a productive member of society has made a valuable contribution to society in the process, yet we don't pay them for their contribution. Although the United States provides a tax deduction for dependents (not sure what other countries do), this does not measure the effort and skill to raise the child well.
Although it has changed in recent decades, stay-at-home mothers were once very common. Those women didn't get paid for goods and services unless they ran a business out of their house. However, they did contribute to society by raising their children well. I also believe our society was better off when parents, both mothers and fathers, spent more time around their children and less time working. Unfortunately, they don't get paid for that contribution to society.
There are plenty of other examples of the differences in how people are paid versus their contributions to society. Furthermore, there are plenty of jobs that are essential for society to function, but do not pay well. For example, the building I work in is cleaned by janitors at night who aren't paid particularly well for their services. The low pay is because the job doesn't require skilled labor and it isn't difficult to find a replacement. The market doesn't place great value on the services they provide, yet they are necessary for the workplace to function. If the scientists working in the building during the day had to take time away to clean the building, they would be less productive. The market doesn't account for that in valuing the work done by the janitors. That's why low income workers get tax credits, because they provide essential services and we need to ensure that they have enough to live on. We need to ensure that someone is providing those services.
I'm also not convinced that providing a universal basic income would make society less productive. I'd love to innovate and have the opportunity to start my own business. However, I depend on the monthly pay from my current job, and the risk is too great to leave that job and focus on my business. A universal basic income might remove that risk and give me the freedom to focus on innovating and starting my own business rather than being tied to my current job. I might be able to make a greater contribution to society if I could do that, but right now, it isn't a viable option. There are many other potential innovators and entrepreneurs who don't take that risk because it's too great. Sure, there are people who would mooch of of a universal basic income. However, it is entirely possible that there would be a net benefit to society because of the freedom to take risks as entrepreneurs and innovators knowing that they're basic needs would be met through a universal basic income and universal health care.
Does it matter if some people get to mooch off of the system if society, overall, is advanced? I suspect that a universal basic income and ensuring that everyone's basic needs are met would actually lead to a more productive society than we have now.
Re: We all know this is comming (Score:5, Insightful)
Entirely agreed. One of the reasons we're trialing basic income here in Finland (not for everyone at the moment, it's an experiment where a group of people on unemployment benefits have been transitioned to basic income) is that the current models of social security are outdated and no longer in tune with the way the job market functions. Back in the 60s-80s when the Finnish welfare system was created (much of it being copied from our neighbors to the west in Sweden who, having been spared the 2nd world war had had a head start in building theirs) there was still an idea going on that full-time employment is the end goal of all healthy people. This meant that the unemployment benefit was to be used as a mechanism in between full-time contracts or for people who've just graduated.
However, as we know throughout the west outsourcing and especially automation have already changed the landscape drastically. Companies hire less and less people on permanent contracts and instead favor a gig-based economy. This creates a lot of issues with the current old fashioned social security system because if someone's unemployed and they take up say a 2 week contract or a part time job, this immediately either entirely cancels or massively shrinks their unemployment benefit. This leads to a situation where people who're unemployed do not want to pick up such job-offerings because it affects the stability of their income. If your benefit is cancelled because you got work for a few weeks, you have to re-apply for it after that which takes time and may make a significant dent in your income. The same goes for micro-businesses and self-employment. Even if someone has a skillset that they could use to make some money on the side while looking for a job, many people choose not to do so because there's a real risk of the officials saying: 'aha, I see you've been tutoring students and being paid for it, that makes you an entrepreneur and we're now going to slash or revoke your benefit'. So it's pretty much an 'all or nothing' scenario right now where the system either expects you to be unemployed or working, there's no 'in between' mode and that's becoming more and more of an issue.
