The real use of money is to buy freedom • Hacker News Board

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#241

Post by Crito » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:08 PM UTC

benched wrote: post #162

coldtea wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created. And it very much is. > It's hard to reconcile that view with the fact that standards-of-living have been growing, more or less worldwide, for the two centuries. Those are not personal wealth. Increased standards of living are a kind of background element, as they are more or less shared by the population. Statistically they eve…

This trope is so tired. Yes, I live better than a medieval peasant, and I have access to more computing power than ever. Yet, the standard of living across my entire family and most people I know is blatantly lower, in terms of human basics like housing and togetherness, than in my grandparents time, despite the fact that my grandparents were factory workers without even high school educations, and I am an experience…

So... how many women do you know that have died in childbirth?

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#242

Post by gress » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:09 PM UTC

eruditely wrote: post #237

gress wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depression is also rising to epidemic proportions, suggesting that improving economic indicators may simply not have anything to do with quality of life.

Measuring averages from the extreme is not-accurate(via Taleb)

What has that got to do with anything that has been said?

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#243

Post by yetanotherphd » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:10 PM UTC

kingraoul3 wrote: post #149

Artistry121 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I see it there are two options available: 1) People freely exchange goods and services. 2) Wealth is distributed without free exchange. It's a spectrum not an absolute. In free exchange (me trading with my boss or with Google or with a grocery store) I will never enter into a trade that has a lower expected value than the dollar value I'm giving up. In other words in every exchange I will either gain value or matc…

The Capitalist order was created with the closure of the commons, creating large masses of people with nothing to sell but their labor. The resulting 'Enclosure Riots' where put down with great force. As a consequence, 'Free exchange' then consists of people with massively unequal bargaining powers coming to an agreement. To see this arrangement as fair, one has to twist their sight up quite a bit. A defense of the f…

I'm pretty sure that if the commons had been divided up equally among the people who previously had the right to use them, we would be exactly where we are now.

Capitalism results in inequality regardless of initial conditions, because people differ in their abilities, and in their luck.

A much more powerful argument for redistribution than capitalism original sin, is that (1) we all live in a society, where we rely on the state to provide the security and infrastructure in which the free market is even possible, and (2) redistribution is the least intrusive, least restrictive method of improving societal wellbeing. It is (potentially) completely indifferent and blind to everything a person is and does, except for their total income.

I know this argument seems weaker because it involves utilitarian aspects, but it is really a more powerful argument because it doesn't rely on an accident of history.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#244

Post by Crito » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:12 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #231

coldtea wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are also intangibles that nobody cares to measure, that matter a lot. A 2013 "middle class lifestyle" might be far ahead a 1950 "middle class lifestyle" in pocessions, access to products, etc, but there are important differences too. For example, in all likely the 1950 "middle class" family could get all they needed by only one person working. And that person work an 8 hour day, with benefits and security…

I believe your assertions about the 1950s need substantiation. I'd like to see some empirical data about things like poverty levels, life expectancy, job security, bankruptcy, and so on. Keep in mind that this is only a couple of decades (at most) from the Great Depression. Even if the 1950s were clearly better, it's a rather cherry-picked data point considering how much worse the 1930s clearly were. That being said,…

Just for starters, he is almost certainly warping his perception of the 1950s by only considering what movies and television showed the 1950s being like for white men in suburbia America.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#245

Post by jedmeyers » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:25 PM UTC

king_jester wrote: post #121

dbecker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created. It's hard to reconcile that view with the fact that standards-of-living have been growing, more or less worldwide , for the two centuries.

Wealth is not zero-sum nor need it be, the only thing required for wealth inequality is that the current pool of wealth be heavily consumed and dominated by a small segment of people, leaving very little of the remaining pool for others.

This small segment of people actually created this wealth. Why shouldn't they be the one consuming it? And you cannot call the sum of all wealth owned by people "a pool" because it is not concentrated in one place nor should be.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#246

Post by mathattack » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:36 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #148

mathattack wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If have a $100,000, and somebody else has zero, neither of us have any value until I spend the money. If I spent the $10,000 to have someone do my laundry for the year (increasing my free time), then they have $10,000 with which to buy things that they might value more than the time doing my laundry. It may be groceries, it might be books, it might be a vacation. If I invest the remaining $90,000 (let's s…

> Nobody forces them to accept it. In fairy tales maybe. In real life, need to feed the family, debt, hunger, mortages, need for shelter, medical treatment needs, etc etc are forcing them to accept it. > Unless I stick the money under my mattress, putting money to use helps others. The same thing happens with giving slaves food. It helps them. That doesn't mean it's the best kind of help they can get.

So the alternative is not buying things or services from people who need the money?

