3 ms·

Why’s it piss you off?

• toyg 5y ago
  Because it's like telling a poor person "just don't be poor", or a depressed person "just lighten up". Coding simply does not come easy to large swaths of the population, one has to respect that fact and don't assume we're all neurologically wired to talk to machines all day. Also, people might well be better suited to very different activities. Would we be richer, as a society, if Van Gogh had decided to drop this "paintings" business and start a boring but profitable civil-servant career instead? Last but not least, the value of each individual programmer, in a capitalistic society, inevitably decreases as the labor pool increases, with obvious consequences in the long run for the profitability of the profession. Car mechanics used to be respected and expensive professionals too.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Do you have a better idea for how society should determine where to direct society’s resources other than using prices? Prices and movements in prices indicate where supply is needed (or not needed). I have not yet seen a better mechanism.
    • vlovich123 5y ago
      It’s funny because the truly wealthy and powerful seem to rely more on favors and intangible relationships, not by putting a price tag on things. Indeed, we see money as a corrupting influence
    • DubiousPusher 5y ago
      So you are satisfied with a world wherein if the price the market puts on your labor is too low to ensure your survival, you are chaff?
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        That is not what I wrote. I asked what the better alternative is. Simply complaining makes for uninteresting conversation. I am not opposed to a universal basic income, given that all other subsidies are ceased. How would society increase the number of surgeons, who require a decade of intense study and risk to become one? How would society incentivize people to live 2 hours from the nearest hospital in order to farm the land and create food for the country? What would society have to do to incentivize people to work jobs where they have to commute somewhere to work, or many places for work, rather than work from their own home?
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  • snerbles 5y ago
    It's entirely driven by spite and class warfare. Elite politicians and journalists were the first to happily bark "learn to code" at freshly-unemployed blue collar workers with all of the apparent condescension you described. Others flinging the phrase back at later-unemployed journalists are merely returning proverbial fire, with subsequent Twitter bans meted out by those that can't take what they dish out.