Comment by arximboldi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arximboldi | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know if that would actually be the case, but if it were, the question would be: is it actually a bad thing?

I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste [1]. In fact, it is normal that as our society gets more educated and the supply of unskilled workers goes down, a lot of hard manual labor will become expensive. This is already the case with mining, for example. The fact that we software engineers do a job that we like and is well paid at the same time is a very lucky (for us) historical accident.

On the other hand, I see in basic income an opportunity to also do unalienated work. For example, I'd very happily use BI to take buy some time off and to do a kinda "libre software retreat", hacking on free projects for a while without needing to bargain with an employer that owns everything that comes out of my head.

[1] Excluding the cost of education, let's assume university is free as in a few places in Europe.

"I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste"

That's because moral justification isn't at the center of our society. The market is. Many attempts have been made to switch from the market to something else, not many were brilliant.

The "lucky historical accident" you cite isn't one... It's just the way our society was built.

Also you could argue on many different levels. To me, long studies meant delayed enjoyment of life, less freedom until 23, etc... You get less immediately, more later.

In the end, the question is really: "Do we want to use social engineering (as it's called) and try to build a brand new society, when all other attempts lead to poverty and war?"

The labour market is not going away with BI. It will just become more free. Currently, many workers are forced to accept crappy jobs for little pay because the alternative is starvation. With BI, they can afford to say no when they don't think the compensation is worth it. If those crappy jobs are necessary, they will have to improve, either by making the jobs more fun or interesting, or increasing the pay.

> The labour market is not going away with BI. It will just become more free.

Of interesting note in this domain, BI is often advocated as an alternative to minimum wage (such that in a mature BI system, there would be no minimum wage, though in some models there'd be a transitional period as the BI ramped up and the minimum wage wound down, at least in real if not nominal terms.)

So, while BI removes economic duress that forces people to take low-wage jobs, that also allows it to remove regulatory barriers which, while they exist to prevent abusive profiteering from economic duress, also have a side-effect of preventing generally mutually-beneficial arrangements that happen to have low wages (but where the low-wage earner might benefit from experience that increases future potential, etc.)

If you subsidise people so they don't need to accept "crappy jobs" then it distorts the market instead of making it more "free" because now a potential worker with fewer skills valued by the market doesn't need to make his living by taking a job that is adequate for his level of education/skills.

> If those crappy jobs are necessary, they will have to improve, either by making the jobs more fun or interesting, or increasing the pay.

You make this sound as if an employer simply can raise the pay of his employees without taking into account the realities of the market.

Some services or products are worth less precisely because there is no customer available willing to pay more for it.

No, duress (which is what the prospect of death is) does not make a market more free. If you are forced to accept a crappy deal because otherwise you will die, you are not making a free decision. A fair deal in a free market is one that you can afford to say no to.

> Some services or products are worth less precisely because there is no customer available willing to pay more for it.

And for some services or products there simply isn't a viable market. If it's necessary to keep people in poverty to keep it viable, then I say we're better off without it.

What duress are you talking about? No one in the EU or the US will actually die if they don't take some crappy job.

These people are free to live in a tent and dive into trashcans for food if they don't like to work, which isn't nice but this certainly isn't death! It's just a crappy lifestyle.

It's just they don't want to live in a tent and they want to have a smartphone, a car and enjoy all the things that the working population enjoys.

> which isn't nice but this certainly isn't death!

It took me literally five seconds of searching to find a study [1] that notes that homeless people in the UK have a death rate that starts at twice that of people with homes and increases up to six times that of people with homes with age.

[1]: http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/Homelessnes...

This isn't surprising considering the alcohol/drug abuse and crime among homeless people.

The reason why their death rate is higher is their state of mind.

It causes them to not take that crappy job that barely affords them a normal life and can potentially open up new perspectives for the future and instead choose to do nothing and hang out with the wrong people until it is too late and they end up on the street.

I don't see how giving them free money will in any way change their psychological condition. (of course there are always exceptions)

Are you really trying to claim that literally every homeless person is a drug-abusing criminal?

