17 ms·

Anthropic Capitalism and the New Gimmick Economy

75 points by harshreality 11y ago

danharaj 11y ago
> Capitalism and Communism which briefly resembled victor and vanquished, increasingly look more like Thelma and Louise; a tragic couple sent over the edge by forces beyond their control. What comes next is anyone’s guess and the world hangs in the balance. Honestly how is this entire article not an exercise in historical materialism as proposed by Marx? From Wikipedia: "Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of human societies and their development over time and was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as the materialist conception of history. It is principally a theory of history according to which the material conditions of a society's mode of production (its way of producing and reproducing the means of human existence—in Marxist terms, the union of its productive capacity and social relations of production) fundamentally determine its organisation and development. Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. Social classes and the relationship between them, along with the political structures and ways of thinking in society, are founded on and reflect contemporary economic activity." > In the first place, we should expect that because there is as yet no known alternative to market capitalism... I can't even.
nickff 11y ago
This article is based on a set of false assumptions, and is obviously written by someone ignorant of the history of economics. >"Economic theory, like the physics on which it is based, is in essence an extended exercise in perturbation theory. Solvable and simplified frictionless markets are populated by rational agents which are then all subjected to perturbations in an effort to recover economic realism. Thus while it is false that economists believe idealized models to be exactly accurate as outsiders contend, it is fair to say that they implicitly assume deviations from the ideal are manageably small." When Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations", he had no such theory of frictionless markets populated by rational actors."The Wealth of Nations" was written based on what Smith observed in the world around him, not some thought experiment, and most of the examples in the book were based on real markets and policies, such as the corn laws. Smith had in fact written another book which made it clear that he believed humans were complex moral and emotional beings. Throughout the history of economics, many (if not most) of the notable contributions were made by people addressing the situations they found themselves in, such as Bastiat responding to protectionism he saw in the French national assembly. >"Even die-hard proponents of market capitalism will cede that this public sector represents “market failure” where price and value become disconnected. Why should one elect to pay for an army when he will equally benefit from free riding on the payments of others? Thus in a traditional market economy, payment must be secured by threat of force in the form of compulsory taxes." This is another example of the author's complete misapprehension of economics. I have never heard any economist argue that all externalities should be compensated or penalized, because everything has externalities. Many have come to different conclusions based on the abundance of externalities; there are Marxists who believe the government must control everything to properly allocate resources, and there are anarcho-capitalists who believe that externalities should either be paid for voluntarily (perhaps after social pressures) or not at all. I could go on to list many of the rest of the egregious errors in this post, but wouldn't want to further tax your patience.
- danharaj 11y ago
  > Smith had in fact written another book which made it clear that he believed humans were complex moral and emotional beings. Theory of Moral Sentiments, right?
  - nickff 11y ago
    Correct.
- mthomasb 11y ago
  It's worth noting that most schools of economics are heavily indebted to physics. This came from a desire to increase economics' perceived rigor, and led to the (mis)appropriation of some core concepts[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672560600708011 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672560600708011
  - nickff 11y ago
    Yes, many economists aspired to make their studies more similar to physics in the early 20th century, to the point that there were interesting devices such as hydraulic computers made to model macroeconomics. Later in the 20th century, economists became more interested in statistics, and the majority of academic economists appear to remain most interested in using advanced statistics to model and predict behaviour. There are other economists who have based their study on basic assumptions and reasoning.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  It's an informative example of social signalling masquerading as analysis. There's a TED-ish evangelical enthusiasm for drawing analogies between ideas that aren't really analogous, an appeal to authority (science[tm]), some drastic oversimplifications of complex ideas, and a zinger at the end. But unless you believe that technology is an evolving lifeform that has its own parasitic political agenda - always possible, but hard to support without evidence - the problems of capitalism and technology are about opportunity distribution, not about whether software runs in a loop. There's no invisible silicon hand at work. It's still all about some people making decisions, and about other people who are excluded from that process.
samirillian 11y ago
well i liked it!
- knieveltech 11y ago
  I liked it as well but you have to expect a bunch of blowback in comments when you're posting material that's basically "software is eating the world".
mindslight 11y ago
TSLH - too short, left hanging. I've pondered similar diagnoses of various economic metrics. But what is his constructive outlook for what comes next? Without one, the only approach is to cling to the outgoing paradigm, because being in a better position in the old one is not likely to put one in a worse position in whatever the new one may be.
- SpeakMouthWords 11y ago
  I've noticed this repeatedly in these vast, sweeping future-of-the-economy outlook pieces. The writer is keen to point out everything that means that the current paradigm is bound to shift, but they never take the time to stick their neck out and postulate what it's shifting into. That said, I did enjoy this article.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dnautics 11y ago
"Price is nearly equal to value except in rare edge cases of market failure" What does this even mean? I'll give two thought examples. 1)Let's say I have a severe peanut allergy and peanuts are selling at $5.00/lb. Does the price meet the value? I.e. would I have a tricky time deciding if I would rather have the $5.00 or the pound of peanuts? Is this even true across society as an "average"? Do we believe markets are that rational, efficient and smooth? 2) over the course of the last year the price of gasoline in California has fluctuated by nearly 40%. Is this variance truly reflective of the relative value of gasoline to dollars over this time period, or is the "catastrophic market failure". How Scotsman must such a failure be?
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  This. Of value to whom, for what purpose they might have, for a given time.... and given the "value" of currency at any given moment. The price at which a market clears is a reasonable fixing of the value, given all of the variables. Even then the assessment of value isn't the same for either side of a trade: the consumer considers the product to be worth more than the money paid and the producer considers the money worth more than the product: they don't agree on the value of the product. If they do... one or the other is an idiot for making the trade. A Picasso can sell at a lot of money because not because of the labor put into it, the materials it's made of, etc. It sells for a lot of money because to someone believes it's worth it.
  - simonh 11y ago
    I'm sure that's correct, but it's not quantifiable. All we can really know is how much people are actually willing to pay for a thing. I agree that only puts a lower bound on the real value of that thing to them, but it's the only objective signal we have to work from.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    No, because someone believes someone else thinks it's worth it. There's a mimetic component to market economics that gets no treatment in writing.
- 11y ago
stegosaurus 11y ago
The criticism of economic metrics is sound but the rest of the article reminded me of Politics and the English Language (the use of complex words where simple ones would do). On the topic of economic metrics - I believe that at this point, in the UK at least, GDP, unemployment, median wage, inflation, and possibly more indicators are irrelevant, and the focus on them misplaced, primarily because housing (capital) costs have exploded whilst other (operational) costs have shrunk.
- imtringued 11y ago
  Our current inflation metric only captures prices of consumer goods. All the inflation that was intended to happen was actually absorbed by the financial market.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    "All the inflation that was intended to happen was actually absorbed..." - do you have a source for this? That seems a whopper of an idea, and I'd like to explore it at length.
    - stegosaurus 11y ago
      >> intended to happen Not sure I can provide a source on this (it's a matter of inner workings of Government). >> inflation [...] was actually absorbed by the financial market In the UK the CPI is made up mostly of operational costs. I deliberately use the term 'operational' here as distinct from 'consumer goods' or something because I am philosophically opposed to partitioning humans into 'consumers' and 'producers'. A naive idealist. :) I would like to produce a 'teardown' of the specification at some point, but haven't motivated myself yet. I actually have a comment somewhere here on HN that has gotten lost - that's a bit of a kick up the arse for me to produce something a bit more structured like a blog. Mortage payments, both interest and capital, and rent are dealt with very badly by CPI. As I recall, they're basically not even included. I think legal fees on home purchase, maintenance, and some other related expenses are in there. At the moment, for at least the median household and probably a large percentage of them, some combination of rent, mortgage payments, or imputed interest is the highest annual expense by a large margin. In that context the CPI becomes a sort of analysis of 'inflation of items purchased by discretionary income', because it fails to account for well over half of the economy. On the ground I think this is sort of obvious, which is why I've been reluctant to produce write-ups with proper citations, because it feels a bit like preaching to the converted. (This is taking as axiomatic that housing costs are 'the financial market'. I'm considering it 'obvious', because housing is essentially the only valuable asset that the median, or even 75th percentile person owns. It functions as capital.)
