Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dear Marc Andreessen

al3x.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 194 posts

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#131

Post by guiambros »

Worth watching the talk by Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO, during last SXSW. The interesting part starts at 20:30s, when he talks about the impact of technology on our economy and society.

He's not against technology or robots. Quite the opposite; he's a maker, geek and technology enthusiast. But he still raises good points of what will happen with jobs and wealth distribution, due to technology growth.

We're on a one-way street, and yes, this is completely different than what what happened 50, 100 years ago. We'll have significant changes in our society as we all learn how to live in a world with less jobs, explosion of technology, increasing wealth concentration, and fast gentrification of main cities.

Kudos to Al3x for bringing light to these important topics.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npYV5bzy7ug

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#132

Post by resu_nimda »

superuser2 wrote: post #113
jdminhbg wrote: post #15

> Taxi drivers protesting Uber aren’t saying that they want apps out of their cabs. Of course they aren't saying that, it would be political suicide to say it. But given the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions, do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient far…

Drivers want you to pay cash because everything else involves a technology company (CC processor, Uber, or both) taking a cut of the sale and cash doesn't. If a tech startup were resisting middlemen in this way, we'd probably call it common-sense business acumen. When it's a taxi driver, he's the scum of the earth? >do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that woul…

The key difference is that said startups use technology to cut out the middle man in a way that is transparent or even beneficial to the consumer. The cabbie, on the other hand, grumpily tries to pass the inconvenience onto the consumer.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#134

Post by Kaizyn »

bokonist wrote: post #22

I'm with Alex generally, but disagree with this sentence: "We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow" In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education. Much money has been allocated to increase college enrollment. But, IMO, for the vast majority of people, college education is a luxury social club. Spending more money o…

As an adult-life on-boarding process, why not compulsory service? At least then, every person is guaranteed to have contributed at least something to society.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#135

Post by Kaizyn »

eqdw wrote: post #63
bokonist wrote: post #22

I'm with Alex generally, but disagree with this sentence: "We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow" In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education. Much money has been allocated to increase college enrollment. But, IMO, for the vast majority of people, college education is a luxury social club. Spending more money o…

> My policy preference would be a law that creating a universal wage subsidy of $7.75 an hour, thus guarantees every worker a total wage of at least $15 an hour. I really like this idea. Lately I've been thinking about minimum wage laws (SF, $15/hr min wage, etc) and something about it rubs me the wrong way. It feels like minimum wage laws are a convenient way for governments to take all the credit for improving the…

You do realize that every time minimum wages are raised like this the cost(s) are simply passed on through to the consumers. The net effect is that the cost base rises with the wage base, so no one actually gets ahead - the nominal price point is just set to a higher figure.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#136

Post by Kaizyn »

sanswork wrote: post #85
gbog wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but those who just do not want to be assigned a productive task, what would you do with them?

Support them as a society. There will always be a tiny % that won't or can't work. Unless you want to let them die you will spend more money and effort trying to find the people abusing the system then you will spend on their abuses.

A basic law of economics is that whatever you spend money on you get more of. Spending money on paying for the abuses will only get you more abuses.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#137

Post by sanswork »

Kaizyn wrote: post #136
sanswork wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support them as a society. There will always be a tiny % that won't or can't work. Unless you want to let them die you will spend more money and effort trying to find the people abusing the system then you will spend on their abuses.

A basic law of economics is that whatever you spend money on you get more of. Spending money on paying for the abuses will only get you more abuses.

What is the name of that law? I'm not familiar with it.

The reason this isn't a problem is that not working gets boring really quickly and people want luxuries they can't get on basic income.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#138

Post by eqdw »

bokonist wrote: post #130
glesica wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..."job of last resort" program... But why? Why is it so necessary that everyone spend their days working? Why not just allow the structurally unemployed to pursue whatever it is that they want to do? I'm not saying we have to give them all mansions and butlers, but why do we have to make up fake, worthless jobs for them to do? It seems as though overall human happiness would be better optimized by allowing them to s…

I answered that same question here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7907937 I think most people are not natural aristocrats. They are not going to be tinkering in their home laboratories, crafting programming languages or writing ebooks. I fear that most people will degenerate in every manner if not subjected to the discipline of work. They will end up drinking and playing video games all day long. Furthermore,…

> Try giving the money away with no strings attached in one city or state (far away from me please) and see what happens.

My Alma Mater did that in the 70s. The results were unequivocably positive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#139

Post by ericd »

bokonist wrote: post #99
avn2109 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "... because the entire transportation structure was designed for cars. If everyone else is driving a three ton steel machine, you need to drive one too, and better get one with airbags and a four-star crash rating." It's almost like the man designed it this way so as to incentivize you to borrow money from him to buy cars. The only thing stopping something like that would be the fact that the auto industry didn't…

"The Man" does not exist, although interest groups certainly do, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy always holds, and I'm always willing to entertain conspiracy theories. But my impression is that the highway system was built because folks like Robert Moses and Ike genuinely thought it was the right thing to do. Cities were in fact massively overcrowded, jammed with congestion, and to be able to escape the tenements of Ne…

I'm pretty sure it's just the complex result of simple evolutionary forces and small benign decisions, and not the result of some malicious intelligent design.

Re: Dear Marc Andreessen

#140

Post by [deleted] »

bokonist wrote: post #22

I'm with Alex generally, but disagree with this sentence: "We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow" In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education. Much money has been allocated to increase college enrollment. But, IMO, for the vast majority of people, college education is a luxury social club. Spending more money o…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN