The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#141

Post by coldtea » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:24 AM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #82

Retric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real costs for most people in the US is artificial. Housing, internet, and healthcare in the US is 2-5 times what it is in most countries because of systemic corruption. Consider, 15 minutes of a doctor’s time making 300k total compensation directly costs ~40$. Meaning your copay is often the actual cost of the services rendered and you need insurance to cover overhead.

> because of systemic corruption. Citation needed. > 15 minutes of a doctor’s time making 300k total compensation directly costs ~40$. So the nurses, administrators, technicians, lawyers, accountants, janitors etc that are needed to allow that doctor to see you don't factor into that cost? I'm not saying the pricing of healthcare in the States makes sense, but neither does the argument you present.

>Citation needed.

After a trillion dollar bailout on the real estate bubble (where banks propped house prices for more than a decade), and widespread studies of healthcare inflated prices you need "citations"?

It's like some bizarro world where to speak of something well established you also need to prove the universe exists all the way to modern history...

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#142

Post by coldtea » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:36 AM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #139

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are also moving the other way at unprecedented speed - the expensive ones: housing, medical care, education. None of which is discussing the comparative inequality of the two periods. Are you saying inequality is required for that list of innovations? If so, on what grounds? We came up with contraceptive pills, eradication of polio, visited the moon, transformation of aviation and personal transportation, dome…

Most of these things were coming as a side effect of the huge Cold War era military industrial complex. We’ll get it back soon enough. Additionally, yes, the US society in the 50s-80s was pretty egalitarian and full of opportunities — as long as you were white, male and heterosexual.

>Additionally, yes, the US society in the 50s-80s was pretty egalitarian and full of opportunities — as long as you were white, male and heterosexual.

It was full of opportunities for all kinds of people, not just "white, male, and heterosexual". That's when the civil rights movement and the feminist movement flourished too and ensured the rights for women and blacks.

People born after some age seem to remember some bizarro version of history, when it was all oppression with no redeeming qualities, and if you were a woman or black etc you were as good as dead. People think we made some huge strides in the 00s, probably because they have no experience of the 60s to 90s. That main strides have been done for gay/lesbian rights (and even those were increasingly more permissible after the 70s and the sexual revolution).

Though all of the above are beyond the point. As if to have those other things (affordable housing, college and healthcare) that the 50s-80s enjoyed, you need to also have racism and sexism... How does that compute?

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#143

Post by coldtea » Mon, May 06, 2019, 8:37 AM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #74

coldtea wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Statins, anti-retrovirals, common availability of antibiotics, treatment for TB, vaccines for many population-decimating (in the traditional sense of the word) viruses. Those are technological innovations, not really relevant. We could have had smartphones and anti-retrovirals AND affordable education/housing/healthcare/job prospects. Like how people in the 50s and 60s could enjoy all kinds of technological and soc…

You don't think what you get for your money is important in a discussion of economic advancement? It sounds like you decided on an answer, then went looking for a question which fits it. > We could have had smartphones and anti-retrovirals AND affordable education/housing/healthcare/job prospects. How can you possibly know that's true? Where are these example economies that have US-level innovation but also has the w…

>You don't think what you get for your money is important in a discussion of economic advancement?

No, I think technical progress is not important in a discussion of economic advancement. The economy can go up and down, but technical progress only goes forward (spare some catastrophe).

Even in the Great Depression or WWII, technology advanced just fine.

>How can you possibly know that's true? Where are these example economies that have US-level innovation but also has the wealth distribution you crave.

US had US-level innovation AND that "wealth distribution I crave" in the 50s-70s.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#144

Post by roenxi » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:11 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #131

roenxi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They may trivially capture some of the resources available for others housing by buying up the housing supply and renting for more than the cost of the mortgage while fighting to maximize the value of investment by limiting the supply of new housing. You're focusing on accounting, which is fine and all, but there are two scenarios here: (1) There are 10 houses, 10 people live in them. Everyone owns their own house.…

When you find yourself proving that 2 + 2 = 17 this is your cue to examine the chain of logic that got you there. The idea that one person can own everything and everyone is equally well off as if they all owned equal shares is wrong on its face. In practice in an environment that isn't deeply unequal the landlord creates value by investing capital in maintaining housing stocks that renters may lack or not want to in…

> The idea that one person can own everything and everyone is equally well off as if they all owned equal shares is wrong on its face.

You say that, but it your counter is also obviously wrong. It would be trivial to have a system where everyone owns equal shares of everything - dissolve private property rights and nationalise. On the face of it that isn't a bad idea but when it is tried it fails spectacularly. I'm not aware of any surviving examples where equal ownership has worked without becoming hopelessly corrupted.

So in practice we know that some level of inequality which, if dropped below, does result in everyone being worse off.

As an interesting aside, ~90% of Canada is owned by the Crown [0]. It isn't obvious that this inequality is their biggest problem w.r.t. living standards.

> Back in reality some portion are pushed onto the street ... and end up dying

Yeah all that stuff does sound awful, but you are not going to the meat of what I was asking. Assuming we aren't creating new wealth (because that would be something that could be done now) then the wealthy will have to give something up so that the poor can gain. What is it? If wealthy people stop going on holidays then retrain the hotel receptionists as doctors? Are wealthy people taking more hours of doctor time than they need and so we make them live with shorter appointments?

