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The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

johnkay.com

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Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#121

Post by kamaal »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #86
bsbechtel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys are opening up a whole other can of worms getting into labor. We tend to think of labor as a cost of production and something to be minimized. Maybe we need to start thinking of labor as a (actually, the main) party responsible for creating the value the firm produces for society. Anytime value is created, it can go to 4 parties - the consumer (lower prices), the government (taxes), the shareholders (through…

Good points. Of course, I'm going to quibble a little, else I wouldn't be replying! > ...our economy is so screwed up right now is because employees are getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie, not because technology is displacing jobs" But, the two are related right? When tech displaces jobs, which it of course has, then there is lower demand for labor and the price of labor (wages) goes down. There are other…

>>There will come a day though, when only a tiny fraction of the population will be "neccessary" to create what the world produces. It will be interesting to see how society realigns itself and evolves when so few people need to do traditional (economic) work.

We are already there, and we seem to be doing just fine. I guess only ~3% of US population today works in farms compared to >70% a century back. The only thing is work keeps changing. People have better things to work on. That has always been the trend since mankind even existed.

If the effort required to produce something goes down, prices too go down significantly.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#122

Post by kamaal »

kiba wrote: post #72
bsbechtel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say you're just not thinking creatively enough. Manufactured homes significantly reduced the cost of owning a home, and just the other day I saw an article talking about 3D printing homes with concrete and how it could drive the cost down even further. The same goes for the other things you mentioned....flood the market with doctors and healthcare costs would go down, we just need med schools to accept more peopl…

Manufactured homes significantly reduced the cost of owning a home, and just the other day I saw an article talking about 3D printing homes with concrete and how it could drive the cost down even further. The problem is the cost of land, not the manufacturing of homes, per se.

Its both actually. Land cost is largely addressed these days by large rising apartment housing complexes.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#123

Post by kamaal »

hmsimha wrote: post #29
FD3SA wrote: post #12

I've always been baffled by the investment choices of billionaires. If you accept an empirical view of the universe, no matter what you do, you will eventually die. Your experiences of the world will cease to exist. Therefore, the only rational investment would be in life extension technologies (SENS, advanced prosthesis, etc.). At first, this might sound repulsive. The idea of a group of elites discovering and hoard…

I wanted to point out that investing in AI research could be viewed by many as more lucrative than investing in anti-ageing research and life extension technology. If we solve AGI, we will have a super-human intelligence capable of solving health and ageing problems for us (and hopefully inclined to do so).

Plus providing us facilities to upload our minds to the cloud and then live on there forever.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#124

Post by [deleted] »

bsbechtel wrote: post #109
unclebucknasty wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could read that two ways and I'm not sure which you intended. 1.) That no matter how cheap we make things, it does no good if the production of those goods causes some to be so much poorer (even down to zero) that they still cannot afford it. If that's what you meant, then we are in agreement. 2.) That we need to make things cheaper however we can, so that the poorest can afford it. If that was your point, then wel…

I meant there is still lots of technology to be developed that can make many goods much cheaper than they are today, and as they become cheaper due to technology, then more people will be able to afford those goods. I wasn't really thinking too deeply on how the cost of labor affects the price of goods, but I tend to have the general attitude that if everyone in a firm (including management and the owners will accept…

[deleted]

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#125

Post by unclebucknasty »

kamaal wrote: post #121
unclebucknasty wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points. Of course, I'm going to quibble a little, else I wouldn't be replying! > ...our economy is so screwed up right now is because employees are getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie, not because technology is displacing jobs" But, the two are related right? When tech displaces jobs, which it of course has, then there is lower demand for labor and the price of labor (wages) goes down. There are other…

>>There will come a day though, when only a tiny fraction of the population will be "neccessary" to create what the world produces. It will be interesting to see how society realigns itself and evolves when so few people need to do traditional (economic) work. We are already there, and we seem to be doing just fine. I guess only ~3% of US population today works in farms compared to >70% a century back. The only thing…

>We are already there, and we seem to be doing just fine

We're not there yet.

>The only thing is work keeps changing. People have better things to work on.

By definition, as long as we have better things to work on (which are valued by our economy), then we haven't arrived at the point about which I'm speaking.