rdtsc 11y ago
The most interesting part is that up until recently Capitalism and Democracy were considered (at least for propaganda purposes) to go hand in hand. That was often sold to third world countries as a package deal. "It's ok if there is a bit of brutality and less freedoms, as long as the capital revolves, because democracy will come in time, it has to, right...". But it is interesting that in cases of countries like China, Singapore, Taiwan? maybe other Asian countries have shown the two don't have to go hand in hand.
- simonh 11y ago
  For how long though? China has had a market economy, in some sectors on its economy only, for a couple of decades. The UK has been struggling with democracy since Cromwell. You can't expect them to converge in a time scale measured in less than generations. Taiwan and South Korea were both authoritarian within my lifetime. Now both are clearly dynamic democracies. Not perfect ones by any means, but dramatically transformed in a single generation. Some will change faster than others, and who can say when any given country will pass the tipping point? But can't you really authoritatively say that it's never going to happen?
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    But I don't see them converging. In other words even if takes a long time, you can estimate a bit by looking at current trends. I
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Okay, so maybe democracy is the anomaly. It maybe just happened that the American Constitution showed up around 1790, right before the Industrial Revolution. Causal? Coincidence? We dunno so much. But we can always hope that increased material prosperity leads to less oppression. China/Singapore/Taiwan are not just unspeakably evil places - that's the system they got by walking their path Perhaps this hope is in vain. But I still hold to it.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    > are not just unspeakably evil places - that's the system they got by walking their path Yap. And I think on the other side is the realization that people are not willing to trade progress, jobs, health insurance, peace, stability for democracy.
seibelj 11y ago
His comparisons of computer files to public goods are meaningless. Think of a web service. It is the same as any other type of service, physical or virtual. It does a job. It costs money to maintain. It charges money to users. Competitors can create competing services. No where in here is the web service a public good.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > No where in here is the web service a public good. It could be, it just depends on who owns the web service. Could be a corporation, could be a social-minded B corp, or could be a non-profit. https://letsencrypt.org/ https://letsencrypt.org/ is run by a non-profit, and would be considered a public service. Consider how much "profit" they're removing from the economy by offering the service for free, and yet one could argue the value of every site able to obtain an SSL cert to receive free TLS support is greater than that profit.
  - seibelj 11y ago
    The point the author was making was that computer files are fundamentally different than physical goods. But software engineers don't produce "computer files" for sale. They make products and services. Whether it's a file or not is meaningless, and the abstract idea of a "computer file" being a public good is inaccurate.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Well, it does get a bit murky. A book is a physical good. An ebook is not. But if I print an ebook out, it is now a physical good. TL;DR Things are complicated. We keep trying to find physical world analogies for the digital space, and that just isn't going to work well.
      - brbsix 11y ago
        An ebook is still a physical good in a sense. The data (or some portion of it) rests on a medium in your possesion (even if only temporarily). As we all know, there are significant costs involved in creating, advertising, distributing, maintaining said digital good. The costs and subsidies (e.g. open source software, government research, corsortiums) are just distributed in a vastly different way, so much so that to some it may seem to be a free lunch (despite being far from it).
titzer 11y ago
"Computer programs, like life itself, can be decomposed into two types of components: Loops which repeat with small variations. Rube Goldberg like processes which happen once." What in the? Any serious analysis could not possibly result from such guffaw-inducing oversimplifications.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Serious analysis can result from even more drastic simplifications. An analysis only requires as much detail as is necessary for its purposes. The same way that you don't go into registers when you try to teach functions, or binary representation of numbers if you teach people to use a calculator.
- Angostura 11y ago
  I thought its power was precisely in the extremeness of the simplification. It is interesting to think about types of software that don't fit this.
daxfohl 11y ago
> things made of atoms ... are being replaced by things made of bits Bits are made of atoms. Computing requires work in the Newtonian sense. So things aren't becoming free, they're becoming orders-of-magnitude cheaper. Big difference: in the former case money is worthless and society is unavoidably egalitarian. In the latter, one person can still be a million times richer than another.

