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My position is more nuanced that you present it to be. I’m arguing against Altman’s notion of progress as being driven by scientific and technological achievem

My position is more nuanced that you present it to be. I’m arguing against Altman’s notion of progress as being driven by scientific and technological achievements. Looking through your list it’s social policies which either drive or are necessary components of most of the improvements you mention. Even the medical advances you mention are dependent on a society’s ability to offer healthcare to its members - a notable deficiency of the US system. I emphasized the importance of the labor movement in my comment; but I don’t want to deny the importance of governmental policy changes. It’s just in the current political arena it’s not clear to me that politicians are interested in much more than serving corporate and billionaire interests, so I don’t have much hope for our ability to continue to make positive policy changes. Therefore the main avenue that people have to take control of their futures seems to me to be organized labor. This is a tool which has shown itself effective in the past for achieving all sorts of improvements in the mass of people’s lives. Besides that I advocate for taking a sober look at our current situation. Painting the picture of society as one of progress by looking at our achievements and denying our societal shortcomings is naive. Examples: the climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, warmongering among nuclear powers, high rates of depression and anxiety, concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. Science and technology may plausibly play some role in addressing these issues, sure, but progress rarely occurs without struggle. Altman’s version is utopian, unrealistic, and will likely make society worse unless the working class can successfully struggle to reap the benefits of “value-creation” for itself.

atleastoptimal 1y ago
You need both social change and technological change to drive progress, but more often technological change drives the conversation. Standards for workplace safety, working hours, social welfare are only possible because technologically developed societies are sufficiently productive to even consider those possibilities. The idea of a 40 hour workweek, the fact that most people aren’t farmers now is due to the industrial revolution, machinery and tech multiplying the productive capacity of a single individual. HIV treatment, cancer treatment, blood tests are a standard part of healthcare not because social policies willed them to be so alone, but because the technology to deliver those treatments at scale exists and allows that to be a possibility in the first place. I do agree that without the right social structures, policy and general political will, the conditions for those technological advances may never have come about in the first place, but in general, it is technology that makes certain allowances for human flourishing possible at all.
- grafmax 1y ago
  You’re right that technology is a necessary ingredient in some cases such as medical treatment. However workplace safety and 40 hour work weeks are not good examples. In the 1800s factory owners extracted as much value from their workforce as they could; they did this by maximizing working hours, dangerous working conditions, child labor, etc; all while enjoying lives of affluence themselves. It’s the fact that factory owners were living lives of affluence that we know the workers were being exploited. There was an highly unequal relationship between workers and owners. It’s not the productivity growth of the Industrial Revolution the made lives better for workers - actually it got much worse initially as they were squeezed by the capitalist class. It’s only when workers organized to struggle for a larger share of the value they were creating for their bosses that their lives got better. Today wealth inequality is at unheard of levels. The wealth of the richest person roughly equals that of the 50% poorest. That is profit extracted from the value workers produce for the wealthy. Technological andvancement isn’t required to give workers a larger piece of the pie; the pie today is already quite enormous. Instead workers must organize if they want better lives. In lieu of that, advances like AI will continue to only profit the very wealthy; the rest of us will likely experience a mix of advantages and drawbacks (analogous to what we’ve seen with the internet or smartphones).
  - atleastoptimal 1y ago
    Worldwide wealth inequality isn't as important to look at as overall worldwide poverty, which has gone down markedly over the past century. It is much preferable to be able to have running water and food despite the richest person in your country having 30 houses, over having no water or food but the richest guy only has 2 houses. In the former, inequality is higher, but the absolute pain of poverty is lower, which is a more relevant metric for human welfare. The industrial revolution, in the 1800s, transformed England and Europe due to the incentives of the growth of industry, and the free movement of labor towards those incentives. Largely, those who worked in factories did so because the benefits/costs exceeded that of farm work. If there were no incentives to change, everyone would have stayed on the farm, preserving the agrarian status quo. Despite all the hazards, the benefit/cost was better for industrial work, largely because it paid more, the money allowing for the improvement of living conditions for those who worked in factories. I agree that to get better working conditions has been a constant battle between the interests of the working class and capital owning class, but looking at everything through that lens ignores the whole point of work/industry in the first place, in that it produces surplus wealth, and only once that wealth is produced can societies make the decision on how that wealth is allocated. In every society that has generally followed the rule of "free market capitalism with common sense regulation and protection of private property", living standards, median wealth ownership and wages, etc. have almost universally gone up decade after decade.

atleastoptimal 1y ago

You need both social change and technological change to drive progress, but more often technological change drives the conversation. Standards for workplace safety, working hours, social welfare are only possible because technologically developed societies are sufficiently productive to even consider those possibilities. The idea of a 40 hour workweek, the fact that most people aren’t farmers now is due to the industrial revolution, machinery and tech multiplying the productive capacity of a single individual. HIV treatment, cancer treatment, blood tests are a standard part of healthcare not because social policies willed them to be so alone, but because the technology to deliver those treatments at scale exists and allows that to be a possibility in the first place. I do agree that without the right social structures, policy and general political will, the conditions for those technological advances may never have come about in the first place, but in general, it is technology that makes certain allowances for human flourishing possible at all.

grafmax 1y ago
You’re right that technology is a necessary ingredient in some cases such as medical treatment. However workplace safety and 40 hour work weeks are not good examples. In the 1800s factory owners extracted as much value from their workforce as they could; they did this by maximizing working hours, dangerous working conditions, child labor, etc; all while enjoying lives of affluence themselves. It’s the fact that factory owners were living lives of affluence that we know the workers were being exploited. There was an highly unequal relationship between workers and owners. It’s not the productivity growth of the Industrial Revolution the made lives better for workers - actually it got much worse initially as they were squeezed by the capitalist class. It’s only when workers organized to struggle for a larger share of the value they were creating for their bosses that their lives got better. Today wealth inequality is at unheard of levels. The wealth of the richest person roughly equals that of the 50% poorest. That is profit extracted from the value workers produce for the wealthy. Technological andvancement isn’t required to give workers a larger piece of the pie; the pie today is already quite enormous. Instead workers must organize if they want better lives. In lieu of that, advances like AI will continue to only profit the very wealthy; the rest of us will likely experience a mix of advantages and drawbacks (analogous to what we’ve seen with the internet or smartphones).
- atleastoptimal 1y ago
  Worldwide wealth inequality isn't as important to look at as overall worldwide poverty, which has gone down markedly over the past century. It is much preferable to be able to have running water and food despite the richest person in your country having 30 houses, over having no water or food but the richest guy only has 2 houses. In the former, inequality is higher, but the absolute pain of poverty is lower, which is a more relevant metric for human welfare. The industrial revolution, in the 1800s, transformed England and Europe due to the incentives of the growth of industry, and the free movement of labor towards those incentives. Largely, those who worked in factories did so because the benefits/costs exceeded that of farm work. If there were no incentives to change, everyone would have stayed on the farm, preserving the agrarian status quo. Despite all the hazards, the benefit/cost was better for industrial work, largely because it paid more, the money allowing for the improvement of living conditions for those who worked in factories. I agree that to get better working conditions has been a constant battle between the interests of the working class and capital owning class, but looking at everything through that lens ignores the whole point of work/industry in the first place, in that it produces surplus wealth, and only once that wealth is produced can societies make the decision on how that wealth is allocated. In every society that has generally followed the rule of "free market capitalism with common sense regulation and protection of private property", living standards, median wealth ownership and wages, etc. have almost universally gone up decade after decade.