6 ms·

My view is that the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which sta

by buro9 12y ago

My view is that the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which states and key individuals were able to extract wealth from others. In that case, as time progressed, the people started to become aware of the inequality and the leaders and states started to see the result (in Russia and other countries) of this inequality being challenged. To protect themselves, the states and key individuals devised to funnel a portion of the benefits from the industrial revolution back down to the wider populace, to offer comfort through more spare time, better health, better living conditions. The industrial machine operated at only slightly below the potential level of efficiency it promised, but now the machine was able to sustain itself and ensure it's future. Where we are today is that the digital revolution has created machines that achieve an even greater efficiency. The "sharing economy" it has brought about is little more than an externalisation of corporation costs of production, allowing those corporations to reap greater benefits with very little cost. The inequality technology has brought about is staggering to behold. What I believe has yet to be achieved is a balancing of the externalisation of costs with the need to build a system that is able to sustain itself. For the current system to survive, those who have need to find ways to increase the comfort and conditions of those who have not.

aragot 12y ago
I'm worried about the form of the redistribution. In France, we have small taxes in many places. Just one example: We dealt with copyright issues by creating a tax on storage mediums, from a few cents to 20-40€ depending on the container, the size and the volatility - more than 40 different tax levels (see tables here [1]). Obviously they included the bureaucracy feature, where if you're a company you can send back a form and be reimbursed. I'm confident the same kind of insane level of tax compexity exists in pretty much any country and it implements revenue equality by squashing entrepreneurship at its root. Less innovation, less inequality ;) So let's go ahead: Which forms of redistribution would do you see? Your comment made me notice that taxes proportional to the number of ads already exist (the VAT) and doesn't help redistributing. We need to take into account the change of scale. Would it be a tax per number of available cars for car-sharing services, then a tax per node in the friend graph for social networks? Sounds insane, but is it what we're bound to implement? [1] http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/Politiques-ministerielles/Propriete-litteraire-et-artistique/Commission-pour-la-remuneration-de-la-copie-privee/Questions-pratiques/Les-montants-de-la-Remuneration-pour-Copie-Privee http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/Politiques-ministeri...
- jdimov 12y ago
  Re-distribution?? Ex-cuse-me?? These aren't YOUR cookies, you bum! Make your own cookies and THEN worry about re-distribution! When someone else has made the cookies, YOU DON'T GET A SAY in how they are distributed, do you get that?
  - EliRivers 12y ago
    That is incorrect. In the typical modern liberal democracy, the right to vote and other such forms of political expression is not tied to how much wealth one generates.
    - jdimov 12y ago
      No, that's how disgruntled people WANT it to be. Luckily, it isn't and it never will be.
      - EliRivers 12y ago
        I can look around me and see unemployed people voting, and I recall the top tax rate was once 90%. Where do you live?
        jdimov 12y ago
        No, you see sheep, thinking they have a say in what piece of the pie they will get, when the answer, of course, is invariably: NONE You see stupid lazy bums pretending to be victims of the system, thinking someone owes them something and acting all righteous about it. You see scum. That's what you see. And they are right where they're supposed to be.
        EliRivers 12y ago
        You're the new TempleOS. The only reason you haven't been hellbanned is that your particularly insanity, a weird Randian fantasy world, isn't inherently offensive.
fennecfoxen 12y ago
> My view is that the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which states and key individuals were able to extract wealth from others... as time progressed, the people started to become aware of the inequality. Your armchair version of economic history seems a little squishy. What of the earlier inequality? What of the landed nobility, kings and barons and knights, the historical elites which we had before the entrepreneurial ones? Were the people simply blind to the inequality at the time? And if the result of the industrial revolution is construed as a better way to extract wealth from human beings, then why were both elites and commoners materially better off than they were as serfs? <editorializing on> Heaven forbid that we should respect capital investment for being able to generate wealth better and more efficiently. Surely this would be a betrayal of class solidarity and the dignity of labor.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >And if the result of the industrial revolution is construed as a better way to extract wealth from human beings, then why were both elites and commoners materially better off than they were as serfs? Simply put: they weren't. The very first labor movements were formed precisely because the landless proletarians of the Industrial Revolution were actually worse off (in terms of objectively measurable things like disease rates, nutrition, sanitation, average height) than their parents and grandparents had been as peasants (mind, this is at least partially because the period just before the Industrial Revolution was, in many countries, unusually prosperous for the peasantry).
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    > mind, this is at least partially because the period just before the Industrial Revolution was, in many countries, unusually prosperous for the peasantry That much is fair enough, as a short-term matter then.
  - crazy1van 12y ago
