5 ms·

> A good lesson to think about all the implications of the software I'm writing. only in so far as not reaping the rewards for having done more work than the c

by chii 4y ago

> A good lesson to think about all the implications of the software I'm writing. only in so far as not reaping the rewards for having done more work than the company paid you for. Efficiency improvements are always good for society as a whole, despite it hurting some people who originally was paid due to the inefficiency.

mschuster91 4y ago
> Efficiency improvements are always good for society as a whole, despite it hurting some people who originally was paid due to the inefficiency. When the economic/capital/wealth 1% end up hoarding all the profitability gains, society as a whole loses. I have come to loathe the term "disruption" as it has always meant externalizing costs to make a quick buck: either by technology replacing actual, real humans with real families who now have to struggle to survive or by breaking laws and regulations like Uber and AirBnB did, with society paying the costs associated with that - in the case of Uber, society picked up the tab for underinsured drivers or for their pension/social security contributions which don't apply for "freelancers", and in the case of AirBnB all the neighbors affected by the noise and literal other disruptions an AirBnB brings with it.
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  This is a criticism of the USA's economic system, where we only give people money through _factor payments_ (exchanging money for labor) or _ownership of capital_. It isn't actually a criticism of technology/automation! In healthier countries, like the Nordics, they've organized their society so that automation, resource extraction, and really all success in business benefits their society as a whole rather than concentrating the wealth into the hands of the elite. Having written that, I feel like I'm picking a nit, because what you said is true in the USA and I don't see it changing in my lifetime.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Norway is one of the very few democratic nations having a sizable sovereign wealth fund and a strong tradition of the responsibility of the state to take care of all of its citizens (partially because the natural conditions make survival without cooperation all but impossible). Out of all the top 20 SWFs [1], only four to six belong to healthy democracies, six if you count Turkey and the US as one - the rest are essentially grifting arms for the local rulers. Everyone else barely has a SWF worth the name and almost all Western and Western-allied countries have fallen into the neoliberal/"lean government" trap. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign...
    - droopyEyelids 4y ago
      Thats true but a sovereign wealth fund isn't the only way to link success of the country's businesses to the success of the people. Using tax revenue to fund a social safety net, public works, education, and housing achieves the goal. The sovereign wealth fund is more about what to do with the money between taxation and social works. If the country has a sovereign wealth fund without all the social spending then I'd say the success of the country's business hasn't been linked to the wellbeing of the people.
- jschveibinz 4y ago
  The 1% do not get wealthy from “hoarding the profitability gains.” This is a common misconception on HN and society in general. Profits of businesses are typically in 10% range for small businesses and even lower on average for large businesses [1]. Wealth is not income. It’s the value of owned assets: money, property, etc. So where does the wealth come from? There are a couple of different answers-and I’m not going to discuss stealing, slavery, exploitation or other illegal and immoral practices-but generally the answer for lots of wealthy, legitimate people is it is CREATED from “deals.” Wherever one person (or group) can sell something to someone