Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#141

Post by ThrustVectoring » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 10:08 AM UTC

rabidrat wrote: post #140

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all the way down to people performing essential services who can't afford to feed their families on full-time work. This is a feature of the system, not a bug. If these folks weren't barely making it, there'd be more free energy for rentiers to extract through various rent-seeking behavior, and since rentiers have significantly more political power, the system would get subtly worse for the everyman in whatever ways…

Can we strike at the root and try to reduce rent-seeking behavior? Even if we can't eliminate it, there was a time when 'usury' an ugly moral sin and Jubilee was an actual event, so at least we understood who the jerks were, instead of blaming ourselves for being indentured servants in a rigged system.

IMO it's gotten too sophisticated to tackle head-on. Back then, if you were getting screwed, at least you knew how and by whom. Now, the vast majority of people who really understand how any particular rent-seeking scheme works are the rentiers themselves, so any public policy debate quickly devolves into a mix of noise and actual malice.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#142

Post by marvin » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 11:20 AM UTC

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #141

rabidrat wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we strike at the root and try to reduce rent-seeking behavior? Even if we can't eliminate it, there was a time when 'usury' an ugly moral sin and Jubilee was an actual event, so at least we understood who the jerks were, instead of blaming ourselves for being indentured servants in a rigged system.

IMO it's gotten too sophisticated to tackle head-on. Back then, if you were getting screwed, at least you knew how and by whom. Now, the vast majority of people who really understand how any particular rent-seeking scheme works are the rentiers themselves, so any public policy debate quickly devolves into a mix of noise and actual malice.

I initially mistook your first comment for defending a broken system (don't know how I could have done that), but this is just beautifully cynical. I buy your reasoning, and the state of things is actually quite tragic.

Most people who understand how this works will think "okay, so this is broken, but how can I profit from this?" rather than focus their energies on how the system can be fixed. The former is much easier to accomplish.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#143

Post by sytelus » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 12:50 PM UTC

TLDR; don’t feel bad about making obscene money because if someone is paying you that obscene money then you must be delievering that much economic value.

An important missing point with author: Money you get tend to represent the value you deliver, not always. In many cases value you delivere is way way off than money you get. For example, lottery winner and a CEO who bankrupts the company while getting golden parachute. This is the reason why the web dev in authors referenced post is wondering if he is being overpaid for drawing boxes on web page.

This is right now becoming universal questions for lot of people who live off of passive income or are in exec roles with as much as 1000X compensation. Economy and markets are not perfect. In aggregate and over a long term things might balance out.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#144

Post by hamilyon2 » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

So, mercantilism all over again? Have we gone a full circle?

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#145

Post by deepsun » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

pesmhey wrote: post #63

nostrademons wrote: post #9

It's interesting to speculate on what would happen if some of these foundational assumptions of economics didn't hold. What if money actually became more valued than what you can buy with money ? What if supply didn't create its own demand? What if people didn't try to make money to satisfy their own wants, but to one-up their neighbors in the pissing match of life? You'd see a lot of strange behavior. Instead of con…

Money is a measure of social value. Your status in the tribe is highly dependent on your utility to the tribe, and that utility is highly-dependent on how well you work with other members of the tribe to achieve common goals. If you are more effective than your neighbor at advancing community goals, then you will have a higher social value than your neighbor. When we were just tribes of 150-200 humans, our minds were…

Yes, but my salary depends not on the utility I create for my company, but on the cost of replacing me (labor market). It's just happened that very few people are willing+capable of doing my job.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#146

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

gshubert17 wrote: post #101

airstrike wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And every human being is entitled to the same amount of wealth? Good luck with that battle.

Perhaps every human being is entitled to equal dignity. A certain level of wealth (dependent on the size of population and level of development) might be necessary to maintain one's dignity. Within families we do not keep tallies of who owes what to whom. My parents did not present me on my 18th birthday with an itemized bill of what I had cost them. Nor did I do that to my children. Economics should be a servant of…

> Within families we do not keep tallies of who owes what to whom.

My family absolutely has lent money to each other at various times, at various interest rates, with the full expectation of those loans being repaid. I suspect this is not unique to us.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#147

Post by RestlessMind » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

marvin wrote: post #142

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's gotten too sophisticated to tackle head-on. Back then, if you were getting screwed, at least you knew how and by whom. Now, the vast majority of people who really understand how any particular rent-seeking scheme works are the rentiers themselves, so any public policy debate quickly devolves into a mix of noise and actual malice.

I initially mistook your first comment for defending a broken system (don't know how I could have done that), but this is just beautifully cynical. I buy your reasoning, and the state of things is actually quite tragic. Most people who understand how this works will think "okay, so this is broken, but how can I profit from this?" rather than focus their energies on how the system can be fixed. The former is much easi…

> Most people who understand how this works will think "okay, so this is broken, but how can I profit from this?" rather than focus their energies on how the system can be fixed. The former is much easier to accomplish.

Taking that cynicism one step further: I don't think it is about ease or difficulty of either approach. Rather, those who understand the system also typically understand the human nature, particularly its lust for power, which prohibits any system from being truly fixed. Because any system is going to be gamed by someone to accumulate power for themselves (or their inner circles). So why not apply your insights for your own benefits?

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#148

Post by RestlessMind » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #81

cleandreams wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. The problem is that most jobs have had stagnant wages for decades and developers are an exception. That is where the guilt comes from. But we need income growth like we need other kinds of growth. The transition to carbon free economy is going to be expensive. It's not going to happen if we decide income growth is toxic.

> The problem is that most jobs have had stagnant wages for decades and developers are an exception. Only if you think "most jobs" really means "Most jobs required unskilled labor in developed nations". China and the rest of Southeast Asia have enjoyed significant wage increase for decades. Developers are an exception to your "most jobs" definition because they are not unskilled labor – well, some require less skill,…

Why should an American (or any other nationality, for that matter) care about what rest of the world has enjoyed? If a system in place is not serving one well, one is going to be upset no matter what happens elsewhere.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#149

Post by mattnewton » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #71

> The yacht is made of wood, metal, and plastic. Building it requires many thousands of hours of effort. Workers have to find the trees, cut them down, haul the lumber across vast distances, cut it, sand it, polish it, paint it, etc., etc., etc. If you weren't commissioning the yacht, all of those materials and man-hours could be put to other, better uses. For all the good it does the Congolese people, you may as wel…

I think the author’s central point is that money can be viewed as an IOU for future utility from society. If I view all of society outside the individual as one agent, say a giant company that owns the stores you shop in and still employed you, and that company pays you $COMPANY-BUCKS to be redeemed at the company store, they got utilty out of you for nothing until you redeem the company bucks for something.

The author is saying that accumulating wealth is just, assuming you were payed fairly, showing a debt society has taken on to you. Society hasn’t had to produce something in return yet. And it’s how you spend that debt that can cause problems, not that the debt exists. You can spend it in ways that direct people to create utility that you share with society or in ways that lock that utility up.