5 ms·
Kind of a strawman though, innit? If "civilization will stagnate and humans will be unmotivated blobs" is one extreme, then the other is something like "condoni
by Terr_ 6mo ago
Kind of a strawman though, innit? If "civilization will stagnate and humans will be unmotivated blobs" is one extreme, then the other is something like "condoning economic genocide".
In reality, few are concerned that Alice has a much nicer car than Bob, compared to concerns that Bob will die without insulin. Get Bob his insulin, and he will still be motivated to have a nicer car.
- WalterBright 6mo ago> Kind of a strawman though, innit? Not at all. It's the primary reason why communes fail.
- nixon_why69 6mo agoI think there's likely a steel man version of "solving inequality" that's a little less radical than "establish a commune". Something like "arrest the trend towards upward accumulation which also reduces incentives to excel", maybe.
- WalterBright 6mo agoIf we did that, we wouldn't have SpaceX, Nvidia, AI, etc.
- croon 6mo agoThere are points in history where the productivity increases were more equitably spread, and we still got lasers, microwaves, MRI, mRNA, microchips, the internet, etc, etc, from national funding no less.
- WalterBright 6mo agoPeople are paid according to the value they produce - equity has nothing to do with it.
- tsunamifury 6mo agoThis is painfully naive. People are paid by the value they produce minus the maximum extraction ownership can get.
- Terr_ 6mo agoA milder version would be: People are paid based on the marginal cost of replacing them. But still, either of those is a far cry from claiming it's "the value they create". It's not hard to show either. Imagine you're on an island and have been gored in the stomach by a wild animal, and a skilled surgeon can save your life. Most people would instantly agree that continued existence is of immense "value". However after making that decision, you discover that you're on an island where almost everyone is a surgeon and the going-rate is much lower than you expected. Are we supposed to believe that your new knowledge somehow reaches backwards in time and retroactively changes the "value" of Not Dying? No, that'd be crazy. Valuation is never the same as price-point.
- WalterBright 6mo agoThe value of something is what the buyer is willing to pay for it and the seller is willing to sell at. There is no other meaningful definition of the value of an item or service. > either of those is a far cry from claiming it's "the value they create". Nobody is going to hire someone who produces less value than their pay.
- nixon_why69 6mo agoElon Musk stopped producing value quite a while ago, nowadays all he does is tweet stupid stuff. Meanwhile his net worth has skyrocketed. Everyone who's ever spent 6 months in big tech knows how easily compensation is divorced from value. Plenty of net-negative, work-creating behavior gets rewarded with big raises.
- WalterBright 6mo ago