Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Higher order skills in walking around maybe?

I think he was talking about, for example marketers, who will still be around 
regardless of how much SMAC the industry leverages to sell whatever rubbish it 
is focused on selling.

--srs

On 19/10/16, 11:20 AM, "silklist on behalf of Bhaskar Dasgupta" 
 wrote:

only issue is, how much will you get paid to just walk around? If we want 
to take an example, see the wages of waiters…without minimum wage floors, its 
impossible to survive. flip side, who will pay for it? the average joe or mango 
man will have very little discretionary funds to spend on stuff like this. even 
micro-payments wouldnt help, you need a bare minimum to get some basics in 
place and the capacity or desire to pay for this has gone. Look at our smart 
phones. besides the phone itself, pretty much all the value add via the apps 
are free. If I look at my app and i look at my interactions, extremely little 
is actually being paid for to the creator. very very little. and that also goes 
to large corporates who can scale up. 

 

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

If that data is their customers’ – it is NOT theirs to play with.

And any improvements and automation in such data can only be delivered right 
back to their customer and nobody else, there’s enough NDAs around for that 
plus serious penalties for when they try to leverage a resource they have 
available in one team for another team.  TCS found that out the hard way in 
that Kaiser Permanente case where a former member on their team for that client 
continued to use his (still active and not shut down as their famed process 
orientedness should have made them do) kp.com login credentials to access tech 
support manuals on behalf of another client that he was not licensed for.  And 
then shared that credential across several other teams, including those that 
developed a competitor to that very software.  [add “allegedly” to taste for 
all this, these are the allegations made by the plaintiff against TCS anyway].

If there’s some software they make that they sell to customers, they would have 
to be dumb indeed not to leverage the hilt out of any and every bit of 
analytics and telemetry they get their hands on, but I’m the last person to 
accuse more than one player in the Indian software industry of intelligence.

--srs

On 19/10/16, 11:06 AM, "silklist on behalf of Bhaskar Dasgupta" 
 wrote:

one of the examples I had asked to be funded was to leverage their data. 
this company manages banking processes. what i wanted was to tie up with ISI 
(not that one) and hire a small skunk work of data scientists and a data design 
/ visualisation centre. And then wanted to do what rolls royce have done with 
their trent engines - they make a stupendous amount of money by monitoring 
their engines on a real time basis in flight and saving airlines shed loads of 
dosh. So i would’ve provided a set of tools, constantly evolving, to the heads 
of operations on their process flows, heads of sales on sales analytics, heads 
of product design on competitive features, and so on and so forth. And once I 
have sufficient coverage, I can setup a banking product market place. World 
Domination! result? god no, we cant pay these phd’s that much! no? then you 
will lose them to american firms who can and will. but that will cause the pay 
scales to be fucked up internally. ok, lets spin off this firm. we don’t do 
spinoffs. why? 100% owned subsidiaries are good and actually you can IPO it as 
their multiples will be better. Oh! that decision is above my pay grade (this 
is the president of the division!) you can fuck off. /facepalm. 

forget about creating new products, buggers don’t even leverage what they 
have! they are sitting on a fucking gold mine of rivers of data (if you don’t 
mind me mangling metaphors) and are happy to sit there and fish for minnows or 
get paid lowly for tending the sodding river bank. 



> On 19 Oct 2016, at 06:06, Suresh Ramasubramanian  
wrote:
> 
> IT companies buying product companies in a desperate bid to innovate .. 
let us just say that I’ve seen a lot of that happen at a previous workplace.
> 
> The usual end result is that the founders and key employees quit in 
disgust after a while and those that are left are gradually absorbed into the 
company doing something totally different than what they set out to do.  
> 
> And meanwhile the product itself is killed off immediately, or maybe dies 
a slow and lingering death with a few legacy customers left behind and 
practically zero further development.
> 
> Big companies that don’t have DNA beyond being pushers of software that 
most if not all users have a visceral hatred for, and/or bloated services 
contracts, are absolutely not going to infuse any magical fresh DNA into them 
by acquiring successful product companies
> 
> The prospect of such foreign DNA taking root in the company is far less 
than in the case of an organ transplant – the sort you get in mad scientist 
movies where a scientist transplants human dna / tissue / whatever into an ape 
and suddenly ends up with a super intelligent planet of the apes or Gorilla 
Grodd variety animal.
> 
> Mohandas Pai is a smug and opinionated twit but he got one thing right 
though. The software industry didn’t die – it will survive and it will probably 
hang on, but the traditional indian (or even foreign) services model is long 
dead in favour of automation.  The only things that won’t be automated to a 
large extent are higher up the value chain than such companies generally play 
around at.   And the hanging on will be the way a really old and sick man keeps 
hanging on – perpetually in the chasm between Allopathy and Tirupathi.
> 
> In other words, the days of 15% raises are dead and gone, companies 
outsourcing basic bargain basement sysadmin and datacentre work will outsource 
far less after 

