Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#81

Post by WalterBright »

ghaff wrote: post #56
WalterBright wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An electrician in 1880 did a lot of design work. One of 1920 (and today) does it by rote - they just follow canned rules and procedures already worked out. It's all coded into regulations, too, so there's little flexibility. An electrical engineer, on the other hand, does design work.

>they just follow canned rules and procedures already worked out To a degree. I get the contrast you're drawing and don't really disagree. But an electrician (like plumbers/contractors/etc.), especially working in an older building, has to deal with a lot of unexpected circumstances that have to be dealt with. There's a lot of problem-solving involved.

Sure, there's some creating work in dealing with obstacles. But let me give another example. My house was wired up by an experienced electrician. I noticed he was running the phone wires through the same holes as the A/C wires. I told him that would not work, as the phone wires would pick up the 60 Hz hum by inductive coupling. He had never heard of the term "inductive coupling". He had NO IDEA what I was talking about. If I let him continue, the phones in my house would all hum.

So I told him I'd do the low voltage wiring myself. Those have to be separated from the A/C wires by a couple feet, and only cross them at 90 degree angles. No hum.

Inductive coupling is something a first year EE student would learn about.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#82

Post by WalterBright »

scientistem wrote: post #80
WalterBright wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the primary cause. See the article I linked to. Government payments, subsidies, regulations, and tax policy all act to distort market incentives.

Hmm, I suppose we have different standards for evidence.

Why have software prices trended to zero, in spite of the desires of their capitalist creators to make it as expensive as possible?

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#83

Post by scientistem »

WalterBright wrote: post #82
scientistem wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I suppose we have different standards for evidence.

Why have software prices trended to zero, in spite of the desires of their capitalist creators to make it as expensive as possible?

Well, I’d assume price competition. (I appreciate the response!) How can you expect prices to improve if you can’t shop around?

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#84

Post by WalterBright »

maxxxxx wrote: post #37
WalterBright wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industries that have government heavily involved in (health care, education, housing) have seen huge runups in prices. Ones government is not involved in (such as software) have seen precipitous price declines.

You can't blame everything on government involvement. You can't just not get involved in heath care, education or housing, You may get sick, to get a job you often need a degree and you need to live somewhere. But you can live without an iphone.

You need food, too, and food is dirt cheap, and there's far less government involved with that. (Yes, I know about the USDA and agricultural subsidies, but the latter doesn't apply to all the food shipped into the US.)

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#85

Post by maxxxxx »

meredydd wrote: post #77
maxxxxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet a lot of the frontend guys will have problems when someone comes out with something like Visual Basic for the web. It's harder now to develop a LOB app than when it was twenty years ago and I think this will change at some point. Same for a lot of "data scientists". Unless you are on the forefront of development there will be more and more tools that make the data accessible to regular people instead of having…

> when someone comes out with something like Visual Basic for the web Obligatory plug: Check out https://anvil.works - it is exactly that! Drag and drop UI, Python front-end and back-end, database integration...the whole deal.

This looks pretty good. I can see it work for a lot of in-house applications.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#86

Post by xapata »

justinator wrote: post #69
xapata wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could just pay service-workers more. If you'd like to have a cool bar where the employees can afford to live in the neighborhood, then create one. Charge enough per drink to pay the rent and advertise why. I'm curious if it'd succeed.

I don't know if working as a bartender to owning a bar is that easy of a process. In Boulder at least, I'm not there to drink at a cool bar, work at a cool bar, or own a cool bar. I'm there because it's a livable city. Or was a livable city.

Then it sounds like you don't care if the bartenders move elsewhere. Which is reasonable.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#87

Post by maxxxxx »

WalterBright wrote: post #84
maxxxxx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't blame everything on government involvement. You can't just not get involved in heath care, education or housing, You may get sick, to get a job you often need a degree and you need to live somewhere. But you can live without an iphone.

You need food, too, and food is dirt cheap, and there's far less government involved with that. (Yes, I know about the USDA and agricultural subsidies, but the latter doesn't apply to all the food shipped into the US.)

As far as I know the food basics are highly subsidized. Isn't the yearly farm bill around 20 billion?

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#88

Post by goldfeld »

WalterBright wrote: post #78
michaelchisari wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said only, not me. Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity.

The Beatles made some of the greatest music in history, but "she loves you yeah yeah yeah" is a mite lacking in intellectual complexity.

Far from making greatest works even in modern music, but they made greatness accessible.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#89

Post by brewdad »

saas_sam wrote: post #23
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #4

Before industrialization, land that mattered was farmland. Then as industrialization took hold, urban land became more important as the grouping of people together allowed for economies of scale in manufacturing. But then the petrochemical revolution put things in reverse, as people could live anywhere and travel by car. Suddenly, open space was economically desirable, as it made more sense to build a factory in supe…

I think the question to answer is this: What does Small Town, U.S.A. have to offer the world that people are willing to pay for? My sense is that until very recently, the answer was "stuff the locals want plus a few large operations that 'plugged into' the national economy like farms and factories." Now, as you point out, the barriers to consolidating industry into mega-hubs like Shenzhen are dissolving. The only rea…

They have to develop highly skilled workforces AND keep them there. My smallish town where I grew up certainly hasn't done that. Of all of my classmates who attended college directly after high school, I can count on one hand with spare fingers the number still living in the area. I'd say well over half don't even live in the state anymore. Mind you, nobody in my high school attended any fancy private universities. We almost all went to state schools. (Big Ten, MAC, and smaller schools.) The private school attendees went to local religious affiliated colleges.

Developing talent does no good if you can't stop the brain drain.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#90

Post by michaelchisari »

WalterBright wrote: post #78
michaelchisari wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said only, not me. Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity.

The Beatles made some of the greatest music in history, but "she loves you yeah yeah yeah" is a mite lacking in intellectual complexity.

You're going to bring up the Beatles, and not bring up Tomorrow Never Knows or Blue Jay Way or anything off of Sgt. Pepper?

And all art has a wide expanse between commercially available and popular, and the avant garde, and within that range is another range between simplicity and complexity.

Art also encompasses film, fiction, the visual arts, music. All of which have a massive range of intellectual importance and depth.

No offense, but I feel as though you're showing your ignorance much more than proving your point.

Post reply on HN