Unfortunately our current government is center-right and blind to the current realities so they're working their assess off to make the situation worse, not better (the basic income trial mentioned earlier was created prior to the current government). We have a couple hundred thousand more unemployed people than open job offerings at this point (the '08 crisis combined with the implosion of Nokia created a huge crater on the job market form which we've not fully recovered, people don't realize this but Nokia was responsible for almost a third of all of our exports), but the government, despite being aware of this, brazenly and openly lies and claims that the problem is that unemployed people arr all 'lazy' and just wanna mooch off the system. So using the 'lazy moochers' as a lame excuse they're creating all kinds of bureaucratic contraptions creating more and more pitfalls for the unemployed people to go through for them to maintain their benefit, such as increasing the amount of paperwork and documentation that has to be provided lest the benefit be cut, and even in some cases forcing people to take what amount to unpaid internships or face a slash in their income (this is actually an illegal thing to do, but they do not seem to care anymore, it also skews the job market even further by injecting free labor into the system which reduces the number of paid positions). This is especially idiotic because the right to social security is in the constitution here, so even if a person falls out of the unemployment benefit, the state is still obligated by law to make s
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I agree with most of your comment, but there is one place I disagree: UBI
For a long time I was on the UBI wagon, believing that it would solve a lot of the problems we're facing with the mismatch between skills in the labor force and jobs available. But moving from a somewhat rough neighborhood to a somewhat well-off suburb has changed my opinion.
The largest amount of trouble in both neighborhoods is caused by people with nothing to do. In the rough neighborhood it was the teens and young a
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I think we can't have that revolution as long as we all have to work desperately to pay our ever-increasing bills. We have to get off the treadmill before we can take a breath and then start to figure out our next steps.
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You and I may have useful things to do and interests to pursue. But a lot of people don't have any such inclination.
If UBI becomes reality, I'm betting we're going to see a whole lot more alcohol consumption and drug use.
Somebody has to work to produce all those things people on UBI are going to consume. Why should I have to work and pay for other people's good time?
Re: We all know this is comming (Score:5, Interesting)
You shouldn't, and you won't. Pretty much no-one will. Most production will be entirely automated (in the west) within the next half a century or so. That's precisely the point: we will have immense production capabilities that require next to no workforce, but without UBI or an equivalent system, there will be no-one to buy any of those things which will lead to major issues.
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Someone has to build those automated systems. Someone has to maintain them. Someone has to upgrade them. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
What you're describing is productivity improvements to the Nth degree such that only a small handful of people are producing everything that the economy has to offer.
Everyone outside of that small handful of productive people will by definition have NOTHING to offer in return to reward the productive few for their effort.
As a member of the productive class, I have n
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If the number of people actually producing goods collapses to a small handful, it will become increasingly obvious who's dollar is backed by production and who's dollar is just worthless UBI.
Really? How will you tell? Will you just assume that because the majority of dollars are UBI, they're all worthless? And do you refuse Bill Gates' dollars today? He's not doing anything to get them anymore. Hasn't in years. Are his dollars worthless?
As a member of the productive class, I have no motivation to accept UBI dollars for my produce. The only people that can legitimately trade with me are other producers -- they are the only people that produce anything of value to offer in return for my productive efforts.
Right. So today, you only accept dollars from farmers, miners, and lumberjacks, right? Somehow I doubt it. You're probably just a Libertarian (big L) jackass with an inflated notion of the wondrous "value" of his own productivity. I've got news for you
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Someone has to build those automated systems. Someone has to maintain them. Someone has to upgrade them. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
So how will people incapable of acquiring the skills to fill these kinds of advanced positions be employed?
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Because not working and just consuming drugs or drinking a lot really isn't a "good time"? And the people likely to be willing to just live at the lowest level available to be able to indulge their drug addictions are probably already doing that... only instead of providing them with the basic comforts via UBI, you are quite possibly funding their stay in the
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UBI isn't designed to give people money to spend doing what they enjoy. It's designed to provide a basic income which allows us to do away with many different programs, such as welfare, unemployment, food stamps, social security, etc. It's not designed to do anything more than provide enough to live on. If you like a free hobby like walks in the park and writing poetry, then UBI might work. But if a hobby costs any amount of real money, you're not going to be able to afford it on UBI.
The 15-25 year
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I notice in both your examples (poor neighborhood vs. well-off) it was the teens/young adults that were the problem. Perhaps the problems you see with idleness are not caused by idleness at all, perhaps they are just a function of immaturity. I would not be lighting stuff on fire or blowing up mailboxes even if I had no job, because I am a reasonable person with an appropriate level of maturity. There is a huge cohort of people who don't have jobs (we call them "retired") and there isn't a huge problem w
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Very good and informative comment. Thanks for taking the time to contribute.
