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The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

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Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#41

Post by kristianc »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #35
coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

In 1980 median house price in SF was $200k. Median US household income was $17k. So it wasn’t exactly affordable and of course the Bay Area is much more appealing now so it makes sense that relative prices have risen. In Manhattan rent in 1980 was around $1200 for a one bedroom, so it’s not even significantly different.

> In Manhattan rent in 1980 was around $1200 for a one bedroom, so it’s not even significantly different.

A 1BR in Manhattan is around $3500 now. Have salaries really tripled in that time?

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#42

Post by NeedMoreTea »

Jonanin wrote: post #30
coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

500 years ago, only 1-2% could afford "whatever" and the rest had to scrap by and pinch pennies. I'm not sure we're moving to a world of less evenly distributed wealth.

Now compare 60 years ago with now.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#43

Post by jrochkind1 »

Jonanin wrote: post #30
coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

500 years ago, only 1-2% could afford "whatever" and the rest had to scrap by and pinch pennies. I'm not sure we're moving to a world of less evenly distributed wealth.

Probably the "normal distribution" of pricing/purchasing didn't apply 500 years ago either, in pre-proto-capitalist Europe or anywhere else.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#44

Post by jrochkind1 »

kristianc wrote: post #41
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1980 median house price in SF was $200k. Median US household income was $17k. So it wasn’t exactly affordable and of course the Bay Area is much more appealing now so it makes sense that relative prices have risen. In Manhattan rent in 1980 was around $1200 for a one bedroom, so it’s not even significantly different.

> In Manhattan rent in 1980 was around $1200 for a one bedroom, so it’s not even significantly different. A 1BR in Manhattan is around $3500 now. Have salaries really tripled in that time?

Well, more or less, yes, actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_Indexed_Monthly_Earnin...

But it does seem to me that rentals in Manhattan have gotten a lot less affordable since 1980. (Manhattan in the 80s was not a particularly posh place, at least not throughout. There was probably more divergence in rents between neighborhoods in the 80s than now). It would take some more specific investigation than national median wages to investigate that. (Note, though, the median income in Manhattan specifically may have outpaced inflation as lower-earners get priced out).

But, as far as inflation and wages, yeah, inflation year after year means salaries in the 80s seem like very low numbers to us now.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#45

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

pjc50 wrote: post #11

Tournament wages theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory This seems to happen whenever there's (a) direct competition (b) the value provided by the winner is very scalable (media, sports, software) and (c) most importantly, it can't be substituted by splitting the job among more people. So footballers follow this model because you can only have 11 people on the pitch - there's no amount of low-wage no…

Software engineers follow for the same reason as footballers or doctors.

In football, there's only a market for the best. Nobody likes a loser.

It's the same in health. There's no market for mediocre or bad doctors.

Similarly, there's not really a market for software that doesn't work. Writing novel software that solves real problems isn't yet trivial. So there's not a huge market for bad software engineers. And there isn't yet a big enough supply of good ones to meet demand.

See why Google doesn't just lower their bar to hire more candidates. It wouldn't do them any good.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#46

Post by bko »

coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

> It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and the rest have to scrap by and increasingly pinch pennies (while still doing some desperate wealth-signalling purchases, like poor urban blacks that buy $200 sneakers to feel like they have something nice and can participate in the kind of society they see in ads).

I don't see why "poor urban blacks" buying $200 sneakers is a "desperate wealth-singalling purchase". Maybe they just like them. I don't see how its any different that the 10-20% buying the "best phone" when it provides no greater utility than a cheaper model.

> And living in NY or the Bay are was still very affordable (to the point that both areas had large artistic / bohemian communities living there, and not of the latte sipping urban wealth variety, but the penny pinching / stick it to the man / junky variety).

I would think as neighborhoods become safer and more gentrified, the number of people that want to live there increases and naturally the price to live there increases as well. Comparing crime ridden NYC from 50 years ago to NYC today makes no sense.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#47

Post by username223 »

polote wrote: post #2

> Chances are good that if you’re in the market for a smartphone, you fall into one of two very clear cut categories. Either: a. you’ve decided that your new phone is a very important item in your life, so you’re going to buy the nicest phone available at whatever price. (Usually this means an iPhone, although some flagship Android phones qualify for this category.) Or, b. you’ve decided that just about every phone o…

That's not even vaguely true. I don't get the supposed dichotomy between giant $1000+ slabs of glass and plastic junk.

A few years ago, a friend gave me his old mid-level Samsung phone for free. It was a piece of garbage, and I hated using it, but I put up with it until it died. Afterwards, I looked around for something decent that wasn't too expensive, and settled on a refurbished iPhone SE. It cost a couple hundred dollars, and still works just fine. It doesn't have all of the latest bells and whistles, but it's good enough, and actually fits in my pocket.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#48

Post by badpun »

coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

> Back in the 50s and up to the 80s a signle-income middle class household could still send a kid to college, buy a house, and so on.

In the US. Meanwhile much of the rest of the world was mired in communism, which created incredible poverty and misery. After the 80-ties when it was finally overthrown for the most part, those billions of people start competing on equal ground with the US, which equalizes the global situation a bit.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#49

Post by wozer »

badpun wrote: post #48
coldtea wrote: post #26

> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…

> Back in the 50s and up to the 80s a signle-income middle class household could still send a kid to college, buy a house, and so on. In the US. Meanwhile much of the rest of the world was mired in communism, which created incredible poverty and misery. After the 80-ties when it was finally overthrown for the most part, those billions of people start competing on equal ground with the US, which equalizes the global s…

The wealth is still in the US, though. It did not go to other countries.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#50

Post by bambax »

coldtea wrote: post #27
bko wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is true. Just a cursory google search suggests that the market, at least globally, is a lot flatter and is likely flattening. Not everyone has an iPhone or Samsung. [0] Similarly, those large cities he lists (LA, New York and San Fran) have relatively low population growth, at 0.67%, 0.25% and 1% respectively [1]. Large cities like Phoenix, and Austin have around 2% growth. This makes more sense to m…

> I don't think it is true. Just a cursory google search suggests that the market, at least globally, is a lot flatter and is likely flattening. Not everyone has an iPhone or Samsung. He doesn't say that "everyone has an iPhone or Samsung". Quite the opposite. That there's a large flat base of sub-300 phones, and a 10% (or more, depending on country) of people with high end (say over $800 phones), and not much in bet…

> That there's a large flat base of sub-300 phones

No, actually he doesn't say that. He says that people who don't care about their phone will take one for $0, any phone:

> Or, b. you’ve decided that just about every phone out there is ‘good enough’ and is more than adequate for your needs, so you’ll go with whatever one costs $0 with your existing wireless contract.

People buy many different phones (including high-end Android phones, and second-hand iPhones); the reality he describes doesn't seem to exist.

Also, including people who don't care about Taylor Swift in a study of the value of Taylor Swift concert tickets' value, is absurd: that some people (or even most people) don't want something, doesn't have anything to do with the price of goods. What matters is who wants it and how hard they want it.

Some people like Taylor Swift a lot, some like her a little, some like to go to concerts, some like to go out, some are looking for a place to bring a date, etc. etc. The author's binary division is completely artificial.

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