8 ms·

As optimistic as your comment is, the fact that there are lots of problems does not mean that we will tackle them. In my opinion, if we don't aim at doing anyth

by aljgz 2y ago

As optimistic as your comment is, the fact that there are lots of problems does not mean that we will tackle them. In my opinion, if we don't aim at doing anything about it, the gap between the rich and the poor will widen. Both between societies, and within one society. I'm now in Canada, but in my childhood country, most of the recent "smart" (meaning connected) devices and the recent AI models are not available. This is starts a viscious cycle that makes things worse and worse. For the less connected high teck devices, the ratio of the price (That's set based on supply/demand in the richest countries) to income (that's damanged by sanctions and general government stupidity) is getting so high that it's really hard to get high-end devices. As the labour required to produce goods and services is automated, one possible scenario is that fewer and fewer people will stay "relevant", while the rest will sink and become invisible. Things can be avoided, but looking at countries that have been unable/unwilling to ensure housing (as one of the 3 most fundamental material needs of the human: food, housing, clothing) stays affordable, does not raise hope. In my opinion, the housing problem is extremely easy to solve when looking at the problem as a technical one, and impossible when you include the way economic incentives are working at it. I hope I'm wrong, but when I project the current path into future, it's not bright.

tonygrue 2y ago
I share all your concerns. I considered mentioning them but figured I should keep my reply focused on idea of freeing people up isn’t inherently bad. In particular zero sum resources like land ownership will be an increased challenge. And our governments have been slow to respond to things like climate change and we could be slow to respond here.
seventhtiger 2y ago
Is our goal to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, or to improve the lives of the poor? Because the gap itself is actually irrelevant to poor people's lives. Rich people's improvement outpacing poor people's is not necessarily an issue. Second, a financial gap does not necessarily translate to a material gap. Someone with 1,000,000x someone else's net worth still buys the same iPhone and drinks the same coca cola. Many important wellbeing factors are not actually blocked by finance, like healthcare and education. Even if you take all the rich people's money and repurpose to education not much will change. Maybe an iPad for every kid, but what good does that do? Housing is actually a great example. Real estate has a way of sucking up entire GDPs worth of money. As a country you can't pay your way out of housing problems. Look at something like China which has been consistently overbuilding housing for decades now. They still have housing issues.
- hakfoo 2y ago
  > Rich people's improvement outpacing poor people's is not necessarily an issue. That's like saying "the fact there's a black hole in the centre of the galaxy is not an issue." Extreme wealth distorts the universe around it. There are people who have no business making nation-state level decisions that are still on the speed dial of the people who are, because of their financial positions. There's also a strong case that education blocked by finance, on a second order. Wealth creates flight opportunities. Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. Not everyone can afford that, even if some are nominally tuition-free-- if they don't offer the same bussing, for example, that's going to add thousands of dollars a year in bus or petrol costs to get the kid to and from campus. But aside from that, when the parents take their kids away, they also take their volunteerism, activity support, and holding staff accountable. The public school ends up supported by the least resourced and least concerned parents, and the students left behind suffer. Housing is probably solvable with a more holistic central-planning mindset. Everyone wants to live in a few desirable areas, but we have no mechanism to generate more desirable areas. A planned economy could help by steering new economic development to places where housing can be built affordably, perhaps with build-out mandates. The Chinese "Ghost Cities" are actually a great idea in retrospect-- if you build everything at once before the first residents arrive, you can avoid some of the very expensive retrofit problems. Building a subway on the barren ground of a planned city is a lot cheaper than drilling under Lower Manhattan. A secondary problem is that housing costs and the need for retirement/end of life savings creates a doom loop-- if you're paying 60% of your income on a mortgage, you can't invest in any other way, so it HAS to be the nest egg. I'm not sure how to address that-- richer and more universal pensions might help reduce the load on home equity, and there are certainly ways to de-asset-ify land (maybe replacing outright land ownership with peppercorn leases-- people wouldn't be able to "buy" a house, at best they could try to bribe the existing owner to abandon the lease and hope to grab it when the property goes back up for redistribution)
  - sokoloff 2y ago
    > Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. I think it’s pointless to try to prevent this. Try to block it and parents who can afford to will just move to where the public schools are good. There’s no level of forced equality (other than everyone living in abject squalor) where there won’t be a spread of resources and some will choose to direct theirs in less or more long-term productive ways.

by aljgz 2y ago

tonygrue 2y ago

I share all your concerns. I considered mentioning them but figured I should keep my reply focused on idea of freeing people up isn’t inherently bad. In particular zero sum resources like land ownership will be an increased challenge. And our governments have been slow to respond to things like climate change and we could be slow to respond here.

seventhtiger 2y ago

Is our goal to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, or to improve the lives of the poor? Because the gap itself is actually irrelevant to poor people's lives. Rich people's improvement outpacing poor people's is not necessarily an issue. Second, a financial gap does not necessarily translate to a material gap. Someone with 1,000,000x someone else's net worth still buys the same iPhone and drinks the same coca cola. Many important wellbeing factors are not actually blocked by finance, like healthcare and education. Even if you take all the rich people's money and repurpose to education not much will change. Maybe an iPad for every kid, but what good does that do? Housing is actually a great example. Real estate has a way of sucking up entire GDPs worth of money. As a country you can't pay your way out of housing problems. Look at something like China which has been consistently overbuilding housing for decades now. They still have housing issues.

hakfoo 2y ago
> Rich people's improvement outpacing poor people's is not necessarily an issue. That's like saying "the fact there's a black hole in the centre of the galaxy is not an issue." Extreme wealth distorts the universe around it. There are people who have no business making nation-state level decisions that are still on the speed dial of the people who are, because of their financial positions. There's also a strong case that education blocked by finance, on a second order. Wealth creates flight opportunities. Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. Not everyone can afford that, even if some are nominally tuition-free-- if they don't offer the same bussing, for example, that's going to add thousands of dollars a year in bus or petrol costs to get the kid to and from campus. But aside from that, when the parents take their kids away, they also take their volunteerism, activity support, and holding staff accountable. The public school ends up supported by the least resourced and least concerned parents, and the students left behind suffer. Housing is probably solvable with a more holistic central-planning mindset. Everyone wants to live in a few desirable areas, but we have no mechanism to generate more desirable areas. A planned economy could help by steering new economic development to places where housing can be built affordably, perhaps with build-out mandates. The Chinese "Ghost Cities" are actually a great idea in retrospect-- if you build everything at once before the first residents arrive, you can avoid some of the very expensive retrofit problems. Building a subway on the barren ground of a planned city is a lot cheaper than drilling under Lower Manhattan. A secondary problem is that housing costs and the need for retirement/end of life savings creates a doom loop-- if you're paying 60% of your income on a mortgage, you can't invest in any other way, so it HAS to be the nest egg. I'm not sure how to address that-- richer and more universal pensions might help reduce the load on home equity, and there are certainly ways to de-asset-ify land (maybe replacing outright land ownership with peppercorn leases-- people wouldn't be able to "buy" a house, at best they could try to bribe the existing owner to abandon the lease and hope to grab it when the property goes back up for redistribution)
- sokoloff 2y ago
  > Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. I think it’s pointless to try to prevent this. Try to block it and parents who can afford to will just move to where the public schools are good. There’s no level of forced equality (other than everyone living in abject squalor) where there won’t be a spread of resources and some will choose to direct theirs in less or more long-term productive ways.