Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

obvioustothecasualobserver.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 50 posts

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#31

Post by gfodor »

enraged_camel wrote: post #30
noonespecial wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>5. Richer people will get richer. Poor people will get poorer. I'm going to go ahead and call you on that one. What you probably mean is that rich people will get a lot richer comparatively. There will be a wider gap on paper. Those same machines have a tendency to make that paper gap more meaningless as time goes on. Bill Gates and I both get to ride in jet planes. Even the poorest people in developed countries liv…

>>Bill Gates and I both get to ride in jet planes. Yes, but you have to take the shuttle to the airport, check in your bags, go through security, get groped by TSA, dick around the terminal while waiting for boarding, then wait for your "zone" to board, then fight others for scarce overhead bin space. Once you land, you need to wait for your turn to get off the plane and then wait for your bags. Bill gates does not h…

The point seemed to fly right over your head. Of course he realizes that the flying experience for Bill Gates is superior to that of your average coach class traveler. But the point is that they are both economically capable, in 2013, to fly in a jet that can take them across the country in a few hours. This is quite remarkable if you think about it.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#32

Post by jamesaguilar »

iSnow wrote: post #28

I cannot see how increased automation without some pseudo-socialist redistribution of income is going to reduce working hours. We had lots and lots of automation over the last generations - and all it led to is still the same long weeks, overnighters, checking in to the company via smartphone. The jobs made redundant have been replace by bullshit pseudo-jobs like commnity managers and social media experts.

It's a shame you think community manager is a bullshit job. Do you want to work the forums two hours a day rather than code? That's what the "community managers" at my workplace do, and I really appreciate it.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#33

Post by vbuterin »

ehsanu1 wrote: post #18
vbuterin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food is basically a solved problem. Priority #1 is medical care IMO. Housing is expensive, but really Japanese-style closet hotels can solve that problem for ultracheap if needed (as I understand it's mostly zoning laws preventing it right now). If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity.

If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity. How so? Post-scarcity implies, to me at least, that nobody has to work to live: everything is abundant and free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy

People will always work; some people just want to do stuff for fun. If we can get the need for employment down to that low percentage, then we're de facto there IMO. At that point, there are several ways to fill in the missing pieces; a government-funded (or even ideally endowment-funded) basic income, food becoming a gimmick to attract customers rather than a commodity the same way water is today, the equivalent of public libraries and bookstores for housing, etc. Money probably won't be an issue in any case; if work is done by that percentage of people who want to work, they won't necessarily need a salary; I can see money being limited to a mechanism for regulating large-scale resource use.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#34

Post by malandrew »

noonespecial wrote: post #23
cwhy wrote: post #15

I am from China, and I can share a bit of what I have learnt about Marxism in my secondary school: 1. As technology advances, machines will do more and more things that what human originally do. 2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment 3. At the same time, people (organization) who owns (not develops) machines will take this income. 4. People (organization) w…

>5. Richer people will get richer. Poor people will get poorer. I'm going to go ahead and call you on that one. What you probably mean is that rich people will get a lot richer comparatively. There will be a wider gap on paper. Those same machines have a tendency to make that paper gap more meaningless as time goes on. Bill Gates and I both get to ride in jet planes. Even the poorest people in developed countries liv…

Totally agree, but I think the question that capitalists need to ask is given the current level of abundance in X and scarcity in Y, what should every human being be privelaged to?

When food was scarce, it would be unreasonable to think that anyone but those that produced the food were entitled. However, now that we can produce as much food as we currently can, how can we justify that some people in the world can exist in such dire straits that they must still endure hunger.

Today, we have enough abundance in key areas of human necessity that should be able to ensure that no human goes hungry ever again, yet many still do.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#35

Post by yardie »

gfodor wrote: post #31
enraged_camel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Bill Gates and I both get to ride in jet planes. Yes, but you have to take the shuttle to the airport, check in your bags, go through security, get groped by TSA, dick around the terminal while waiting for boarding, then wait for your "zone" to board, then fight others for scarce overhead bin space. Once you land, you need to wait for your turn to get off the plane and then wait for your bags. Bill gates does not h…

The point seemed to fly right over your head. Of course he realizes that the flying experience for Bill Gates is superior to that of your average coach class traveler. But the point is that they are both economically capable, in 2013, to fly in a jet that can take them across the country in a few hours. This is quite remarkable if you think about it.

Okay, expand that out a little. Bill Gates can fly into any country he wants and stay as long as he wants. Your typical coach flyer does not have that resource (visa constraints, return ticket constraints). He may have quite a few things in common with the upper-middle class but barely anything in common with the lower and poor class.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#36

Post by _lex »

nyan_sandwich wrote: post #21
cwhy wrote: post #15

I am from China, and I can share a bit of what I have learnt about Marxism in my secondary school: 1. As technology advances, machines will do more and more things that what human originally do. 2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment 3. At the same time, people (organization) who owns (not develops) machines will take this income. 4. People (organization) w…

>1,2,3 Yup, except why do the developers not get the income? Presumably they are selling the machines? >4 Yes. The key with this kind of logic is to relate it to the current situation, though; people with more workers can afford even more workers. Why doesn't it all blow up now ? There is more to success than simply scale of manufacturing capability; firms need to keep ahead of competitors, keep up with technology, m…

Developers will benefit from some of the income, but won't get it all. This is because their initial benefit will draw more people into software development, which, if not coincided by an increase in demand for software engineers, will lower wages since it'll increase competition for jobs.

