6 ms·

Speaking as a civil engineer, I don't understand what point you're trying to convey. I love what I do and it's very rewarding to look back and see the outcome

Speaking as a civil engineer, I don't understand what point you're trying to convey. I love what I do and it's very rewarding to look back and see the outcome of your work. It really doesn't matter if there are inspectors or clients or bosses telling you what to do. When that bridge is up, that's your work that will be there for future generations. Perhaps that's hard to understand to software people, but working on something can be and often is rewarding.

keiferski 6y ago
I'm not really sure how you arrived at this interpretation of my comment, as it seems totally unrelated to what I wrote. My point is that large infrastructure projects require top-down organization, unlike open-source software, for example, which can be constructed through the individual, separate actions of large numbers of people. Ergo the disparate actions of individual people will not add up to a bridge.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > My point is that large infrastructure projects require top-down organization, unlike open-source software, FLOSS still requires top-down organization, just like any engineering process. You may be used to work at projects where a single person can parachute into a code base and rewrite everything from scratch, but there are also contractors who can build an entire house single-handedly. Once you add enough complexity to a project, you start to require hierarchies. > for example, which can be constructed through the individual, separate actions of large numbers of people. It's the exact same thing in civil engineering. You get contracts that are entirely independent of other tasks. The guy putting up utility poles on a bridge deck doesn't care if the drainage has been finished yet.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    I really don't think you're understanding my point. It is not a complex idea. - Some things can be created in sum, by individual people acting according to their own individual desires. - Other things can only be created with larger amounts of resources and organization. No amount of individual action will get them made. To use a different example: the Manhattan Project would not have developed a nuclear bomb if it simply gave every physicist in the country a stipend to live and said "work on nuclear physics." Massive amounts of coordination and resources were necessary.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      It seems you either are having a hard time understanding simple concepts or you're not able to see the forest for the trees. For starters, a basic income does not stop anyone from working in structured projects. I have no idea where you came up with that nonsense. You gave construction work as an example and I explained to you why your belief made no sense, and still you don't follow. Let's be perfectly clear: people do enjoy what they do for a living, and don't do it because they are paid to do it. Self-fulfillment is real. Secondly, people do enjoy working in structured environments, specially if they are working on a lofty goal. Academia is largely an example of that. You talk about the Manhattan project? How many physicists do you believe were working on that project because they wanted to get rich or were compelled to pay the bills? Once you satisfy your basic needs, you focus on other aspects of your life. See Maslow's pyramid. Thirdly, people do cooperate and collaborate for the greater good, regardless of income. See volunteer work. And finally, please refrain from trying to belittle fellow readers, specially if you do that while demonstrating some slowness grasping simple concepts or ideas.
      - keiferski 6y ago
        You are interpreting my comments in a very strange way, so I don't really know how to respond. I was just making a simple point to the parent comment about project organization, not going on an attack against the idea that people enjoy their work, or trying to belittle someone. You are reading way more into my comments than is there.
        Jetrel 6y ago
        Hopefully I can intervene a little here - I think the argument he's making is that nothing is stopping someone from, say, receiving UBI -AND- also working on an organized public-works project. There's a sense that if we have UBI, it'll take a huge number of people out of the workforce, but I think the only real rationale for that is the notion that a number of people hate working enough that the moment they get "sufficient cost-of-living" income they'll quit and veg out. There's a counter-argument that a huge number of people would instead still work really hard, but would pursue different jobs (often jobs that pay terribly right now) if they didn't have to worry about financial security. There's a huge swash of jobs I'm actually personally interested in, in the trades, that I can't rationally touch because it's a massive pay cut - which wouldn't be so bad, except that our society has no safety net, particularly for end-of-life care, so squirreling money away is the only way to get an approximation of one. It's really the unbounded end-of-life/healthcare costs that force me towards a soft income-maximization path. I don't have to be too crazy about it, but if one possible career path (programming) has a reliable guarantee of earning 3-4x another one (construction), I can't reasonably pass that up. I think if UBI dropped in, we'd see a mass exodus from "bs jobs" that provide no value to society, but I think a large number of jobs which do something meaningful would retain a surprisingly high percentage of their employment. There would probably be some major wage adjustments, but they'd draw a surprising number of people from the "now that I don't 'have' to do anything, what do I 'want' to do?" crowd. Doctors, food-industry, construction, mechanics, etc, would all remain surprisingly hirable. Quite a few other things like sales and management would dry up really hard.
EliRivers 6y ago
Not everyone thinks or feels the same way you do. Now that really is hard for people to understand; no passive aggressive snark required.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > Not everyone thinks or feels the same way you do. Well, it seems to me that those who don't just never had the opportunity or good fortune to hold a job they enjoy doing. Isn't that a problem worth fixing? I mean, I doubt that desiring a fulfilling life is a niche thing.
  - EliRivers 6y ago
    For some people, a job is what they do to pay the rent, and fulfilling activities are other things. For some people, the very fact of getting paid to do something effectively ruins it, given all the rest of the obligations that go with holding down a paid job; even artists with patrons find themselves having to create art that gets in the way of the art they really want to create. So unless this "fix" involves some kind of radical social engineering, it's just not going to be "fixable". You got lucky; you are the kind of person who find fulfillment in being paid to do your job. There are people who don't have that, and given the way our society and economy works, never will. Many of those people, myself included, are fine with that. It's OK. What many such people are less fine with is how much those other people like you want us to be like you.

