Average Is Over • Hacker News Board

Re: Average Is Over

#71

Post by geoffschmidt » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:22 AM UTC

beatpanda wrote: post #26

So we're currently building an economy that the "average person" doesn't have the skills to participate in. OK. So who are we building this economy for, and why?

"We" are not "building" the economy in the sense that factory workers build a car. It is more like evolution. You start with some little molecules floating the ocean, you let the simulation run, and eventually you get a complex equilibrium that includes ants, giraffes, and those parasites that mind-control mice into getting eaten by cats.

You start with self-sufficient peasant farmers that don't want barbarians to take their stuff, you let the simulation run, you eventually get towns, feudalism, enough surplus food to feed a few scientists, the industrial revolution, world wars, the military-industrial complex, the internet, high frequency trading. There is not someone designing this progression. It is a system of particles that in each time step apply an update rule.

If we want to stop it, we need to figure out what force we can apply to the system to make it settle into a different equilibrium. That's not even the hard part, since the system is not very stable, and can collapse into new equilibria very quickly, just like natural ecosystems can when you introduce new species. What's hard is understanding the dynamics of the system well enough that you can steer it into a state that you want, and make it stay there. Otherwise it is like introducing kudzu for erosion control. Well, it sure controlled erosion!

I am not a fatalist or a nihilist. I don't believe that there is some universal predetermined order (I think giraffes are arbitrary) and I think that when we can understand a small corner of the system, targeted intervention can work. But it is not a question of finding the right "evil person" to beat up, or finding the right political dogma. It is a question of studying the system with the same intellectual modesty as an ecologist, and finding a few levers that we can responsibly use - and, yes, gathering enough force in one place that we can protect the levers from people that would rather they be set in different positions.

Re: Average Is Over

#72

Post by muyuu » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:23 AM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #66

muyuu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is none. There is no "solution" because it, in itself, is not a problem. The problem is that everybody feels entitled to a top 10% salary and many would kill for "their fair share" when nowadays even the lower 10% have their basic needs covered and some left for leisure. The problem is that a society where everybody have similar incomes is somehow fairer, when there is no logical chain leading there and…

nowadays even the lower 10% have their basic needs covered and some left for leisure Only really because of what's left of the welfare system, mainly Medicaid, Section 8 housing, food stamps, and the EITC; which I agree does help on the low end, but is increasingly being time-limited and rationed (e.g. Section 8 is hard to get into). The 10th-percentile household income in the U.S. is around $12,000. If that's all yo…

Denmark's safety net is one thing, some whacko communist universal subsidy is another. Said safety net doesn't decrease disparity significantly, while giving some universal coverage for basic needs. As long as it's not a bigger burden to the economy than the alternative, I'd have nothing against something like this. I also believe the safety nets here in the UK are about right, in general terms. The government is still too big though.

Denmark's income inequality has increased during the last decades together with their living standard.

http://www.oecd.org/document/22/0,3746,en_21571361_44315115_...

Notice the language there. "The situation has worsened" because the rich are now richer, even though the living standards have improved dramatically in all income ranges, somehow "the situation has worsened" because now the gap is 6 to 1, instead of 5 to 1 as it was in the 80s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_disparity

Re: Average Is Over

#73

Post by bad_user » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:29 AM UTC

jmtame wrote: post #14

It was only a few centuries ago that we paid this exclusive, elite upper class in society called scribes to write and transcribe things for us, because we weren't literate enough to do it ourselves. The parallels are pretty surprising today: we're paying an exclusive, elite class called programmers to write in the languages understood by computers. Software is eating the world, jobs are being displaced, and the deman…

Everybody can talk, but few people can be successful salesmen. Anyone could learn to play a musical instrument, but few people are actually doing it and even fewer people are good at it.

Related to scribes, even if mostly everyone knows how to read or write, that doesn't mean that book authors are obsolete. Writing novels and technical books is an endeavor that requires much more than simply being capable to read and write.

So I don't really get why this analogy is being made. Well, actually I do. It's for the same reason why recruiters are doing keyword matching on resumes.

Re: Average Is Over

#74

Post by wladimir » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:30 AM UTC

joelrunyon wrote: post #47

joelrunyon wrote: post #46

Better titled Average is looking less attractive than it did 10 years ago There will always be a place for average. However, I don't think it's going to be as attractive of a place to be as it has been. It's going to be much more costly to try and coast through life.

It's also worth noting that it's never been as affordable or easy to escape "average" as it has been today - interestingly enough, thanks to technology.

What is this "average"? Obviously, it is a statistical measure. But what does it mean in terms of people?

In those terms, "the average" is just a narrative of what the average person would be like. Which seems to be breaking down.

Sure - you can make a list of specific things that every person needs or desires, as there is a lot of commonality between people. Aside from that commonality, we do different things, which are specific to persons or groups. You cannot really speak of a mathematical average there, as those are qualitative differences not quantitative differences (and the groups also overlap...).

How do you "escape the average"? How is it to be "average"? How will you and other people escaping, affect that average? Will the average catch up with you?

I think the term is losing meaning, more than anything else, due to the specialization inherent in our technological society, and due to non-geographical clustering of people made possible by faster means of communication.

Re: Average Is Over

#75

Post by rythie » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:35 AM UTC

jmtame wrote: post #14

It was only a few centuries ago that we paid this exclusive, elite upper class in society called scribes to write and transcribe things for us, because we weren't literate enough to do it ourselves. The parallels are pretty surprising today: we're paying an exclusive, elite class called programmers to write in the languages understood by computers. Software is eating the world, jobs are being displaced, and the deman…

Is programming that elite though? wages seemed to have hardly changed in the U.K. in the last 10 years (accounting for inflation). Also programming pays a similar amount to other jobs requiring a degree and is certainly a lot less than jobs like accountancy, finance, law and medical doctors.

For example, average programmer salary in 2004 was about £31k and in £38k http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/programmer.do and if you calculate £31k in today's money you get £38,440 [http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/His...]

Re: Average Is Over

#76

Post by wladimir » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:43 AM UTC

mtts wrote: post #45

hammerdr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of a "everything is automated, only a small portion of people are needed to produce essentials and even advance" society, would we just be better off with a system that relied on the altruism of the few to make the lives of everyone better and everyone else could just exist? That sort of society has a slew of issues that could be better explored in futurist science fiction (things such as psychologic issu…

I think you're already seeing societies like this in North Western Europe: large numbers of unproductive, uneducated and essentially useless people are kept fed, housed and clothed as that is the humane thing to do, but their lives are absolutely meaningless and empty (mostly - there are of course people who can make it work for themselves). Occasionally they revolt, like they did last summer in England, but even the…

but their lives are absolutely meaningless and empty

There is nothing "the economy" can do to change that, though. Feeling meaningful and full is a state of mind. And that goes more in the realm of religion and spirituality (and psychology) than materialism. It cannot be changed by any government intervention.

Some people have confused those things to the point of extremity. To take an extreme example on the other side, buddhist monks feel fine about themselves without being "productive" and hardly having any possessions.

Also, "useless" is very cruel thing to say regarding people. Who decides who is "useful" and "useless"? Can't we just as well say "everyone is useful" to make people feel better?

Re: Average Is Over

#77

Post by wisty » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:53 AM UTC

As a corollary, nobody average is busy.

Re: Average Is Over

#78

Post by mtts » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 11:57 AM UTC

wladimir wrote: post #76

mtts wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're already seeing societies like this in North Western Europe: large numbers of unproductive, uneducated and essentially useless people are kept fed, housed and clothed as that is the humane thing to do, but their lives are absolutely meaningless and empty (mostly - there are of course people who can make it work for themselves). Occasionally they revolt, like they did last summer in England, but even the…

but their lives are absolutely meaningless and empty There is nothing "the economy" can do to change that, though. Feeling meaningful and full is a state of mind. And that goes more in the realm of religion and spirituality (and psychology) than materialism. It cannot be changed by any government intervention. Some people have confused those things to the point of extremity. To take an extreme example on the other si…

In a society that values economic productivity above all else, "useless" is a very accurate term. The challenge is to convince the economically "useful" people that have to pay the taxes that support these "useless" people to keep doing that, which will get harder and harder as the "useful" people see their purchasing power dwindle.

I'm not sure what the solution to this problem would be, but I do have a suspicion that more free market economics is not it.

Re: Average Is Over

#79

Post by pgeorgi » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 12:03 PM UTC

MengYuanLong wrote: post #53

The majority of comments seem to praise the programming/IT community or question the state of our government/economic system but I have a different question. What future skill set should people be retooling to have? What can our economy use more of?

Taking care of children/elders/family/friends/neighbors.

With everything else automated, people will still be in need for social interaction with real humans.

Currently the issue is that there's no simple economic value to put on these tasks. Given their importance, I'd claim the bug lies in the economic model, not in social interactions.

This all assumes that automation is put to its full potential: What will society look like when harvesting energy, food generation and processing, transportation and home building ("basic needs") were fully automated and available for more-or-less free? (home building is the odd one out in this list, as the others are for nearly instant consumtion, while most people live under the same roof for a while)

Re: Average Is Over

#80

Post by wladimir » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 12:32 PM UTC

mtts wrote: post #78

wladimir wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but their lives are absolutely meaningless and empty There is nothing "the economy" can do to change that, though. Feeling meaningful and full is a state of mind. And that goes more in the realm of religion and spirituality (and psychology) than materialism. It cannot be changed by any government intervention. Some people have confused those things to the point of extremity. To take an extreme example on the other si…

In a society that values economic productivity above all else, "useless" is a very accurate term. The challenge is to convince the economically "useful" people that have to pay the taxes that support these "useless" people to keep doing that, which will get harder and harder as the "useful" people see their purchasing power dwindle. I'm not sure what the solution to this problem would be, but I do have a suspicion th…

There is nothing inherent in that people should value economic productivity above all else. That's the gospel of the industrial revolution, and it's not really valid anymore in the (post-)information age.

If you cannot be part of "economic productivity" then it is natural to look at other ways to feel good about yourself. "useless" is a value judgment that you cannot really make about other people and causes a lot of grief.

Anyway, I was just trying to say that these concerns are orthogonal to the macro-economy. I'm with you though, that more free market economics is not a solution to anything...