The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015) • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by paulddraper » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

m1sta_ wrote: post #51

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.

I bought my first house in 2015 in Utah, about 20 min from downtown Salt Lake City. Was not anything special.

1976 construction, 2000 sqft, 0.2 acre, 5 bed, 3 bath, 2 car garage, average condition, just under $200k.

Glassdoor average salary for "Software Engineer" (not Senior, etc.) in Salt Lake is currently $89k, 14% less than national average. [1]

Single-income house ownership is extremely common here.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/salt-lake-city-software-e...

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

#82

Post by Godel_unicode » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #80

Godel_unicode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real costs for most people in the US is artificial. Housing, internet, and healthcare in the US is 2-5 times what it is in most countries because of systemic corruption. Consider, 15 minutes of a doctor’s time making 300k total compensation directly costs ~40$. Meaning your copay is often the actual cost of the services rendered and you need insurance to cover overhead.

> because of systemic corruption.

Citation needed.

> 15 minutes of a doctor’s time making 300k total compensation directly costs ~40$.

So the nurses, administrators, technicians, lawyers, accountants, janitors etc that are needed to allow that doctor to see you don't factor into that cost? I'm not saying the pricing of healthcare in the States makes sense, but neither does the argument you present.

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

#83

Post by cfarm » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

SmooL wrote: post #4

"-Normal distributions come from multifactorial situations, where many variables matter. -In a world governed by scarcity, our decisions and preferences tend to be multifactorial in nature. -In a world governed by abundance, on the other hand, our decisions are no longer multifactorial. They tend to be dominated by one factor above all others: either X matters to you, or it doesn’t." I'm more curious as to _why_ our…

In a world of abundance where you can (by definition) do whatever you want, you will need to prioritize the things that you want to do vs not. There is simply not enough time to do everything so there is less "weighing" of decisions.

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

#84

Post by badpun » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #68

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…

> In the US. Meanwhile much of the rest of the world was mired in communism, which created incredible poverty and misery. Depends on where of the world. Most of the rest of the world in the 50s (aside from eastern Europe, USSR and China) was anything but communist. And even the communist (socialist) parts, where not really about some "incredible poverty" (e.g. in places like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and so on, jus…

India was also communist. Just India and China alone is already something like 40% of world population. USSR + Eastern/Central Europe is another 400+ million people. There were also many communist countries in Africa and Asia.

As for the standard of living, I know the realities of communist Poland:

- The "everybody could get a house" is complete falsehood, at least for Poland. In fact, almost no one lived in a house - people lived in small, overcrowded flats (2 rooms for a family of 6, 1 room for a family of 4 were not uncommon), and even getting those shitty flats in drab housing projects required serious sacrifices and often years of waiting in the queue.

- As for higher education, only around 15% of population attended university, and not for the lack of wanting - it was clear that far from anyone could go.

- Healthcare was bad, but probably on par with the general underdevelopment of the country.

- Throught the fifties, people worked 28 days a month - yep, they only had a couple of Sundays off and that was it. The salary they got for such exertion was barely enough to cover rudimentary living expenses. My grandmother had to take a loan to buy a winter coat (to not freeze, not because it was pretty), and she paid that loan off over months. Over time, the living conditions gradually improved, but even in the eighties it was mandatory to work every second Saturday IIRC.

- What's probably most important and probably unimaginable for some who did not live under communism, were that obtaining just basic consumer goods was a challenge at times. Tens of millions of people at times stood for hours every day after work just to buy toilet paper or meat. It was an unimaginable waste of human time and energy.

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

#85

Post by jdavis703 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #5

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…

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…

You’re looking at 1% population growth, but much higher real estate growth costs. Looking at real estate demand is probably a better way to measure demand in cities since it’s so hard to build new homes these days.

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

#86

Post by paulddraper » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #73

paulddraper wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those are technological innovations, not really relevant. Those are extremely relevant, especially the source for those invocations. E.g. I could believe the USSR achieved greater income equality, but I'm skeptical it would have produced those innovations.

USSR was run by a party elite, devastated with millions dead/imprisoned in their purges, devastated with millions of dead in WWII, and starting from an agrarian economic base much behind the US of the time (1917) to begin with. Without those aspects (but keeping equality more or less same, e.g. like Swedish style democratic socialism) it could be a very different story. It's not like inequality produced them. If anyt…

Alright s/USSR/Sweden/ and same comment

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

#87

Post by heavyset_go » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

m1sta_ wrote: post #51

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.

Cheap housing exists in areas of low-to-negative growth. As in, those who got out did and those who can get out will in order to find better jobs and a higher quality of life.

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

#88

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #74

coldtea wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 soc…

You don't think what you get for your money is important in a discussion of economic advancement? It sounds like you decided on an answer, then went looking for a question which fits it. > We could have had smartphones and anti-retrovirals AND affordable education/housing/healthcare/job prospects. How can you possibly know that's true? Where are these example economies that have US-level innovation but also has the w…

Well, an example would be the US in the 50s,60s and 70s.

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

#89

Post by _0nac » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

badpun wrote: post #84

coldtea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US. Meanwhile much of the rest of the world was mired in communism, which created incredible poverty and misery. Depends on where of the world. Most of the rest of the world in the 50s (aside from eastern Europe, USSR and China) was anything but communist. And even the communist (socialist) parts, where not really about some "incredible poverty" (e.g. in places like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and so on, jus…

India was also communist. Just India and China alone is already something like 40% of world population. USSR + Eastern/Central Europe is another 400+ million people. There were also many communist countries in Africa and Asia. As for the standard of living, I know the realities of communist Poland: - The "everybody could get a house" is complete falsehood, at least for Poland. In fact, almost no one lived in a house…

India as a whole has never been communist, although the Gandhi-inspired self-reliance/import substitution/License Raj era definitely did cripple the economy in similar ways.

Many "communist" countries in Africa and the Middle East were so mostly on paper and they flipped allegiances regularly based on whether the US or the Soviets were offering better carrots.

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

#90

Post by pdkl95 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #46

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 blac…

> I don't see why "poor urban blacks" buying $200 sneakers is a "desperate wealth-singalling purchase".

Far too often sending the right kind of signal is a required prerequisite[1] to e.g. being granted access to a job that might eventually become a better-than-minimum-wage career. Often wealth isn't the intended signal; it's a presentation of having accepted and converted to a group's culture or beliefs.

[1] https://tressiemc.com/uncategorized/the-logic-of-stupid-poor...