The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI • Hacker News Board

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#411

Post by mft_ » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

matthest wrote: post #403

mft_ wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...in the US. I was mostly trying to make the point that the cost of living crisis is global, affecting many countries, and that your US-centric view doesn't scale. Healthcare costs hitting consumers directly isn't global as most countries have totally different systems. --- That said, your suggestion that the answer to rampant capitalism making healthcare unaffordable is more rampant capitalism (which you call compe…

Ah ok sorry missed that you were talking globally instead of just US. In the US, our problems stem from a lack of "capitalism," or healthy markets, or whatever anyone wants to label it. Bottom line, it's very much a supply side problem. In housing, for example, NIMBY laws have for decades restricted all kinds of new housing being built. In capitalism, developers would be allowed to build. So we've very much had the o…

> In the US, our problems stem from a lack of "capitalism," or healthy markets, or whatever anyone wants to label it. Bottom line, it's very much a supply side problem.

I'd challenge whether for complex topics like healthcare, there truly ever could/would be a market that would deliver the savings you envisage.

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, you'd expect them to do everything in their power to give the best outcome, right? Wrong. Most people just go to their local hospital, and sadly the quality of physicians, surgeons, treatments offered, and overall care varies tremendously. There are various data to suggest that joining a clinical trial may offer improved outcomes (and of course, in extremis, clinical trial participation is the only way to access experimental treatments) and yet a very small percentage of patients ever do. Anecdotal experience suggests that many patients can barely understand the details of their disease and treatments (which are becoming more technical with time).

My point? For reasons that require further exploration, healthcare "customers" typically aren't sufficiently informed, discerning, engaged, or mobile in the way that would be necessary for a genuine competitive market composed of for-profit providers to function effectively to drive down prices and improve outcomes.

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#412

Post by shafyy » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

bloppe wrote: post #173

shafyy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just look at real median income. You also need to look at other factors like wealth inequality, housing prices and health care.

housing prices and health care are captured by the "real" part of "median real income". Inequality is not, but as long as everybody is getting richer, I'm less concerned about inequality.

Inequality is still important even if everybody is getting richer (I disagree that everybody is getting richer, but that's a different discussion). Because wealth and power concentrated in the hand of a few means that a few have outsized influence on politics and society, which is very much eroding the fundaments of how a democracy is supposed to work.

Furthermore, there are many studies showing that more wealth inequality results in more consumption in a society. Which is not good for many reasons.

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#413

Post by shafyy » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

Antoniocl wrote: post #258

shafyy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just look at real median income. You also need to look at other factors like wealth inequality, housing prices and health care.

Well, I think in the context of the parent comment, separating out housing would risk overstating changes in its effect on purchasing power because increases to housing would already be captured by inflation (since we're talking about real median income, which is already inflation adjusted) I agree that housing affordability is a major problem and that looking at it independently could help you quantify if housing sp…

Yes housing prices are captured by inflation, but since housing prices are so different from region to region and city to city, just looking at a country-wide average median income does not say much.

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#414

Post by apercu » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

BobaFloutist wrote: post #323

apercu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until I see median real income start to actually go down I'm not sure I understand this, it doesn't feel like what I have "lived" for the least 30 years. Median real income might not be down statistically, but the purchasing power of professional incomes relative to housing, education, and major life costs clearly feels lower than it did in the mid 90s. An inflation-adjusted six-figure salary today does not deliver…

According to a random inflation calculator I found with a lazy Google search, $50,000 in 1996 is about $106,000 today. Was $50,000 a lot of money in 1996? Did it afford a nice house in a good neighborhood? Or is it that 6 figures just isn't what it used to be?

I bought my first house in the 90s on a 65k base salary in an ok neighborhood in a great city. Anecdotally anyway.

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#415

Post by CalRobert » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

scottyah wrote: post #317

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always intuitively felt to me like there was enough space, but I am now getting the sense that my intuition here has been wrong. Will you define "frontier living" so I can better see the lack of space ?

