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Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

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Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#71

Post by dvdhnt »

unknown_apostle wrote: post #60

Working class people are being subjected to ultra efficient hypercapitalism, as in Uber drivers discovering they worked for free when they need to purchase a new car. Meanwhile Wall Street has been bailed out 2 times in the last 15 years alone with monetary policy. How many people went to jail? (And they haven’t learned a thing, on the contrary and quite spectacularly so.) If you want to know where the tech bubble co…

You've clearly articulated an ideal I've felt for over a year but couldn't convey completely. Thank you!

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#72

Post by darod »

ghaff wrote: post #63
isostatic wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is a good thing. In our Delhi office, each elevator has an attendant who's sole job is to push the button of the floor you want. This means less space in the lift for passengers, and lifts being taken out of commission because there's nobody to push the button. Removing this job (by having the technology to allow passengers to select their floor themselves) means improvement for the users. The same applies t…

Self-service is a mixed bag. Yes, I like ATMs and Netflix (or Redbox). But I hate self-service at grocery stores especially if I'm buying produce etc. I'm not a big fan at home improvement stores much of the time either.

I completely agree. Bill Burr sums it up better than I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxINJzqzn4w

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#73

Post by yborg »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #47
R_haterade wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That last part bothers me a lot. It seems a lot of people just don't want to move. Anecdotally I've moved nearly 6 times in the last 8 years. My parents have done the same. How do we build any kind of community with so little permanence? If we can't bond with our neighbors, we become these empty, atomized husks floating from one economic opportunity to another. Put another way, how can a village raise a child if the…

Isn't that what Facebook and the like are for? I'm being serious here. Since 2002 I have moved 5 times for work: Colorado, Texas, Guam, Maryland and now I'm in Virginia. My family is spread around Texas. I mostly keep up with the people I made friends with through the years and my family on FB, Twitter etc...phone and then rarely on email. The idea of a "local" community you have your whole life is antiquated - if it…

>Your village is a hypercorp that sells all your social interactions for profit

This, to me, is a "Truman Show" level dystopia.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#74

Post by koonsolo »

unknown_apostle wrote: post #60

Working class people are being subjected to ultra efficient hypercapitalism, as in Uber drivers discovering they worked for free when they need to purchase a new car. Meanwhile Wall Street has been bailed out 2 times in the last 15 years alone with monetary policy. How many people went to jail? (And they haven’t learned a thing, on the contrary and quite spectacularly so.) If you want to know where the tech bubble co…

The whole credit card system in US is made to rip off "stupid" people, extremely so.

Nobody writes about that, probably because everyone from US thinks it's normal, and nobody from the rest of the world knows about it.

But that system is made to screw all the people who are not good at personal finances.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#75

Post by slackingoff2017 »

microcolonel wrote: post #58
bsaunder wrote: post #51

This is the use case for universal basic income. Its largely not their fault for their current economic situation. They played by the rules. They worked hard. If we could only remove the "necessity" of a job and the puritan shame of unemployment to live a moderate life of meager means. People should be encouraged to contribute to society not to simply "get a job".

The solution to some people getting played by the system surely isn't to play everyone even more by that same system. I figure UBI will look like it's succeeding for ~10-20 years, then we'll see what the real impact of it is (as people grow up with it). There's also little consensus on how comfortable the basic income should be; I get the impression that if it is too comfortable, you'd be a fool to work, if it's too…

UBI is welfare with a different name. The results will be the same.

Some people will sit on their asses and never work a single day but the majority of the population would keep working. The extra money would become meaningless because prices would adjust to accommodate it.

We have to keep in mind that you can't just create money and hand it out and make everyone rich. If everyone had 10x as much money prices would end up going up 10x. The supply of real goods you can use that money for hasn't changed. The huge increase in demand would lead to a supply crunch and much higher prices.

The money we're giving out for UBI has to be taken from someone else. What UBI is calling for is wealth redistribution, something I'm in favor of. But people seem to think it's magic around here.

If we pillaged the top 1% and distributed their wealth evenly the entire rest of the population would get close to a 100% raise. That's how filthy rich the top 1% are.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#76

Post by ganoushoreilly »

vostok wrote: post #57
seshagiric wrote: post #34

"....but it’s easy to see why they might feel as if no one in Washington is living their lives...." As an non-American I personally think this is why large number of working class voted for Trump, and something Clinton either missed or did not give importance to.

I don't think Trump lived a working class life before becoming president.

I don't think it was about that, it was about him being someone from outside the establishment that they perceive as being out of touch.

I've still not met anyone that's pro trump and believes most of what he was promoting. Sadly the most common response I get is "I wasn't voting for Hillary, so I voted Trump".

I truly believe these Americans feel they are are in desperate circumstances and someone from the outside that even acknowledged them, let alone claimed solutions, was bound to grab their attention.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#77

Post by irq11 »

humanrebar wrote: post #53

> There isn’t an app to fix this. Well, we could make it socially important to make remote work possible. The geographic concentration of tech thought and culture has been at least partly intentional. Early internet culture seemed eager to do exactly the opposite. The inefficiencies of colocation were problems ripe for innovation. If tech workers could live in small towns more easily, they'll have middle-class-squeez…

We could also make it socially important to spread the tech industry across the US, instead of trying to cram everything in the eastern third of San Francisco.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#78

Post by mythrwy »

gammarator wrote: post #27
1_2__4 wrote: post #23

Replace this with "coal bubble" in WV, "oil bubble" in SD, "Hollywood bubble" in LA, etc. etc. etc. or just title these "20-something learns there's a world outside their immediate environment and boy howdy is it different."

Steve Blank is not 20.

Yes, but he is worth 20 something hundred million dollars. That kind of makes him a 20 something.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#79

Post by base698 »

bsaunder wrote: post #51

This is the use case for universal basic income. Its largely not their fault for their current economic situation. They played by the rules. They worked hard. If we could only remove the "necessity" of a job and the puritan shame of unemployment to live a moderate life of meager means. People should be encouraged to contribute to society not to simply "get a job".

By some estimates we have 20 million opiate addicts. What happens when the opiate addict runs out of his basic income on day 5 of a 31 day month?

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#80

Post by bluedino »

tinkerdol wrote: post #41
bmwe30is wrote: post #30

>Some are rooted, embedded in their communities; and some are trapped — because housing is unaffordable where the better paying jobs are. And the jobs that are high paying are not the jobs they built their lives on. There's some texture and nuance to this statement. I remember on NPR, they interviewed a lady whom mentioned similar sentiments; her and her husband had built a family, worked in the blue-collar industry…

>Mobility and a willingness to learn new skills seems to prevail. It's what other generations have done, millions of immigrants (my parents included). For an individual this might be a solution (even for me! I've moved around lots too) But for a whole society it's not. Especially when we seem to be hearing similar stories across thousands of towns and cities. Is everyone supposed to move to the bay area, NYC, Boston,…

You don't have to move to NYC or SF - you just can't stay stuck in Cleveland for 20 years after the factory jobs disappeared.

There's opportunity to be had in Texas, the southeast, the northwest.

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