Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Refragmentation

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 461 posts

Re: The Refragmentation

#341

Post by three14 »

zanny wrote: post #257
three14 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the taboo I'm talking about. Police, health care, mining, teaching, and surprisingly many others aren't going overseas right now. A lot of jobs are disappearing, and a lot aren't. Why assume that e.g. the American economy won't have enough jobs in the near future? There's no data on HN in all these discussions, and no real trends to extrapolate from except in very specific sectors.

Mining is becoming heavily automated. The work of a dozen men even twenty years ago can now often be done by two with a good computer model. We are pushing very hard for computer vision, which is the real barrier to practical robotics that could replace your electrician, plumber, nurse, miner, driver, etc. There is no sacred cow of labor besides what is mandated by the molasses slow state (because I would absolutely…

Pressure, yes, but I want numbers - what percentage of jobs have disappeared over, say, the past 20 years, and could increased demand realistically replace those jobs in other sectors? You can't simply say "manual labor is over, because... singularity." There's no singularity yet. Until then, you need data before you can really extrapolate from current trends. The easiest things to automate are already automated, and harder things are coming along slowly. It might be true that jobs disappear faster than prices fall from the automation, or prices might fall fast enough that most people can have jobs that don't pay much, and still get by.

Re: The Refragmentation

#342

Post by kmonsen »

"The ultimate way to get market price is to work for yourself, by starting your own company." This seems to be one of his main points here, and for me it is not true at all.

There are many people that bring real value, even if they would not be good founders (and maybe not even good as first 1-10 employees). That is just one specific set of skills (in addition to common skills), a person can bring a lot of value without being a good founder.

Re: The Refragmentation

#343

Post by huuu »

Imho it's much simpler than PG explains. If we feel more or if we feel less than someone else we create separation.

Ofcourse there are forces that stimulate this separation (like PG says) but in the end it's just us.

The solution it to listen to yourself. Am I feeling less than this person? Am I feeling more than this person? If so: stop that thought.

Re: The Refragmentation

#344

Post by justinhj »

Consider one ycombinator company,Uber. Do they generate wealth? From the point of view of a NYC taxi driver they are directly taking both the customers and the value of the drivers medallions. In return,uber drivers work giving 1/3 of their earnings to a company because that company built the software and lobbied the governments (presumably eventually) to allow this new form of public transport. It doesn't seem any different to the past. Those with the connections, capital and technology take a large share of the wealth being generated by the actual workers.

Re: The Refragmentation

#345

Post by mhaymo »

zanny wrote: post #253
quadrangle wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: If more income takes more work, and I'm already rich, then the extra work is only worth it to me if I get a really substantial return, not just some minor increase. (In reality, only totally naive people believe that any billionaire cares at all about making more money for the sake of the money. It's actually about power and about irrational desire to be higher in the rankings compared to other bill…

Which is also in contradiction to Grams perspective. Its insane to claim that you need to keep wealth concentration uncapped to incentivize innovation, because a supermajority of novel innovation comes from people at the bottom becoming rich, not the rich getting richer. Its important to distinguish enabling upward mobility through entrepreneurship and incentivizing that with reasonable taxes and stopping billionaire…

> a supermajority of novel innovation comes from people at the bottom becoming rich, not the rich getting richer.

Citation needed? As PG points out, most startup founders are not poor. They take the risk of innovating not because they are desperate, but because they see a large upside. Reducing that upside will certainly reduce the motivation to innovate at the margins. The only question is how much does it reduce motivation, and do the benefits outweigh the costs?

Re: The Refragmentation

#346

Post by ohthehugemanate »

justinhj wrote: post #344

Consider one ycombinator company,Uber. Do they generate wealth? From the point of view of a NYC taxi driver they are directly taking both the customers and the value of the drivers medallions. In return,uber drivers work giving 1/3 of their earnings to a company because that company built the software and lobbied the governments (presumably eventually) to allow this new form of public transport. It doesn't seem any d…

I think this explanation ignores a lot of value. If all the value is really generated by the workers and the boss is just coopting it through connections and technology, then the workers individually should be able to to generate as much value,or at least wealth (as a proxy for value). But that's not the case. You can drive around all day as a freelance taxi driver sure. You'll get sued by the taxi monopoly of course, and riders won't trust you, and you won't have stable rates or work, and you won't know where to go to get fares, and you'll have to deal with your own payment system and accounting, and and and...

The value that a business owner generates is, at a minimum, coordinating the diverse people and elements to make regular work at regular pay possible. And that's if there is NO management required, or technology, or special access, or or or. In fact the "technology and connections" which you dismiss, is an important part of the value that the owner brings to

Re: The Refragmentation

#347

Post by dkural »

A counter-example, and a different framework to think about equality: Most of Scandinavia has fragmentation, freedom of expression, and genuine diversity of choice, diversity of lifestyle, of opinion, but it also has more equality. One can have a more equal society without raising taxes or massive wealth distribution. This is possible if a society ensures that its children receive adequate and equal access to healthcare and education in their earliest years, in other words, an equal start. This is where the US fails the most compared to Europe. Property taxes are the levers through the poor are priced out of good school districts. It acts as the algorithm through which self-segregation is made possible, often resulting in racial segregation as well. Education being a local affair ensures the wealthy and the educated have no incentive to fight for the rights of the poor and the ignorant, since they can get their fix via simply moving to a better neighborhood, leaving the others behind. Not so in Europe. The leaders of the community put pressure on officials and the system, and as the one system improves, so does the lot of all.A similar dynamic is true in healthcare as well, in Europe: A single-payer system ensures all get the same healthcare, and suddenly fixing it becomes a problem of upper-classes as well, but the entire society benefits from the improved system.

PG's post is self-justifying and self-interested.

Here's an alternative explanation of fragmentation: It is the sign of a new industry. It'll consolidate once it matures. Look at semiconductor & hardware consolidation. Google, Amazon, Apple, MSFT, Intel, Oracle etc. absorb a lot of software biz over time. There used to be hundreds of car companies, dozens of aircraft manufacturers.

Re: The Refragmentation

#348

Post by golergka »

pcmaffey wrote: post #310
golergka wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> top 1% of the population, which owns more than the rest of the 99% combined http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf This study that I found (after just 3 minutes of googling, btw) says that top 1% own only 34.6%. Do you have a source for your figures?

http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/wealth-havi...

Thanks. However, I found that original source for the wealth distribution figures, the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, to be a much more interesting read:

https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...

Re: The Refragmentation

#349

Post by dkural »

justinhj wrote: post #344

Consider one ycombinator company,Uber. Do they generate wealth? From the point of view of a NYC taxi driver they are directly taking both the customers and the value of the drivers medallions. In return,uber drivers work giving 1/3 of their earnings to a company because that company built the software and lobbied the governments (presumably eventually) to allow this new form of public transport. It doesn't seem any d…

Most drivers prefer Uber. Uber takes value away from the middlemen, takes a smaller share of the middleman cut, and redistributes the remaining value to the driver and the passenger. Hence its popularity.

Most of the profit in the old system accrues to the taxicab company + medallion holder. Uber does hurt these folks, by giving more of the pie to the driver, who can now drive without owning a medallion & is not hurt by this barrier-to-entry, and Uber provides the rest as a discount to the passenger, who receives a better overall service at the same time (you see where the car is + estimated time, ratings, GPS, etc.)

Re: The Refragmentation

#350

Post by drewm1980 »

His distinction between "wealth generating" and "rent seeking" behavior isn't obvious to me. Is investing in a start-up (so that you hopefully get a cut of the wealth generated by thousands of people and machines) a form of rent seeking?
Post reply on HN