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Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

theguardian.com

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Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#61

Post by mjevans »

zwischenzug wrote: post #20
thefastlane wrote: post #10

"Does money matter?" i will check with my landlord and let you know.

I assume this is meant as sarcasm against a supposed argument against the importance of money. Hawking argues that money very much does matter.

I find the argument to be slightly different.

Today money matters in so much as getting things that need to be done to happen. Things like quality medical care, a place to live, and 'workers' to get those things done.

Money past that, money as a form of arbitrary luxury, is far too transitory. Once you reach that point you have very little marginal change in your situation, status signaling, or other measures; you have reached saturation on the 'good' money can do for you.

I think that most of the people who support Universal-BIG just want to get rid of the wasteful feedback loops in the low end of that equation. Everyone should have good food, good living areas, and good healthcare as a member of society. It establishes a more level playing field for all other activities and removes a lot of the wasteful expenditures of time and energy. It also cuts down on the 'alternative' means of achieving such basic support (ending up in jail or revolving hospitalization and being a drain on society).

Does this mean money should cease existing? No, but for a lot of things it would no longer be related.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#62

Post by mrec »

airesQ wrote: post #46
hal9000xp wrote: post #26

I actually don't understand why Brexit should necessary be bad for UK. Switzerland is doing very well outside of EU despite it's literally surrounded by EU members. Of course, there is a risk that UK won't do as good as Switzerland does but it's only risk, it's not established fact yet. Regarding article itself ... well, it's The Guardian so it's very predictable what they will write about wealth. Regarding author, i…

Why would the UK do badly outside the EU? Well because 45%+ of its exports go to the EU. And the EU is not just a trade deal. It is a single market, like the US is a single market, with a great degree of regulatory uniformity. Which means accepting laws from a central source (in the US it is Washington, in the EU it is Brussels). What you think would happen to Texas were to secede? With border controls? With its inte…

> Well because 45%+ of its exports go to the EU.

Implying that ~ 55% of its exports go outside the EU, and since the EU is a customs union, external trade incurs tariffs by default and members are prohibited from negotiating their own trade deals to change that. The 55% number is despite those constraints; it's not unreasonable to think that the proportion would be quite a bit higher if EU trade had tariffs and trade with the rest of the world didn't [1]. The 55% number is also rising steadily as EU growth lags behind the rest of the world. I'd be surprised if Brexit ends without free UK/EU trade, but even if it did I don't think it'd be the disaster many are painting.

Short-term things will be rocky given the uncertainty and adjustment pains; long-term things will be fine; medium-term could go either way depending on how the various parties behave.

[1] That's simplifying a bit, since the EU does have free trade deals with some countries, although notably not with the US or China or India or much of the rest of the Commonwealth. Also, some of the UK's trade with the rest of the world is currently routed through the EU, though given how cheap freight is these days that shouldn't be too hard to change if necessary.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#63

Post by mpweiher »

zo1 wrote: post #21
sevenless wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is not a whitewash that makes actions good, sensible or moral.

I think they're rather pointing out the fact that democracy is a-priori taken seriously (good, sensible, and moral as you put it) until it votes-in an action that some people don't like. You never hear the same types of things being told of normal presidential and governmental elections as we did for the brexit outcome. I.e. "this side used fear mongering of X" and "side B used promises of Y to manipulate the public"…

A couple of points:

1. In a normal election, you can "vote the bums out" in the next election. This has much more serious and long-term consequences, more akin to a constitutional amendment, which in countries that have a constitution usually requires something like a 2/3rd majority.

2. In a normal election, the side that wins by making promises (false or otherwise) then has to actually deliver on those promises, and be judged on those promises, because it is voted into power. This is not the case here, and in fact the new PM wanted to remain.

3. The lies and false promises in this particular case were quite extreme. Although there probably were some, I can't think of single "leave" promise that was truthful.

4. Yes, you do hear this all the time, but the general idea is that since you can reconsider next time around, the lies should be left to stand and the people voted into power judged by their performance relative to their claims. Again, there is none of that here, as the people behind leave aren't even generally going to be in power, so no judging them against their claims, and this will be hard to undo.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#64

Post by jernfrost »

I think Hawking has said many important things about wealth and economy in the past. Many economists are very narrowly focused, not considering the bigger picture.

Society and the field of economics have always had to make major changes in response to significant technological change. The industrial revolution ripped apart the old order and fundamentally changed the way people thought about economics.

As Hawking has talked about, I think AI as well will make fundamental and lasting changes to the field of economics, and to how we organize our society.

E.g. I don't think libertarian ideology can survive an AI world. Free market economics makes most sense for the present world but socialist economics might actually make more sense in an AI world.

It depends on how things evolve. Either a rich elite will end up controlling all the means of production without needing workers, creating masses of unemployment, or we end up in a world where everybody is a capitalist. Nobody works, but everybody might own capital they invest in production.

The outcome will depend largely on the marginal cost of production. If 3D printers, robots, AI etc allow production to happen at small scale with similar marginal cost to that of large scale production the capitalism might get dramatically democratized. If not instead we risk a Blande Runner like Dystopia.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#65

Post by gonvaled »

Retra wrote: post #58
gonvaled wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is a relative term: somebody without a shirt is poor because nearly everybody has a shirt, not because shirts are absolutely necessary. Edit: not sure why I am being downvoted. Take the poorest man on Earth today; he is richer than most men alive 20 thousand years ago. I would argue that he would conquer any ancient society.

I don't think you understand how poor the poorest man on Earth today is, nor how ineffective that wealth would be for gaining influence in other cultures.

Maybe I got carried away. Maybe not the poorest, but a very poor man today has resources at his disposal (via modern societies, no matter how poor) vastly greater than the resources a very rich man could get millenia ago. He can be cured of various deseases, can move around with incredible vehicles, can talk with people very far away from him, has incredible amount of knowledge at his disposal, and already knows things (“the Earth is round“) which are very valuable (as in “we invested huge amounts of resources to get to know this“). His power is enormous.

Human nature is such that we feel poor because we only have a bike, while our neighbor has a Porsche, without realizing that a bike is an incredible thing.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#66

Post by gonvaled »

hx87 wrote: post #59
gonvaled wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Eurozone is suffering. All economic areas have up and downs. Being in a shared monerary union, you sacrifize some advantages for others: we compromise - I know, strange word. We are building a stable, long term monetary union. We are learning, we are improving and we will have a strong currency going forward. Next time another economy area is in distress, as it will unavoidably happen, remember about our crisis,…

Thanks to the magic of currency markets, I don't have to care about currencies either when I travel in Europe, even though I am American. Whenever I buy something, I use my credit card, and the charges are automatically converted to USD based on whatever the USD/EUR/GBP/etc rates are on that day. The Eurozone can be a great idea, if some sort of fiscal union comes into being; otherwise the Euro will always be underva…

So are the carrots you buy ecpensive? In april? Two years ago? Basically, you go to the supermarke, get your carrots and say: whatever, lets just get over with it.

Sure, you can get use to a new currency - it took us the best part of a decade to stop thinking in our old national currencies in the eurozone, and some people, and for some things, old currencies are still used mentally and in conversation.

The good thing in the Eurozone is: I dont need to. A currency must, above all, get out of my way.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#67

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

gonvaled wrote: post #65
Retra wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand how poor the poorest man on Earth today is, nor how ineffective that wealth would be for gaining influence in other cultures.

Maybe I got carried away. Maybe not the poorest, but a very poor man today has resources at his disposal (via modern societies, no matter how poor) vastly greater than the resources a very rich man could get millenia ago. He can be cured of various deseases, can move around with incredible vehicles, can talk with people very far away from him, has incredible amount of knowledge at his disposal, and already knows thin…

For a remote Afghan, or even a rural Cambodian, life is pretty much the same as it has been for thousands of years. The wealth and means exist to feed and clothe and shelter all humans on earth, but those who actually have means at their disposal choose instead to spend the money on wars and opulence.

Plenty of Middle-class Americans deny that the earth is round, even with all the knowledge of the world at their fingertips.

Potentially, yes, the world is miraculous compared to the past. But for those who are not born into some of that gradual wealth creation (as most Westerners were), they are still very poor and very exploited. Or they are too remote to bother with and so life is hardly any different compared with 100 or 500 years ago.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#68

Post by clavalle »

nyolfen wrote: post #60
clavalle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The article asks "can possessions stand in the way of fulfillment?" Experience tells me the answer there is certainly yes, they can and often do. While this can be true, and I know a few people who seem oddly compelled to accumulate more at the detriment of the rest of their lives, I find that it is far more common that the lack of wealth stands in the way of fulfillment. On a different point, I see the market as an…

>Desperation and exploitation are not core features of a free market, Capitalistic system. In fact, I think they are a drag on Capitalism and the free market. without making a value judgment, i think this extremely disputable, historically speaking

You don't have to dig in history to dispute it, desperation and exploitation are current features of our Capitalist system.

BUT

I think that is more historical accident rather than a necessary consequence of the system. I think we have to work to pull Capitalism out of that swamp if it is to remain viable for the foreseeable future.

But it is so ingrained that these are part and parcel with the free market that suggesting ways to fix it is taken as an attack on Capitalism itself.

In my view, if we removed desperation from the system, one way or another, and allowed people to bargain for a gain rather than to stem losses, it would be jet fuel for the market, the economy and Capitalism as a whole.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#69

Post by hx87 »

gonvaled wrote: post #66
hx87 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to the magic of currency markets, I don't have to care about currencies either when I travel in Europe, even though I am American. Whenever I buy something, I use my credit card, and the charges are automatically converted to USD based on whatever the USD/EUR/GBP/etc rates are on that day. The Eurozone can be a great idea, if some sort of fiscal union comes into being; otherwise the Euro will always be underva…

So are the carrots you buy ecpensive? In april? Two years ago? Basically, you go to the supermarke, get your carrots and say: whatever, lets just get over with it. Sure, you can get use to a new currency - it took us the best part of a decade to stop thinking in our old national currencies in the eurozone, and some people, and for some things, old currencies are still used mentally and in conversation. The good thing…

> So are the carrots you buy ecpensive?

Not a difficult problem: I just look up the latest local-to-USD conversion rates and do the conversion. If you have a largely cash economy, sure, multiple currencies are a bit of a hassle, but with electronic payments and on-the-fly currency conversion, you can do your accounting in whatever currency you want. It does not get in your way. Having a permanently over- or undervalued currency does.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#70

Post by gonvaled »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #67
gonvaled wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I got carried away. Maybe not the poorest, but a very poor man today has resources at his disposal (via modern societies, no matter how poor) vastly greater than the resources a very rich man could get millenia ago. He can be cured of various deseases, can move around with incredible vehicles, can talk with people very far away from him, has incredible amount of knowledge at his disposal, and already knows thin…

For a remote Afghan, or even a rural Cambodian, life is pretty much the same as it has been for thousands of years. The wealth and means exist to feed and clothe and shelter all humans on earth, but those who actually have means at their disposal choose instead to spend the money on wars and opulence. Plenty of Middle-class Americans deny that the earth is round, even with all the knowledge of the world at their fing…

We are talking about different things: you talk about somebody alive today, but basically living in the past. His peers are those in times past, so he is as rich or poor as they were.

I talk about your average “very poor guy“ in a modern society: he is just poor compared to his peers, but rich compared to a lot of people.

But no matter who we are talking about: my point all along is that being poor or rich is a relative measure. To say that a person is poor, you need to state “compared to“. Usually we implicitely compare to the “average contemporary citizen“

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