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Yes, exactly! No one is arguing against technology or progress. But there is a legitimate issue here; our economic system currently punishes society for progre

Yes, exactly! No one is arguing against technology or progress. But there is a legitimate issue here; our economic system currently punishes society for progress when it should reward it. For instance, If automated driving becomes a viable technology, we have just eliminated most of the labour force in the trucking industry. This should be a good thing for society (we've freed up lots of time and labour, likely reduced error, increased efficiency, potentially even eliminated some accidents and saved lives, etc). But in practice, self-driving trucks would be devastating to the nation. There's close to 1 million people in the US who drive trucks for a living -- it's literally the most common job in nearly every state. (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...). All of these people would be unemployed. Many would likely be shunted into minimum wage, poverty-level employment for the rest of their lives (whatever poverty-level employment is left by then -- those jobs are rapidly disappearing to automation too). If we continue on our current course without changing something, it will eventually be impossible for companies to create value at all -- so many people will be so poor, that it will be impossible to sell anything to them. How highly can Candy Crush be valued in the future, when 99% of it's ad viewers have zero spending money? How much value can AirBnB capture if 99% of the population is too poor to travel? The reply that "these people should all just start highly successful businesses" is a cop-out, in much the same way that telling a poor person to "just become a movie star" or "just become a pro basketball player" is. It's simply not possible for most people to do that, regardless of how hard they try. (Startups already have a 90%+ failure rate today. Adding 1 million otherwise untrained individuals won't help that figure). And it's grossly irresponsible of us as a society to shove people into poverty for failing to meet this wildly-unrealistic expectation.

ericd 11y ago
And I don't think anyone is arguing that the poor should all go out and try to start businesses once they're automated out of their current job, that would be a very naive viewpoint. PGs essay is saying that society should be discussing how to solve poverty, rather than how to solve economic inequality. I'm strongly in favor of things like basic income, extensive free retraining programs, and a lot of social support to make sure that every citizen can be free of the desperation of true poverty, and we can maintain social and economic mobility, but there are a lot of ways that attempting to stamp out economic inequality could go really horribly wrong.
- FreedomToCreate 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, what could go wrong by attempting to stamp out economic inequality. The argument that the top job creators and innovators would leave because they don't have massive income incentives is an extreme in case that is an example.
  - ericd 11y ago
    Becoming an unattractive place to come for ambitious people. Becoming an unattractive place for ambitious/wealthy people to stay. Causing inequality to take subtler forms, like power, political influence, personal connections. Civil unrest, as the social contract between people and between government and the people to be radically altered. There are a lot of potentially very severe problems, and it's dangerously naive to think that true equality between all people is something actually achievable unless humanity and human nature undergoes some fundamental changes. We should be trying to fix poverty, and giving more people an opportunity to be ambitious and take risks without risking ruin, we shouldn't be making it unattractive to be ambitious.
    - FreedomToCreate 11y ago
      I am not advocating for true equality. I am saying that we can distribute wealth to better represent how people contribute to the system. No one is at the top without the support of the millions who pushed them there. Everyone is not ambitious in the business sense. Everyone can't be Michael Jordan, but Michael Jordan wouldn't be with everyone.
- meanduck 11y ago
  I would go even further and say that skill crash is the real and unavoidable problem rather than poverty. Poverty can be curbed by giving out food and shelter which is getting cheaper. But skill migration is not so painless.
  - ericd 11y ago
    Yeah, I think we need very extensive federally-funded retraining programs. Just being kept alive by welfare isn't going to give people a sense of purpose - people need to feel useful. But I think a social safety net is very helpful in helping people feel comfortable taking risks - I probably would not have started a company if the cost of failure was homelessness, rather than just swallowing my pride and moving into my parents' basement.
kamaal 11y ago
Let me explain this to you. In the 1980's there was a country wide lockout in India, when the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi tried to introduce general purpose computing in India. Yes, the whole country was shut down in protest to prevent the widespread use of computers. It was assumed hundreds of thousands of people would lose jobs to automation, wages would collapse and India would become a more poorer country. The computing revolution came to pass and nothing of that sort happened. If anything things got way better, uncountable number of people were lifted out of poverty to middle class. A lot of people who were other wise stuck working as peons, clerks, telephone operators etc kind of jobs were rescued and are now working on more productive jobs. >>It's simply not possible for most people to do that, regardless of how hard they try. If you have already decided(and know) that you will fail, regardless of your actions. Why think low of people who try anyway, and probably win?

ericd 11y ago

And I don't think anyone is arguing that the poor should all go out and try to start businesses once they're automated out of their current job, that would be a very naive viewpoint. PGs essay is saying that society should be discussing how to solve poverty, rather than how to solve economic inequality. I'm strongly in favor of things like basic income, extensive free retraining programs, and a lot of social support to make sure that every citizen can be free of the desperation of true poverty, and we can maintain social and economic mobility, but there are a lot of ways that attempting to stamp out economic inequality could go really horribly wrong.

FreedomToCreate 11y ago
Out of curiosity, what could go wrong by attempting to stamp out economic inequality. The argument that the top job creators and innovators would leave because they don't have massive income incentives is an extreme in case that is an example.
- ericd 11y ago
  Becoming an unattractive place to come for ambitious people. Becoming an unattractive place for ambitious/wealthy people to stay. Causing inequality to take subtler forms, like power, political influence, personal connections. Civil unrest, as the social contract between people and between government and the people to be radically altered. There are a lot of potentially very severe problems, and it's dangerously naive to think that true equality between all people is something actually achievable unless humanity and human nature undergoes some fundamental changes. We should be trying to fix poverty, and giving more people an opportunity to be ambitious and take risks without risking ruin, we shouldn't be making it unattractive to be ambitious.
  - FreedomToCreate 11y ago
    I am not advocating for true equality. I am saying that we can distribute wealth to better represent how people contribute to the system. No one is at the top without the support of the millions who pushed them there. Everyone is not ambitious in the business sense. Everyone can't be Michael Jordan, but Michael Jordan wouldn't be with everyone.
meanduck 11y ago
I would go even further and say that skill crash is the real and unavoidable problem rather than poverty. Poverty can be curbed by giving out food and shelter which is getting cheaper. But skill migration is not so painless.
- ericd 11y ago
  Yeah, I think we need very extensive federally-funded retraining programs. Just being kept alive by welfare isn't going to give people a sense of purpose - people need to feel useful. But I think a social safety net is very helpful in helping people feel comfortable taking risks - I probably would not have started a company if the cost of failure was homelessness, rather than just swallowing my pride and moving into my parents' basement.

kamaal 11y ago

Let me explain this to you. In the 1980's there was a country wide lockout in India, when the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi tried to introduce general purpose computing in India. Yes, the whole country was shut down in protest to prevent the widespread use of computers. It was assumed hundreds of thousands of people would lose jobs to automation, wages would collapse and India would become a more poorer country. The computing revolution came to pass and nothing of that sort happened. If anything things got way better, uncountable number of people were lifted out of poverty to middle class. A lot of people who were other wise stuck working as peons, clerks, telephone operators etc kind of jobs were rescued and are now working on more productive jobs. >>It's simply not possible for most people to do that, regardless of how hard they try. If you have already decided(and know) that you will fail, regardless of your actions. Why think low of people who try anyway, and probably win?