We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor • Hacker News Board

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#251

Post by tossacct » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 8:01 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #199

yaix wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know in the US, but here in Europe the gov't does not need to "use violence" for that. It is pretty much general consensus that people with no monies should get money (not "foodstamps") from the gov't, payed by our taxes, so they can live with dignity, independently of what the reason for their unemployment / poverty might be.

When Americans use the "use violence" argument, your argument doesn't work as a response, I'm afraid. It is a libertarian tactic of assuming that anything the government does they don't like is use of violence, except for government protection of artificial property rights which is somehow usually magically exempt.

Just because naive libertarian polemicists use an argument doesn't make that argument incorrect.

>>>It is a libertarian tactic of assuming that anything the government does they don't like is use of violence, except for government protection of artificial property rights which is somehow usually magically exempt.

In my experience, libertarians universally agree with me when I say "artificial property rights are completely protected and propped up by the government's threat of violence". It is their favorite part of the how governments operate, because they do not recognize the benefits of collectivism (socialism, communism, prisoners dilemma, tragedy of the commons).

Notice how I have not told you anything about my personal political views.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#252

Post by ctdonath » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 8:11 PM UTC

flyinRyan wrote: post #238

ctdonath wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start with these to get the idea: http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com http://tinyhouseblog.com/ http://mypatriotsupply.com Shop at the Dollar Store, Goodwill, Aldi, etc. Look for foreclosed, abandoned, and other dirt cheap real estate; search Zillow.com for sub-$1000 properties (not a typo). Plant a garden. Move. No excuses.

And if you eat cheap shit food your medical costs are going to soar within a few years, wiping out any gains you would get.

I didn't say "eat cheap shit food". I said "plant a garden". Not sure how you read one from the other.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#253

Post by sliverstorm » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 8:35 PM UTC

tossacct wrote: post #93

lotu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are allow to do what ever the fuck you want until you die just don't expect me to give you money for doing what ever the fuck you want. As I too am doing what every the fuck I want, which happens to include only giving money to people who do something useful for me.

I think it is a good thing that individuals control their own money, and can choose to give it to whomever they want. Can we agree that people with no money will starve to death unless they use violence to take food from someone, or the government uses violence to take food from someone on their behalf? The foodstamps of this great depression are equivalent to the soup lines of the old great depression: they prevent…

I don't think anyone really objects to food stamps; rather, the expectation of a living wage for doing whatever suits your fancy.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#254

Post by tossacct » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 8:43 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #219

dragons wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if that person is a dad who has two kids, a wife, and parents living locally, who take care of their kids during the day? Not everyone can so easily be uprooted.

Yes, that's a difficult choice. Still, they have the choice. They can take the bus, or ride a train, or move in with the parents. Not to mention the free clinic open 24 hours, and the internet, and food stamps, and on and on. The point is, its a 1st world problem no matter how you cut it. "My job is not satisfying. I wish I had more money for discretionary spending." These are not 'real' problems.

I gotta tell you: not everyone is on the internet. In the US, publicly usable internet usually comes in the form of wifi, or terminals at the library. Not everyone has a library near by. Not everyone has enough money for a cheap cellphone or cheap laptop to take advantage of free wifi. Internet cafes aren't a going concern here.

And some people are legitimately scared of computers! Is it their own problem? Emphatically yes. Is it also society's problem? Again, emphatically yes. Is it their own fault? Well that's a matter of opinion. I think we should solve the problem and then argue over blame if there is time left over.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#255

Post by reefoctopus » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 9:20 PM UTC

31reasons wrote: post #149

jseliger wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the 1950s, there was the great promise of "the leisure society" - a future of such material abundance that most people would hardly need to work. That society became possible, but we systematically rejected it in favour of more consumption. I'm not convinced this is true: there are also intense coordination costs and learning costs. Two programmers working 20 hours a week, for example, are way less productive tha…

>Two programmers working 20 hours a week, for example, are way less productive than one programmer working 40 hours a week. And the one programmer will learn faster because she's putting in an extra 20 hours a week. From where did you pull out that data ? It is always possible that one programmer working 20 hours is more productive than two programmers working 40 hours. It depends what they are actually doing.

ceteris paribus

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#256

Post by jlgreco » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 9:21 PM UTC

flyinRyan wrote: post #238

ctdonath wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start with these to get the idea: http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com http://tinyhouseblog.com/ http://mypatriotsupply.com Shop at the Dollar Store, Goodwill, Aldi, etc. Look for foreclosed, abandoned, and other dirt cheap real estate; search Zillow.com for sub-$1000 properties (not a typo). Plant a garden. Move. No excuses.

And if you eat cheap shit food your medical costs are going to soar within a few years, wiping out any gains you would get.

You can eat very healthily on the cheap. Lots of different beans and grains, particularly rice.

Meat is very expensive so generally people eating frugally avoid it nearly entirely, but depending on where you live it may be cheap and practical to raise some chickens if you really feel you need it.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#257

Post by tossacct » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 9:25 PM UTC

javert wrote: post #237

aharrison wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested in this concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly All economic discussions of free markets that I have ever heard have implicitly or explicitly stated that one of the necessary oversights of government is to break up or regulate natural monopoly-prone industries.

