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This article starts with the wrong question: Who will earn wealth? This goes back to PG's Wealth essay[1] -- his daddy view of wealth, where wealth is somethi
by stephengillie 13y ago
This article starts with the wrong question:
Who will earn wealth?
This goes back to PG's Wealth essay[1] -- his daddy view of wealth, where wealth is something finite, and we as a society must share it. This is incorrect, for wealth isn't a thing, it's a large amount of something else.
Wealth is what we create when we build and improve things. Your house is a wealth of shelter, and the improvements you've made to it (such as fresh paint, landscaping, and heat), relative to other houses, show your wealth relative to other houseowners.
Money is just an exchanger of wealth -- something we trade with others to facilitate the transfer of wealth from others to ourselves. We earn money by transferring some of our wealth to others, and usually we draw from our wealth of time.
Humans don't need money to survive, so long as they grow their own food and build their own shelters, or have robots do this for them. And humans don't need to buy robots if we can 3d print them. And have solar or other personal power generation facilities on our own land.
Who will create wealth?
Those are the big winners who strike gold on Kickstarter and Youtube. They didn't win because they were "luckier" than us, they won because they were literally better than the rest of us at what they do.
We'll download and print new clothes each day. Who will design them? Who will design new buildings for the robots to build? Who gives robots purpose? For now, humans.
I'm more concerned about the Butlerian Jihad[2] than I am concerned with farming companies hoarding food away from us, which is essentially what the concern here is about -- if we don't have money, how will we buy food?
[1]http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad
- amouat 13y ago> they won because they were literally better than the rest of us at what they do Only if "more popular = better".
- stephengillie 13y agoI genuinely believe LIFX, Spark Core, and Lockitron are currently the best new products in their markets.
- amouat 13y agoAnd I've genuinely heard of none of those :) I was more thinking of music where few people would argue that the Top 40 or top YouTube hits represented the tracks with the most "quality".
- thwarted 13y agoUnfortunately, the grandparent didn't emphasize the "at what they do". They are literally better at being more popular and figuring out how to get people to give them money than the rest of us. This may not be "better" in the engineering sense, and it may be undesirable in the abstract or ethical sense, but it is the differentiator that separates them from "the rest of us".
- ScottWhigham 13y ago> they won because they were literally better than the rest of us at what they do That's just not true. Are you saying Katy Perry, for example, is better than the rest of musicians at what she does? It's just not true that "success" follows "better than the rest". It trivializes what success is to frame it in that way. There are many, many more factors that contribute to "they won because..." other than being good/better/best.
- stephengillie 13y agoKaty Perry is not as technically capable as some other musicians. Yet she is more popular than them. Which is she trying to do, make music or be famous?
- ScottWhigham 13y agoSo wait - are you trying to argue on a trivial point (arguing just to argue) or are you saying that my comments are wrong?
- stephengillie 13y agoI'm arguing that you and I believe Katy Perry has different objectives. You believe she's trying to be an excellent musician, and you're irritated that she's much more popular than superior musicians. I believe she's trying to be popular, and music (err...just performing really) is the tool she's using to make other people like her.
- nico 13y ago> Those are the big winners who strike gold on Kickstarter and Youtube. They didn't win because they were "luckier" than us, they won because they were literally better than the rest of us at what they do. What made/make those people better? Their drive, their talent, their education? How much of this can you attribute as their merit and how much is actually luck? I've come to the conclusion that most (an unscientific 99%) of a person's success is due to luck. To me, the biggest evidence of this is: we don't choose where we're born. The above means that we have no control over what genes we get, as well as our initial social and economical situation, and our general environment. Given that pretty much everything else evolves from there, what can you truly attribute to anything else than luck?
- stephengillie 13y agoYes, everything can be reduced to the outcomes of probability. I thought our discussion was at a higher abstraction layer.