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I don't care about inequality (of outcome). I care about suffering. Automation may increase inequality between those who are able to take advantage of it, and

• liber8 13y ago
  This is an excellent point, though I'm not sure you'll be in agreement with why I feel that way. The issue comes down to how you define "suffering". One of the reasons income inequality is such a silly measurement of overall economic well-being is because people often believe it must be correlated with suffering. In other words, those at the poorer end of the spectrum must be suffering relative to those at the rich end (and usually because of those at the rich end). But this doesn't appear to be true in modern society at all. In reality, those at the poor end of the spectrum have never experienced less (physical) suffering. Food, clean water, and basic shelter have never been cheaper. On a minimum wage salary, you can live a life without what I would call suffering, though it will look nothing like the typical portrayal of "middle class" life we see on TV. If you're sick, you can get extremely advanced medical care without cost (even in the US, there are free clinics in all major cities, and if you visit the emergency room, though you may be billed preposterous sums, you'll still get care). What constitutes "suffering" is probably one of the biggest disconnects that plague liberals and conservatives.
  • alex-g 13y ago
    Perhaps we agree more than you expected. I certainly agree that it is too simplistic to say that poor people are suffering because rich people have the money (and that therefore, if we take from the rich and give to the poor, the problem is solved). But that's a pretty 101 sort of critique anyway. Economic and cultural hegemony have been part of the left-wing conversation for a while now, and my main original point was that the concerns of the unemployed and underemployed have tended to be politically ignorable (due to lack of numbers, cultural shaming, the perception that unemployment is always temporary, etc.). And I agree that being poor in a contemporary rich country isn't as miserable as other ways of being poor. I see you were quite careful to pin your example to "a minimum wage salary", which is a level of income and security that many people don't have. Since I think we probably both care a lot about equality of opportunity, we should agree that being billed preposterous sums for healthcare is still not a brilliant situation, just like not being able to afford to go to college, lacking access to banking services, and so on. I'm not saying we need to buy everyone an Xbox One because that's the new baseline, but I hope that liberals and conservatives can agree that there are powerful mechanisms that entrench people in poverty, to the general detriment of society.
    • liber8 13y ago
      Ah, you raise a few interesting points. >>the concerns of the unemployed and underemployed have tended to be politically ignorable (due to lack of numbers, cultural shaming, the perception that unemployment is always temporary, etc.<< This seems like it must be true, but I'm not sure it is upon further consideration. Politicians have spent a great deal of time and effort on issues that affect the poor (and the comparative "poor"). In the US, we have a substantial welfare system that includes housing subsidies, a variety of food subsidies, and a variety of medical care subsidies. I would add that benefits under each of these systems has been pushed through by both "liberal" and "conservative" governments. (Many European countries have had an even greater focus on policies that benefit the poor.) But I would argue that the biggest gains those on the poor end of the spectrum have made over the last 30 years (and certainly over the last 200 years) has been driven by market forces, not political ones. The widespread decline of food prices has been due to private activity, in spite of government policy (see, e.g., various agricultural subsidies/tariffs that maintain above-market prices). The enormous decline in prices of finished goods, durable goods, electronics, and basically anything you’d put in your home, has similarly been driven by market forces. This leads to a tremendous decrease in suffering that is difficult to measure. [For example, cheap air conditioners, furniture and televisions make what would have been miserable conditions in 1950's New York into perfectly pleasant conditions today.] So, perhaps focusing on overall growth will produce greater benefits to the poor than simply focusing on symptoms of poverty. >>Since I think we probably both care a lot about equality of opportunity...<< Equality of opportunity is a terrifying outcome. Of course it sounds wonderful in theory, but how do we attain it? The novel Brave New World illustrates how this would have to be done: (1) prohibit natural births, instead hatching babies under laboratory conditions; and (2) raise and educate children en masse, in a (presumably) government-run institutions. Of course even this would result in slight differences in opportunity. Even if everyone shared the same DNA, it would be impossible to ensure each person had the same experiences during childhood (i.e. Billy gets bullied for some reason and never reaches his potential while Bobby doesn’t and attains success). So, in this respect, I don’t believe that anyone wants true equality of opportunity. The question is, how close is close enough, and at what cost? Because, at a certain point, the only way to increase equality of opportunity is to decrease freedom. We’re currently at the point where the main freedoms we are losing relate to how much of our income we get to keep (i.e. increase tax revenue to provide subsidies/programs for the poor). Most people don’t have a huge problem with this. But we’re already begin to sacrifice other freedoms, and this is only accelerating. If your kid is fat, he will have a decreased opportunity to succeed. So, we impose sin taxes on certain ingredients. The FDA bans trans-fats. New York City tries to impose size restrictions on sodas. All of these rules are meant to save us from ourselves, or in essence, to give those with less information or willpower a more-equal opportunity to succeed. The same logic applies to smoking or drinking, housing, schooling, etc. I’m not sure I see a logical place to stop. If someone notices you drinking or smoking during pregnancy, should society step in? There is a chance the child will be negatively impacted. Of course, this means he won’t have the same opportunities as if you had not drunk or smoked during pregnancy. This means the child’s opportunities won’t be equal to others due to your choices. Should we supervise or jail you to ensure you don’t drink or smoke while pregnant? Even terminate the pregnancy if we discover you drank or smoked while pregnant? Of course, the child of a successful 35-year old mother who drinks or smokes while pregnant may have far better opportunities than the child of a 15-year old mother with no education who doesn't drink or smoke. To what extent should or must society intervene in the latter case? The converse case is even more terrifying. I didn’t have an equal opportunity of succeeding because I had a stay-at-home mom who taught me to read when I was 4. She taught me years of history and science outside of school, things my peers never learned after 20 years of schooling. I got to peer over the shoulder of friends and relatives who ran successful small businesses. There’s simply no way replicate or ensure that everyone has these experiences (outside of a Brave New World-esque regime). Should my parents therefore be prohibited from trying to give me an advantage over others? It’s fascinating to me that America chose a revolution based on liberty near the time the French chose a revolution based on equality. 200 years later, the world is a far richer place due to the advances wrought under freedom. Certainly giving people as much opportunity as possible is a worthy goal, but I fear the consequences of what would be required to ensure true equality of opportunity. So then, perhaps we’re back again to the more worthy goal: eliminating suffering.
  • cam_l 13y ago
    "Food, clean water, and basic shelter have never been cheaper." Lack of these things are, and always have been, mere symptoms of powerlessness. And though nature played a larger part in this powerlessness in the past, it is largely a social problem. But still, this is only even arguable in the states because so much wealth, and so much power, was captured from the rest of the world during the last half of last century. If your supposed lack of suffering (which I would dispute) of some 300m citizens rests on the suffering of a couple of billion in other places, it doesn't exactly mean a whole hell of a lot.
• humanrebar 13y ago
  > we also need to structure our society to reduce suffering and improve the general quality of life More concretely, people who are really passionate about inequality could invest in nonprofits to help exactly the people who need it through things like targeted scholarship funds, charter schools, food banks, foster care charities, mentorship programs, addiction recovery organizations, and the like. I believe that we've already been restructuring society to ill effect. Let's start with restructuring our Thursdays. I'm sure our crossfit friends or trivia night at the pub will manage without us. In other words, I would like us to "restructure society" not through programs, laws, and schemes but by personalizing the problem by taking care of our actual neighbors who have actual needs.
• normloman 13y ago
  A world with high inequality but low suffering would still be undesirable, as wealthy people would set the rules. They have the money to spend on lobbying and advertising. The poor would be fed, but still be powerless.
  • cam_l 13y ago
    This is the crux of the matter. A world in which people have power over others, moreso where people want power over others, will always devolve into suffering. As per Lord Acton.. power corrupts.
• jjoonathan 13y ago
  > I don't care about inequality (of outcome). I care about suffering. I subscribe to a different argument with the same conclusion: I care about the inefficiency in the way we, as a society, handle our human resources. Poverty is a morass of catch-22s that conspire to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it, and that's a waste of human potential no matter how you slice it. The minimum-wage worker who spends 1/3 of his time on his first job, 1/3 of his time on his second job, and 1/3 of his time in a perpetually unrewarding search for something better has no time or energy left for putting himself in a better position to create value for society. He is aware of the problem and he knows the theoretical solution. It is not necessarily a lack of discipline or market insight that hold him back, it's the inability to take on risk in the form of investing time and resources into a new mode of value production that make it an unattractive option. If he tries and fails, food, shelter, and health care become mutually exclusive "luxuries" next month. HN is full of entrepreneurs who are acutely aware of the importance of being able to take risks, but it is important to realize that we (the software engineering profession) are, at the moment, comparatively well sheltered from the wrath of the market by the fact that we posses a skill that is currently in demand, and even with this shielding many of us opt for risk aversion. If we fail, our fallback plan is a cushy $100k job that we can use as a springboard for our next attempt. Our "punishment" is a temporary stint at helping someone else build their dream. On the other hand, if Sam the supermarket checkout clerk, Mike the aspiring musician, or Anne the academic go into business and fail, their punishment will be far more draconian and far less amenable to taking another chance. The thing is, we (as a society) don't really want more supermarket clerks, street musicians, and struggling adjunct professors. We want these people to be successful because they will generate 100x the value if they are! But we are unwilling to invest the comparative pittance to cover their base needs to let them try and fail. If we played our cards right, social welfare would become an investment, not a parasitic nuisance. Unfortunately our current welfare policy (to include minimum wage) is filled with so many perverse incentives that it probably accounts for a solid half of the poverty-perpetuating morass of catch-22s I lamented earlier, if not more. What's funny is that I regularly see people on opposite sides of the socialist/libertarian axis agree abut both the problem and the solution, even if their intermediate reasoning is different. I think you'll take my word about the socialists, but here's Milton Friedman discussing the negative income tax: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
• malandrew 13y ago
  This is exactly why either the negative income tax or the basic livable income are such great ideas. Like most of on HN, we're among those best positioned to be on the winning side of this inequality. I'm very much in favor of the approach Switzerland [0] has taken couple with its social services, because it's enough money and social support programs for the following things: 1) A roof over your head (not the best housing, but adequate) 2) Food in your belly (not great food, but enough) 3) A healthcare program (where you don't have to worry) 4) Basic education (so you know enough to learn further on your own) 5) Enough money left over to afford a computer and an internet connection (so you can learn on your own) With all those needs met, everyone has what they need to do well for themselves. Those at the winning end of inequality know they've given everything necessary for others to join them if they make the effort. The winning end can reap further rewards by deserving it in the form of making the five line items above insanely efficient to deliver. Create cheaper, adequate housing, make food more plentiful and nutritious for cheaper, make healthcare more effective and cheaper, make basic education more effective and cheaper and make computers and internet access cheaper. The people who contribute the most to those goals deserve to live the best because they've done the most to contribute to the general welfare of all. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532738