After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#191

Post by mdp2021 » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

glogla wrote: post #163

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This article is pretty clear about its intent: don’t be lulled into a false sense of economic security after the pandemic and build this experience into our understanding of our system. The first step of any solution is convincing people there is a problem. Not just the obvious “things are bad,” but an understanding that these issues are systemic in a way that challenges American ideology. These articles frus…

Based on what gets up and downvoted, most of people on HN are ancap or fascists. I guess it makes sense - startups are gold rush, VC's are the ones giving away shovels for portion of gold should there be any, and founders are people who either found gold or believe they will. I wonder if most of people have political outlook like this. If they do, it is both sad and comforting, because then the humanity is doomed to…

Upvote and downvote do not work that way at HN and should not be interpreted that way without analysis. Here it is not about how you feel: it is about whether you make sense. Experience mostly reflects the principle (some noise must be expected).

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#192

Post by dbingham » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #184

dbingham wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a number of solutions on offer - they just have a difficult time gaining traction in our media (and therefor in the public debate). Part of that has to do with the fact that a majority of those with economic and political power - those who have succeeded in the current system - still refuse to recognize that the problems are systematic. They refuse to recognize that the problems are intrinsically caus…

Why would anyone ever try a high risk innovation play to propel society forward if there was no reward? Most businesses fail. This would encourage people to just work at BigCo instead of trying to start new things. I feel like innovative companies such as SpaceX or Moderna would never happen under that economic model for example.

Yikes. You... uh... must have a social circle that looks very different from mine.

I know any number of people who would eagerly start a high risk innovation play as a worker cooperative, because the money reward isn't what they care about. They care about making change in society or seeing a technical advancement become wide spread.

For most of them, they just need the chance - a floor under their feet so they can't fall too far if they fail and enough funding to get going. And, given how much crowdfunding has succeeded in todays world of concentrated wealth - I believe crowdfunding could provide that in this system where wealth is much, much more distributed.

The other piece of if is, with worker cooperatives every single employee of the company is fully bought into that innovation play. And stands to see the rewards created by it. Not just the investors and company founders. If anything, it increases the effectiveness of these companies, because everyone involved in them is incentivized to give it their all. Everyone involved stands to see the rewards of success.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#193

Post by iammisc » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

dbingham wrote: post #185

iammisc wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't. The free market and worker cooperatives are completely compatible. There is nothing that needs to change in the markets, only in society.

> The free market and worker cooperatives are completely compatible. I agree. But there is something that needs to change in order for worker cooperatives become the dominant business form. So long as capital can demand ownership, worker cooperatives will remain a relative niche. What needs to change in markets is we need to remove the ability for capital to demand ownership. That's essentially the core of my proposa…

The idea that replacing ownership with loans will lead to good outcomes is frankly shocking to me.

There's a reason all major religions historically prohibit usury (the charging of any interest, as well as enforce debt jubilees), while encouraging ownership.

Frankly, this sounds like a great idea, but it vastly understates the role of the markets (esp the stock market) in lifting others out of poverty.

Humans are not machines. We cannot always work. Stock ownership provides the ability for the disabled, the elderly, etc to earn income based off of work they'd already put in. It's like buying a stake in society. Without it, each person would be measured based off their economic output. I know you claim that's how the current system works, but imagine how much worse it would be if there were no other way to earn money other than by working.

> It would vastly increase equality, with out increasing destitution.

This is a claim stated without data.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#194

Post by dbingham » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

qsort wrote: post #189

dbingham wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This already exists, they are called cooperatives, many of them actually work pretty great. Try to guess what happens when they grow and they need to hire employees... They continue to operate. Mondragon has 80,000 worker owners. And yes, it has a challenge in recent years where the worker owners have created a class of non-owner employee. But it got pretty big before that started happening, and there's no reason t…

> My proposal is essentially that we make this the requirement So basically we are abolishing the ability for any business to hire employees? This would be terrible, especially for the poor. Owner and employee are different risk profiles, it's neither useful nor beneficial to impose by law that nobody can be an employee any longer, especially for those who can't afford the risk. It's also very easy to route around th…

> Owner and employee are different risk profiles, it's neither useful nor beneficial to impose by law that nobody can be an employee any longer, especially for those who can't afford the risk.

The owner doesn't carry the risk - the business does. That's the whole point of a limited liability corporation. And there's no reason those liability protections couldn't be strengthened further.

Plus, this is seriously underestimating the risk a poor employee takes. Someone living pay to pay check who has no information about the state of the business and stands to lose everything if they get fired risks a lot more than a business owner who has all the information about the state of the business and can keep a comfortable cushion for themselves to fall back on should the business fail (and can choose the moment at which to end the business to be sure they don't eat into that cushion).

Who's taking more risk here? The employee, not the business owner.

> It's also very easy to route around that obstacle if it were made law: just fire everyone and hire them back as contractors, oh, no, sorry, democratically run worker cooperative employing one worker.

You could pretty easily tweak contract law to get rid of this workaround. Even so, this isn't an easy workaround. No business of reasonable size can afford to fire all of its employees. And if those employees are co-owners of the business no single employee has the power to fire all the others.

> You are completely throwing away many layers of protections that are afforded to workers in a system of regulated employment relations.

And replacing them with power. They don't need those protections when they are in control. They can devise their own rules.

> It's a thought experiment predicated on paying an enormous social cost that nobody is willing to pay, to get to a point where nobody wants to be. If the first step of your plan directly implies getting rid of all credit, then I frankly don't think it's really a good plan.

My proposal is a separate thing from the thought experiment. The thought experiment is an example of the sort of innovative thinking we should be engaging in to come up with new alternatives, but for the most part - aren't on a large scale.

My proposal is a fleshed out proposal that I could work. Sure there are pieces of it that still need to be further fleshed out - like exactly how the transition would work. But I you can I must hang out with different crowds if you don't think anybody wants to get to a place with less inequality and where the average person has a hell of a lot more control over their day to day life.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#195

Post by nradov » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

dbingham wrote: post #182

nradov wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing stopping workers from creating worker cooperatives today and getting business loans today. We don't need a new economic system for that. But lenders won't lend without a high expected ROI.

Yes, worker cooperatives have formed and functioned in the existing economy. Which is part of how we know using them as the foundation of our economy, rather than a niche aspect of it, could work. > But lenders won't lend without a high expected ROI. Exactly, that's what's stopping them. Worker cooperatives don't provide the return on investment that investor ownership grants. They don't allow those with capital (wea…

This is an unrealistic fantasy. Capital owners don't lend money to businesses just for fun. You haven't proposed a viable way to encourage lending. If they can't achieve a high expected ROI on business lending then they'll use their capital for other purposes.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#196

Post by nightski » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

dbingham wrote: post #192

nightski wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone ever try a high risk innovation play to propel society forward if there was no reward? Most businesses fail. This would encourage people to just work at BigCo instead of trying to start new things. I feel like innovative companies such as SpaceX or Moderna would never happen under that economic model for example.

Yikes. You... uh... must have a social circle that looks very different from mine. I know any number of people who would eagerly start a high risk innovation play as a worker cooperative, because the money reward isn't what they care about . They care about making change in society or seeing a technical advancement become wide spread. For most of them, they just need the chance - a floor under their feet so they can'…

So all of that is possible in today's economic model. You don't need to make capital investment illegal for that to happen. Looking forward to the next crowdfunded carbon capture worker cooperative. Heck the SEC just raised the crowdfunding limit for startups to $5M so time will tell.

I do find it interesting that your social circle is willing to bet their entire net worth on a risky startup where the reward is a salary cut in the worker cooperative + some savings account level interest. The "funding" bit is the key. You waived over it with crowdfunding, but now it's like buying lottery tickets with low payout. Pay $20 for a 20% chance at $40 in 10 years! You'll make the world a better place!

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#197

Post by guerrilla » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #171

guerrilla wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> author seemed to fundamentally misunderstand finance. Without telling us in why you think that, your comment just comes across as throwing insults around. Such a serious accusation requires evidence.

It wasn't an insult, it was a critique. Any economy built on promises that can be thrown out at will is just a house of cards. Where do you even start with that? That's just one thing, the article is filled with half thought out premises that when taken to their conclusion fall apart. In reality it is the author making serious accusations that require evidence, not my critique.

I can't help you if you don't know where to start to support your own claims but rhetorical hand-waving probably isn't it. That you disagree with Graeber isn't really indicative that he fundamentally misunderstand finance though. He's kind of a well-received[1] expert on the subject, even according to the Financial Times[2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years#Cri...

2. https://www.ft.com/content/04e44606-d9a0-11e0-b16a-00144feab...

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#198

Post by dbingham » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #183

dbingham wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My meaning was very plain. Your meaning was not plain, you wrote a few very broad sentences and in your clarifications it seems you were talking about a single problem - equality. The original post was outlining many problems, inequality being one of them and the systems being proposed potentially address many problems. But that's fine, such is the nature of dialog over text. > Studies show that family fortunes in…

> This is likely to be an outdated statistic at best. If you go back three or four genenerations, you will find yourself passing through a time when the US had very high inheritance taxes and a 90% top marginal tax rate. That period of time did likely prevent the formation of dynasties across it. However, those policies have since been repealed and current studies show very low social mobility and a significant incre…

> Even the worst models of climate change do not predict the catastrophic ends you are attempting to paint. You're just distracting from the issue at this point. In general, I find doomsday predictions unvaluable. Nevertheless, i'm not going to fall for this change in goalposts.

Yes. Yes they do. [1] That, and climate reality has so far been worse than our worst case models in many respects. [2]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/m...

[2] https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/global-warming-is...

Anyway, we could keep going, but we've been at this all morning so it's probably best to let it lie. I feel comfortable I've made my point well enough, and I think you've made yours. I think we're unlikely to make further progress in a low bandwidth media.

I dunno, maybe if/when I write the book I dream of I'll be able to address more of your points in more detail and with more data and you'll find that more convincing than I can be reactively writing forum posts. Until then, I've appreciated the dialog.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#199

Post by drcongo » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #111

drcongo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me you don't know who David Graeber is without saying you don't know who David Graeber is.

I don't know who he is/was and I don't much care who he is/was, because whoever that was doesn't change the fact that this is a low-effort communist screed like millions of other communist screeds (including Marx's own works): "bad things have happened to me, and I'm sure bad things have happened to you, so lets gang up on people who have some of the things we want and take it from them". What's infuriating is that I…

See my other comment in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28957611

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#200

Post by KittenInABox » Fri, Oct 22, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #196

dbingham wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. You... uh... must have a social circle that looks very different from mine. I know any number of people who would eagerly start a high risk innovation play as a worker cooperative, because the money reward isn't what they care about . They care about making change in society or seeing a technical advancement become wide spread. For most of them, they just need the chance - a floor under their feet so they can'…

So all of that is possible in today's economic model. You don't need to make capital investment illegal for that to happen. Looking forward to the next crowdfunded carbon capture worker cooperative. Heck the SEC just raised the crowdfunding limit for startups to $5M so time will tell. I do find it interesting that your social circle is willing to bet their entire net worth on a risky startup where the reward is a sal…

Even in the example you provided a labor-led, democratically funded entity can only receive 5M while capital-led, private investor funded entity has no real limit.