Rolling the ladder up behind us • Hacker News Board

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#151

Post by dh2022 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 1:06 AM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #93

WalterBright wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I merely point out that economic history shows that economic freedom works better than any other system. Besides, I enjoy debate, like other people enjoy playing football. If you don't, why are you here?

With all due respect, and I mean that sincerely as you've accomplished far more than I have, you aren't here for debate. Your viewpoint is stuck in the cold war mentality where Soviet communism was a failure (it did, but that doesn't mean that everything they touched was bad) and America and its brand of Free Market capitalism is perfect (it isn't) and responding to your comments is like talking to a brick wall for a…

Having lived through communism I can say the only good things were equality of men and women (in my communist country there were just as many women doctors, engineers, managers, accountants as men) and equality between people (students from Africa were very much welcomed). Everything else though was miserable: our free healthcare, our free cold apartments that had electricity 2 hours a day, our free education, our cheap on paper but non-existent food and medicaments.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#152

Post by ArcTugboat03 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 2:11 AM UTC

mm263 wrote: post #67

zimzam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Inexpensive food is a boon to society. Cultivating food the 'old fashioned way' is incredibly labor intensive. We now have machines that allow us to cultivate far more food with far less labor. For example, in 1900 corn took 38 hours/acre to plant/cultivate/harvest. In 2000 it took about an hour. The yeild per acre has also improved 3x-5x in that span, so the time per bushel has decreased…

You are not making an argument you think you are making. We switched from one set of problems to another set of problems that didn't exist before industrial agriculture: soil erosion, pest explosion, entire harvests wiped out by disease because genetic uniformity, which means one pathogen can destroy everything - think Irish potato famine but now it's scientific and modern. The mess of traditional farming - with its…

This is an excessively romanticized view of traditional farming. If you look at the astonishing death tolls from famine throughout human history, including in living memory, it is pretty clear why, for all its problems, industrial agriculture is still a far superior approach.

Food security requires food production at levels which demand industrialized agriculture, for better or worse.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#153

Post by like_any_other » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 2:19 AM UTC

whall6 wrote: post #142

Refreeze5224 wrote: post #2

This is the true problem with AI. It's with who owns it, and what they will inevitably use it for. Whether it can do cool stuff with code or equal a junior developer is irrelevant. What it can do is less important than what it will be used for. The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs, which from their perspective is a cost center and always will be. If you're not an owner, then you have no control over t…

The owning class is different today than it was in Ned’s time. Who owns MSFT? You, probably, through your 401k. Nobody is stopping you from creating a coalition of similarly minded shareholders and effecting change. Unless you stuff your cash under your mattress, you are the owning class.

> Who owns MSFT? You, probably, through your 401k.

All or nothing fallacy. People have VASTLY different degrees of ownership, and this is reflected in their degree of control.

> Nobody is stopping you from creating a coalition of similarly minded shareholders

Such coalitions already exist. They have names like BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity Investments [1]. Good luck competing with them. Especially if you abdicate your role in democracy, don't agitate for legal change, and restrict yourself to only market-based means of change (not BlackRock and ilk though - they use every lever available to them, they don't handicap themselves).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asset_management_firms

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#154

Post by felipeerias » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 2:30 AM UTC

youworkwepay wrote: post #104

The value of vibe coding isn't that it writes good or sustainable code. It's that you can build a sufficiently non-shitty prototype of a concept as a non IT expert to validate the use case and secure proper assistance. From a change leadership perspective, walking in the door with a shitty prototype beats pitching vaporware every day of the week and twice on Sundays. And the fact amateurs can deliver (basic, crappy)…

The article hints at that when it describes vibe coding as “fancy UX”, but fails to connect the dots.