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Bhaskar Dasgupta]

only issue is, how much will you get paid to just walk around? If we want to 
take an example, see the wages of waiters…without minimum wage floors, its 
impossible to survive. flip side, who will pay for it? the average joe or mango 
man will have very little discretionary funds to spend on stuff like this. even 
micro-payments wouldnt help, you need a bare minimum to get some basics in 
place and the capacity or desire to pay for this has gone. Look at our smart 
phones. besides the phone itself, pretty much all the value add via the apps 
are free. If I look at my app and i look at my interactions, extremely little 
is actually being paid for to the creator. very very little. and that also goes 
to large corporates who can scale up. 


> On 19 Oct 2016, at 06:45, Alaric Snell-Pym  wrote:
> 
> On 18/10/16 15:42, Bruce A. Metcalf wrote:
> 
>> The challenge to an economic utopia isn't building it or even
>> maintaining it. The challenge is to provide something for the
>> lumpenproletariat to do with their free time that is not more
>> destructive than what the creatives produce.
> 
> Oh, I think you underestimate humanity. You don't need an above-average
> IQ to be useful. There will still be sports, and there will still be
> jobs that focus around talking to people rather than doing "brain work".
> There is social utility in a person who is warm and caring.
> 
> ABS
> 
> -- 
> Alaric Snell-Pym
> http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric
> 

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Alaric Snell-Pym]

On 18/10/16 15:42, Bruce A. Metcalf wrote:

> The challenge to an economic utopia isn't building it or even
> maintaining it. The challenge is to provide something for the
> lumpenproletariat to do with their free time that is not more
> destructive than what the creatives produce.

Oh, I think you underestimate humanity. You don't need an above-average
IQ to be useful. There will still be sports, and there will still be
jobs that focus around talking to people rather than doing "brain work".
There is social utility in a person who is warm and caring.

ABS

-- 
Alaric Snell-Pym
http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Bhaskar Dasgupta]

one of the examples I had asked to be funded was to leverage their data. this 
company manages banking processes. what i wanted was to tie up with ISI (not 
that one) and hire a small skunk work of data scientists and a data design / 
visualisation centre. And then wanted to do what rolls royce have done with 
their trent engines - they make a stupendous amount of money by monitoring 
their engines on a real time basis in flight and saving airlines shed loads of 
dosh. So i would’ve provided a set of tools, constantly evolving, to the heads 
of operations on their process flows, heads of sales on sales analytics, heads 
of product design on competitive features, and so on and so forth. And once I 
have sufficient coverage, I can setup a banking product market place. World 
Domination! result? god no, we cant pay these phd’s that much! no? then you 
will lose them to american firms who can and will. but that will cause the pay 
scales to be fucked up internally. ok, lets spin off this firm. we don’t do 
spinoffs. why? 100% owned subsidiaries are good and actually you can IPO it as 
their multiples will be better. Oh! that decision is above my pay grade (this 
is the president of the division!) you can fuck off. /facepalm. 

forget about creating new products, buggers don’t even leverage what they have! 
they are sitting on a fucking gold mine of rivers of data (if you don’t mind me 
mangling metaphors) and are happy to sit there and fish for minnows or get paid 
lowly for tending the sodding river bank. 



> On 19 Oct 2016, at 06:06, Suresh Ramasubramanian  wrote:
> 
> IT companies buying product companies in a desperate bid to innovate .. let 
> us just say that I’ve seen a lot of that happen at a previous workplace.
> 
> The usual end result is that the founders and key employees quit in disgust 
> after a while and those that are left are gradually absorbed into the company 
> doing something totally different than what they set out to do.  
> 
> And meanwhile the product itself is killed off immediately, or maybe dies a 
> slow and lingering death with a few legacy customers left behind and 
> practically zero further development.
> 
> Big companies that don’t have DNA beyond being pushers of software that most 
> if not all users have a visceral hatred for, and/or bloated services 
> contracts, are absolutely not going to infuse any magical fresh DNA into them 
> by acquiring successful product companies
> 
> The prospect of such foreign DNA taking root in the company is far less than 
> in the case of an organ transplant – the sort you get in mad scientist movies 
> where a scientist transplants human dna / tissue / whatever into an ape and 
> suddenly ends up with a super intelligent planet of the apes or Gorilla Grodd 
> variety animal.
> 
> Mohandas Pai is a smug and opinionated twit but he got one thing right 
> though. The software industry didn’t die – it will survive and it will 
> probably hang on, but the traditional indian (or even foreign) services model 
> is long dead in favour of automation.  The only things that won’t be 
> automated to a large extent are higher up the value chain than such companies 
> generally play around at.   And the hanging on will be the way a really old 
> and sick man keeps hanging on – perpetually in the chasm between Allopathy 
> and Tirupathi.
> 
> In other words, the days of 15% raises are dead and gone, companies 
> outsourcing basic bargain basement sysadmin and datacentre work will 
> outsource far less after automating the hell out of everything they can, 
> testing will be automated.
> 
> Of all the cash cows out there, telemarketing and support still needs humans 
> to a larger extent and will hang on but higher up the value chain – because a 
> lot of it has moved to social media, marketing rules in this space have 
> tightened etc.  
> 
> And even that is going way down after all the tech support scams in India 
> that flourish tarring even the legit players with the same brush, with at 
> least some of the legit players looking wistfully at the “upsell” angle that, 
> if pushed a few hairs farther down the line, becomes those scams where 
> someone claims to be “tech support” for your OS or device manufacturer and 
> cons you into paying for a $50 a month perpetual contract.
> 
> --srs
> 
> On 19/10/16, 10:15 AM, "silklist on behalf of Deepak Shenoy" 
>  deepakshe...@capitalmind.in> wrote:
> 
>Apologies for the plug but I wrote a piece a year back:
>http://capitalmind.in/2015/01/the-inflexion-point-
>for-the-it-service-industry-long/
> 
>So my point is that the problem isn't with IT companies - they will survive
>as IBM and HP etc have, and perhaps grow in single digit percentages and
>generally get a lot lower price to earnings multiples. They do stuff no one
>currently wants to do and overhauling a system to use stuff that other
>  

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

IT companies buying product companies in a desperate bid to innovate .. let us 
just say that I’ve seen a lot of that happen at a previous workplace.

The usual end result is that the founders and key employees quit in disgust 
after a while and those that are left are gradually absorbed into the company 
doing something totally different than what they set out to do.  

And meanwhile the product itself is killed off immediately, or maybe dies a 
slow and lingering death with a few legacy customers left behind and 
practically zero further development.

Big companies that don’t have DNA beyond being pushers of software that most if 
not all users have a visceral hatred for, and/or bloated services contracts, 
are absolutely not going to infuse any magical fresh DNA into them by acquiring 
successful product companies

The prospect of such foreign DNA taking root in the company is far less than in 
the case of an organ transplant – the sort you get in mad scientist movies 
where a scientist transplants human dna / tissue / whatever into an ape and 
suddenly ends up with a super intelligent planet of the apes or Gorilla Grodd 
variety animal.

Mohandas Pai is a smug and opinionated twit but he got one thing right though. 
The software industry didn’t die – it will survive and it will probably hang 
on, but the traditional indian (or even foreign) services model is long dead in 
favour of automation.  The only things that won’t be automated to a large 
extent are higher up the value chain than such companies generally play around 
at.   And the hanging on will be the way a really old and sick man keeps 
hanging on – perpetually in the chasm between Allopathy and Tirupathi.

