7 ms·

Is it bad if they just fall by the wayside? If one puts forth zero effort, they should get zero reward.

by lwhalen 9y ago

gervase 9y ago
What if they exert maximal effort, but achieve zero results?
- whb07 9y ago
  Kind of like any venture where you try as hard as possible and yet fail ? Kind of like an athlete in the olympics who ends up losing by a fraction of a second? Idk, they don’t get the gold right?
  - txsh 9y ago
    So, in your world, the best software developer gets paid the most (gold), the second best gets paid less (silver), the third best gets paid the least (bronze), and everybody else works as slaves because they're losers.
    - pjmorris 9y ago
      "As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired." - from Glengarry Glen Ross
    - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
      There's capitalism in a nutshell. Except first prize was granted by your parents and upbringing. Second prize was partially because of parents and upbringing, but with a bit more luck. And bronze? Yeah, well they're just lazy and bad and they deserve what little they have - cause the Gold and Silver earned what they have.
      - fastball 9y ago
        And this goes all the way back to the proverbial Adam and Eve? Don't we then all have the same ancestors and therefore all equal opportunity?
        crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        1. I didn't bring religion into this. You did. 2. I reject to what amounts to a nice story with no basis in fact. If I remember my judeao-christian studies, the woman was less than the man in those stories. 3. It is evident that even being born, not all babies are equal. And that's before we consider socioeconomic status. Should humans be considered as equal? Of course. However its quite easily demonstrated that people aren't. This is reductio ad absurdio.
        prawn 9y ago
        I think you can ignore the religious mention and in good-faith (ha!) take their point to be that we ultimately have common ancestors. Then respond that your family has a strong effect but it's not the only one.
        s73v3r_ 9y ago
        "Don't we then all have the same ancestors and therefore all equal opportunity?" Just about every study done on the subject shows that the family you're born into has a HUGE effect on how successful you'll be in life.
        fastball 9y ago
        Yes, and presumably some parents work hard to give their children a good future and some do not. Is this irrelevant? Why is it not acceptable for someone that had better parents to do better?
        crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        That's because children are seen as innocent. We can blame someone in poverty of "making bad choices"... What choice is there for a newborn to make bad choices? Yet, we have little issue,society speaking, condemning a baby and their family to a life of poverty to continue that cycle. Or should we say that the newborn/baby deserves lack of medical care, substandard food or hunger,substandard housing, less/lacking education? If you believe they deserve that, can you explain what actions a baby can do differently?
    - dang 9y ago
      Could you please not post like this? It leads to low-quality flamewars, and there's specifically a guideline against it: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
chipperyman573 9y ago
No, if you could guarantee that only people who contribute nothing would be affected by this, and there would be no edge cases (people with disabilities, etc) Also, "zero effort" is subjective - is playing video games all day zero effort? I would say so, but some Twitch streamers would disagree.
njarboe 9y ago
"fall by the wayside" is a bit hand wavy. Do you mean they become poor, broke, with nothing to loose, ripe for a revolution? Or that they are killed by automated drones when they come over the fence of your/my/our/their gated community?
- lwhalen 9y ago
  if they were prone to revolution, you'd think "get a danged job" would be the path of least resistance (pun fully intended).
  - mathgladiator 9y ago
    I've been thinking about this with respect to America's future. Basically, suppose people want a revolution. Well, that would require a competent leader to make the mob effective. This is the rub, if you have leadership skills then you make bank and would be in 'the system'.
    - ACow_Adonis 9y ago
      The implicit assumption here is that American firms actually higher leaders based on some kind of objective leadership skills (and that the market will suck them all up). I'm guessing whoever wrote this hasn't grown up poor/discriminated against, didn't beat their peers and find themselves never-the-less judged/ousted because they "weren't of the right background/proper means/cultural fit". And remember, all it takes is a few key leaders. And that includes those who may have been part of the system but were unjustly ousted...(or those who just think they are getting a wiff of the winds of change and want to be on the right side) /I'm not making any actual prediction of revolution the US incidentally. I'd be inclined against any theories of imminent revolution. Just pointing out that simple theories of "it wouldn't happen here because of our fake-meritocracy" are pretty off the mark.
      - mathgladiator 9y ago
        There are objective things like 'people follow you' Why are you making assumptions about me? What if leadership isn't about beating your peers, but about using influence to bring people together?
ACow_Adonis 9y ago
It never ceases to amaze me how most people in capitalist (all) countries continue to work under the folk-belief of a labor theory of value. How much effort you put in has, at best, a second order relation to reward. Far stronger effects are supply, demand, mechanism of action, distribution of initial resources, and social factors.
- ixtli 9y ago
  It's pretty shocking. What becomes _infuriating_ is when they say this while also defending their right to own the product of that labor because they were there first or happened to present capital in the right place at the right time.
- jadedhacker 9y ago
  I thought the idea of a labor theory of value wasn't related to the actual effort you put in, but more that value is related to how much average social labor would be currently invested to acquire or produce something. So if you have a machine you can pull a lever to produce 10 items in 1 second, each of those items acquires 1/10th of a human-second of value. I get though that those other conditions matter more in terms of the actual price though. Marx distinguished between "value", "use-value", and "exchange-value", the latter being price, the second being required for value or exchange value, and the first being used as the basis of comparison between goods. I took it to mean that exchange value is like temperature while value is like heat. Can you elaborate? I'd like to know more about how these different theories interact.
jadedhacker 9y ago
It sounds like you are not a fan of landlords or am I misunderstanding something.
- mathgladiator 9y ago
  Setting up a rental is actually a lot of work that is upfront and has a ton of risk. You also need to pay taxes, so it's not based on effort at steady state. Steady state is based on cashflow management.
  - jadedhacker 9y ago
    This ignores that major developers can absorb a lot of risk and aggregate. It also ignores that foreclosures on ordinary people can be snapped up by banks and developers. It also ignores that tax abatements are very popular and often extremely undeserving. Near where I live, tax abatements are granted regularly and come out of the school budget. If the housing market keeps going up, where's the risk? You'd have to be the dumbest man in NYC real estate to lose money like the president's son-in-law. Small time landlords are a slightly different ballgame, but it's still bizarre that we allow individuals to speculate on where people live and and extract money from the less wealthy in this fashion. EDIT: Also, what other job requires work up-front, but then nearly none? Landlords are famous for terrible upkeep. Even in communities where problems are generally fixed, most of the time, the landlord just collects a check until a problem pops up. They only have to work for rare serious problems and for managing move-in move-out. EDIT2: The craziest thing is that we see that they do this and still collect 25%+ of ordinary people's incomes for an invisible service that is merely holding intellectual property. It's as though people pay to live in a castle keep with no services, pay the local lord, and justify giving 25%+ taxes on top of what you give to the actual democratic government (typically less to much less) because the lord is somehow a great symbol of the economic system.
    - refurb 9y ago
      I'd suggest you do some reading on investing in and managing real estate. It's a lot of work with a lot of risk.
prawn 9y ago
How do you feel about China's forays into social scoring that limits the choices available to those with indiscretions (unpaid fines, etc). They can't fly, access particular services, etc. If the limitations/rewards vary based on who is in power, I can see that becoming quickly challenging. Internet access could be deemed a reward, for example.

Is it bad if they just fall by the wayside? If one puts forth zero effort, they should get zero reward.

gervase 9y ago

What if they exert maximal effort, but achieve zero results?

whb07 9y ago
Kind of like any venture where you try as hard as possible and yet fail ? Kind of like an athlete in the olympics who ends up losing by a fraction of a second? Idk, they don’t get the gold right?
- txsh 9y ago
  So, in your world, the best software developer gets paid the most (gold), the second best gets paid less (silver), the third best gets paid the least (bronze), and everybody else works as slaves because they're losers.
  - pjmorris 9y ago
    "As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired." - from Glengarry Glen Ross
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    There's capitalism in a nutshell. Except first prize was granted by your parents and upbringing. Second prize was partially because of parents and upbringing, but with a bit more luck. And bronze? Yeah, well they're just lazy and bad and they deserve what little they have - cause the Gold and Silver earned what they have.
    - fastball 9y ago
      And this goes all the way back to the proverbial Adam and Eve? Don't we then all have the same ancestors and therefore all equal opportunity?
      - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        1. I didn't bring religion into this. You did. 2. I reject to what amounts to a nice story with no basis in fact. If I remember my judeao-christian studies, the woman was less than the man in those stories. 3. It is evident that even being born, not all babies are equal. And that's before we consider socioeconomic status. Should humans be considered as equal? Of course. However its quite easily demonstrated that people aren't. This is reductio ad absurdio.
        prawn 9y ago
        I think you can ignore the religious mention and in good-faith (ha!) take their point to be that we ultimately have common ancestors. Then respond that your family has a strong effect but it's not the only one.
      - s73v3r_ 9y ago
        "Don't we then all have the same ancestors and therefore all equal opportunity?" Just about every study done on the subject shows that the family you're born into has a HUGE effect on how successful you'll be in life.
        fastball 9y ago
        Yes, and presumably some parents work hard to give their children a good future and some do not. Is this irrelevant? Why is it not acceptable for someone that had better parents to do better?
        crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        That's because children are seen as innocent. We can blame someone in poverty of "making bad choices"... What choice is there for a newborn to make bad choices? Yet, we have little issue,society speaking, condemning a baby and their family to a life of poverty to continue that cycle. Or should we say that the newborn/baby deserves lack of medical care, substandard food or hunger,substandard housing, less/lacking education? If you believe they deserve that, can you explain what actions a baby can do differently?
  - dang 9y ago
    Could you please not post like this? It leads to low-quality flamewars, and there's specifically a guideline against it: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

chipperyman573 9y ago

No, if you could guarantee that only people who contribute nothing would be affected by this, and there would be no edge cases (people with disabilities, etc) Also, "zero effort" is subjective - is playing video games all day zero effort? I would say so, but some Twitch streamers would disagree.

