100 years of whatever this will be • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#351

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

dirtshell wrote: post #199

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #132

"I can still enter into a contract with you without ever telling anyone. I can buy something from you, in cash, and nobody needs to know. [...] As long as the regulators are doing their job." Is he not aware that regulators in many places work towards making that impossible? What are examples of good, helpful regulations, does he cite any? Or is it just a vague feeling that regulation is good, and governments are goo…

Its sort of a given to learned people that regulations are good. The fact you don't live in a factory town bartering cigarettes for Amazon Coin you use to buy your meals with is a testament to this. Or that your company isn't forcing you to work at gunpoint. The US allowed corporations to run free during industrialization for just 60 years and they managed to exploit people to such an extent that even the hands-off U…

So you just use regulations synonymous with laws? Like the example of "no regulations" is that you can just shoot people that bother you?

Nobody argues that there should be no laws, so that is a pretty useless discussion.

But you can not say "without regulations, people would be free to murder each other, therefore all regulations are good". Some laws can be good, some can be bad.

"The author is also clearly not a leftist based on the contents of the article, and his allusions to centrally planned societies (aka their understanding of communism) as a fool's errand."

The more regulations you get, the further down you are on the path to centrally planned society. Regulations are central planning. Like demanding a minimum wage is central planning, it is literally planning economy, setting prices for things with disregard of the markets.

So if the author is in favor of that, he is a leftist, plain and simple.

Look at the way he writes: he laments that "Everyone seems to increasingly be in it for themselves, not for society." - and you want to tell me he is not following a collectivist, leftist ideology, yearning for a socialist utopia?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#352

Post by thumbellina » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

jspaetzel wrote: post #306

All of this is just pessimistic complaining. Flip this and be optimistic and you'll find life isn't all that bad. Think about the last hundred years... * Rich people are still rich and poor people have access to more food, medicine, and opportunity then any time in human history. * Families have and always should lookout for themselves first. That's the way things work and should work. * Society is able to support mo…

Perhaps the continual raising awareness of problems is a key part of progress.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#353

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

nouveaux wrote: post #161

vorpalhex wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. And when someone tells you "no", how do you respond? You have three basic options: 1. Submit (but you can't submit to everyone saying no) 2. Take your toys and go home (but then your group will forever shrink) 3. Force people to say yes The only good ans…

I agree. I dont think all systems require consensus and its likely most things do not. When it comes to things that optimizes for survival, it is likely we will need consensus to be productive. Consensus only need to happen when we are close to one another. Technology has the side effect of bringing us closer together.

I don't think technology has to bring us closer together.

I agree with you that the current default state is bringing everyone into the same sphere. I don't believe that is actually what we want.

I don't want to listen to every Bob's or Mary's political opinion or outrage take. I'm happy debating with a small group that has agreed upon rules (and excludes people who don't follow those rules). Likewise, there are plenty of political discussion groups that want to exclude me because I don't agree with their rules.

Technology should work to make small, discrete groups able to form while ignoring physical proximity.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#354

Post by moffkalast » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

solveit wrote: post #322

whatshisface wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the broader financial system ever tried out making transactions impossible to reverse. They might not have ever had the power to do it. Another thing to bear in mind is that none of the participants in the financial system have ever been interested in designing a financial system. They have been interested in making money.

> I don't believe the broader financial system ever tried out making transactions impossible to reverse. They might not have ever had the power to do it. I mean, cash transactions are irreversible right? Unless you mean that there was always a government willing to force a reversal, in which case crypto (and all technical solutions) isn't all that different. It's just another day in the never-ending arms race between…

That's a pretty good point actually, cash worked perfectly fine without this feature for centuries.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#355

Post by davidw » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #336

davidw wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's part of the point of the article. Those rules are not some kind of distributed system. They are centralized.

that's half true. every actor in the system has its own ledger and they reconcile transactions at a given point in time. you don't need to know what others are doing or who they are. your bank authorize your transactions and then some other bank receives the order to deposit the money on another account they control. in this sense banking is more decentralized than "one true ledger to rule them all"

I was referring to 'larceny' in my comment as being a centralized rule.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#356

Post by heurisko » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

> Computers are so hard to run now, that we are supposed to give up and pay a subscription to someone ....

Computers were hard to run when installing an OS meant you burnt CDs.

And medium tier "webhosting" meant an expensive control panel with no root access.

I'm amazed how easy things are today, you can setup and tear down operating systems in a minutes, and there's lots of medium tier server competition and a few big players for bigger projects.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#357

Post by wilkommen » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

IAmWorried wrote: post #296

jq-r wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've answered your own question. It is going to be a war. War is a great mallet which destroys most of the power structures and shuffles the cards a bit. But the price to pay is atrociously high. After the war everyone will swear "Never again!", but their children's children have no idea what that means, and have no problem going to war all over again.

I think that the elites of the various countries have too much in common at this point to allow a war to happen. They would sooner team up and move to Elysium and abandon all the rest of us on earth than allow for global destruction. I think this is the future TBH, the wealthy will more and more take things into their own hands a la superyachts, NZ properties, fortified compounds, etc. The middle classes and below wi…

This possible outcome has occurred to me before, but it's hard to imagine a breaking of society which doesn't include the hunting-down of at least some of the rich. I don't know how they could truly escape the downfall.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#358

Post by swagasaurus-rex » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #343

pydry wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason you got gay marriage but not universal healthcare is that gay marriage doesn't threaten corporate interests.

Universal Healthcare doesn't particularly threaten corporate interests either. Remember when centrist Obama tried to implement the Heritage foundation approved version and everyone went a little crazy for no obvious reason? It would be comforting to think that some evil geniuses were holding back universal healthcare for their own benefit, but it's mostly just lingering stupidity and racism that's holding America bac…

Health insurance is what holds back universal health care, along with hospitals themselves. Both of them are incentivized to raise costs for consumers.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#359

Post by throwawayboise » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #343

pydry wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason you got gay marriage but not universal healthcare is that gay marriage doesn't threaten corporate interests.

Universal Healthcare doesn't particularly threaten corporate interests either. Remember when centrist Obama tried to implement the Heritage foundation approved version and everyone went a little crazy for no obvious reason? It would be comforting to think that some evil geniuses were holding back universal healthcare for their own benefit, but it's mostly just lingering stupidity and racism that's holding America bac…

Almost afraid to ask, but how is racism holding back health care?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#360

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

haxiomic wrote: post #178

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #132

"I can still enter into a contract with you without ever telling anyone. I can buy something from you, in cash, and nobody needs to know. [...] As long as the regulators are doing their job." Is he not aware that regulators in many places work towards making that impossible? What are examples of good, helpful regulations, does he cite any? Or is it just a vague feeling that regulation is good, and governments are goo…

> What are examples of good, helpful regulations There's some fairly obvious ones: we had a problem where a chemical we were using in many products (CFCs) was destroying a critical part of our atmosphere – ozone. CFCs were cheap, so in free market competition, companies were optimizing for short term success with the unaccounted for externality of increasing skin cancer rates in humans and other animals. Regulation i…

"Free market capitalism" does not mean there should be no laws whatsoever. It is a trivial realization that markets have to operate within their given environment, including laws. Nevertheless you can aim for as much freedom as possible. You can make it illegal to shoot people, without having to set prices for goods and labor in law.

I don't think regulations is synonymous with basic laws in such discussion. And therefore the CFC example is also not a good one, as it is obviously an externality. Nobody claims it should be legal to pollute the environment for free.