Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I'll give you two examples. Pierre Omidyar started eBay in his spare time while he was working a day job, as a way for people to connect with each other to sell things. He said he knew he had something with potential when there was a transaction for a broken laser pointer. He was creating value because he created a market where there really wasn't one before. Maybe you could go to a flea market to sell a broken laser pointer, but you'd have a hard time finding a buyer. eBay created value for a lot of people who wanted to buy and sell things that were hard to find, in part through bringing enough people that you could use auctions for price discovery for goods that are hard to value.
Undeniably, eBay has both created jobs and killed jobs. If you had a shop specializing in some sort of collectibles, you're either selling on eBay or you're out of business. But if you think Omidyar's motivation was to cut labor costs, you don't know what you're talking about.
Another example is PayPal, which had a bunch of founders with a bunch of ideas, but which took off because people who were buying and selling on eBay needed a way to take credit cards and the legacy card networks were not interested in solving that problem. They wouldn't use their rails to let the smallest businesses receive funds. So PayPal built a way to use ACH to do that. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Keith Rabois have no love for traditional jobs, but PayPal succeeded because they found a problem to solve by creating value, not because they were trying to find a less labor-intensive way of doing things that other people are already doing.
Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Square, Stripe, Twitter -- they all have similar stories.
Now, give me a counter example. Tell me about a prominent tech company that was started to do what people were already doing, only with less labor. You're going to be tempted to try with Amazon, but you'll be wrong.
Now you're moving the goalposts. Of course there are successful companies that use technology to try to do things cheaper, and there always have been. Eli Whitney's cotton gin is more than two hundred years old. But you were making a different argument, that today's tech companies were founded primarily to eliminate labor costs, in a way that is fundamentally different than the rest of the Industrial Revolution.
I'll leave the rest of what you said for another post.
eta, never mind this is easy. You said, look how bad things are. I said, so which side are you on? You said, your own. You are a combination of selfish, fatalistic, and apathetic, shifting from one to another whenever someone tries to pin you down too well. OK then.
And maybe you read something once about a way to tax tech. I think I've been pretty clear that I'm more inclined than the average bear to regulate or tax tech if we can find a way to do it that works. If you really cared, we could talk about it. But your interest seems to be more about sticking it to people who have found success than about solving a societal problem, because you generally lack any kind of interest in solving any kind of societal problem.
My point was, you "profit" too by using the tech products. If they weren't making your life better, considering the money you pay for them that turns into those companies' profits, you wouldn't use them. Tech creates a lot of consumer welfare, not just for the tech companies. You have a principled position that you want all the stuff you want, but other people shouldn't make money making it for you.
No kidding. I didn't say large companies put their employees on one single campus. I said large companies put their people in offices, and they need large offices, because they have lots of people. You were explaining that the pricy commercial space isn't going to be necessary. I'm saying, large companies are all organized around have people in space like that.
|
One last point. You use “founding” a lot here. And you frame my argument as one in which I said tech firms were “founded” to replace labor.
But here’s what I actually said:
“OK. I still don't know how this addressed my original point, but I agree with it. It is true. But it also misses something. Tech is not like the automobile. Cars put buggy whip makers (a tiny piece of the economy, btw) out of business collaterally. The intent was not to eliminate the costs of buggy whips (indeed, cars were a bit pricier than horses and horse appliances). The express intent of many forms of tech - and how it makes the huge sums it does for the fortunate few - is to eliminate massive pools of labor by doing the work that labor does via robot, platform, or algorithm.”
I didn’t use “founded” or even speak to that issue. I said that where tech can replace labor and realizes this is attractive to its consumers, it does. When does that occur? It could be at a tech company’s founding. It could be years later, when the firm develops a product that happens to eliminate jobs.
You’ve tried to narrow the issue so you can make the argument that tech firms are never “founded” to replace labor. Well, I can stipulate that many aren’t. And many are. But the issue is, when a tech firm (particularly a big one) finds itself in possession of tech that can eliminate labor, does it sell that tech to consumers who it knows will be interested in that tech because it allows that firm to eliminate labor costs? Absolutely. And does tech seek to “disrupt” (read, put a shit ton of people out of business, as Uber and Amazon have) in order to profit? Absolutely. Bezos has brilliantly sought, openly, to establish a monopoly by undercutting all competitors in price for decades. Uber was genius in undercutting the taxi and black car industries. It even sought to copy the black car industry by initially only inviting black car owners!
Again, there is nothing wrong with this. And tech should profit as it likes. But the suggestions tech doesn’t know the harm it’s causing, doesn’t know its insane profits are in great part a diversion of dollars from those it puts under, and doesn't intentionally profit by selling things that will eliminate jobs are just silly.
That some in tech advocate for a robust safety net does not get tech off the hook. Tech is filled with many libertarians, people who shrug and say "the market will do what it does" when confronted with its impacts. I think that's a fine response. And in response to that, I'll say this:
If you push those market forces too far, the losers will seek the govt to even the playing field, and that may harm you in many different ways. The biggest of you could find yourself broken up. And the rest of us will not be here to defend you. Like you, we don't care about the externalities. We don't care about you. We just want what you make, and even if the govt slams you, you'll still make it and we'll still get it. Probably cheaper. (What else are you going to do? Get a 9-5 gig at [insert widget maker here]?)
Enjoy the profits, and see if you can avoid a level of inequality that brings out the populists with pitchforks and the politicians who'll trade off class warfare. We'll sit this one out and watch. It's going to be wildly entertaining.
Demanding the rest of the economy subsidize a safety net for tech (Wall Street also fits in this bucket, but it's a different analysis) is nuts. Particularly where tech fights tooth and nail with lobbyists to avoid any form of windfall tax, privacy legislation, or tax on use of customer information that would take away even a small portion of its profits.
Read Zuboff and Lanier.
