10 ms·

This is the exact same answer every leftist I've talked to says when I ask them who will run the garbage system, and who will clean the sewers.

ForHackernews 3y ago
C'mon, robots obviously! Cleaning sewers doesn't sound like any fun, but designing or remotely piloting a fatberg-blasting sewer shark bot? That sounds kickass!
- martinsnow 3y ago
  But it the meantime while there exists no such robots, or while the prototypes get stuck downthere. Someone has to manually fetch them, and do the job. It's not very enticing and I don't think there will be many software engineers ready to suit up, to dig one out.
  - Niksko 3y ago
    Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. You iterate, as with everything.
    - Chris2048 3y ago
      It took/is taking a long while to develop self-driving cars, despite the money and big players chasing it. How long will a fat-berg shark take-a-to-make-a? Also, think of the people who might help you with this - sewer-diving experts! You are essentially collaborating with them to displace their own roles.
      - ForHackernews 3y ago
        I used to work in retail stocking shelves. 1000% I would have happily collaborated on developing a shelf-stocking robot... if I got paid something for it.
smolder 3y ago
I know it seems crazy on its face. And I'm sure those leftists you refer to didn't have a coherent concept of how such a system would actually work. There's no way we could just replace paychecks today with rations and social credits and have a functioning system. It'd be an extreme destabilizing change to a system we built incrementally over a long time to be self reinforcing. But I also have the view that people are very malleable and can conform to all sorts of social structures and belief systems.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  [flagged]
- nickff 3y ago
  >"But I also have the view that people are very malleable and can conform to all sorts of social structures and belief systems." This is another view common to most (Marxist) communists, the belief in society's ability to cultivate the 'socialist man'.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - smolder 3y ago
    Okay, so are you disputing what I said? Various disparate religions and ideologies have cultivated adherents with notable success across history -- not least among them is free-market capitalism.
    - drekipus 3y ago
      It's less of a belief and more of an emergent property of liberty and maths
- guidoism 3y ago
  I like to think about how this works at smaller scales. When there is an office full of people all being paid about the same and (critically) where they all want and care about the same outcome, the shit jobs will get done. I have often called myself a "code janitor" since I clean up shit that was left behind. It's not because I didn't want to be working on fun greenfield projects but because it was shit that just needed to get done. So I did it. And so did others. Another example to play around with is when you go camping with friends. There's some shit work that just needs to be done. People pitch in. The same with staying at a friends house or a vacation rental with friends. Or cleaning leaves off of the storm drains. We all do this sort of work because it makes our lives better. If literal shit was piling up in front of my house I would probably shovel it even if it took 8 hours. Natural disasters are also examples where people do work for free without expectation of compensation. I think people are more like that than what happens in apocalyptic novels (even though I love reading them).
rootusrootus 3y ago
How often do you talk to people this far to the left? I live in a family full of liberals and none of them even remotely think the world should operate this way. I think you could take every person in the US with ideology this far out to the left and put them in a single medium size stadium.
- ilyt 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Chris2048 3y ago
  Presumably they mean "every leftist that holds this opinion, I've talked to", not "every leftist I've ever talked to".
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    That's a charitable reading given they literally wrote the latter, not the former.
    - Chris2048 3y ago
      A charitable reading requires fair consideration. First, they didn't literally write the latter: A: every leftist I've talked to B: every leftist I've ever talked to Second, if true, would imply that every leftist they've ever talked to will always get asked "who will run the garbage system, and who will clean the sewer" which wouldn't make sense outside the context of having given a specific opinion on a specific topic first. Hence the topic of conversation is implied as context.
Niksko 3y ago
Running the garbage system is a desk job largely I would expect. It might not be the most stimulating subject matter to you, but I think it's within the realm of possibility that you'd find people who found it an interesting system to manage. Cleaning the sewers sounds objectionable. I think you shouldn't discount the idea that in a societal structure that's different from ours you'd remove some of the social stigma that comes from such a job. But at the same time, if you observed that very very few people wanted to clean sewers for whatever reason, and there wasn't enough supply to meet demand, then you invest more in technology that reduces the shortfall. As others suggested, automation.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "But at the same time, if you observed that very very few people wanted to clean sewers for whatever reason" The reason might be, most people do not like to be in the literal shit of others? It comes with actual health hazards btw. "and there wasn't enough supply to meet demand, then you invest more in technology that reduces the shortfall. As others suggested, automation" But we ain't there yet at all. What do we do, till then? The sewage needs to run 24 h and not only if someone feels like taking a look eventually. And as for ordinary garbage: mostly it is not a desk job, but physical labour to touch and move hundreds of different dirty garbage bins every day. Dealing with that shit, should always come with good compensation. (whether money or social credits or whatever currency is in use)
  - Niksko 3y ago
    > What do you do until then? Sure, but you iterate. We decided as a society that Polio was awful enough that we wanted to eradicate it. If we freed up enough effort that is currently wasted on chasing profits, we could eventually get to solving problems like "shit stinks and it sucks having to clean it".
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      Absent corruption, profits must by definition come from money paid by people who determined that, according to themselves, the work being paid for has value. This is why capitalism works. It is a mass, distributed, value computation engine. Considering this, I don’t see how effort is wasted on profit, since the effort produced something that someone considered valuable. Do we have another way of computing value at scale? To date, I haven’t seen any realistic proposals.
geocar 3y ago
Why would you be so bothered to just let them? Would you feel embarrassed that "leftists" are nicer? That can be a motivation too! I know some people just show up so they can have someone to talk to for a few hours on a Saturday. I think if you can't find volunteers, you can have a lottery.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  > you can have a lottery what happens if the lottery "winners" refuse?
  - geocar 3y ago
    Many western countries use a lottery to choose juries. If the winners refuse, they'll have a chance to explain themselves, and then they'll be judged by those who didn't refuse. Exactly what happens next depends.
    - Chris2048 3y ago
      Jury duty is one off, and often compensated. It also isn't clearly undesirable - it's a lottery for different reasons. What would you do in the scenario described for people who refuse any undesirable work?
matkoniecz 3y ago
Possible difference is that we may need far smaller number of programmers interested in dishwashers than we need for this jobs.
travisgriggs 3y ago
Let me analyze your sewage and garbage and sell your consumption habits to the highest bidder, and I might bite. Think of it as a "sump scription" :D
JoshTriplett 3y ago
The obvious answer is "pay people more". If we had UBI, for instance, and people did not have to work in order to have basic needs (food and shelter) met, then the willingness to do unpleasant jobs like sewer cleaning will go down, and it'll be necessary to pay people more to do that work. And the need to pay people more will then drive technological innovation that may today not be worthwhile because "just hire someone" is less expensive. And in a world with UBI, automating away unpleasant jobs becomes more of an unmitigated win. (In case it isn't clear: I think "UBI plus a free market" is a much better system than "don't pay people but magically hope all the work gets done anyway".)
- drekipus 3y ago
  > UBI plus a free market If there's a ubi, then there's price floor that is higher than a non ubi price floor, meaning that the median prices of goods go up, less taxes to find the ubi, and the ubi must then increase to meet the increased costs for a basic standard of living. Well done you invented inflation.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. It does depend on how efficient we could make basic necessity items, and those are only a tiny portion of the modern economy, I suppose. Though I don’t trust the government to not simultaneously screw with the incentives for producing those items, whether by accident or not, which would make a situation like the one you describe more likely. Also it’s not at all clear how housing would work— I’m guessing people would complain about the sort of housing you could get for a workable UBI amount (i.e. one that is actually in equilibrium with the rest of the economy, as in being a tiny rider-on). This would realistically politically cause the amount to keep going up (and thus cause inflation).
    - Chris2048 3y ago
      > basic necessity items, and those are only a tiny portion of the modern economy If housing/shelter is a necessity, it might not be cheap. I think housing projects aimed to do exactly this. You'll eventually find 'poverty' redefined to those receiving UBI only, stuck in undesirable locations, who don't consider it true that "work is optional". Another issue is policing, which is also increasingly expensive, and has all sorts of issues in the US. People like to just shout "fix the police", but have no answer as to how you can recruit for such a job.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Umm running the garbage system sounds rad?? I currently design open source farming robots but I would absolutely love designing open source garbage robots. Of course what’s better is community level management of waste production so we don’t even have a lot of garbage to deal with! Reusable washable containers for food, etc.

