Unnecessariat • Hacker News Board

Re: Unnecessariat

#221

Post by david927 » Wed, May 25, 2016, 5:10 PM UTC

rumcajz wrote: post #139

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

> That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. No. But we need that many people to buy the stuff.

Do we? I'm not sure we do.

Inequality has increased so much that the bottom 50% don't really own anything, they have no wealth to speak of. Their income, combined, pales to the top 1%. If they stopped buying and renting tomorrow, there was be a hiccup, to be sure, but not more than that. And that's new too.

Re: Unnecessariat

#222

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, May 25, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #123

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not a midnight vote (or at least, not what the term implies), but yes, it was definitely rammed through. I've never seen such an absolutely-will-not-take-no-for-an-answer ramming job ever on anything.

How so? Obama didn't force anyone to vote a particular way, did he?

Force? No.

Strongly twist arms? Absolutely. Google "Louisiana purchase" for one example; there were several.

Now, to some degree, that's just normal politics. But I've never seen it done that hard, for that long, on a bill that passed by such razor-thin margins.

Re: Unnecessariat

#223

Post by david927 » Wed, May 25, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #163

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

In theory, the best economic answer is to reduce the number of hours in a working week. In practice, it's very difficult to do that with competition from all over the world.

It's not even a good idea in theory. There's already a shortage of, say, doctors and software developers. Lowering their hours makes it more acute without changing the unemployment rate at all.

They tried it in France -- nothing really changed. The law says you can go home but you still stay and work; the company culture doesn't change.

In theory, the best economic answer, I think we can all agree, is UBI.

Re: Unnecessariat

#224

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, May 25, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #78

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will also take more people out of the category of "working people".

Goldman Sachs disagrees. See link above.

The Goldman link says that the overtime rules will add jobs. I agree.

My comment was addressed to the $15 minimum wage, not the 40-hour week. The Goldman link does not address that at all that I could see.

Why will the $15 minimum wage eliminate jobs? Basic supply-and-demand economics. When the price of something goes up, the usage goes down. (Unless you can make labor a Veblen good, where the high price increases demand. But that depends on status signalling. You could think about trying to make that apply to labor, but I think it would be rare to have cases where that worked.)

Re: Unnecessariat

#225

Post by jraines » Wed, May 25, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #177

jraines wrote: post #24

I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech: The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the fut…

>Everything he listed has gotten worse, not better Not productivity. It's roughly doubled. http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/what-can-labor-producti...

You're right. I was referring to the institutions he listed, but didn't make that clear.

Re: Unnecessariat

#226

Post by clock_tower » Wed, May 25, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #153

clock_tower wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will some sort of neo-feudalism do better than historical feudalism? I think that what I'm groping towards by saying "neo-feudalism" is the existing European social model with the optional addition of ermine capes, as someone else commented below... This discussion has actually taught me a few things, and I don't have a pre-existing opinion here. > Kings and lawlessness A president's timeframe is likely to be "unti…

I'm trying to imagine a system whereby as much power is removed from a corruptible entity as possible. Could the king in your scenario be a set of algorithms? Someone on HN previously pointed me towards this: https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html "Elected representatives would formally define and manage an after-the-fact measurement of national welfare, while market speculators would say which policies they ex…

At least in the Middle Ages, there were algorithms that reigned over the king. A king had an executive role (comparable to a US president, greater than a parliamentary prime minister), but was constrained by customary law -- which is fancy-speak for "the way we've always done things," but even so, it meant there were things a king couldn't do. One of the issues Barbara Tuchman mentions in _A Distant Mirror_ is the way in which the French king could only levy a tax on the whole realm when at war, and even then couldn't continue it after the war ended -- the expectation being that "the king will live of his own," i.e. support himself from his personal estates, at peace.

Going forward in history, that's why the Carlists in 19th-century Spain were both pro-autocracy and fighting for their liberties: they preferred a king who was the absolute monarch of a half-dozen countries (Castile, Leon, Navarre, Galicia, Aragon, and Andalusia), instead of a centralized federal government in which none of the kingdoms had special privileges (note that Carlism was strongest in the northern parts of Spain) and all kingdoms' subjects were administered impartially from Madrid.