Re: We all know this is comming (Score:4, Informative)
And instead, our productivity went up. We had more time to do more work. It is not a great trade.
Re: We all know this is comming (Score:5, Informative)
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One thing that is invariably left out in discussions of the Social Security system, the absence of which is especially glaring when someone begins to talk up the "Ponzi Scheme" notion is the reality of productivity growth, which has been 1.7% a year since the First Industrial Revolution 250 years ago, and is at least 1% over recent years. Even with productivity growth this low the actual per capita wealth doubles over a 70 year period, so that SS payments are being made from a steadily wealthier society. It
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and I'm guessing we're not going to do a damn thing about it because a good chunk of us can't bear the thought of somebody having a nice things in life and not working relentlessly to get it. It comes down to an antiquated concept of 'fairness'.
What it comes down to is if you really want to pay twice the price for banking services just so that bankers can keep their highly paid jobs. I do banking in both Norway and Spain, and it is significantly more expensive in Spain, where they still have a lot of physical banks everywhere. The difference between the deposit rate and borrowing rate is about 1.5 percentage points in Norway and 2.5 percentage points in Spain. In addition the Spanish banks charges all kinds of fees for banking operations, while th
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The differences between countries in terms of how banks charge are quite varied and what you are observing is a difference in the structure of charges more than anything - in some countries banks effectively subsidise the "day-to-day" banking for individuals (in the UK to the point of it being completely free) out of other parts of the operations - usually these days by charging business customers much more for payments, account maintenance etc. There are differences in cost structure but those aren't reall
Re:We all know this is comming (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, people tend to take things they haven't worked for as granted and that goes both for technology and society. My dad was born before WW2, he remembers Norway as occupied by the Nazis. I can't appreciate our freedom the way he can, I've never lived it. And that means we sometimes lose perspective, like how a few deaths to terror is actually a lot better than the millions upon millions killed in the last great war. While I can read a history book I can't really grasp how it was to live before TV, but I do remember the time before cell phones and I understand the difference that makes far better. I'm not saying it's always so, but often those who have worked and sacrificed and suffered are under-appreciated by posterity, not by intent or malice but simply because we haven't truly felt the impact they made. For us it's "always" been so.
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Re: We all know this is comming (Score:2)
Tech is already replacing office staff. 30 years ago you needed 2-3 book keepers for a small but growing office. Now one person with quick books can do the job and still have time to do reporting too.
Accountants and finance people are being replaced with software that can sort, collate and show data in pretty colors for the executives.
Why do you need an assistant when the computer can do scheduling and call blocking for you? Cortana, Alexa?
Why would we do anything about it? The boring repetative busines
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Can you imagine if Google could index every legal journal so that lawyers could quickly search case history? That would double the number of lawyers able to practice law instead of bieng [sic] research assistants.
Westlaw and LexisNexis already are this Google for law of which you speak. For a couple decades now. Your prediction is not true so says history.
You have to try another analogy to make your point. I suggest something automotive in nature as this _is_ slashdot. :)
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Westlaw and lexisnexis have severe user restrictions or at least did 10 years ago.
Also older case law which might still be relevant were not in those searches. As records weren't digitized
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It comes down to an antiquated concept of 'fairness'. They worked and sacrificed and suffered to get what little they've got in life so why shouldn't everybody else?
With fuel to the fire added by people like you who genuinely seem to believe the exact opposite - that anybody who worked or sacrificed or suffered or who has anything right now didn't come by it honestly and deserves to burn in penance for their elitist past.
Wait and see (Score:2, Interesting)
Do the elite pay the underclass a basic income for nothing other than peaceful coexistence, or do they preemptively put down the inevitable rebellion against their intended genocide?
I could see it going either way, but I know which way I find more likely.
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At least the companies that are largely automated that have public stock available, those shares should be paying heavy dividends, executives can be paid in stock options almost pure
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Do the elite pay the underclass a basic income for nothing other than peaceful coexistence, or do they preemptively put down the inevitable rebellion against their intended genocide?
I could see it going either way, but I know which way I find more likely.
Good thing /. supports religion then!
'cause if everyone trashed religion and just loved lording their supposedly superior intelligence over everybody, it could turn out bad, huh?