ForHackernews 3y ago

C'mon, robots obviously! Cleaning sewers doesn't sound like any fun, but designing or remotely piloting a fatberg-blasting sewer shark bot? That sounds kickass!

martinsnow 3y ago
But it the meantime while there exists no such robots, or while the prototypes get stuck downthere. Someone has to manually fetch them, and do the job. It's not very enticing and I don't think there will be many software engineers ready to suit up, to dig one out.
- Niksko 3y ago
  Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. You iterate, as with everything.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    It took/is taking a long while to develop self-driving cars, despite the money and big players chasing it. How long will a fat-berg shark take-a-to-make-a? Also, think of the people who might help you with this - sewer-diving experts! You are essentially collaborating with them to displace their own roles.
    - ForHackernews 3y ago
      I used to work in retail stocking shelves. 1000% I would have happily collaborated on developing a shelf-stocking robot... if I got paid something for it.

smolder 3y ago

I know it seems crazy on its face. And I'm sure those leftists you refer to didn't have a coherent concept of how such a system would actually work. There's no way we could just replace paychecks today with rations and social credits and have a functioning system. It'd be an extreme destabilizing change to a system we built incrementally over a long time to be self reinforcing. But I also have the view that people are very malleable and can conform to all sorts of social structures and belief systems.

dingnuts 3y ago
[flagged]
nickff 3y ago
>"But I also have the view that people are very malleable and can conform to all sorts of social structures and belief systems." This is another view common to most (Marxist) communists, the belief in society's ability to cultivate the 'socialist man'.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- smolder 3y ago
  Okay, so are you disputing what I said? Various disparate religions and ideologies have cultivated adherents with notable success across history -- not least among them is free-market capitalism.
  - drekipus 3y ago
    It's less of a belief and more of an emergent property of liberty and maths
guidoism 3y ago
I like to think about how this works at smaller scales. When there is an office full of people all being paid about the same and (critically) where they all want and care about the same outcome, the shit jobs will get done. I have often called myself a "code janitor" since I clean up shit that was left behind. It's not because I didn't want to be working on fun greenfield projects but because it was shit that just needed to get done. So I did it. And so did others. Another example to play around with is when you go camping with friends. There's some shit work that just needs to be done. People pitch in. The same with staying at a friends house or a vacation rental with friends. Or cleaning leaves off of the storm drains. We all do this sort of work because it makes our lives better. If literal shit was piling up in front of my house I would probably shovel it even if it took 8 hours. Natural disasters are also examples where people do work for free without expectation of compensation. I think people are more like that than what happens in apocalyptic novels (even though I love reading them).

rootusrootus 3y ago

How often do you talk to people this far to the left? I live in a family full of liberals and none of them even remotely think the world should operate this way. I think you could take every person in the US with ideology this far out to the left and put them in a single medium size stadium.

ilyt 3y ago
[flagged]
Chris2048 3y ago
Presumably they mean "every leftist that holds this opinion, I've talked to", not "every leftist I've ever talked to".
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  That's a charitable reading given they literally wrote the latter, not the former.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    A charitable reading requires fair consideration. First, they didn't literally write the latter: A: every leftist I've talked to B: every leftist I've ever talked to Second, if true, would imply that every leftist they've ever talked to will always get asked "who will run the garbage system, and who will clean the sewer" which wouldn't make sense outside the context of having given a specific opinion on a specific topic first. Hence the topic of conversation is implied as context.

