The disruption of disruptive technology (Uber)

[metrologist]

I think the way to fix it is to phase out the medallion system and implement proper and reasonable  licensing, like as is with most other industries. Uber, the rest of the taxi industry, et al would pay the same licensing. The cities that collected the huge dollar sums for those medallions would need to pay that back to the debtors and creditors for the losses - and that would be paid out of the licensing fees during the phase out.

That's my wild idea...

[Rick Law]

I think the way to fix it is to phase out the medallion system and implement proper and reasonable  licensing, like as is with most other industries. Uber, the rest of the taxi industry, et al would pay the same licensing. The cities that collected the huge dollar sums for those medallions would need to pay that back to the debtors and creditors for the losses - and that would be paid out of the licensing fees during the phase out.

That's my wild idea...

I think your proposal would work.  The issue is beyond just taxi.

Disruptive technology by definition disrupts.  If the pain is severe such as this case, it would be wise for technology company to look ahead and/or work with others to see how the pain can be mitigated.  Otherwise, we are looking at pain/cost beyond the benefit the new tech could bring, or possibly draconian regulation that could kill the new tech right off.

[metrologist]

Well, MS is developing a system that will eliminate the need for cashiers. That would have a large impact on the employment rate, if it does create demand for a different skillset and job market - same with the imminent driver-less trucking industry. I kind of like the idea of being able to run into a supermarket full tilt, grab whatever I want, and just leave unimpeded by some kind of payment process. I really despise waiting in lines. Perhaps the catalyst that is driving that are political decisions, such as raising minimum wage making the fixed costs too high. SF wants to impose a 'robot' tax to help mitigate this kind of change, but then Cupertino wants to impose a $1500 per head tax on large companies such as Apple.

I don't think anyone would argue that change should not or will not come, but these kinds of wild politics have wild consequences. We'll see where the trade rift and potential boycotts end up.

[rdl]

For every low wage, low skill job where a human is replaced by a technology solution, that is one less person available as a customer.  I guess places like Walmart will still get by, while having few customers for their cheaply made crap, because of the fact that they have almost no employee overhead cost to cover.

[Kjelt]

For every low wage, low skill job where a human is replaced by a technology solution, that is one less person available as a customer.  I guess places like Walmart will still get by, while having few customers for their cheaply made crap, because of the fact that they have almost no employee overhead cost to cover.

Low skill jobs yes but it does generate high skill jobs.
Some economists predict the end of the employer-employee system.
Most theories are based on a base salary for everyone.
In theory you don't have to work anymore and can do something you like and are good at hopefully benefitting society in general. How that exactly has to function is a puzzle to me, the worst and dirtiest jobs will probably get paid the most, as it should be IMO.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Most theories are based on a base salary for everyone.

That experiment's been done already and doesn't work at all.

[rdl]

It would be like Star Trek.

The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

[Kjelt]

Most theories are based on a base salary for everyone.

That experiment's been done already and doesn't work at all.

No it has not on a grand scale. Few experiments with a couple of hundred persons....
Switzerland was the furtest AFAIK but thy voted against it so it never happened.

[Marco]

Most theories are based on a base salary for everyone.

I fear for society if this happens. Work ethic is in my opinion one of the strongest socialization forces there is.

We might be able to find an alternative if we consciously try, but we don't really do large scale social engineering (except pushing social justice, but that doesn't seem to stabilize society much). We just let the chips fall where they may and they may fall very poorly indeed.

[Kjelt]

I am less negative, work can give much more satisfaction IMO if it is voluntary.
Look at the million volunteers in our country.
The fact is that there are less paid jobs in the future while the population increases.

[Marco]

Volunteer work is much less assimilative than paid jobs though.

With both internalized nationalism and full employment disappearing you also get a really weird moral framework with regards to the third world. With full employment you can argue "we have enough jobs for our current population at our current minimum wage, but we can't accept all comers and maintain that, so maintain the borders". With nationalism maintaining borders is obviously easily argued for.

Without nationalism and with UBI there's just "we got ours, fuck off".

[Rick Law]

It would be like Star Trek.

The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

Even in Star Trek, "base salary" for all doesn't work so well either.  We need our job to reaffirm to ourselves our own self-worth.  We all have our ego that when our ego is crushed, so are our ability to exist.

Remember one Star Trek episode called Tapestry (season 6 e16) when Picard had his artificial heart blow up, and Q help Picard changed his pass and avoided the fight.   Poor Picard was not very happy working as a junior officer - he rather die than continue on. 

[Kjelt]

Volunteer work is much less assimilative than paid jobs though. ""........

I don't get your point, no matter what viewpoint you take you will always get  "us" and "them". In a company viewpoint that is the same, us western company against foreign company and viceversa. On a country viewpoint exactly the same , even continents with tradewars US vs China vs EU.

It has IMO nothing to do with changing the economic system. Capitalism is exploding and will disappear since the majority of people that are screwed over by the system will not accept/tolerate it anymore.
I myself am doing fine in the current system have a good job, house etc. and hope not to live and see that day, but it will come.

[Kjelt]

Even in Star Trek, "base salary" for all doesn't work so well either.  We need our job to reaffirm to ourselves our own self-worth.  We all have our ego that when our ego is crushed, so are our ability to exist.

AFAIK In StarTrek there is no money or monetary system. Which is great since everything is contributed to the goal which is set. I am not a historian and perhaps my next sentence is not true, but if a Farao in ancient Egypt had to pay for their piramids there would not have been one in the world. What I am trying to say is that if humans unite and combine their skills and efforts to achieve something, amazing things can be accomplished which should not be hindered by some abstract thing as money which is virtual anyway.

Ego is something humans are better off without. The best people in this world IMO have no or a tiny ego, they don't need to be in the news or famous nor ruch. Still some do become famous against their wishes for the things they accomplish and the other people they influence.

[Marco]

You always have "us" and "them", but for employment beggars can't be choosers. When it hits you in the pocketbook you will more readily abandon segregating principles. Volunteer organizations have far more opportunity to self segregate than large employers too, at least as far as religion and language is concerned.

Us Dutch vs foreign China is far less of a problem than national parallel societies. With Chinese we don't compete for space, we don't compete for government influence. Us Dutch vs. them Dutch/Turks will become a bigger divide if we stop working together. It's bad enough as is, Erdogan is already turning many of them and us in seeing them as an invading army.

As for economics, as long as the third world has an exploding population I don't see any way to fix it for the majority worldwide any time soon without making the whole world third world. Fixing it for the majority in first world nations with UBI while maintaining our borders with the third world and without a nationalist ethic leads to a really fucked up moral framework.

How do you square the circle? We can pray for singularity I guess so we can just give everyone first world consumption levels and healthcare, but without it we're kind of stuck with the first/third world divide. Just slowly increasing automation will not get us there, we need full blown human+ level AI.

[Kjelt]

Have you been in the timeperiod that men in Holland had to serve the armed forces for 14 to 18 months for almost zero pay?
I was put in an armoured infantry division and it consisted of people from all nationalities and all layers of society, from farmers to welders to financial specialists to EEs. The first months we were "drilled" by three sergeants that were the devils themselves, I will spare you the details but they were mean and cruel all to get the teams to join and become one. After that period the sergeants were removed from the division and replaced by others. We acted as one team, if we got a job we did it, and pay was not an issue, it was teamspirit and teampride to get things done, the individuals ego was replaced by a group mission. Now it was not allways that great we also had our struggles ofcourse but this is what I think is important, if a group of people act and feel as a group and give them a task they can achieve way more than he sum of individuals. And the latter is what a lot of money centered capitalistic companies get, they give a manager a bonus to cut expenses and so he cuts expenses although it severely undermines another piece of the company. I have seen this many times and can give you nu erous examples.

[Marco]

I just don't have faith in society automatically grouping themselves up in diverse groups to achieve goals. National service and jobs force us together, otherwise we would quickly self segregate ... and in our current society we would self segregate into dangerously incompatible cultures.

I believe civilization is fragile and entirely accidental, progress not being assured.

[Rick Law]

Even in Star Trek, "base salary" for all doesn't work so well either.  We need our job to reaffirm to ourselves our own self-worth.  We all have our ego that when our ego is crushed, so are our ability to exist.

AFAIK In StarTrek there is no money or monetary system. Which is great since everything is contributed to the goal which is set. I am not a historian and perhaps my next sentence is not true, but if a Farao in ancient Egypt had to pay for their piramids there would not have been one in the world. What I am trying to say is that if humans unite and combine their skills and efforts to achieve something, amazing things can be accomplished which should not be hindered by some abstract thing as money which is virtual anyway.

Ego is something humans are better off without. The best people in this world IMO have no or a tiny ego, they don't need to be in the news or famous nor ruch. Still some do become famous against their wishes for the things they accomplish and the other people they influence.

Yeah, I stand corrected.  I know in Star Trek they doesn't use money when I wrote that.  I was using it as as a short-cut to express value derived/allotted per status of job.  Value such as living quarters, work space (captain's ready room), so forth.  It is not a good way of expressing it - too easy to lead to confusion.

That said, re:"Ego is something humans are better off without."
So much of human emotions are thought of as getting in the way of a better world - but I doubt we are still human if we get rid of all that.  We may still look human, but we are not human when we lack human qualities.  "Invasion of Body Snatchers" depicted such a world - a world of human looking creatures, but acting like ants inside an ant-hill.

