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Yeah, I've been thinking lately as well, why are we doing that? I mean as a society? (I recall a phrase said by someone, that we are consciously building a futu

Yeah, I've been thinking lately as well, why are we doing that? I mean as a society? (I recall a phrase said by someone, that we are consciously building a future nobody wants to live in.) What exactly are we getting from that? Ultra-rich, namely car companies owners and shareholders, will become even more rich. (Why are they doing it, by the way, don't they have enough super-cars, mansions, yachts already?) What am I getting from it? Basic goods will become 7% cheaper? Who needs that? I am happy with current prices. And then dozens if not hundreds of millions people worldwide will lose their jobs and even more the very means for their existence. What will be the impact on their families, communities? I may be terribly wrong but it seems like yet another round of value extraction by a small cohort of ultra-rich from general society. There are technologies that are genuinely useful, like space exploration, scientific projects, disease fighting, urban development, planetary computer network, and so on. And there are "comfort gimmicks" like refined sugar (and sugary drinks), tobacco, toasters, etc. that produce effects from which people living consciously and healthy would want to get rid of. And that are propelled only by "economic factors". Which are a paperclip maximizer.

kbenson 10y ago
In what way is this different than the industrial revolution? Are we, as a world, wallowing in relatively more people starving and in poverty than ever before? Why is this different?
- beyondcompute 10y ago
  Well, I still believe that world became better than it was: https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_makes_the_case_for_optimism?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_makes_the_case_for... And, of course, it all is just a food for thought, doesn't necessarily mean we need to prohibit sales of self-driving vehicles (except for special technical applications). But still we have to understand that it's our conscious effort, not just the "natural force of Progress". As a society we should intervene and regulate things, and make that decision to steer the economic trends in ways harmonious with society's needs. As a related thought, I think, Jaron Lanier puts it nicely: https://youtu.be/XdEuII9cv-U?t=11m37s https://youtu.be/XdEuII9cv-U?t=11m37s
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    Would you rather have Donald Trump intervening to steer economic trends in harmonious ways, or would you rather trust the natural force of progress?
    - beyondcompute 10y ago
      First of all, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma Second of all government intervention already does lots of cool things for us: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-06-19/who-created-the-iphone-apple-or-the-government- https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-06-19/who-creat... But we don't appreciate it because we're being fooled into "libertarian dream" by rich who want to get rid of our control: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-... One more time, it's not in reality a "natural force". It's company owners and their severely overworked cliques consciously plan to put hundreds of millions people out of jobs to become personally more prosperous and they tell you that it's a "natural force".
  - internaut 10y ago
    > But still we have to understand that it's our conscious effort, not just the "natural force of Progress". Thank you, yes. That so many people in the 'intelligentsia' seem to think it all happens automatically is a really dangerous meme. It is a big part of why so many TED talks are kind of fraudulent. Society has to fix complex problems, but first the people in it have to recognize problems are actually real instead of pretending everything's great. The risk of being 'glamoured' (like the bewitching of the Lords and Ladies in Terry Pratchett's books) is real. You have to either acclimate in places that that live outside of the narrative (the flyover states, the continent of Africa), or use your imagination. Otherwise you risk being in an optimism bubble with your contemporaries, much as people bemoaning the world tend to wind up in bars together. It is super important to understand that reversals in fortune occur starting at the peripheral of an economic system rather than at the heartland, at the city. That is why whole countries are going into disrepair while almost nobody in the West notices. They just think it is shit because it was always (relatively) shit in the 3rd world or in the 'stix', but it is at the peripheral that things start to break down, that models start to not correspond to reality!
- gwright 10y ago
  It is certainly worth talking about how to make things better, but all the stats I've ever seen indicate that the global incidence of poverty has been decreasing, not increasing. For example, from: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview > According to the most recent estimates, in 2012, 12.7 percent of the world’s population lived at or below $1.90 a day. That’s down from 37 percent in 1990 and 44 percent in 1981.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Yes, that's the conclusion I was hoping people would come to if they looked at the stats. :)
ardit33 10y ago
I am pretty sure Luddites had very similar arguments back in the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite If you look back at it, they were on the wrong side of history/argument. Automation is going to keep going, no matter what, and it is mostly a good thing. Yes, we might have few years of uneasy adjustment times, but things will sort themselves out on the long run. Think of it, one modern excavator is much better than 50 people digging ditches. One operator with one machine replaced 50 manual workers, yet the world didn't end, but I think it got better over time* *Whoever protects manual labour vs machines, hasn't lived through deep poor communism. Most eastern Europe didn't have the capital or means to have productive machines in the workplaces, and they replaced them with human labour. Over time the stark differences between west and east became very apparent.
- mavhc 10y ago
  Viewed from another perspective the Luddites were self employed, worked from home, and set their own hours. They didn't want to work 8 to 8 in a dangerous factory for a rich guy.
  - DigitalJack 10y ago
    Also, they were lucky to live past 40.
- internaut 10y ago
  > . Automation is going to keep going, no matter what This is a lie. Sooner or later progress will stop, it is just a matter of when, not if. All of human history illustrates this point. We are not about to be the exception.
  - internaut 10y ago
    Just a few hours ago this was submitted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525 The first paragraph reads: "One central fact about the global economy lurks just beneath the year’s remarkable headlines: Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than it has been in the lifetime of most people on earth." We can extend our duration of economic success for a very long time, but not for forever. At some point we go dark. It has happened to every civilization in history, slowly or suddenly, primitive or sophisticated, for what appears to be about a million different reasons. I don't know whether this time it is 'The Big One', but it is folly to assume it shall never occur because we're more sophisticated than before. The same was true of every civilization before us. Other than the Net I don't think there's a single institution we have that some other former civilization had in some way on a smaller scale.
WillPostForFood 10y ago
7% cheaper, repeated over and over is meaningful. 1n 1900, people had to spend 43% of their income on food, now it is 13%. They spent 12% of their income on clothing, now it is 4%. Basic goods getting cheaper particularly helps poorer people. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-amer...
- internaut 10y ago
  Food has become more expensive recently. Basic materials e.g. timber, nails, screws, stuff you use to build houses, have all become more expensive recently, despite a dramatic decline in house production (in my country at least). Seems like few people are talking about this and it really annoys me. No, things are not getting better and better. Many trends are going into reverse but are not being talked about. They were getting better and better. Most of those trends stop in the early 70s or after 2008, especially basic needs like medicine and shelter.
  - 3adawi 10y ago
    usually people took about trends that is seen in decades, not 'recently' where recently here means a couple of years. If you look at food expenditure as a percentage in the 90s and now, there has been progress.
  - spectrum1234 10y ago
    Your timeframe is way too short. You are cherry picking.
    - internaut 10y ago
      Real median wages haven't increased for about four decades. Real energy prices have been high since the existence of OPEC with only some relief very recently. This isn't cherrypicking. That's half a lifetime.
JBReefer 10y ago
Goods becoming 7% cheaper means everyone on Earth is 7% wealthier. You might be happy with current prices, but very poor people definitely aren't.
- beyondcompute 10y ago
  No, of course, no. Goods becoming cheaper means people who sell goods at "adequate prices" will go out of business. Namely, local manufacturers, family businesses, people who pay decent sick leaves, people who obsess over sustainability. Your desire to save that 10% on a pack of potato chips means that instead of a neighboring guy who works in this shop for his entire life, who smiles to you, who knows what you want, you get these cold supermarkets with miserable people working like robots to make ends barely meet. Cheap things mean children working in China to make junk that goes to waste pretty soon, etc. Our obsession with unthoughtful saving means we're stealing pennies from our own future.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
DigitalJack 10y ago
I guess you have to ask yourself what the point of life is. If it's just to keep busy, then yeah, we should stop technological advancement.
vacri 10y ago
> There are technologies that are genuinely useful, like space exploration vs > And there are "comfort gimmicks" like ... toasters ??? One of these things is more important and useful to the ordinary person's life than the other, and it's not throwing computers at the stars.
WalterBright 10y ago
> 7% cheaper Meaning all Americans get a 7% raise.

