Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

On the other hand, capital accumulates, and is consolidated over time.

Also part of the reason athletes make so much more today is because of sustained labor agitation on the parts of the unions. Go read 'Ball Four' for an example of what pre-union sports was like.

Perhaps we agree more than you expected. I certainly agree that it is too simplistic to say that poor people are suffering because rich people have the money (and that therefore, if we take from the rich and give to the poor, the problem is solved). But that's a pretty 101 sort of critique anyway. Economic and cultural hegemony have been part of the left-wing conversation for a while now, and my main original point was that the concerns of the unemployed and underemployed have tended to be politically ignorable (due to lack of numbers, cultural shaming, the perception that unemployment is always temporary, etc.).

And I agree that being poor in a contemporary rich country isn't as miserable as other ways of being poor. I see you were quite careful to pin your example to "a minimum wage salary", which is a level of income and security that many people don't have. Since I think we probably both care a lot about equality of opportunity, we should agree that being billed preposterous sums for healthcare is still not a brilliant situation, just like not being able to afford to go to college, lacking access to banking services, and so on. I'm not saying we need to buy everyone an Xbox One because that's the new baseline, but I hope that liberals and conservatives can agree that there are powerful mechanisms that entrench people in poverty, to the general detriment of society.

Technology is a force multiplier. If there was a gap between the most and least able before, it will be larger now.

> I don't care about inequality (of outcome). I care about suffering.

I subscribe to a different argument with the same conclusion: I care about the inefficiency in the way we, as a society, handle our human resources. Poverty is a morass of catch-22s that conspire to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it, and that's a waste of human potential no matter how you slice it.

The minimum-wage worker who spends 1/3 of his time on his first job, 1/3 of his time on his second job, and 1/3 of his time in a perpetually unrewarding search for something better has no time or energy left for putting himself in a better position to create value for society. He is aware of the problem and he knows the theoretical solution. It is not necessarily a lack of discipline or market insight that hold him back, it's the inability to take on risk in the form of investing time and resources into a new mode of value production that make it an unattractive option. If he tries and fails, food, shelter, and health care become mutually exclusive "luxuries" next month.

HN is full of entrepreneurs who are acutely aware of the importance of being able to take risks, but it is important to realize that we (the software engineering profession) are, at the moment, comparatively well sheltered from the wrath of the market by the fact that we posses a skill that is currently in demand, and even with this shielding many of us opt for risk aversion. If we fail, our fallback plan is a cushy $100k job that we can use as a springboard for our next attempt. Our "punishment" is a temporary stint at helping someone else build their dream. On the other hand, if Sam the supermarket checkout clerk, Mike the aspiring musician, or Anne the academic go into business and fail, their punishment will be far more draconian and far less amenable to taking another chance.

The thing is, we (as a society) don't really want more supermarket clerks, street musicians, and struggling adjunct professors. We want these people to be successful because they will generate 100x the value if they are! But we are unwilling to invest the comparative pittance to cover their base needs to let them try and fail. If we played our cards right, social welfare would become an investment, not a parasitic nuisance. Unfortunately our current welfare policy (to include minimum wage) is filled with so many perverse incentives that it probably accounts for a solid half of the poverty-perpetuating morass of catch-22s I lamented earlier, if not more.

What's funny is that I regularly see people on opposite sides of the socialist/libertarian axis agree abut both the problem and the solution, even if their intermediate reasoning is different. I think you'll take my word about the socialists, but here's Milton Friedman discussing the negative income tax: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

Perhaps that means you are not the kind of person the parent was referring to? For me, I tend to get excited about doing just about everything. Since I cannot possibly do everything, I usually tune my interests to where industry interests are.

While I've never had a job drawing sketches specifically, I have had jobs using other artistic mediums. I've spent a lot of my career as a programmer. I've been farming for several years now. If there was strong external interest for drawing, I'd probably be quite keen to hone my skills there too. I've been spending my spare time recently introducing myself to a few other industries that seem promising. I haven't worked professionally in those industries yet, but who knows what the future holds?

That all seems natural to me, though it is clearly not for everyone. I can see where the parent is coming from though. From my point of view it is somewhat difficult to imagine someone who wouldn't want to become an expert in computing, drawing, or whatever industry needs.