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"today's white collar laborers are capturing one or two orders of magnitude less of the value they're creating than the blue collar workers of 1990's detroit."

"today's white collar laborers are capturing one or two orders of magnitude less of the value they're creating than the blue collar workers of 1990's detroit." Which is why the problems associated are much more about the macro-economy than they are about silicon valley. The middle class is being gutted before our very eyes while the elite gobble up more and more of the "created value" through the power of technology.

WalterBright 10y ago
Wealth isn't zero sum. Creating something of value doesn't take anything away from anyone else.
- Decade 10y ago
  Well, it is zero sum, but the actual limits are unimaginably vast. Though, there is a very high energy barrier to exploiting the resources of the entire universe. Let’s at least get to Mars, first. There’s the matter of supply and demand. Nothing comes out of nowhere. When you create a thing, you demand some resources, and then the next person has to pay more for the same resource. Even for a creative output from yourself, you need food and shelter. (And what a controversy shelter has become, in the San Francisco Bay Area.) In the ideal case, the resources you consume enable you to create more wealth than you cost to the rest of society, and thus society benefits. (Not the now homeless person in San Francisco, though.) Technology is sort of weird in that consumption actually decreases costs, in some situations. The semiconductor companies are paying exponentially increasing costs for state of the art fabs, and they need to keep the fabs selling at peak capacity to make a profit. Also, software is merely knowledge, with very low reproduction costs, so a small production of software can be consumed on a vast scale across the planet, and facilitate the production of more software, enriching people’s lives. This does not make it easy to reward the creators fairly.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >Wealth isn't zero sum. It is sometimes. The profits "earned" by Wall Street are nearly always zero sum, for instance. They are not making other people richer.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    Free market transactions are not zero-sum because each party feels they gain by making the trade (else they would not trade). Zero sum transactions are things like theft, any transaction with an unwilling party.
    - koverstreet 10y ago
      Or fraud. Or monopolies and cartels collecting rents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
- Noos 10y ago
  It depends on the business. A lot of businesses create things that do take away from other people. Amazon destroyed the local bookstore, for one. In a sense, wealth is spread through redundancy and waste, and the more efficient people get the less wealth. My home town going from three regional retail chains to a single walmart led to the destruction of plenty of wealth through efficiency. edit: it depends really too what we mean by wealth. If we define wealth as being employed, good lord wealth is zero sum. The amount of jobs the modern tech sector has created has been pitiful, with poorer compensation than many unskilled fields. If it means by possessing things, its a mixed blessing.Plenty of free or low cost content, though large staple goods like houses or cars are climbing up there. Also, Martin Ford mentions something called the lights in the tunnel problem. Imagine a tunnel full of lights that represent the wealth of people. In the modern world, a handful of lights shine intensely bright, while increasingly more are dark, dim, or low-intensity. But the tunnel is dark, because a handful of lights can't generate enough light to make it illuminated. He used it in context of automation, but this is modern wealth creation, and eventually it will reach the point where the ones controlling the wealth have done so by dimming so many people that the tunnel goes dark.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    > My home town going from three regional retail chains to a single walmart led to the destruction of plenty of wealth through efficiency. Take into account the increase in wealth of all the customers (as they get more for their money).

WalterBright 10y ago

Wealth isn't zero sum. Creating something of value doesn't take anything away from anyone else.

Decade 10y ago
Well, it is zero sum, but the actual limits are unimaginably vast. Though, there is a very high energy barrier to exploiting the resources of the entire universe. Let’s at least get to Mars, first. There’s the matter of supply and demand. Nothing comes out of nowhere. When you create a thing, you demand some resources, and then the next person has to pay more for the same resource. Even for a creative output from yourself, you need food and shelter. (And what a controversy shelter has become, in the San Francisco Bay Area.) In the ideal case, the resources you consume enable you to create more wealth than you cost to the rest of society, and thus society benefits. (Not the now homeless person in San Francisco, though.) Technology is sort of weird in that consumption actually decreases costs, in some situations. The semiconductor companies are paying exponentially increasing costs for state of the art fabs, and they need to keep the fabs selling at peak capacity to make a profit. Also, software is merely knowledge, with very low reproduction costs, so a small production of software can be consumed on a vast scale across the planet, and facilitate the production of more software, enriching people’s lives. This does not make it easy to reward the creators fairly.
crdoconnor 10y ago
>Wealth isn't zero sum. It is sometimes. The profits "earned" by Wall Street are nearly always zero sum, for instance. They are not making other people richer.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  Free market transactions are not zero-sum because each party feels they gain by making the trade (else they would not trade). Zero sum transactions are things like theft, any transaction with an unwilling party.
  - koverstreet 10y ago
    Or fraud. Or monopolies and cartels collecting rents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
Noos 10y ago
It depends on the business. A lot of businesses create things that do take away from other people. Amazon destroyed the local bookstore, for one. In a sense, wealth is spread through redundancy and waste, and the more efficient people get the less wealth. My home town going from three regional retail chains to a single walmart led to the destruction of plenty of wealth through efficiency. edit: it depends really too what we mean by wealth. If we define wealth as being employed, good lord wealth is zero sum. The amount of jobs the modern tech sector has created has been pitiful, with poorer compensation than many unskilled fields. If it means by possessing things, its a mixed blessing.Plenty of free or low cost content, though large staple goods like houses or cars are climbing up there. Also, Martin Ford mentions something called the lights in the tunnel problem. Imagine a tunnel full of lights that represent the wealth of people. In the modern world, a handful of lights shine intensely bright, while increasingly more are dark, dim, or low-intensity. But the tunnel is dark, because a handful of lights can't generate enough light to make it illuminated. He used it in context of automation, but this is modern wealth creation, and eventually it will reach the point where the ones controlling the wealth have done so by dimming so many people that the tunnel goes dark.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > My home town going from three regional retail chains to a single walmart led to the destruction of plenty of wealth through efficiency. Take into account the increase in wealth of all the customers (as they get more for their money).