The Refragmentation • Hacker News Board

Re: The Refragmentation

#411

Post by ArkyBeagle » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #398

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. The economy is bigger than you are, and it's keenly in your enlightened self-interest to have each other person in your economy producing at maximum. The "excluders" in the antebellum South lived under a rather delusional post-hoc rationalization of slavery. John C. Clahoun wrote of this belief system at length. This was minimally modified in the Reconstruction South and after. My maternal grandmother raised 9…

Your comment aggressively misses my point. In a broad, idealistic sense, yes, I would like each person in the economy producing at maximum. (Assuming we could agree on an ideal value metric, which I'm not sure we can.) There we agree. But if I am narrowly self-interested (which many humans are), and if I value positional success over absolute wealth (which many do), then I am better off participating in a system of o…

It's quite clear that the cognitive dissonance necessary to buy into membership in a truly* privileged class is very costly. You can't value positional success at the expense of the success of the others in your economy without incurring greater cost.

*the present-day use of the word seems incoherent at best - so let's stick to easier-to-see versions for now.

Narrow self-interest appears to be completely at odds with enlightened self-interest. This isn't some ascetic protestation of moral superiority; it's a purely practical mechanism for personally having things that work.

I'm not sure how an average is better (or worse) than an outlier; I meant simply to show what was possible. She was able to use institutions other than marriage for support.

Re: The Refragmentation

#412

Post by quadrangle » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 7:34 PM UTC

mhaymo wrote: post #396

zanny wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor is relative. We are talking about the difference between having a safety net at your parents house where they have a combined income of 300k and might have a cleaning maid every weekend versus a billionaire CEO with penthouses in four cities and his own airplane. One is middle class, the other is extremely rich.

So the focus on "inequality" is a focus on large wealth at the expense of thinking about poverty, to the degree that you call 6-figure earners "people at the bottom". I'm still not convinced that a "supermajority" of innovation does not involve the very rich. Much innovation today comes from companies like Google, Apple, SpaceX, lead by very wealthy leaders. Even if you were right, the point remains that limiting the…

You're confusing causation and correlation even if your premise is valid (which is totally questionable).

First, Google and Apple have nothing to do with personal wealth, they are corporations. The fact that have lots of corporate wealth means they have resources to put into innovation. They can do that completely independently of whether they pay absurd salaries or stock-dividends. Corporations can profit off their activities and put the profits back into innovation, and when that happens they are business expenses that aren't even taxed!!

So the entire issue about taxation of wealthy incomes is only about wealth that people take home as personal profit and do not reinvest in business.

Now, let's accept the questionable premise that these people with high incomes produce the greatest innovation. That simply means that innovation correlates with high income. It does not tell us anything about cause. Maybe these are people who would be innovative no matter what and our system happens to reward that with riches. If that hypothesis holds, then higher taxes would have zero impact on their innovation. There's tons of evidence that innovative people are motivated in other ways besides getting richer, i.e. that the promise of further riches isn't the cause of their innovative work.

Re: The Refragmentation

#413

Post by acjohnson55 » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #223

curun1r wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's saying income inequality is a feature of technology allowing people to be paid their market value and that you can't 'fix' that. The thing that I worry about is whether this feature is destroying the conditions that allowed it to become a feature in the first place. He mentioned the example of Apple and IBM, which I see as illustrative in another way. Would personal computing devices have become popular in a h…

>He mentioned the example of Apple and IBM, And on that, as on so much else, he's more than a little wrong. Apple and Microsoft simply couldn't have happened without the mega-corps - not least HP, but also IBM, and Fairchild and its spin-offs - which only existed because of post-war military and civilian "socialist" state support for technology. By the mid-70s that support had been influencing economic policy for mor…

> Apple was a product of that system, not a cause of it. Companies like Apple do not happen in a pure deregulated neoliberal market paradise because markets don't have the kind of strategic intelligence that can fund projects like Whirlwind, TX-0, and the original Arpanet - all of which are essential steps on the road to making an Apple or a Google.

The book Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy [1] really hammers in this point. I highly recommend it to people who have an interest in this. I wrote a review that captures a lot of my reflections on the book itself and the subject matter [2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Capitalism-Innovation-Economy-Sp...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/review/R2SCHS5SXNDF30/ref=cm_cr_dp_tit...

Re: The Refragmentation

#414

Post by quadrangle » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 7:40 PM UTC

caf wrote: post #366

quadrangle wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably that would have been good. FWIW, I think it's preferable to never need financing ever, and it really ought to be only used for things that are investments (real estate, education, expenses that relate to accessing or building new work/business) and never for pure consumption. So, I get your overall point. The other thing to recognize is that being poor is MORE EXPENSIVE than being rich. This fundamental fact…

I think financing - provided you can obtain it at a good rate, which of course you can't if you're poor - makes sense whenever the benefits of a purchase are expected to be spread out over time.

That's only ever true if you have other potentially-higher return investing your resources in other ways or if you're getting into talking about risk issues and bankruptcy law.

If you have enough cash to buy a car and enough left to be an emergency buffer and cover other needs and don't have something to do with that cash which promises a higher investment return than the interest on a car loan, then it does not make sense to get the financing. It doesn't matter that the value of the car to you is spread out over time. Buying the car outright is better unless you needed the money for something else or didn't have it or had some investment that would outpace the interest on the loan.