njarboe 9y ago

"fall by the wayside" is a bit hand wavy. Do you mean they become poor, broke, with nothing to loose, ripe for a revolution? Or that they are killed by automated drones when they come over the fence of your/my/our/their gated community?

lwhalen 9y ago
if they were prone to revolution, you'd think "get a danged job" would be the path of least resistance (pun fully intended).
- mathgladiator 9y ago
  I've been thinking about this with respect to America's future. Basically, suppose people want a revolution. Well, that would require a competent leader to make the mob effective. This is the rub, if you have leadership skills then you make bank and would be in 'the system'.
  - ACow_Adonis 9y ago
    The implicit assumption here is that American firms actually higher leaders based on some kind of objective leadership skills (and that the market will suck them all up). I'm guessing whoever wrote this hasn't grown up poor/discriminated against, didn't beat their peers and find themselves never-the-less judged/ousted because they "weren't of the right background/proper means/cultural fit". And remember, all it takes is a few key leaders. And that includes those who may have been part of the system but were unjustly ousted...(or those who just think they are getting a wiff of the winds of change and want to be on the right side) /I'm not making any actual prediction of revolution the US incidentally. I'd be inclined against any theories of imminent revolution. Just pointing out that simple theories of "it wouldn't happen here because of our fake-meritocracy" are pretty off the mark.
    - mathgladiator 9y ago
      There are objective things like 'people follow you' Why are you making assumptions about me? What if leadership isn't about beating your peers, but about using influence to bring people together?

ACow_Adonis 9y ago

It never ceases to amaze me how most people in capitalist (all) countries continue to work under the folk-belief of a labor theory of value. How much effort you put in has, at best, a second order relation to reward. Far stronger effects are supply, demand, mechanism of action, distribution of initial resources, and social factors.

ixtli 9y ago
It's pretty shocking. What becomes _infuriating_ is when they say this while also defending their right to own the product of that labor because they were there first or happened to present capital in the right place at the right time.
jadedhacker 9y ago
I thought the idea of a labor theory of value wasn't related to the actual effort you put in, but more that value is related to how much average social labor would be currently invested to acquire or produce something. So if you have a machine you can pull a lever to produce 10 items in 1 second, each of those items acquires 1/10th of a human-second of value. I get though that those other conditions matter more in terms of the actual price though. Marx distinguished between "value", "use-value", and "exchange-value", the latter being price, the second being required for value or exchange value, and the first being used as the basis of comparison between goods. I took it to mean that exchange value is like temperature while value is like heat. Can you elaborate? I'd like to know more about how these different theories interact.

jadedhacker 9y ago

It sounds like you are not a fan of landlords or am I misunderstanding something.

mathgladiator 9y ago
Setting up a rental is actually a lot of work that is upfront and has a ton of risk. You also need to pay taxes, so it's not based on effort at steady state. Steady state is based on cashflow management.
- jadedhacker 9y ago
  This ignores that major developers can absorb a lot of risk and aggregate. It also ignores that foreclosures on ordinary people can be snapped up by banks and developers. It also ignores that tax abatements are very popular and often extremely undeserving. Near where I live, tax abatements are granted regularly and come out of the school budget. If the housing market keeps going up, where's the risk? You'd have to be the dumbest man in NYC real estate to lose money like the president's son-in-law. Small time landlords are a slightly different ballgame, but it's still bizarre that we allow individuals to speculate on where people live and and extract money from the less wealthy in this fashion. EDIT: Also, what other job requires work up-front, but then nearly none? Landlords are famous for terrible upkeep. Even in communities where problems are generally fixed, most of the time, the landlord just collects a check until a problem pops up. They only have to work for rare serious problems and for managing move-in move-out. EDIT2: The craziest thing is that we see that they do this and still collect 25%+ of ordinary people's incomes for an invisible service that is merely holding intellectual property. It's as though people pay to live in a castle keep with no services, pay the local lord, and justify giving 25%+ taxes on top of what you give to the actual democratic government (typically less to much less) because the lord is somehow a great symbol of the economic system.
  - refurb 9y ago
    I'd suggest you do some reading on investing in and managing real estate. It's a lot of work with a lot of risk.

prawn 9y ago

How do you feel about China's forays into social scoring that limits the choices available to those with indiscretions (unpaid fines, etc). They can't fly, access particular services, etc. If the limitations/rewards vary based on who is in power, I can see that becoming quickly challenging. Internet access could be deemed a reward, for example.