    > Simply put: they weren't. Not sure this can truly be "simply put". On the one hand there was manual labor on the farm with very simple amenities like an outhouse and well water and no ability to advance as you're literally doing the same job your ancestors have done for centuries, but work ended at sun down and people had substantial control over their daily lives. On the other hand, in industry there was less physically demanding labor for (relatively) more money and living in conditions with heat and water, but your work day might be 14 hours, you could easily be gravely injured at work, and your apartment was shared with a dozen people. Both seem to have pluses and minuses to me. For whatever reason, people chose to leave the farm and enter industry.
opinali 12y ago
"the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which states and key individuals were able to extract wealth from others." Remember that inequality was huge way before the industrial revolution. You know how feudalism worked, right? A few dozen filthy-rich noble families + 99% of population in abject misery, was the rule for most of Europe in the best part of the previous couple millennia. Situation improved with the ascension of bourgeoisie, but even that was limited to a small fraction of population that lived in big cities, in a time where almost everyone still worked the fields. The industrial revolution replaced old methods of economic exploitation with new methods, no big change for better or worse. Competition forced the bulk of industrial efficiency to benefit consumers; suddenly a good overcoat was not a luxury for the rich, etc. which started a virtuous economic cycle - and also meant that profit margins were NOT so fantastically big for capital owners. It's sure big fortunes were made by the barons of early factories and railroads etc., but the elites were already making tons of money before any new tech. "people started to become aware of the inequality and the leaders and states started to see the result (in Russia and other countries) of this inequality being challenged." People were always aware of inequality and injustice. The real change in the industrial revolution is that exploited workers were concentrated in cities, and even more, in companies / factories, so they could organize easily and fight for better working conditions, which was almost impossible for peasants living in tiny groups miles away from each other. "What I believe has yet to be achieved is a balancing of the externalisation of costs with the need to build a system that is able to sustain itself. For the current system to survive, those who have need to find ways to increase the comfort and conditions of those who have not." Agreed here. This balance is a never-ending struggle, any economic model is only sustainable when the bulk of society have disposal income to drive demand.
- pharke 12y ago
  > Remember that inequality was huge way before the industrial revolution. You know how feudalism worked, right? A few dozen filthy-rich noble families + 99% of population in abject misery, was the rule for most of Europe in the best part of the previous couple millennia. I'm going to ask for a source on this, because this smacks of hyperbole or at least ignorance. It seems that when you refer to feudalism [1], you may mean manorialism [2] and more specifically the institution of serfdom [3]. First, I am not arguing that the life of a serf was in any way ideal. They were the lowest caste of society and were afforded very little in the way of self determination, but they were not wholly without legal protections and rights, they were often paid a wage for their labour or could at the very least pay their debts directly with their labour, and it was generally in the direct interest of their lord to uphold their end of the contract by providing compensation, protection, court hearings, and facilities for processing and storing the food produced on their lands. While it would obviously have made for an extremely poor life had one been born on land held by a cruel or careless lord I wouldn't say that living and working in a workhouse [4] or mill would have been much better, at least as a serf you would have a right to live with your family in a hovel and work a portion of the land for your own benefit. 12 hour days in a dark, loud, and extremely dangerous textile mill and going home to an equally dark, loud, and stinking tenement room shared with a dozen other people sounds more like abject misery to me. The beginnings of improvement in personal rights and freedoms began more so with Magdeburg rights [5] and town law, providing an alternative for serfs who were able or fortunate enough to exchange their tenure, buy out of it, or simply flee it for life in a town. That was as early as the 10th century. Things improved even more during the Renaissance and after the Black Death which resulted in an increase in the value of labour and saw the decline of serfdom in Western Europe. I would argue that a deterioration in living conditions for skilled labourers brought on by the industrial revolution [6] and the end of the open field system [7] resulted in a greater necessity to organize to avoid further deprivation. Also, peasant revolts were not unheard of [6] and often began in the villages that formed the centre of life on the manor estate. The life of a serf was far from pastoral but the change in living conditions from the late Roman Empire up to the modern era has not followed a constant upward trend and even today our society is quite capable of reaching local minima. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manorialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manorialism [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_rights [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_field_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_field_system [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts
miscellaneous 12y ago
What you seem to be missing is that the barriers to entry for modern technologies are incredibly low (and getting lower). From basic microeconomics, we know that the ability for a company to maintain >0 economic profit for an extended period of time relies on them maintaining a competitive advantage - barriers to entry help a lot with that. Today, disruption is so easy. Starting a app/website/platform involves almost no fixed costs and variable costs scale easily. We are now seeing century-old corporations being disrupted by university students. Technology has helped this situation, not hindered it. (fixed spelling)

