Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#201

Post by RealityNow » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:13 PM UTC

The paradox of capitalism is that business interests (capital) are in direct opposition to workers' interests. Businesses are incentivized to reduce costs, which means paying workers as little as possible, squeezing as many hours out of them, and laying them off as soon as they're not needed.

Sure everyday workers are sometimes the customers as well, but that's becoming less and less the case. Google and Facebook don't make their money off you, they make them from advertisers working on behalf of businesses. Real estate developers in Manhattan don't make money building affordable middle class housing (hence the non-existence of such developments), they make them off luxury high-rises targeting the wealthy.

Combine that with technological advances and globalization allowing increasingly consolidated corporations to replace workers with robots/software and move jobs overseas, and the end result is that wealth is more concentrated, the economy is more concentrated (plutonomy), and your average Joe living in rural New England just doesn't matter as much to the vault-holders in an economic system where we only see each other as dollar signs.

No amount of retraining or "bootstraps" is going to bring the jobs back. It's just not possible to compete with the corporations and their larger moats and bankrolls. The only option is to work for them, or perish. These corporations aren't building anymore satellite offices in rural areas or opening up to remote work (due in part to the increasingly competitive job market), so the only option is to move to expensive cities with chronic housing supply shortages. These rural areas are as economically useless to the wealthy elites who run the show as the homeless people camped outside their offices.

Anybody who claims we're not ready for a UBI yet is living in a bubble.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#202

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:14 PM UTC

hack_mmmm wrote: post #97

jboggan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not easy to uproot and move from an economically depressed area to an active metropolis. I've done it (Athens, GA to San Francisco in late 2012) and it was incredibly expensive and involved a large amount of personal credit use, cash assistance from family, and time. It was a huge stretch at the time for me to move across the country and break into a new industry, and I did it as a single man, willing and…

"Now that I'm a programmer I can theoretically get a job in pretty much any American city I choose, and probably negotiate a starting/moving bonus" Try getting a job in Athens Georgia with equal or greater salary than you are earning now in SF

Not true. You can probably get a job most anyplace that actually has employers who need programmers, but you'll find starting bonus and moving expenses are limited to major tech areas and employers. Where I live there's a university that employs a lot of tech folks, and several private tech companies, but nobody pays for relocation, and salaries are $50K - $100K or maybe a little more at the very top end.

A good real-estate agent makes way more money than a programmer in many areas of the US.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#203

Post by CPLX » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:20 PM UTC

RealityNow wrote: post #201

The paradox of capitalism is that business interests (capital) are in direct opposition to workers' interests. Businesses are incentivized to reduce costs, which means paying workers as little as possible, squeezing as many hours out of them, and laying them off as soon as they're not needed. Sure everyday workers are sometimes the customers as well, but that's becoming less and less the case. Google and Facebook don…

> No amount of retraining or "bootstraps" is going to bring the jobs back. It's just not possible to compete with the corporations and their larger moats and bankrolls.

This, frankly, is patent nonsense. And this sense of learned helplessness is a specifically American affliction.

There really just isn't a reason why there can't be reasonably compensated manufacturing jobs, or why corporate and industrial policy can't help depressed rural areas. As anyone who's traveled across Germany or Switzerland is well aware.

As a society we choose policies that concentrate wealth in this way. The point of view you're expressing -- that this is inevitable and unstoppable -- is not at all fact, but rather the product of decades of public relations by vested interests in this country.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#204

Post by iagovar » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:24 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #159

tylerjwilk00 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still not quite getting it. If people have to choose between going into debt from a finance charge or starving on the street with no roof over their head they will choose the former. It's not about financial education it's about hard choices of the underprivileged.

I'm not talking about starving on the street, I'm talking about everybody in US using credit cards for payments and repay. I'm talking about shops offering their own credit cards. You know when US people use their credit card? Every day. You know when Europeans use their credit card? When abroad. And our credit gets instantly paid by our normal bank account. For us, a credit card is the same as a debit card but with…

We use debit cards though. I don't see credit cards often, but I do see everyone with debit cards. I pay almost everything with it since it's free, I can't screw up (debit cards have limits, or in any case the total amount of your bank account), easy, etc. I've been offered credit cards by my bank, but I do not trust them so I prefer to use a debit one. Also, Fnac or even supermarkets do offer cards, but I don't see the point of having them, and I'd say most people do not pay attention to this offers.

