A nation of slaves • Hacker News Board

Re: A nation of slaves

#201

Post by dang » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 8:41 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #192

dang wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? That's quite silly. [...] I'm sorry, but your assertion isn't borne out by thought. This comment would have been better without its hostile preface and its hostile appendix. Please don't use such language on Hacker News. All: Please re-read what you've posted and, if it contains phrases that contribute hostility to the discussion, edit them out. This is really important, because (speaking metaphorically) our br…

This is meant in all seriousness (and posted here instead of private mail because it is something that others could probably benefit from reading): The preface is the gist of my post ("I disagree with your reasoning, and find it absurd."), and the appendix summarizes the conclusion ("The conclusion you've come to does not follow logically once you take into account other factors"). I agree (having written some bad po…

I am confident that the creative and intelligent users of Hacker News can figure out how to retain "flavor and diction" while making their writing more substantive and less rude.

Meta discussion is bad on HN. My current stream of meta comments is a special case, and temporary. Sometimes one prescribes medicine that is toxic because the disease is worse. Hacker News' disease is unsubstantive and hostile language in comments. We're pushing hard against this problem from several angles. Providing clear feedback to the community is one.

I don't want to jinx it by commenting on how well it's going so far, but I would definitely like to invite any of you who notice a change, for better or worse, to tell us about it at hn@ycombinator.com. We'll read it with interest.

(Edited for less risk of jinxing.)

Re: A nation of slaves

#202

Post by pdonis » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 8:48 PM UTC

mrow84 wrote: post #188

crusso wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You call it "rhetoric", I call it "evidence that what you're focusing on isn't important". All this focus on economic inequality is misguided. The focus should be upon breaking chains of economic mobility.

Why do you think it is misguided? You "break the chains of economic mobility" by providing people with enough wealth and time to allow self-improvement; if you withhold that wealth and time by dictating terms from the powerful side of an economic relationship then that absolutely is significant. You state "all this focus on economic inequality is misguided" very brazenly, but what evidence do you have that the two ar…

> those things make you significantly more employable

It's interesting that you use the word "employable" instead of the more general term "capable of creating wealth". Someone who thinks of themselves primarily as an employee is always going to be less wealthy than someone who thinks of themselves primarily as a wealth creator. That's because having employees is not necessary for wealth creation, but wealth creation is necessary for having employees. So if you're an employee, you're in a relationship that is always going to be fundamentally asymmetric.

So if you really want to focus on economic inequality, you need to focus on getting people to stop thinking "how employable am I?" and start thinking "how much wealth can I create?" Ultimately, the only way to get real economic equality is for everyone to be an entrepreneur. And even then you won't have complete economic equality because people differ in entrepreneurial skills. Which is why focusing on economic inequality is misguided; what we should be focusing on is wealth creation.

Re: A nation of slaves

#203

Post by mrow84 » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:13 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #202

mrow84 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it is misguided? You "break the chains of economic mobility" by providing people with enough wealth and time to allow self-improvement; if you withhold that wealth and time by dictating terms from the powerful side of an economic relationship then that absolutely is significant. You state "all this focus on economic inequality is misguided" very brazenly, but what evidence do you have that the two ar…

> those things make you significantly more employable It's interesting that you use the word "employable" instead of the more general term "capable of creating wealth". Someone who thinks of themselves primarily as an employee is always going to be less wealthy than someone who thinks of themselves primarily as a wealth creator. That's because having employees is not necessary for wealth creation, but wealth creation…

I did wonder about elaborating, because I agree with your point about employees necessarily making less, but I didn't think it really necessary.

Your final statement "focusing on economic inequality is misguided; what we should be focusing on is wealth creation" is disingenuous, unless you mean focusing on how to improve wealth creation for those people in poverty. Otherwise, it is just a false equivalence - you are suggesting that by focusing on wealth creation for ourselves, we improve their chances for wealth creation, for which there is no evidential route beyond trickle down economics. If you do mean promoting wealth creation for people in poverty, or indeed people who are 'merely' poor, then that is a form of alleviating inequality that I wholly support.

