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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

I think that people are far too pessimistic and have lost sight of the end goal.

The goal is not to create productivity. The goal is to create leisure. And, so far, we've done a really shitty job of that.

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That's the thing, we were all supposed to be living luxurious lives, instead we're working 60 hour work weeks. And the elite think that more of that should be in store for us, you know because the economy just isn't doing all that well. Mainly because they are busy disrupting everything and automating it, using massive piles of capitals they have amassed on our backs to coerce us to work harder and produce more with less money -- productivity.

With automation they need less of our work, so we should work more for less, while the capital they have amassed does most of the work through automation.

Logically nothing we do as a species makes sense unless looked through the logic of economics, consumption, and production. It's a system with its own logic and we are so conditioned to think in its terms that we can think of no other way of organizing people and/or work.

The best days for America was the American Dream as George Carlin said you have to dreaming to believe it. It was simply a hope that more of that money would trickle down to pretty much anyone if they worked hard enough.

That hope is no longer there. No matter which way you frame it.

Pretty Cynical there. Its really all about perspective. Look at this.

As we continue to automate things, we reduce the time and effort required to manufacture the things we need. This creates an immense amount of leisure time. As we focus on creating social systems which provide basic income and living needs, we are currently on trajectory for a system where people can choose to do whatever they want, with complete leisure. All need for food and devices is sustained by machines, we are provided with all basic needs by the government and you can do whatever your heart desires.

Now people may think that is pointless, but imagine what people could accomplish with the ability to pursue anything they want. There is 7 billion people on this planet. Its impossible to expect everyone achieving the american dream through sheer handwork.

> This creates an immense amount of leisure time. As we focus on creating social systems which provide basic income and living needs, we are currently on trajectory for a system where people can choose to do whatever they want, with complete leisure.

Could yes, but will it, maybe in the long run. In my lifetime, basic income will be exactly that, basic. Enough for probably shelter and food. You know people living off food stamps, see how much luxury they have. That is still tied to the economy. Most of the income generated will go to the people who own the machines that produce that output.

The sort of optimism you were talking about Adam Smith talked about, it never happened in Capitalism. Despite the fact that we solved a lot of automation problems of producing food, shelter, and material goods around the 1940s.

The government only has so much money it can give out. Divide the entire world's GDP by the population and you get 11,038. So if we could do that we can all live on 11,000 a year. That would be in the case that you took away the money from private interest and implemented something like Communism globally. That's not going to happen. The elites will cause massive wars before their give up their strangle hold and control on the world. Private interests will hold on to the money and make people work for it, as they always have.

If the means of production were in the hands of the citizens, then there's no reason to make "profit". And if the production was completely automated, then everything would be easy to obtain and at very low cost.

Now, we don't have to take away production facilities from companies or individuals, although progressive taxation is probably a good idea. Instead, the federal Govt already owns a great deal of land. We could urge to start developing on a small portion of that, for the needs of all the citizens.

This isn't a communist/socialist/capitalist issue. We've been ignoring other economic systems for 2 centuries now, and flirted with communism back in the 20's. It's time to see what's out there that matches with our current technology.

Poor people don't make enough money for companies to target effectively.

Poor people also do not have the skills to make them employable- as in the minimum requirements for a human life are not equal to what their economic output is.

Automation also provides a significant downward thrust lowering wages and sending people to unemployment or unemployability. This causes the the non-higher classes to be slowly, inexorably be shoved further down, thus creating more in the lower classes.

Therefore, the longer we go, the more poor people (per capita) will exist. And poor people will continue to be dismissed, other than hand-wavy good intentions that really fail to solve the issue at hand.

Once this cycle goes long enough, then that is the beginning of a national collapse, ala Depression. (No money to do things, no way to get money.)

This assumes that we value leisure over status, a prosperous future, living in a nice house, and putting our kids through good schools. We work 60 hour weeks because if we don't someone will work them instead of us, and we'll be part of the hollowed out middle class whose prospects are worse than their parents. Basically you can have time or you can have money, but not both.

Time, kids, and money. Choose two.

Two? You'd better have a darn good plan for your life and a supportive partner or you'll be darn lucky to have more than one.

>As we continue to automate things, we reduce the time and effort required to manufacture the things we need. This creates an immense amount of leisure time.

The first sentence has been very true as we progress with technology and the economy, etc. The second has not followed and there is no reason to believe it will. Less time and less effort will be required to produce, but that will not translate to leisure time for the underclass (it never has -- benefits go to the people who have the power to decide where the benefits go tautologically, i.e. capitalists), it will translate to more profit for the overclass.

So long as wealth inequality continues to get worse and we dive wholeheartedly into capitalism progress will just mean centralization of wealth and a stratification of the overlords and the peasantry who work until they drop being paid nothing for someone else's profit.

Embracing socialism a little more will help, and failing that the wealthy may realize living surrounded by unwashed hungry angry violent masses is unpleasant and set up some kind of charity for those who behave according to their wishes.

In the past the over-class needed the peasants and serfs to mind the farms. They no longer need the peasants and serfs for anything. The capitalist class needed them to produce goods they could sell for a profit. We basically need some role for the elites to play to justify giving money to other people that they no longer need.

I think the cynical thing here is assuming that the Elite class will continue to grow and make the lower economic classes suffer at their expense. The thing is though that being overly rich in a shit world is not much of a benefit to anyone. The Elite could set up there own little world (I'm kind of thinking like Elysium), but even that eventually will break into some elites who have more than other elites, and the cycle repeats.

The system will improve once we democratize resources more and more.

> The system will improve once we democratize resources more and more.

Where do you see evidence of this happening?