The poor will get poorer b/c they will have neither capital (money/development machines) and because eventually the rate of cannibalization of industries will increase over time. Software's eating the world, and that process is accelerating.

Machines alone won't be worth much more than the sum of their parts because they are mass produced and largely interchangeable, so there's a ton of competition in the market. They will still be under the control/ownership of capitalists because they won't be persons - everything that isn't a person technically has an owner.

When machines do cross the barrier of deserving rights, we should reconvene and have this discussion again.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#37

Post by _lex »

Joeri wrote: post #19
cwhy wrote: post #15

I am from China, and I can share a bit of what I have learnt about Marxism in my secondary school: 1. As technology advances, machines will do more and more things that what human originally do. 2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment 3. At the same time, people (organization) who owns (not develops) machines will take this income. 4. People (organization) w…

> As a result, less people will have jobs Automation has never unemployed people, only persons. Specific categories of jobs are removed by automation, but these are replaced by other categories of jobs. Demand is created for the products of these jobs, and the whole machine keeps turning. The consumer driven economy is built on artificial demand. The vast majority of 'stuff' bought is unnecessary. Without advertising…

It's false to think that automation must create jobs, although it's a tautology that it does destroy/reduce parts of them.

Your argument essentially amounts to "this is how it's worked in the past (unemployed people have been able to find other categories of jobs), so it'll always work that way".

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#38

Post by rapala »

contingencies wrote: post #29
yzhengyu wrote: post #10

Article comes across to me as a very preachy, high falutin, very warped perception of what constitutes a modern economy. If the end outcome of increasingly rapid automation means that a significant percentage of humanity ends up being unable to participate in economic activity due to an inability to acquire currency, then we are in big trouble.

Maybe, as some people suggest, we need to redefine the nature of currency using social and environmental welfare as factors? The problem is, SWIFT, SIX Interbank Clearing and the ISO don't support this, banks don't support this, and national governments don't support this. Instead, IMHO, they pay it just enough lip service (eg. carbon credits) to keep it from having a truly fair go. With the technology we have availa…

How would these social and environmental factors be featured in the new currency? How would they differ from the current situation where things like moral value of goods are reflected directly in the price (green energy costs more because it has more value)? I'm having difficulties seeing how this new currency would work.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#39

Post by contingencies »

rapala wrote: post #38
contingencies wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, as some people suggest, we need to redefine the nature of currency using social and environmental welfare as factors? The problem is, SWIFT, SIX Interbank Clearing and the ISO don't support this, banks don't support this, and national governments don't support this. Instead, IMHO, they pay it just enough lip service (eg. carbon credits) to keep it from having a truly fair go. With the technology we have availa…

How would these social and environmental factors be featured in the new currency? How would they differ from the current situation where things like moral value of goods are reflected directly in the price (green energy costs more because it has more value)? I'm having difficulties seeing how this new currency would work.

I'm no expert, there is an entire field here. However, basically, anything people agree to value can function as an asset to be traded as nationally issued fiat-currency (debt) is today. There's essentially no difference, though the latter has the historical benefit of being demanded as tax and supporting by a large army, theoretically though the governments cannot wield these against the hippy next door for, you know, growing trees (environmental credits) or sharing spliffs (social credits).

People wanting the currency (debt) is based upon trust; ie. the trust that the debt society owes you, symbolized in the form of your possession of the asset in question, will be redeemed at some future point by someone else for something you want. (Note that due to inflation and the creation of money in current era systems this debt notion is flipped; typical money must be repaid - with interest, at speed - or forfeited. But that's a tangent.)

A path forward will probably include convincing one or more governments to adopt some alternate assets and begin to effectively provide rates of exchange through government tax incentives or similar. This could kickstart a modern renaissance in multi-asset accounting and localized economies. Not holding my breath on speed, but anything's possible. Part of the challenge here is that social and environmental concerns typically cross borders and election terms, and developed countries' political decisionmaking is heavily blinkered against these two classes of issue.

Recommended reading: Debt: The First 5000 Years.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#40

Post by gilgoomesh »

jkramer7 wrote: post #4

Can someone clarify? I'm not sure what end goal the article is driving at. Are we aiming for more free time? If that's the case, then I fail to see how automation helps. Companies have incentives to hire as few employees as possible -- it cuts down on administrative overhead, like the necessity of sending out a check to each employee. The result will be as many full-time employees as possible. The workers displaced b…

The article is poorly written.

The article starts by talking about pointless consumer spending (convincing people to buy things they don't need). This is a net loss to society.

However, the article doesn't make any kind of distinction between pointless consumer spending and wise consumer spending and instead runs off on a totally unrelated tangent about automation (which certainly helps but isn't related to the macroeconomic effects of consumption).

The article totally ignores the fact that "wise" consumer spending is a significant benefit to everyone – i.e. when consumers are buying things they need or where the benefit of the purchase exceeds the effort input to earning the money. It also helps progress the economy when consumers are buying products that are new and innovative and make technology or business model improvements.

Post reply on HN