In other words, the days of 15% raises are dead and gone, companies outsourcing 
basic bargain basement sysadmin and datacentre work will outsource far less 
after automating the hell out of everything they can, testing will be automated.

Of all the cash cows out there, telemarketing and support still needs humans to 
a larger extent and will hang on but higher up the value chain – because a lot 
of it has moved to social media, marketing rules in this space have tightened 
etc.  

And even that is going way down after all the tech support scams in India that 
flourish tarring even the legit players with the same brush, with at least some 
of the legit players looking wistfully at the “upsell” angle that, if pushed a 
few hairs farther down the line, becomes those scams where someone claims to be 
“tech support” for your OS or device manufacturer and cons you into paying for 
a $50 a month perpetual contract.

--srs

On 19/10/16, 10:15 AM, "silklist on behalf of Deepak Shenoy" 
 wrote:

Apologies for the plug but I wrote a piece a year back:
http://capitalmind.in/2015/01/the-inflexion-point-
for-the-it-service-industry-long/

So my point is that the problem isn't with IT companies - they will survive
as IBM and HP etc have, and perhaps grow in single digit percentages and
generally get a lot lower price to earnings multiples. They do stuff no one
currently wants to do and overhauling a system to use stuff that other
smart people want to use is too expensive. (Like COBOL - it may be outdated
and all that but it still forms the basis for an irrationally large part of
banking) This work will continue until you have removed the very need for
the basis that the older software has been required, so there will always
be business for the Infy/TCS/Cognizant types from this kind of maintenance
work.

But things can change very fast. 10 years ago I couldn't imagine that BigCo
would be able to manage something like 5000 servers using less than 5
people including bringing more up when required, at run time, with complete
reporting/control available even on a mobile phone app. It's possible now.
It's routine now. And as more companies are discovering it is, the on-site
and off-site infrastructure work that was handled by the IT cos has seen
dwindling business. SAP now offers a cloud based pre-setup solution, where
you need none of the server infrastructure - only the initialization pieces
which the IT cos still do; but at some point SAP will create modules that
are one-click installs for the kind of industry you are in.

Automation isn't robotics - you don't need machine learning or AI for most
of the work required. For instance much of the testing work that is done
tends to be checklist driven, and some of that has already been automated
at multiple levels using tools. What these IT cos should have been doing is
buying the product companies that build these tools, but they simply don't
have the DNA. (I would even say buy minority stakes in them with a board
seat) Their own products are absolutely crap; see the quality of the 

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Thaths]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 12:03 PM Udhay Shankar N  wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 3:45 AM, Thaths  wrote:
>
> > But occupying the time of the vast hordes of bored and restive
> > > non-creatives will be a challenge, and it's a challenge I have not yet
> > > seen addressed anywhere this side of Orwell.
> > >
> >
> > I am surprised reading this from you, Bruce. I'd have thought Uncle Walt
> > had figured this out in his resorts.
>
> ​But will this scale to ~90% of humanity?​
>

Fair point.

Judging by the number of people I see during my daily commute that are
staring into their phones, I suspect Uncle Zuck has figured out scaling.

So all we need to do is to figure out a way to meld entertainment for the
hordes with a scalable platform.

Thaths

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Deepak Shenoy]

Apologies for the plug but I wrote a piece a year back:
http://capitalmind.in/2015/01/the-inflexion-point-
for-the-it-service-industry-long/

So my point is that the problem isn't with IT companies - they will survive
as IBM and HP etc have, and perhaps grow in single digit percentages and
generally get a lot lower price to earnings multiples. They do stuff no one
currently wants to do and overhauling a system to use stuff that other
smart people want to use is too expensive. (Like COBOL - it may be outdated
and all that but it still forms the basis for an irrationally large part of
banking) This work will continue until you have removed the very need for
the basis that the older software has been required, so there will always
be business for the Infy/TCS/Cognizant types from this kind of maintenance
work.

But things can change very fast. 10 years ago I couldn't imagine that BigCo
would be able to manage something like 5000 servers using less than 5
people including bringing more up when required, at run time, with complete
reporting/control available even on a mobile phone app. It's possible now.
It's routine now. And as more companies are discovering it is, the on-site
and off-site infrastructure work that was handled by the IT cos has seen
dwindling business. SAP now offers a cloud based pre-setup solution, where
you need none of the server infrastructure - only the initialization pieces
which the IT cos still do; but at some point SAP will create modules that
are one-click installs for the kind of industry you are in.