Re: A nation of slaves

#204

Post by pdonis » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:18 PM UTC

mrow84 wrote: post #203

pdonis wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those things make you significantly more employable It's interesting that you use the word "employable" instead of the more general term "capable of creating wealth". Someone who thinks of themselves primarily as an employee is always going to be less wealthy than someone who thinks of themselves primarily as a wealth creator. That's because having employees is not necessary for wealth creation, but wealth creation…

I did wonder about elaborating, because I agree with your point about employees necessarily making less, but I didn't think it really necessary. Your final statement "focusing on economic inequality is misguided; what we should be focusing on is wealth creation" is disingenuous, unless you mean focusing on how to improve wealth creation for those people in poverty. Otherwise, it is just a false equivalence - you are…

> unless you mean focusing on how to improve wealth creation for those people in poverty

To be precise, I meant focusing on making people in poverty better at wealth creation. If that's what you meant, then we're in agreement.

However, I'm not entirely sure that's what you meant, because you talk about wealth creation "for" people in poverty; you use that expression twice. That could mean what I meant, or it could mean "creating wealth and then giving it to people in poverty", which IMO does not help--unless it's just the first step, and the second step is "here are ways to use what you've just been given to get better at creating more wealth for yourself".

Re: A nation of slaves

#205

Post by semanticist » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:19 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #114

semanticist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? No, seriously, if I can work 15 hours a week and live comfortably, why is there an automatic assumption that I'd need to work more just because other people are prepared to do that? What does 'get ahead' even mean, in that context? There's so many social and cultural assumptions bound up in your statement that it's nearly meaningless for anyone who isn't you.

People don't just want to do well, they want to do better than those around them. it's natural to many people (maybe not to you, but to many). I read this quote from a wall street executive in an article recently posted on HN: " “It's not just enough to fly in first class; I have to know my friends are flying in coach." So unless nobody is selling first class tickets, people will work harder to afford them. And in or…

I don't think your Wall Street exec is expressing a common viewpoint. In fact, I think he's probably a sociopath, and if we can architecture a society which is actively hostile to those kind of attitudes I think it could only be a good thing.

Re: A nation of slaves

#206

Post by mrow84 » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:24 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #197

mrow84 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pessimizer was saying that the relative return to the labour at the bottom end is low. It is like (to be hyperbolic) living a life of luxury, but on giving the starving man who labours for you a bit of food, suggesting that that is ample reward for his efforts, because of how much value that bit of food has for him. Then, you can top that off by saying that it doesn't matter how much food he produces for you,…

> just under 12% of the cost (6% of the sale price) went to the people who made the yarn, cut the cloth, and sewed it all together. And what about the people who took the completed T-shirts and moved them to where they were wanted? That somehow has no value? People who ordered the T-shirts didn't order T-shirts sitting piled up in a factory; they ordered them so they could wear them. That means making the product is…

I didn't say that the other parts of the process had no value, I said that the relative return to people at the bottom of the labour chain is low. My claim is that they are getting paid proportionally less for the work that they do.

I don't really see why it is contentious - poor people have less bargaining power, because they have less to bargain with (e.g. poorer health, less education, less to fall back on), so will come off worse in trades, including trades for their labour. It makes economic sense, but that doesn't make it good. Also note that overall efficiency can become irrelevant if the returns on efficiency gains are unequally distributed.

Addressing those problems, which are structural not individual, will improve the lives of people who are under-compensated by the current system. Claiming those problems don't have any effect on outcomes requires explanation.

Re: A nation of slaves

#207

Post by infinite8s » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:25 PM UTC

zhemao wrote: post #160

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Our current social system has produced astonishing wealth. [...]" In Europe the main problem in agriculture is overproduction so farmers sometimes get payed to leave some land uncultivated and hard limits are imposed on the production of milk and on the import of bovine meat. This is not a place where we'll starve because everybody will start painting and sculpting all of a sudden.

