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Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

theguardian.com

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Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#71

Post by whyever »

SandB0x wrote: post #13
fenomas wrote: post #5

I'm not unsympathetic, but this article seems like a hodgepodge of gripes in search of a premise. "These tech elites are like bankers, in the sense that they make a lot of money, and in no other sense. Also they're mostly men. And they control capital, if, uh, they own corporate shares. Plus, Moore's Law." Huh?

> hodgepodge of gripes in search of a premise Welcome to The Guardian's opinion pages, where everything is a source of outrage and the shadowy "1%" are always out to get you.

It is undeniable that the gap between poor and rich is increasing, especially in the US.

Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#72

Post by scholia »

raverbashing wrote: post #19
fenomas wrote: post #5

I'm not unsympathetic, but this article seems like a hodgepodge of gripes in search of a premise. "These tech elites are like bankers, in the sense that they make a lot of money, and in no other sense. Also they're mostly men. And they control capital, if, uh, they own corporate shares. Plus, Moore's Law." Huh?

Yes It also seems like a text that is missing an ending. Very shallow text

It's an opinion column from the Observer newspaper, which appears on Sundays in the UK, and therefore has to fit a precise length...

Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#73

Post by sixQuarks »

Here's a wild idea: What if it were free (or cost pennies) to get any materialistic good besides food? Imagine owning a 300 foot yacht or a jumbo jet for a penny. And everyone in the world can have their own with unlimited supplies.

I believe we're in the middle of an adjustment period that will take 15 to 25 years. At the end of this period, virtual reality will be a sufficient replacement for reality, and as affordable as a cellphone is today. When all goods (besides food) are virtual goods, all of a sudden the cost doesn't matter. The rich divide gets shattered.

You could be living in a cardboard shack, but in VR, you're living in a mansion. I know it's a crazy idea, but I just don't see wealth being associated with real materialistic goods in the future which will change everything.

Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#74

Post by sparkie »

aragot wrote: post #31
buro9 wrote: post #14

My view is that the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which states and key individuals were able to extract wealth from others. In that case, as time progressed, the people started to become aware of the inequality and the leaders and states started to see the result (in Russia and other countries) of this inequality bein…

I'm worried about the form of the redistribution. In France, we have small taxes in many places. Just one example: We dealt with copyright issues by creating a tax on storage mediums, from a few cents to 20-40€ depending on the container, the size and the volatility - more than 40 different tax levels (see tables here [1]). Obviously they included the bureaucracy feature, where if you're a company you can send back a…

If robots are replacing labor, tax the robots of course!

Might sound silly, but to me, it's the most simple and sane thing we can do to sustain people who are put out of work by automation.

Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#75

Post by Lambdanaut »

sixQuarks wrote: post #73

Here's a wild idea: What if it were free (or cost pennies) to get any materialistic good besides food? Imagine owning a 300 foot yacht or a jumbo jet for a penny. And everyone in the world can have their own with unlimited supplies. I believe we're in the middle of an adjustment period that will take 15 to 25 years. At the end of this period, virtual reality will be a sufficient replacement for reality, and as afford…

I'm a futurist optimist and yet I REALLY don't see VR reasonably replacing reality in 15 to 25 years. There's too many sensory parts of reality to replicate. At best it'll be a shoddy ripoff for a long time. Not to mention the health benefits that come with interacting in the real world that you don't get from VR. You're not going to be soaking up those sun rays or enjoying that tuna you caught off the side of your yacht in Second Life VR. You'll be watching your avatar enjoy these things. At the end of the day you've still gotta log off and enjoy the real world, or you'll atrophy.

VR might supplement reality just like watching TV does, but it'll be a long time before we're living our lives in VR.

Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#76

Post by jdimov »

aragot wrote: post #70
jdimov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-distribution?? Ex-cuse-me?? These aren't YOUR cookies, you bum! Make your own cookies and THEN worry about re-distribution! When someone else has made the cookies, YOU DON'T GET A SAY in how they are distributed, do you get that?

Whether you like it or not, redistribution is the basis for most of the laws of my country (and certainly yours). It's not up to you or me, it's how the People think. In fact, that's what the OP is about. It is besides the point to know which side I am. In fact, I've just said tax complexity squashes new enterprises. I've written an article about how an entrepreneur in France loses 70% of his income in tax-and-admini…

Just because the majority think they are entitled to the 1%'s wealth, does not make it so.

The French government might as well take 90% of that entrepreneur's wealth and "re-distribute" it to the so-called "People" (I call them "Sheep") and guess what? That one entrepreneur will still be wealthier than any of them and the "People" will still mumble. In other words, NOTHING will change.

Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#77

Post by fennecfoxen »

whyever wrote: post #71
SandB0x wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hodgepodge of gripes in search of a premise Welcome to The Guardian's opinion pages, where everything is a source of outrage and the shadowy "1%" are always out to get you.

It is undeniable that the gap between poor and rich is increasing, especially in the US.

Is it undeniable? Last I heard there was a lot of noise from Picketty and Saez, which was based on fundamentally invalid and unsound scholarship. To put it in computing terms, it's on a par with benchmarking your software for performance improvements, but upgrading your laptop partway through and calling that a massive speedup. A one-time methodology change in the methodology of the census bureau's Current Population Survey (in 1992) is responsible for roughly a third of Picketty's claimed increase in the Gini coefficient.

It's undeniable that this has been in the news and on the lips of many partisans.

And there was some short-term increase in the aftermath of the latest recession, I suppose. That's not really controversial, though its durability has not yet been proven. (Also, I'm not sure the "especially in the US" label is necessarily deserved.)

Really, the "undeniable" label is a tendentious one: it argues, more than it describes. Its purpose is to turn a little solid evidence for a small change into what seems like an ocean of evidence for an overwhelming change. I call it deceitful.

Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#78

Post by jdimov »

sparkie wrote: post #74
aragot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm worried about the form of the redistribution. In France, we have small taxes in many places. Just one example: We dealt with copyright issues by creating a tax on storage mediums, from a few cents to 20-40€ depending on the container, the size and the volatility - more than 40 different tax levels (see tables here [1]). Obviously they included the bureaucracy feature, where if you're a company you can send back a…

If robots are replacing labor, tax the robots of course! Might sound silly, but to me, it's the most simple and sane thing we can do to sustain people who are put out of work by automation.

Did it ever occur to you that if you allowed yourself to be commoditized enough to lose your job to a robot, may be you don't DESERVE to be sustained!

Re: Google and tech’s elite are living in a parallel universe – John Naughton

#80

Post by swombat »

littletimmy wrote: post #11
swombat wrote: post #4

Dr Schmidt’s smart creatives work all the hours that God sends, and then some. They are, to use his term, “overworked in a good way”. The concept of work-life balance can, he thinks, “be insulting to smart, dedicated employees”, for whom work is an important part of life, not something to be separated. The best corporate cultures, he thinks, “invite and enable people to be overworked in a good way, with too many inte…

The problem with what you're saying is that the people who "do not draw a clear line between work and play" are not nearly as romantically satisfied with their work as you claim. Do you not see how this "passion for work" argument is often employed to make employees work the maximum they can? If you apply to work at Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey, or Google, the message is clear: it is not enough that you sell your time…

Let me clarify: I totally do not think that this state of mind is a reality at banks - and probably not at many tech companies either. I truly abhor the fake "passion" demonstrations required in the typical corporate environment. They are one of the reasons why I hated my time there. It is a tragedy, a travesty of the good things humans can achieve through their work.

However, this concept is a reality in my life, and I am observing it in people other than me as well, at work. In no cases does it involve people "working round the clock" - though sometimes it does involve people thinking about work-related topics even when they're not at work. And it also involves them thinking about non-work things while at work. From time to time, people might choose to work late, but there's no external pressure to do so.

This philosophy is best explained in a book called "The Seven-day weekend" by Ricardo Semler of Semco fame. Note the emphasis of letting life take over and blur the lines from that "direction", rather than just trying to fool people into working longer hours, which is indeed a disgusting approach to business.

PS: I'm European. This notion of work being an evil biblical curse to be avoided is just as backwards as the american-style attempts to convince people to work all the time and "show passion".

PPS: That said, thank you for highlighting a way that my arguments in this matter can be misunderstood.

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