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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)

#91

Post by [deleted] »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #82
Retric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

tsimionescu wrote: post #88
Godel_unicode wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by mac01021 »

Caring about something is not a binary, all-or-nothing affair. I care about some things a lot, others a fair amount, and yet others quite little.

And for most of the examples given in the OP, I still find myself landing in the middle, between two supposed modes.

So I guess I'm not entirely convinced.

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

#94

Post by thesagan »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #82
Retric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I sense that awareness of U.S. corruption has been increasing.

One watchdog group has been tracking it's position, as mentioned in this WSJ article: https://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2019/01/29/u-s-seen-...

And then there's that now-infamous Princeton study, which has been cited many times: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

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

#95

Post by gshdg »

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…

In that regard, the mid-20th century is an anomaly in human history.

Which is not to say we shouldn't aspire to such a relatively even income/wealth distribution. However, the political will for progressive taxation - which facilitated that level of equality - has been on the wane since the 70's. Possibly related to the extreme American economic dominance in the Post-WWII era, which we shouldn't expect to ever see again.

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

#96

Post by Retric »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #82
Retric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I simply put an actual price tag on a doctors time. Dentists and Doctors both need receptionists, janitors, deal with insurance, and have an office etc. However, compare a few bills and a few different situations and some clear differences show up.

If you want an actual examples a famous one is the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation issue. Each individual little bit is not a big deal, but they compound with inefficiency growing at each step.

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

#97

Post by wetpaws »

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?

Caring about phones as status symbols vs not really. (Which is, again, sort of the point of the article)

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

#98

Post by scarejunba »

pjc50 wrote: post #52
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are things with low differentiation. Average day care is fine. Average janitorial services are okay. Average checkout operator is okay.

No one needs the exceptional janitor.

Fwiw though, I think there's lots of room for the mediocre software engineer. Enough work requires little to no skill. I've done some of it myself b

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