531–540 of 572 posts
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It's fascinating to me how capital owners are never ever responsible for anything despite having maximal agency.
> maximal agency how are the capital owners deciding what a consumer would choose to spend their money on?
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Is this a billboard for Capital in the whole Capital vs Labor debate? “Laborers fret not, you’ve been liberated from your job actually, and I sure hope you bought securities!”
we've all mostly been liberated from back breaking agricultural farm work in developed countries, no? At least in countries that have automated. Don't think you can say the same for countries without automation. We've reaped tremendous benefits that are just totally lost / taken for granted by the luddites.
Automation can be great when used to replace dangerous or back breaking work that is difficult for humans to preform. AI is not really that though.
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I think you'd find that, on average, "as poorly as they can get away with" actually does mean that they treat people quite well. I'm not sure what hierarchies you've been a part of where people actively trying to treat people poorly leads to their success - I'd wager those are few in far between in reality, and over represented in media. Maybe you're cynical about a few high profile companies or how U.S. politics app…
> on average, "as poorly as they can get away with" actually does mean that they treat people quite well. This is a very important point and the strength of capitalism. Even a self asshole like Elon Musk is incentivized to provide useful goods and services and create jobs that raise people's standard of living.
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When everything exists, nothing exists? There are no universal properties? A non-trivial universal property for a domain asserts something non-trivial about everything in the domain. You think 'political' is a trivial property?
Who knows? But this is reference to exceptional (low entropy) properties. If you multiply highly informational properties, they stop being informative. And move more towards white noise.
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Well, if that's your idea of success: Based on Pew's income band classification, China's middle class has been among the fastest growing in the world, swelling from 39.1 million people (3.1 percent of the population) in 2000 to roughly 707 million (50.8 percent of the population) in 2018. https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class
China switched to free markets. They also had the advantage of technology that didn't exist in the 1800s. Before China switched to free markets, they had an equal distribution of all income economy. You might want to check it out. So, too, the USSR, Cambodia, Vietnam, Jamestown, Plymouth, etc.
Hmmm I'm checking it out right now. Seems like life expectancy jumped massively under Mao, is that bad?
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Well put. To note, luddites' issues were not just losing their job. Let's remember that the earlier machines were very crude, safety was absolutely not in their design, and a worker life's also didn't have much weight. So, the early days of machine assisted production were in inhumane conditions, people losing limbs, kids getting killed in them (less skills needed also meant kid labour was a viable option) etc. So ye…
To add to your note: iirc the Luddites were also concerned because the quality of the cloth produced by the machines was worse than the handmade stuff, beyond all of the labor abuses and job losses. Another parallel to the AI age.
Note that sometimes government action forcing people to do things they don't want is necessary e.g. paying taxes and protecting the environment. That's hardly ever the case, though.
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I would encourage you to read the facts, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaura... They sold 180–190 °F coffee, with a lid, to a 79yo lady at a drive-through window. She was sitting in her car and spilled the coffee in her lap while trying to remove the lid. I don't have an opinion on the legal ramifications, but the setting has 'horrific accident waiting to happen' written all over it.
> I would encourage you to read the facts [...] I already have, thank you. > They sold 180–190 °F coffee, with a lid, to a 79yo lady at a drive-through window. I know. That "79yo lady" is an adult who is liable for her own actions. Coffee is hot, duh , I would expect someone of that age to know that. McDonald's isn't responsible for babysitting people who should know better than to squeeze hot beverages between their…
Are you aware that during discovery, it was uncovered that McDonalds had undertaken studies to determine how hot they needed to make the coffee to avoid in-restaurant guests from drinking it too quickly and getting free refills. They knew the coffee was too hot and had received many complaints, and other people had been burned, but it was in fact "the point" to ensure the coffee was too hot, to save a couple of cents per customer.
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To add to your note: iirc the Luddites were also concerned because the quality of the cloth produced by the machines was worse than the handmade stuff, beyond all of the labor abuses and job losses. Another parallel to the AI age.
> quality of the cloth produced by the machines was worse than the handmade stuff Yes, it was, but it was far cheaper. You can still get extraordinarily good fabrics today, extremely well-made hand-sewn leather goods. But a standard size carry-on suitcase made of high-quality leather in the US will run you around $1000-1500. You can buy a crappy mass-produced plastic one of the same size for around $100, or a well-ma…
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To add to your note: iirc the Luddites were also concerned because the quality of the cloth produced by the machines was worse than the handmade stuff, beyond all of the labor abuses and job losses. Another parallel to the AI age.
Is it a surprise that producers of X claim people really want X and only their X? If true no government action is necessary. If false then government action forces consumers to buy something they don't want. Note that sometimes government action forcing people to do things they don't want is necessary e.g. paying taxes and protecting the environment. That's hardly ever the case, though.
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Yes, but not everything needs to analyzed politically. Nor making a political assumption about someone.
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Unless you are willing to bite the bullet and agree then that we ought to analyze politically why a ball is round or why birds fly.