Automation isn't robotics - you don't need machine learning or AI for most
of the work required. For instance much of the testing work that is done
tends to be checklist driven, and some of that has already been automated
at multiple levels using tools. What these IT cos should have been doing is
buying the product companies that build these tools, but they simply don't
have the DNA. (I would even say buy minority stakes in them with a board
seat) Their own products are absolutely crap; see the quality of the stuff
TCS and Infy have built for say the MCA, versus teh quality of design that
seems to be in teh new Modi camp (vidyutpravah.in for instance or such).

I heard of a bigco - a friend works there - where an insurance company was
being pitched by various vendors for a certain solution. The big Indian
names went in with the powerpoint smoke and mirrors thing and offered
things like 6 months to a year to finish with X headcount etc. A russian
company with the founders as programmers pitched a working prototype that
they said would take a couple more weeks to finalize and they'd get it live
in amonth at a cost that was not even in the same area code forget the
ballpark. They actually won the project and BigCo guys had multiple
meetings to "create risk mitigation techniques" and such things. It's kinda
funny.

I think if IT cos react, they will get lean. If they get lean, many many
people - and I'm speaking thousands in bangalore alone - will find out that
their skills are drastically short of the real world requirement of jobs.
This is the problem - not that the IT cos won't survive. IMHO.

Deepak Shenoy
Capital Mind: Financial Macro and Market Analytics
http://capitalmind.in
Twitter: @deepakshenoy

On 16 October 2016 at 15:34, Bhaskar Dasgupta  wrote:

> i was interviewing for one of the IT corporates some time back for their
> COO position and once i managed to dig a bit into their financials, i
> backed out. the majority of their revenue streams are from processing in
> advanced stuff, processing code, processing transactions, processing
> quality control. They do this very well. Very very well. standardise the
> process, six sigma the shit out of it, hire the great unwashed herd of
> graduates pouring out of the universities - retrain them to be great
> processors and great business model. But this kind of model is very
> susceptible to dis-intermediation from further advances in technology. When
> I asked if can have some serious seed funding to develop products rather
> than just provide services, there was a bit of a hoo ha. I think a product
> plus service model is the best option, create great products and then have
> a long tail in services and maintenance contracts. we have some of these
> products but not enough. not easy to develop products - the eco-system
> isn’t there yet.
>
> so whilst i don’t think its the end of the road, but for example, every 2
> months I am in a conference where vendors pitch up talking about robotic
> process improvement or AI and how they are showing 20–50% reduction in warm
> bodies in agency/outsourced/offshored units. Where will these 20-50% of
> highly trained processors go when the infosys or TCS lets them go?
> Thankfully the economy is ginormous and we are well accustomed to poverty
> and pain and still have the joint / extended family to fall back upon. But
> for the IT industry? pain...
>
> i agree with Srini, 

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Srini RamaKrishnan]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 8:12 PM, Bruce A. Metcalf 
wrote:

> But occupying the time of the vast hordes of bored and restive
> non-creatives will be a challenge, and it's a challenge I have not yet seen
> addressed anywhere this side of Orwell.



A good and stable society offers something for all to do.

There's a pyramidal shape to the psyche of most humans and to most
societies, starting with the vast base which is in survival mode (At least
80% of humanity still lives on less than $10 a day.) It doesn't matter what
the current tribal game is, monarchy, communism, anarchy, econo-narcissism
aka capitalism, this base will be primarily occupied with the meat and
potatoes of life, with little hint of flavor of the prevailing tribal game.

A smaller tier will focus on maximizing sexual desirability and social
status within the structure of the current game. Which usually means
growing up the ranks in a party structure in a dictatorial  game, or
growing rich and handsome in an econo-narcissistic game.

Stagnant lotus eaters can exist anywhere in these levels, but it is a very
temporary phase, they will either get pushed up or down eventually.

A still smaller tier will seek personal fulfillment through the exertion of
will - by bettering themselves through mental and physical exertion - not
for economic or social reward, but for the sake of the activity itself.
Typically such people might accumulate advanced academic degrees, or, run
marathons or climb mountains when they don't have to, to name a few
examples.

There are tiers above this to do with being selflessly loving, kind,
generous, inward looking, intuitive, wise, creative, holy, saintly -
however, society historically usually ignores these populations as being
too small to be of consequence.

Trying to plan a new social order is like trying to dig up a safe passage
for a river in flood. No one wields enough power to shape the landscape or
wisdom to predict a safe route.

Left unimpeded the river flows through the easiest route with the least
obstructions, which means it avoids tall mountains and favors the low
lands. In the case of the human psyche this means a partiality towards
survival, sex and power and an avoidance of tall peaks like creativity,
wisdom, kindness and unity.

A creative and wise society can only evolve when the low lands are
completely inaccessible. For this reason a largely creative or wise society
is impossible as long as there's bottomless consumption and consumerism for
example.

All Governments (somewhat benevolent dictatorial opiate structures) are
like check dams, they eventually break down, but as long as they exist they
are useful in lessening the trauma of the flood. Everyone knows a dammed
river grows turbid and stale, and can't remain dammed for too long anyway -
hence Arab spring, Occupy Wall Street, anti-beef riots, Pepe the Frog etc.
and its opposition, secret prisons, NSA panopticons, legal marijuana,
caliphate, libertarian and hindutva dreams and social media echo chambers.

Ideally societies would invest in making the low lands unattractive and the
tall peaks accessible. Which would obviously mean eradicating poverty,
globally a cost of $5 trillion or so, roughly the bill for the American led
War on terror so far. The bill is far lesser to eradicate poverty in a
single country, like the USA. Far easier and worthy than an NSA Panopticon
or a manned mission to Mars. However it is not in the interest of
government structures anywhere to completely eradicate poverty, one of the
primary levers of social control. Some poverty eradication can be attempted
from time to time, but with the awareness that none of the structures of
social control would work well without poverty.

Meanwhile, when a large number of people used to being successful in the
game are suddenly sitting on the benches, not actively participating in
economic success, universal basic income or affordable healthcare will do
little to calm them. It's natural they will turn to a change agent, a
revolutionary demagogue who unleashes them on the check dams of the game
only to build new check dams down river.

Since nobody is making the low lands unattractive, this is the cycle of
imprisonment of society since nearly the beginning of time with a few
isolated golden ages.

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Udhay Shankar N]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 3:45 AM, Thaths  wrote:

> But occupying the time of the vast hordes of bored and restive
> > non-creatives will be a challenge, and it's a challenge I have not yet
> > seen addressed anywhere this side of Orwell.
> >
>
> I am surprised reading this from you, Bruce. I'd have thought Uncle Walt
> had figured this out in his resorts.


​But will this scale to ~90% of humanity?​

​Udhay​
-- 

((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Thaths]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 1:42 AM Bruce A. Metcalf 
wrote:

> But occupying the time of the vast hordes of bored and restive
> non-creatives will be a challenge, and it's a challenge I have not yet
> seen addressed anywhere this side of Orwell.
>

I am surprised reading this from you, Bruce. I'd have thought Uncle Walt
had figured this out in his resorts.

Thaths

[silk] Future Institute?

[Chew Lin Kay]

Does anyone know the work of this group? http://www.futureinstitute.in

Am asking for a friend, who would like to know more about the work they've
done so far and where that has been applied.

Thank you!
Chew Lin

Re: [silk] Bump in the road, or end of the road?

[Bruce A. Metcalf]

"Charles Haynes"  wrote:


It's certainly possible that we will automate ourselves out of the
need for "jobs" but that's only a problem if you believe that
existing structures of wealth accumulation and distribution are
appropriate for such a world. It seems obvious that they are not. It
could be unrest, or it could be an unparalleled opportunity to
provide basic needs universally and allow for unprecedented
creativity.


I think the expectation of "unprecedented creativity" is not merely 
unfounded, but dangerous.


Yes, the sort of folk on this list would certainly become more creative 
and constructive if let free of economic concerns. And the voluntary 
"work" of such creatives may well be of immense benefit to our species 
and planet.


But recall please that fully half the population has below average IQ 
(by definition). There is also a half of humanity with below average 
understanding, aspiration, and ability to do creative work.


