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"It feels like the biggest concentration of assholery in the entire US." I guess you haven't been to San Francisco. Take what you hate about New York, and wrap
by timr 10y ago
"It feels like the biggest concentration of assholery in the entire US."
I guess you haven't been to San Francisco. Take what you hate about New York, and wrap it with a thick layer of smug, futurist, "we're saving the world" self-adulation. At least in the 80s, the leveraged buyout assholes weren't trying to convince people that they were making the world a better place. Gordon Gekko was a satire. Now he's a "growth hacker" at a unicorn.
I have never in my life met so many people who are excited about the idea of creating systemic unemployment as I have since living in bubble SF. Self-driving cars? Man...when Uber can fire all of those profit-sucking drivers, we'll be living the dream, won't we? And anyone who questions the premise of our glorious, pure capitalist future gets:
"If people are riding in Ubers and if people are working for Uber, then, hey, maybe it's not such a terrible "soul-sucking" idea."
OK seriously, dear HN: just because consumers want something doesn't make it good. Consumers want dirt cheap electronics, but don't want to think about the Chinese kid who is getting lead poisoning from his "side hustle" of pulling e-waste apart with his teeth. Consumers want to pay a bit less for their burrito, but not worry about the illegal immigrants who cooked it, and are being evicted from their five-man hovel in the Mission to make room for luxury condos. Capitalism doesn't optimize for "good". It optimizes for profit.
Shitty jobs have always existed. These "gig economy" companies are celebrating this lifestyle, and trying to make it more prevalent and less lucrative for the labor. That's what sucks.
- dvt 10y ago> OK seriously, dear HN: just because consumers want something doesn't make it good. Consumers want dirt cheap electronics, but don't want to think about the Chinese kid who is getting lead poisoning from his "side hustle" of pulling e-waste apart with his teeth. Consumers want to pay a bit less for their burrito, but not worry about the illegal immigrants who cooked it, and are being evicted from their five-man hovel in the Mission to make room for luxury condos. Capitalism doesn't optimize for "good". It optimizes for profit. I think that's really worth thinking about. And I guess that was kind of my original point. Startups like Seamless are around because everyone in NYC is kind of a dick, maybe self-absorbed, etc. We should focus fixing that root problem, instead of solving it with some panacea.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoWe also have regulations because consumers do care about that kid, they just don't have the resources to care every time they make a purchase. Which is why it's so problematic corporations violate regulations, either by outsourcing the violation or outright flouting the law. It's literally exploiting the limited computational resources of consumers to bypass their expressed wishes.