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> and while we're "changing the world" it's really not in any egalitarian or progressive way There is a good argument to be made that increasing the GDP is a m
by cactus2093 6y ago
> and while we're "changing the world" it's really not in any egalitarian or progressive way
There is a good argument to be made that increasing the GDP is a moral imperative [0]. I know it's increasingly trendy to think all of capitalism is evil and we should tear the whole global economic system down (and to tweet about it from your iPhone while sitting in your air conditioned home, eating your meal delivered by Doordash). As much as it is true that inequality is higher than it should be, and there are lots of things in the world that should be improved, it's also true that for the vast majority of people in the US and around the world, their living conditions today are much better than they would have been at any other time in history. Which is the simple result of compounding economic growth.
Talking about "changing the world" by building an app sounds a bit quaint and too self-serious these days, but I really don't think it's true that the average person working in tech contributes nothing positive to society.
[0] https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/essays/economic-growth-moral-imperative https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/essays/economic-growth-moral...
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoI don't fully agree with your point, but I've upvoted you anyways, because this is an entirely reasonable response argument to the points I made and that's how HN is supposed to work. But please note I didn't say anything like "the average person working in tech contributes nothing positive to society." That's pretty ad hominem, and I don't think that, otherwise I wouldn't work in this industry.
- cactus2093 6y agoWell I appreciate the good-faith discussion. And fair enough, I didn't intend to put words in your mouth, I was interpreting "not in any egalitarian or progressive way" as meaning "not in any positive way". But I can see how you might not have been making that strong of a claim.
- hehebbssjj 6y ago> As much as it is true that inequality is higher than it should be I just spent time with a friend who is working two jobs during the pandemic and cannot afford to live on their own in our relatively low cost of living city. They have to ride the bus for 2 hours to get to one job. This isn't even global inequality, this is an order of magnitude income difference between "haves" with high tech jobs that realistically produce no value, and "have nots" who actually make society function.
- cactus2093 6y agoWell I'm sorry that your friend is having a tough time. But you really didn't respond to, much less refute, any of the main points of what I wrote here.
- hehebbssjj 6y agoMy point is extracting the maximum value from people by paying them almost nothing because it "increases the GDP" isn't a moral imperative. It's absurd on its face to say that growth at any expense is ethical because of some trickle down bullshit.
- dang 6y agoCould you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=community%20identity%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...