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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

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.
    - gus_massa 4y ago
      You forgot to count plumbers, and everyone in the construction industry. Also the guy that fills the milk bottles. My brother used to work in a milk bottling plant, but he was not filing the bottles by hand. A machine filled the bottles, someone overlook the machine, my brother was making the chemistry and biological test to ensure the milk was safe to drink. And there was some additional people they call in case the machine gets broken (or to build a new machine.) You are forgetting to count a lot of people.
      - falcolas 4y ago
        Even if every single position in the US held today were considered essential, there would still be more people in the US who are unemployed than employed. And every job currently held today is absolutely not essential.
        kortilla 4y ago
        That doesn’t support your point though that we’re anywhere near post scarcity and can support people quitting. Many jobs that were classified as essential during the pandemic are things people don’t have oodles of joy doing (garbage pickup, power plant coal loader, etc). You can cut out the entire “entertainment” or whatever industry you think isn’t essential, but we still need to convince the people working the essential jobs to do it while everyone else free-rides.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  If most of us “humans” not “hn subset” stopped working we’d be in deep trouble. Who will maintain buildings, infrastructure, essential services, government etc. I think we could work towards long term fewer hours and more people who don’t need to work though.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    My thinking is this - less than half of the population in the US holds a traditional job. 150M or so. And a vast majority of those are not jobs related to "essential" work. They're largely part of the retail and administrative workforce. And so, if a majority of less than half of the US population is working unnecessary jobs (i.e. only valuable to our economy)... how much of what we do is really valuable to us as a species? Which is a roundabout way to say that scarcity is a mostly if not completely solved problem; working to survive is largely no longer necessary, just customary.
    - MrJohz 4y ago
      There's a big leap there though from "non-traditional" to "not necessary". A colleague of mine is working on a project involving ensuring that farmers can track their feed and illness statistics correctly to improve their yields. It's not a traditional job, but it's absolutely necessary to ensure that (for example) the dairy industry can provide enough milk. (And moreover, to reduce the number of people who need to be working on calculating those statistics by hand.) Likewise, you're also assuming that jobs that meet needs are more essential than jobs that meet wants, but the point of post-scarcity is that not only our needs are met, but our wants are as well. Picard can make himself a cup of earl grey whenever he wants, as opposed to sustaining himself with the recommended nutri-pack. One of my most fulfilling jobs was working for a t-shirt printing company - in theory, nothing we did was at all essential, but it was clearly very important to a lot of people's lives. Some of the most fascinating orders were memorial t-shirts being printed for people's funerals. Not essential at all, but I would argue very valuable to us as a species.
      - ThunderSizzle 4y ago
zackmorris 4y ago
You make a good point. I've latched onto some goals (like making games) because I forget that they're a stepping stone to something bigger. The bigger thing would have been the web framework, or the programming language. But even those aren't quite big enough. If I'm being honest, the biggest stuff is curing disease, eliminating wealth inequality.. biblical stuff. Truly I want to be an inventor and work to solve the very hardest problems. So it feels undignified to be fixing someone's computer when I could be helping researchers to like, cure death and stuff. But you're right, that act of helping someone is the very essence of our humanity and shouldn't be written off as something inconsequential just because it's not glorious. There is glory to be found though, a different kind of glory in that covenant. And I totally agree about AGI. Edit: as far as scarcity goes, I think that economics correctly attempts to allocate resources between people with unlimited wants and needs. It just never got as far as the endgame we're in now, where the primary scarce resource is time. That's an artificial scarcity, so we might have a chance to turn things around if we optimize for that instead of material wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity
- yawnxyz 4y ago
  I left the tech world to “cure disease” (working on a phage clinical trial, currently treating three patients, and they’re doing super well!) With that said, I’m consumed with FOMO and opportunity cost every day. I’ve missed the boat on being founder-level or early designer/engineer on so many projects that have gone on to raise Series B it’s mind numbing. Also, we were paid $0 bootstrapping our stuff in the first five years, and now finally we get paid, but $60k a year. I’m saying this as a warning to all devs and designers out there. Do NOT do this. If you can get into Google or FAANG or whatever, build wealth that way. Maybe you’ll feel like a sell-out or you never scratched your itch or done something good for the world, but then you can also remember you can take a year off in Bali or whatever.

