[Potemkin]

I disagree: the reason why people want to invent technology and the reason why most people want to see technology invented should determine how it's put to use. That a bunch of economists get a hard on from watching production figures go up instead of working hours go down is what's irrelevant.

It's not 'economists' (whom you seem to regard as the fount of all evil in the world) who determine the uses to which technology is put - it is the capitalists, manufacturers, financiers and corporate executives who decide this, and they decide it on the basis of whether and how it will increase productivity and therefore profits. And how else would or could they decide it?

[Ambroise]

It's not 'economists' (whom you seem to regard as the fount of all evil in the world) who determine the uses to which technology is put - it is the capitalists, manufacturers, financiers and corporate executives who decide this, and they decide it on the basis of whether and how it will increase productivity and therefore profits. And how else would or could they decide it?

This. Economists merely provide ad hoc or post hoc justifications for the prevailing orders from above. Sort of like the intellectual class/intelligentsia (which economists often are). This sort of thinking is typical liberal misdiagnosis of the problem at hand. Since liberals, usually, are idealists, they think that ideas can change the material world and material conditions. Whereas, I assume, Marxists being materialists, think the opposite. The ideas that are presently floating around are probably the sort that the material conditions will allow. Hence, that economists are preoccupied with productivity is simply them relaying the material reality that the bourgeoisie, manufacturers, and corporate executives are in charge and these are their interests. Liberals probably think that economists come up with fancy ideas, and purely with the power of reason they convince the business leaders/executives that read their papers and then these business leaders adjust the system and their own interests accordingly.

Am I making any sense? I'm still new at playing an amateur pseudo-Marxist.

[Poelmo]

It's not 'economists' (whom you seem to regard as the fount of all evil in the world) who determine the uses to which technology is put - it is the capitalists, manufacturers, financiers and corporate executives who decide this, and they decide it on the basis of whether and how it will increase productivity and therefore profits. And how else would or could they decide it?

Economists aren't evil. just annoying people whose soothsaying influences politics, like the animal intestine readers of old who (though kings) had an influence on when and where wars would take place. Government determines the length of the work week. Most people prefer a shorter workweek over a long workweek with higher production. Obviously government has to think about international competition and that's the reason we've seen no recent reductions of the work week, but it really is what the people want and once the world has equalized the work week will be shortened (if functioning democracy still exists by then). But don't take my word for it, the large corporations say the same thing in their commercials: "share more time with your family through product x", "finish your work faster with product y", "make life easier with product z", they never say "increase societal production with product x" because they know that's not what the people want technology for. And the people fall for it everytime. You thought you could save time using a mobile phone to arrange work-related appointments? Wrong, your boss just makes you arrange more work-related appointments. You think self-driving cars will give you time to relax during your commute? Wrong, you're boss will kindly imply that whoever doesn't go through tedious spreadsheets during their commute risks being fired.

[ronimacarroni]

Obviously government has to think about international competition and that's the reason we've seen no recent reductions of the work week

Well I'm making a case that more hours per employee is actually bad for the economy because it creates more idle people who are not able to enter the workforce making the economy stagnate.

[Poelmo]

Well I'm making a case that more hours per employee is actually bad for the economy because it creates more idle people who are not able to enter the workforce making the economy stagnate.

That doesn't really matter as a first order effect because the amount of money in circulation doesn't have to change, but there may be secondary effects like an increase in crime or a future workforce that's inexperienced because they couldn't find work for many years.

[DudeWhoGetsIt]

I think there is an unspoken fact that we all know of but dare not say.
Machines are replacing human labor.
Yet despite that people are working more hours and getting paid less at the expense of other who want to participate in the labor market.
So the solution to the technology problem is for the government to pass laws limiting the amount of time an employee is allowed to work.
That means more employees working different shifts less hours.
That does pose the a problem regarding salary though, so maybe the government could subsidize the difference in the form of food stamps or section 8 housing.
Regardless of how the salary difference is solved, less working hours will solve the employment problem, which is the most pressing problem right now.

People who aren't able to invest the love and resources into their children to raise them up to a level of productivity where they are self-sufficient, shouldn't be having children. We should give these people options: soma vacations, prison, or if they are up for it, re-education, re-socialization so that they aren't losers pumping out losers.

[Vera Politica]

But why do you think the education requirements for service sector jobs are constantly increasing? It's because there are fewer and fewer of such jobs available, and so the employers are weeding out potential applicants in the easiest way possible - by demanding a university degree before they will allow you to flip burgers for minimum wage. Giving everyone a university degree will simply mean that employers will start demanding at least a Masters before they will let you flip burgers for them.

Potemkin is the voice of reason in this thread. Re-quoted, emphasis added.

The rift between education and the requirements for labor is a leading reason justifying the re-modelling of higher education by administrators, or, rather, the leading reason they think justifies the immense bureaucratization/corporatization of universities. The moves are so that capitalists benefit directly from the public expenditure/investment in post-secondary institutions. Thus, we see the rhetoric against the humanities, liberal arts, mathematics and the academy in general. They want universities to train rather than to educate since the latter brings no immediate benefit to the relative short-term goals of industry.

People need training for these jobs, not education, as Potemkin pointed out. But most of the training is not being done in universities and employers are reluctant to hire young workers since they might either need to pay for the costs of their training or wait until they have the relevant experience, within their institution, to actually be able to perform the work at the "optimum" level they desire. The solution, as they see it, is to shift public expenditure away from the public good (education) to what is more directly conducive to profit: training.

What really baffles me is that university professors, lecturers and students believe that civil, reasonable discussion will prevent this trend. All we need to do is convince, with reasons, our political leaders to curtail this development (which has been happening since the early 20th century but which accelerated after the collapse of the Soviet Union and, recently, after the Great Recession). This, of course, is all nonsense. Class consciousness is brewing in the academy but, as it stands, it is not enough to gain support for organized labor (at least in the United States). These developments are, increasingly more rapidly, exposing the rampant exploitation of those employed in higher institutions of learning. 70% of the academy is now non-tenure, non-research, contractual appointments with no benefits, job security, and, on the high end, averaging about 30 000$ a year. It was 30% only 30 years ago.

[Potemkin]

What really baffles me is that university professors, lecturers and students believe that civil, reasonable discussion will prevent this trend. All we need to do is convince, with reasons, our political leaders to curtail this development

They're a bunch of pointy-heads; what else do you expect?

[Poelmo]

People need training for these jobs, not education, [...]

Training is a form of education. You really don't get it when you advocate for all kinds of training programs instead of university education. My point was, and always has been in this thread, that, on average, you had to know more stuff to be able to perform jobs in the future. Whether you learned that at some apprenticeship or a university is irrelevant. It does take more knowledge to work with office software than to walk behind an oxen plowing the fields.

[Potemkin]

Training is a form of education. You really don't get it when you advocate for all kinds of training programs instead of university education. My point was, and always has been in this thread, that, on average, you had to know more stuff to be able to perform jobs in the future. Whether you learned that at some apprenticeship or a university is irrelevant. It does take more knowledge to work with office software than to walk behind an oxen plowing the fields.

Again, you don't seem to understand the difference between training and education. You seem to think that training is education, and that real education is merely useless and self-indulgent nonsense (hence, I presume, your contempt for things like medieval Icelandic literature). Your attitude is actually a rather egregious example of the effect of the industrialisation of education and the proletarianisation of academia.

[Poelmo]

Again, you don't seem to understand the difference between training and education. You seem to think that training is education, and that real education is merely useless and self-indulgent nonsense (hence, I presume, your contempt for things like medieval Icelandic literature). Your attitude is actually a rather egregious example of the effect of the industrialisation of education and the proletarianisation of academia.

You have completely derailed the subject: what you or I see as "real"education or "meaningful"education doesn't matter. Read my first post again. It was about the effects of automation on knowledge and intelligence requirements and how that would eventually leave a growing number of people behind. Btw, I have no contempt for "medieval Icelandic literature", I have a contempt for people who study that and then complain they can't find a job, especially if they used public funds intended to increase/maintain employment.

[Vera Politica]

I have a contempt for people who study that and then complain they can't find a job, especially if they used public funds intended to increase/maintain employment.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this statement. For one, it is not in the mission of any university to maintain/increase employment. These institutions have been publicly financed without there ever being the illusion that they would provide a specialized labor commodity for employers. It is only quite recently that we have come to think of universities in this sort of way. More importantly, university institutions are among the oldest in the world. Of the surviving institutions from the 15th centuries, nearly all of them are universities. Universities have their origins in an economic system that predates capitalism and whose mission and social function has been, fundamentally, the same throughout history. That being said, capitalism's ferocious tenacity and expansion explains the predicament of universities today. But it would be silly to think that there is something wrong with universities if they do not primarily function to advance the interests of capital. It is only when the interests of capital are imposed on or are used as a metric to evaluate universities that we think something is wrong. But the question still hasn't really been addressed: should universities serve the interests of capital? Is it rational to evaluate universities in this way?