Niksko 3y ago

Running the garbage system is a desk job largely I would expect. It might not be the most stimulating subject matter to you, but I think it's within the realm of possibility that you'd find people who found it an interesting system to manage. Cleaning the sewers sounds objectionable. I think you shouldn't discount the idea that in a societal structure that's different from ours you'd remove some of the social stigma that comes from such a job. But at the same time, if you observed that very very few people wanted to clean sewers for whatever reason, and there wasn't enough supply to meet demand, then you invest more in technology that reduces the shortfall. As others suggested, automation.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"But at the same time, if you observed that very very few people wanted to clean sewers for whatever reason" The reason might be, most people do not like to be in the literal shit of others? It comes with actual health hazards btw. "and there wasn't enough supply to meet demand, then you invest more in technology that reduces the shortfall. As others suggested, automation" But we ain't there yet at all. What do we do, till then? The sewage needs to run 24 h and not only if someone feels like taking a look eventually. And as for ordinary garbage: mostly it is not a desk job, but physical labour to touch and move hundreds of different dirty garbage bins every day. Dealing with that shit, should always come with good compensation. (whether money or social credits or whatever currency is in use)
- Niksko 3y ago
  > What do you do until then? Sure, but you iterate. We decided as a society that Polio was awful enough that we wanted to eradicate it. If we freed up enough effort that is currently wasted on chasing profits, we could eventually get to solving problems like "shit stinks and it sucks having to clean it".
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    Absent corruption, profits must by definition come from money paid by people who determined that, according to themselves, the work being paid for has value. This is why capitalism works. It is a mass, distributed, value computation engine. Considering this, I don’t see how effort is wasted on profit, since the effort produced something that someone considered valuable. Do we have another way of computing value at scale? To date, I haven’t seen any realistic proposals.

geocar 3y ago

Why would you be so bothered to just let them? Would you feel embarrassed that "leftists" are nicer? That can be a motivation too! I know some people just show up so they can have someone to talk to for a few hours on a Saturday. I think if you can't find volunteers, you can have a lottery.

Chris2048 3y ago
> you can have a lottery what happens if the lottery "winners" refuse?
- geocar 3y ago
  Many western countries use a lottery to choose juries. If the winners refuse, they'll have a chance to explain themselves, and then they'll be judged by those who didn't refuse. Exactly what happens next depends.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    Jury duty is one off, and often compensated. It also isn't clearly undesirable - it's a lottery for different reasons. What would you do in the scenario described for people who refuse any undesirable work?

matkoniecz 3y ago

Possible difference is that we may need far smaller number of programmers interested in dishwashers than we need for this jobs.

travisgriggs 3y ago

Let me analyze your sewage and garbage and sell your consumption habits to the highest bidder, and I might bite. Think of it as a "sump scription" :D

JoshTriplett 3y ago

The obvious answer is "pay people more". If we had UBI, for instance, and people did not have to work in order to have basic needs (food and shelter) met, then the willingness to do unpleasant jobs like sewer cleaning will go down, and it'll be necessary to pay people more to do that work. And the need to pay people more will then drive technological innovation that may today not be worthwhile because "just hire someone" is less expensive. And in a world with UBI, automating away unpleasant jobs becomes more of an unmitigated win. (In case it isn't clear: I think "UBI plus a free market" is a much better system than "don't pay people but magically hope all the work gets done anyway".)

drekipus 3y ago
> UBI plus a free market If there's a ubi, then there's price floor that is higher than a non ubi price floor, meaning that the median prices of goods go up, less taxes to find the ubi, and the ubi must then increase to meet the increased costs for a basic standard of living. Well done you invented inflation.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. It does depend on how efficient we could make basic necessity items, and those are only a tiny portion of the modern economy, I suppose. Though I don’t trust the government to not simultaneously screw with the incentives for producing those items, whether by accident or not, which would make a situation like the one you describe more likely. Also it’s not at all clear how housing would work— I’m guessing people would complain about the sort of housing you could get for a workable UBI amount (i.e. one that is actually in equilibrium with the rest of the economy, as in being a tiny rider-on). This would realistically politically cause the amount to keep going up (and thus cause inflation).
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    > basic necessity items, and those are only a tiny portion of the modern economy If housing/shelter is a necessity, it might not be cheap. I think housing projects aimed to do exactly this. You'll eventually find 'poverty' redefined to those receiving UBI only, stuck in undesirable locations, who don't consider it true that "work is optional". Another issue is policing, which is also increasingly expensive, and has all sorts of issues in the US. People like to just shout "fix the police", but have no answer as to how you can recruit for such a job.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

Umm running the garbage system sounds rad?? I currently design open source farming robots but I would absolutely love designing open source garbage robots. Of course what’s better is community level management of waste production so we don’t even have a lot of garbage to deal with! Reusable washable containers for food, etc.