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That's how I feel about HyperCard. Some apps were so ahead of their time that when they were axed, nothing comparable replaced them. I believe that this is due

That's how I feel about HyperCard. Some apps were so ahead of their time that when they were axed, nothing comparable replaced them. I believe that this is due to a tragedy of the commons in the software industry. We're all so creative, with so many dreams, but spend the majority of our lives working 40 hour weeks to outcompete each other and make rent. Then when someone wins the internet lottery, they succumb to their ego and do a bunch of stuff in business to hoard even more wealth, rather than working to reform the system which keeps so many others down. I would very much like to write a programming language, a blogging tool, a web framework, a game, a game development tool, etc etc etc. But I never will. Most of the people reading this never will either. So I endure. I meditate, I practice stoicism, I go to the gym. But I had to let my dreams die for my own self-preservation because opportunity cost grew to consume my entire psyche. I simply can't think about all of the other things I could be doing while I have to work. And all I do is work. There doesn't seem to be much help coming in terms of UBI or having N people split a 40 hour workweek or forming artist communes for makers. Sure, we hear the occasional stories. But it's like we're all waiting around for a billionaire to liberate us, rather than creating a scalable cooperative system to sustain all of us right now today. What I'm saying is that until we look beyond the technical challenges and see that the problem is subjugation, we'll never get free of the lackluster tools, because we'll never have time to make better ones.