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#247

Post by kingraoul3 » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:38 PM UTC

yetanotherphd wrote: post #243

kingraoul3 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Capitalist order was created with the closure of the commons, creating large masses of people with nothing to sell but their labor. The resulting 'Enclosure Riots' where put down with great force. As a consequence, 'Free exchange' then consists of people with massively unequal bargaining powers coming to an agreement. To see this arrangement as fair, one has to twist their sight up quite a bit. A defense of the f…

I'm pretty sure that if the commons had been divided up equally among the people who previously had the right to use them, we would be exactly where we are now. Capitalism results in inequality regardless of initial conditions, because people differ in their abilities, and in their luck. A much more powerful argument for redistribution than capitalism original sin, is that (1) we all live in a society, where we rely…

I agree with you (excepting that the violence evidenced in primitive capital accumulation is a historical accident), but the thrust of my argument was to demonstrate that Libertarian philosophy is wrong on it's own terms.

There are a variety of other arguments you could advance against it - for example that the self is social fiction with no scientific basis, the increasing communality of all labor, the inherent instability of Capitalism evidenced by the Long Wave cycle, the sociological fact that people's consciousness is shaped by their relationship to the means of production (evidenced, on their part, by their almost uniformly advantaged upbringings)...

Speaking for myself, I have lost my taste for extended intellectual debate on the internet, and all of these vectors of criticism would (if I were being intellectually honest) lead to extended debate. It may not be fair of me, but as a Marxist I do believe that the material world will change much more workers minds than some logic arguments arrayed in an online discussion.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#248

Post by jedmeyers » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:40 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #148

mathattack wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If have a $100,000, and somebody else has zero, neither of us have any value until I spend the money. If I spent the $10,000 to have someone do my laundry for the year (increasing my free time), then they have $10,000 with which to buy things that they might value more than the time doing my laundry. It may be groceries, it might be books, it might be a vacation. If I invest the remaining $90,000 (let's s…

> Nobody forces them to accept it. In fairy tales maybe. In real life, need to feed the family, debt, hunger, mortages, need for shelter, medical treatment needs, etc etc are forcing them to accept it. > Unless I stick the money under my mattress, putting money to use helps others. The same thing happens with giving slaves food. It helps them. That doesn't mean it's the best kind of help they can get.

> In real life, need to feed the family, debt, hunger, mortages, need for shelter, medical treatment needs, etc etc are forcing them to accept it.

Why other people should provide food, housing, medical treatment, etc if the person provides almost nothing in return?

Another question: Would you replace your doctor, who earns 50x minimum wage, with 50 random minimum wage earners to do a medical procedure on you?

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#249

Post by coldtea » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:53 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #148

mathattack wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If have a $100,000, and somebody else has zero, neither of us have any value until I spend the money. If I spent the $10,000 to have someone do my laundry for the year (increasing my free time), then they have $10,000 with which to buy things that they might value more than the time doing my laundry. It may be groceries, it might be books, it might be a vacation. If I invest the remaining $90,000 (let's s…

> Nobody forces them to accept it. In fairy tales maybe. In real life, need to feed the family, debt, hunger, mortages, need for shelter, medical treatment needs, etc etc are forcing them to accept it. > Unless I stick the money under my mattress, putting money to use helps others. The same thing happens with giving slaves food. It helps them. That doesn't mean it's the best kind of help they can get.

>Why other people should provide food, housing, medical treatment, etc if the person provides almost nothing in return?

They do provide stuff in return. Actually they do all the important stuff: cooking, cleaning the streets, driving the cabs, delivering packages, extracting oil, mining coal, replacing the hospital bedsheets, growing and picking our food, taking care of the dead, and tons more besides, while the rest of the population gets to play "highly specialized professional" for doing high level BS from marketing to accounting.

>Another question: Would you replace your doctor, who earns 50x minimum wage, with 50 random minimum wage earners to do a medical procedure on you?

No, I'd replace him with a doctor that earns 1x mininum wage -- so everybody can afford him. If he doesn't like the job enough to do it for what it is and for the service he offers, then he's not a passionate doctor anyway. (In the same way real hackers would even program for free, just because they enjoy it so much)

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#250

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Dec 24, 2013, 11:53 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #219

sokoloff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true to a point for everyone: that having more money from a low starting point primarily increases lifestyle. But as you add more and more money, I think that most people reach a turning point where "enough really is enough" and their worries about money truly diminish, but that lifestyle stops increasing. As I've grown in my own career, for sure my lifestyle increased. I literally subsisted on Ramen and $2 fr…

Airplanes must be cheaper than I thought, if a classic car and a city apartment comes after an airplane.

Well, I was in my 20s working for a hedge fund, and caught the aviation bug BAD, so don't read much into that prioritization other than, "I had money burning a hole in my pocket and all the sense of a 20-something..." :)

You can buy a functional single-engine airplane for $30-50K. $50K even gets you into something that I'd consider pretty nice for an entry level airplane. They go way, way up from there, of course...