Technology is moving at an accelerated pace. What automation and tech can do is moving up the skill ladder and replacing more jobs than before. In addition, a globalized workforce/economy means we are reaching a scale that is giving us ever-increasing efficiency and per-worker productivity. This is why we are seeing the beginnings of a very stubborn structural unemployment and stagnant wages over the last couple of decades.

But, we are just starting. And at some point, a much smaller percentage of what we produce will require humans. When that happens, the "better things to work on" won't fit the current economy's definition of value that is worthy of compensation. That is, it won't go to the production of goods or services for which people are willing to pay.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#126

Post by akurtzhs »

enraged_camel wrote: post #48
dror wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your experiences of the world will cease to exist. Therefore, the only rational investment would be in life extension technologies (SENS, advanced prosthesis, etc.)." No. You make a false assumption that everyone's main goal in to live as long as possible. Different people have different goals, and Gates clearly cares about making a major impact on other people.

If you live longer, you can make a bigger impact. Especially if you're someone like Bill Gates. Imagine if the great thinkers and inventors of past times were still alive today. Imagine if someone like Elon Musk could live forever. edit: gotta love it when drive-by downvoters just cast their vote without adding anything to the discussion.

On the other hand, imagine Kim Il-sung living and ruling over North Korea forever.

I'm in favor of SENS, but the idea of having the established elite be permanently on top worries me.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#127

Post by unclebucknasty »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #108
bsbechtel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys are opening up a whole other can of worms getting into labor. We tend to think of labor as a cost of production and something to be minimized. Maybe we need to start thinking of labor as a (actually, the main) party responsible for creating the value the firm produces for society. Anytime value is created, it can go to 4 parties - the consumer (lower prices), the government (taxes), the shareholders (through…

> Maybe we need to start thinking of labor as a (actually, the main) party responsible for creating the value the firm produces for society. Right. That's pretty much straight Marxist ideology. (I say this as a matter of fact, not as a matter of denigration per se.) Idea for you. It's a free country, relatively speaking. So if labor is truly primarily responsible for the value in something, perhaps you and a bunch of…

There is no need to test whether capital provides value, as it obviously does. Your parent was speaking to viewing labor as providing the primary value.

I noticed though, that your test's premise started as a means to challenging your parent's assertion that labor provided the primary value (i.e. you implied that capital provided the primary value). But, your test's conclusion was that capital provided only significant value, which no one is arguing. Apparently, you couldn't bring yourself to conclude that capital provided the primary value, perhaps because your test doesn't prove it.

But, I have an exercise for you. Imagine starting a company with very little capital, but plenty of labor (i.e. people willing to work for a share in future profits). Now, imagine starting a company with $1B and no labor.

In any case, regardless of which you deem technically "most" valuable, there is still the question of degree: that is, do the rewards accrue to the parties proportionate to their value?

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#128

Post by bayesianhorse »

As far as I understood it, Bill Gates was arguing that the worst of poverty is vanishing surprisingly well.

Kay says this is wrong, because the countries with intermediate economies aren't on the top yet.

I think the basic misunderstanding is that economic development - if it works - is a stochastic exponential process. Humans tend to underestimate this function badly. On the one hand it is very fast - after the US went from where Turkey is today to its current economy in "only" 50 years, but in every particular year, looking into the future, progress looks like a painstakingly slow crawl.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#129

Post by bayesianhorse »

dba7dba wrote: post #60

Wrong title. It should say: The world's rich get richer while the poor struggle to avoid getting poorer. Money makes money.

Which is exactly the kind of attitude that gives nerds a bad reputation for lack of economic understanding...

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#130

Post by bsbechtel »

w1ntermute wrote: post #119
bsbechtel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys are opening up a whole other can of worms getting into labor. We tend to think of labor as a cost of production and something to be minimized. Maybe we need to start thinking of labor as a (actually, the main) party responsible for creating the value the firm produces for society. Anytime value is created, it can go to 4 parties - the consumer (lower prices), the government (taxes), the shareholders (through…

> That means we have more people who can go work on things like curing cancer and colonizing space Labor isn't 1-for-1 substitutable. You can't take a 50 y/o manual laborer with a high school education who's been displaced by robots and just turn him into a cancer researcher or rocket scientist.

It's not, but humans are dynamic beings who can learn new skills, not stagnant machines with one single function. 100 years ago half our population was illiterate, yet we overcame the displacement of thousands of farm workers due to technology. We will continue to do this throughout history again and again.
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