kbenson 10y ago

In what way is this different than the industrial revolution? Are we, as a world, wallowing in relatively more people starving and in poverty than ever before? Why is this different?

beyondcompute 10y ago
Well, I still believe that world became better than it was: https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_makes_the_case_for_optimism?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_makes_the_case_for... And, of course, it all is just a food for thought, doesn't necessarily mean we need to prohibit sales of self-driving vehicles (except for special technical applications). But still we have to understand that it's our conscious effort, not just the "natural force of Progress". As a society we should intervene and regulate things, and make that decision to steer the economic trends in ways harmonious with society's needs. As a related thought, I think, Jaron Lanier puts it nicely: https://youtu.be/XdEuII9cv-U?t=11m37s https://youtu.be/XdEuII9cv-U?t=11m37s
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  Would you rather have Donald Trump intervening to steer economic trends in harmonious ways, or would you rather trust the natural force of progress?
  - beyondcompute 10y ago
    First of all, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma Second of all government intervention already does lots of cool things for us: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-06-19/who-created-the-iphone-apple-or-the-government- https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-06-19/who-creat... But we don't appreciate it because we're being fooled into "libertarian dream" by rich who want to get rid of our control: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-... One more time, it's not in reality a "natural force". It's company owners and their severely overworked cliques consciously plan to put hundreds of millions people out of jobs to become personally more prosperous and they tell you that it's a "natural force".
- internaut 10y ago
  > But still we have to understand that it's our conscious effort, not just the "natural force of Progress". Thank you, yes. That so many people in the 'intelligentsia' seem to think it all happens automatically is a really dangerous meme. It is a big part of why so many TED talks are kind of fraudulent. Society has to fix complex problems, but first the people in it have to recognize problems are actually real instead of pretending everything's great. The risk of being 'glamoured' (like the bewitching of the Lords and Ladies in Terry Pratchett's books) is real. You have to either acclimate in places that that live outside of the narrative (the flyover states, the continent of Africa), or use your imagination. Otherwise you risk being in an optimism bubble with your contemporaries, much as people bemoaning the world tend to wind up in bars together. It is super important to understand that reversals in fortune occur starting at the peripheral of an economic system rather than at the heartland, at the city. That is why whole countries are going into disrepair while almost nobody in the West notices. They just think it is shit because it was always (relatively) shit in the 3rd world or in the 'stix', but it is at the peripheral that things start to break down, that models start to not correspond to reality!
gwright 10y ago
It is certainly worth talking about how to make things better, but all the stats I've ever seen indicate that the global incidence of poverty has been decreasing, not increasing. For example, from: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview > According to the most recent estimates, in 2012, 12.7 percent of the world’s population lived at or below $1.90 a day. That’s down from 37 percent in 1990 and 44 percent in 1981.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Yes, that's the conclusion I was hoping people would come to if they looked at the stats. :)

