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Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

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388 points pseudolus | 5 comments | 25 Mar 25 17:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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Bukhmanizer ◴[26 Mar 25 19:14 UTC] No.43485838[source]▶
I’m surprised not many people talk about this, but a big reason corporations are able to do layoffs is just that they’re doing less. At my work we used to have thousands of ideas of small improvements to make things better for our users. Now we have one: AI. It’s not that we’re using AI to make all these small improvements, or even planning on it. We’re just… not doing them. And I don’t think my experience is very unique.
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baazaa ◴[26 Mar 25 22:57 UTC] No.43488436[source]▶
I think people need to get used to the idea that the West is just going backwards in capability. Go watch CGI in a movie theatre and it's worse than 20 years ago, go home to play video games and the new releases are all remasters of 20 year old games because no-one knows how to do anything any more. And these are industries which should be seeing the most progress, things are even worse in hard-tech at Boeing or whatever.

Whenever people see old systems still in production (say things that are over 30 years old) the assumption is that management refused to fund the replacement. But if you look at replacement projects so many of them are such dismal failures that's management's reluctance to engage in fixing stuff is understandable.

From the outside, decline always looks like a choice, because the exact form the decline takes was chosen. The issue is that all the choices are bad.

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throwaway6734 ◴[27 Mar 25 00:37 UTC] No.43489176[source]▶
The result of boomer cultural and capital domination. Millenials need to grow up and yank power from them, first starting with massive government handouts given to olds
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1. nradov ◴[27 Mar 25 02:44 UTC] No.43489902[source]▶
Should I take it that you support privatizing Social Security and eliminating Medicare? That probably won't be a winning political platform with any generation.
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2. throwaway6734 ◴[27 Mar 25 08:26 UTC] No.43491431[source]▶
As a first step I'd prefer to see both of them dramatically more means tested. There's no reason that someone with millions of dollars of assets should be receiving thousands of dollars a month from the state. I think this position is politically tenable with the looming cuts that will happen automatically over the next decade
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3. nradov ◴[27 Mar 25 13:07 UTC] No.43493214[source]▶
That's not going to happen so you can forget about it. Means testing entitlement programs has been tried before and never got much political support from any generation or political party. It's unwise to create incentives for old people to be poor because then workers will be less likely to also save for retirement in their own separate private accounts.
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4. johnnyanmac ◴[27 Mar 25 13:31 UTC] No.43493445{3}[source]▶
How is that an incentive? It's a fallback. You're not gonna love comfortably off SS payments alone in this day and age.

Treating this mentality of "taking money out that you put in" as "taking handouts" is the exact reductive mentality being used to try and have the government steal the money you earned from under your nose.

5. trollbridge ◴[27 Mar 25 13:40 UTC] No.43493547[source]▶
Means testing SS would result in elderly people transferring their assets to other people, much as already happens so they can get free nursing home care. Medicare isn’t means treating but Medicaid is, so we can see exactly what happens.

Means testing will also make paying into these programs even less popular. Upper middle class people will ask why, exactly, they’re expected to pay more into a retirement program they will get less out of. That’s a recipe for political change from a party who promises not to do that.