keiferski 6y ago

I'm not really sure how you arrived at this interpretation of my comment, as it seems totally unrelated to what I wrote. My point is that large infrastructure projects require top-down organization, unlike open-source software, for example, which can be constructed through the individual, separate actions of large numbers of people. Ergo the disparate actions of individual people will not add up to a bridge.

rumanator 6y ago
> My point is that large infrastructure projects require top-down organization, unlike open-source software, FLOSS still requires top-down organization, just like any engineering process. You may be used to work at projects where a single person can parachute into a code base and rewrite everything from scratch, but there are also contractors who can build an entire house single-handedly. Once you add enough complexity to a project, you start to require hierarchies. > for example, which can be constructed through the individual, separate actions of large numbers of people. It's the exact same thing in civil engineering. You get contracts that are entirely independent of other tasks. The guy putting up utility poles on a bridge deck doesn't care if the drainage has been finished yet.
- keiferski 6y ago
  I really don't think you're understanding my point. It is not a complex idea. - Some things can be created in sum, by individual people acting according to their own individual desires. - Other things can only be created with larger amounts of resources and organization. No amount of individual action will get them made. To use a different example: the Manhattan Project would not have developed a nuclear bomb if it simply gave every physicist in the country a stipend to live and said "work on nuclear physics." Massive amounts of coordination and resources were necessary.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    It seems you either are having a hard time understanding simple concepts or you're not able to see the forest for the trees. For starters, a basic income does not stop anyone from working in structured projects. I have no idea where you came up with that nonsense. You gave construction work as an example and I explained to you why your belief made no sense, and still you don't follow. Let's be perfectly clear: people do enjoy what they do for a living, and don't do it because they are paid to do it. Self-fulfillment is real. Secondly, people do enjoy working in structured environments, specially if they are working on a lofty goal. Academia is largely an example of that. You talk about the Manhattan project? How many physicists do you believe were working on that project because they wanted to get rich or were compelled to pay the bills? Once you satisfy your basic needs, you focus on other aspects of your life. See Maslow's pyramid. Thirdly, people do cooperate and collaborate for the greater good, regardless of income. See volunteer work. And finally, please refrain from trying to belittle fellow readers, specially if you do that while demonstrating some slowness grasping simple concepts or ideas.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      You are interpreting my comments in a very strange way, so I don't really know how to respond. I was just making a simple point to the parent comment about project organization, not going on an attack against the idea that people enjoy their work, or trying to belittle someone. You are reading way more into my comments than is there.
      - Jetrel 6y ago
        Hopefully I can intervene a little here - I think the argument he's making is that nothing is stopping someone from, say, receiving UBI -AND- also working on an organized public-works project. There's a sense that if we have UBI, it'll take a huge number of people out of the workforce, but I think the only real rationale for that is the notion that a number of people hate working enough that the moment they get "sufficient cost-of-living" income they'll quit and veg out. There's a counter-argument that a huge number of people would instead still work really hard, but would pursue different jobs (often jobs that pay terribly right now) if they didn't have to worry about financial security. There's a huge swash of jobs I'm actually personally interested in, in the trades, that I can't rationally touch because it's a massive pay cut - which wouldn't be so bad, except that our society has no safety net, particularly for end-of-life care, so squirreling money away is the only way to get an approximation of one. It's really the unbounded end-of-life/healthcare costs that force me towards a soft income-maximization path. I don't have to be too crazy about it, but if one possible career path (programming) has a reliable guarantee of earning 3-4x another one (construction), I can't reasonably pass that up. I think if UBI dropped in, we'd see a mass exodus from "bs jobs" that provide no value to society, but I think a large number of jobs which do something meaningful would retain a surprisingly high percentage of their employment. There would probably be some major wage adjustments, but they'd draw a surprising number of people from the "now that I don't 'have' to do anything, what do I 'want' to do?" crowd. Doctors, food-industry, construction, mechanics, etc, would all remain surprisingly hirable. Quite a few other things like sales and management would dry up really hard.

EliRivers 6y ago

Not everyone thinks or feels the same way you do. Now that really is hard for people to understand; no passive aggressive snark required.

rumanator 6y ago
> Not everyone thinks or feels the same way you do. Well, it seems to me that those who don't just never had the opportunity or good fortune to hold a job they enjoy doing. Isn't that a problem worth fixing? I mean, I doubt that desiring a fulfilling life is a niche thing.
- EliRivers 6y ago
  For some people, a job is what they do to pay the rent, and fulfilling activities are other things. For some people, the very fact of getting paid to do something effectively ruins it, given all the rest of the obligations that go with holding down a paid job; even artists with patrons find themselves having to create art that gets in the way of the art they really want to create. So unless this "fix" involves some kind of radical social engineering, it's just not going to be "fixable". You got lucky; you are the kind of person who find fulfillment in being paid to do your job. There are people who don't have that, and given the way our society and economy works, never will. Many of those people, myself included, are fine with that. It's OK. What many such people are less fine with is how much those other people like you want us to be like you.