4 ms·

If you look at any metric like life expectancy, literacy rates, child mortality, things have gotten so much better. (One exception is the US where life expectan

If you look at any metric like life expectancy, literacy rates, child mortality, things have gotten so much better. (One exception is the US where life expectancy dropped. As was heavily discussed online the last days, this is mostly due to gun violence, traffic accidents and drug abuse which IMO are largely cultural and not due to automation)

timr 4y ago
> this is mostly due to gun violence, traffic accidents and drug abuse which IMO are largely cultural and not due to automation) Not really. It's mostly due to food and metabolic disorders (i.e. diabetes, heart disease; iirc heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the US, and depending on how you group, diabetes is in the top five), which actually underscores the point. People are dying at higher rates because they can get cheap calories at a rate unprecedented in human history.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799722418556931?s=20 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799722418556931?...
  - timr 4y ago
    Both this and what I wrote can be true at the same time.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Again, are you looking at the average or the median? Just saying the same thing over and over without data to back it up doesn't count for much. The discrepancy is fairly large - average US 'familial' net worth is $748,000, median is only $122,000 - and the median net worth for non-homeowning families is only $6,000. https://financebuzz.com/us-net-worth-statistics https://financebuzz.com/us-net-worth-statistics A serious medical condition is also likely to cause bankrupty and loss of homeowner status for many homeowners in the mid-range for US citizens, which is unusual relative to other industrialized countries. If you add in obvious stress factors - economic instability, environmental degradation, increasing climatic variability, the revival of infectious disease threats - then you can see why a dystopian future is a real probability, and that the status quo approach is unwise.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  Is there a median child mortality or literacy rate? For net-worth, which I never mentioned, your own source shows increases over time of both median and average since 2016. All the distressing situations you describe of course are real, but were they less common in the US in the past? QoL has gone up tremendously over the last fifty years, especially if you look at it globally. Do we need something like UBI to avoid terrible poverty for everyone? Absolutely! As we slowly move towards a post-scarcity society, re-distribution of wealth becomes more and more critical. That said, I'd rather be bottom 30% of income today than top 70% 50 years ago. No money in the world could have bought you minimally-invasive surgery, modern anesthesia... Nice summary of all the ways things have gotten better: https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/1638379674999873538?s=20 https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/163837967499987353...
  - sharemywin 4y ago
    UBI? let's just start with reliable food, housing and medical(including mental health). and shore up some kind of retirement funds. then lets talk about cost effective daycare so raising a child doesn't destroy your financial prospects. If there's anything left I'm all about it.
    - ajmurmann 4y ago
      I suggest UBI because I believe it's the most cost-effective way to allow people to get those things. Targeted intervention have often high overhead and undesirable side effects. For example, demand-side interventions to support limited goods and services drive up the price of these things while cost controls frequently lead to prices going actually up, due to the regulatory overhead. See https://www.niskanencenter.org/cost-disease-socialism-how-subsidizing-costs-while-restricting-supply-drives-americas-fiscal-imbalance/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/cost-disease-socialism-how-su... Let's just raise the poverty floor instead and let people decide what to do with the money.
JohnFen 4y ago
> If you look at any metric like life expectancy, literacy rates, child mortality, things have gotten so much better. Indeed. But I was talking about drug pricing, not all of that.

timr 4y ago

> this is mostly due to gun violence, traffic accidents and drug abuse which IMO are largely cultural and not due to automation) Not really. It's mostly due to food and metabolic disorders (i.e. diabetes, heart disease; iirc heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the US, and depending on how you group, diabetes is in the top five), which actually underscores the point. People are dying at higher rates because they can get cheap calories at a rate unprecedented in human history.

ajmurmann 4y ago
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799722418556931?s=20 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799722418556931?...
- timr 4y ago
  Both this and what I wrote can be true at the same time.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Again, are you looking at the average or the median? Just saying the same thing over and over without data to back it up doesn't count for much. The discrepancy is fairly large - average US 'familial' net worth is $748,000, median is only $122,000 - and the median net worth for non-homeowning families is only $6,000. https://financebuzz.com/us-net-worth-statistics https://financebuzz.com/us-net-worth-statistics A serious medical condition is also likely to cause bankrupty and loss of homeowner status for many homeowners in the mid-range for US citizens, which is unusual relative to other industrialized countries. If you add in obvious stress factors - economic instability, environmental degradation, increasing climatic variability, the revival of infectious disease threats - then you can see why a dystopian future is a real probability, and that the status quo approach is unwise.

ajmurmann 4y ago
Is there a median child mortality or literacy rate? For net-worth, which I never mentioned, your own source shows increases over time of both median and average since 2016. All the distressing situations you describe of course are real, but were they less common in the US in the past? QoL has gone up tremendously over the last fifty years, especially if you look at it globally. Do we need something like UBI to avoid terrible poverty for everyone? Absolutely! As we slowly move towards a post-scarcity society, re-distribution of wealth becomes more and more critical. That said, I'd rather be bottom 30% of income today than top 70% 50 years ago. No money in the world could have bought you minimally-invasive surgery, modern anesthesia... Nice summary of all the ways things have gotten better: https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/1638379674999873538?s=20 https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/163837967499987353...
- sharemywin 4y ago
  UBI? let's just start with reliable food, housing and medical(including mental health). and shore up some kind of retirement funds. then lets talk about cost effective daycare so raising a child doesn't destroy your financial prospects. If there's anything left I'm all about it.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    I suggest UBI because I believe it's the most cost-effective way to allow people to get those things. Targeted intervention have often high overhead and undesirable side effects. For example, demand-side interventions to support limited goods and services drive up the price of these things while cost controls frequently lead to prices going actually up, due to the regulatory overhead. See https://www.niskanencenter.org/cost-disease-socialism-how-subsidizing-costs-while-restricting-supply-drives-americas-fiscal-imbalance/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/cost-disease-socialism-how-su... Let's just raise the poverty floor instead and let people decide what to do with the money.

JohnFen 4y ago

> If you look at any metric like life expectancy, literacy rates, child mortality, things have gotten so much better. Indeed. But I was talking about drug pricing, not all of that.