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This is why I'm thinking we need a new system. Not capitalism, not communism, not anything that's already been talked about for 200 years. It seems to me that

This is why I'm thinking we need a new system. Not capitalism, not communism, not anything that's already been talked about for 200 years. It seems to me that our real problem is that we are wired to demand everybody contributes. Both righties and lefties actually agree on this, they just have different views on how to get it done theoretically, and in practice have also come up with various schemes to make this happen. But actually we live in a world of plenty. Yes, there are hungry people. Yes, there are people who don't have an iPhone. But what do I mean? I mean that in general it appears to me that almost everything is produced by a very small number of people. We're no longer living in a world where you need 9 people to feed 10 people. The same is true for a lot of goods and services. We don't actually need a bunch of people to do many things. Quite a lot of processes, if you ask someone who works in various industries, are really done by a few people, supported by a cast of extras that outnumbers them. Some of these extras make more money than the people actually doing the useful work. Often these extras are are like you allude to, only there in order to pretend they are part of the process so that they can make a living. To make things worse, there actually is a class of people who have no job at all, which creates a kind of fear among the hangers-on. What we actually need is to have productive people unimpeded by people who need to scrape a living. We should change our norms so that if you aren't selected to be one of the people who makes iPhones or grow food, you can just be good friend. If you want to be an iPhone maker, study and try to get in there. If you don't make it, you're not a failure. You just go about living while all the robot designers take care of stuff.

achenet 3y ago
uh iPhones aren't just made by well dressed Stanford educated designers and engineers in California, you know. The number of people needed to mine the metal/silicon for them, to make the circuits (and to build the factories which make the circuits), and to actually assemble them (for example [0]), the global supply chain of container ships and port personnel and police forces to fight piracy... it's a lot of people. I think they outnumber the bullshit KPR middle managers that get demonized here. Now just to be clear, I'm not saying that bullshit jobs don't exist - they do. And maybe a world with universal basic income would reduce these bullshit jobs and generally make everything nicer. But the iPhone needs *a lot* of really non-bullshit, totally serious hard work by thousands if not millions of people to exist, many of them getting paid ridiculously low wages and working under what I would consider inhuman conditions (12 hour days, etc... I should mention that I'm French, so perhaps used to slightly cushier worker protections than most people). And I think there are more underpaid, overworked Chinese factory workers than there are are "VPs of corporate happiness". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Mainland_China
- lordnacho 3y ago
  The fact that there's a lot of real jobs making iPhones just means there's a lot of BS jobs that will hang onto them. Of course it's true, you need a LOT of specialists to make iPhones. I would also wager that a lot of real jobs are lost because there's a tradeoff between gunning for such a job and just settling for a moocher job. Some of those real jobs would consist of automating away the assembly line jobs. It's just that we don't have that society yet, so the manager who doesn't know how to do the automation hires miners and assembly workers, who are obliged to do something in order to make a living.
  - achenet 3y ago
    I'm really skeptical that it's easy to automate those assembly line jobs away, or to automate mining. For one thing, robots are expensive to build. For another, while it's possible to make robots do tasks like that, there's a good chance they'll be less efficient at them than humans. And of course, if you're profit driven, given the choice between paying foreign sweatshop workers starvation wages on a high margin product and blowing billions on a risky R&D project that has a 50% chance of not working and a 50% chance of being copied by all your competitors if it does (assuming you develop something that's actually cheaper than cheap wage slave labor, which is far from a given) is pretty obvious... that said, if you can actually build an iPhone factory that doesn't need workers, I'm believe there are many big companies willing to pay you a small fortune for that.
    - lordnacho 3y ago
      Well yeah, it's not easy right now, because we are doing precisely what you are saying, basically short term optimization. Not saying that hasn't served us well for a long time, but I think there are improvements we could make in our society.
    - v-erne 3y ago