I live in Spain, and I've seen a similar situation in other countries except in Germany.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#205

Post by penpapersw » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:25 PM UTC

unknown_apostle wrote: post #60

Working class people are being subjected to ultra efficient hypercapitalism, as in Uber drivers discovering they worked for free when they need to purchase a new car. Meanwhile Wall Street has been bailed out 2 times in the last 15 years alone with monetary policy. How many people went to jail? (And they haven’t learned a thing, on the contrary and quite spectacularly so.) If you want to know where the tech bubble co…

Can confirm. I worked a pretty decent software job with lower pay than others make for the same job for the past 5 years. Could barely afford insurance for my wife and I. We actually had to just give up and not pay for it the first few months of this year before I was laid off, figuring that paying the "fine" for not having health insurance plus whatever unlikely emergency medical costs we might have was cheaper. As soon as I'm laid off, we're on public aid and have the best insurance, and since every job I applies to rejects me, and haven't found any freelance work through sdegutis.com yet, it looks like we'll have a few more months of being able to have better health insurance than I could afford when working a decent programming job. The system is broken and literally ridiculous.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#206

Post by RealityNow » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:27 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #203

RealityNow wrote: post #201

The paradox of capitalism is that business interests (capital) are in direct opposition to workers' interests. Businesses are incentivized to reduce costs, which means paying workers as little as possible, squeezing as many hours out of them, and laying them off as soon as they're not needed. Sure everyday workers are sometimes the customers as well, but that's becoming less and less the case. Google and Facebook don…

> No amount of retraining or "bootstraps" is going to bring the jobs back. It's just not possible to compete with the corporations and their larger moats and bankrolls. This, frankly, is patent nonsense. And this sense of learned helplessness is a specifically American affliction. There really just isn't a reason why there can't be reasonably compensated manufacturing jobs, or why corporate and industrial policy can'…

So what's the solution? How do we bring jobs back to these depressed rural areas?

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#207

Post by iagovar » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:27 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #175

koonsolo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about starving on the street, I'm talking about everybody in US using credit cards for payments and repay. I'm talking about shops offering their own credit cards. You know when US people use their credit card? Every day. You know when Europeans use their credit card? When abroad. And our credit gets instantly paid by our normal bank account. For us, a credit card is the same as a debit card but with…

> You know when US people use their credit card? Every day. You know when Europeans use their credit card? When abroad. To me, that's just evidence of how backwards many Europeans are in their approach to credit cards. You seem to have an attitude that credit cards are inherently evil. They're just tools, which can be misused (and put you into debt) or used for maximum convenience (accruing rewards and protections al…

Debit cards are widely used in Europe (maybe not in Germany), but people, when they want credit just goes to the bank and take a loan or something like that.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#208

Post by icebraining » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:29 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #199

icebraining wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of inflation following QE casts doubt on such a simplified model. But in any case, you don't have to inflate to have UBI. Just tax money a bit when it gets distributed to shareholders.

> Just tax money a bit when it gets distributed to shareholders. Well, that would factor in as a depression of dividends for all stocks; that would only reduce the value of holding stocks, sounds like it would backfire tremendously. Then you have the issue of whether or not to tax dividends to foreign-held stocks: if you tax disbursements, it would compound some countries' taxes and ultimately reduce the value of hol…

Right, first I need to state that I would increase the income tax; anyone making about $100k would essentially pay extra as much as they received from UBI, and people making more would end up paying more than they'd get from UBI.

So the tax on dividends would just serve to cover the gap, not the full amount.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#209

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:39 PM UTC

jboggan wrote: post #197

nostrademons wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is why people don't use the time they have in the low cost-of-living area to develop the skills (via the Internet) that would make them attractive to employers in big cities? That was my approach - I lived at home with my parents after graduation, basically did nothing but program (both for work and after work), and after 3 years Google came knocking and paid for my move out to Silicon Valley.…

A lot of survivor bias among you and your friend group I would think. I did code in all my free time back in Georgia but I had no CS degree and I had never held a programming job. There were a lot of things that I didn't know I didn't know, as I soon learned when I showed up in SF. I have a lot of friends and contacts back in the Atlanta area that are doing just what you described . . . and they will continue doing j…

> What other skills can you develop via the internet that make you appealing to employers in big cities?

Sales, digital marketing, community management, UX, and data science are some examples. Known "influencers" in online forums, for example, often get hired for digital marketing, because they have real-world on-the-ground experience that big corporations that lack (for an infamous example, see Saydrah on Reddit). If you can get a video to go viral on YouTube, you're often qualified for many marketing jobs; I had an English-major friend get a job at a startup (albeit a terrible one) for a rant he made on YouTube that went viral. Independent researchers who can come up with an interesting & rigorous blog post based on publicly-available data often get data science job offers. Redesign a major product and convince a significant number of people that your version is better (this is non-trivial) and oftentimes you'll get a job as a UX designer or PM for that product.

Re: Annual note to self: most of the world exists outside the tech bubble

#210

Post by dmoy » Sat, Aug 12, 2017, 11:45 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #137

vonmoltke wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is one of several thousand employers that are both hiring and pay reasonably well. I lived in Dallas for almost fifteen years. The vast majority of those companies ignored me even when I applied. Many of those same companies are now starting to beat my door down because I changed my location to New York. This industry seems to have a serious problem with geographic myopia. Just from your list, Facebook ignor…

Did you indicate a willingness to relocate in your application? I was in Boston when I applied to Google etc, but had on my website, my resume, and my cover letter (when applicable) "Looking to move to Silicon Valley."

I mean I work at Google now, but when I was applying to move out west, my experience almost exactly mirrored GP's. Only Amazon responded to my resume. There is an awful lot of luck involved at landing a high paying job still.