It's not like I've never heard of that. It's just that it's a false concept that doesn't actually exist. Take electricity, for example. First, there are many large companies that could raise the necessary capital to build power plants and electric transmission lines. Second, people can always get together and form a non-profit power company if the normal market isn't providing stable, competitive prices. (By "people"…

>>> It's not like I've never heard of [the concept of natural monopolies].

You have the benefit of the doubt from me, but your specific arguments leave out the installation phase of the electrical grid, which I'm sure you are very familiar with.

>>>First, there are many large companies that could raise the necessary capital to build power plants and electric transmission lines.

Agree, but capital isn't the only thing. You have to put the electrical lines into the ground, disrupting traffic. The costs and capital of the electrical system are not what makes it a natural monopoly, the physical reality of our current technology does (pending wireless transmission as you mention later).

The current physical reality is solved by having the government own the last mile(for some definition of mile), while electrical providers can connect at hubs. This is how it works in places where the population understands the specifics of natural monopolies.

>>>Third, having deregulated electricity systems would open up the field to innovation, such that we'd probably all have small nuclear reactors at our houses, or wireless power transmission, or something.

The biggest problem is that these technologies do not yet exist. Maybe in the future they will be stymied by regulation, but if they were invented today I can't think of an electrical grid regulation that would stop them. Remember, consumers can hook up power generating technology to the grid already: solar panels.

>>>Second, people can always get together and form a non-profit power company if the normal market isn't providing stable, competitive prices. (By "people" I mean, say, the people of an entire US state.)

Businesses are in the business of making money. When a corporation thinks it can make money by suing municipalities that form broadband networks, they do so. Like in Lafayette.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/60150 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-01/...

Want to know why this isn't all over the news, with the competing ISPs and cable companies badmouthing these bad corporate actions? Because the cable companies and the ISPs and the media companies are largely owned by the same people, and collude monopolistically. This is a very recent accomplishment: regulations existed to prevent it but were overturned by the deregulation achieved through the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownershi...

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#258

Post by lotharbot » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 9:39 PM UTC

flyinRyan wrote: post #239

lotharbot wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Get ... several mortgages and children." > "live a normal life in Silicon Valley with kids" It seems to me this is exactly the point being made. You can live on a lot less money than whatever you currently consider "normal", but not necessarily in your current location or at your current level of consumption. Whatever it costs you to live comfortably in SV with kids, it probably costs me half that to live comforta…

> it probably costs me half that to live comfortably in Denver with kids. That's a horrible comparison. The difference in potential salaries, potential connections, business opportunities and so on would put make Denver the expensive one IMO (costs half as much as SV to have none of those advantages? wtf!).

> "The difference in potential salaries, potential connections, business opportunities and so on would put make Denver the expensive one IMO"

If you're one of those near the top of the spectrum, making 25 or more times the median salary or starting up a business that truly blows up, perhaps. In which case you wouldn't be complaining that it's hard to raise kids in SV.

If you're an average joe coder, or even fairly above average, you're making 10% less in Denver and you have fewer options for tech companies (but still plenty locally, and some decent remote options). But you can buy a nice house here for well under $200k and live ten minutes from work. For the vast majority of people, it's far less expensive.

The point here is not to convince you, personally, to move to Denver. Just to clarify that there's a whole spectrum of places to live at all sorts of prices, with all sorts of advantages and disadvantages. The GGP post implied that "live a normal life in SV" was the only option, which is of course absurd. There are advantages to living in SV, but they do not come without costs.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#259

Post by javert » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 9:52 PM UTC

flyinRyan wrote: post #241

javert wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, monopolies come from the government explicitly banning or regulating away competition. Yes, it's true that you can't get the nice properties of a free market without some conditions being met. Specifically, you need the government to be the arbiter of physical force between people. Otherwise, you have gang warfare (anarchism).

>Otherwise, you have gang warfare (anarchism). Wow, way to punctuate a diatribe of ignorance with equating anarchism with gang warfare.

If you can explain to me how anarchism would work "in practice" so as to not be gang warfare, or point me to an explanation, I'd appreciate it. So far, nobody has ever taken me up on this. I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I'd like to see good arguments against my own position.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#260

Post by tossacct » Mon, Feb 04, 2013, 10:06 PM UTC

readme wrote: post #245

tossacct wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>You could start your own company, be your own employer and work as much as you feel like. Most people in the United States do not have this option because they do not have enough money to do so.

It's more about determination and wit than money, IMO.

Agree for software people, agree for middle class people with no children. Vast swathes of the population are not included. 30% of the population has less than 10k in net wealth. Think someone with a mortgage but no equity(or even underwater) and no assets. For this person, money is a very key issue since they are one non-emergency medical issue(cancer, heart disease, diabetes) away from death assuming they have insurance. If they don't have insurance, they will die if they develop a medical issue due to lack of ability to pay for their treatments or medication.

For those with money, don't forget luck. Also don't forget timing, but I repeat myself.

The money thing comes into play for the lower 30% of the population which has 10k to -infinity in net worth. Here's a tip: price out some business plans, then look up the percentage of the US population has enough net worth[1] to fund or convince a bank to fund their plan.

[1]http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/11/30/study-american-hou...