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If you're ever been to a third world country then you'd see how this is completely untrue. The dotcom boom has revolutionized the way of life for people in coun

by xmprt 1y ago

If you're ever been to a third world country then you'd see how this is completely untrue. The dotcom boom has revolutionized the way of life for people in countries like India. Even for the average person in America, the ability to do so many activities online that would have taken hours otherwise (eg. shopping, research, DMV/government activities, etc). The fact that we see negative consequences of this like social network polarization or brainrot doesn't negate the positives that have been brought about.

adityaathalye 1y ago
With telecom, we benefited from skipping generations. I got into a telecom management program because in 2001-ish, I was passed by on a village street by a farmer bicycling while talking on his cellphone. Mind you my family could not afford cellphone call rates at the time. In fact, the technology was introduced out here assuming corporate / elite users. The market reality became such that telcos were forced kicking and screaming to open up networks to everybody. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (back then) mandated rural <> urban parity of sorts. This eventually forced telcos to share infrastructure costs (share towers etc.) The total call and data volumes are eye-watering, but low-yield (low ARPU). I could go on and on but it's just batshit crazy. Now UPI has layered on top of that---once again, benefiting from Reserve Bank of India's mandate for zero-fee transactions, and participating via a formal data interchange protocol and format. Speaking from India, having lived here all my life, and occasionally travelled abroad (USAmerica, S.E. Asia). We, as a society and democracy, are also feeling the harsh, harsh hand of "Code is Law", and increasingly centralised control of communication utilities (which the telecoms are). The left hand of darkness comes with a lot of darkness, sadly. Which brings me to the moniker of "third world". This place is insane, my friend --- first, second, third, and fourth worlds all smashing into each others' faces all the time. In so many ways, we are more first world here than many western countries. I first visited USAmerica in 2015, and I could almost smell an empire in decline. Walking across twitter headquarters in downtown SF of all the places, avoiding needles and syringes strewn on the sidewalk, and avoiding the completely smashed guy just barely standing there, right there in the middle of it all. That was insane.
- yugioh3 1y ago
  That kind of extreme poverty juxtaposed to extreme wealth, and all of the social ills that come along with it, have always been a fixture of the American experience. I don’t think it’s a good barometer or whether the USA is in decline when there has long been pockets of urban decay, massive inequality, drug use etc. Jump back to any point in American history and you’ll find something similar if not much, much worse. Even in SF of all places, back in the wild west era gold rush or in the 1970s… America has always held that contradiction.
  - adityaathalye 1y ago
    Yeah, I sort of recounted a stark memory. That juxtaposition was a bit too much. However, it wasn't just that, and the feeling has only solidified in three further visits. It isn't rational, very much a nose thing, coming from an ordinary software programmer (definitely not an economist, sociologist, think tank).
intended 1y ago
It seems the crux is that we needed X people to produce goods, and we had Y demand. Now we need X*0.75 people to do meet Y demand. However, those savings are partially piped to consumers, and partially piped to owners. There is only so much marginal propensity to spend that rich people have, so that additional wealth is not resulting in an increase in demand, at least commensurate enough to absorb the 25% who are unemployed or underemployed. Ideally that money would be getting ploughed back into making new firms, or creating new work, but the work being created requires people with PHDs, and a few specific skills, which means that entire fields of people are not in the work force. However all that money has to go somewhere, and so asset classes are rising in value, because there is no where else for it to go.
- jaggederest 1y ago
  > partially piped to consumers, and partially piped to owners. Or, the returns on capital exceed the rate of economic growth (r > g), if you like Piketty's Capital in the Twenty First Century. One of the central points is about how productivity and growth gains increasingly accrue to capital rather than labor, leading to capital accumulation and asset inflation.
  - intended 1y ago
    Yep, that’s the source of the point. The effort is in finding a way to make it easy to convey. Communication of an idea is almost as critical as its verification now.
    - jaggederest 1y ago
      I just need to read it one of these days. I keep reading parts of it but never sitting down with it.
      - intended 1y ago
        Oh hell, don’t make me feel bad. I’ve got a meager capacity to trudge through major papers. I cheer you on.
the_other 1y ago
I think you’re putting too much weight on cost (time, money), and not enough weight on “quality of life”, in your analysis. For sure, we can shop faster, and (attempt) research and admin faster. But… Shopping: used to be fun. You’d go with friends or family, discuss the goods together, gossip, bump into people you knew, stop for a sandwich, maybe mix shopping and a cinema or dinner trip. All the while, you’d be aware of other peoples’ personal space, see their family dynamics. Queuing for event tickets brought you shoulder to shoulder with the crowd before the event began… Today, we do all this at home; strangers (and communities) are separated from us by glass, cables and satalites, rather than by air and shouting distance. I argue that this time saving is reducing our ability to socialise. Research: this is definitely accelerated, and probably mostly for the better. But… some kinds of research were mingled with the “shopping” socialisation described above. Admin: the happy path is now faster and functioning bureaucracy is smoother in the digital realm. But, it’s the edge cases which are now more painful. Elderly people struggle with digital tech and prefer face to face. Everyone is more open to more subtle and challenging threats (identity theft, fraud); we all have to learn complex and layered mitigation strategies. Also: digital systems are very fragile: they leak private data, they’re open to wider attack surfaces, they need more training and are harder to intuit without that training; they’re ripe for capture by monopolists (Google, Palantir). The time and cost savings of all these are not felt by the users, or even the admins of these systems. The savings are felt only by the owners of the systems. Technologgy has saved billions of person-hours individual costs, in travel, in physical work. Yet, wemre working longer, using fewer ranges of motions, are less fit, less able to tolerste others’ differences and the wealth gap is widening.
- startupsfail 1y ago
  Yes, this is true. There used to be a lot of local book stores, for example. Amazon optimized that away, while ruining social fabric.
  - AfterHIA 1y ago
    RIP literacy in America. We hardly knew ye.
  - 1y ago

