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Comment Re:Why older workers aren't worried (Score 1) 26

My guess is that older workers aren't too worried because we have enough experience to recognize the hype when we see it, and the experience to see how badly it does overall (it helps in some small instances, but overall not that much). I don't see 2 years as bringing enough difference to matter unless the AI bros come up with a new way.

This. AI risk to workers isn't growing, it has already peaked, because we're going over the top of the hype cycle already, and the hype is soaring above reality. The next AI winter is coming.

Comment Re: Spreading misinformation (Score 2) 119

Also a private platform's definition of misinformation can not only be imperfect, but they're legally within their rights to remove far more than just misinformation, and could remove content by whatever criteria they please. There are audiophile forums that will remove documentation of attempts at scientific testing. Truth Social will ban you for criticizing Trump or saying things he doesn't like. TwitX will ban you for saying things Musk doesn't like (often things that could pose a risk to his vested interests). There are flat earth forums that will ban you for saying the Earth is round. The only alternative to any of this is the forced speech approach of forcing private parties to host content against their will.

Comment Re:The Rush? (Score 1) 51

From what little recent data is available, the COVID19 variants circulating now are at least in the same ballpark of mortality rate as all those that have been circulating since early 2022, although data from India suggests that variants circulating this year may have mortality closer to the early-pandemic peaks:

https://ourworldindata.org/mor...

https://ourworldindata.org/cov...

Also it's significantly higher than the mortality rate of the flu, so if your vaccination choices are based on the danger of contracting the disease, that would make you a dumbass without a logical brain:

https://www.medpagetoday.com/i...

Comment Re:The Rush? (Score 1) 51

There's no way you've had covid. It's not "the sniffles," it's the worst goddamn flu you can imagine. I've also had dengue fever and it felt pretty similar to that. And as someone who's lost some friends and family to it, including an uncle who didn't get vaccinated, fuck you. I hope you get long covid.

Comment Re:Having a laugh? (Score 1) 52

You might want to read up on how economists talk about supply/demand graphs. They have to offer me enough to make taking the job be better than my next best alternative (which might be sitting on my duff flaming on the Interwebs). If I have no skills and few opportunities, yes, that's going to be starvation wages. But the vast majority of people do have options so any employer has to out-bid the next best choice.

Without a minimum wage the floor drops out of your next-best-choices and large chunks of the population end up on starvation wages. This isn't a theoretical issue you need to estimate with graphs, it can be seen in practice in jurisdictions with extremely low or nonexistent minimum wages, or even in first-world gig work.

I do not believe that is the case. Standards of living consistently rose in England throughout the industrial revolution. I just read a book by Don Boudreaux and Phil Gramm which has an entire chapter documenting this.

That makes sense, you don't believe that's the case because you just voluntarily and uncritically filled your head with a warm load of grifty bullshit "documented" by a couple of right-wing lobbyists. If you'd ever read a real history book focusing on workers' standards of living in that period, the way that the propaganda book you hopefully didn't pay for flew in the face of it would've set off some alarm bells. Here's something to get you started: https://www.crei.cat/wp-conten...

Did you live through the '70s? I did. Life is immeasurably better now for everyone but the homeless guy on the corner. The wage stagnation myth is just that created by twisting statistics (e.g. ignoring transfer payments).

Look at the median home price vs. median salary in the '70s vs. now and the homeless guy might look like the only person who hasn't been totally hosed. It's the same for education costs, two things conveniently left out of inflation measures. Accounting for transfer payments doesn't change the picture either:

https://equitablegrowth.org/sl...

Tell me about it. I got laid off from my cushy high-tech job and spent 13 months trying to land a new gig. I lost count of how many applications and interviews I went through. High tech and software job markets are in a world of hurt right now.

So you know, and at the same time think that most anyone who wants a job has one right now? How does that work?

I have no doubt working in a Nigerian nickel mine sucks ass. But just like other sweatshops going back to the aforementioned dark satanic mills, you have to ask, why are people working there? Because it beats the alternative. The long term answer is to make Nigeria and Haiti (to pick two examples) more productive so they generate wealth, not make hiring people so expensive the employers all leave. And that's my point: yes some regulation can help some people in the short run. If it makes hiring people too expensive relative to their output, the jobs will leave and everyone left behind will be worse off.

People were often forced into the earliest mills because the (once popular) alternative, farming the commons and telling business owners to fuck off with their hellhole factories, was conveniently taken away. The alternative that people are choosing work over is usually not a lower-paying job but the threat of homelessness and starvation often worsened by the very business interests they're forced to work for.

Productivity alone won't do anything for workers, both the industrial revolution and the last half-century in the first world are proof of that. If you're worried about employers leaving for cheaper labor costs, good luck competing with every Chinese political prisoner.

Comment Re:Having a laugh? (Score 2) 52

That is not literally true, not in labor markets and not in virtually every other market. If employers could offer anything they wanted, they'd pay me $1/year. They do not, they offer much more than the minimum wage for something like 97% of hourly jobs. Salaried jobs have no minimum wage and yet we don't get poverty wages. Clearly the same supply/demand curves which control other markets are at play here.

They offer you more than minimum wage because of the existence of a minimum wage. Otherwise they'd offer you not $1 per year, but just enough to afford to return to work when added to whatever welfare they can squeeze out of government and society. Minimum wages do apply to salaried jobs as well. Check out what you can earn in countries that don't have them, and then thank a union. Or throw off the shackles of the minimum wage and get into a type of work that really doesn't have one, gig work, and let us know how that supply and demand thing works out for you.

That's been the story of industrialization since the 1750s. Every productivity enhancement has been decried by people claiming it will lead to waves of unemployment and dark satanic mills. And yet the numbers do not support this fear. Standards of living and wages have been more or less monotonically increasing for two centuries and for the most part, anyone who wants a job has one. It's almost as if improving productivity leads to rising wages and economic growth.

The Luddites died in grinding poverty with all indications being that they were correct, it was their grandchildren who got the new jobs that came along as a result of the automation that ruined their grandparents. Wages and standards of living have been stagnant for a half-century at this point. There are people frantically applying to hundreds of jobs they're well-qualified for and not getting so much as an interview. Over 100 people are applying to each job opening these days, and likewise it takes over 100 job applications for an average applicant to get a job (both rather conservative estimates). If improving productivity led to rising wages, why are we not earning 40% more for the same number of hours people worked in the '70s? Why has going from mainframes and dumb terminals to present-day computing added approximately jack shit to ~90% of workers' pay?

Gee, my current employer is hiring fast and furious, as are many others.

Good for you! Especially if you work in tech. Sucks for the people who aren't part of your anecdote though.

This has been argued back and forth for at least a century. We're not going to come to an agreement here. All I'll conclude with is that some regulation may have value and there's also a reasonable chance regulation is harmful.

Look up the history of the ones you don't think may have value and you'll learn about the workers who fought and/or died to get the laws in place that keep you from experiencing the same thing, which you now take for granted. Or if that's not enough, maybe you should experience a 996 work schedule in China, work alongside a nonexistent/laughably low minimum wage in a Caribbean country, or do some dangerous work in a Nigerian e-waste mine to get a taste of what happens without all those regulations.

Comment Re:Teenage gangs and gateway crime? (Score 1) 56

I get so tired of hearing the school systems stress technology so much, because they are inevitably 20-30 years behind in their understanding of how to best utilize it, leave alone secure their systems. I always fantasized about teaching a computer class that didn't even touch a keyboard for the first half year...

I recall Windows 3.51 was quite secure for the time. But once they merged the DOS branch of the OS with the NT branch, things got a lot worse for several years.

It's good to hear AWS has never been hacked because just about every other company with data has been. A lot of people rely on AWS, and what you are saying is accurate and if they are running their systems correctly, there can be a reasonable expectation that they will be secure. That's nice to know.

Comment Re:Teenage gangs and gateway crime? (Score 2) 56

> What I learned is that teachers have literally no time for anything.

The school system in the U.S. is notorious for this. Teachers get so much stuff dumped on them, much of which has little to do with actual teaching. It's a truly thankless job that cannot be fixed by dumping more money into the system. It's fundamentally broken. There are plenty of good teachers, but their effectiveness becomes more and more fettered every year.

Source: father of 4, and husband to a school teacher

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