[Kjelt]

Still ants have been around since the dinosaurs, I am not sure if the era of humans will last that long 
But seriously setting ego aside does not mean we become plants, we all are still unique and have certain gifts we could use to achieve greater goals than individuals could achieve. Companies are an example that could still last without the monetary foundations, people would join the organisation that suits them the best.

[Rick Law]

Still ants have been around since the dinosaurs, I am not sure if the era of humans will last that long 
But seriously setting ego aside does not mean we become plants, we all are still unique and have certain gifts we could use to achieve greater goals than individuals could achieve. Companies are an example that could still last without the monetary foundations, people would join the organisation that suits them the best.

I too wonder if we can last as long as ants or even lasts as long as dinosaurs.  At best, we are merely hundreds thousands of years as modern human.  100 million years plus for dinosaurs looks like eternity comparing to 100k years.  As we speak, we are looking down paths in our civilizations some with clashes that likely end with dead-ends.

Not to be argumentative, back to ego for a moment before going back to disruption - ego is part of emotion.  Some emotion get in the way of inter-human cooperation.  Ego is an emotion that can be both positive and negative.  Ego helps an individual reach higher goals.

Ants too can cooperate - much more so than human forming companies/corporations.  Army Ants for example are organized, size in the millions, and each group with their own designated function.  Ants are not known to have emotion.  We don't know of ants fighting another ant because it is jealous of another ant having a bigger share of food.  We do know of one group (colony) of ants attacking another so as to rob them of their belongings, enslave their conquered.  All these bad things could happen without ego.  So, I cannot even say that a "pot people" society (as in Invasion of Body Snatchers and not as in pot-smokers) would even be a peaceful society.  But within the society, they would be more like within an Ant Colony.

Civility in our society is what stops us from acting on our emotions unchecked.  Culture in our society is what sets the standard of what we consider reasonable - including ego driven actions.  Our culture has at times seen suicide as a way of dealing with financial problems, so taxi-driver taking the final-exit is not so outrageous - less outrageous than sad.

Disruptive technology is growing at a much faster pace (that is my supposition/gut-feel, I've no actual data to support that).  There were times when I was on the receiving ends of the benefit.  I was also young and was very insensitive to those at the short end.  Then came the moment(s) when I was at the laid-off end of the new tech.  I was not in a situation where I have family to feed at those "short end" times, but I recall the stress and pressure.  So, I sympathize with those impacted - a lot.

[Seph.b]

I would just like to point out one thing.

If there were actual social safety nets that prevented anyone from falling into abject poverty from a poor life choice or from their industry being disrupted none of this would be a problem. People commuting suicide for such reasons is a huge loss to society as a whole.

I don't know what that social safety net looks like, but with more and more industries on the verge of disruption we should probably start trying to figure it out.

[CatalinaWOW]

Funny thing about safety nets.  Just like minimum wages they continually have to improve.  Way back at the start of the twentieth century a good safety net meant people could eat (and maybe sleep out of the weather).  By the end of the twentieth century a good safety net meant personal housing, food, clothing, and medical care and was starting to include things like phone service, entertainment (for mental health) and so on.

It is kind of like alimony in US divorce law.  The ability to maintain the lifestyle one is accustomed to.

[Seph.b]

Funny thing about safety nets.  Just like minimum wages they continually have to improve.  Way back at the start of the twentieth century a good safety net meant people could eat (and maybe sleep out of the weather).  By the end of the twentieth century a good safety net meant personal housing, food, clothing, and medical care and was starting to include things like phone service, entertainment (for mental health) and so on.

It is kind of like alimony in US divorce law.  The ability to maintain the lifestyle one is accustomed to.

Those are the some of the reasons I said I don't know what it looked like.

With every disruption and advancement in automation less people are required to do all of the jobs required by a functioning society. Of course new job and industries are created, but the pace is/will not keep up. Those new jobs are also not always very evenly distributed. Eventually we are asking for civil unrest as more and more people fall through the cracks.

[vk6zgo]

 The thing is, once you put Uber's more adventurous ideas like autonomous cars & "air cars" to one side,
the only technological change involved in their existing "pretend taxi" service is an "App".
Hell, High School kids write Apps!
It's not even unique, conventional taxi services can, & do, use a similar booking method.

The main thrust of their concept is to ignore the existing regulated environment. & just go with an unregulated service.
This is just an extreme extension of the ideology which has been the "received wisdom" for the last 30 years.

 Back in the 1960s, there was a lot of commotion in the UK about the advent of "Minicabs", which operated on a similar business model.
Obviously no App, but everything else was eerily similar.

They were still around in 1971 when I was there, but the conventional taxis were still doing well.
I don't know how, but eventually they became part of the " establishment", along with all the other transport services.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/classiccars/8369024/50-years-of-minicabs.html