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Reminds me of this post from Venkatesh Rao: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/

Reminds me of this post from Venkatesh Rao: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-l... > Today, you’re either above the API or below the API. You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do. It seems like we're returning to a state of inequality seen for most of history, and the second half of the 20th Century was just a historical anomaly. See PG's essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html > Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only been increasing, but accelerating. The unusual conditions that prevailed in the mid 20th century masked this underlying trend.

tw1010 7y ago
Interesting. But it's due to statements like "you’re either above the API or below the API" that I unfortunately can't get through many ribbonfarm articles. I mean, it's clearly not true that "everyone works for an algorithm" (take architects as a trivial example). I keep having to force myself find a strong-man interpretation of all the half-baked ideas, which makes it exhausting to get through without becoming a bit annoyed.
- andy_ppp 7y ago
  I’m going to go out on a limb and say buildings built the way they currently are is a joke and in 20 years time there will only be prefab. Architects are paid pretty badly compared to devs. What I’m trying to say is I can see what it means if I squint at it a bit.
- jonah 7y ago
  > take architects as a trivial example I guess it depends on how strict your definition of algorithm is, but I share an office with an Architect and he seems to spend the largest portion of his time dealing with codes and rules and laws and compliance. Edit: And to add to the sibling comment, he is paid what he is, as much of not more for his knowledge of those rules and experience navigating them as he is for his aesthetic sense.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  Venkatesh frequently oversimplifies things to make a point. It's just his personality type, which thinks in generalities and so speaks in generalities. I wouldn't say he's wrong, though, just "not yet right". Architects and construction workers, for example, are one industry that is not yet eaten by software, but IMHO will be within the next 20-30 years. I could see housing revolutionized by software that just encodes all the relevant building codes in software, then uses a WYSIWYG editor and constraint solver to let people design their own houses, then has robots build the house from the ground up. The role of the architect would be replaced by software; the role of the construction worker by robots. Instead you would have surveyors and people who load the building materials from trucks into the robots, both of whom function below the API.
- m463 7y ago
  > it's clearly not true that "everyone works for an algorithm" That said, there are algorithms that govern our daily lives. An economy is sort of emergent behavior of all the participants.
Alex3917 7y ago
C.f. also Douglas Rushkoff's book Program or be Programmed: https://www.wired.com/2011/07/douglas-rushkoff/ https://www.wired.com/2011/07/douglas-rushkoff/
yters 7y ago
One difference is the old inequality meant the poor people lived short miserable lives, starving to death or dying from disease. Today's inequality means poor people have a climate controlled place to live, regular food, decent healthcare, the ability to travel across the nation if not the world, see and communicate around the world in a moments notice, easy access to knowledge at their fingertips that spans all human civilization, endless amounts of entertainment, and freedom to live as they please. It's unclear to me why this kind of inequality is a bad thing, or how it is comparable to inequality in the past.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  TBH, this feels like a "why aren't they happy eating cake" kind of response. Just look at the statistics of rising "deaths of despair" in the US. To say "I don't see why this kind of inequality is a bad thing" - well, huge amounts of inequality is also what ends up destroying democracies.
  - yters 7y ago
    You seem to jump from 'deaths of despair' to 'inequality is a problem'. Can you explain how you establish the connection?
    - yters 7y ago
      My point is the two are not necessarily connected. Very well off socialist countries, such as the Norse, also have quite high suicide rates. My hypothesis is 'deaths of despair' is due to the emptiness of materialism, not due to inequality.
- CPLX 7y ago
  If you lost your current status and became poor in a way matching your description, would you consider that bad? If so, in what ways would it be bad? Would you be content, or seek to regain your current status? If you found that impossible would you be happy with your life? These are rhetorical questions, as the standard win-the-forum-argument response is anticipated and will not be helpful. Empathy and introspection, however, will.
nostrademons 7y ago
Inequality is actually continuing to shrink, but it's being redistributed in a way that makes it keenly visible, because the "new losers" are typically the people who held control of the discourse before. Globally, income inequality is at historic lows: https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality Over 500M people have been lifted into the middle-class in China alone, with similar stories in India, Eastern Europe, and parts of Africa and the Middle East. It's just that this rise has largely come at the expense of the American middle class, which was the prime audience and prime producer of media for most of the late 20th century. So if you look only at the universe of people who were given a voice in the late 20th century, things are much worse than they were. If you look at the universe of all humans (or the small subset of Americans who work in industries benefitting from globalization), things are much better, both in terms of output and in inequality.
- phil248 7y ago
  Inequality has been increasing in China at a rate far outpacing the rest of the world, and the world at large has seen inequality continually increase despite improving living conditions for an increasing number of people. From the IMF: "China has moved from being moderately unequal in 1990 to being one of the world’s most unequal countries." https://blogs.imf.org/2018/09/20/chart-of-the-week-inequality-in-china/ https://blogs.imf.org/2018/09/20/chart-of-the-week-inequalit...
  - kurthr 7y ago
    It strikes me that local inequality (e.g. between people in the same country) could be increasing everywhere, while global inequality, which is dominated by national averages decreases. The problem is that we mostly notice the local one (happiness with the Jones's) rather than the global.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      Simpson's Paradox tells us that this is utterly plausible. Inequality is getting worse everywhere. While aggregate statistics shows inequality is decreasing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

tw1010 7y ago

Interesting. But it's due to statements like "you’re either above the API or below the API" that I unfortunately can't get through many ribbonfarm articles. I mean, it's clearly not true that "everyone works for an algorithm" (take architects as a trivial example). I keep having to force myself find a strong-man interpretation of all the half-baked ideas, which makes it exhausting to get through without becoming a bit annoyed.

