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The Refragmentation

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Refragmentation

#321

Post by RockyMcNuts »

cronjobber wrote: post #7

He takes the easy way out on the war theory: It would be awful, of course, so let's not think about it. But think about it. Would historical WWII be possible in today's United States? Introduce the draft and send current US population off to die in Europe? I think you'd see intense levels of political resistance, draft dodging and desertion in the field. Fragmentation means you probably can't unite the whole country…

You can't just assume a system that makes everyone better off despite increasing differences, or that everybody is happy about it, or that there's a peaceful system for sorting out conflicts amid increasing differences.

Of course it always ends in violence. Refragmentation == reemergence of extremism. People asserting stronger identities while technology shrinks the world and brings them into closer economic and information loops is a recipe for conflict.

In the old days you could have crazy ideas and no one on the other side of the world gave a hoot. Today you get storming Inland Regional Centers, Federal lands, or malls.

Re: The Refragmentation

#322

Post by dinkumthinkum »

gotchange wrote: post #101

A very fascinating article that I have truly enjoyed reading minus the last 10 or so paragraphs where Paul expressed it unequivocally that he's a status-quo warrior and that nothing can be done to remedy the problem of the ever widening gap of income inequality in the global economy and more specifically in the US and that it's a "natural" product of the state of affairs in our world. A classical example of « the nat…

I don't think Graham is being a status quo warrior here at all and I would have to reread carefully to see if he was really committing the naturalistic fallacy, I think that is an odd reading. I think his reasoning is fairly sound here. He actually laments that solving income inequality is very difficult, which it is. A lot of lip service is paid to this topic and usually all an politician has to say about it is something about manufacturing jobs.

I almost feel you may change the entire field of economics with committing the naturalistic fallacy under your reasoning ...

Re: The Refragmentation

#323

Post by Terr_ »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #307
rdtsc wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it seems that today there are greater opportunities to sell expensive hardware, particularly since even the lower classes are (in absolute terms) richer than the middle class of the Apple II era. What has happened is instead technology allowed some luxury products to be commodized and available to everyone. I doubt multi-billionairs build their own OS-es, cell phone towers, hardware, batteries, support from scra…

75% of poor Americans own at least 1 car, and 45% own their own home. Most poor people have copious amounts of free time; only a fraction work. http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf Of course, this is tangential to curun1r's claim, which is that somehow an inability for consumers to purchase new technologies would hinder innovation.

Are you sure "own" is the correct word? Those people are completely debt-free with no car liens or mortgages?

Re: The Refragmentation

#324

Post by prostoalex »

ptc wrote: post #292
incompatible wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at the other end? The popular opinion seems to be that we just need to force companies to pay higher wages, i.e., put up the minimum wage. Now those low paying jobs are illegal and people end up unemployed instead, especially when the economy is bad. I'd be willing to try abolishing minimum wages and letting the government pay a subsidy to anyone making a genuine effort to work, so that they have a reasonable sta…

There's no solid evidence that increasing the minimum wage will create fewer jobs. From Paul Krugman's review of Robert Reich's new book > Other evidence points indirectly to a strong role of market power. At this point, for example, there is an extensive empirical literature on the effects of changes in the minimum wage. Conventional supply-and-demand analysis says that raising the minimum wage should reduce employm…

With so many exemptions to minimum wage laws (self-employed are exempted, family-owned businesses are exempted, waiters are exempted unless their tipping income does not put them over minimum, anybody working under 1099 is exempted) the comparisons become a bit muddled - a minimum wage worker who lost his position and decided to get some moving gigs or drive a few hours for Uber/Lyft certainly has "a job" for survey purposes, someone whose hours were cut certainly still has "a job", but the definitions have changed in-between.

Re: The Refragmentation

#325

Post by thedufer »

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #301
ptc wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no solid evidence that increasing the minimum wage will create fewer jobs. From Paul Krugman's review of Robert Reich's new book > Other evidence points indirectly to a strong role of market power. At this point, for example, there is an extensive empirical literature on the effects of changes in the minimum wage. Conventional supply-and-demand analysis says that raising the minimum wage should reduce employm…

> a monopsonist facing a price floor doesn’t necessarily buy less, just as a monopolist facing a price ceiling doesn’t necessarily sell less and may sell more. The theory is that the buyers of labor in these cases will simply buy alternatives - specifically low-labor alternatives, like automation. Think of automated checkout stands at retail stores, but applied to fast food. Time was, fuel filling stations all had at…

This doesn't really affect your point, but gas station attendants aren't completely gone - in New Jersey, it's illegal for a motorist to pump their own gas. The purpose, of course, is to keep those minimum-wage jobs around.

