11 ms·

An open letter to Paul Graham

42 points by MarlonPro 11y ago

SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
Between this essay and the one I saw on HN over the weekend [1], I feel PG really got this essay wrong. Both response essays have really compelling points, and even as I read PG's original, I felt like he was catastrophizing. Something that none of the above mention is that, as "job eliminators," we need to start considering how to keep the people who have no chance at a job can continue to live reasonable lives. California, despite being the home of Silicon Valley, still has "truck driver" as the most common occupation as of 2014. [2] In ten years we'll probably be seeing the first self-driving trucks; in 25 the occupation will likely be gone for any runs that don't require humans to unload the truck at the other end (home or small commercial delivery drivers, movers, etc.; a lot of trucks just move goods from one manned loading dock to another). Before you say they'll work at some new job, what other jobs at that skill level won't also be automated by that time? We need a serious movement toward guaranteed income. Capitalism needs consumers; if most of the population can't get jobs, who will be the consumers? And what will happen to those people? Without guaranteed income, they'll be desperate; I don't exaggerate in suggesting that the poor will eventually get to the point of trying to overthrow or attack the rich. A brief look at the fall of various past civilizations will reveal many parallels, and even if the rich could sufficiently arm themselves to resist, living in cyberpunk-style walled enclaves, that's not a future I would want to live in. Making sure everyone has enough to live a decent life is the only path I can see to a humane future. [1] http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/02/a-response-to-paul-grahams-article-on-income-inequality/ http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/02/a-response-to-paul-grahams-art... [2] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...
- pc86 11y ago
  On the surface I want to support BI, I really do. But how does it work other than as a replacement (not supplement) to existing social welfare programs? Give someone enough money that they can rent a room, buy food, and cover their healthcare (whatever cost that may incur). The numbers required to do this in the US when you eliminate all social programs seem doable. Most people pay less in taxes, money gets distributed directly to the people, and it seems fine. So what happens when someone uses their entire BI allowance on Fireball and lottery tickets? The two choices seem to be "they die" or "we don't actually eliminate social service in exchange for a guarantee BI."
  - mikeyouse 11y ago
    The BI proponents typically forget that there's some average amount of money that would work for everyone, but there is clearly a power-law at the expensive end of social services. As an example, I have an extended family member who was born happy and healthy but contracted meningitis at 5 years old and was severely mentally handicapped afterwards. For the past 20 years, his parents have provided his extensive care buoyed by social security disability, but they won't be around forever, so then what? Giving him or some agent on his behalf $12k/year isn't going to come close to paying for the level of support that he needs. There are millions of people in similar situations that could not survive without significant amounts of money which is almost entirely funded by the government. Just assuming that this will be covered by any basic income is silly.
    - pc86 11y ago
      So at that point it basically becomes a "you only get BI unless you need more," which is really just what we have now but everyone gets a $12k/yr kicker on top, right (to use your figure).
      - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
        Throw in single-payer to cover health issues (and include mental health issues) and you'll cover 98% of the problem. People play PowerBall to extremes and similar because they're desperate. I doubt $12k/year would be sufficient, BTW. You want people to be able to live a decent, if spartan, life on BI, and at $12k I think they'd be forced to decide between starving or extremely poor living conditions. Probably $18k/year would be an absolute minimum, plus allowances for kids (how to handle kids is a HUGE question, well outside the scope of this post). The amount you earn could vary by chosen living area, in proportion to living expenses. Maybe not 100% proportionally; if an area has 150% of the cost of living, but only pays you 125% more than the nominal amount, there would still be a pressure to move to less expensive areas, but more expensive areas wouldn't de facto exclude people on BI. There needs to be extended discussion on the details. I don't know nearly enough to be able to have all of the answers. But it seems like the answer is out there, if enough people get together to work on it.
- anonbanker 11y ago
  BI is a great short-term idea. As jobs become replaced, we can keep the keep capitalism alive for at least two generations with this hack. Unfortunately, the system of Capitalism is starting to fail, and we're seeing the ludicrous hacks applied to industrial age economics in order to keep us afloat. The need for money, in the classical sense, is disappearing. All the institutions that are held afloat on such a model, are begining to die. blockchains, and trustless ledgers in general, will take down Governments (based on trust, after all), nevermind mere government-backed banking institutions or corporate-welfare-receivers. We should be mindful (aware) of what a world is going to look like without these institutions, and try to structure our lives around these new changes.
  - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
    >the system of Capitalism is starting to fail To paraphrase a famous quote, Capitalism is the worst system possible, except for all of the other systems that have been tried. There are a number of possible ways to hack/change capitalism that, while they don't change the fundamental principles, do make the process more sustainable.
