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> but to happen on a large scale we need more opportunities for people to create millions of dollars in value. Wouldn’t you say that there has been a huge spi

> but to happen on a large scale we need more opportunities for people to create millions of dollars in value. Wouldn’t you say that there has been a huge spike in opportunities over the past 50 years? I’m thinking of the explosion of computing and its impact on society. Yet we’ve mostly seen the middle class shrink. I’m skeptical the issue here is opportunities. I’m pretty sure the issue is a shift in the balance of power, moving it from labour to capital. One superyacht could have paid for a lot of middle class lives. Automating a farm is a great opportunity to make a couple engineers+ceos+investors rich, and dump a few hundred people onto the job market, diluting their and every other worker in their position’s power

roenxi 3y ago
Yeah. The article points out one instance in a long, systemic conga line of instances where the regulators find the best option that people have and ban it. Yes, we have seen the middle class shrink. If you want the middle class to grow, people need to have freedom to take the best option available. If workers are paid more than the value they produce and there are policies that push people to work 40 hours a week when there are opportunities to work 70 then quality of life isn't going to go up. A lot of the growth has gone to places that let people work [0] at wages you would probably call unfair. Those people are much better off than they were 50 years ago. They worked in hellish conditions and it turns out the theory is correct - after working very hard and saving their standards of living started to improve. That isn't possible without combinations of hard work and low consumption. > I’m pretty sure the issue is a shift in the balance of power, moving it from labour to capital. Then you're choosing a damn stupid strategy by advocating that people get paid more. You should be advocating that they have better opportunities to own and create capital. If labour is at a disadvantage, why encourage people to be labourers? The goal should be to make everyone a capitalist. It is like those people who are proud of the wins of the union movement. Y'know, congratulations. They locked themselves into being the losing side of a losing game. If they'd been going for more legal support for co-ops and better access to capital there'd be less workers and more people'd be better off. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Macroeconomic_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Macroeconomic...
- kennywinker 3y ago
  > policies that push people to work 40 hours a week when there are opportunities to work 70 then quality of life isn't going to go up. Seems like we have very different definitions of quality of life, if you think working 70 hours/week is a path to it. > You should be advocating that they have better opportunities to own and create capital. If labour is at a disadvantage, why encourage people to be labourers? Because labour exists, and a world without it doesn’t. So someone will always be a labouror. All you’re advocating for is more little warlords, instead of a couple kings. Doesn’t sound better to me.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    What happened to being "this rich a nation"? There isn't a reason to have one group called "labour" and one called "capital". The world could be all of one or all of the other. In the bad old days it was 100% labour. In the ideal future it is 100% capital. Capital is just more effective than labour, that is the reason why the capitalists end up having much more wealth. It isn't an exclusive club - everyone should be signing up. That is the type of thinking that leads to stupid legislation like what the article is talking about. Rigid thinking in politics who can't imagine that a vegetable seeder could make a living any way except by going out, seeding vegetables and eventually ruining their bodies. The whole trick to improving their quality of life is finding better work for them to do or convincing them to take ownership of capital. They can't possibly secure a great lifestyle if they keep working as seeders. All the most straightforward scenarios that lead to a step change in their living standard are achieved by them not being seeders - automating the seeding process with them as owners of capital, or upskilling them so that they can find more productive work. Trying to convince the one person in the world who will give them the most money that they need to be payed more is a failed strategy that people have been trying for centuries now with effectively no success.
    - kennywinker 3y ago
      > Capital is just more effective than labour At what? Capital doesn’t plant seeds, harvest crops, stock shelves, or cook meals. In a world with perfect 100% automation, yeah - sure, everybody can be a capitalist. In the real world labour is absolutely necessary, and being a capitalist is just exploiting those people that do the actual real work. Your suggestion that everybody should try to be a capitalist is saying everyone should fight like crabs in a bucket to be the top crab crushing all the other crabs. Good plan.

roenxi 3y ago

Yeah. The article points out one instance in a long, systemic conga line of instances where the regulators find the best option that people have and ban it. Yes, we have seen the middle class shrink. If you want the middle class to grow, people need to have freedom to take the best option available. If workers are paid more than the value they produce and there are policies that push people to work 40 hours a week when there are opportunities to work 70 then quality of life isn't going to go up. A lot of the growth has gone to places that let people work [0] at wages you would probably call unfair. Those people are much better off than they were 50 years ago. They worked in hellish conditions and it turns out the theory is correct - after working very hard and saving their standards of living started to improve. That isn't possible without combinations of hard work and low consumption. > I’m pretty sure the issue is a shift in the balance of power, moving it from labour to capital. Then you're choosing a damn stupid strategy by advocating that people get paid more. You should be advocating that they have better opportunities to own and create capital. If labour is at a disadvantage, why encourage people to be labourers? The goal should be to make everyone a capitalist. It is like those people who are proud of the wins of the union movement. Y'know, congratulations. They locked themselves into being the losing side of a losing game. If they'd been going for more legal support for co-ops and better access to capital there'd be less workers and more people'd be better off. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Macroeconomic_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Macroeconomic...

kennywinker 3y ago
> policies that push people to work 40 hours a week when there are opportunities to work 70 then quality of life isn't going to go up. Seems like we have very different definitions of quality of life, if you think working 70 hours/week is a path to it. > You should be advocating that they have better opportunities to own and create capital. If labour is at a disadvantage, why encourage people to be labourers? Because labour exists, and a world without it doesn’t. So someone will always be a labouror. All you’re advocating for is more little warlords, instead of a couple kings. Doesn’t sound better to me.
- roenxi 3y ago
  What happened to being "this rich a nation"? There isn't a reason to have one group called "labour" and one called "capital". The world could be all of one or all of the other. In the bad old days it was 100% labour. In the ideal future it is 100% capital. Capital is just more effective than labour, that is the reason why the capitalists end up having much more wealth. It isn't an exclusive club - everyone should be signing up. That is the type of thinking that leads to stupid legislation like what the article is talking about. Rigid thinking in politics who can't imagine that a vegetable seeder could make a living any way except by going out, seeding vegetables and eventually ruining their bodies. The whole trick to improving their quality of life is finding better work for them to do or convincing them to take ownership of capital. They can't possibly secure a great lifestyle if they keep working as seeders. All the most straightforward scenarios that lead to a step change in their living standard are achieved by them not being seeders - automating the seeding process with them as owners of capital, or upskilling them so that they can find more productive work. Trying to convince the one person in the world who will give them the most money that they need to be payed more is a failed strategy that people have been trying for centuries now with effectively no success.
  - kennywinker 3y ago
    > Capital is just more effective than labour At what? Capital doesn’t plant seeds, harvest crops, stock shelves, or cook meals. In a world with perfect 100% automation, yeah - sure, everybody can be a capitalist. In the real world labour is absolutely necessary, and being a capitalist is just exploiting those people that do the actual real work. Your suggestion that everybody should try to be a capitalist is saying everyone should fight like crabs in a bucket to be the top crab crushing all the other crabs. Good plan.