To use a tech example, look at computers. Just 20 years ago they were extremely expensive and out of the hands of many people, especially schools in poorer communities. Through manufacturing processes, we have driven there price extremely low (ex raspberry pi) enabling even the poorest communities to have access to learning programming and creating things. This would not be possible without the democratization of technology.

Another example is food. Advances in science and agriculture have enabled us to create vast amounts of fruits, vegetables, etc... and our distribution system allows for these resources to reach even the smallest of communities; And this can be done at extremely low costs. Here is a way to put it into perspective. 50 years ago you couldn't go to a rural community in Northern Canada and get a pomegranate without paying a huge premium to have it delivered there from a warm country where it is grown, thus only rich people in that community could enjoy a pom. Now, Poms are growing readily and moved around the world, so for a couple dollars anyone can enjoy one.

That is the power of democratization of technology and resources, and the next big step is democratizing our financial systems and marketplaces to distribute wealth better.

if that were to be true (elite not 'growing' at the masses' expense) it would have already happened. modern world is essentially what u describe, elites, lesser elites and then the struggling commons.

>it never has -- benefits go to the people who have the power to decide where the benefits go tautologically, i.e. capitalists

so it is a tautology by choice. they could decide to send the benefits of faster and increased production to the masses.

This creates an immense amount of leisure time.

I don't know if I'd classify unemployment without the financial means to survive as leisure, but whatever helps you sleep at night!

I'm fully cognizant that my business has generated 50 jobs and cost 10,000.

No, we do not create leisure, we create redundant, surplus humans, who must either adapt (re-train), be catered for (universal income), or, sadly, suffer.

Automation doesn't necessarily create a single second of leisure. Automation creates more productivity. The results of that, if well distributed among the population, could create leisure. But there's no reason it must be well distributed, and plenty of observational evidence suggests it isn't.

If robots do all the necessary work in the future, there's no reason to believe that the benefits of this work won't accrue to the 1% (say "ownership class" if you like) and be sold to the rest of the population at whatever the market will bear. The 1% might then have infinite leisure, while the rest of the population would have to do whatever work they demanded (manservant? parasol carrier? masseuse? plenty of frivolous work can be created) in order to earn money to buy those robot-created goods. That's how modern society is set up, currently. There's little prospect of it changing.

The only hope left is to reform the political system.

One discussion on that topic is that Ted Cruz wishes to initiate a Constitutional Convention over various perceived issues. Given the recent contentious passed bills and judgements (PPACA, Gay Marriage, et al.), a convention of this type would split the country into factions.

If that happens, I have a bad feeling about this country, and that goes along the lines of a civil war. Everything seems already so factioned already, and that their candidate is of the devil.

I often find myself wondering if Cruz actually expects that the federal government would pay any more attention to new amendments. It's already remarkably manipulative about what it considers relevant now. Any system that requires precise language laid down by "scholars" to justify stepping around what reads differently in plain English is clearly not a system that anyone is shy about gaming anyway.

60 hour work weeks? Citation needed. Every time we talk about work, people overinflate their workweeks by including commuting time or that one time they checked their work email from their phone.

5x12 is hardly the norm.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/09...

Let's split that and say 50.

This is because efficiency gains are channeled into improving overall productivity rather than reducing work required. This in turn is driven by global competition.

I don't think that's correct. Leisure isn't much good if it's due to unemployment and you're living at the subsistence level.

What you're looking for, is "standard of living." And the part they're not really making explicit, is that economists have long accepted as a truism, that the best predictor of "standard of living" is productivity.

So slaves who are highly productive for fear of their life, or even chattel-workers (I.e. Most folks) who likewise produce for fear of the bread line... They have a high standard of living?

I call shenanigans. The best predictor for having a high standard of living is having a high standard of living.

Also, define "standard". The most universal standard I can consider is leisure.

I should have added "as a country" in there somewhere. Obviously slaves or chattel workers can raise the average standard of living of a group as a whole, if you include their masters. Assuming that that system of labor is actually "highly productive" which I don't think I agree with.

And, so far, we've done a really shitty job of that.

That's somewhat true because housing restrictions in major coastal cities have become so draconian, raising prices; moving to cheap places like Texas, Phoenix, or Atlanta is one way to increase leisure over consumption. But there may be other issues around the productivity hits that dividing up brainwork creates: http://jakeseliger.com/2016/01/09/the-more-you-do-it-the-bet....

As someone looking to buy their first house in Phoenix, it startles me that you think Phoenix is cheap. I'm accustomed to the metro-Detroit housing market (which is doing far better than Detroit-proper and has mostly recovered from the recession) and the prices here are hard to see myself paying. A house I would have expected to pay ~$200k for is listed at $310k, as an example.

It's all relative. Sure, Phoenix is expensive compared to Detroit, but that doesn't mean it can't also be cheap compared to Boston, Seattle, NYC, DC, or just about anywhere in California.

http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/real-estate/T010-S003-home-pri...

Sorry, but that's cheap. $1400/mo (assuming 10% down) for a mortgage on an entire house? That's cheap. That's marginally above apartment pricing in even non-high-end areas.

And that $310k house will cost $1200k in LA or $2100k in SF, but with less land.

For $310k, I'd expect about a 1000 sqft 2 bedroom condo in my area. The smallest single family homes are about 1200 sqft for about $500k, located on a postage stamp of land.

My parents home is valued at $225k as of mid-last year. 1800 sq ft, 1.5 baths, 3 bedroom, hardwood floors throughout the first floor, finished basement, quarter acre of land, nice sized deck. driveway long enough for 3 vehicles, in a decent school system, and in a pretty good neighborhood.

It's all relative, I know, but it's still shocking to see someone saying a $1400 mortgage on a house is cheap.

So the proletariat should rise up and seize the means of leisure.

Suggest a 4 day week and people think you've lost your mind.

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