    - anonbanker 11y ago
      People who say we shouldn't start over with something new because everything else sucked more than what we have now are defeatists. I like apache just as much as the next guy, but I moved to the apache2 codebase. the rewrite turned out to be better with time. Let's assume that whatever replaces capitalism will have similar characteristics.
  - serge2k 11y ago
    > blockchains, and trustless ledgers in general, will take down Governments That sounds awful, fortunately it's not oging to happen.
murbard2 11y ago
> The crux of your argument — that “Ending economic inequality would mean ending startups” — is both a straw man (no one’s advocating eliminating income inequality completely) and untrue (people can still pursue whatever they want — they just have to pay more taxes on it.) Will you get a 80% tax rebate on your opportunity cost if your startup, as most do, fails? Of course not, which means you've dramatically shifted the EV of the proposition.
golemotron 11y ago
> Literally no one in America, save for a very few on the fringe, is talking about “eliminating income inequality.” People are seeking to and talking about reducing income inequality. This is disingenuous. On social and mainstream media the issue has been framed as "income inequality is a problem" not "excessive income inequality is a problem."
- pc86 11y ago
  I agree with you, but I think the author's point holds. Nobody except the truly out of touch are suggesting that every person in the country should earn and be worth the same amount of money. Just that the degree to which it's reached is too much.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- jrock08 11y ago
  Unless you are trying to be obtuse, or hate brevity, the statement "eliminate income inequality" and "eliminate excessive income inequality" read exactly the same. No one is arguing for a move to a fully socialist state, so "eliminate income inequality" in the US means "tax the highest bracket more" and/or "add a higher tax bracket and tax it more" and/or "add a wealth tax". If you honestly look at the arguments rather than just arguing petty semantics you'll be better off in the long run.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
aminok 11y ago
Paul Graham is absolutely right, and those who argue against him are doing so from a position of close-mindedness. First of all: it's irrelevant to the principle whether the goal is to "eliminate" income inequality, or "reduce" it. This being HN, I won't elaborate on why. This place should be above pedantry and people coming from all viewpoints should be able to see why it's the case that if one is bad, so is the other. Second, Graham is not arguing that the pie is getting larger. He is saying that the type of capitalistic market-based activity that increase income inequality also increase the size of the pie. Sure a new regulation that increases legal fees for the average person but increases the wages of highly educated legal professionals will be a zero sum reallocation of the shares of each slice, but that is not what PG is talking about when he says he's in the business of creating income inequality.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > First of all: it's irrelevant to the principle whether the goal is to "eliminate" income inequality, or "reduce" it. This being HN, I won't elaborate on why. This place should be above pedantry and people coming from all viewpoints should be able to see why it's the case that if one is bad, so is the other. I'm afraid you're going to have to elaborate a bit for me to see it. (And no, I'm not just trying to be a pedant.) (Unless you're saying that PG's argument is that reducing inequality is bad, not just that eliminating it is bad. Then I'd have to agree with you.) One could both believe that inequality should not be eliminated because it actually benefits society (PG's point in the essay) and believe that too much inequality harms society. One could even believe that we are on the "too much inequality" side of the optimum.
  - aminok 11y ago
    Fair enough. Yes, PG is arguing that reducing income inequality is bad. He did not address the hypothetical notion that there is a goldilocks zone of 'just enough' inequality, either side of which is suboptimal (due to the 'systemic destabilization' or some other deleterious effect of inequality having a dampening effect on productivity that exceeds inequality's positive effects on productivity after some level), and none of the critiques brought up such an argument either, so I didn't feel the need to address that.
Rainymood 11y ago
>In the real world you can create wealth as well as taking it from others. A woodworker creates wealth. He makes a chair, and you willingly give him money in return for it. A high-frequency trader does not. He makes a dollar only when someone on the other end of a trade loses a dollar. But wait a second, the woodworker doesn't get the wood from something? Which happens to be a natural resource? So he's just siphoning wealth from the earth to his own pockets (by adding some more value).
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  You could argue that the woodcutter is "siphoning wealth from the earth to his own pockets". Or, you could say that the woodcutter is getting paid for his labor. But the woodworker buys the wood from the woodcutter, rather than cutting it himself. He creates wealth by making a chair that is more valuable than a block of wood. And I would say that "siphoning wealth from the earth to his own pockets" is antithetical to "adding some more value".
sivraj 11y ago
I disagreed in large with PG's original essay but also see the challenge as being bigger than simply increasing taxes. As taxes increase in the US, the wealthy look outside the US for storing wealth and exploit tax loopholes. The current tax situation is a combination of being low enough to make offshoring wealth attractive to only the super wealthy, whilst being not so high as to lose campaigning and lobbying financial support for each political party. Increasing taxes is the solution, but ensuring wealth stays in the US and tax is collected is a whole other ball game.