Banks have been automating since the ATM (Score:2)
ATMs started coming out in the 1970s. People back them wondered what would become of all the teller jobs these machines would replace.
In the 90s it was automatic deposit of payroll that kept people from having to talk to a human at a bank.
Nowadays, it's been months since I set foot in a bank. I'd guess that's true for many slashdot readers. Still, the banking industry is employing more people, not less!
According to BLS [bls.gov], there are 8.4 million people employed in the US financial sector, and this is expected t
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there are 8.4 million people employed in the US financial sector, and this is expected to go up by half a million in the next 10 years.
Simple extrapolation. A bursting of an economic bubble, or simplification/reform of the tax code, could end many of those.
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Still, the banking industry is employing more people, not less!
This is known as Jevons Paradox [wikipedia.org], but it really isn't a paradox at all. If you owned a bank, or factory, and automation increased productivity so each worker produced twice as much profit, would you fire half of your workers, or would you hire more?
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Nationalize Banks (Score:2, Insightful)
In the US at least, banks are so deeply in bed with the government that they ought to just be nationalized. For the average person, they only use a bank to keep their money safe (insured by FDIC), process checks, get a car loan or mortgage, and maybe a certificate of deposit for people who like safe investments. Time-bomb mortgages were bought writ large by the government. When the banks were about to go under, the federal reserve handed them trillions of dollars. 'Quantitative easing' afterward involved gi
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EVERYBODY having an AI that can do this
Once everyone has the same AI, it will still come down to connection speed
People who can build the closest to the stock market server will beat people who cannot afford a direct channel or have a direct connection that is further away.
I don't think we have to worry about having too much equality in the foreseeable future.
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There is no such thing as an objectively-"correct" price for anything. There's no physical law which governs economics.
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> There is no such thing as an objectively-"correct" price for anything.
What we have instead is the market clearing price. Which no one can manipulate in a free market (per microeconomic definition, when certain conditions are met - perfect competition, perfect information, no externalities).
The price of something is the intersection of supply and demand. Individuals make value judgments subjectively. But the market clearing price in a free market is an objective outcome from these subjective valuations.
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> There is no such thing as an objectively-"correct" price for anything.
What we have instead is the market clearing price. Which no one can manipulate in a free market (per microeconomic definition, when certain conditions are met - perfect competition, perfect information, no externalities).
The price of something is the intersection of supply and demand. Individuals make value judgments subjectively. But the market clearing price in a free market is an objective outcome from these subjective valuations.
> There's no physical law which governs economics.
Indeed. Economics transcends physics in that the laws of physics could have been different (might be in alternative universes), but the results of free market microeconomics are in fact *mathematical* theorems.
These theorems apply whenever there are limited resources and agents must make mutually exclusive choices between them.
Except that there is no such thing as a free market in reality, and the mathematical theories in economics fall apart in the face of actual human behaviour.
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The much better algorithm is buy before it rises, sell before it drops. But that's even harder to stick to, since you need to be able to forecast the future.
However, my grandmother had an even better algorithm (from my perspective): Always Buy, Never Sell. And she kept that policy even through the great depression. Thanks, Grandma!
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Bye Bye Middle Class... (Score:4, Insightful)
"conduct research or brainstorm ideas"
Too many people doing this just creates chaos.
"workforce will more likely grow than shrink over the next 20 years"
Most people doing unrewarding, low-paid, make-work jobs precariously (since it'll be easy to replace anyone). Hire people or face big taxes.
"creates opportunities"
For a select few aided by automated systems.
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All infrastructure projects are very much labour intensive but I would hardly call it make work, to have the best roads, the best footpaths, the best public paths, the best railroad, the best highways, the best electrical grid, the best sewer system, the best fresh water systems, the best storm water systems, the best communications network, the best ports, the best airports and of course out into the future, the best space ports, the best star bases, the best Lunar colonies. When people can not see beyond
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... unless you're a plumber, electrician. I.e., any job that requires your physical presence and is not easy to automate.
I suspect even those could eventually be automated by changing the way we do buildings. Instead of having site-built homes that get renovated over time, homes might eventually be treated like cell phones. Build them in an automated factory, ship to site, and when they break or become obsolete remove them, recycle them, and replace them with a new factory-built module.
