This made me think of the essay 'Solitude and Leadership' by William Deresiewicz.
From the essay:
"So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself. Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today. Even if they merely reflect the conventional wisdom of their own day, they say something different from what you hear all the time. But the great books, the ones you find on a syllabus, the ones people have continued to read, don’t reflect the conventional wisdom of their day. They say things that have the permanent power to disrupt our habits of thought. They were revolutionary in their own time, and they are still revolutionary today. And when I say “revolutionary,” I am deliberately evoking the American Revolution, because it was a result of precisely this kind of independent thinking. Without solitude—the solitude of Adams and Jefferson and Hamilton and Madison and Thomas Paine—there would be no America. So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading."
Modern efficiencies have eliminated a lot of jobs. Fact. No point in arguing about whether it's good or bad. It just is.
So don't waste time trying to defend Apple or Google. They are just successful in their time. Good for them.
Consider though, that many of us who are fortunate enough to be working in the information tech / startup area, are focusing most of our efforts of creating products consumers don't even know they want or need yet, but we hope they find super cool. Hopefully the product gives us enough users to figure out how to make money off ads or something. Cool, fine.
I have to agree that it's a shame that there isn't more momentum behind figuring out how to solve problems that people already have. Figuring out problems that would benefit the vast majority of people who don't work in information technology, who just so happen to be finding it harder to find good jobs because of information technology.
Most of comments here are missing the big picture.
Most of the general public and individual investors do not have clear insight into how HFTs work, or if they are beneficial or not. Most are inclined to be scared of crashes and erratic behavior traced back to HFTs. Trading off liquidity for a loss of trust in capital markets is a bad deal.
When investors lose trust in the system, it all falls apart.
A few important things that aren't being discussed:
If your income level drops, it should be relatively easy to cut back on food expenses. You can simply eat less or buy less expensive food. Not great options, but possible. On the other hand, if you income level drops, it's can be very difficult to reduce housing costs fast. Thus I would think that people are more vulnerable to unexpected drops in income.
Same thing goes for medical costs. It can be very difficult to reduce those without sacrificing health.
Another big issue is that in 1962 most households were single income. Most mothers were at home. If the husband lost his job, there were 2 potential wage earners that could theoretically renter the job market to regain the needed income. Today most households are dual income, and require all of that income to pay the bills. So if one personal loses their job, there isn't a backup worker able to enter the workforce if needed. So again, more vulnerability to reduced income.
As far as I understand it, each music subscription service negotiates it's own rates with the labels. There isn't an industry standard fee. So unless the fees have been publicly disclosed, it's a guess.
This sense of entitlement and immaturity, especially considering how lucky we are to even have jobs where we sit in front on computers all day, drives me crazy.
I think the world of startups is unfortunately filled with youth that expect candy and fun and complain when it isn't, all the while making enough money to put them in the top %10 of salaried wage earners on earth.
Honestly I wouldn't mind seeing more Marines in startups. Running up steep mountains in sub-zero temps while being shot at after not sleeping for a week, on top of being hungry would give you some perspective on what to complain about.
From the essay:
"So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself. Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today. Even if they merely reflect the conventional wisdom of their own day, they say something different from what you hear all the time. But the great books, the ones you find on a syllabus, the ones people have continued to read, don’t reflect the conventional wisdom of their day. They say things that have the permanent power to disrupt our habits of thought. They were revolutionary in their own time, and they are still revolutionary today. And when I say “revolutionary,” I am deliberately evoking the American Revolution, because it was a result of precisely this kind of independent thinking. Without solitude—the solitude of Adams and Jefferson and Hamilton and Madison and Thomas Paine—there would be no America. So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading."