IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#101

Post by mmirate » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:07 PM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #72

jstanley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's your parent, partner, or kids, (or even if it's not -- it could be anyone) you're welcome to provide for them yourself. You're also welcome to donate to (or even work for!) charities that provide for them. But it's not OK to force everyone else to provide for them.

Mark Blyth (prof. of political economy at Brown) has advice for anyone with this attitude: "The Hamptons is not a defensible position"[1]. What are you going to do when a large fraction of the population starts getting hungry and they decide taking what they need from you (and everyone else with wealth/resources)? Do you really think that the police will simply arrest them? What about when someone starts shooting and…

That speaks more to police being incompetent, understaffed and/or underfunded (and to civilian concealed-weapons-permit-holders being too few and too-far-between) than to anything else.

(n.b. incarcerating a criminal costs tens of thousands of dollars per year; whereas the summary execution of a deadly threat during a riot, costs at most $10 of ammunition per criminal)

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#102

Post by tetraca » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:13 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #77

nippples wrote: post #29

I really thought it was corrupt politicians giving away public resources to private mega corporations, irresponsible financing systems, wall street selling lel bonds, the undermining of the national working class, bogus copyright laws that are designed to squish small and upcoming competition, and people purchasing garbage degrees instead of useful ones with money they don't have guaranteeing they'll be indebted for…

There does seem to be a hostility towards people who work in tech on the left. To me this feels like pandering to that by Clintonian types who don't actually have any interest in dealing with class issues.

From what I've seen, I don't believe it's universal. The hostility is toward certain kinds of people who encourage and enable centralization or crystallization of power. People like Richard Stallman are generally liked, but people like Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg are not. Mind you I don't know what the Tankie side of things really says because I loathe them.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#103

Post by eternalban » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:14 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #66

empath75 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also enabled by IT.

Financial institutions are all now IT companies. It's an essential core competency. Money is information.

And that is precisely why (imo) the finance world engineered the outsourcing strategy (and invested heavily in off shore body shops) in late 90s. At least that is how it looked to me in those days.

(The official story was that low skill IT jobs are sent off shore to help the bottom line. This, the official reason for a service and information economy to tech transfer its crown jewels, never made any sense. Consider that software craft is mostly learned on the job, thus gutting the entry level insures future deficits in higher levels. And further that by near universal account, outsourced software projects are technically subpar and subject to multiple rewrites. All this while entire floors at investment banks' IT departments were 'let go'.

You do the math.)

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#104

Post by gizmodo59 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:19 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #66

empath75 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also enabled by IT.

Financial institutions are all now IT companies. It's an essential core competency. Money is information.

A core competency doesn't mean they are IT companies. Knowing how to use a computer is akin to literacy. That does not mean that being so efficient in Excel will make you Martin Shkreli (https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4df5il/martin_shkre...) Finance is much more than knowing how to use or even excel at any software or programming. Computer is an enabler in this case IMHO.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#105

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:22 PM UTC

// Automation replaces men. This of course is nothing new. What is new is that now, unlike most earlier periods, the displaced men have nowhere to go. The farmers displaced by mechanization of the farms in the 20's could go to the cities and man the assembly lines. As for the work animals like the mule, they could just stop growing them. But automation displaces people, and you don't just stop growing people even when they have been made expendable by the system. Under Stalin the kulaks and all those who didn't go along with the collectivization of agriculture were just killed off. Even then, if they had been ready to go along, Stalin could have used them. But in the United States, with automation coming in when industry has already reached the point that it can supply consumer demand, the question of what to do with the surplus people who are the expendables of automation becomes more and more critical every day....

...As automation spreads, it will intensify the crises of capitalism and sharpen the conflicts among the various sections of the population, particularly between those working and those not working, those paying taxes and those not paying taxes. Out of this conflict will grow a counter-revolutionary movement made up of those from all social layers who resent the continued cost to them of maintaining these expendables but who are determined to maintain the system that creates and multiplies the number of expendables. This in turn will mobilize those who begin by recognizing the right of these displaced persons to live, and from there are forced to struggle for a society in which there are no displaced persons. //

James Boggs, _The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker's Notebook_, 1962(!!)

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/amreboggs.html

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#106

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:23 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #77

nippples wrote: post #29

I really thought it was corrupt politicians giving away public resources to private mega corporations, irresponsible financing systems, wall street selling lel bonds, the undermining of the national working class, bogus copyright laws that are designed to squish small and upcoming competition, and people purchasing garbage degrees instead of useful ones with money they don't have guaranteeing they'll be indebted for…

There does seem to be a hostility towards people who work in tech on the left. To me this feels like pandering to that by Clintonian types who don't actually have any interest in dealing with class issues.

I think there's hostility to the rich in general on the left. Not all people who work in tech are rich, but many of the, oh, top 10% of income earners, especially those someone else might come into contact with regularly, are in tech. And human nature to express more ire towards those you come into contact with regularly than those you never do.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#107

Post by davemp » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:25 PM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #95

jrs95 wrote: post #79

It isn't the technology that's to blame for how the wealth it creates is distributed. That's just silly. And honestly, an efficient socialist economy is made much more realistic by modern technology. There's a lot that can be done to offset some of the downsides that have been associated with it in the past.

Not the least of which is mass automation, which removes one of the worst aspects of socialism and communism; the permanent working underclass. A friend of mine says Communism arrived 100 years too early, I'd say that's an excellent way to put it.

I'm curious as to where this mass automation story originated. I haven't seen any real evidence that anything besides the most basic repetitive tasks will be automated in the future. This automation would also likely just lead to a new set of low pay, desirable jobs.

Sure, Moore's law and advancements in machine learning/vision push to make automation more economically viable for certain areas that were already good candidates. For other areas where human's adaptability is even moderately valuable, technology is a long ways away from coming anywhere close to beating out humans.

Technology breaking the chains of toil is a very idealistic thought. I can see technology augmenting more jobs and allowing humans to toil more efficiently, but not total automation.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#108

Post by jrs95 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:25 PM UTC

tetraca wrote: post #102

jrs95 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There does seem to be a hostility towards people who work in tech on the left. To me this feels like pandering to that by Clintonian types who don't actually have any interest in dealing with class issues.

From what I've seen, I don't believe it's universal. The hostility is toward certain kinds of people who encourage and enable centralization or crystallization of power. People like Richard Stallman are generally liked, but people like Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg are not. Mind you I don't know what the Tankie side of things really says because I loathe them.

It's definitely not universal. But in my opinion, it's more like there are people who think they're better than us that are upset that we're as successful as we are. And being predominantly white men doesn't help, even if we do tend to lean left. That shitty documentary Nancy Pelosi's daughter made is probably a good example of that. The premise is basically that tech workers are terrible and are destroying San Francisco. I'm sure there's similar sentiments on the right as well, but theirs seem to be more of "these rich tech liberals want to tell us how to live" or something along those lines.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#109

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:27 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #79

It isn't the technology that's to blame for how the wealth it creates is distributed. That's just silly. And honestly, an efficient socialist economy is made much more realistic by modern technology. There's a lot that can be done to offset some of the downsides that have been associated with it in the past.

I don't think it's technology to blame exactly, but I think technology is a part of the story. I think decreasing areas for expanse created a crisis for capitalist profitability, which tech was one "solution" to, but it's a solution that makes increasing portions of the population surplus/unneeded labor, and increases wealth inequality.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#110

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Aug 07, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #107

FussyZeus wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the least of which is mass automation, which removes one of the worst aspects of socialism and communism; the permanent working underclass. A friend of mine says Communism arrived 100 years too early, I'd say that's an excellent way to put it.

I'm curious as to where this mass automation story originated. I haven't seen any real evidence that anything besides the most basic repetitive tasks will be automated in the future. This automation would also likely just lead to a new set of low pay, desirable jobs. Sure, Moore's law and advancements in machine learning/vision push to make automation more economically viable for certain areas that were already good…

I guess the question is what portion of the population is employed in these "most basic repetitive tasks", and with those automated, how many people getting paid are actually neccesary for capitalist production? If a lot fewer than the people who exist... what is to become of them? Some tech types say "Universal Basic Income" as an attempt at a solution to that.