else at a multiple of its current value, wealth is created. The expectation that something of value will either generate income or grow in value in future years creates a higher price for that thing right now. That entices the buyer, and creates wealth for the seller. How much wealth? If you have a rock today that you can tell a story about being potentially worth 100x in 10 years, then you can probably sell that rock for 10x of its actual value today. That is wealth creation. This is related to the concept of “time value of money.” Real estate is one example. Selling a business is another. Art is yet another example. Have a great day. Edit: [1] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average-company-makes-a-36-profit-margin-which-is-about-5x-too-high-part-ii/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average...
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > Wealth is not income. It’s the value of owned assets: money, property, etc. Both wealth and income disparity have risen over the last decades - while the lower income group's shares have stayed constant, the middle class has eroded in favor of those already in wealth - and only the top 5% managed to gain wealth after the 2009-ff depression [1], with their gains by necessity coming from the suffering of the 95%. The reason is simple: if you are already wealthy, you can afford snatching up assets of all kinds for fire-sale prices - particularly those who had to panic-sell their assets or walk away from properties they could no longer afford or were completely underwater after the loss in value despite paying down their mortgage for many years in the early COVID crisis months or in the 2009-ff depression to survive got hit really hard. And on top of that, simply being wealthy puts you in a very favorable economic position... stuff like using higher-risk but also higher-profit financial instruments is only allowed after hitting a certain wealth threshold, you could generate virtually free money and evade taxes by taking loans on your continuously appreciating stocks, or use highly complicated multi-national tax evasion constructs. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
droopyEyelids 4y ago
In countries with no safety net like the USA, people do prefer to work at tedious soul-deadening tasks like manually copy pasting into a CSV than to lose their housing and starve. However, there is a benefit to the person who is no longer employed doing mindless toil! It gives them another chance to find healthier work. Again, in the USA this benefit is outweighed by the possibility of immiseration, but it is at least a small plus in the 'pros' column.
- jschveibinz 4y ago
  Ok, but one issue with your comment: the U.S. has a huge safety net. Entitlements (social programs including social security, welfare, Medicare/Medicaid), etc.) compose 52% of the federal budget ($2 trillion). This equates to almost $10,000 per American. [1] In fact, the U.S. spends more per capita than the Nordic countries, as discussed in other comments. Norway is around $7,500 per person. [2] So what’s the difference? The U.S. is the “wild, Wild West” and Norway is not, according to [2]. [1] https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlement-spending/ https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlemen... [2] https://freakonomics.com/2010/05/who-spends-more-on-social-welfare-the-united-states-or-sweden/#:~:text=If%20we%20take%20into%20account,%245%2C800%2C%20and%20Finland%20at%20%244%2C900 https://freakonomics.com/2010/05/who-spends-more-on-social-w....
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    Does any of this make a difference to the unemployed? I assure you, the unemployed in the US and norway have two very different experiences and I'd much rather be unemployed in a scandi country than in the US.
    - chii 4y ago
      So why is it worse in the US, when the spending is ostensibly higher? What is the root cause of this inefficiency?