The challenge to an economic utopia isn't building it or even 
maintaining it. The challenge is to provide something for the 
lumpenproletariat to do with their free time that is not more 
destructive than what the creatives produce.


Even the ambitious who fight to obtain control of this utopia can be 
handled (at least I hope so, the upcoming US election will be a test 
case). But occupying the time of the vast hordes of bored and restive 
non-creatives will be a challenge, and it's a challenge I have not yet 
seen addressed anywhere this side of Orwell.


But perhaps that unprecedented creativity will include a solution; we 
must hope it will provide one in time.


Cheers,
/ Bruce /

[silk] The sad illusion of India’s demographic dividend

[Srini RamaKrishnan]

https://www.ft.com/content/bce1cb26-9439-11e6-a80e-bcd69f323a8b

The sad illusion of India’s demographic dividend

The country’s middle class will lack the muscle to help drive the economy
forward

As Diwali, India’s festival of light, approaches, the weather in the hill
station of Manali in the north of the country is turning colder. Shepherds
are leading their flocks to lower climes to escape the freezing nights in
the Himalayas, while trekkers no longer venture to the high peaks for fear
the passes will soon be closed by snow.

Some of those who cater to tourists to the region are fortunate enough to
have small plots of land on which to grow apples or pulses. The rest will
spend the winter mostly idle, while a few will follow the flow of tourists
to Goa and other beach resorts where they will work as cooks, cleaners and
drivers. Others will go to the cities where — if they are lucky — they can
find jobs on construction sites. The most fortunate of all will study in
the hope of securing jobs in the IT industry.

A young population is supposed to represent a demographic dividend.
However, that is only if there are jobs for them — and that is not the case
in India. A recent snapshot from the Employment and Unemployment Survey
from the official Labor Bureau shows how dire the jobs situation is for
most Indians, whatever their age or skill.

The country has little to export but, without better jobs, it will lack the
rising income needed for domestic consumption to serve as the engine of
growth. Neither recent economic data or a stock market that is only up
about 5 per cent over the past year suggest that improvement on the jobs
front — which matters far more than GDP — is imminent. Both the number of
jobs created and their quality are disappointing.

India needs to generate about 1m jobs a month to meet the needs of its
young people — yet jobs growth between 2012 and the financial year that
ended in March amounted to a paltry 5m, according to the EOS survey. The
trend is especially worrisome for women, as only 23.7 per cent worked in
fiscal 2016, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for graduates and those with even more
qualifications was 28 per cent. Almost 80 per cent of the total labour
force was either self-employed or working as casual labour and a mere 17
per cent were regular wage earners.

“We believe new job creation strategies have to be formulated to increase
the share of manufacturing jobs, reduce the informal jobs, bring more women
into the labour market and meet the aspirations of educated youth,”
Citigroup’s India economist Samiran Chakraborty noted in a recent report.

It isn’t clear, though, where and how new jobs will be created. Indeed,
most analysts believe the low-end service jobs which were the great growth
story of the last decade have peaked. The founder of one Indian bank has a
particularly dystopian view in which 150m very rich Indians will look after
a legion of low-end service staff and their families.

To be sure, there are a few positive indicators. The Reserve Bank of India
cut rates earlier this month in an attempt to spur growth. Also on the
positive side of the ledger, the monsoon was good, which means that after
two years of disappointment rural income and spending should pick up

However on balance, the broader economic data are not encouraging. Growth
remains weak, while private sector investment remains basically flat.
Corporate earnings were down 4 per cent in the year ended in March. In
addition, the great drivers of the Chinese stock market these days —
technology, healthcare and property — are unlikely to serve as catalysts
for similar developments in India given the lack of income growth.

India is not rich enough to follow the Chinese template. The definition of
middle class incomes in India is generous — perhaps overly so. Annual
middle income in India means a range of Rs20,000 to Rs100,000 ($1,500) per
household. The total covers about 12 per cent of the population, though
some economists think the true number is about 6 per cent. India has
neither the low-end manufacturing that helped Chinese workers advance nor
the wealth to support the growth of a new economy based on higher quality
services.

Sadly, India is not alone in its plight.