75 points by harshreality 11y ago

> Capitalism and Communism which briefly resembled victor and vanquished, increasingly look more like Thelma and Louise; a tragic couple sent over the edge by forces beyond their control. What comes next is anyone’s guess and the world hangs in the balance. Honestly how is this entire article not an exercise in historical materialism as proposed by Marx? From Wikipedia: "Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of human societies and their development over time and was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as the materialist conception of history. It is principally a theory of history according to which the material conditions of a society's mode of production (its way of producing and reproducing the means of human existence—in Marxist terms, the union of its productive capacity and social relations of production) fundamentally determine its organisation and development. Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. Social classes and the relationship between them, along with the political structures and ways of thinking in society, are founded on and reflect contemporary economic activity." > In the first place, we should expect that because there is as yet no known alternative to market capitalism... I can't even.

nickff 11y ago

This article is based on a set of false assumptions, and is obviously written by someone ignorant of the history of economics. >"Economic theory, like the physics on which it is based, is in essence an extended exercise in perturbation theory. Solvable and simplified frictionless markets are populated by rational agents which are then all subjected to perturbations in an effort to recover economic realism. Thus while it is false that economists believe idealized models to be exactly accurate as outsiders contend, it is fair to say that they implicitly assume deviations from the ideal are manageably small." When Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations", he had no such theory of frictionless markets populated by rational actors."The Wealth of Nations" was written based on what Smith observed in the world around him, not some thought experiment, and most of the examples in the book were based on real markets and policies, such as the corn laws. Smith had in fact written another book which made it clear that he believed humans were complex moral and emotional beings. Throughout the history of economics, many (if not most) of the notable contributions were made by people addressing the situations they found themselves in, such as Bastiat responding to protectionism he saw in the French national assembly. >"Even die-hard proponents of market capitalism will cede that this public sector represents “market failure” where price and value become disconnected. Why should one elect to pay for an army when he will equally benefit from free riding on the payments of others? Thus in a traditional market economy, payment must be secured by threat of force in the form of compulsory taxes." This is another example of the author's complete misapprehension of economics. I have never heard any economist argue that all externalities should be compensated or penalized, because everything has externalities. Many have come to different conclusions based on the abundance of externalities; there are Marxists who believe the government must control everything to properly allocate resources, and there are anarcho-capitalists who believe that externalities should either be paid for voluntarily (perhaps after social pressures) or not at all. I could go on to list many of the rest of the egregious errors in this post, but wouldn't want to further tax your patience.

danharaj 11y ago
> Smith had in fact written another book which made it clear that he believed humans were complex moral and emotional beings. Theory of Moral Sentiments, right?
- nickff 11y ago
  Correct.
mthomasb 11y ago
It's worth noting that most schools of economics are heavily indebted to physics. This came from a desire to increase economics' perceived rigor, and led to the (mis)appropriation of some core concepts[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672560600708011 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672560600708011
- nickff 11y ago
  Yes, many economists aspired to make their studies more similar to physics in the early 20th century, to the point that there were interesting devices such as hydraulic computers made to model macroeconomics. Later in the 20th century, economists became more interested in statistics, and the majority of academic economists appear to remain most interested in using advanced statistics to model and predict behaviour. There are other economists who have based their study on basic assumptions and reasoning.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
It's an informative example of social signalling masquerading as analysis. There's a TED-ish evangelical enthusiasm for drawing analogies between ideas that aren't really analogous, an appeal to authority (science[tm]), some drastic oversimplifications of complex ideas, and a zinger at the end. But unless you believe that technology is an evolving lifeform that has its own parasitic political agenda - always possible, but hard to support without evidence - the problems of capitalism and technology are about opportunity distribution, not about whether software runs in a loop. There's no invisible silicon hand at work. It's still all about some people making decisions, and about other people who are excluded from that process.

samirillian 11y ago

well i liked it!

knieveltech 11y ago
I liked it as well but you have to expect a bunch of blowback in comments when you're posting material that's basically "software is eating the world".

mindslight 11y ago

TSLH - too short, left hanging. I've pondered similar diagnoses of various economic metrics. But what is his constructive outlook for what comes next? Without one, the only approach is to cling to the outgoing paradigm, because being in a better position in the old one is not likely to put one in a worse position in whatever the new one may be.