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And the executive's jobs? (Score:2)
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Speak for yourself. I make games to entertain all the people the other programmers have made idle.
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You mean this won't... (Score:4, Funny)
You mean this won't just give humans more time to do the important Wall Street banker things, like snorting coke off of hookers?!
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You mean this won't just give humans more time to do the important Wall Street banker things, like snorting coke off of hookers?!
To be fair, great inroads have already been made to automate the hookers. I'll leave the reader to find their own link. ;)
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Shoveling money around ... (Score:2)
... is pretty much pointless in a post-scarcity economy.
That many bank jobs will go is blatantly obvious. Most bankers I see today could be replaced by some shell scripts and a speech recongizer.
A post scarcity economy, if done well, will simply have the long awaited 15 hour workweek.
Point in case: the biggest job I have incoming is 2 days per week as a coach for agile work and Scrum. Not even a Scrum master but a coach for Scrum. Not coding and no Dev ops. And that job is enough for decent pay that others
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In two or three million years, when humans have a post-scarcity economy, we can worry about bankers.
Likely that't not their fear (Score:3, Interesting)
Their fear isn't what is going to happen when they have to fire their rank and file.
The real fear is what happens when the american public opens their eyes to this farce when they no longer can get any jobs and start rioting against the bankers and system
I like the comment about more time to "conduct research or brainstorm ideas" Yeah, on your own time, at home, while you're collecting unemployment and job searching.
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It will be blamed on the immigrants.
Aging Tyrannosaurus (Score:2)
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How often do you go to a bank, compared to before the Internet? The last time I went I needed to go because I opened an account and it was required they knew I was alive and present in person. At another bank I do everything online.
Most of the things that might need a human interaction can be done over the phone. The people on the phone can do more people AND are cheaper, even if their wage would be the same as a person that you visit.
And many of the things that need to be done over the phone can be automated. There are now still people who do not have a PC or do not know how to use one. They are latterly dying out. From guestimated experience it is people who are born before around 1955. Yes, there are many exceptions on both sides of that date.
There are several banks in Europe that are only online. No brick and mortar. I even have an account in a different country. (No, I am not rich enough to dodge taxes).
I don't think a person's use or non-use of brick and mortar bank services has much to do with their computer comfort level. I usually go the bank once a week, to withdraw cash from the drive-through ATM; it takes about a minute because I do it on my way to work in the morning. Two or three times a year I actually go into the bank, to exchange coins for currency; sometimes this can take as long as 15 minutes. These minor inconveniences are the by-products of preferring not to live an entirely cashless life,
At least 10% workforce reduction for one finance c (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work for a major regional finance company in their IT department, after almost three years there I finally made it down to one of the processing floors. What a disaster, something like 200 people on this floor, all overweight "lifers" with at least 18" deep of nick-knacks on their desk, they did... something? One lady I helped, every 10th check did not have the company logo on it. Her job was to print checks for brokers. Somehow the 20 programmers up on the IT floor hadn't gotten around to automating her job yet. The other 199 people on this floor had similarly mind-numbing jobs that were likely 2-10 lines of scripting away from being automated away. I suspect as these people get hit by busses and/or die of clogged arteries, their jobs will be automated. But 200 jobs is roughly 10% of that company, an entire floor of a skyscraper, poof, gone. They'll likely be out-competed by a much smaller company that can do the same services for a quarter of the cost and 6x the uptime before the last of those lifers retires.
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This is the biggest problem. It's not just the "lifers," it's what we're going to do with the pipeline of college-educated new graduates. I've mentioned this before, but colleges are graduating millions of students with a generic "management" degree or something similarly vague. The previous social contract was that large companies would take these new grads and find...something...for them to do. I see this a lot working in IT for large companies. If we have nothing to do for all these new grads, and all th
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>According to them, it was so crowded that they had to stagger start and end times to get people in and out of the buildings efficiently.
Ahh... FlexTime. That brings back memories.
It didn't take them long to figure out that this reduced efficiency because people weren't all on the same shift schedule. Don't forget, whatever the 'stagger' is gets doubled because not only does employee B show up an hour after employee A, but employee A leaves an hour before employee B. That's 25% of a standard work day w
Bye bye spreadsheet monkeys (Score:2)
If all your job amounts to is running numbers through spreadsheets you're toast. Bye bye data analysts (aka "Statisticians in drag") it's been good knowing you.