Re: The Refragmentation

#415

Post by kobayashi » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #359

kobayashi wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Companies like Apple do not happen in a pure deregulated neoliberal market paradise because markets don't have the kind of strategic intelligence that can fund projects like Whirlwind, TX-0, and the original Arpanet - all of which are essential steps on the road to making an Apple or a Google. While I can agree that private entities/markets lacked the capability to fund transformative projects during most of the 20t…

Leaving the buzzwordy hand waving in the last paragraph aside, spacex gets the majority of its revenue from the government.

I wouldn't call it buzzwordy hand waving, mostly because it actually means something intelligible. But regardless, so what if SpaceX gets the majority of its money from the government? It's operating as a private entity and it's revolutionizing space travel, and the funding coming from the US government is not for research and development, but for actual services rendered. Similarly, do you believe that the next giant leap forward in general AI is going to come from government? It may, but it also might come from the private sector. I'd say that the same goes for the future's version of Arpanet (something the public doesn't see coming but eventually changes everything).

Because technology enables small teams to make big changes that were once only within reach for large entities like the government, the idea that markets don't have the strategic intelligence to do big, long-term thinking, just seems bunk to me. Also, look at the AI lab announced by Altman and Musk, or look at YC's new long-term research lab project. These could conceivably produce the next Arpanet, don't you think?

Re: The Refragmentation

#416

Post by zanny » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 7:57 PM UTC

three14 wrote: post #410

zanny wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/middle-class-jobs-m... http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-bots-are-taking-aw... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/smart-machines-job-... Most relevantly to this direct topic: http://fortune.com/2015/02/25/5-jobs-that-robots-already-are... Like I said, there are demonstrable mechanisms, and in-lab and even in-market examples of how these technologies are going to…

None of this really answers the question. Of course technology eliminates jobs. This has been happening since before Ford was founded and before all those automotive jobs were originally created . See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite for instance. The question isn't whether specific jobs are being destroyed, but rather whether all unskilled jobs are being destroyed, and none of those links even begin to give any…

By definition of unskilled labor you imply only work done by physical action.

If you really don't think you cannot replace the human arm with a machine, you haven't been paying attention for two centuries. How is that even a question? We could replace all unskilled work today, if all you are doing is removing mechanical components of labor.

Remember, unskilled labor is "work to be done without training or certification". Driving a truck requires a Class C license, which is a certification. Working at Mcdonalds takes no certification. You need to have state certifications to work as a carpenter, plumber, or electrician. Your janitor doesn't need anything. So when you ask "is there any evidence unskilled labor can be completely replaced" then I would ask what unskilled job is not being replaced right now, from self checkout to vending machines to roombas to combine harvesters.

Re: The Refragmentation

#417

Post by yummyfajitas » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 8:01 PM UTC

anon1385 wrote: post #357

Terr_ wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I looked at the linked document. The figures are as follows (all in thousands): 14,157 units below the poverty line (12.7% of all units) 5,566 of those Owner occupied (39.3%) 3,191 of those owned "free and clear" (22%) So his 45% claim isn't even true to start with. It falls to 22% when you consider full ownership. Seeing yummyfajitas make factually incorrect claims is disappointing but not surprising.

I did misremember the 45% vs 39% number (my notes on that report transposed two separate stats), but I'm assuming that by "factually incorrect" you mean referring to a mortgage holder as an owner.

If so, do you also consider the Census (whose terminology I used) to be making "factually incorrect claims"?

Re: The Refragmentation

#418

Post by beatpanda » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

wh-uws wrote: post #122

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…

"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…

This is easy -- any person working a full-time job should be able to pay rent in safe, decent, legal housing, afford to feed themeselves and their family and put clothes on their back.

If this condition isn't satisfied, our economic system doesn't work, period.

Re: The Refragmentation

#419

Post by lsc » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

r2dnb wrote: post #369

lsc wrote: post #362

>The ultimate way to get market price is to work for yourself, by starting your own company. see... this (and the implication that people working at large companies get less than market rate) doesn't ring true for me. The real "free markets" of labor, like craigslist and the rent-a-coder marketplaces pay about 20% of what you get if you go through a recruiter who has "a relationship" with a large company... for doing…

True, but PG doesn't consider selling your time as starting a company, you're not talking about the same thing

right, but running a company requires a rather different skillset from working for someone else as a programmer. It's a different job.

My point is just that as a full timer at a big company, you are at the top end of "market rate" for programmers.

If you start your own company, you are on the 'business person' payscale, which is a rather different thing.

Re: The Refragmentation

#420

Post by simon_ » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 8:12 PM UTC

anon1385 wrote: post #357

Terr_ wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I looked at the linked document. The figures are as follows (all in thousands): 14,157 units below the poverty line (12.7% of all units) 5,566 of those Owner occupied (39.3%) 3,191 of those owned "free and clear" (22%) So his 45% claim isn't even true to start with. It falls to 22% when you consider full ownership. Seeing yummyfajitas make factually incorrect claims is disappointing but not surprising.

Sigh, it is hard for me to imagine that this comment was made in good faith.

First of all, owning "free and clear" is hardly the expected meaning of ownership in the context of cars or especially houses in the US. I have a mortgage and I still say I own my house. When I told friends I was buying my house, I expect >90% of them assumed I was getting a mortgage. The government reported "homeownership rate" certainly does not exclude households with mortgages.

Second of all, ignoring semantics, the original context was a conversation about whether a significant number of households being unable to afford technology like a $5K computer would stifle innovation. Innovation probably doesn't care whether customers are in debt or not, so this is still perfectly decent evidence to cite about the spending capacity of poor households.

"Disappointing but not surprising". Sigh.