SpeakMouthWords 11y ago
I've noticed this repeatedly in these vast, sweeping future-of-the-economy outlook pieces. The writer is keen to point out everything that means that the current paradigm is bound to shift, but they never take the time to stick their neck out and postulate what it's shifting into. That said, I did enjoy this article.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dnautics 11y ago

"Price is nearly equal to value except in rare edge cases of market failure" What does this even mean? I'll give two thought examples. 1)Let's say I have a severe peanut allergy and peanuts are selling at $5.00/lb. Does the price meet the value? I.e. would I have a tricky time deciding if I would rather have the $5.00 or the pound of peanuts? Is this even true across society as an "average"? Do we believe markets are that rational, efficient and smooth? 2) over the course of the last year the price of gasoline in California has fluctuated by nearly 40%. Is this variance truly reflective of the relative value of gasoline to dollars over this time period, or is the "catastrophic market failure". How Scotsman must such a failure be?

sbuttgereit 11y ago
This. Of value to whom, for what purpose they might have, for a given time.... and given the "value" of currency at any given moment. The price at which a market clears is a reasonable fixing of the value, given all of the variables. Even then the assessment of value isn't the same for either side of a trade: the consumer considers the product to be worth more than the money paid and the producer considers the money worth more than the product: they don't agree on the value of the product. If they do... one or the other is an idiot for making the trade. A Picasso can sell at a lot of money because not because of the labor put into it, the materials it's made of, etc. It sells for a lot of money because to someone believes it's worth it.
- simonh 11y ago
  I'm sure that's correct, but it's not quantifiable. All we can really know is how much people are actually willing to pay for a thing. I agree that only puts a lower bound on the real value of that thing to them, but it's the only objective signal we have to work from.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  No, because someone believes someone else thinks it's worth it. There's a mimetic component to market economics that gets no treatment in writing.
11y ago

stegosaurus 11y ago

The criticism of economic metrics is sound but the rest of the article reminded me of Politics and the English Language (the use of complex words where simple ones would do). On the topic of economic metrics - I believe that at this point, in the UK at least, GDP, unemployment, median wage, inflation, and possibly more indicators are irrelevant, and the focus on them misplaced, primarily because housing (capital) costs have exploded whilst other (operational) costs have shrunk.

imtringued 11y ago
Our current inflation metric only captures prices of consumer goods. All the inflation that was intended to happen was actually absorbed by the financial market.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  "All the inflation that was intended to happen was actually absorbed..." - do you have a source for this? That seems a whopper of an idea, and I'd like to explore it at length.
  - stegosaurus 11y ago
    >> intended to happen Not sure I can provide a source on this (it's a matter of inner workings of Government). >> inflation [...] was actually absorbed by the financial market In the UK the CPI is made up mostly of operational costs. I deliberately use the term 'operational' here as distinct from 'consumer goods' or something because I am philosophically opposed to partitioning humans into 'consumers' and 'producers'. A naive idealist. :) I would like to produce a 'teardown' of the specification at some point, but haven't motivated myself yet. I actually have a comment somewhere here on HN that has gotten lost - that's a bit of a kick up the arse for me to produce something a bit more structured like a blog. Mortage payments, both interest and capital, and rent are dealt with very badly by CPI. As I recall, they're basically not even included. I think legal fees on home purchase, maintenance, and some other related expenses are in there. At the moment, for at least the median household and probably a large percentage of them, some combination of rent, mortgage payments, or imputed interest is the highest annual expense by a large margin. In that context the CPI becomes a sort of analysis of 'inflation of items purchased by discretionary income', because it fails to account for well over half of the economy. On the ground I think this is sort of obvious, which is why I've been reluctant to produce write-ups with proper citations, because it feels a bit like preaching to the converted. (This is taking as axiomatic that housing costs are 'the financial market'. I'm considering it 'obvious', because housing is essentially the only valuable asset that the median, or even 75th percentile person owns. It functions as capital.)