Re: The Refragmentation

#326

Post by prostoalex »

lisper wrote: post #125
wh-uws wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No leftie is arguing or longing for any of these policies. What we're looking for is just more equality in economic opportunities and esp capital and that distribution of capital to be more fair across all the classes and not to be a privilege only for rich people and highly connected people." And what non lefties are asking is how do you solve income inequality without those policies? And more fair? Fair by what me…

Income inequality is not the problem, it's a shorthand for the real problem, which is the mutual reinforcement of wealth inequality and political corruption. Rich people use their disposable income to buy political influence which they then use to get laws passed that allow them to collect rents. The solution is to 1) roll back the corrupt laws (like the preferential tax treatment of carried interest and high-speed t…

I don't have an online source, but paper version of Business Week magazine did a graph on monetary value of each loophole for US Treasury, and carried interest impact was miniscule (remember that it's still taxed at 23.8% vs 39.6% if it was treated as income, and with so few people taking advantage of it, the total rake-in is rather small). Not that the loophole itself makes any sense.

If you want some major impact on government revenues (which would also open doors to things like public finance of campaigns, subsidized tuition, subsidized healthcare, etc.), remove the mortgage interest deduction and standard deduction, but then you quickly find out that one man's loopholes are another man's "Washington reaching into our pockets yet again".

Re: The Refragmentation

#327

Post by prostoalex »

jacquesm wrote: post #47
golergka wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be just small businesseses, not startups. Startups either go Facebook or go bust, they're not created to stay stable at small scale.

> Startups either go Facebook or go bust, they're not created to stay stable at small scale. Nonsense. Plenty of companies start out as small companies and suddenly find themselves on the upwards slope of a hockey stick, others start out as aiming for that hockey stick and end up being 'just' sustainable businesses. This whole start-up naming thing denies 125 years of objective reality. You can't start a scalable com…

He's not debating the merit of fast growth vs taking it slow, he's just pointing out terminology.

pg's 2012 essay http://paulgraham.com/growth.html suggested using the term "startup" for hypergrowth-oriented company, and the term "small business" for slow-and-steady approach.

Both types exist, deserve to exist, and are nown to end up at a different place than the original goal they had in mind. But using suggested terminology saves us from the replay of the same argument over and over.

Re: The Refragmentation

#328

Post by leot »

lightcatcher wrote: post #317
leot wrote: post #92

"A physicist who chose physics over Wall Street in 1990 was making a sacrifice that a physicist in 1960 wasn't." The trouble is the proportion of those who have the highest technological leverage and are engaged in rent-seeking rather than wealth creation. The 1960s physicist was creating wealth they couldn't capture, while the 1990s physicist was capturing wealth they didn't create. If physicists (and other Ivey gra…

> If physicists (and other Ivey grads) all only chose wealth-creation, we'd see far less inequality (at least outside the Bay Area). Choosing wealth-creation rather than rent-seeking has nothing to do with distribution of wealth as far as I see it. The hugely wealth-creating SF bay area is one of the most unequal places in the world. I think redistribution of wealth is absolutely necessary to reduce poverty and incre…

The Bay Area is the exception, certainly. The question concerns whether other places would be more or less equal.

There are three assumptions behind the claim that wealth-seeking is better for income inequality:

1) rent-seeking is "easier money" than wealth creation (so if all physicists engaged in wealth creation instead of rent-seeking, as a group they'd end up having less money, hence less inequality for them v.s. non-physicists

2) wealth creation creates wealth, which in general is good for everyone, thereby reducing inequality by giving more people more stuff

3) wealth creating activities have a range of side benefits. E.g., unlike finance, it often requires recruiting, training, and leading teams to build things, which in turn creates jobs and better people, reducing inequality.

Re: The Refragmentation

#329

Post by bsder »

What people forget is that what the big, old, sclerotic, 20th century companies did well was provide a functional wage for the 50% of people who were below average.

It's lovely that the 1% are paid what they are worth. It's not so lovely that 50% are now paid minimum wage or, worse, zero.

Re: The Refragmentation

#330

Post by yummyfajitas »

Terr_ wrote: post #323
yummyfajitas wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

75% of poor Americans own at least 1 car, and 45% own their own home. Most poor people have copious amounts of free time; only a fraction work. http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf Of course, this is tangential to curun1r's claim, which is that somehow an inability for consumers to purchase new technologies would hinder innovation.

Are you sure "own" is the correct word? Those people are completely debt-free with no car liens or mortgages?

The document (like most statistical documents published by the US Govt) defines it's terms - why don't you go to section A-1 and check yourself?
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