A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
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Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
#2An HFT isn't entirely useless.
You might want to sell 66 shares of Apple stock and somebody else wants to buy 145 and for you both to get a timely fill, there has to be some kind of middleman.
If you think HFTs are bad, just take a look at floor traders -- the kind of people who will front run you if they see you coming and they know what you want, or will take a bathroom break if they don't want to trade with you.
Reg NMS, which set the stage for HFT passed because of a scandal involving the members of the New York Stock Exchange which is as good of a group of rent seekers as you'll find anywhere. Plenty of hanky-panky goes on with HFT, but it is a less corrupt system than what it replaces.
Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
#3[deleted]
Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
#4This article was flagged by users, presumably because it is a dupe of the discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10826838.
Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
#5This sure is getting flagged a lot.
Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
#6I hope I didn't go too overboard by dissecting PG's essay like this, but I felt it was necessary to correct many of the items that I read.
It may seem spurious now, but economic inequality is relevant for the tech industry, too. The massively increased productivity that information technology provides is very infrequently distributed proportionally to the people who actually forged it-- exactly the same condition as most workers in the US, currently. The principal difference in terms of economics is that the absolute wages of software engineers are currently higher than the median wages, meaning that they don't feel the pressure of not having quite enough-- given enough time, this will change unless we make a decision to alter our course.
The accumulation of economic gains from massively increased productivity will trend toward stagnation at the uppermost levels-- the founders and owners. Our society is currently engineered for this to be the case, and we have much work to do if we want a more equitable society.
If we accept economic inequality, we accept that we are not citizens but instead are largely debt-laden effortful passengers in a world owned by our betters.
Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
#7This sure is getting flagged a lot.
I noticed this too. There's some weird behavior going on with the algo, I think... it keeps popping on and off of the front page.
Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
#8This article was flagged by users, presumably because it is a dupe of the discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10826838 .
There's a lot of overlap, but my full article is actually the response as intended, and that comment is a condensed and incomplete summary due to character limit.
Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
#9PGs articles aren't wrong - but they are second order, when we need a first order response to a current evil [ before it leads to bloody revolution ]
If you look at income distribution its a hockey stick - you really have to slap yourself on the face and realise there is no middle class - what you thought of as professional-middle-class-contributor is actually college-debt-burdened-lower-class - no matter how many years they work they will never pay off their debt, let alone own their own home.
People aren't asking for "income equality" they are asking for some level of humanity and democracy to be restored to our version of Capitalism, to strengthen that capitalism.
So, just as "All Lives Matter" is not a good response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, its not useful to discuss "income inequality is not intrinsically a bad thing" when we are in a time when the lower class are basically slaves and the middle class has been in steady decline - your _only_ chance to have security is to win a lottery [ the Startup or the PowerBall variety ]
So, what needs to be talked about is rather : how to take money out of politics, how to get poor people out of the ghetto, how to stop young black people from being shot by police on a weekly basis, how to bring back a reasonable level of tax on the super wealthy, and how to stop large companies from getting subsidies to pollute our environment.
A small amount of Socialism is needed urgently to bring Capitalism back into a survivable form - if not, I really think we are headed for bloody revolution, because most of the populace are angry, and its a rational anger because their survival needs are barely being met, in many cases.