Second, very few majors are intended to provide specific skills for employment. The empirical evidence shows, for example, that philosophy majors perform better than business majors; that they have (along with mathematics) the highest salary multiplier (from start to mid-career salary) and that they out earn, by mid career, the following majors: marketing, accounting, communication, nursing, biology, health care administration, psychology, graphic design, criminal justice, education, etc. They also have among the lowest levels of unemployment. (this tends to be misrepresented since other data lumps philosophy together with religious studies which has a much higher than average rate of unemployment). Besides certain majors (like engineering) and professional graduate programs (like library science or speech pathology), virtually no departments train graduates for the job market. It is simply not the function of universities to do such things despite the fact that university graduate gain a set of skills that are portable, adaptable, and useful across a broad range of employment sectors.

[quetzalcoatl]

...it is not in the mission of any university to maintain/increase employment...

This is as much an economic statement as a philosophical one. The traditional purpose of the university was a finishing school for the sons and daughters of the landed elite. The emergence of capitalism expanded this function to include a broadly educated workforce.

Debt-encumbered parents of college students perceive college as a portal to a career. Period. Their tolerance for tax supported institutions is entirely contingent on that belief.

[Vera Politica]

The emergence of capitalism expanded this function to include a broadly educated workforce.

Actually, universal/public education (elementary and secondary school) was a direct product of this. It is only very recently that universities have come under the function of capital, so to speak.

The traditional purpose of the university was a finishing school for the sons and daughters of the landed elite.

The idea was that education, not training, took primacy (training took place in guilds, etc.). Law and Medicine were extremely important in the university while they were largely ignored, chastised and considered irrelevant outside of the university.

Debt-encumbered parents of college students perceive college as a portal to a career. Period.

I am not sure what the period is meant to emphasize. Do you think anything I have said is invalidated by the fact that the majority of debt-ridden college parents see higher education as a portal to a career? I don't see that it does.

Their tolerance for tax supported institutions is entirely contingent on that belief.

It is unfortunate that it is a false belief. Regardless, it is not surprising that most people think this way about higher education as capitalism does have the tendency to reduce many social relations to economic or money relations. The relationship that the university has/had with society was never intended to be the one which people falsely believe is the case.

[quetzalcoatl]

The relationship that the university has/had with society was never intended to be the one which people falsely believe is the case.

Intended by whom and for what purpose? The university has never existed, outside the imaginations of scholars, as a haven for reflection, study, and research. On the contrary, it has always existed as a political/social institution explicitly designed to reinforce the existing order. It may have coincidentally fulfilled some of the functions you describe, but its power as an institution has never derived from any independent scholarly functions it may have served. Its primary justification from the beginning was its utility to ruling class.

[Vera Politica]

Intended by whom and for what purpose? The university has never existed, outside the imaginations of scholars, as a haven for reflection, study, and research. On the contrary, it has always existed as a political/social institution explicitly designed to reinforce the existing order. It may have coincidentally fulfilled some of the functions you describe, but its power as an institution has never derived from any independent scholarly functions it may have served. Its primary justification from the beginning was its utility to ruling class.

I do not disagree that the university has always had this type of function: largely ensuring the reproduction of the relations of production (and thereby directly serving the interests of the ruling class). But there are other historical facts which are of interest, namely, that universities themselves often served as centers for progressive movements and that intellectuals have often been the targets of reactionary measures by ruling classes. What is most interesting today is that innovation and scholarship is not indifferent to the direct interests of our ruling class but it presents an impediment to the reproduction of the current relations to the means of production. In other words, the current relations of production are slowly forcing universities into a largely degenerative role indicative of the degenerative state of current capitalist production and capitalist relations to the means of production.

[Tachyon]

Training is a form of education.

You have it backwards...education is a proper subset of training.

[Vera Politica]

education is a proper subset of training.

How do you figure this? (note: I don't meant this as a rhetorical question. While I disagree, I am genuinely interested in understanding why you think this is the case as I am sure you are not the only one who does).

[Tachyon]

How do you figure this?

The way i think of it is that training refers to the act of a person gaining new skills, regardless of the method in which they do it. So, that could include apprenticeships, government training programs, seminars, companies hiring a consultant to teach their employees about a specific topic, reading books at the library, etc. I see education as a proper subset (included in the set of 'training', but not 'equal' to it) because you go to a school to learn your skills from subject matter experts that have been credentialed to evaluate whether or not you learned the material or not. If we are talking about college, then at the end you get a degree that represents that you possess the same knowledge as anyone else with the same degree (at least in theory). The same cannot be said about apprenticeships or seminars or the rest. So, i see education as a proper subset of training the same way i see the others as proper subsets of training.

[AFAIK]

That does pose the a problem regarding salary though, so maybe the government could subsidize the difference in the form of food stamps or section 8 housing.

Walmart is lobbying hard for this (I imagine). The state subsidizes the retailer's wage costs by providing the working poor with food stamps. This contributes to the growth of profits and dividend payments.

Walmart maintains a fleet of air craft that whisk union busters to any store in the USA at a moments notice. I saw the helicopters in a CNBC documentary !!