quijoteuniv 4y ago
“ Then when someone wins the internet lottery, they succumb to their ego and do a bunch of stuff in business to hoard even more wealth, rather than working to reform the system which keeps so many others down.” Well said
leetrout 4y ago
"but spend the majority of our lives working 40 hour weeks to outcompete each other and make rent" THIS. I am so sick of the competition in most tech jobs / companies to climb the stupid ladder. Everyone just wants more more more and our society reinforces that. I _REALLY_ miss working on teams that didn't have that amount of competition causing mild dysfunction.
- water-your-self 4y ago
  Can I ask the rough scale of the company you work for?
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Do you feel compelled to participate in that competition? If not, why does it bother you?
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    Fail to compete and you'll be left behind in terms of compensation, performance review rankings, and career growth, the last of which also limits your future job choices. It also puts you nearer the top of the list for layoffs when corporate finances get tight.
    - kortilla 4y ago
      But those things shouldn’t bother you if you aren’t interested in the “more more more” society. It’s easy to get a stable programming job in the US that pays $80k and has very little lay-off risk. You can’t have it both ways complaining about being left behind in comp while not participating in the grind that allows those comps to go higher.
      - quickthrower2 4y ago
        Lower paid jobs can be worse. That they can’t afford to pay you more might mean they are doing something noble but usually it is a wannabe growth startup being badly run and pushing down pressure on lower waged staff to compensate. But you have a point: at 80k requirement you could easily freelance to earn that, for non technical people. Help set up shopify stores etc. and not need to constantly be on a learning grind.
        uxp100 4y ago
        I don’t think wanna be growth startup is really typical. Typical lower, but not that low paid tech job is more like maintain software tooling that supports mechanical engineers testing, or aids insurance appraisal, or replacing ladder logic industrial automation with something that has more iot type features (and still might be partially ladder logic). Probably all those pay 80k-100k to someone with a few years experience. The downsides are dingy offices that you’ll have to show up in sometimes, and for the last one, potentially lots of travel to not too exciting places.
imperfect_blue 4y ago
Because for everyone to make what they want to make is, as of current year, a pie in the sky fantasy until scarcity is solved, and perhaps not even then. There are 8 billion humans, the world doesn't need another hundred thousand programming languages or web frameworks or game development platform or even indie games or fiction or music or film, produced every year when the whim strikes someone's fancy. Even if we could, who can even consume that much content? Being a cog in a machine at least means you're probably doing something of value to someone instead of writing another book that nobody reads. As of now we have no better solution to coordination failure except to create the AGI that will save/doom us.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Personal opinion: I think scarcity is mostly a solved problem, in that most of us are working on projects that only exist to make someone else more money, not to fulfill any actual needs of those 8 billion humans. There are exceptions of course. But most of us could stop working tomorrow, and aside from the lack of income, the scarcity of resources available to us would not change. The real problems that causes hunger/poverty in our world has more to do with logistics and politics, not a deficit of resources.
  - imperfect_blue 4y ago
    I cannot understand why you would think so, even in a first world nation. Who would grow your food? Who would make the tools and fertilizer that enable the farmers to grow your food? The robotics and software that enables those tools and fertilizer to be produce? Who would organize, transport, package, preserve and process the produce so that you can access it? Apply the same questions to healthcare, education, transport, construction, entertainment, etc. Some jobs are superfluous and arise out of coordination failure, that's true. Lawyers, administrators, salespeople and parts of finance and the government comes to mind. But "most people could stop working" is an unreasonable assertion.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      > Who would grow your food? >> There are exceptions of course. There are about 2M farmers and ranchers in the US. 22M health care professionals. 4M teachers. 2M truckers, 135k rail workers, 40k miners, etc. Even at our highest employment levels, under half of those in the US are employed. They're just not counted as unemployed because they're either children, in school, retired, or simply not seeking employment. Yes, I do believe that most jobs are superfluous - that many more people could not have to work without a material impact to the availability of goods.
chucksmash 4y ago
> Then when someone wins the internet lottery, they succumb to their ego and do a bunch of stuff in business to hoard even more wealth, rather than working to reform the system which keeps so many others down. It doesn't even have to come down to greed though. If some meme stock speculation 1000x'd, my family could live off the gains in perpetuity and I could spend all my time working in a soup kitchen, doing good. But if I instead figured out how to turn that into even more money, I could start a new soup kitchen and help even more people, doing even more good. But if I instead figured out how to turn that into even more money, ...
- thelastgallon 4y ago
  Is this effective altruism?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    It's altruism if GP stops the recursion at some point and actually uses the money to help people and do good. It's effective altruism if they use the money in a smart way, that reasonably maximizes the good it does for others, instead of doing something stupid or just extremely suboptimal.
itsoktocry 4y ago
>But it's like we're all waiting around for a billionaire to liberate us Only in Silicon Valley, and that's probably a big part of the problem. In some of the highest paying, most creative occupations on the planet people are drooling at the feet of billionaires to save them while they slave away M-F. Most people throughout history didn't look at the rich with anything but contempt. In Silicon Valley they're held up as geniuses on every subject. Look at how a subsection of the industry treated Elon Musk taking the axe to Twitter (politics aside).
- warkdarrior 4y ago
  > Most people throughout history didn't look at the rich with anything but contempt. Citation needed. I don't think wealth as the main cause of contempt.
- kortilla 4y ago
  You’re confusing “billionaires” with “a few select billionaires that built disruptive businesses from the ground up”. Nobody in Silicon Valley is “drooling at the feet” of the Walton children.

quijoteuniv 4y ago

“ Then when someone wins the internet lottery, they succumb to their ego and do a bunch of stuff in business to hoard even more wealth, rather than working to reform the system which keeps so many others down.” Well said

leetrout 4y ago

"but spend the majority of our lives working 40 hour weeks to outcompete each other and make rent" THIS. I am so sick of the competition in most tech jobs / companies to climb the stupid ladder. Everyone just wants more more more and our society reinforces that. I _REALLY_ miss working on teams that didn't have that amount of competition causing mild dysfunction.

water-your-self 4y ago
Can I ask the rough scale of the company you work for?
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Do you feel compelled to participate in that competition? If not, why does it bother you?
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  Fail to compete and you'll be left behind in terms of compensation, performance review rankings, and career growth, the last of which also limits your future job choices. It also puts you nearer the top of the list for layoffs when corporate finances get tight.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    But those things shouldn’t bother you if you aren’t interested in the “more more more” society. It’s easy to get a stable programming job in the US that pays $80k and has very little lay-off risk. You can’t have it both ways complaining about being left behind in comp while not participating in the grind that allows those comps to go higher.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      Lower paid jobs can be worse. That they can’t afford to pay you more might mean they are doing something noble but usually it is a wannabe growth startup being badly run and pushing down pressure on lower waged staff to compensate. But you have a point: at 80k requirement you could easily freelance to earn that, for non technical people. Help set up shopify stores etc. and not need to constantly be on a learning grind.
      - uxp100 4y ago
        I don’t think wanna be growth startup is really typical. Typical lower, but not that low paid tech job is more like maintain software tooling that supports mechanical engineers testing, or aids insurance appraisal, or replacing ladder logic industrial automation with something that has more iot type features (and still might be partially ladder logic). Probably all those pay 80k-100k to someone with a few years experience. The downsides are dingy offices that you’ll have to show up in sometimes, and for the last one, potentially lots of travel to not too exciting places.

imperfect_blue 4y ago

Because for everyone to make what they want to make is, as of current year, a pie in the sky fantasy until scarcity is solved, and perhaps not even then. There are 8 billion humans, the world doesn't need another hundred thousand programming languages or web frameworks or game development platform or even indie games or fiction or music or film, produced every year when the whim strikes someone's fancy. Even if we could, who can even consume that much content? Being a cog in a machine at least means you're probably doing something of value to someone instead of writing another book that nobody reads. As of now we have no better solution to coordination failure except to create the AGI that will save/doom us.

falcolas 4y ago
Personal opinion: I think scarcity is mostly a solved problem, in that most of us are working on projects that only exist to make someone else more money, not to fulfill any actual needs of those 8 billion humans. There are exceptions of course. But most of us could stop working tomorrow, and aside from the lack of income, the scarcity of resources available to us would not change. The real problems that causes hunger/poverty in our world has more to do with logistics and politics, not a deficit of resources.
- imperfect_blue 4y ago
  I cannot understand why you would think so, even in a first world nation. Who would grow your food? Who would make the tools and fertilizer that enable the farmers to grow your food? The robotics and software that enables those tools and fertilizer to be produce? Who would organize, transport, package, preserve and process the produce so that you can access it? Apply the same questions to healthcare, education, transport, construction, entertainment, etc. Some jobs are superfluous and arise out of coordination failure, that's true. Lawyers, administrators, salespeople and parts of finance and the government comes to mind. But "most people could stop working" is an unreasonable assertion.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    > Who would grow your food? >> There are exceptions of course. There are about 2M farmers and ranchers in the US. 22M health care professionals. 4M teachers. 2M truckers, 135k rail workers, 40k miners, etc. Even at our highest employment levels, under half of those in the US are employed. They're just not counted as unemployed because they're either children, in school, retired, or simply not seeking employment. Yes, I do believe that most jobs are superfluous - that many more people could not have to work without a material impact to the availability of goods.

chucksmash 4y ago

> Then when someone wins the internet lottery, they succumb to their ego and do a bunch of stuff in business to hoard even more wealth, rather than working to reform the system which keeps so many others down. It doesn't even have to come down to greed though. If some meme stock speculation 1000x'd, my family could live off the gains in perpetuity and I could spend all my time working in a soup kitchen, doing good. But if I instead figured out how to turn that into even more money, I could start a new soup kitchen and help even more people, doing even more good. But if I instead figured out how to turn that into even more money, ...

thelastgallon 4y ago
Is this effective altruism?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  It's altruism if GP stops the recursion at some point and actually uses the money to help people and do good. It's effective altruism if they use the money in a smart way, that reasonably maximizes the good it does for others, instead of doing something stupid or just extremely suboptimal.

itsoktocry 4y ago

>But it's like we're all waiting around for a billionaire to liberate us Only in Silicon Valley, and that's probably a big part of the problem. In some of the highest paying, most creative occupations on the planet people are drooling at the feet of billionaires to save them while they slave away M-F. Most people throughout history didn't look at the rich with anything but contempt. In Silicon Valley they're held up as geniuses on every subject. Look at how a subsection of the industry treated Elon Musk taking the axe to Twitter (politics aside).

warkdarrior 4y ago
> Most people throughout history didn't look at the rich with anything but contempt. Citation needed. I don't think wealth as the main cause of contempt.
kortilla 4y ago
You’re confusing “billionaires” with “a few select billionaires that built disruptive businesses from the ground up”. Nobody in Silicon Valley is “drooling at the feet” of the Walton children.