by buro9 12y ago

aragot 12y ago

I'm worried about the form of the redistribution. In France, we have small taxes in many places. Just one example: We dealt with copyright issues by creating a tax on storage mediums, from a few cents to 20-40€ depending on the container, the size and the volatility - more than 40 different tax levels (see tables here [1]). Obviously they included the bureaucracy feature, where if you're a company you can send back a form and be reimbursed. I'm confident the same kind of insane level of tax compexity exists in pretty much any country and it implements revenue equality by squashing entrepreneurship at its root. Less innovation, less inequality ;) So let's go ahead: Which forms of redistribution would do you see? Your comment made me notice that taxes proportional to the number of ads already exist (the VAT) and doesn't help redistributing. We need to take into account the change of scale. Would it be a tax per number of available cars for car-sharing services, then a tax per node in the friend graph for social networks? Sounds insane, but is it what we're bound to implement? [1] http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/Politiques-ministerielles/Propriete-litteraire-et-artistique/Commission-pour-la-remuneration-de-la-copie-privee/Questions-pratiques/Les-montants-de-la-Remuneration-pour-Copie-Privee http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/Politiques-ministeri...

jdimov 12y ago
Re-distribution?? Ex-cuse-me?? These aren't YOUR cookies, you bum! Make your own cookies and THEN worry about re-distribution! When someone else has made the cookies, YOU DON'T GET A SAY in how they are distributed, do you get that?
- EliRivers 12y ago
  That is incorrect. In the typical modern liberal democracy, the right to vote and other such forms of political expression is not tied to how much wealth one generates.
  - jdimov 12y ago
    No, that's how disgruntled people WANT it to be. Luckily, it isn't and it never will be.
    - EliRivers 12y ago
      I can look around me and see unemployed people voting, and I recall the top tax rate was once 90%. Where do you live?
      - jdimov 12y ago
        No, you see sheep, thinking they have a say in what piece of the pie they will get, when the answer, of course, is invariably: NONE You see stupid lazy bums pretending to be victims of the system, thinking someone owes them something and acting all righteous about it. You see scum. That's what you see. And they are right where they're supposed to be.
        EliRivers 12y ago
        You're the new TempleOS. The only reason you haven't been hellbanned is that your particularly insanity, a weird Randian fantasy world, isn't inherently offensive.

fennecfoxen 12y ago

> My view is that the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which states and key individuals were able to extract wealth from others... as time progressed, the people started to become aware of the inequality. Your armchair version of economic history seems a little squishy. What of the earlier inequality? What of the landed nobility, kings and barons and knights, the historical elites which we had before the entrepreneurial ones? Were the people simply blind to the inequality at the time? And if the result of the industrial revolution is construed as a better way to extract wealth from human beings, then why were both elites and commoners materially better off than they were as serfs? <editorializing on> Heaven forbid that we should respect capital investment for being able to generate wealth better and more efficiently. Surely this would be a betrayal of class solidarity and the dignity of labor.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>And if the result of the industrial revolution is construed as a better way to extract wealth from human beings, then why were both elites and commoners materially better off than they were as serfs? Simply put: they weren't. The very first labor movements were formed precisely because the landless proletarians of the Industrial Revolution were actually worse off (in terms of objectively measurable things like disease rates, nutrition, sanitation, average height) than their parents and grandparents had been as peasants (mind, this is at least partially because the period just before the Industrial Revolution was, in many countries, unusually prosperous for the peasantry).
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  > mind, this is at least partially because the period just before the Industrial Revolution was, in many countries, unusually prosperous for the peasantry That much is fair enough, as a short-term matter then.
- crazy1van 12y ago
  > Simply put: they weren't. Not sure this can truly be "simply put". On the one hand there was manual labor on the farm with very simple amenities like an outhouse and well water and no ability to advance as you're literally doing the same job your ancestors have done for centuries, but work ended at sun down and people had substantial control over their daily lives. On the other hand, in industry there was less physically demanding labor for (relatively) more money and living in conditions with heat and water, but your work day might be 14 hours, you could easily be gravely injured at work, and your apartment was shared with a dozen people. Both seem to have pluses and minuses to me. For whatever reason, people chose to leave the farm and enter industry.

opinali 12y ago

"the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which states and key individuals were able to extract wealth from others." Remember that inequality was huge way before the industrial revolution. You know how feudalism worked, right? A few dozen filthy-rich noble families + 99% of population in abject misery, was the rule for most of Europe in the best part of the previous couple millennia. Situation improved with the ascension of bourgeoisie, but even that was limited to a small fraction of population that lived in big cities, in a time where almost everyone still worked the fields. The industrial revolution replaced old methods of economic exploitation with new methods, no big change for better or worse. Competition forced the bulk of industrial efficiency to benefit consumers; suddenly a good overcoat was not a luxury for the rich, etc. which started a virtuous economic cycle - and also meant that profit margins were NOT so fantastically big for capital owners. It's sure big fortunes were made by the barons of early factories and railroads etc., but the elites were already making tons of money before any new tech. "people started to become aware of the inequality and the leaders and states started to see the result (in Russia and other countries) of this inequality being challenged." People were always aware of inequality and injustice. The real change in the industrial revolution is that exploited workers were concentrated in cities, and even more, in companies / factories, so they could organize easily and fight for better working conditions, which was almost impossible for peasants living in tiny groups miles away from each other. "What I believe has yet to be achieved is a balancing of the externalisation of costs with the need to build a system that is able to sustain itself. For the current system to survive, those who have need to find ways to increase the comfort and conditions of those who have not." Agreed here. This balance is a never-ending struggle, any economic model is only sustainable when the bulk of society have disposal income to drive demand.

pharke 12y ago
> Remember that inequality was huge way before the industrial revolution. You know how feudalism worked, right? A few dozen filthy-rich noble families + 99% of population in abject misery, was the rule for most of Europe in the best part of the previous couple millennia. I'm going to ask for a source on this, because this smacks of hyperbole or at least ignorance. It seems that when you refer to feudalism [1], you may mean manorialism [2] and more specifically the institution of serfdom [3]. First, I am not arguing that the life of a serf was in any way ideal. They were the lowest caste of society and were afforded very little in the way of self determination, but they were not wholly without legal protections and rights, they were often paid a wage for their labour or could at the very least pay their debts directly with their labour, and it was generally in the direct interest of their lord to uphold their end of the contract by providing compensation, protection, court hearings, and facilities for processing and storing the food produced on their lands. While it would obviously have made for an extremely poor life had one been born on land held by a cruel or careless lord I wouldn't say that living and working in a workhouse [4] or mill would have been much better, at least as a serf you would have a right to live with your family in a hovel and work a portion of the land for your own benefit. 12 hour days in a dark, loud, and extremely dangerous textile mill and going home to an equally dark, loud, and stinking tenement room shared with a dozen other people sounds more like abject misery to me. The beginnings of improvement in personal rights and freedoms began more so with Magdeburg rights [5] and town law, providing an alternative for serfs who were able or fortunate enough to exchange their tenure, buy out of it, or simply flee it for life in a town. That was as early as the 10th century. Things improved even more during the Renaissance and after the Black Death which resulted in an increase in the value of labour and saw the decline of serfdom in Western Europe. I would argue that a deterioration in living conditions for skilled labourers brought on by the industrial revolution [6] and the end of the open field system [7] resulted in a greater necessity to organize to avoid further deprivation. Also, peasant revolts were not unheard of [6] and often began in the villages that formed the centre of life on the manor estate. The life of a serf was far from pastoral but the change in living conditions from the late Roman Empire up to the modern era has not followed a constant upward trend and even today our society is quite capable of reaching local minima. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manorialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manorialism [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_rights [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_field_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_field_system [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts

miscellaneous 12y ago

What you seem to be missing is that the barriers to entry for modern technologies are incredibly low (and getting lower). From basic microeconomics, we know that the ability for a company to maintain >0 economic profit for an extended period of time relies on them maintaining a competitive advantage - barriers to entry help a lot with that. Today, disruption is so easy. Starting a app/website/platform involves almost no fixed costs and variable costs scale easily. We are now seeing century-old corporations being disrupted by university students. Technology has helped this situation, not hindered it. (fixed spelling)