by xmprt 1y ago

adityaathalye 1y ago

With telecom, we benefited from skipping generations. I got into a telecom management program because in 2001-ish, I was passed by on a village street by a farmer bicycling while talking on his cellphone. Mind you my family could not afford cellphone call rates at the time. In fact, the technology was introduced out here assuming corporate / elite users. The market reality became such that telcos were forced kicking and screaming to open up networks to everybody. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (back then) mandated rural <> urban parity of sorts. This eventually forced telcos to share infrastructure costs (share towers etc.) The total call and data volumes are eye-watering, but low-yield (low ARPU). I could go on and on but it's just batshit crazy. Now UPI has layered on top of that---once again, benefiting from Reserve Bank of India's mandate for zero-fee transactions, and participating via a formal data interchange protocol and format. Speaking from India, having lived here all my life, and occasionally travelled abroad (USAmerica, S.E. Asia). We, as a society and democracy, are also feeling the harsh, harsh hand of "Code is Law", and increasingly centralised control of communication utilities (which the telecoms are). The left hand of darkness comes with a lot of darkness, sadly. Which brings me to the moniker of "third world". This place is insane, my friend --- first, second, third, and fourth worlds all smashing into each others' faces all the time. In so many ways, we are more first world here than many western countries. I first visited USAmerica in 2015, and I could almost smell an empire in decline. Walking across twitter headquarters in downtown SF of all the places, avoiding needles and syringes strewn on the sidewalk, and avoiding the completely smashed guy just barely standing there, right there in the middle of it all. That was insane.

yugioh3 1y ago
That kind of extreme poverty juxtaposed to extreme wealth, and all of the social ills that come along with it, have always been a fixture of the American experience. I don’t think it’s a good barometer or whether the USA is in decline when there has long been pockets of urban decay, massive inequality, drug use etc. Jump back to any point in American history and you’ll find something similar if not much, much worse. Even in SF of all places, back in the wild west era gold rush or in the 1970s… America has always held that contradiction.
- adityaathalye 1y ago
  Yeah, I sort of recounted a stark memory. That juxtaposition was a bit too much. However, it wasn't just that, and the feeling has only solidified in three further visits. It isn't rational, very much a nose thing, coming from an ordinary software programmer (definitely not an economist, sociologist, think tank).

intended 1y ago

It seems the crux is that we needed X people to produce goods, and we had Y demand. Now we need X*0.75 people to do meet Y demand. However, those savings are partially piped to consumers, and partially piped to owners. There is only so much marginal propensity to spend that rich people have, so that additional wealth is not resulting in an increase in demand, at least commensurate enough to absorb the 25% who are unemployed or underemployed. Ideally that money would be getting ploughed back into making new firms, or creating new work, but the work being created requires people with PHDs, and a few specific skills, which means that entire fields of people are not in the work force. However all that money has to go somewhere, and so asset classes are rising in value, because there is no where else for it to go.

jaggederest 1y ago
> partially piped to consumers, and partially piped to owners. Or, the returns on capital exceed the rate of economic growth (r > g), if you like Piketty's Capital in the Twenty First Century. One of the central points is about how productivity and growth gains increasingly accrue to capital rather than labor, leading to capital accumulation and asset inflation.
- intended 1y ago
  Yep, that’s the source of the point. The effort is in finding a way to make it easy to convey. Communication of an idea is almost as critical as its verification now.
  - jaggederest 1y ago
    I just need to read it one of these days. I keep reading parts of it but never sitting down with it.
    - intended 1y ago
      Oh hell, don’t make me feel bad. I’ve got a meager capacity to trudge through major papers. I cheer you on.

the_other 1y ago

I think you’re putting too much weight on cost (time, money), and not enough weight on “quality of life”, in your analysis. For sure, we can shop faster, and (attempt) research and admin faster. But… Shopping: used to be fun. You’d go with friends or family, discuss the goods together, gossip, bump into people you knew, stop for a sandwich, maybe mix shopping and a cinema or dinner trip. All the while, you’d be aware of other peoples’ personal space, see their family dynamics. Queuing for event tickets brought you shoulder to shoulder with the crowd before the event began… Today, we do all this at home; strangers (and communities) are separated from us by glass, cables and satalites, rather than by air and shouting distance. I argue that this time saving is reducing our ability to socialise. Research: this is definitely accelerated, and probably mostly for the better. But… some kinds of research were mingled with the “shopping” socialisation described above. Admin: the happy path is now faster and functioning bureaucracy is smoother in the digital realm. But, it’s the edge cases which are now more painful. Elderly people struggle with digital tech and prefer face to face. Everyone is more open to more subtle and challenging threats (identity theft, fraud); we all have to learn complex and layered mitigation strategies. Also: digital systems are very fragile: they leak private data, they’re open to wider attack surfaces, they need more training and are harder to intuit without that training; they’re ripe for capture by monopolists (Google, Palantir). The time and cost savings of all these are not felt by the users, or even the admins of these systems. The savings are felt only by the owners of the systems. Technologgy has saved billions of person-hours individual costs, in travel, in physical work. Yet, wemre working longer, using fewer ranges of motions, are less fit, less able to tolerste others’ differences and the wealth gap is widening.

startupsfail 1y ago
Yes, this is true. There used to be a lot of local book stores, for example. Amazon optimized that away, while ruining social fabric.
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  RIP literacy in America. We hardly knew ye.
- 1y ago