There is a serious lack of economic logic in the story. Nothing like “about half” of American workers work in environments routinized enough to use something like manna.
Also getting instructions every minute would be extremely unlikely. The employees would hate it, so you would have to raise pay or you would lose workers at the margins.
Many office employees get advice and guidance from machines with high frequency. However, they usually come through screens—not earpieces. Earpieces are an inferior message delivery system for most kinds of machine-originated messages—through being too invasive, and having poor bandwidth—compared to vision.
Earpieces are an inferior message delivery system for most kinds of message—through being too invasive, and having poor bandwidth—compared to vision.
Indeed. In fact, the main advantage earpieces have over visual systems when it comes to the delivery of artificial information sources is the fact that it frees up the visual system for other purposes. (Like steering, for example.)
Indeed. In fact, the main advantage earpieces have over visual systems when it comes to the delivery of artificial information sources is the fact that it frees up the visual system for other purposes.
If we’re imagining the very cheapest employees in a dystopian future burger joint, ability to read English might rule out a lot of foreign/older (vision)/uneducated/dyslexic people. People? I mean, human resources.
I’ve worked with people who would rapidly become comfortable with minute-by-minute instructions… though they might complain about it a lot, for a variety of essentially signaling reasons.
In general, my rule of thumb about giving detailed instructions to people is that it’s a bad idea, not because they hate it, but because they become accustomed to it. If I solve the “what should I do next?” problem for someone enough times, they start expecting me to solve it for them in the future as well. I have a hard enough time solving it for myself.
The minimum wage creates a class of people who it isn’t worth hiring (their productivity is less than their cost of employment). If you have a device which raises the productivity of these guys, they can enter the workforce at minimum wage.
Additionally, there may be zero marginal product workers—workers whose cost of employment equals the marginal increase in productivity that results from hiring them. This could happen in a contracting job market if the fear of losing employment causes other workers to increase their productivity enough. Then you could fire Jack and see the productivity of John increase enough to match the productivity net of costs that Jack provided. If such workers exist, then they can provide a new source of labour even in the absence of minimum wage laws.
I agree with you that there’s a lack of economic logic in the story, though.
Well, as labor becomes less scarce, you don’t have to care if your employees hate it or not. Enough people will be desperate enough for some sort of work that you’ll be able to find people.
It would only catch on if it could survive the initial phase where it was still a minority. If anyone using it was prepared to quit and try for another job then businesses not using it would out-compete businesses using it. It might not have to be enjoyable, but if it wasn’t at least tolerable it wouldn’t even get off the ground.
a) In that case, in the story it did get off the ground so it must have been tolerable.
b) Criticizing the frequency of instructions is a pretty weak argument against the story plot since it’s not critical to the plot. If 1 minute instructions bothers you a lot, imagine the story says they are 2 or 5 minute instructions, or a wristwatch screen with your next instruction on it.
Nothing like “about half” of American workers work in environments routinized enough to use something like manna.
Do you have anything to support this? It seems to me that organizational charts are usually pyramid shaped, and the lower parts of the pyramids are where the most employees are, where less decision-making jobs are and where such a system would be more useful—and so a lot more employed people are doing jobs which a less skilled / lower cost person could do with guidance than are doing jobs with tough decisions and responsibility or creativity.
Also, that a lot of people have factory / processing jobs which are right now such fixed routines that a manna-like system would skip over them.
The employees would hate it
The point of the system is that the fast food restaurant is able to pay people less and guide them to doing a better job than was done before. That is, people who couldn’t get a fast food job before and were unemployable can earn money. Those fictional unemployable people who can now eat are hardly going to complain that their job isn’t as much fun as they want, are they?
There is a serious lack of economic logic in the story. Nothing like “about half” of American workers work in environments routinized enough to use something like manna.
Also getting instructions every minute would be extremely unlikely. The employees would hate it, so you would have to raise pay or you would lose workers at the margins.
Many office employees get advice and guidance from machines with high frequency. However, they usually come through screens—not earpieces. Earpieces are an inferior message delivery system for most kinds of machine-originated messages—through being too invasive, and having poor bandwidth—compared to vision.
Indeed. In fact, the main advantage earpieces have over visual systems when it comes to the delivery of artificial information sources is the fact that it frees up the visual system for other purposes. (Like steering, for example.)
If we’re imagining the very cheapest employees in a dystopian future burger joint, ability to read English might rule out a lot of foreign/older (vision)/uneducated/dyslexic people. People? I mean, human resources.
I’ve worked with people who would rapidly become comfortable with minute-by-minute instructions… though they might complain about it a lot, for a variety of essentially signaling reasons.
In general, my rule of thumb about giving detailed instructions to people is that it’s a bad idea, not because they hate it, but because they become accustomed to it. If I solve the “what should I do next?” problem for someone enough times, they start expecting me to solve it for them in the future as well. I have a hard enough time solving it for myself.
//Not an economist//
The minimum wage creates a class of people who it isn’t worth hiring (their productivity is less than their cost of employment). If you have a device which raises the productivity of these guys, they can enter the workforce at minimum wage.
Additionally, there may be zero marginal product workers—workers whose cost of employment equals the marginal increase in productivity that results from hiring them. This could happen in a contracting job market if the fear of losing employment causes other workers to increase their productivity enough. Then you could fire Jack and see the productivity of John increase enough to match the productivity net of costs that Jack provided. If such workers exist, then they can provide a new source of labour even in the absence of minimum wage laws.
I agree with you that there’s a lack of economic logic in the story, though.
Well, as labor becomes less scarce, you don’t have to care if your employees hate it or not. Enough people will be desperate enough for some sort of work that you’ll be able to find people.
It would only catch on if it could survive the initial phase where it was still a minority. If anyone using it was prepared to quit and try for another job then businesses not using it would out-compete businesses using it. It might not have to be enjoyable, but if it wasn’t at least tolerable it wouldn’t even get off the ground.
a) In that case, in the story it did get off the ground so it must have been tolerable.
b) Criticizing the frequency of instructions is a pretty weak argument against the story plot since it’s not critical to the plot. If 1 minute instructions bothers you a lot, imagine the story says they are 2 or 5 minute instructions, or a wristwatch screen with your next instruction on it.
I thought that was the implication. Initially, Manna was actually an improvement on a human.
Do you have anything to support this? It seems to me that organizational charts are usually pyramid shaped, and the lower parts of the pyramids are where the most employees are, where less decision-making jobs are and where such a system would be more useful—and so a lot more employed people are doing jobs which a less skilled / lower cost person could do with guidance than are doing jobs with tough decisions and responsibility or creativity.
Also, that a lot of people have factory / processing jobs which are right now such fixed routines that a manna-like system would skip over them.
The point of the system is that the fast food restaurant is able to pay people less and guide them to doing a better job than was done before. That is, people who couldn’t get a fast food job before and were unemployable can earn money. Those fictional unemployable people who can now eat are hardly going to complain that their job isn’t as much fun as they want, are they?