rdtsc 11y ago

The most interesting part is that up until recently Capitalism and Democracy were considered (at least for propaganda purposes) to go hand in hand. That was often sold to third world countries as a package deal. "It's ok if there is a bit of brutality and less freedoms, as long as the capital revolves, because democracy will come in time, it has to, right...". But it is interesting that in cases of countries like China, Singapore, Taiwan? maybe other Asian countries have shown the two don't have to go hand in hand.

simonh 11y ago
For how long though? China has had a market economy, in some sectors on its economy only, for a couple of decades. The UK has been struggling with democracy since Cromwell. You can't expect them to converge in a time scale measured in less than generations. Taiwan and South Korea were both authoritarian within my lifetime. Now both are clearly dynamic democracies. Not perfect ones by any means, but dramatically transformed in a single generation. Some will change faster than others, and who can say when any given country will pass the tipping point? But can't you really authoritatively say that it's never going to happen?
- rdtsc 11y ago
  But I don't see them converging. In other words even if takes a long time, you can estimate a bit by looking at current trends. I
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Okay, so maybe democracy is the anomaly. It maybe just happened that the American Constitution showed up around 1790, right before the Industrial Revolution. Causal? Coincidence? We dunno so much. But we can always hope that increased material prosperity leads to less oppression. China/Singapore/Taiwan are not just unspeakably evil places - that's the system they got by walking their path Perhaps this hope is in vain. But I still hold to it.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > are not just unspeakably evil places - that's the system they got by walking their path Yap. And I think on the other side is the realization that people are not willing to trade progress, jobs, health insurance, peace, stability for democracy.

seibelj 11y ago

His comparisons of computer files to public goods are meaningless. Think of a web service. It is the same as any other type of service, physical or virtual. It does a job. It costs money to maintain. It charges money to users. Competitors can create competing services. No where in here is the web service a public good.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> No where in here is the web service a public good. It could be, it just depends on who owns the web service. Could be a corporation, could be a social-minded B corp, or could be a non-profit. https://letsencrypt.org/ https://letsencrypt.org/ is run by a non-profit, and would be considered a public service. Consider how much "profit" they're removing from the economy by offering the service for free, and yet one could argue the value of every site able to obtain an SSL cert to receive free TLS support is greater than that profit.
- seibelj 11y ago
  The point the author was making was that computer files are fundamentally different than physical goods. But software engineers don't produce "computer files" for sale. They make products and services. Whether it's a file or not is meaningless, and the abstract idea of a "computer file" being a public good is inaccurate.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Well, it does get a bit murky. A book is a physical good. An ebook is not. But if I print an ebook out, it is now a physical good. TL;DR Things are complicated. We keep trying to find physical world analogies for the digital space, and that just isn't going to work well.
    - brbsix 11y ago
      An ebook is still a physical good in a sense. The data (or some portion of it) rests on a medium in your possesion (even if only temporarily). As we all know, there are significant costs involved in creating, advertising, distributing, maintaining said digital good. The costs and subsidies (e.g. open source software, government research, corsortiums) are just distributed in a vastly different way, so much so that to some it may seem to be a free lunch (despite being far from it).

titzer 11y ago

"Computer programs, like life itself, can be decomposed into two types of components: Loops which repeat with small variations. Rube Goldberg like processes which happen once." What in the? Any serious analysis could not possibly result from such guffaw-inducing oversimplifications.

coldtea 11y ago
Serious analysis can result from even more drastic simplifications. An analysis only requires as much detail as is necessary for its purposes. The same way that you don't go into registers when you try to teach functions, or binary representation of numbers if you teach people to use a calculator.
Angostura 11y ago
I thought its power was precisely in the extremeness of the simplification. It is interesting to think about types of software that don't fit this.

daxfohl 11y ago

> things made of atoms ... are being replaced by things made of bits Bits are made of atoms. Computing requires work in the Newtonian sense. So things aren't becoming free, they're becoming orders-of-magnitude cheaper. Big difference: in the former case money is worthless and society is unavoidably egalitarian. In the latter, one person can still be a million times richer than another.