Average Is Over • Hacker News Board

Re: Average Is Over

#251

Post by PGenes » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 1:52 PM UTC

geebee wrote: post #147

mtts wrote: post #18

Ridiculous. The solution to average people becoming less relevant in the economy (which I don't dispute, btw) can of course never be to make everyone above average as that is by definition impossible. It's a feel good message for average folk that papers over the truth, which is that average folk that used to make a decent living doing average work will become poor. All of them, eventually. How poor exactly? Well, yo…

"The solution to average people becoming less relevant in the economy (which I don't dispute, btw) can of course never be to make everyone above average as that is by definition impossible." It's not as impossible as you might think. The idea here is to be above average in a specialty, not in everything. It's even more within reach when you start thinking about how narrow a specialization can become. I remember Scott…

It's not as possible as you imagine. There are billions of people on earth. The notion that each of them, even after accounting for geographical location etc can provide something unique, seems incredibly far fetched. Almost all life is marked by incredibly similar lifestyles at the species level. This is true of all of human history too.

However attractive it sounds, we will NOT all find special ways to add value that escape automation.

Re: Average Is Over

#252

Post by anamax » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 2:18 PM UTC

batista wrote: post #250

anamax wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Govts kill millions (actually approaching 100M in the last 100 years) and you equate that with the equivalent of a weekend's worth of drunk driving. (And then there's Ted Kennedy....) And no, it isn't "rich or govt". For all your bleating, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates don't give a damn about me. Meanwhile, every pol wants a piece. Your "only option" doesn't work, so it doesn't much matter what would happ…

"Govts kill millions (actually approaching 100M in the last 100 years) and you equate that with the equivalent of a weekend's worth of drunk driving." Governments kill millions? You seem to confuse governments with wars. Or you mean "kill millions of their own", like, say, Pol Pot? Then you confuse government with dictatorship AND civil war at the same time. Sure, dictatorship is a form of government, but we were tal…

There's always an excuse when a govt kills millions.

> Historically, every time the governments have gone to war has been to make some rich people richer.

Not even close to true.

>> And no, it isn't "rich or govt". For all your bleating, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates don't give a damn about me

> Exactly. But that's not in your favor.

Actually, it is. They don't bother because it doesn't "serve their interests". Govts do.

> From Bill Gates illegally bribing and extorting PC makers

to make more money and sell windows pcs for less than market rate. Wow, I was hurt.

The problem with the "buy a market" strategy is that you never actually finish. As soon as you stop buying and start trying to make "extra profit", competitors appear and undercut you.

You do know that breaking up standard oil INCREASED prices to consumers. It was basically a move by railroads to raise their rates.

> to Larry Page using his search monopoly to pollute the results and crash the competition.

You're seriously claiming that Google gets users by giving them worse search results?

Re: Average Is Over

#253

Post by billybob » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 6:11 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #199

billybob wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that the laws are uniformly applied (which may not be true), they are irrelevant to the differences between people's incomes. If Person A invents hoverboards and everyone buys them, creating billions in economic value, and Person B works at a gas station and creates a few thousand in economic value, they both reap proportional rewards. No, Person A couldn't have succeeded without laws protecting him/her from…

> Assuming that the laws are uniformly applied (which may not be true), they are irrelevant to the differences between people's incomes. That's not true at all. The law has huge impacts on how things are distributed. You're making an assumptions premised on how our existing system of property law works. E.g. "If Person A invents hoverboards and everyone buys them, creating billions in economic value..." Our current s…

No doubt there is plenty of room to argue about the best system. But to say that our current system is COMPLETELY arbitrary, and that fairness is WHOLLY irrelevant to the discussion is dangerous hyperbole.

It would certainly be unfair, even cruel, to restrict everyone's income to the exact same amount, regardless of what they do. It would also lead to extremely low productivity. The fact that we don't do that isn't arbitrary.

Our current system has evolved, imperfectly, from common ideas about rights and incentives held by various thinkers throughout human history. Let's not talk as though it were the first thing vomited out of a random law generator.

Re: Average Is Over

#254

Post by bzbarsky » Fri, Jan 27, 2012, 7:01 PM UTC

cgmorton wrote: post #195

bzbarsky wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are in fact doing jobs they're passionate about. What you should really worry about is a world in which a person can't do anything except consume entertainment and goods, because everything else is handled better by machines....

And what exactly is wrong with that? You've gotten 'consume entertainment and goods' confused with 'do absolutely anything they want'. Maybe that's making movies, or writing, or painting, or travelling, or maybe spending their time getting to know interesting people. And even if this person really prefers sitting at home watching TV (even though they haven't spent their energy at some demeaning, labour-intensive job)…

No, I don't have it confused.

Some people really like producing something someone else can use. Especially if people then actually use it. There are quite a lot of people like that, actually. And such people would be absolutely screwed in the world you describe.

What's the point of making movies no one will watch? Is it worth writing if no one will read it? Painting if no one wants to see them? For some people, yes. For many, no.