      >> I'm really skeptical that it's easy to automate those assembly line jobs away I think most people here on HN does not see this because they tend to do software related work, but this is happening faster that you may think. When I last time spoke with middle level manager of building company that specializes in constructing factories in Central Europe he said that change over last 20 years is almost magical - factory built at the start of millenium required hundreds people to operate. Projects finished two decades laters can easily operate with 20 people or less. And this is East/Central Europe - probably least automated part of developed world. If you look at Japan you can see things such as fully automated ps 4/5 production lines ( https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-secret-weapon-a-nearly-all-automated-factory https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-sec... )
smeej 3y ago
So "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"? I hate to tell you this, but you've very much missed your target of "not something that's already been talked about for 200 years." Who does the selecting? Who says, "You, there! You shall devote your time to programming robots, so your neighbors can 'be good friends' and have meaningful relationships. Buck up, comrade. Look how good it will be for everyone (...else)!"?
- lordnacho 3y ago
  I'll admit this isn't fully fleshed out. I've yet to design the gulags. But the core of it is a change of focus away from "everyone must contribute as much as they can" which the lefties also support. It's more the recognition that actually we could (maybe!) get more done if we didn't insist on everyone doing something.
  - pierat 3y ago
    What you're trying to create needs to deal with this now simple fact: Creation of a thing costs a lot of time and resource. Copying said thing is trivial to the point of free. (This is the biggest difference between our current culture, and previous years. Copying is effectively free.)
    - lordnacho 3y ago
      This is only true in IP heavy areas, isn't it? You still need effort to pull ore out of a mountain.
    - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
      Abolish IP and treat ideas the same way bacteria swap their plasmids.
      - pierat 3y ago
        Doing that means you used to get the medieval and renaissance guild systems. However, we already have countries that ignore copyright/patent/trademark (China). The new solution is to remove features from devices, and to tie them into some cloudshit. We get some dog-and-pony show that cloud means we get new features, but in reality, it's just an anti-cloning tactic.
badpun 3y ago
> I mean that in general it appears to me that almost everything is produced by a very small number of people. We're no longer living in a world where you need 9 people to feed 10 people. This is only true for complex positions, where it's almost impossible for management to suss out individual employee's impact. Vast majority of jobs are not like that - they're driving trucks, stocking shelves, processing paperwork in some government job, driving farm equipment, assemblying smartphones, selling retail financial products etc.
TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
Capitalism in theory doesn't support jobs that produce no value. Shareholders would have demanded that waste be optimized out of the company.
- lordnacho 3y ago
  And yet everyone can think of someone who has been handsomely paid for producing no value. The theory is wrong, basically, if that's what it says.
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    Just because you don’t see the value doesn’t mean there is none. Granted bad deals get made from time to time.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      No, those bad deals are likely at least 50%, maybe even 80%. I've seen way too many PMs and middle managers twiddling their thumbs and just inventing tasks and reports just so they are busy and are not fired. How do I know? We had some of them go to a conference once; they were all gone for two weeks. Work was going faster and smoother. And that's not a single anecdote, it's supported by many other programmers. Truth is, nepotism and "we've been buddies at the uni" is happening much more than you are willing to admit.
    - Supermancho 3y ago
      Yes, the correct observation is that no economic system operates at optimum across every vector. > Just because you don’t see the value doesn’t mean there is none. Sometimes it is absolutely true, which is most often seen in nepotism but also in categorically stupid people (re: Bonhoeffer).
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  That sounds like a lovely version of capitalism, but the one I've experienced is anything but optimized. There can be incentives to keeping around unproductive jobs, the size and stability of an org can often be used as a basic sign of health. See: AT&T
brabel 3y ago
You're describing https://www.thevenusproject.com/ https://www.thevenusproject.com/ Are you aware of that or you just came up with the same basic idea (a resource-based economy)?
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Never heard of it, I'll check it out
datavirtue 3y ago
Relax, socialism is fine.