42 points by MarlonPro 11y ago

Between this essay and the one I saw on HN over the weekend [1], I feel PG really got this essay wrong. Both response essays have really compelling points, and even as I read PG's original, I felt like he was catastrophizing. Something that none of the above mention is that, as "job eliminators," we need to start considering how to keep the people who have no chance at a job can continue to live reasonable lives. California, despite being the home of Silicon Valley, still has "truck driver" as the most common occupation as of 2014. [2] In ten years we'll probably be seeing the first self-driving trucks; in 25 the occupation will likely be gone for any runs that don't require humans to unload the truck at the other end (home or small commercial delivery drivers, movers, etc.; a lot of trucks just move goods from one manned loading dock to another). Before you say they'll work at some new job, what other jobs at that skill level won't also be automated by that time? We need a serious movement toward guaranteed income. Capitalism needs consumers; if most of the population can't get jobs, who will be the consumers? And what will happen to those people? Without guaranteed income, they'll be desperate; I don't exaggerate in suggesting that the poor will eventually get to the point of trying to overthrow or attack the rich. A brief look at the fall of various past civilizations will reveal many parallels, and even if the rich could sufficiently arm themselves to resist, living in cyberpunk-style walled enclaves, that's not a future I would want to live in. Making sure everyone has enough to live a decent life is the only path I can see to a humane future. [1] http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/02/a-response-to-paul-grahams-article-on-income-inequality/ http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/02/a-response-to-paul-grahams-art... [2] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

pc86 11y ago
On the surface I want to support BI, I really do. But how does it work other than as a replacement (not supplement) to existing social welfare programs? Give someone enough money that they can rent a room, buy food, and cover their healthcare (whatever cost that may incur). The numbers required to do this in the US when you eliminate all social programs seem doable. Most people pay less in taxes, money gets distributed directly to the people, and it seems fine. So what happens when someone uses their entire BI allowance on Fireball and lottery tickets? The two choices seem to be "they die" or "we don't actually eliminate social service in exchange for a guarantee BI."
- mikeyouse 11y ago
  The BI proponents typically forget that there's some average amount of money that would work for everyone, but there is clearly a power-law at the expensive end of social services. As an example, I have an extended family member who was born happy and healthy but contracted meningitis at 5 years old and was severely mentally handicapped afterwards. For the past 20 years, his parents have provided his extensive care buoyed by social security disability, but they won't be around forever, so then what? Giving him or some agent on his behalf $12k/year isn't going to come close to paying for the level of support that he needs. There are millions of people in similar situations that could not survive without significant amounts of money which is almost entirely funded by the government. Just assuming that this will be covered by any basic income is silly.
  - pc86 11y ago
    So at that point it basically becomes a "you only get BI unless you need more," which is really just what we have now but everyone gets a $12k/yr kicker on top, right (to use your figure).
    - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
      Throw in single-payer to cover health issues (and include mental health issues) and you'll cover 98% of the problem. People play PowerBall to extremes and similar because they're desperate. I doubt $12k/year would be sufficient, BTW. You want people to be able to live a decent, if spartan, life on BI, and at $12k I think they'd be forced to decide between starving or extremely poor living conditions. Probably $18k/year would be an absolute minimum, plus allowances for kids (how to handle kids is a HUGE question, well outside the scope of this post). The amount you earn could vary by chosen living area, in proportion to living expenses. Maybe not 100% proportionally; if an area has 150% of the cost of living, but only pays you 125% more than the nominal amount, there would still be a pressure to move to less expensive areas, but more expensive areas wouldn't de facto exclude people on BI. There needs to be extended discussion on the details. I don't know nearly enough to be able to have all of the answers. But it seems like the answer is out there, if enough people get together to work on it.
anonbanker 11y ago
BI is a great short-term idea. As jobs become replaced, we can keep the keep capitalism alive for at least two generations with this hack. Unfortunately, the system of Capitalism is starting to fail, and we're seeing the ludicrous hacks applied to industrial age economics in order to keep us afloat. The need for money, in the classical sense, is disappearing. All the institutions that are held afloat on such a model, are begining to die. blockchains, and trustless ledgers in general, will take down Governments (based on trust, after all), nevermind mere government-backed banking institutions or corporate-welfare-receivers. We should be mindful (aware) of what a world is going to look like without these institutions, and try to structure our lives around these new changes.
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  >the system of Capitalism is starting to fail To paraphrase a famous quote, Capitalism is the worst system possible, except for all of the other systems that have been tried. There are a number of possible ways to hack/change capitalism that, while they don't change the fundamental principles, do make the process more sustainable.
  - anonbanker 11y ago
    People who say we shouldn't start over with something new because everything else sucked more than what we have now are defeatists. I like apache just as much as the next guy, but I moved to the apache2 codebase. the rewrite turned out to be better with time. Let's assume that whatever replaces capitalism will have similar characteristics.
- serge2k 11y ago
  > blockchains, and trustless ledgers in general, will take down Governments That sounds awful, fortunately it's not oging to happen.