ardit33 10y ago

I am pretty sure Luddites had very similar arguments back in the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite If you look back at it, they were on the wrong side of history/argument. Automation is going to keep going, no matter what, and it is mostly a good thing. Yes, we might have few years of uneasy adjustment times, but things will sort themselves out on the long run. Think of it, one modern excavator is much better than 50 people digging ditches. One operator with one machine replaced 50 manual workers, yet the world didn't end, but I think it got better over time* *Whoever protects manual labour vs machines, hasn't lived through deep poor communism. Most eastern Europe didn't have the capital or means to have productive machines in the workplaces, and they replaced them with human labour. Over time the stark differences between west and east became very apparent.

mavhc 10y ago
Viewed from another perspective the Luddites were self employed, worked from home, and set their own hours. They didn't want to work 8 to 8 in a dangerous factory for a rich guy.
- DigitalJack 10y ago
  Also, they were lucky to live past 40.
internaut 10y ago
> . Automation is going to keep going, no matter what This is a lie. Sooner or later progress will stop, it is just a matter of when, not if. All of human history illustrates this point. We are not about to be the exception.
- internaut 10y ago
  Just a few hours ago this was submitted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525 The first paragraph reads: "One central fact about the global economy lurks just beneath the year’s remarkable headlines: Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than it has been in the lifetime of most people on earth." We can extend our duration of economic success for a very long time, but not for forever. At some point we go dark. It has happened to every civilization in history, slowly or suddenly, primitive or sophisticated, for what appears to be about a million different reasons. I don't know whether this time it is 'The Big One', but it is folly to assume it shall never occur because we're more sophisticated than before. The same was true of every civilization before us. Other than the Net I don't think there's a single institution we have that some other former civilization had in some way on a smaller scale.

WillPostForFood 10y ago

7% cheaper, repeated over and over is meaningful. 1n 1900, people had to spend 43% of their income on food, now it is 13%. They spent 12% of their income on clothing, now it is 4%. Basic goods getting cheaper particularly helps poorer people. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-amer...

internaut 10y ago
Food has become more expensive recently. Basic materials e.g. timber, nails, screws, stuff you use to build houses, have all become more expensive recently, despite a dramatic decline in house production (in my country at least). Seems like few people are talking about this and it really annoys me. No, things are not getting better and better. Many trends are going into reverse but are not being talked about. They were getting better and better. Most of those trends stop in the early 70s or after 2008, especially basic needs like medicine and shelter.
- 3adawi 10y ago
  usually people took about trends that is seen in decades, not 'recently' where recently here means a couple of years. If you look at food expenditure as a percentage in the 90s and now, there has been progress.
- spectrum1234 10y ago
  Your timeframe is way too short. You are cherry picking.
  - internaut 10y ago
    Real median wages haven't increased for about four decades. Real energy prices have been high since the existence of OPEC with only some relief very recently. This isn't cherrypicking. That's half a lifetime.

JBReefer 10y ago

Goods becoming 7% cheaper means everyone on Earth is 7% wealthier. You might be happy with current prices, but very poor people definitely aren't.

beyondcompute 10y ago
No, of course, no. Goods becoming cheaper means people who sell goods at "adequate prices" will go out of business. Namely, local manufacturers, family businesses, people who pay decent sick leaves, people who obsess over sustainability. Your desire to save that 10% on a pack of potato chips means that instead of a neighboring guy who works in this shop for his entire life, who smiles to you, who knows what you want, you get these cold supermarkets with miserable people working like robots to make ends barely meet. Cheap things mean children working in China to make junk that goes to waste pretty soon, etc. Our obsession with unthoughtful saving means we're stealing pennies from our own future.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

DigitalJack 10y ago

I guess you have to ask yourself what the point of life is. If it's just to keep busy, then yeah, we should stop technological advancement.

vacri 10y ago

> There are technologies that are genuinely useful, like space exploration vs > And there are "comfort gimmicks" like ... toasters ??? One of these things is more important and useful to the ordinary person's life than the other, and it's not throwing computers at the stars.

WalterBright 10y ago

> 7% cheaper Meaning all Americans get a 7% raise.