achenet 3y ago

uh iPhones aren't just made by well dressed Stanford educated designers and engineers in California, you know. The number of people needed to mine the metal/silicon for them, to make the circuits (and to build the factories which make the circuits), and to actually assemble them (for example [0]), the global supply chain of container ships and port personnel and police forces to fight piracy... it's a lot of people. I think they outnumber the bullshit KPR middle managers that get demonized here. Now just to be clear, I'm not saying that bullshit jobs don't exist - they do. And maybe a world with universal basic income would reduce these bullshit jobs and generally make everything nicer. But the iPhone needs *a lot* of really non-bullshit, totally serious hard work by thousands if not millions of people to exist, many of them getting paid ridiculously low wages and working under what I would consider inhuman conditions (12 hour days, etc... I should mention that I'm French, so perhaps used to slightly cushier worker protections than most people). And I think there are more underpaid, overworked Chinese factory workers than there are are "VPs of corporate happiness". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Mainland_China

lordnacho 3y ago
The fact that there's a lot of real jobs making iPhones just means there's a lot of BS jobs that will hang onto them. Of course it's true, you need a LOT of specialists to make iPhones. I would also wager that a lot of real jobs are lost because there's a tradeoff between gunning for such a job and just settling for a moocher job. Some of those real jobs would consist of automating away the assembly line jobs. It's just that we don't have that society yet, so the manager who doesn't know how to do the automation hires miners and assembly workers, who are obliged to do something in order to make a living.
- achenet 3y ago
  I'm really skeptical that it's easy to automate those assembly line jobs away, or to automate mining. For one thing, robots are expensive to build. For another, while it's possible to make robots do tasks like that, there's a good chance they'll be less efficient at them than humans. And of course, if you're profit driven, given the choice between paying foreign sweatshop workers starvation wages on a high margin product and blowing billions on a risky R&D project that has a 50% chance of not working and a 50% chance of being copied by all your competitors if it does (assuming you develop something that's actually cheaper than cheap wage slave labor, which is far from a given) is pretty obvious... that said, if you can actually build an iPhone factory that doesn't need workers, I'm believe there are many big companies willing to pay you a small fortune for that.
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    Well yeah, it's not easy right now, because we are doing precisely what you are saying, basically short term optimization. Not saying that hasn't served us well for a long time, but I think there are improvements we could make in our society.
  - v-erne 3y ago
    >> I'm really skeptical that it's easy to automate those assembly line jobs away I think most people here on HN does not see this because they tend to do software related work, but this is happening faster that you may think. When I last time spoke with middle level manager of building company that specializes in constructing factories in Central Europe he said that change over last 20 years is almost magical - factory built at the start of millenium required hundreds people to operate. Projects finished two decades laters can easily operate with 20 people or less. And this is East/Central Europe - probably least automated part of developed world. If you look at Japan you can see things such as fully automated ps 4/5 production lines ( https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-secret-weapon-a-nearly-all-automated-factory https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-sec... )

smeej 3y ago

So "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"? I hate to tell you this, but you've very much missed your target of "not something that's already been talked about for 200 years." Who does the selecting? Who says, "You, there! You shall devote your time to programming robots, so your neighbors can 'be good friends' and have meaningful relationships. Buck up, comrade. Look how good it will be for everyone (...else)!"?

lordnacho 3y ago
I'll admit this isn't fully fleshed out. I've yet to design the gulags. But the core of it is a change of focus away from "everyone must contribute as much as they can" which the lefties also support. It's more the recognition that actually we could (maybe!) get more done if we didn't insist on everyone doing something.
- pierat 3y ago
  What you're trying to create needs to deal with this now simple fact: Creation of a thing costs a lot of time and resource. Copying said thing is trivial to the point of free. (This is the biggest difference between our current culture, and previous years. Copying is effectively free.)
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    This is only true in IP heavy areas, isn't it? You still need effort to pull ore out of a mountain.
  - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
    Abolish IP and treat ideas the same way bacteria swap their plasmids.
    - pierat 3y ago
      Doing that means you used to get the medieval and renaissance guild systems. However, we already have countries that ignore copyright/patent/trademark (China). The new solution is to remove features from devices, and to tie them into some cloudshit. We get some dog-and-pony show that cloud means we get new features, but in reality, it's just an anti-cloning tactic.

badpun 3y ago

> I mean that in general it appears to me that almost everything is produced by a very small number of people. We're no longer living in a world where you need 9 people to feed 10 people. This is only true for complex positions, where it's almost impossible for management to suss out individual employee's impact. Vast majority of jobs are not like that - they're driving trucks, stocking shelves, processing paperwork in some government job, driving farm equipment, assemblying smartphones, selling retail financial products etc.

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago

Capitalism in theory doesn't support jobs that produce no value. Shareholders would have demanded that waste be optimized out of the company.

lordnacho 3y ago
And yet everyone can think of someone who has been handsomely paid for producing no value. The theory is wrong, basically, if that's what it says.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  Just because you don’t see the value doesn’t mean there is none. Granted bad deals get made from time to time.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    No, those bad deals are likely at least 50%, maybe even 80%. I've seen way too many PMs and middle managers twiddling their thumbs and just inventing tasks and reports just so they are busy and are not fired. How do I know? We had some of them go to a conference once; they were all gone for two weeks. Work was going faster and smoother. And that's not a single anecdote, it's supported by many other programmers. Truth is, nepotism and "we've been buddies at the uni" is happening much more than you are willing to admit.
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    Yes, the correct observation is that no economic system operates at optimum across every vector. > Just because you don’t see the value doesn’t mean there is none. Sometimes it is absolutely true, which is most often seen in nepotism but also in categorically stupid people (re: Bonhoeffer).
flagrant_taco 3y ago
That sounds like a lovely version of capitalism, but the one I've experienced is anything but optimized. There can be incentives to keeping around unproductive jobs, the size and stability of an org can often be used as a basic sign of health. See: AT&T

brabel 3y ago

You're describing https://www.thevenusproject.com/ https://www.thevenusproject.com/ Are you aware of that or you just came up with the same basic idea (a resource-based economy)?

lordnacho 3y ago
Never heard of it, I'll check it out

datavirtue 3y ago

Relax, socialism is fine.