andy_ppp 7y ago
I’m going to go out on a limb and say buildings built the way they currently are is a joke and in 20 years time there will only be prefab. Architects are paid pretty badly compared to devs. What I’m trying to say is I can see what it means if I squint at it a bit.
jonah 7y ago
> take architects as a trivial example I guess it depends on how strict your definition of algorithm is, but I share an office with an Architect and he seems to spend the largest portion of his time dealing with codes and rules and laws and compliance. Edit: And to add to the sibling comment, he is paid what he is, as much of not more for his knowledge of those rules and experience navigating them as he is for his aesthetic sense.
nostrademons 7y ago
Venkatesh frequently oversimplifies things to make a point. It's just his personality type, which thinks in generalities and so speaks in generalities. I wouldn't say he's wrong, though, just "not yet right". Architects and construction workers, for example, are one industry that is not yet eaten by software, but IMHO will be within the next 20-30 years. I could see housing revolutionized by software that just encodes all the relevant building codes in software, then uses a WYSIWYG editor and constraint solver to let people design their own houses, then has robots build the house from the ground up. The role of the architect would be replaced by software; the role of the construction worker by robots. Instead you would have surveyors and people who load the building materials from trucks into the robots, both of whom function below the API.
m463 7y ago
> it's clearly not true that "everyone works for an algorithm" That said, there are algorithms that govern our daily lives. An economy is sort of emergent behavior of all the participants.

Alex3917 7y ago

C.f. also Douglas Rushkoff's book Program or be Programmed: https://www.wired.com/2011/07/douglas-rushkoff/ https://www.wired.com/2011/07/douglas-rushkoff/

yters 7y ago

One difference is the old inequality meant the poor people lived short miserable lives, starving to death or dying from disease. Today's inequality means poor people have a climate controlled place to live, regular food, decent healthcare, the ability to travel across the nation if not the world, see and communicate around the world in a moments notice, easy access to knowledge at their fingertips that spans all human civilization, endless amounts of entertainment, and freedom to live as they please. It's unclear to me why this kind of inequality is a bad thing, or how it is comparable to inequality in the past.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
TBH, this feels like a "why aren't they happy eating cake" kind of response. Just look at the statistics of rising "deaths of despair" in the US. To say "I don't see why this kind of inequality is a bad thing" - well, huge amounts of inequality is also what ends up destroying democracies.
- yters 7y ago
  You seem to jump from 'deaths of despair' to 'inequality is a problem'. Can you explain how you establish the connection?
  - yters 7y ago
    My point is the two are not necessarily connected. Very well off socialist countries, such as the Norse, also have quite high suicide rates. My hypothesis is 'deaths of despair' is due to the emptiness of materialism, not due to inequality.
CPLX 7y ago
If you lost your current status and became poor in a way matching your description, would you consider that bad? If so, in what ways would it be bad? Would you be content, or seek to regain your current status? If you found that impossible would you be happy with your life? These are rhetorical questions, as the standard win-the-forum-argument response is anticipated and will not be helpful. Empathy and introspection, however, will.

nostrademons 7y ago

Inequality is actually continuing to shrink, but it's being redistributed in a way that makes it keenly visible, because the "new losers" are typically the people who held control of the discourse before. Globally, income inequality is at historic lows: https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality Over 500M people have been lifted into the middle-class in China alone, with similar stories in India, Eastern Europe, and parts of Africa and the Middle East. It's just that this rise has largely come at the expense of the American middle class, which was the prime audience and prime producer of media for most of the late 20th century. So if you look only at the universe of people who were given a voice in the late 20th century, things are much worse than they were. If you look at the universe of all humans (or the small subset of Americans who work in industries benefitting from globalization), things are much better, both in terms of output and in inequality.

phil248 7y ago
Inequality has been increasing in China at a rate far outpacing the rest of the world, and the world at large has seen inequality continually increase despite improving living conditions for an increasing number of people. From the IMF: "China has moved from being moderately unequal in 1990 to being one of the world’s most unequal countries." https://blogs.imf.org/2018/09/20/chart-of-the-week-inequality-in-china/ https://blogs.imf.org/2018/09/20/chart-of-the-week-inequalit...
- kurthr 7y ago
  It strikes me that local inequality (e.g. between people in the same country) could be increasing everywhere, while global inequality, which is dominated by national averages decreases. The problem is that we mostly notice the local one (happiness with the Jones's) rather than the global.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    Simpson's Paradox tells us that this is utterly plausible. Inequality is getting worse everywhere. While aggregate statistics shows inequality is decreasing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox