7 ms·

This made me recall immediately the "I, pencil" article. It's stunning to remember that almost anything one gets to touch or see throughout the day is a produc

by gkya 9y ago

This made me recall immediately the "I, pencil" article. It's stunning to remember that almost anything one gets to touch or see throughout the day is a product of almost always global collaboration, if we include a things conception with its production, and also transportation, selling, etc.

skookumchuck 9y ago
This is the result of free markets. Centralized economic planning is simply unable to deal with the complexity.
- makotech222 9y ago
  Yeah, we certainly can't produce toilet paper unless 50% of the population is in poverty.
  - cornholio 9y ago
    To take your sarcasm further, it appears we can't: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-venezuela-toilet-paper-shortage-kass-0226-20160225-column.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-venezu... (Yes, I know we could)
  - wyoh 9y ago
    Freer markets means less poverty though.
    - makotech222 9y ago
      Haha, do they?
      - lulmerchant 9y ago
        Absolutely, nothing has brought a greater level of prosperity and equality to the world than free market capitalism. This is simply an empirical fact. Just like it is an empirical fact that every socialist nation in history has created huge levels of poverty and inequality.
        makotech222 9y ago
        Hey, remember when the USSR started and they eliminated homelessness within 10 years. And also, were the first to space. In addition, had citizens that were better fed than the US, had more doctors per capita. And this is just from State Capitalism, not Socialism.
        lulmerchant 9y ago
        No I don’t, because that never happened. I do remember millions of soviet citizens dying from famine though, and millions more dying from state sponsored killing. I don’t remember any famines taking place in developed free markets during that period. However, I have a pretty clear memory of the two class system that developed in all of the socialist nations that existed in the 20th century. One of the starving poor, and another of the rich oligarchs.
        Avshalom 9y ago
        I feel like the fall of the British Empire and subsequent reversion to the mean is probably responsible for most of that prosperity.
        lulmerchant 9y ago
        The revision to what mean? The pre-British empire mean? Because pre-British empire wasn’t exactly a prosperous period.
      - Latteland 9y ago
        I think the question is how do you define free? Free for powerful to do anything they want? Free subject to govt control? The tension is between those points.
        skookumchuck 9y ago
        The term is "free markets" which have a reasonably agreed upon definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
  - monochromatic 9y ago
    Yes, 14.8% = 50% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
    - makotech222 9y ago
      I believe OP was talking about trade throughout the world.
      - gkya 9y ago
        The USers should learn that there's a other continents, let alone countries. Do they not teach geography in primary schools there? Whenever I post sth about a global problem here there's always some people coming up with links to some data or wiki page on the instance of that in the US, which give me cringes.
        dang 9y ago
        National slights, regardless of nation being slighted, aren't ok here. You've done this before, unfortunately. Would you please not do it again? It's obviously uncivil. If people can't respect each other here, they can't comment here. Because of HN's origins, it's often the case that there's some ambiguity about whether a statement is scoped to the US or more widely. The fix for that is disambiguation, not taking or making insults. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jtolmar 9y ago
    That's not inherent to markets, it's caused by allowing a market system to have a feedback loop where investments are rewarded proportionately to their size (capitalism). The people able to participate in the feedback loop inevitably become wealthier than those who can't until the market prioritizes what they want over everyone else.
- gkya 9y ago
  Wut? Do you really think you can convince me that USSR did not have toilet papers or pencils? Or send the first man to space? This is not about what economical model is better. People can collaborate both under central economic planning and through free markets. One might certainly be more preferable to the other, but that's totally a different conversation (I'm not a fan of either, for the records).
  - hippich 9y ago
    You will laugh, but yes, USSR also had troubles with toilet paper from time to time (while launching satellites i guess) - https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fru.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F%25D0%25A2%25D0%25BE%25D0%25B2%25D0%25B0%25D1%2580%25D0%25BD%25D1%258B%25D0%25B9_%25D0%25B4%25D0%25B5%25D1%2584%25D0%25B8%25D1%2586%25D0%25B8%25D1%2582_%25D0%25B2_%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A0&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
    - gkya 9y ago
      Wow, thanks! This is why I like to err in public sometimes, you never know how interesting things will come your way.
      - Latteland 9y ago
        The soviet union was one problem after another of limited availability of goods. I'm glad you are open to this info.
    - kingofhdds 9y ago
      In my Soviet childhood it was quite permanent, actually. So permanent as a child I would be surprised to hear it's a trouble :-) We used newspapers cut into rectangular pieces, and it was such a usual thing that cultural norms already existed around it. Where I lived, for example, cutting newspapers for bathroom use was definitely a men's chore. A lady could be very angry at her husband, not finding accurate pieces in time of need.
    - 9y ago
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't take HN on generic ideological tangents. They lead to generic ideological flamewars, which are more or less all the same, and therefore off topic here.
globuous 9y ago
Going off of that, when I realized that an ice cube was proof of incredible engineerning and that in terms of mankind, it's brand new tech !! I "couldn't believe it". I got that the concept of freezing water was some complex thermodynamics, but never realized it implied I couldn't make an ice cube without it when it's hot outside ! I thought the French had been drinking cold champagne all these years ! (turns out they have, since mostly only the rich ere drinking it and they were using various caves to keep cold temperatures, and they shipped ice from the Alpes; no source on my hands, but that's what I remember when looking into it). Shizzles, I couldn't make a simple flame by myself ;p
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Before refrigeration, people would use evaporative cooling to keep things cool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    And cooler cabinets, where they had blocks of ice in a compartiment at the top of a closet (of sorts). (source: guided tour of a late-1800s castle with a fully equipped French kitchen complex. Complex because they had rooms for separate tasks.)
- BuildTheRobots 9y ago
  Ice Houses were really popular; especially in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building)
  - noefingway 9y ago
    Harvesting ice in the winter was a common and wide spread activity in North America (and most of Europe). Short article on Hudson River ice harvesting http://www.genealogy.clifflamere.com/Aid/History/IceHarvesting.htm http://www.genealogy.clifflamere.com/Aid/History/IceHarvesti...
iQuercus 9y ago
Shameless plug, I made a short podcast episode about this, from a systems perspective. It looks at what it takes to clean your teeth...and how systems have a tendency to spiral out this way. It’s a feature of problem solving systems: they generate new/different problems that need to be solved, and therefore propagate the system into something like global collaboration. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-0-cleaning-your-teeth/id1341489523?i=1000400906742&mt=2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-0-cleaning-your-...

by gkya 9y ago

skookumchuck 9y ago

This is the result of free markets. Centralized economic planning is simply unable to deal with the complexity.

makotech222 9y ago
Yeah, we certainly can't produce toilet paper unless 50% of the population is in poverty.
- cornholio 9y ago
  To take your sarcasm further, it appears we can't: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-venezuela-toilet-paper-shortage-kass-0226-20160225-column.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-venezu... (Yes, I know we could)
- wyoh 9y ago
  Freer markets means less poverty though.
  - makotech222 9y ago
    Haha, do they?
    - lulmerchant 9y ago
      Absolutely, nothing has brought a greater level of prosperity and equality to the world than free market capitalism. This is simply an empirical fact. Just like it is an empirical fact that every socialist nation in history has created huge levels of poverty and inequality.
      - makotech222 9y ago
        Hey, remember when the USSR started and they eliminated homelessness within 10 years. And also, were the first to space. In addition, had citizens that were better fed than the US, had more doctors per capita. And this is just from State Capitalism, not Socialism.
        lulmerchant 9y ago
        No I don’t, because that never happened. I do remember millions of soviet citizens dying from famine though, and millions more dying from state sponsored killing. I don’t remember any famines taking place in developed free markets during that period. However, I have a pretty clear memory of the two class system that developed in all of the socialist nations that existed in the 20th century. One of the starving poor, and another of the rich oligarchs.
      - Avshalom 9y ago
        I feel like the fall of the British Empire and subsequent reversion to the mean is probably responsible for most of that prosperity.
        lulmerchant 9y ago
        The revision to what mean? The pre-British empire mean? Because pre-British empire wasn’t exactly a prosperous period.
    - Latteland 9y ago
      I think the question is how do you define free? Free for powerful to do anything they want? Free subject to govt control? The tension is between those points.
      - skookumchuck 9y ago
        The term is "free markets" which have a reasonably agreed upon definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
- monochromatic 9y ago
  Yes, 14.8% = 50% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
  - makotech222 9y ago
    I believe OP was talking about trade throughout the world.
    - gkya 9y ago
      The USers should learn that there's a other continents, let alone countries. Do they not teach geography in primary schools there? Whenever I post sth about a global problem here there's always some people coming up with links to some data or wiki page on the instance of that in the US, which give me cringes.
      - dang 9y ago
        National slights, regardless of nation being slighted, aren't ok here. You've done this before, unfortunately. Would you please not do it again? It's obviously uncivil. If people can't respect each other here, they can't comment here. Because of HN's origins, it's often the case that there's some ambiguity about whether a statement is scoped to the US or more widely. The fix for that is disambiguation, not taking or making insults. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jtolmar 9y ago
  That's not inherent to markets, it's caused by allowing a market system to have a feedback loop where investments are rewarded proportionately to their size (capitalism). The people able to participate in the feedback loop inevitably become wealthier than those who can't until the market prioritizes what they want over everyone else.
gkya 9y ago
Wut? Do you really think you can convince me that USSR did not have toilet papers or pencils? Or send the first man to space? This is not about what economical model is better. People can collaborate both under central economic planning and through free markets. One might certainly be more preferable to the other, but that's totally a different conversation (I'm not a fan of either, for the records).
- hippich 9y ago
  You will laugh, but yes, USSR also had troubles with toilet paper from time to time (while launching satellites i guess) - https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fru.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F%25D0%25A2%25D0%25BE%25D0%25B2%25D0%25B0%25D1%2580%25D0%25BD%25D1%258B%25D0%25B9_%25D0%25B4%25D0%25B5%25D1%2584%25D0%25B8%25D1%2586%25D0%25B8%25D1%2582_%25D0%25B2_%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A1%25D0%25A0&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
  - gkya 9y ago
    Wow, thanks! This is why I like to err in public sometimes, you never know how interesting things will come your way.
    - Latteland 9y ago
      The soviet union was one problem after another of limited availability of goods. I'm glad you are open to this info.
  - kingofhdds 9y ago
    In my Soviet childhood it was quite permanent, actually. So permanent as a child I would be surprised to hear it's a trouble :-) We used newspapers cut into rectangular pieces, and it was such a usual thing that cultural norms already existed around it. Where I lived, for example, cutting newspapers for bathroom use was definitely a men's chore. A lady could be very angry at her husband, not finding accurate pieces in time of need.
  - 9y ago
dang 9y ago
Please don't take HN on generic ideological tangents. They lead to generic ideological flamewars, which are more or less all the same, and therefore off topic here.

globuous 9y ago

Going off of that, when I realized that an ice cube was proof of incredible engineerning and that in terms of mankind, it's brand new tech !! I "couldn't believe it". I got that the concept of freezing water was some complex thermodynamics, but never realized it implied I couldn't make an ice cube without it when it's hot outside ! I thought the French had been drinking cold champagne all these years ! (turns out they have, since mostly only the rich ere drinking it and they were using various caves to keep cold temperatures, and they shipped ice from the Alpes; no source on my hands, but that's what I remember when looking into it). Shizzles, I couldn't make a simple flame by myself ;p

toomanybeersies 9y ago
Before refrigeration, people would use evaporative cooling to keep things cool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  And cooler cabinets, where they had blocks of ice in a compartiment at the top of a closet (of sorts). (source: guided tour of a late-1800s castle with a fully equipped French kitchen complex. Complex because they had rooms for separate tasks.)
BuildTheRobots 9y ago
Ice Houses were really popular; especially in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building)
- noefingway 9y ago
  Harvesting ice in the winter was a common and wide spread activity in North America (and most of Europe). Short article on Hudson River ice harvesting http://www.genealogy.clifflamere.com/Aid/History/IceHarvesting.htm http://www.genealogy.clifflamere.com/Aid/History/IceHarvesti...

iQuercus 9y ago

Shameless plug, I made a short podcast episode about this, from a systems perspective. It looks at what it takes to clean your teeth...and how systems have a tendency to spiral out this way. It’s a feature of problem solving systems: they generate new/different problems that need to be solved, and therefore propagate the system into something like global collaboration. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-0-cleaning-your-teeth/id1341489523?i=1000400906742&mt=2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-0-cleaning-your-...