Shit sandwich (Score:2)
Wasn't there an article?? (Score:2)
Once the elite levels are affected, they worry (Score:5, Interesting)
I live near New York City. NYC, London and maybe Hong Kong are the investment banking capitals of the world, and there are billions floating around because of it. Banks don't worry when their rank and file employees don't have jobs anymore due to automation, but that changes a lot when we start talking about the elite ranks.
For those who don't know, an associate job at an investment bank is an extremely common congratulatory gift for graduating from Ivy League and other elite schools' MBA programs. It's a closed club because the jobs (for new grads with zero work experience) start at a crazy six-figure salary and have bonus potential going way beyond that. The banks work the associates to the bone doing what basically amounts to number crunching in Excel and preparing pitch books for potential investors. If you live through this without getting fired, you will never worry about money again in your life once you graduate to the management and director/partner ranks. These are guys in their late 20s who own several cars, a condo in Manhattan and a Hamptons beach mansion...the amount of money floating around investment banking is unimaginable to regular humans.
If the elite don't have a place to put their kids after they get out of MBA school that gives them the same standard of living they have, you can bet they'll be privately worried, but they also have to publicly cheer for the automation of work because it's great for their clients. I hope we figure out the right balance, because otherwise someone is going to suggest killing off anyone who doesn't get over 120 on an IQ test, and that's not going to end well.
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Check out the short staory "Manna" by Marshall Brain. It pretty much takes this scenario to it's endgame. It's a free online publication: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
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And We Have an Idiot For President (Score:2)
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That's because the poster is an ignorant shit who doesn't preview, or doesn't care that he announces his ignorance and shitty-ness to the entire world.
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What other value could someone have to society other than his ability to contribute? That there are entertainers of various sorts who make millions belies your implication that the value has to be a job in the conventional sense.
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simplification/retardification of education
Don't forget the contemptification of education, too. Djikstra observed that there was no Dutch translation for the English word "egghead" - a perjorative term for a smart person. Want to be internetally nuked from orbit? Say that you consider yourself a smart person on an internet forum. There's nobody more hated than "arrogant elitist snobs" in American culture, and as far as I can tell, that refers to anybody with any sort of education. Look how Slashdot reacts when somebody mentions computer scien
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Less then 5, more likely.
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Blockchain makes banks irrelevant
Sure, until someone finds a way to game the system and then everyone's fucked because it's decentralized. ex: ethereum
Re: You're joking (Score:2)
Agreed. They care about their dicks and worry about Weinstein-spillover and obscene bonuses for fjnorking the dumbass worker class.
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I'm pretty sure the "upper echelons of financial firms" don't give a rat's ass about their staff
Well, remember, you're only "upper echelon" anything if you have a lot of peons reporting to you. So in that respect, yes, they do.
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The mega-rich. This is a burgeoning segment.
I'm in personal finance, and I'll tell you something: These people spend like drunken sailors. It is its own economy. It won't be a healthy economy, but it's an economy.
It's not a big conspiracy. It's that capitalism pushes as many people as possible into positions where they have no choices. Their meager wages will be spent on services, like the factory towns which used to use chattle (?). People egot paid in this stuff, but it had to be used to just subsist. By
re: mega-rich (Score:2)
I'm not sure I totally agree with you here, though I follow.....
I certainly can't speak for what the true motives of the Koch brothers really are. But as a very general thing, I can still appreciate the fact that free market Capitalism is the best motivator we've ever had to get people to do work/accomplish things. Without it in place, the only alternatives we've seen in ANY other form of government are letting a few at the top dictate who is distributed what, completely subjectively. Thanks to the fact th
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I'd say the solution would be for them to push for the introduction of UBI, and at the same time (since everyone now has enough money to feed, house and clothe themselves) push for elimination of minimum wage.
Pros: Every citizen now has his or her basic needs met; Any job 'worth' doing becomes economically viable; Any citizen is free to start their own business without fear of not being able to eat, etc.; Unskilled immigration becomes considerably less attractive.
Cons: ...um... you're all going to have to f