Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure • Hacker News Board

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#91

Post by ManFromUranus » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:16 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #76

ManFromUranus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that gambling is indeed bad, but gambling is not some sort of outgrowth of capitalism. You do not need captialism to gamble and one does not beget the other. The "game" makers are simply bad people exploiting others. These bad people would simply be bad in a different way in a socialist country.

Fair point. However, there are a bunch of complex laws in the US around gambling and gambling as a business is often banned where doing the same things as individuals is more often legal. Old but interesting: http://fortune.com/2011/02/15/was-my-sports-bet-legal/ Which I think get's into the same incentives as these games. If the house get's a cut of from poker players without risks they have reason to promote addict…

I think that the danger is: you make a law to protect idiots from their own stupidity and end up breaking normal business activity somehow, or creating a regulatory environment that's a pain in the ass for entrepreneurs and whatnot.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#92

Post by wpasc » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

yborg wrote: post #56

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #28

The argument essentially seems to be this: Some people are making substantial amounts of money from activities that we traditionally associate with leisure, in the example given, videogames. This devalues gaming as a leisure activity for the rest of society. This is a bad thing. This is an indicator of a broader trend of the monetization of all forms of leisure. This is bad. Consequently we should find ways to redist…

The article is weak from clickbaity title to eventual conclusion that only UBI will save us from a dark dystopian future of a huge slave class of gamers forced to allocate their meager incomes to buy in-game powerups by a shadowy cabal of Silicon Valley overlords. It always sounds cool to derive these kinds of arguments when there is a new delivery model that is Paradigm Shifting Everything. In fact, as pointed out b…

I don't know... Clash of Clans strikes me as an early alpha of Skynet

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#93

Post by IanDrake » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #75

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone run the numbers of how UBI would be financed? I'm genuinely curious, not trying to attack the idea. My impression is that people are more positive on UBI than they should be because they think it will enable a higher standard of living than it actually will. I would be more in favor of a jobs guarantee since I think people find working meaningful, but this isn't an area I've researched very much so I'm def…

> Has anyone run the numbers of how UBI would be financed? There are different ways to do the accounting here. The opponents like to just add up the sum of everyone's UBI and call that the cost. But if someone pays $12,000 to fund the UBI and then receives a $10,000 UBI, the net cost to them is obviously $2000 rather than $12,000. Calculating the overall net cost is also not very useful, because it's effectively zero…

I’m not sure why you’re doing mental gymnastics on this one. There is a simple answer.

300,000,000 - US population

$12,000 - Your UBI amount

Total cost: 3.6 trillion dollars.

Projected US tax collection for 2019: 3.4 trillion. That’s not the US budget, just the amount not borrowed to pay for the budget.

Cost of social programs that UBI would replace (in theory): 2.3 trillion. (SS, Medicare, other). I don’t think UBI could replace SS though.

So you need to increase tax revenues about 33% if you look at it in the most favorable way.

Then, when the bottom falls out for those who needed the full benifit of the programs you replaced, you will either bring those programs back or increase the UBI payment for everyone, which is easy to do because we’d just vote ourselves more money, because money is free.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#94

Post by UncleSlacky » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

ManFromUranus wrote: post #62

andrepd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There are no thieves or bad actors in socialist utopias? Of course there are. Socialism doesn't work now and never will work given human nature. Face it: bad people exist and they will do bad things in whatever context they find themselves in. You are just complaining about the ones you see in this context. However they would just be a different kind of bad actor in a socialist context.

"To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough." - Andrew Collier

In any case, why should society encourage qualities like greed and selfishness?

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#95

Post by majormajor » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

cirgue wrote: post #80

ergomarky wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were they skeptical at all though? Or did they just want more control over the content? Whenever I talk to people who would very much be in that category, they don't hate TV at all, in fact they love it and sub to Netflix and Prime (or whatever else), they just hated the bombard of ads and not being able to watch what you want when you want. So this hypocritical behavior you're trying to highlight just doesn't exist…

Was it not a commonly held opinion with your friends/family in high school and college that television was a pretty rotten form of media? I don't think that this is a universal phenomenon, but it definitely exists.