murbard2 11y ago

> The crux of your argument — that “Ending economic inequality would mean ending startups” — is both a straw man (no one’s advocating eliminating income inequality completely) and untrue (people can still pursue whatever they want — they just have to pay more taxes on it.) Will you get a 80% tax rebate on your opportunity cost if your startup, as most do, fails? Of course not, which means you've dramatically shifted the EV of the proposition.

golemotron 11y ago

> Literally no one in America, save for a very few on the fringe, is talking about “eliminating income inequality.” People are seeking to and talking about reducing income inequality. This is disingenuous. On social and mainstream media the issue has been framed as "income inequality is a problem" not "excessive income inequality is a problem."

pc86 11y ago
I agree with you, but I think the author's point holds. Nobody except the truly out of touch are suggesting that every person in the country should earn and be worth the same amount of money. Just that the degree to which it's reached is too much.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
jrock08 11y ago
Unless you are trying to be obtuse, or hate brevity, the statement "eliminate income inequality" and "eliminate excessive income inequality" read exactly the same. No one is arguing for a move to a fully socialist state, so "eliminate income inequality" in the US means "tax the highest bracket more" and/or "add a higher tax bracket and tax it more" and/or "add a wealth tax". If you honestly look at the arguments rather than just arguing petty semantics you'll be better off in the long run.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

aminok 11y ago

Paul Graham is absolutely right, and those who argue against him are doing so from a position of close-mindedness. First of all: it's irrelevant to the principle whether the goal is to "eliminate" income inequality, or "reduce" it. This being HN, I won't elaborate on why. This place should be above pedantry and people coming from all viewpoints should be able to see why it's the case that if one is bad, so is the other. Second, Graham is not arguing that the pie is getting larger. He is saying that the type of capitalistic market-based activity that increase income inequality also increase the size of the pie. Sure a new regulation that increases legal fees for the average person but increases the wages of highly educated legal professionals will be a zero sum reallocation of the shares of each slice, but that is not what PG is talking about when he says he's in the business of creating income inequality.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> First of all: it's irrelevant to the principle whether the goal is to "eliminate" income inequality, or "reduce" it. This being HN, I won't elaborate on why. This place should be above pedantry and people coming from all viewpoints should be able to see why it's the case that if one is bad, so is the other. I'm afraid you're going to have to elaborate a bit for me to see it. (And no, I'm not just trying to be a pedant.) (Unless you're saying that PG's argument is that reducing inequality is bad, not just that eliminating it is bad. Then I'd have to agree with you.) One could both believe that inequality should not be eliminated because it actually benefits society (PG's point in the essay) and believe that too much inequality harms society. One could even believe that we are on the "too much inequality" side of the optimum.
- aminok 11y ago
  Fair enough. Yes, PG is arguing that reducing income inequality is bad. He did not address the hypothetical notion that there is a goldilocks zone of 'just enough' inequality, either side of which is suboptimal (due to the 'systemic destabilization' or some other deleterious effect of inequality having a dampening effect on productivity that exceeds inequality's positive effects on productivity after some level), and none of the critiques brought up such an argument either, so I didn't feel the need to address that.

Rainymood 11y ago

>In the real world you can create wealth as well as taking it from others. A woodworker creates wealth. He makes a chair, and you willingly give him money in return for it. A high-frequency trader does not. He makes a dollar only when someone on the other end of a trade loses a dollar. But wait a second, the woodworker doesn't get the wood from something? Which happens to be a natural resource? So he's just siphoning wealth from the earth to his own pockets (by adding some more value).

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
You could argue that the woodcutter is "siphoning wealth from the earth to his own pockets". Or, you could say that the woodcutter is getting paid for his labor. But the woodworker buys the wood from the woodcutter, rather than cutting it himself. He creates wealth by making a chair that is more valuable than a block of wood. And I would say that "siphoning wealth from the earth to his own pockets" is antithetical to "adding some more value".

sivraj 11y ago

I disagreed in large with PG's original essay but also see the challenge as being bigger than simply increasing taxes. As taxes increase in the US, the wealthy look outside the US for storing wealth and exploit tax loopholes. The current tax situation is a combination of being low enough to make offshoring wealth attractive to only the super wealthy, whilst being not so high as to lose campaigning and lobbying financial support for each political party. Increasing taxes is the solution, but ensuring wealth stays in the US and tax is collected is a whole other ball game.