by chii 4y ago

mschuster91 4y ago

> Efficiency improvements are always good for society as a whole, despite it hurting some people who originally was paid due to the inefficiency. When the economic/capital/wealth 1% end up hoarding all the profitability gains, society as a whole loses. I have come to loathe the term "disruption" as it has always meant externalizing costs to make a quick buck: either by technology replacing actual, real humans with real families who now have to struggle to survive or by breaking laws and regulations like Uber and AirBnB did, with society paying the costs associated with that - in the case of Uber, society picked up the tab for underinsured drivers or for their pension/social security contributions which don't apply for "freelancers", and in the case of AirBnB all the neighbors affected by the noise and literal other disruptions an AirBnB brings with it.

droopyEyelids 4y ago
This is a criticism of the USA's economic system, where we only give people money through _factor payments_ (exchanging money for labor) or _ownership of capital_. It isn't actually a criticism of technology/automation! In healthier countries, like the Nordics, they've organized their society so that automation, resource extraction, and really all success in business benefits their society as a whole rather than concentrating the wealth into the hands of the elite. Having written that, I feel like I'm picking a nit, because what you said is true in the USA and I don't see it changing in my lifetime.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  Norway is one of the very few democratic nations having a sizable sovereign wealth fund and a strong tradition of the responsibility of the state to take care of all of its citizens (partially because the natural conditions make survival without cooperation all but impossible). Out of all the top 20 SWFs [1], only four to six belong to healthy democracies, six if you count Turkey and the US as one - the rest are essentially grifting arms for the local rulers. Everyone else barely has a SWF worth the name and almost all Western and Western-allied countries have fallen into the neoliberal/"lean government" trap. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign...
  - droopyEyelids 4y ago
    Thats true but a sovereign wealth fund isn't the only way to link success of the country's businesses to the success of the people. Using tax revenue to fund a social safety net, public works, education, and housing achieves the goal. The sovereign wealth fund is more about what to do with the money between taxation and social works. If the country has a sovereign wealth fund without all the social spending then I'd say the success of the country's business hasn't been linked to the wellbeing of the people.
jschveibinz 4y ago
The 1% do not get wealthy from “hoarding the profitability gains.” This is a common misconception on HN and society in general. Profits of businesses are typically in 10% range for small businesses and even lower on average for large businesses [1]. Wealth is not income. It’s the value of owned assets: money, property, etc. So where does the wealth come from? There are a couple of different answers-and I’m not going to discuss stealing, slavery, exploitation or other illegal and immoral practices-but generally the answer for lots of wealthy, legitimate people is it is CREATED from “deals.” Wherever one person (or group) can sell something to someone else at a multiple of its current value, wealth is created. The expectation that something of value will either generate income or grow in value in future years creates a higher price for that thing right now. That entices the buyer, and creates wealth for the seller. How much wealth? If you have a rock today that you can tell a story about being potentially worth 100x in 10 years, then you can probably sell that rock for 10x of its actual value today. That is wealth creation. This is related to the concept of “time value of money.” Real estate is one example. Selling a business is another. Art is yet another example. Have a great day. Edit: [1] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average-company-makes-a-36-profit-margin-which-is-about-5x-too-high-part-ii/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average...
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Wealth is not income. It’s the value of owned assets: money, property, etc. Both wealth and income disparity have risen over the last decades - while the lower income group's shares have stayed constant, the middle class has eroded in favor of those already in wealth - and only the top 5% managed to gain wealth after the 2009-ff depression [1], with their gains by necessity coming from the suffering of the 95%. The reason is simple: if you are already wealthy, you can afford snatching up assets of all kinds for fire-sale prices - particularly those who had to panic-sell their assets or walk away from properties they could no longer afford or were completely underwater after the loss in value despite paying down their mortgage for many years in the early COVID crisis months or in the 2009-ff depression to survive got hit really hard. And on top of that, simply being wealthy puts you in a very favorable economic position... stuff like using higher-risk but also higher-profit financial instruments is only allowed after hitting a certain wealth threshold, you could generate virtually free money and evade taxes by taking loans on your continuously appreciating stocks, or use highly complicated multi-national tax evasion constructs. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

droopyEyelids 4y ago

In countries with no safety net like the USA, people do prefer to work at tedious soul-deadening tasks like manually copy pasting into a CSV than to lose their housing and starve. However, there is a benefit to the person who is no longer employed doing mindless toil! It gives them another chance to find healthier work. Again, in the USA this benefit is outweighed by the possibility of immiseration, but it is at least a small plus in the 'pros' column.

jschveibinz 4y ago
Ok, but one issue with your comment: the U.S. has a huge safety net. Entitlements (social programs including social security, welfare, Medicare/Medicaid), etc.) compose 52% of the federal budget ($2 trillion). This equates to almost $10,000 per American. [1] In fact, the U.S. spends more per capita than the Nordic countries, as discussed in other comments. Norway is around $7,500 per person. [2] So what’s the difference? The U.S. is the “wild, Wild West” and Norway is not, according to [2]. [1] https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlement-spending/ https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlemen... [2] https://freakonomics.com/2010/05/who-spends-more-on-social-welfare-the-united-states-or-sweden/#:~:text=If%20we%20take%20into%20account,%245%2C800%2C%20and%20Finland%20at%20%244%2C900 https://freakonomics.com/2010/05/who-spends-more-on-social-w....
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  Does any of this make a difference to the unemployed? I assure you, the unemployed in the US and norway have two very different experiences and I'd much rather be unemployed in a scandi country than in the US.
  - chii 4y ago
    So why is it worse in the US, when the spending is ostensibly higher? What is the root cause of this inefficiency?