Nope, far from common. Most people liked The Simpsons and/or various other such things.

There were a few "I don't even own a TV!" folks but they mostly turned into "I don't even own a Facebook!" types, in any case.

There were very few who wouldn't watch any television or film. And as TV production and writing quality went up, television took up more of their time.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#96

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

IanDrake wrote: post #93

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has anyone run the numbers of how UBI would be financed? There are different ways to do the accounting here. The opponents like to just add up the sum of everyone's UBI and call that the cost. But if someone pays $12,000 to fund the UBI and then receives a $10,000 UBI, the net cost to them is obviously $2000 rather than $12,000. Calculating the overall net cost is also not very useful, because it's effectively zero…

I’m not sure why you’re doing mental gymnastics on this one. There is a simple answer. 300,000,000 - US population $12,000 - Your UBI amount Total cost: 3.6 trillion dollars. Projected US tax collection for 2019: 3.4 trillion. That’s not the US budget, just the amount not borrowed to pay for the budget. Cost of social programs that UBI would replace (in theory): 2.3 trillion. (SS, Medicare, other). I don’t think UBI…

> There is a simple answer.

Only if you want to count the dollar you pay but not the dollar you get back in order to claim that it's too expensive.

It ignores all of the misleading accounting that occurs in the existing system and wouldn't be there anymore.

Suppose we used to provide $1000/year value in assistance with a 10% phase out rate and then we had a 15% tax rate up to $10,000 and 25% thereafter. We switch that to $1000/year in unconditional assistance with no phase out and pay for it by changing to a flat 25% tax rate. If your accounting method is telling you that this change has caused everyone who makes more than $10,000/year to have to pay an extra $1000/year in taxes, you've missed a term. Neither the marginal nor effective tax rates have changed for anyone.

This is why many economists prefer the "negative income tax" formulation of a UBI where the UBI is a tax credit and it's possible for low income people to pay a negative amount in taxes.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#97

Post by emodendroket » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #87

emodendroket wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was at least in some cases explicitly about rentals. That's why the difficulty was jacked up for US releases -- Nintendo was successful at getting game rentals legally banned in Japan, but not the US.

If that's what Nintendo were trying to do they did a piss-poor job at it. I beat Super Mario World over a single weekend's rental.

It didn't happen to every game, but compare, for instance, the US and Japan releases for Contra 3 or Contra: Hard Corps.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#98

Post by emodendroket » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #89

annabellish wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Difficulty is customisable, but we still live in a world where massive AAA titles lock things which in previous generations were relatively easily attainable behind grinding measured in weeks, not days, with no regard for any difficulty setting you might have, while constantly suggesting both explicitly and by implication that you could skip the grind by just giving them more money. I think a lot of t…

The reason the golden age is now is specifically because you have all those options. Just because AAA games exist doesn't invalidate the fact that if you are looking for a specific type of more traditional game experience, you can find it much easier then ever before.

The "Golden Age" usually refers to when the great works were produced; otherwise we'd always simultaneously be in every golden age that ever occurred (barring the works in question being destroyed), making the term kind of meaningless.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#99

Post by rconti » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

"As a result, gaming has come to privilege haves over have-nots, work and passive consumption over leisure, and the economic over the social."

I can't parse this. And my eyes glazed over once I kept trying to get past it and keep reading.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#100

Post by CM30 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 8:07 PM UTC

cirgue wrote: post #80

ergomarky wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were they skeptical at all though? Or did they just want more control over the content? Whenever I talk to people who would very much be in that category, they don't hate TV at all, in fact they love it and sub to Netflix and Prime (or whatever else), they just hated the bombard of ads and not being able to watch what you want when you want. So this hypocritical behavior you're trying to highlight just doesn't exist…

Was it not a commonly held opinion with your friends/family in high school and college that television was a pretty rotten form of media? I don't think that this is a universal phenomenon, but it definitely exists.

No, not really. Most people in my high school liked watching TV and what not. They may not have liked aspects of the format (like ads or being stuck finding repeats into the times when a show wasn't on video yet), but they certainly liked watching TV.

Where the heck did you go to school/college anyway? Never seen that sort of attitude before.