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

Average Is Over

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 254 posts

Re: Average Is Over

#231

Post by jpadkins »

virmundi wrote: post #134

I think that we're taking the concept of "average" too literally. Picture two lines: average worker competency and need/requirement for the company to be competitive. The author states that historically those two lines have been so close as to be equivalent in management's eyes. Now the second line has moved up. So according to this definition, the average line is no longer acceptable. As a result we need to move it…

I like how you explained it much clearer than the professional author did...

I think NY Times needs to realign their columnists talent level...

Re: Average Is Over

#232

Post by jpadkins »

rushabh wrote: post #29

Siri has changed the discussion about voice recognition and semantic search. Hard to imagine what will happen to all the call-centers in India if the use of this technology becomes more widespread. How many years are we away from this?

Speech recognition has been displacing Indian call centers for 10+ years. Tellme Networks and Nuance have been leading this space... Siri has done nothing in the call center sector.

Re: Average Is Over

#233

Post by jpadkins »

rsheridan6 wrote: post #174
simonh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that worked out so well for Russia and China. Command economies have never efficiently allocated resources, and they never will. Economies are just too complicated for a single central authority to control successfully. They can never have enough accurate information, and can't be flexible enough to rapidly changing circumstances. Just look at the hopeless response to the financial crisis from European leader…

If the alternative does turn out to be unemployment on a massive scale due to automation, the Soviet Union doesn't look so bad in comparison. It's probably not optimal, but at least we know that it works (badly, no doubt, but life went on under the Soviets). I seriously doubt Friedman's idea of sending everyone to college would work at all.

The Soviet Union killed 100m of its own citizens. Now what doesn't look so bad?

Re: Average Is Over

#234

Post by jf271 »

bradhall wrote: post #192
jf271 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In parts of the world where there is a lot of automation birth rates are basically either flat or declining below replacement level. Maybe this is a natural response to increasing automation or at least understanding there is a need for less people.

Do you have a citation or example of this? I've also read the opposite about Japan: that they are increasing automation in order to compensate for declining birth rates.

Not directly. Most studies look at it as automation making up for declining birth rates. There are a lot of studies that say birth rates go down with increased education, surplus goods and increased leisure time so it might be a chicken and egg thing.

Re: Average Is Over

#235

Post by specialist »

I feel like I was just rick rolled.

Please prefix the pundit's name to these links.

As for this particular pundit, he lost me at "invade Iraq". After claiming the earth is flat, you'd think people would have learned to ignore this asshat.

Re: Average Is Over

#236

Post by scott_w »

ajkessler wrote: post #189
roc wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the correlation between income disparity and crime rates remains despite a net drop in crime, how is that a refutation of inequality of disparity as a component to crime? Wouldn't a larger drop in crime in more-equal countries than less-equal countries only re-affirm that though there are clearly other factors involved, inequality is still a component? I don't actually know the numbers but I'd think it would be pr…

Sure. But since income disparity has soared in the last 40 years and crime rates have plummeted, even if they have plummeted everywhere, this indicates that inequality, if it has any effect at all, is likely pretty minor. I think this would be near impossible to test for though. So many factors affect crime rates across difference societies, and different societies experience wildly different types of income disparit…

It's not impossible. Levitt discusses issues like this in Freakonomics.

Just because all crime falls over a period of time doesn't discount the effect. It doesn't even mean the effect of income disparity is minor. If the rate of crime falling in countries with a lowering income disparity is vastly higher than the rate of crime falling in countries with high income disparity, then that suggests a link that can be followed up on statistically.

Re: Average Is Over

#237

Post by gyardley »

geogra4 wrote: post #183
gyardley wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I'm in America too, although I'm not American. We agree completely on the need for some sort of minimal welfare state. No one wants to let others die on the street. I've said as much elsewhere in this thread. We don't agree if you, like Friedman, think we need "a G.I. Bill for the 21st century that ensures that every American has access to post-high school education." I don't believe our current levels of spe…

Why don't you believe our spending is sustainable? The USA is nowhere near default. Rates on US Treasury bills are extremely low, as they're actually seen as an incredibly safe investment compared to both other countries and stocks in general. I sort of disagree with Friedman. I think we need to reform high school educations to make them useful. Career and Technical education needs to be seen as a viable track for st…

Historical patterns in financial crises, mostly. Over the past couple centuries, once sovereign debt rises over a certain percentage of GDP, countries have invariably defaulted, with the shock coming very suddenly and with a lot of pain and austerity for all involved.

The book is extremely boring, but 'This Time Is Different' has a lot of data on past financial crises, which as far as I can tell is legit and untampered with. Yes, this time could be different, but I don't see any compelling reason why we'll be an exception to the pattern. I'd argue that US sovereign debt is perceived as safe right now only because other countries are further down the same path and because the market's collectively whistling past the graveyard.

Projected spending on Social Security and Medicare is the other reason - these aren't 'unfunded liabilities', as they're frequently described by conservatives, because Congress is under no obligation to maintain Social Security and Medicare at current benefit levels. But if we were to maintain current benefit levels, it's quite a bit of money we've got no solid plans for generating.

I could be wrong, but I suspect something has to give.

Complete agreement on the need for more vocational training.

Re: Average Is Over

#238

Post by robocat »

sethg wrote: post #198
gyardley wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a completely wingnut idea. I first bumped into it in Hayek, who was in favor of it and not much of a socialist. The rationale works like this - given that some less-fortunate members of society will need assistance at some point in their life, and given that 'conservative' != 'asshole' and we don't want to just let them die in the street, we have to provide some form of limited welfare state. Since we have t…

My cynical opinion is that most voters would rather have their poor neighbors go through an intrusive welfare system than simply receive checks, even if the simpler system would be cheaper. There’s a perverse sort of transaction going on: you receive welfare in exchange for abasing yourself in front of a bureaucrat, acknowledging that the bureaucrat has the right to decide whether or not you belong to The Deserving P…

From what I see, obtaining and then maintaining your welfare payments requires ongoing make-work... Standing in queues, applying for jobs you don't want or can't get, regular paperwork and meetings with some bureaucrat that hates their demeaning job more than you hate talking to them, doing employment courses (how to write a resume, how to do an interview, etc.) or skills training (that may cost money or debt, but often has zero chance of helping you get work), etc etc.

The system is abusive... Intentionally... it's goal is to "improve the numbers" by pushing people out of the system (onto the street, onto relatives, suicide, illegal jobs, whatever).

Re: Average Is Over

#239

Post by rsheridan6 »

jpadkins wrote: post #233
rsheridan6 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the alternative does turn out to be unemployment on a massive scale due to automation, the Soviet Union doesn't look so bad in comparison. It's probably not optimal, but at least we know that it works (badly, no doubt, but life went on under the Soviets). I seriously doubt Friedman's idea of sending everyone to college would work at all.

The Soviet Union killed 100m of its own citizens. Now what doesn't look so bad?

That's a grossly exaggerated figure, and if you skip the Lenin/Stalin era and go straight to Khruschev it's not nearly as bad. And if, by hypothesis, the "average" person become redundant and unemployable, they would simply starve to death in lieu of government intervention, which would lead to a death toll that would make the Dekulakization look like a traffic ticket.

Re: Average Is Over

#240

Post by _delirium »

gyardley wrote: post #228
sethg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cynical opinion is that most voters would rather have their poor neighbors go through an intrusive welfare system than simply receive checks, even if the simpler system would be cheaper. There’s a perverse sort of transaction going on: you receive welfare in exchange for abasing yourself in front of a bureaucrat, acknowledging that the bureaucrat has the right to decide whether or not you belong to The Deserving P…

Maybe. One of the reasons I'd ideally like (in that magic fairy land we can't get to from here) small, cohesive, homogenous communities to be the ones that take care of each other, instead of relying on some sort of centralized authority, is because it allows the community to set standards for morality and behavior - not just for the poor but for everyone. When you're dependent on a group, you're accountable to that…

Oddly enough that's almost exactly the opposite of one of Hayek's justifications! He wanted a more individualist society where people were free to do their own thing, join/leave groups, etc., rather than feeling compelled to stay in their own tight-knit ethnic/religious/etc. groups, usually the ones they "chose" by accident of birth. And he thought one way that could happen is if the de-facto safety-net role played by those groups (e.g. the way the Mormon church has a strong safety net) was replaced by a basic state floor, freeing people to break ties with the tribalist groupings they didn't want to be in, but until now had felt compelled to stay with for safety or out of fear. Brief quote: http://www.kmjn.org/snippets/hayek79_minimumincome.html

I do think there's something to be said for cohesive groups, but moving between them is quite hard if there's no higher-level safety net from some more neutral source like the U.S. government. I know more than one person who wants to leave a church they don't like or believe in theologically, but stays because they're not sure how they'd replace its social/economic network. Especially the case with groups like the Mormons who combine a strong internal network with shunning of people who leave, making the drop-off in support you'd get by leaving seem like a daunting cliff.

Post reply on HN