Of course we won't starve, but just having enough food to go around is a pretty low bar for a society in which people can live comfortably. The working classes in the developing world today generally don't starve, but no one would say they have particularly comfortable living conditions. What jerf is saying that, in the absence of full robot automation, a society in which we have guaranteed basic income will make us…

There are a large number of people in the 'working' class (at least in the US) who are struggling daily to make enough money to be able to feed a family. They aren't starving as yet, but it just takes a small unfortunate incident to push them over the edge into spiraling poverty.

Re: A nation of slaves

#208

Post by d4rti » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #76

glesica wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you've never worked in a large organization... ;-) Bullshit jobs are largely jobs that managers create and defend in order to expand their managerial fiefdoms. A manager's influence in an organization comes partially from how many people report to him or her. That's the incentive structure that creates many of the bullshit jobs. There are also interpersonal issues in play. For instance, you or I might walk into…

>It is a fallacy to believe that businesses operate efficiently simply because there is a profit motive. I think the purpose of this adage is that businesses operate more efficiently than government entities. Not with perfect efficiency.

This is also a fallacy - it's certainly possible for some government entity to be more efficient than some business.

Re: A nation of slaves

#209

Post by mrow84 » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:30 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #204

mrow84 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did wonder about elaborating, because I agree with your point about employees necessarily making less, but I didn't think it really necessary. Your final statement "focusing on economic inequality is misguided; what we should be focusing on is wealth creation" is disingenuous, unless you mean focusing on how to improve wealth creation for those people in poverty. Otherwise, it is just a false equivalence - you are…

> unless you mean focusing on how to improve wealth creation for those people in poverty To be precise, I meant focusing on making people in poverty better at wealth creation. If that's what you meant, then we're in agreement. However, I'm not entirely sure that's what you meant, because you talk about wealth creation "for" people in poverty; you use that expression twice. That could mean what I meant, or it could me…

Sorry, I thought that my questioning whether you were "suggesting that by focusing on wealth creation for ourselves, we improve their chances for wealth creation" clarified it. I was talking about improving the property of "ability to create wealth" for people who are under-served by the current system.

This can include a range of things, like better access to healthcare and improved nutrition, as well as schemes to help people start businesses. Things are still pretty dire for an upsettingly large number of people in the world.

Re: A nation of slaves

#210

Post by mrow84 » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:44 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #195

mrow84 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pessimizer was saying that the relative return to the labour at the bottom end is low. It is like (to be hyperbolic) living a life of luxury, but on giving the starving man who labours for you a bit of food, suggesting that that is ample reward for his efforts, because of how much value that bit of food has for him. Then, you can top that off by saying that it doesn't matter how much food he produces for you,…

> People reject the labour theory of value, probably correctly in fundamental terms, but the marginal and subjective theories of value both seem to promote (and justify) this kind of structural inequality. Economics is (at least most of it) a science. It doe not promote or justify anything; it tries to describe the real world, and tell you what consequences any input would have. The Labor Theory of Value is just not…

I agree with you, which is why I think that "People reject the labour theory of value, probably correctly in fundamental terms".

Your claim that economic theory "does not promote or justify anything" is clearly wrong, because theories are co-opted as policy, and then have enormous impacts on people's lives. Would you claim that the economic theory contained within communism did not promote or justify particular courses of action in the Soviet Union?

My point was that the marginal and subjective theories of value, taken narrowly, promote structural inequality, by claiming that when a price is accepted it is fair. I don't think that real economists are so dogmatic, but people who cling on to that idea doctrinally, forgetting the caveats that must be applied (i.e. lack of any kind of coercion, perfect information, etc.) can end up saying that equality of value is all that is necessary for fairness.