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The reason I call it coercion is that the resources individuals require to make a life for themselves are held by others. If I own 1000 acres of land and you o

The reason I call it coercion is that the resources individuals require to make a life for themselves are held by others. If I own 1000 acres of land and you own zero, I can coerce you into working for me. If I own 1000 and you own 10, we'll negotiate. Does that make sense? It's not really about providing people amazing lives - it's more that free trade doesn't really work properly when one party is playing a completely different game. Example - as a software developer I could choose a 30k PA job or a 90k PA job. I feel a pressure to take the latter, but it doesn't feel like coercion, I can actually make the choice. If you're unskilled - and bear in mind that unskilled is a moving target which essentially means 'not required by society at the present time' - then it doesn't work that way. You take whatever you can get. That's the problem with inequality. It's not about toys, size of house. it's about the extreme outcomes - the bottom level becoming interchangeable cogs and no longer human beings with free will.

gwright 11y ago
It is difficult to have a discussion without agreement on terms. "Coercion" means forcing someone to do something via threats or actual force. It doesn't mean "not giving me what I want (or need)". Perhaps you should be given what you need, but failing to do that isn't coercive. There is an unsettling attitude on HN that there is something inherently wrong with unskilled labor or more generally work that doesn't require some sort of advanced study. Perhaps there is a future world where everyone is engaged in highly skilled labor that satisfies their every desire but until that time there are going to be many people who will be occupied in other types of work and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Honest work of any kind that enables someone to be self-sufficient should be applauded, not disdained. What is wrong with an unskilled worker taking the best available job and building from there? Isn't that generally how people acquire skills? If the argument is that a person can't sustain themselves that way, then I would suggest that developing programs to assist people who are already working is much easier than developing programs to assist people who aren't working at all. Regarding 'inequality', I just don't find that very compelling mainly because the discussion seems to be all about how to take things away from rich people in order to give it to poor people, that is, redistribution schemes based on the mistaken notion that this is a zero-sum game. In many cases, the wealth is acquired by distortions in the market created by government intervention. Eliminating the market distortions would be a good first step towards a more vibrant economy that would benefit every one.

gwright 11y ago

It is difficult to have a discussion without agreement on terms. "Coercion" means forcing someone to do something via threats or actual force. It doesn't mean "not giving me what I want (or need)". Perhaps you should be given what you need, but failing to do that isn't coercive. There is an unsettling attitude on HN that there is something inherently wrong with unskilled labor or more generally work that doesn't require some sort of advanced study. Perhaps there is a future world where everyone is engaged in highly skilled labor that satisfies their every desire but until that time there are going to be many people who will be occupied in other types of work and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Honest work of any kind that enables someone to be self-sufficient should be applauded, not disdained. What is wrong with an unskilled worker taking the best available job and building from there? Isn't that generally how people acquire skills? If the argument is that a person can't sustain themselves that way, then I would suggest that developing programs to assist people who are already working is much easier than developing programs to assist people who aren't working at all. Regarding 'inequality', I just don't find that very compelling mainly because the discussion seems to be all about how to take things away from rich people in order to give it to poor people, that is, redistribution schemes based on the mistaken notion that this is a zero-sum game. In many cases, the wealth is acquired by distortions in the market created by government intervention. Eliminating the market distortions would be a good first step towards a more vibrant economy that would benefit every one.