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When you were 8 years old, did you believe that, in the future, people in America would be frantically playing musical chairs with their lives, trying to put ot

When you were 8 years old, did you believe that, in the future, people in America would be frantically playing musical chairs with their lives, trying to put other people out of a livelihood before others can do it to them? When did the future turn into a game of Survivor? When did the economy become a game of musical chairs? If you don't have a seat when the music stops, just kiss your life goodbye.

noonespecial 15y ago
If you don't have a seat when the music stops, just kiss your life goodbye. That's the natural order. Scarcity and all that yap. We're fighting to do away with it. As it turns out, its freakin' hard.
- hugh3 15y ago
  This Robert Heinlein quote is perhaps overplayed, but I'm gonna paste it in here anyway in case someone hasn't heard it or just needs a reminder: "Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck.""
  - arethuza 15y ago
    Care to list some societies that have failed for those reasons and in that way? [Edit: Heinlein died in '88 so he can't have been talking about the Soviet Union and its empire, which anyway I don't think falls into that category].
    - aselene 15y ago
      Spain forced all jews to convert or to be exiled in 15th century, although they were the most succesfull bankers and merchants (perhaps because of that). When all the gold from America arrive to Spain in the next century there were no one to use it wisely, so the Spanish Empire turn into an economic disaster.
potatolicious 15y ago
> "When did the future turn into a game of Survivor?" When we allowed 20% of the population to assume ownership of 80% of the wealth, forcing everyone else to scramble for scraps. When we've dismantled and made useless our social safety nets by a combination of poor policies and equally poor policing for abuse. When we've collectively moved to the right in economic and social policies, thereby not only disenfranchising the poor, but also make them hate themselves - the loudest complaints about "socialists" and "redistribution" seem to come from people who need it the most, but don't recognize it. It happened when we started penalizing people for having anything less than perfect health. Have a chronic condition? Well, forget about entrepreneurialism and adding to the economy, pray for a worker-cog job for the rest of your days to keep the insurance flowing! This may be a gross simplification of a complex issue - but it seems to me like the futured turned into a game of Survivor when we started treating everyone else like animals out to get us. The poor are lazy and out to game the system. The immigrants are out to steal our jobs. The unemployed are lazy and slovenly and want a free ride... etc etc. The American public, IMO, needn't look much further than a mirror to see the cause of their woes.
- hugh3 15y ago
  The real question, I think, is when did news.ycombinator turn into reddit/r/politics?
  - forensic 15y ago
    When software entrepreneurs put 10% of the population out of work and then used social darwinism to justify the lack of a social safety net.
- scrod 15y ago
  What is possibly the only coherent comment in this entire discussion is already being down-voted. Sorry Hacker News, but your "cultivated community" demonstrably fails to perpetuate very little more than a disinterested, self-serving, center-right frame of reference with a strong undercurrent of elitism.
  - 15y ago
hugh3 15y ago
When did the future turn into a game of Survivor? I don't know, but the past turned into a game of Survivor roughly four billion years ago. If it hadn't, we never would have developed cell membranes, let alone multicellularity. I'm not just being glib. The struggle to survive and to thrive, against members of other species or against members of your own, is a constant feature of all life across the Earth and probably throughout the universe. I don't know why people seem to think they should be immune from it.
- forensic 15y ago
  >I don't know why people seem to think they should be immune from it. So when social leaders sell us in childhood on the idea that the future will be a disease free high-tech utopia, they really mean it will be that for an elite 20% and the rest of us can go die. Social Darwinism is delightful.
- danssig 15y ago
  Wow, the "survival of the fittest" argument, and on hacker news of all places. The entire point of civilization is to escape "survival of the fittest". Do you know what we call people who still live by those rules? Uncivilized.
tomjen3 15y ago
That is the same system we have been playing forever, ever since the bronze age when the stone tool makers where put out of business by the metal workers. Your error, and it is a common one, is to assume that no new chairs are created. The trouble right now is because we have gone from trying to create new and fundamentally better things to making existing things cheaper (this is a good and necessary thing too, or else we would only have cars for the rich but it assumes that new technologies exist that can be made cheaper). We have too many bosses and not enough leaders.
- forensic 15y ago
  The chairs in this analogy represent access to food, healthcare, education, shelter, clothing. The necessities of life. The game technically has more chairs than people. The problem is that an elite 1% are occupying 50% of the chairs.

noonespecial 15y ago

If you don't have a seat when the music stops, just kiss your life goodbye. That's the natural order. Scarcity and all that yap. We're fighting to do away with it. As it turns out, its freakin' hard.

hugh3 15y ago
This Robert Heinlein quote is perhaps overplayed, but I'm gonna paste it in here anyway in case someone hasn't heard it or just needs a reminder: "Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck.""
- arethuza 15y ago
  Care to list some societies that have failed for those reasons and in that way? [Edit: Heinlein died in '88 so he can't have been talking about the Soviet Union and its empire, which anyway I don't think falls into that category].
  - aselene 15y ago
    Spain forced all jews to convert or to be exiled in 15th century, although they were the most succesfull bankers and merchants (perhaps because of that). When all the gold from America arrive to Spain in the next century there were no one to use it wisely, so the Spanish Empire turn into an economic disaster.

potatolicious 15y ago

> "When did the future turn into a game of Survivor?" When we allowed 20% of the population to assume ownership of 80% of the wealth, forcing everyone else to scramble for scraps. When we've dismantled and made useless our social safety nets by a combination of poor policies and equally poor policing for abuse. When we've collectively moved to the right in economic and social policies, thereby not only disenfranchising the poor, but also make them hate themselves - the loudest complaints about "socialists" and "redistribution" seem to come from people who need it the most, but don't recognize it. It happened when we started penalizing people for having anything less than perfect health. Have a chronic condition? Well, forget about entrepreneurialism and adding to the economy, pray for a worker-cog job for the rest of your days to keep the insurance flowing! This may be a gross simplification of a complex issue - but it seems to me like the futured turned into a game of Survivor when we started treating everyone else like animals out to get us. The poor are lazy and out to game the system. The immigrants are out to steal our jobs. The unemployed are lazy and slovenly and want a free ride... etc etc. The American public, IMO, needn't look much further than a mirror to see the cause of their woes.

hugh3 15y ago
The real question, I think, is when did news.ycombinator turn into reddit/r/politics?
- forensic 15y ago
  When software entrepreneurs put 10% of the population out of work and then used social darwinism to justify the lack of a social safety net.
scrod 15y ago
What is possibly the only coherent comment in this entire discussion is already being down-voted. Sorry Hacker News, but your "cultivated community" demonstrably fails to perpetuate very little more than a disinterested, self-serving, center-right frame of reference with a strong undercurrent of elitism.
- 15y ago

hugh3 15y ago

When did the future turn into a game of Survivor? I don't know, but the past turned into a game of Survivor roughly four billion years ago. If it hadn't, we never would have developed cell membranes, let alone multicellularity. I'm not just being glib. The struggle to survive and to thrive, against members of other species or against members of your own, is a constant feature of all life across the Earth and probably throughout the universe. I don't know why people seem to think they should be immune from it.

forensic 15y ago
>I don't know why people seem to think they should be immune from it. So when social leaders sell us in childhood on the idea that the future will be a disease free high-tech utopia, they really mean it will be that for an elite 20% and the rest of us can go die. Social Darwinism is delightful.
danssig 15y ago
Wow, the "survival of the fittest" argument, and on hacker news of all places. The entire point of civilization is to escape "survival of the fittest". Do you know what we call people who still live by those rules? Uncivilized.

tomjen3 15y ago

That is the same system we have been playing forever, ever since the bronze age when the stone tool makers where put out of business by the metal workers. Your error, and it is a common one, is to assume that no new chairs are created. The trouble right now is because we have gone from trying to create new and fundamentally better things to making existing things cheaper (this is a good and necessary thing too, or else we would only have cars for the rich but it assumes that new technologies exist that can be made cheaper). We have too many bosses and not enough leaders.

forensic 15y ago
The chairs in this analogy represent access to food, healthcare, education, shelter, clothing. The necessities of life. The game technically has more chairs than people. The problem is that an elite 1% are occupying 50% of the chairs.