One crazy thing I recently heard that put this into perspective is that Livestock makes up approximately 60% to 62% of the world's total mammal biomass. Combined with humans (approx. 34%–36%), domesticated livestock means humans and their animals constitute roughly 96% of all mammalian biomass on Earth, leaving wild mammals at only about 4%. I suppose Frontier living doesn't necessitate hunting, but the amount of rea…

This is the small solace I take when it comes to climate change reducing arable land - almost all of our crops are grown to supply a luxury product (meat), so if we need to, presumably we could just eat the grains we grow directly, instead of turning them in to animals first.

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#416

Post by CalRobert » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #398

pibaker wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the nuanced reply and yes, I do mean that you will not be able to produce as much food as you currently can nor will you be able to do so as reliably as we currently can. And while you might be able to do it in Ireland — one of the only countries in the world with less people than two hundred years ago — it will likely be impossible to the billions living in far more densely populated countries.

I think maybe there is a "frontier living" fantasy that is resting on the hidden assumption that you can bring your modern tech stack with you, minus the civilization that it relies on. If I squint my eyes and imagine really hard, I can see living off the land, supported by small fusion reactors powering powerful AGI computer clusters, highly advanced 3D printers capable of producing all the physical support structur…

FWIW this isn't even remotely close to what I was thinking - I definitely had no notions of AGI or 3d printing involved. You can do a lot with hand tools if you have plenty of time and a forgiving environment (access to water and trees for timber).

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#417

Post by hypercube33 » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

bloppe wrote: post #30

Until I see median real income start to actually go down, I just don't buy it. AI is currently a commodity. Maybe one of the labs will be able to differentiate sufficiently to be able to charge the kinds of premiums they need just to pay back their investors. Maybe, instead, we'll see something akin to the FOSS revolution, where large, high-quality, open training sets are developed to make sure there's always a fair…

Sure but you have to run AI on something and today that's basically limited to multi-thosand dollar hardware - the price and effort to entry has to come down to make it make sense for normal consumers to move it out of the cloud to local.

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#418

Post by trillic » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #365

trillic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SAT is a measure of test-taking ability, socioeconomic status, a narrow band of academic skills, and processing information under time pressure. I don't think it measures much else. Why do you think the SAT is a measure of hard work or character?

You think test-taking and information processing ability comes without hard work?

I think cognitive ability is a real thing with a genuine genetic component; twin studies make that pretty hard to deny. But the SAT measures a narrow slice of ability under conditions that favor prep access, and speaking from experience, scoring well on standardized tests without having to work for it hurt me long term. I coasted on test-taking ability and didn't develop real discipline until adulthood.

Without standardized tests, my transcript probably doesn't get me into a top school, I likely don't end up in tech, and honestly maybe I would've been forced to develop a work ethic earlier, which might have been better for me.

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#419

Post by waffletower » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #190

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was flagged for being clearly botted, and I don't just mean LLM-generated (although it is also that). When I posted on and flagged the old submission, I noted that it had over two dozen upvotes in 15 minutes, despite the essay having a helpful "54 min read" indicator at the top. I truly do not believe the upvotes on these submissions are organic, and it really destroys my faith in HN that this was restored when th…

I upvoted this without reading. For me sometimes the article is just the spark for a far more interesting set of comments that overshadow it. And it is really that I am voting for.

I upvoted after reading a large portion. I had commented previously that the use of Gaussian math was reductive, but I think the contrasting mathematics of the two types of inheritance is interesting to consider.

Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

#420

Post by waffletower » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

dankai wrote: post #2

I resubmitted this because somebody flagged the original submission for unclear reasons and it had quite a lot of upvotes in a short time. Perhaps some people are offended by this argument, but it's definitely worthy of a discussion instead of censorship.

While there are more excessive examples of moderation than Hacker News, "Rate Your Music" moderation is hilariously indulgent and arbitrary from my 2nd hand vantage, but moderation here and elsewhere tends to error on the side of removal and exercise of power. There is no BDSM thrill behind staying one's moderation ability. Many are attracted to moderation just as many police are attracted to their work to get the dopamine that is gifted to them by dominating others. But it might be reductive to think this moderation is tied to an individual's brain treat, and it might instead be useful to consider the host organization -- they may not feel enriched by posts that critique status quo capitalism.