Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by scarmig » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 8:48 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #62

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…

Strict universal nomadism is incompatible with agricultural development. Most of human existence has been nomadic, but the recent default for ~10000 years has been sedentary (non-migratory) mainly because of agriculture. And we've replicated the "farmer schedule" in most all subsequent careers. The rise of interdisciplinary personalities (or at least recognizing this is a thing) might just be a new old thing: the mod…

Nomadism is entirely compatible with agriculture, actually. A lot of Native American tribes had a nomadic lifestyle while simultaneously relying heavily on intentional agriculture for a lot of their caloric intake.

"Strict universal" is doing a lot of work there. I suspect very few societies would end up even qualifying as nomadic with that.

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

#162

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

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,…

The answer to your last paragraph, for the majority of people, is yes. That's how urbanization looks like. That's what the other generations have done. That's how it worked a hundred years ago, with a huge portion of people leaving countryside to relocate in urban centers, that's how it transformed China recently (uncountable millions of people moving from inland farming to their east coast manufacturing), that's how it's ongoing now, and that's how it's going to happen in the future.

The current world increasingly favors centralization and economies of scale, so the "optimal" spread of people gets more and more centralized. Living on the fringe, unless there's a specific economic need (we'll still need some (1%? less in the long term) people living as on site farmers) is increasingly becoming an expensive "hobby"/lifestyle choice, since you're going to get less services at a much higher cost and with less opportunities for income.

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

#163

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 9:04 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #3

Second sentence starts with: > We have a summer home ... Is this common for people living inside the tech bubble?

With the real estate trends being the way they are, that may be more affordable as you think.

Real estate in the big cities is sky high, but as people are moving there, other places are getting more and more empty and thus cheaper. Buying a summer house for me would cost ~5% of my main residence cost, and it'd likely be larger.

A fun anecdote from a local insurance company handling rural areas - they insure houses for no more than the market value (obviously, so there'd be no motivation for arson), and if a house gets a major fire, that doesn't cover the replacement value (cost of repairs or reconstruction), not even close. So a surprisingly common solution/consequence after an insured fire is simply buying a comparable close-by house+land for the insurance money, since that's much cheaper than rebuilding the original one. Obviously that's not feasible in the long term, but those areas can go on for decades without needing to build a single new house as there are much more houses than families due to people moving to cities.

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

#164

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

60654 wrote: post #9

> Most people aren’t in tech or law or teaching in universities; they fall solidly in what is called working-class. They work as electricians, carpenters, plumbers, in hospitals, restaurants, as clerks, office managers, farmers, etc. I'm surprised that he's surprised by this. Even in SV you can have a reality check, if you just deign to strike up a conversation with the cooks and the bus drivers and the janitors who…

The author expresses that they meet the people in a different context. Sure, you see bus drivers doing their job, but you're not talking with them about life while they're at the wheel.

In the tech bubble, chances are that the cook and the bus driver and the janitor just works there - they don't live there (because they can't afford it), they don't go to diners and pubs there much, it's as if they live in a different society that just "visits" that world during work. In the semi-rural area, they were part of the same society, in the tech bubble they're two separate societies increasingly growing apart from each other.

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

#165

Post by icebraining » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 9:11 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #159

tylerjwilk00 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still not quite getting it. If people have to choose between going into debt from a finance charge or starving on the street with no roof over their head they will choose the former. It's not about financial education it's about hard choices of the underprivileged.

I'm not talking about starving on the street, I'm talking about everybody in US using credit cards for payments and repay. I'm talking about shops offering their own credit cards. You know when US people use their credit card? Every day. You know when Europeans use their credit card? When abroad. And our credit gets instantly paid by our normal bank account. For us, a credit card is the same as a debit card but with…

We just have other types of debt. I know so many people paying 120-150% of the price of their TVs, vaccuum cleaners, kitchen appliances (like the €1224 Thermomix, which they've somehow convinced everyone must have), etc thanks to loans offered by subsidiaries of large banks and pushed by the shops.

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

#166

Post by ptero » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #153

Domenic_S wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This whole thread is full of cringe. TFA was about how silicon valley & Washington are The Elites -- out of touch with the working class and what are everyday problems for a huge swath of America. And the top 3 comments from the elite are: - Poor people are stupid - Poor people are bad at personal finance - More/better education (government) will help Did everyone suddenly forget all the un/underemployed college…

You are twisting my words. I never said poor people are stupid or the other way around. I said the US credit card system puts people without insight into finances in a serious disadvantage. No sorry, it rips them off. And nobody is talking about it, because it seems everybody thinks it's normal. Explain your credit score to a European for example, and you will be met with a blank stare or disbelief.

I do not see credit cards as the biggest problem. There is some incentive to abuse them, but using them every day is not the problem. I use them all the time, pay them off each month and enjoy benefits and protections not available via debit cards (so I have only of those and only use it when I'm in Europe :) ).

I personally see the incentives to borrow a hell of a lot of money to buy a house or a college education as much bigger issue.

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

#167

Post by valuearb » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 9:17 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #74

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.

If you want to gamble on starting your own business it's amazing how much money you can easily borrow on credit cards.

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

#168

Post by ptero » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 9:21 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #152

Domenic_S wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This whole thread is full of cringe. TFA was about how silicon valley & Washington are The Elites -- out of touch with the working class and what are everyday problems for a huge swath of America. And the top 3 comments from the elite are: - Poor people are stupid - Poor people are bad at personal finance - More/better education (government) will help Did everyone suddenly forget all the un/underemployed college…

>Did everyone suddenly forget all the un/underemployed college graduates we've got? Are they stupid, too? I think you'll find the HN consensus is that they're stupid (or were tragically misled) for going to college in a major other than computer science or engineering.

Ok, I will bite. I do not think blanked statements "CS or fools" make any sense, but I think a number of folks who dedicated 4-8 years of their lives to getting a liberal arts degree did this without a clear idea of what they can realistically expect at the end and making backup plans.

A PhD in English or French culture may make sense, but one must realize that professional opportunities outside academia are sparse and number of positions in academia is small.

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

#169

Post by stephenbez » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 9:22 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #90

slackingoff2017 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> 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. The problem with this, of course, is that the rich would simply leave. They are the most attractive to rob, and the best prepared to escape. In addition, "the 1%" is not an exclusive club; most people (currently) have a pretty good chance of entering…

I assume you meant the top 10%. In the US 56% of people will spend a year or more in the top 10%. 12% of people will spend a year or more in the top 1%.

http://www.aei.org/publication/evidence-shows-significant-in...

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

#170

Post by icebraining » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #126

bloomca wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you have a survivor's bias here – I have kind of the same track, I developed my initial skills while living with parents, being single and without having too much social interactions, so I was able to dedicate incredible amount of time to all this stuff. But this is not always the case. Very often when you realize that you need to change something, you already work, and you have some obligations, so you hav…

You may be right - I think about what I'd need to do to switch careers now, at 36, and it's a lot harder than when I was 19. Luckily I have a bit of a cushion, which was built up over those years as a computer programmer, so I wouldn't go homeless or anything while retraining. Many other people are not so lucky. I wonder what sort of education would be necessary to bring that opportunity to everyone, though. I was lu…

Let's say everybody got the necessary education to follow your path. Can Silicon Valley absorb the 27 million unemployed or underemployed workers in the US?