Re: Unnecessariat

#227

Post by studentrob » Wed, May 25, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #206

studentrob wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are happy monks who live in seclusion off the generosity of others Monks choose to live that way. Most people need more than money to survive. They need challenge and creativity, too. > Some country is going to implement basic income and force us to talk about these ideas that successful people feel we can keep pushing away because it doesn't affect us yet. Scandinavian countries have had better social progra…

There are countless ways to find challenge and creativity that don't involve working for money. In fact, most paying jobs are pretty bad at satisfying that need.

I totally agree with you. I should have been more clear.

In my opinion, some people want to work. They want to contribute to society and receive validation in the form of a variable salary that can go up or down according to their contribution. Others don't. Both are fine.

Calling people "useless" is not a great selling point for basic income. It strikes a nerve with some people [1], and while I think the post I just cited went over the top, I see what they're getting at.

Useless is subjective. I wouldn't call monks or anyone else useless. Yet, this is one of Altman's reasons for supporting basic income [2]. I don't think he intended his statement to be interpreted that way. It is what it is.

[1] https://medium.com/the-development-set/silicon-valley-s-unch...

[2] http://www.techinsider.io/sam-altman-praises-basic-income-on...

Re: Unnecessariat

#228

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, May 25, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #183

tim333 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything he listed has gotten worse, not better Not productivity. It's roughly doubled. http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/what-can-labor-producti...

The Luddites were right: all other things being equal (they aren't), more productivity means less jobs. Right now, not everyone can work full time, and it shows no sign of ever getting better: demand simply does not grow as fast as productivity. This means lots of free time. The question is, how do we allocate it? There are only 2 ways to do it: have everyone work less, or have less people work at all. Really, this i…

Unemployment is more efficient. It's not a choice between 20% unemployment and giving everyone 4 day work-weeks (20% work cut), it's a choice between 20% unemployment and 4.5 day work-weeks.

Training, communication, organization, and a dozen other things are per-worker costs which incentivize employing fewer people full-time. The only exceptions are regulatory distortions that incentivize part-time labor to avoid paying benefits. And those jobs only exist at the bottom of the pay scale (where flat healthcare costs dominate scaling efficiency costs), which is where full-time work is required to survive. It's not just foolishness, the current system is more efficient while being more devastating.

We can absolutely do better, but it's going to take a serious realignment.

Re: Unnecessariat

#229

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, May 25, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #130

EGreg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Little by little the argument that "taxation is theft" will come to sound like: "But it's not fair to demand that the hard working robot owners pay more in taxes to help the people too lazy to own their own robots."

"Taxation is theft" is true regardless of whether robots are employed or not. The fundamental issue is, simply, that it involves the use of force (or threat of use of force). As long as men with guns will come and arrest you if you don't "pay your taxes" then it is theft. No rhetorical flourishes or byzantine logic can alter that.

Certainly, but by this metric so are most of the things you care about. Property rights are undeniably theft, because the only thing stopping strangers from sleeping on your couch is your ability to have men with guns take them away if they try it.

The salient point here is that everything done with force is theft, but we depend on mild, egalitarian theft to keep society functioning. The primary issue with private theft is its asymmetry (every security system that doesn't deter a theft is a waste of money), while governmental theft is roughly symmetric and underlies even the institutions libertarians care about.

If you'd like that night watchman state to keep your neighbor from killing you and taking your canned beans, realize that you're asking for property reassignment through force. Not just taxation-theft to fund that government, the actual behavior you want is ownership determined by force. You haven't invented a grand claim against taxes, you've rediscovered the observation that somewhere down the line force (or the lack of it) is a consideration in every exchange.

Re: Unnecessariat

#230

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, May 25, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #199

nhaehnle wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theft by force (or threat of force) is a subset of theft in the more general sense. Fair enough, but how do you reconcile that with my point (3)? Police returning an item as in the given example means the police are thieves according to your definition. If not, how do you propose mitigating this conflict? In the same way as it is done today. Note that I'm not the one who is saying that land ownership is theft - you a…

Note that I'm not the one who is saying that land ownership is theft - you are, because you are trying so say "taking by (threat of) force is theft". I'm not saying that land ownership is theft. I don't advocate taking someone else's land by force, but I do claim that (at least in "proto-world") taking unclaimed land is acceptable exactly because it is unclaimed. That whole discussion does lead to some other interest…

I think you're underestimating the degree to which "taking unclaimed land is acceptable" is a controversial statement. Talk to the nomads about what constitutes 'unclaimed' land - the entire possibility of shared-use is being overlooked. Property rights aren't theft because you used land no one else claimed, they're theft because you denied everyone else the right to use otherwise-shared territory.