<story><title>Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know</title><url>https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/02/19/technological-unemployment-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Chris_Jay</author><text>Funnily enough, my own (long term) project is aimed at addressing the problem you&amp;#x27;re pointing out. Given the possibility of remote work, there&amp;#x27;s no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sites.google.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;0B9EHSqWgFV7LNUxEVXk0S0ZiMlk&amp;#x2F;preview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sites.google.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;0B...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>nwah1</author><text>Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor.&lt;p&gt;Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can&amp;#x27;t people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be?&lt;p&gt;The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming became illegal, and not because they all forgot how to farm. It is simply that farm labor couldn&amp;#x27;t pay the rent of land anymore.&lt;p&gt;The mechanisms by which the unimproved value of land rises and falls is the key mechanism that we must understand in order to understand wages and the rate of unemployment. Real wages are not a number. They are the lifestyle you can obtain. They are what is left over after you&amp;#x27;ve paid your taxes and your right to exist in a particular location. (Increasingly, healthcare and education are prerequisites to getting by in the same way.)&lt;p&gt;Simply giving people money, irrespective of the financing method, as most advocates of the &amp;quot;technological unemployment&amp;quot; thesis argue for, ignores the nature of rent. When there&amp;#x27;s no rent-free land, rents rise and fall based on the ability to pay. People getting free money have more ability to pay, and landlords will definitely notice.&lt;p&gt;Thing about land is they aren&amp;#x27;t making it anymore. Higher demand doesn&amp;#x27;t just stimulate supply. The supply curve is vertical.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mncharity</author><text>&amp;gt; Given the possibility of remote work, [...] urban centers.&lt;p&gt;Even HN doesn&amp;#x27;t yet seem to be discussing the impact of coming VR&amp;#x2F;AR on people&amp;#x27;s geographic distribution.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s still too low profile?  Eye tracking; facial expression tracking (researchy); foveated rendering reducing GPU requirements; inexpensive laptops with discrete GPUs; HMDs with monitor-like angular resolution; inexpensive finger tracking (hopefully)... perhaps it&amp;#x27;s easy to not notice these if you&amp;#x27;re not tracking the tech?  Easy to think &amp;quot;remote work, so video conferencing, so limited impact - far better to do open plan offices&amp;quot;?  Instead of &amp;quot;the practice and spatial constraints of software development will change dramatically over the next half decade&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know</title><url>https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/02/19/technological-unemployment-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Chris_Jay</author><text>Funnily enough, my own (long term) project is aimed at addressing the problem you&amp;#x27;re pointing out. Given the possibility of remote work, there&amp;#x27;s no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sites.google.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;0B9EHSqWgFV7LNUxEVXk0S0ZiMlk&amp;#x2F;preview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sites.google.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;0B...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>nwah1</author><text>Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor.&lt;p&gt;Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can&amp;#x27;t people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be?&lt;p&gt;The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming became illegal, and not because they all forgot how to farm. It is simply that farm labor couldn&amp;#x27;t pay the rent of land anymore.&lt;p&gt;The mechanisms by which the unimproved value of land rises and falls is the key mechanism that we must understand in order to understand wages and the rate of unemployment. Real wages are not a number. They are the lifestyle you can obtain. They are what is left over after you&amp;#x27;ve paid your taxes and your right to exist in a particular location. (Increasingly, healthcare and education are prerequisites to getting by in the same way.)&lt;p&gt;Simply giving people money, irrespective of the financing method, as most advocates of the &amp;quot;technological unemployment&amp;quot; thesis argue for, ignores the nature of rent. When there&amp;#x27;s no rent-free land, rents rise and fall based on the ability to pay. People getting free money have more ability to pay, and landlords will definitely notice.&lt;p&gt;Thing about land is they aren&amp;#x27;t making it anymore. Higher demand doesn&amp;#x27;t just stimulate supply. The supply curve is vertical.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragonwriter</author><text>&amp;gt; there&amp;#x27;s no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s actually a very fundamental reason why land perceived as being worth living in &lt;i&gt;becomes&lt;/i&gt; an urban center, and remote work doesn&amp;#x27;t change most of the climate, water, resource distribution, etc., reasons why particular sites are much more attractive for human habitation.</text></comment>