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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)

#51

Post by m1sta_ »

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…

There is still a lot of cheap housing in the USA. It's just not in the bay area anymore.

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

#52

Post by pjc50 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #45
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 ther…

Few markets have a market for "bad" employees, surely? What matters in the tournament situation is that the number #2 employee isn't as good as the #1 employee, regardless of what absolute quality level we're talking about.

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

#53

Post by Godel_unicode »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #42
Jonanin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Statins, anti-retrovirals, common availability of antibiotics, treatment for TB, vaccines for many population-decimating (in the traditional sense of the word) viruses.

Everyone has a super computer in their pocket, the vast majority of human knowledge is available in your hand for free all the time, you can video chat anyone you want anywhere in the world in HD for free, world-leading educators post hundreds of hours of video lectures online for free. You can get O(every song ever recorded) instantly anywhere you are for $10-$15/month.

In my opinion, what we're seeing is that things split into two categories: generally free or almost free, and expensive enough to be out of reach of most people. The thing that is really exciting is that things are moving from the latter to the former very quickly. The problem specifically with education is that expectations (everyone must have a degree!) Hasn't kept up with reality (degrees are no longer the only/best marker of skill!).

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

#54

Post by badpun »

wozer wrote: post #49
badpun wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is about income, and not wealth. Most of these middle-class US families in the 50-ties through 80-ties that you mentioned had very little wealth, and only managed to build it up (via paying off mortgage, saving for retirement) over decades of work and solid income. Now, there's less opportunities for solid income in the US, as they've become more equally spread across the globe.

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

#55

Post by wisty »

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…

IIRC it is true, but it's a quirk of the phone market. People either go for the the flagship or for an economy phone, but it's a weird quirk of the mobile market (since most people assume that the cheapest phones are basically as good as midrange phones, or that they're better off with a cheaper phone and more frequent upgrades, so there's no middle).

Cars are different. Not everyone buys a Porsche or a Kia.

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

#56

Post by Godel_unicode »

wozer wrote: post #49
badpun wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's not the zero-sum game you're making it out to be.

Also, those countries are all far better off now.

https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/25-years-r...

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

#57

Post by coldtea »

mrob wrote: post #39
coldtea wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously income. Are you in the upper 20% that does great (or still fine), or in the 80% that's increasingly scrapping by?

Except income is no longer bimodal. It was back in the 70s, but now there's just a single peak. See: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Global-inequality... However, growth in income is bimodal: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_changes_in_re... Could that affect the phone market indirectly, by consumer confidence? It's possible, but it's not nearly as clear-cut as human height.

Also account for wealth (we don't make the distinction between income and wealth much in my here parts).

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

#58

Post by coldtea »

bambax wrote: post #50
coldtea wrote: post #27

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. 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-…

He speaks generally, not absolutely.

You can see all between price points, but not all have equal peaks -- it's a larger "cheapo" and a smaller but significant "expensivo" segment that dominate, that's the author's point (whether it's true or not).

He doesn't say that there are absolutely no cases that fall in between, just that the distribution of them is not normal, but bifurcated to those two extremes.

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

#59

Post by in_cahoots »

mrob wrote: post #22
in_cahoots wrote: post #17

The author almost stumbles on the answer to his question when he shows the height distribution. It’s bimodal, because men and women have different average heights. Similarly, flagship and lower-tier phone buyers will display distributions in what they’re willing to pay. If you combine two separate normal distributions you can always make a claim that a single distribution is no longer normal. But that doesn’t make it…

It's not similar to height distribution. At the population statistics level, human height is bimodal because humans either have a Y chromosome or they don't. What is the equivalent binary variable for the phone market?

I suspect there are (at least) two populations of phone buyers: those who see it as a cool gadget with the latest technology, and those who just want a device to browse the web, take some pictures, and play some games. The former upgrade every year or two to the best phone they can afford; the latter are happy paying a few hundred bucks or less when their old phone breaks or no longer holds a charge.

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

#60

Post by coldtea »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #53
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now compare 60 years ago with now.

Statins, anti-retrovirals, common availability of antibiotics, treatment for TB, vaccines for many population-decimating (in the traditional sense of the word) viruses. Everyone has a super computer in their pocket, the vast majority of human knowledge is available in your hand for free all the time, you can video chat anyone you want anywhere in the world in HD for free, world-leading educators post hundreds of hour…

>Statins, anti-retrovirals, common availability of antibiotics, treatment for TB, vaccines for many population-decimating (in the traditional sense of the word) viruses.

Those are technological innovations, not really relevant.

We could have had smartphones and anti-retrovirals AND affordable education/housing/healthcare/job prospects.

Like how people in the 50s and 60s could enjoy all kinds of technological and social innovations compared to 100 years before (electricity, TV, improved medicine, vaccines, etc) AND have cheap college tuition, affordable housing, etc.

Spare some catastrophe technology is monotonically increase -- it advances with new inventions.

So not really relevant as to whether we are more or worse off than the 50s and 60s in economic aspects.

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