5 ms·

Thank you. I think it is important to understand that the technocratic egalitarianism advocated nowadays in Silicon Valley circles is a poor rehash of Marxist n

by mkempe 11y ago

Thank you. I think it is important to understand that the technocratic egalitarianism advocated nowadays in Silicon Valley circles is a poor rehash of Marxist notions. While communism is a political, revolutionary movement, Marxism and Hegelianism were the philosophical underpinnings of that movement.

Mz 11y ago
Not only is it a poor rehash, it is incredibly insulting to the current Have Nots. It is very much a "I got mine, FUCK YOU." position. Perhaps, at best, a means to assuage their guilt for their imagined crime of being wealthy. The system can change. It needs to change. I have no desire to be assigned the role of sheeple, where my only value to society is as a consumer. I cannot imagine a worse quality of life or a more effective means to disenfranchise me while telling yourself you are being "nice" to me.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  > "It is very much a "I got mine, FUCK YOU." position." Can you explain what you mean by this? I think it's worth pointing out that implementing a basic income does not diminish the available work in an economy. If you want to earn more than your basic income, you're still free to do so.
  - Mz 11y ago
    Thank you for asking. It operates on the assumption that because I am not wealthy yet, I am an incompetent dolt who has no hope of becoming wealthy. Giving me a basic income is highly likely to close doors, not open them. Getting rich from your own efforts is extremely challenging, but the process changes who you are. You learn something important and you forge important ties along the way. Wealth grows out of power. Power does not grow out of wealth. Giving people money instead of a means to earn it is a means to erode their ability to access actual power. It is a means to disenfranchise people. It may be done with good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I find it insulting. I was STAR student and a National Merit Scholarship winner in high school. I have mostly not been taken very seriously on Hacker News. I have mostly been treated dismissively. Giving me a basic income is much, much more likely to entrench the barriers I experience to trying to resolve my problems and figure out how to earn my own. When I was homemaker, I never figured out how to make money online. I also couldn't figure it out while working for a Fortune 500 company. I didn't figure it out until I became homeless. When people are still able to eat in spite of the fact that what they are doing doesn't work, they tend to not bother to do the very hard work involved in changing. They tend to not want to make the uncomfortable choices. You are talking about the principle of "boiling a frog slowly" and applying it to all of society. To me, it looks like a doomsday scenario.
    - ZenoArrow 11y ago
      > "Thank you for asking." You're welcome. > "Giving me a basic income is highly likely to close doors, not open them." How so? This would be a universal basic income (UBI for short), if everyone gets UBI there's no social stigma attached to it. Furthermore, a basic income frees up your time to develop your skills, whether that be through academic study, an internship/apprenticeship, or pursuing interests in the arts. In other words, UBI gives the majority of us more options if we choose to change career or make progess in a field without sufficient short term stability. > "I find it insulting. I was STAR student and a National Merit Scholarship winner in high school. I have mostly not been taken very seriously on Hacker News. I have mostly been treated dismissively." If I'm honest, if you're expecting a high level of praise on HN, you're in the wrong place. It doesn't matter who you are, or what your background is. However, if you enjoy a good debate and learning new things, then it's worth it. Got to learn to take the rough with the smooth, I've made empty comments with high upvotes, and thoughtful comments with high downvotes, just be clear whether you've been honest with yourself and keep an open mind to new information and you'll be fine.
      - Mz 11y ago
        I really do not need help with my relationship to Hacker News. As best I can tell, I have the highest karma of any openly female member. But it hasn't resulted in the kinds of professional contacts I had hoped for. Getting to the position I have achieved has involved a great deal of work, most of it "behind the scenes." The point I am trying to make is not about my relationship to HN. The point I am trying to make is that the biggest barrier to success is a million-and-one unquestioned assumptions about how someone is supposed to behave and about how people interact with them. I spent some time reading articles about lottery winners. About 2/3s of people who win the lottery are bankrupt within 5 years. In most cases, it does not solve their financial problems. If anything, it seems to multiply their problems. People at the top who worked for it or grew up with it know a great many things about who to trust, how to invest, how to downplay your success and so many other things that poor people do not know. Giving them money doesn't convey any of that. Furthermore, when people believe that money per se is the problem and you give them money, you demotivate them from trying to solve the actual hard problems that do exist. Often, financial problems are clues to something going wrong and also serve as a motivator to overcome your problems. I am not in the least concerned about stigma. I am concerned about removing valuable information from the system and making it radically more difficult to figure out what is going wrong, thereby making it harder to fix the problems because we are blind to them. People often do not bother to change bad habits if they can continue to pay the bills. Alcoholics often continue to drink if it isn't ruining them financially, even though it is ruining their health and their lives in so many other ways. One of the hardest things in the world is to get people to change entrenched habits. You are talking about making it easier to not bother. This does not sound like a good thing to me.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> I think it is important to understand that the technocratic egalitarianism advocated nowadays in Silicon Valley circles is a poor rehash of Marxist notions. I don't think that's what they're proposing at all. And if you want me to believe it, you're going to have to do more than claim it's true. What, specifically, do you see in either the idea of basic income or in "technocratic egalitarianism" that is inherently Marxist (as opposed to being merely superficially similar in some respects)?

by mkempe 11y ago

Mz 11y ago

Not only is it a poor rehash, it is incredibly insulting to the current Have Nots. It is very much a "I got mine, FUCK YOU." position. Perhaps, at best, a means to assuage their guilt for their imagined crime of being wealthy. The system can change. It needs to change. I have no desire to be assigned the role of sheeple, where my only value to society is as a consumer. I cannot imagine a worse quality of life or a more effective means to disenfranchise me while telling yourself you are being "nice" to me.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "It is very much a "I got mine, FUCK YOU." position." Can you explain what you mean by this? I think it's worth pointing out that implementing a basic income does not diminish the available work in an economy. If you want to earn more than your basic income, you're still free to do so.
- Mz 11y ago
  Thank you for asking. It operates on the assumption that because I am not wealthy yet, I am an incompetent dolt who has no hope of becoming wealthy. Giving me a basic income is highly likely to close doors, not open them. Getting rich from your own efforts is extremely challenging, but the process changes who you are. You learn something important and you forge important ties along the way. Wealth grows out of power. Power does not grow out of wealth. Giving people money instead of a means to earn it is a means to erode their ability to access actual power. It is a means to disenfranchise people. It may be done with good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I find it insulting. I was STAR student and a National Merit Scholarship winner in high school. I have mostly not been taken very seriously on Hacker News. I have mostly been treated dismissively. Giving me a basic income is much, much more likely to entrench the barriers I experience to trying to resolve my problems and figure out how to earn my own. When I was homemaker, I never figured out how to make money online. I also couldn't figure it out while working for a Fortune 500 company. I didn't figure it out until I became homeless. When people are still able to eat in spite of the fact that what they are doing doesn't work, they tend to not bother to do the very hard work involved in changing. They tend to not want to make the uncomfortable choices. You are talking about the principle of "boiling a frog slowly" and applying it to all of society. To me, it looks like a doomsday scenario.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    > "Thank you for asking." You're welcome. > "Giving me a basic income is highly likely to close doors, not open them." How so? This would be a universal basic income (UBI for short), if everyone gets UBI there's no social stigma attached to it. Furthermore, a basic income frees up your time to develop your skills, whether that be through academic study, an internship/apprenticeship, or pursuing interests in the arts. In other words, UBI gives the majority of us more options if we choose to change career or make progess in a field without sufficient short term stability. > "I find it insulting. I was STAR student and a National Merit Scholarship winner in high school. I have mostly not been taken very seriously on Hacker News. I have mostly been treated dismissively." If I'm honest, if you're expecting a high level of praise on HN, you're in the wrong place. It doesn't matter who you are, or what your background is. However, if you enjoy a good debate and learning new things, then it's worth it. Got to learn to take the rough with the smooth, I've made empty comments with high upvotes, and thoughtful comments with high downvotes, just be clear whether you've been honest with yourself and keep an open mind to new information and you'll be fine.
    - Mz 11y ago
      I really do not need help with my relationship to Hacker News. As best I can tell, I have the highest karma of any openly female member. But it hasn't resulted in the kinds of professional contacts I had hoped for. Getting to the position I have achieved has involved a great deal of work, most of it "behind the scenes." The point I am trying to make is not about my relationship to HN. The point I am trying to make is that the biggest barrier to success is a million-and-one unquestioned assumptions about how someone is supposed to behave and about how people interact with them. I spent some time reading articles about lottery winners. About 2/3s of people who win the lottery are bankrupt within 5 years. In most cases, it does not solve their financial problems. If anything, it seems to multiply their problems. People at the top who worked for it or grew up with it know a great many things about who to trust, how to invest, how to downplay your success and so many other things that poor people do not know. Giving them money doesn't convey any of that. Furthermore, when people believe that money per se is the problem and you give them money, you demotivate them from trying to solve the actual hard problems that do exist. Often, financial problems are clues to something going wrong and also serve as a motivator to overcome your problems. I am not in the least concerned about stigma. I am concerned about removing valuable information from the system and making it radically more difficult to figure out what is going wrong, thereby making it harder to fix the problems because we are blind to them. People often do not bother to change bad habits if they can continue to pay the bills. Alcoholics often continue to drink if it isn't ruining them financially, even though it is ruining their health and their lives in so many other ways. One of the hardest things in the world is to get people to change entrenched habits. You are talking about making it easier to not bother. This does not sound like a good thing to me.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

> I think it is important to understand that the technocratic egalitarianism advocated nowadays in Silicon Valley circles is a poor rehash of Marxist notions. I don't think that's what they're proposing at all. And if you want me to believe it, you're going to have to do more than claim it's true. What, specifically, do you see in either the idea of basic income or in "technocratic egalitarianism" that is inherently Marxist (as opposed to being merely superficially similar in some respects)?