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I can't even think of so many frivolous examples, off the top of my head. Most technology would also benefit the "underclass"? Maybe Tinder helps veterans and s

I can't even think of so many frivolous examples, off the top of my head. Most technology would also benefit the "underclass"? Maybe Tinder helps veterans and single moms to get together and have sex. Uber facilitates the date, and AirBnB organizes their honeymoon should they hit it off? Amazon saves time for everybody. What are the horrible startups - are they really dominating? What would be an idea that would benefit exclusively the underclass? (Political issues aside - or how could you launch a startup to fix the paperwork veterans have to do, wouldn't that have to come from politics?)

VLM 11y ago
The frivolous examples all have something in common, spending money. One thing all underclasses have in common, is not having much money. As income and wealth concentrate into ever smaller groups of people, technologies that extract money are naturally going to focus on ever smaller demographics. The point of the article is possibly there is some social good in doing something other than finding new ways to extract money by entertaining the ever shrinking pool of ever richer people, and by doing that, possibly, we can avoid joining the underclass. Ironically that joining is inevitable, much as people can try to avoid death but can't really, "we" can't avoid demographic pressures and we will all be poor sooner or later. One aspect carefully tiptoed around in the article is if the number of rich people only decreases and the number of poor people only increases, there is some enlightened self interest involved. All of us are far more likely to become poor than to become rich. And that makes us and everyone around us extremely uncomfortable for obvious reasons, so its really cool to help exotic people on the other side of the planet, and really uncool to help our own people locally, beyond the minimal symbolic stuff like saying we support the troops and putting a ribbon on the car, for example. If you help a poor white male, that's going to make people extremely uncomfortable because its socially unacceptable to discuss that as our inevitable future, even if we all know it is our future and even worse we can't talk about it.
- facepalm 11y ago
  A couple of years ago I visited a castle in Slovakia. The boss of the castle had all sorts of amenities (the museum told), such as people who washed their clothes, food that would appear magically, heated rooms. That required a whole castle with lots of employees (slaves?) to sustain. These days "normal" people live better than the kings in former times, with zero employees, thanks to technology. So poor is not always the same as poor. Also, please provide an example of startups catering to rich people? Tesla comes to mind, but other than that? Netflix is pretty cheap, I think - certainly cheaper than the cable subscriptions of old times?
  - thebaer 11y ago
    The article isn't talking about the relative wealth of modern, industrialized/technologized society to medieval times. The point is that a single mom (with an 80% chance of being "poor or hovering on the nasty edges of working poverty") probably isn't worried about how much Netflix, or rather cable TV, costs when she can't afford someone to watch her child so she can go to work and make money to pay for food and a roof over her head. She isn't going to pull out her iPhone and call an Uber to drive her to work from this place she AirBnB'd last night -- adding it to her Snapchat story, of course, before she heads out the door.
    - facepalm 11y ago
      Is that really the case? I think some citation would be nice. For example the refugees in Europe often have a smartphone among the very few things they take along on their journey, simply because is is essential to their survival. I mean they have nothing, but they have a smartphone. And some smartphones have become really cheap, too - (there is Android, you don't have to buy an iPhone).
facepalm 11y ago
At least 5 downvotes, but no answers. At least list some frivolous startups.

VLM 11y ago

The frivolous examples all have something in common, spending money. One thing all underclasses have in common, is not having much money. As income and wealth concentrate into ever smaller groups of people, technologies that extract money are naturally going to focus on ever smaller demographics. The point of the article is possibly there is some social good in doing something other than finding new ways to extract money by entertaining the ever shrinking pool of ever richer people, and by doing that, possibly, we can avoid joining the underclass. Ironically that joining is inevitable, much as people can try to avoid death but can't really, "we" can't avoid demographic pressures and we will all be poor sooner or later. One aspect carefully tiptoed around in the article is if the number of rich people only decreases and the number of poor people only increases, there is some enlightened self interest involved. All of us are far more likely to become poor than to become rich. And that makes us and everyone around us extremely uncomfortable for obvious reasons, so its really cool to help exotic people on the other side of the planet, and really uncool to help our own people locally, beyond the minimal symbolic stuff like saying we support the troops and putting a ribbon on the car, for example. If you help a poor white male, that's going to make people extremely uncomfortable because its socially unacceptable to discuss that as our inevitable future, even if we all know it is our future and even worse we can't talk about it.

facepalm 11y ago
A couple of years ago I visited a castle in Slovakia. The boss of the castle had all sorts of amenities (the museum told), such as people who washed their clothes, food that would appear magically, heated rooms. That required a whole castle with lots of employees (slaves?) to sustain. These days "normal" people live better than the kings in former times, with zero employees, thanks to technology. So poor is not always the same as poor. Also, please provide an example of startups catering to rich people? Tesla comes to mind, but other than that? Netflix is pretty cheap, I think - certainly cheaper than the cable subscriptions of old times?
- thebaer 11y ago
  The article isn't talking about the relative wealth of modern, industrialized/technologized society to medieval times. The point is that a single mom (with an 80% chance of being "poor or hovering on the nasty edges of working poverty") probably isn't worried about how much Netflix, or rather cable TV, costs when she can't afford someone to watch her child so she can go to work and make money to pay for food and a roof over her head. She isn't going to pull out her iPhone and call an Uber to drive her to work from this place she AirBnB'd last night -- adding it to her Snapchat story, of course, before she heads out the door.
  - facepalm 11y ago
    Is that really the case? I think some citation would be nice. For example the refugees in Europe often have a smartphone among the very few things they take along on their journey, simply because is is essential to their survival. I mean they have nothing, but they have a smartphone. And some smartphones have become really cheap, too - (there is Android, you don't have to buy an iPhone).

facepalm 11y ago

At least 5 downvotes, but no answers. At least list some frivolous startups.