I don't believe the wealthy are using enough raw resources for to make a difference; there'd need to be a massive redeployment and upskilling program training new people to have higher skills. That isn't obviously an equality issue, it might be an education problem or related to government healthcare policy.

> Only for the upper middle class does that mean they have just as nice a house in a less desirable neighborhood.

You haven't changed the number or quality of the houses, so you're basically suggesting the middle class and the poor swap houses. If the poor persons prior home wasn't an acceptable dwelling, why would it be acceptable to put a middle class family in it? Is there something wrong with the poor persons house? Is the issue that the wealthy are using too much building material so the poor can't do home repairs?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_land#Canada

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#145

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, May 06, 2019, 9:52 AM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #64

jdhn wrote: post #3

His paragraph about jobs is spot on. I've seen this in my own workplace on a team that is 75% contractors and 25% full time employees. Contractors are seen as completely replaceable, and if one leaves they'll be replaced with another one after a quick round of interviews. However, if a full time employee leaves, the process to replace them seems to take much longer as it appears that those doing the hiring are lookin…

The fix is to always hire contractors, let the bad ones go, and convert the good ones to full time if you can.

When I was contracting I would always get an offer towards the end of my contracts. I never accepted as I enjoyed the clearer supplier/customer relationship you get with contracting. Most of my peers refused because it rarely made financial sense.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#146

Post by jgalt212 » Mon, May 06, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #106

jgalt212 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree not so sure about that line. Many of the whatevs are scraping by. https://www.financialsamurai.com/scraping-by-on-500000-a-yea...

Nearly every line of that budget screams "luxury", with the exception of two things: 1. The skyrocketing cost of college really does create enormous problems. I'm assuming the family profiled are either doctors or lawyers, because otherwise those $32K/yr payments would only last for a few years at most. (I paid $40K/yr in loans for both my wife and I when I got my first real job, but that happened exactly once... and…

> 2. $5,000/mo mortgage is pretty high, even for a family of four in a high CoL area.

I'll take you task on this one, as a crummy 3 BR apartment in Manhattan is north of $2MM. Interest alone on that is $6700/mo. And I've personally seen number of dispiriting 3 BR's listed for $3MM.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#147

Post by jgalt212 » Mon, May 06, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #106

jgalt212 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree not so sure about that line. Many of the whatevs are scraping by. https://www.financialsamurai.com/scraping-by-on-500000-a-yea...

Nearly every line of that budget screams "luxury", with the exception of two things: 1. The skyrocketing cost of college really does create enormous problems. I'm assuming the family profiled are either doctors or lawyers, because otherwise those $32K/yr payments would only last for a few years at most. (I paid $40K/yr in loans for both my wife and I when I got my first real job, but that happened exactly once... and…

> 6. $1K/mo on "children's lessons".

In NYC, these fees are necessary if you want to get your child into a "good" public middle and high school. The alternative is to pay $50K/year for private school. So #6 is a valid strategy to cut costs via attending public school--the very opposite of "luxury".

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#148

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, May 06, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #136

BurningFrog wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite confused reasoning. Sports are by definition zero sum games. There can only be one world champion etc. No such mechanism exist for doctors or software engineers. They get rewarded for the value they create, and there can in principle be any number of them, as long as they create additional value.

The market valuation of unicorns also assumes there can be only one "world champion" in each market, with high margins. In the medium term either one of Uber or Lyft has to win or investors have to accept big writedowns. (Doctors are different, they're not scalable and can only treat whoever's in front of them)

Or one could acquire the other.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#149

Post by mywittyname » Mon, May 06, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

Lots of things follow a Pareto distribution (which is what the author is describing). This is the default distribution for anything that relies on network effects and competes in a market with limited availability.

Famously, word usage follows this pattern (Zipf's law). But other things such as wealth accumulation, product usage, celebrity fame, upvotes on Reddit, etc all have this distribution. It's not possible for every person to read every post, evaluate every possible drink, or watch every movie, so they settle on one of the most immediately available options. So they drink a Coke while watching The Avengers and upvote the top-rated comment on Reddit about it.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#150

Post by danaris » Mon, May 06, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #146

throwawayjava wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every line of that budget screams "luxury", with the exception of two things: 1. The skyrocketing cost of college really does create enormous problems. I'm assuming the family profiled are either doctors or lawyers, because otherwise those $32K/yr payments would only last for a few years at most. (I paid $40K/yr in loans for both my wife and I when I got my first real job, but that happened exactly once... and…

> 2. $5,000/mo mortgage is pretty high, even for a family of four in a high CoL area. I'll take you task on this one, as a crummy 3 BR apartment in Manhattan is north of $2MM. Interest alone on that is $6700/mo. And I've personally seen number of dispiriting 3 BR's listed for $3MM.

But Manhattan is not, I would say, what one should take as an example of "a high CoL area." As I understand things, it, along with Silicon Valley, are the highest-cost-of-living areas in the country, by a significant margin.