This was an interesting email to receive today. It reminded me of some things we discussed back on The Oil Drum about this very thing (the online archive still available: http://theoildrum.com/special/archives ) - how paving over all the old city & county gravel roads had introduced a pile of fixed costs (not just paving, but regular re-grading, snow plowing, etc) that towns would eventually have to shed.
In other words, at some point in the not too distant future, they will start turning roads back into gravel roads, slowly but surely, starting at the very outside edges and creeping inward until only a certain core of local paved roads remains.
Blackstone is the largest landlord in the United States, owning over 300,000 rental units. In the last two years, Blackstone has aggressively purchased apartment buildings and single-family homes.
They ended a voluntary eviction moratorium in late 2022 and have since filed eviction suits against tenants who owed as little as one month’s rent. Blackstone justifies rent increases by claiming a housing shortage, but in reality it's a way to maximize profits.
#AI#Automation#Productivity#Economy: "In the 1980s, the most prominent view was that unionized firms had less incentive to invest in innovation and new technologies. Because unions would ensure that workers received most of the benefits, the thinking went, investors had little incentive to spend on R&D. But there are several other ways of thinking about this says John Van Reenen, an economist at the London School of Economics.
Firms that make good use of new technologies usually pay more because they’re more productive and profitable. Van Reenen says that, under the right circumstances, unions can help ensure that workers have the power to claim some share of those profits in the form of higher wages. In one paper, he quotes John Hodge, former head of the U.S. Smelters, who once said, “We won’t work against the machine if we get a fair share of the plunder.”
Input from workers — which unions often facilitate — can also steer companies toward more productive (and worker-friendly) uses of AI. “There is an emerging view that bottom-up innovation is going to be the best way to figure out the best uses of AI,” says Kinder. “So there is a business case for keeping employees in the loop.”
And worker input can guard against a phenomenon that MIT’s Acemoglu has warned about in his research and in a recent book: “so-so technology.” The idea is that companies sometimes automate just enough to replace workers, but without creating big improvements in productivity. Acemoglu uses the example of self-checkout kiosks: They work well enough to take work away from cashiers, but not so well that they provide a major boost to the economy that could fuel demand elsewhere."