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.
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    You forgot to count plumbers, and everyone in the construction industry. Also the guy that fills the milk bottles. My brother used to work in a milk bottling plant, but he was not filing the bottles by hand. A machine filled the bottles, someone overlook the machine, my brother was making the chemistry and biological test to ensure the milk was safe to drink. And there was some additional people they call in case the machine gets broken (or to build a new machine.) You are forgetting to count a lot of people.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      Even if every single position in the US held today were considered essential, there would still be more people in the US who are unemployed than employed. And every job currently held today is absolutely not essential.
      - kortilla 4y ago
        That doesn’t support your point though that we’re anywhere near post scarcity and can support people quitting. Many jobs that were classified as essential during the pandemic are things people don’t have oodles of joy doing (garbage pickup, power plant coal loader, etc). You can cut out the entire “entertainment” or whatever industry you think isn’t essential, but we still need to convince the people working the essential jobs to do it while everyone else free-rides.
quickthrower2 4y ago
If most of us “humans” not “hn subset” stopped working we’d be in deep trouble. Who will maintain buildings, infrastructure, essential services, government etc. I think we could work towards long term fewer hours and more people who don’t need to work though.
- falcolas 4y ago
  My thinking is this - less than half of the population in the US holds a traditional job. 150M or so. And a vast majority of those are not jobs related to "essential" work. They're largely part of the retail and administrative workforce. And so, if a majority of less than half of the US population is working unnecessary jobs (i.e. only valuable to our economy)... how much of what we do is really valuable to us as a species? Which is a roundabout way to say that scarcity is a mostly if not completely solved problem; working to survive is largely no longer necessary, just customary.
  - MrJohz 4y ago
    There's a big leap there though from "non-traditional" to "not necessary". A colleague of mine is working on a project involving ensuring that farmers can track their feed and illness statistics correctly to improve their yields. It's not a traditional job, but it's absolutely necessary to ensure that (for example) the dairy industry can provide enough milk. (And moreover, to reduce the number of people who need to be working on calculating those statistics by hand.) Likewise, you're also assuming that jobs that meet needs are more essential than jobs that meet wants, but the point of post-scarcity is that not only our needs are met, but our wants are as well. Picard can make himself a cup of earl grey whenever he wants, as opposed to sustaining himself with the recommended nutri-pack. One of my most fulfilling jobs was working for a t-shirt printing company - in theory, nothing we did was at all essential, but it was clearly very important to a lot of people's lives. Some of the most fascinating orders were memorial t-shirts being printed for people's funerals. Not essential at all, but I would argue very valuable to us as a species.
    - ThunderSizzle 4y ago

zackmorris 4y ago

You make a good point. I've latched onto some goals (like making games) because I forget that they're a stepping stone to something bigger. The bigger thing would have been the web framework, or the programming language. But even those aren't quite big enough. If I'm being honest, the biggest stuff is curing disease, eliminating wealth inequality.. biblical stuff. Truly I want to be an inventor and work to solve the very hardest problems. So it feels undignified to be fixing someone's computer when I could be helping researchers to like, cure death and stuff. But you're right, that act of helping someone is the very essence of our humanity and shouldn't be written off as something inconsequential just because it's not glorious. There is glory to be found though, a different kind of glory in that covenant. And I totally agree about AGI. Edit: as far as scarcity goes, I think that economics correctly attempts to allocate resources between people with unlimited wants and needs. It just never got as far as the endgame we're in now, where the primary scarce resource is time. That's an artificial scarcity, so we might have a chance to turn things around if we optimize for that instead of material wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity

yawnxyz 4y ago
I left the tech world to “cure disease” (working on a phage clinical trial, currently treating three patients, and they’re doing super well!) With that said, I’m consumed with FOMO and opportunity cost every day. I’ve missed the boat on being founder-level or early designer/engineer on so many projects that have gone on to raise Series B it’s mind numbing. Also, we were paid $0 bootstrapping our stuff in the first five years, and now finally we get paid, but $60k a year. I’m saying this as a warning to all devs and designers out there. Do NOT do this. If you can get into Google or FAANG or whatever, build wealth that way. Maybe you’ll feel like a sell-out or you never scratched your itch or done something good for the world, but then you can also remember you can take a year off in Bali or whatever.