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Poverty-Fighting Startups

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Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#131

Post by gumby »

dudzik wrote: post #101
dudzik wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see what the ugly part of the American past has to do with the current thread. Your comment feels a lot like Whataboutism[0] to me. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Can someone explain to me the downvotes? I can only derive from them that someone thinks that what I wrote is wrong. Maybe I am missing something and I just do not know.

It appears a number of people use downvote to mean "I disagree". I suppose they think HN is Facebook.

Also of course some people use it correctly, which confounds the data.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#132

Post by ZenoArrow »

TFYS wrote: post #130
ZenoArrow wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Everyone also now has a way to communicate their needs instantly to a computer. Compared to what could be achieved with todays technology, the price mechanism is inaccurate and slow." The price mechanism means that people have to make trade offs, and for anyone living outside of poverty, that's often a good thing. To use a simple example, if you're a gamer you may want both a PS4 and an Xbox One, but if you only h…

Of course you'd have to somehow set limits on consumption in any system where resources are limited. The price mechanism isn't the only way to do that. You could for example have only one game system to begin with so there's no reason to own two. Or you could have public "libraries" for things like gaming systems where you could borrow anything you need, reducing the need to own things. Resources should be allocated…

> "Of course you'd have to somehow set limits on consumption in any system where resources are limited. The price mechanism isn't the only way to do that. You could for example have only one game system to begin with so there's no reason to own two. Or you could have public "libraries" for things like gaming systems where you could borrow anything you need, reducing the need to own things."

Okay, but putting aside shared ownership and artificially limiting choice, how do you set limits on consumption?

Let's use a different example. Someone owns a car that they maintain themselves. Their car breaks down, but instead of requesting a new part to fix it they request a new car. How does the government choose which is the appropriate action to take? Before you answer, consider that this is just one decision out of millions that a government would have to make within the space of a month.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#133

Post by TFYS »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #132
TFYS wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you'd have to somehow set limits on consumption in any system where resources are limited. The price mechanism isn't the only way to do that. You could for example have only one game system to begin with so there's no reason to own two. Or you could have public "libraries" for things like gaming systems where you could borrow anything you need, reducing the need to own things. Resources should be allocated…

> "Of course you'd have to somehow set limits on consumption in any system where resources are limited. The price mechanism isn't the only way to do that. You could for example have only one game system to begin with so there's no reason to own two. Or you could have public "libraries" for things like gaming systems where you could borrow anything you need, reducing the need to own things." Okay, but putting aside sh…

If we know exactly how much resources we have, how much resources we usually spend on things and we ask people what's most important to them now and in the near future, we can calculate the allocation of resources that does the best job of satisfying peoples needs.

If a lot of people think new cars are important, then a computer can allocate a lot of resources into making new cars. This would of course mean we'd have less resources for everything else and peoples needs start changing as a result. If you can easily get a new car but notice that the quality of healthcare is decreasing, the next time the system asks your opinion on resource allocation you vote for more healthcare.

So in your example I guess there would be a democratically decided amount of resources dedicated to making new cars. If that amount is high, the computer would probably give him a new car as soon as one was available. If it's low, society would be fixing and sharing cars and using the freed resources on more important things.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#134

Post by obscurantist »

azernik wrote: post #54
noobermin wrote: post #10

I'm not from Silicon Valley, so the only sampling I have of SV culture comes from this site[0]. From what I see, the article has a refrain that being anti-libertarian goes against the SV gain, but I see political opinions from across the political spectrum here, and my leftist opinions are often upvoted. So, while I can see investors being skeptical, would the tech community as a whole be anti-welfare? I don't necess…

I think SV culture tends to be politically extremist, or to be more accurate fundamentalist, in whatever ideology it pursues. I see more hard-line libertarians, but also more hard-line socialists, than in other subcultures. There's a long tradition of political extremism among engineers in cultures around the world; something to do with seeing society as a system simple enough that a single human being can understand…

>There's a long tradition of political extremism among engineers in cultures around the world

Funny you say that, as most of the major Islamist terrorist groups were founded by or led by men with engineering backgrounds.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#135

Post by ZenoArrow »

TFYS wrote: post #133
ZenoArrow wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Of course you'd have to somehow set limits on consumption in any system where resources are limited. The price mechanism isn't the only way to do that. You could for example have only one game system to begin with so there's no reason to own two. Or you could have public "libraries" for things like gaming systems where you could borrow anything you need, reducing the need to own things." Okay, but putting aside sh…

If we know exactly how much resources we have, how much resources we usually spend on things and we ask people what's most important to them now and in the near future, we can calculate the allocation of resources that does the best job of satisfying peoples needs. If a lot of people think new cars are important, then a computer can allocate a lot of resources into making new cars. This would of course mean we'd have…

So in other words, you've replaced money with votes. Will everyone have an equal number of votes? Do parents get more votes as they have children to support? Do the votes of locals have greater weight than the votes of people from outside a region where a proposed change is due to take place? How do people stay informed about all the votes they should be participating in? If someone wants to opt out of your proposed society, can they do so and still retain material resources?

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#136

Post by jacobush »

loblollyboy wrote: post #80
jacobush wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make the argument the USSR removed that overhead, it might be good to keep in mind, the tsars and the kosacks where busy removing it long before.

How?

Tsar Russia was a very centralised society. A large portion of the population were not allowed to make any decisions for themselves, because they were slaves.

Another large portion were peasants, but they reported to a master.

And the Tsar himself was bogged down in decision making about minutiae to the degree that he had little time for strategic thinking.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#137

Post by TFYS »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #135
TFYS wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we know exactly how much resources we have, how much resources we usually spend on things and we ask people what's most important to them now and in the near future, we can calculate the allocation of resources that does the best job of satisfying peoples needs. If a lot of people think new cars are important, then a computer can allocate a lot of resources into making new cars. This would of course mean we'd have…

So in other words, you've replaced money with votes. Will everyone have an equal number of votes? Do parents get more votes as they have children to support? Do the votes of locals have greater weight than the votes of people from outside a region where a proposed change is due to take place? How do people stay informed about all the votes they should be participating in? If someone wants to opt out of your proposed…

I didn't mean people would buy things with votes. People could just keep a list of things they need in order of importance and the system would only use those lists to calculate the optimal allocation of resources, for example.

We'd need to test what works best. I don't have the details of such a system because it doesn't exist. All I'm trying to say is that we could come up with other ways to allocate resources than the price mechanism with our current level of technology. What I just came up with is just one way you might go about doing it, I'm sure we could figure out a working system. Of course such a system would have it's own faults, but I believe we could come up with something better than the current system, where the "needs" of a billionaire are more important than the needs of a million people in poverty.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#138

Post by ptaipale »

fastball wrote: post #107
closeparen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Higher income is already associated with lower fertility. Only people who are already pretty rich decide that they’re not rich enough to procreate. 2) If the market honestly has nothing for someone to do (or it’s of such low value that it falls below minimum wage), is it really a tragedy if they don’t work?

It is if they fill their time with making babies and this results in catastrophic population growth.

As you must be aware, population growth comes from high family size which in turn comes from the need to ensure one's support at old age.

In extremely poor societies, where there are no pensions or social security for the old, the best way to make sure you have food and shelter when you're too old to work is to have many children.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#139

Post by cgmg »

john_moscow wrote: post #46
gumby wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USSR tried doing exactly that with the planned economy and trying to distribute the wealth more or less evenly and failed miserably. Actually if you look at where they started and where they got, they did a pretty good job in raising the very poorest our of poverty, electrifying the country, and really eliminating a lot of the abject poverty that was most of the country at the time of the revolution. Changes that t…

>Actually if you look at where they started and where they got, they did a pretty good job in raising the very poorest our of poverty, electrifying the country, and really eliminating a lot of the abject poverty that was most of the country at the time of the revolution. That's the funny part about it. USSR was basically an engineered society with eliminated "overhead" of debating, negotiating, marketing, private ris…

> Except once the common needs were satisfied, the system ran into stagnation.

You are vastly understating the magnitude of the USSR's problems.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921–22 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932–33 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1946–47

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#140

Post by ZenoArrow »

TFYS wrote: post #137
ZenoArrow wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, you've replaced money with votes. Will everyone have an equal number of votes? Do parents get more votes as they have children to support? Do the votes of locals have greater weight than the votes of people from outside a region where a proposed change is due to take place? How do people stay informed about all the votes they should be participating in? If someone wants to opt out of your proposed…

I didn't mean people would buy things with votes. People could just keep a list of things they need in order of importance and the system would only use those lists to calculate the optimal allocation of resources, for example. We'd need to test what works best. I don't have the details of such a system because it doesn't exist. All I'm trying to say is that we could come up with other ways to allocate resources than…

I'm sure your heart is in the right place, and I admire your optimism, but I just don't think what you're suggesting will be a society I'd want to live in.

The thing is, I used to think along similar limes to you. When I was in my 20s I saw the Zeitgeist films and found the ideas behind the resource-based economy to be compelling. A way to meet everyone's needs without relying on money. However, as time went on and I thought more about what living in such a society would be like, I saw that it wasn't the answer I was looking for.

To give you some idea of what changed my mind, I'd suggest we look at variety. As the phrase goes, variety is the spice of life. Centrally planned economies, whether resource-based or otherwise, would see variety as inefficient and attempt to cut down on variety. You gave an example of it earlier when I asked about the PS4 and Xbox One. Whilst it's true we don't "need" variety, it is something we collectively want.

For all its flaws, money gives people the chance to make choices based on what's best for them, with far fewer restrictions on what's possible. These days, I'd much rather see something along the lines of universal basic income than a resource-based economy, though I recognise UBI has its flaws too.

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