Essentially, we now have a system that can turn a simple problem description into an interactive tool for that problem. Even if it still does so very imperfectly, it’s easy see already the beginnings of a powerful and empowering new paradigm.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#155

Post by kevincox » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 3:13 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #4

Refreeze5224 wrote: post #2

This is the true problem with AI. It's with who owns it, and what they will inevitably use it for. Whether it can do cool stuff with code or equal a junior developer is irrelevant. What it can do is less important than what it will be used for. The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs, which from their perspective is a cost center and always will be. If you're not an owner, then you have no control over t…

> The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs Of course. That's been going on since the invention of the plow. That's why today we can do more interesting things than turn over the earth with a pointy stick all day every day. > economic democracy, where average people regain control over their lives History shows us that this inevitably means people lose all control over their lives, because the state will m…

The problem isn't reducing payroll costs and increased productivity, it is the consolidation of wealth.

If we can do twice as much with half of the labour people should work 20h weeks, not be unable to afford a home.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#156

Post by cedws » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 3:18 AM UTC

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #149

The most pressing issue to me currently regarding LLMs is the blatant, flagrant change in tone of the "leadership/ownership" class towards employees. It comes off as little other than thinly veiled contempt for the people that actually make the business function. We've seen, most recently, Jassy come out and say "we're gonna need a lot less people", Zuckerberg doing his "replacing engineers" shtick on several occasio…

It’s masks off for them, they were always sociopaths that see other people as a means to an end.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#157

Post by Veedrac » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 3:40 AM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #100

Veedrac wrote: post #55

A defense of the Luddites against sewing machines was honestly not something I expected. Support for the Luddites in general, sure I can predict that, but the claim that sewing machines are bad, exploitative, produce "shitty" cloth, serve only the pursuit of profit...

Power looms are not the same thing as sewing machines. Not even close.

Ah, you're right, thanks for the correction.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#158

Post by bevr1337 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 3:43 AM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #73

Refreeze5224 wrote: post #2

This is the true problem with AI. It's with who owns it, and what they will inevitably use it for. Whether it can do cool stuff with code or equal a junior developer is irrelevant. What it can do is less important than what it will be used for. The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs, which from their perspective is a cost center and always will be. If you're not an owner, then you have no control over t…

> The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs Things are cyclic, nothing new; the previous big scare was (is?) outsourcing, where for the same price as one developer in western / northern Europe or SF you can hire five from eastern Europe or India. But that hasn't affected employability of the one developer, as far as I'm aware. I'm not even thinking of skill level, I'm sure that's comparable (but honestly I…

> Things are cyclic, nothing new

Must be a convenient worldview

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#159

Post by bevr1337 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 3:55 AM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #42

stego-tech wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit motives are a relatively recent phenomenon, though, and are often erroneously cited as analogous to efficiency gains (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary). > Even food is not able to escape this hole: it's not profitable to manually cultivate food anymore if you wanted to do that as a career. Does this not horrify you? That the foundational discipline of humanity - nutrition via hunting, gathering, o…

> That the foundational discipline of humanity - nutrition via hunting, gathering, or growing - is no longer a "profitable enterprise"? I don't understand this statement. These things aren't unprofitable. Doing these things a specific way is unprofitable. Growing food is most certainly profitable; but only at scale. Is it sad that a small, family farm isn't really a great way to make a living nowadays? Sure. But that…

> Growing food is most certainly profitable; but only at scale

The agricultural practices you hint at only make sense in a boardroom. I'm sure it seems rational or logical, but it's not based in experience or ethics.

> But that's not a foundational discipline of humanity;

It is probably the foundational discipline of humanity. Cultivating and cooking food is what allowed us to do everything since.

Re: Rolling the ladder up behind us

#160

Post by bevr1337 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 4:01 AM UTC

ArcTugboat03 wrote: post #152

mm263 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not making an argument you think you are making. We switched from one set of problems to another set of problems that didn't exist before industrial agriculture: soil erosion, pest explosion, entire harvests wiped out by disease because genetic uniformity, which means one pathogen can destroy everything - think Irish potato famine but now it's scientific and modern. The mess of traditional farming - with its…

This is an excessively romanticized view of traditional farming. If you look at the astonishing death tolls from famine throughout human history, including in living memory, it is pretty clear why, for all its problems, industrial agriculture is still a far superior approach. Food security requires food production at levels which demand industrialized agriculture, for better or worse.

Maybe a false dichotomy. For ex, modern transportation could have been in service to sustainable agricultural models, providing resiliency between communities.