Jobs and dating are screwed. In the same way, for the same reasons

We have too little, and at the same time too much of some things that should be good.

On one side, there is so much work it's unbelievable people keep doing it

Right now, the most profitable company of the world is nVidia, because it makes the most wanted special chips that power AI applications.

One major reason for the success of nVidia, according to Bloomberg, is grueling 24/7 work by employees who, in increasing numbers, could already cash out millions in stock options. This may be creating "a culture problem brewing at nVidia" that I could only summarize as "why on Earth should I still live like this? To make "AI" that's just clones of people who already have so much wealth to become dementia?"

In other words, the whole house of cards of AI, which can't happen without nVidia, could crash, possibly triggering a global meltdown worst than 2008, the day after one tiny group of people realizes they could retire rich NOW, to finally enjoy life.

On the other side, there is too little work, or no work at all

In the same world where those few guys could realize any moment they're working themselves dead for no real good reason, workers with comparable or higher skills have the opposite problem. Take Kevin Cash, a US Navy veteran with five degrees who, since he was laid off two years ago, has sent almost 2,200 jobs without success, and now survives off Uber rides and Taskrabbit gigs, almost sure that continuing to try, even for someone with with five degrees and years of experience, "is futile".

One reason he's giving up is what many people, me included have been reporting for years now: "a lot of posted jobs are fake... I spent a solid 12 ½ days applying to jobs that never existed." Another is that software, including the AI proudly powered by those nVidia engineers, make way too easy to demand unneeded or impossible purple squirrels, as in "[one recruiter] wanted 10 years of experience with a certain software program that had only been around for six years".

Long story short, the strategies to "try new (online) ways to “develop and retain talent”" suggested just a few years ago have failed miserably, and even actual job interviews fail to predict if a candidate will succeed. For the record, the very day I decided to write this post, I got this piece of spam email:

"Are you interested in having the ability to search for candidates - for all types of desk roles?... Our service enables you to search for handpicked candidates from a database of over 4 million highly skilled remote staff from the Philippines."

The story of Kevin Cash, however, means much more than it seems at first sight. To begin with, his story is important because he's unemployed with the same skills that nVidia should need to remain so profitable, namely "business intelligence and semiconductor manufacturing".

Then, it's even more important because almost all the 2.200 jobs he's quite qualified to get but didn't are (besides being often fake!) exactly the kind of jobs that, thanks to some mythical "upskilling" are supposed to compensate everybody, not just guys with five degrees, of the jobs they lost or will lose because of automation, AI and what not.

Sure, innovation eventually creates more jobs than it destroys. I could still believe that. But in the last decade or two "innovation" has been destroying exactly the kind of jobs people should have "upskilled themselves for, and it keeps doing so faster and faster: in the US only, the whole high-tech industry faced in 2023 a brutal wave of layoffs that shows "no signs of slowing down", with figures "lower than all estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

That's the whole problem, here, speed: "in the long run we're all dead", longtermism be damned. I really don't get how anyone in this reality can still believe that the super fast "innovation" we are going through will create enough jobs that enough of the real people it will put on the streets could ever get qualified for, before starving under some bridge. That's just a fable, and it's always been a fable, because:

• by definition, "managers" will "NEVER be needed in large numbers"

• by definition, "genius" is SCARCE

Executive summary of this whole section: forget a full employment society, and forget upskilling to wages that can afford a family more than a tiny percentage of all the workers that should be thankful to live in these wonderful times.

Worldwide job market, ca. 2030

Dating is just like looking for a job: so complicated it's futile

A new research on dating, which was expecting to find "a substantial improvement in the ability to find and meet potential partners, reflecting reduced search costs brought about by [online dating] technology" found something else instead:

"data suggest that search costs have not changed over time despite the wide use of online dating sites and apps."

If this looks like the guy still jobless after 2,200 applications, is because it is. The researchers explicitly note that recent literature documents "a similar lack of improvement in matching efficiency in labor and product markets".

Jobs and dating go hand in hand even in inequality: another recent research found that online dating caused "a rise in U.S. income inequality", making Americans (and everybody else, why not?) to increasingly "marry someone more like themselves" (for the record, that's just what I meant when I wrote that online dating amounts to self-inflicted eugenics).

Back to the first research, one reason it mentions for lack of improvements may be that, exactly because they can ask so much with dating apps, lonely hearts become as hard to please as those HR recruiters dreaming of purple squirrels. The researchers, however, point to a simpler explanation: dating apps just don't increase one's inborn capability to process information, which is what would ultimately determine one's "proficiency in mate selection within the marriage market" (which is just the dating version of the already mentioned "genius is SCARCE"" thing).

For what it's worth, I suspect it's even simpler: the mere fact of looking at things like dating and marriage as "markets" is twisted. Well-adjusted human beings are those who use "markets", or help others to do so, to buy carrots or screwdrivers, not life partners.

Same new, same new

What makes dating apps pointless is the same thing that makes stupidly hard to hire or get hired, thus contributing, among other things, to parents and children getting in debt for schooling that's prestigious, but little else: technology for the sake of technology. That's not the only cause, of course, nor the main one: almost always technology, especially digital technology, just enables or accelerates stuff (good or bad, doesn't matter) that humans were already doing or were begging to do anyway.

Still, all the stories and studies I've reported so far are perfect examples that going too fast, too digital, is bad for everybody's mental health, because dating, marriage and jobs aren't hobbies. They greatly overlap with one's own meaning and stability in life, and if they are all messed up simultaneously, in the same way and for the same reasons, it's not sustainable for much longer.

Solutions are as simple as they are hard to implement. It's painfully evident that both head hunters and lonely hearts should spend much more time with the real people who may help them.

That would only be a stopgap, however. As I said, there are too many signs that we're going towards a future where, even if there was no global warming whose only real solution were to "just sit still and smell the roses" ...

...full employment will neither possible nor more urgent than fighting mass loneliness that creates nevrotic masses, by finding life partners in ways that work, possibly to form families which will be sorely needed.

I argue that we can get there by getting UBI and AI in the right order, after disrupting the first if not the only thing that REALLY needs disruption. That may look hard, or downright crazy. But the more we keep going like this, the more it seems to me the less unrealistic, less unfeasible solution among those that would work. Just ask good old uncle Albert, below.

PSA: I am actively seeking work as blogger, (ghost-) writer, speaker, researcher, popularizer... on all the topics in this and my other posts. Or, you can support me directly by subscribing, or with donations.