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Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

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Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#81

Post by nicholas73 »

nathan_long wrote: post #42

Why is the sale of labor considered so different than the sale of anything else? You don't feel immoral selling your car to the highest bidder. Why should selling your labor be different? You don't feel immoral buying bananas as cheaply as possible. Why should purchasing labor be different? I'm not trolling; I'm genuinely trying to think through these questions.

I don't believe it should be different, and so far no better way of pricing has been found than a free market. However a completely separate issue is inequality. This is important to the winners as well, as it provides a measure of stability to the system. What governments (or unions for that matter) should not do is impose new labor laws on businesses. This merely distorts free markets and creates burdens which might cause them to simply move elsewhere. What is needed is a basic income so people can pursue opportunities. Oh, and maybe the grubmint can be more efficient at spending money.

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#82

Post by dctoedt »

nathan_long wrote: post #22
dctoedt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as the poorest people are doing better, it's irrelevant that Bill Gates is a Billionaire. But the human psyche doesn't seem to work that way. There's a fair amount of research suggesting that we tend to measure our well-being not in absolute terms, but relative to those around us or who are otherwise on our mental radar. [ADDED:] No matter how well someone is doing, if he perceives that others "around" him…

If most people are envious of Bill Gates, does it follow that they have the right to take away his money and redistribute it?

> If most people are envious of Bill Gates, does it follow that they have the right to take away his money and redistribute it?

You're presupposing that there's such a thing as a "right" outside of a given social framework. (Cf. @rayiner's various comments on that subject.) If people are envious by nature, that's like the weather; to paraphrase Robert A. Heinlein, attempting to argue with the weather is seldom a profitable enterprise.

In any case, Bill Gates's success was not due solely to his own efforts; he built his achievements on a foundation provided by his fellow citizens, of America and the world. So it's not a moral axiom that Gates should keep some particular share of the money that happens to come into his hands. Cf. Elizabeth Warren's famous talk during her campaign for the Senate, where on the subject of fair taxation she accurately pointed out that:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. [1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEs, starting at 0:50, transcribed at http://spectator.org/blog/2011/09/22/elizabeth-warren-on-fai....

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#83

Post by randomdata »

humanrebar wrote: post #77
randomdata wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also consider the importance of avoiding pitfalls like drug abuse, crippling debt, and unexpected pregnancies. Wouldn't avoiding those things largely fall under the "certain type of person" I mentioned? There are certainly some variables there too, like being born into poverty, but we can, for argument's sake, assume outside factors are otherwise equal when comparing people under this.

I understand your point, but I'm pushing back on it because I don't agree that those other factors are trivial when discussing poverty and inequality. To ignore personal behavior in this discussion is to be begging a false cause fallacy. At some level we may just disagree about how fair it is to consider us all fleshy robots and how important it is to consider individuals instead of populations.

I'm afraid I do not understand your comment as you seem to be echoing what I have stated.

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#84

Post by nicholas73 »

randomdata wrote: post #63
nathan_long wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that's true, 90% of the population did not stay out of work, and the average person today has far more material comforts and leisure time than they did before the tractor. A rising tide lifts all boats, even if some are temporarily waterlogged.

That's pretty much where I was going with my comment. The tractor displaced people from the work they knew, but it allowed them to find new forms of productivity over the long term and do things well beyond what ever could have accomplished while guiding horses around the farm. I imagine individuals felt some big pains during the transition though. Even if the computer can give rise to certain groups today, is there…

At the same time, the amount of education required to make a decent living has increased, to the point that today you might need a graduate degree to make a middle class white collar living. Whereas years ago, high school was enough. Pre-tractor days you hardly needed middle school. This is a significant mobility problem when you virtually have to crapshoot your life and hope you chose the right field. With increased automation, the level of understanding of a subject or business needed is so great that the average person may never find a genuine opportunity to break out. Try being a rockstar entrepreneur straight out of college outside of app development. At some point even apps will be full of entrenched players like other fields.

This is why I believe this time is different - a basic income is needed or else the populace will be like serfs with little mobility from their trade. In other words, a caste system.

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#85

Post by jasonlotito »

nathan_long wrote: post #48
jchrisa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have the right to tax it or inflate it away.

Really? What if society consisted of 10 people on an island, and only one of them was great at catching fish. Would the others have the right to take his fish and redistribute them?

You're leaving out what the other 9 castaways do. You don't mention the fact that 3 of these people are staying up at night guarding the camp from predators, ensuring the fish catcher gets a full nights rest.

You are ignoring the person who knows how to properly filter and provide fresh water for drinking.

You forget that someone else is always manning the fire, ensuring it's always going. He can easily set it again if it happens to go out for some reason. It also helps that his wife is injured so he can stay close to her.

The fisher can't fish if he's not out in the water, so he has two people helping him. One to mend the nets or other materials needed to fish, and the second to bring the fish onto shore. They both also prepare the fish for cooking.

And the final person the cook, doesn't just cook the fish. He prepare the fish, align with other food he is able to scrounge with whatever person has some free time, ensuring people get a better diet.

So do they have the right to take his fish? Considering without them, he would have died that first night, I'm pretty sure their is some level of obligation.

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#86

Post by nicholas73 »

The amount of education required to make a decent living has increased, to the point that today you might need a graduate degree to make a middle class white collar living. Whereas 50 years ago, high school was enough. Pre-tractor farming days you hardly needed middle school. This is a significant mobility problem when you virtually have to crapshoot your life and hope you chose the right field. With increased automation, the level of understanding of a subject or business needed is so great that the average person may never find a genuine opportunity to break out on their own. Try being a rockstar entrepreneur straight out of college outside of app development. At some point even apps will be full of entrenched players like other fields. Contrast that to that not too long ago even a neighborhood corner store could compete and offer an alternate to the wage system.

This is why I believe this time is different - a basic income is needed or else the populace will be like serfs with little mobility from their trade. In other words, a caste system.

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#87

Post by thedufer »

ForHackernews wrote: post #41
nathan_long wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your comment bizarre. A baker doesn't spend $X on flour unless she can make more than that from selling the bread. Companies don't pay programmers big bucks and give nice benefits unless they make a lot more off the software programmers build. Nobody is getting ripped off here.

What a joke. What you've written could be said of any well-paid job right up until it's eliminated: "Telegraph operators were paid well and felt themselves part of an honored profession. It was a good way to make a living for a lot of people."[1] Companies would be THRILLED to eliminate developers and no longer have to pay them. And plenty of people are working on that problem: "Imagine sitting at a Salesforce event…

From 2 comments up:

> the great bulk of programmers will be lined up and shot, in retribution for their years of pampered arrogance.

_This_ is what your parent finds "bizarre". Are you arguing that the same would be said about any other job that was eliminated by changing market conditions? No, that would be insane. They lost their jobs and found a new line of work (or fell into poverty). And that's what will happen to programmers if (when?) our job is eliminated.

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#88

Post by randomdata »

nicholas73 wrote: post #84
randomdata wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much where I was going with my comment. The tractor displaced people from the work they knew, but it allowed them to find new forms of productivity over the long term and do things well beyond what ever could have accomplished while guiding horses around the farm. I imagine individuals felt some big pains during the transition though. Even if the computer can give rise to certain groups today, is there…

At the same time, the amount of education required to make a decent living has increased, to the point that today you might need a graduate degree to make a middle class white collar living. Whereas years ago, high school was enough. Pre-tractor days you hardly needed middle school. This is a significant mobility problem when you virtually have to crapshoot your life and hope you chose the right field. With increased…

> Pre-tractor days you hardly needed middle school.

Only because the teacher was built-in to the job, so to speak. I've taking up farming the last several years and have found it to be worlds more difficult than anything I've encountered in the tech industry. However, my father and grandfather have been working alongside me and are able to share their wisdom. I'm the seventh generation to work the land we own, and my family farmed elsewhere before that, so the knowledge amassed and passed down over the years is staggering.

Though the software industry has gone much the same way, in my opinion. While it may not be your father passing down the knowledge, you have all of the world's programmers at your quick and easy disposal through the very machines you are working with. That is just as powerful as what farmers have always had available, and probably why we're watching formal education devalue, if anything, especially as other industries try to copy the model. In fact, I think that may even further emphasize that all roads eventually lead to mediocracy over the long term.

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#89

Post by humanrebar »

_delirium wrote: post #69
humanrebar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are certainly lucky that your natural interests lead you to something lucrative There is certainly luck involved, but chalking all success up to fortunate nerd-dom is a simplification. Also consider the importance of avoiding pitfalls like drug abuse, crippling debt, and unexpected pregnancies. Also, millions of students do boring and pointless schoolwork every day to improve their grades so they can get into a…

Isn't Valley culture pretty much the opposite of what you describe, for better or worse? Classic engineering culture does have some of those features: work hard at school, get good grades, get into a good college, work hard in college, do an internship, graduate with a good GPA, get a good white-collar job. Valley startup culture seems to sort of hate that culture, though, and considers it a kind of obsolete old-peop…

I certainly hate go-along-to-get-along culture. For the record, I would love to see the need for crap work be disrupted. I'm just saying that for the time being, some boring responsibility is necessary even in Silicon Valley (large swaths of QA come to mind) and hardly anyone (no one?) is lucky enough to like all of it.

Re: Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

#90

Post by thedufer »

sanskritabelt wrote: post #66
crazygringo wrote: post #3

> Smart software... is ushering in an era of "hyper-meritocracy." > ...the cognitive requirements of working with smart software... > Online education... will only deepen inequality... Because of the premium it places on conscientiousness. some people are pure self-starters... But at the same time, I think it’s a pretty small percentage of the population. These are all excellent points. It's funny -- centuries ago, w…

If the current situation were in fact a meritocracy, wouldn't we expect to see a lot more social mobility than we're seeing now? ( http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/06/13-facts-h... ) ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/social-immobility-c... )

Parent was comparing the meritocracy of today to the lack thereof centuries ago. I don't see where either of those links looks farther than a few decades back.
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