No I did not claim this. I wrote that drug and alcohol abuse is affecting more homeless people than others. This is obviously one of the causes why the death rate for homeless people is higher.

But you are obviously not interested in a normal discussion since you just try to read something into my statements to attack me.

The same duress that uses force to prevent me for moving into the hills and living in a tent off the land.

> That's because moral justification isn't at the center of our society. The market is.

The moral argument is that the market is more fair at setting prices because it is a more fundamentally democratic mechanism than price controls. That is, all of us together, compared to a handful of easily-lobbied people, are better at finding sensible prices.

That's because moral justification isn't at the center of our society. The market is.

So how much do you pay your friends to hang out with you? I've been going with $20 a visit, but I've heard that might be a little on the low side these days.

The market rate is closer to $100, at least in luxury cities like New York.

What are you even talking about?

the center of society: human relationships.

edit: at least that's what i assume they're talking about.

George Orwell in "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" suggested that friendly personal offline relationships are all but impossible between people with widely disparate incomes. Exceptions as always, prove the rule.

> To me, long studies meant delayed enjoyment of life, less freedom until 23, etc... You get less immediately, more later.

What do you think life is like if you choose to skip postsecondary education? In most cases, it's straight into a factory/manual labor job that is much more physically (and in many cases mentally and emotionally) draining than your standard white-collar coding job.

To characterize those who choose education as having less in the near term seems to ignore what modern universities have become: in America at least, it's basically a secular rumspringa, wherein students dabble in drugs, sex, and other "counter culture" in addition to their studies. This may not be the experience of every CS student (perhaps due to the field's gender inequality and the number of introverted personalities), but it's just a gross misrepresentation to state that choosing further education means less freedom and enjoyment of your life and you should be rewarded thusly.

I think it's often a matter of immediate freedom... even if I have a clear idea of what life is without high education.

"You'll do whatever you want but get a degree first": tell me you've never heard these words. Maybe this education-then-life approach is counter-productive: education should be a life long journey, and life shouldn't start after your studies. "Finish your homework first, then you'll get to play" may be related...

Also, I suffered a stroke at 32 because of my job, so I'm not sure IT is as safe as you think. YMMV.

And I didn't study in the USA. Free education in Europe is not always as sexy as some may think. I often think that maybe this difference is what makes Europeans boring, and americans so creative and innovative. It's like we're trained through higher education to be obedient (white collar) workers, and you're trained more to achieve whatever you really want.

Lastly, it's been studied/proven/observed/shown that children who can delay immediate gratification for a better future outcome will perform better at school and in their lives (cf The Stanford marshmallow experiment).

Who or what is your society? Moral justification is absolutely at the center of European society. Sure, we have lots of criminal capitalists here as well, but morals is our way to deal with those people.

You seem to suggest letting these American-style gangsters go unchecked. Why though?

You also seem to be suggesting that studying until 23 is less enjoyable than working 9-17 from 17/18 onwards.

This all leads me to think you have a very upper-class, down-upon, shielded from trouble perspective.

All they said was morality doesn't set prices for labor. Buyers of labor do (market).

in a market, no one sets prices. at least if a market is free, people only take prices.

>The "lucky historical accident" you cite isn't one... It's just the way our society was built.

The point is that you couldn't have been a software engineer if you'd been born 100 years ago. And demand for software engineers might tank in the future. People who currently enjoy their jobs as software engineers are lucky to be living in a time when it's possible to make a good living doing that. If you'd been born in another time, there might not have been such a good match between what you're good at, what you enjoy, and what's profitable.

I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste [1].

In general I agree. However, besides education costs (I have quite many friends who have a sizeable loan), software engineers also enter the workforce quite a bit later. E.g., taking Netherlands as an example:

- Waste collector: age 12-16 VMBO

- Software engineer: age 12-18 VWO, age 18-23 BA+MA university

Also, very few students actually finish university in time. So, they are usually 24 or 25 when they are on the market. So, there would be less opportunity to build up a pension at equal wages.

I think that most of those students already work during their studies and income difference is so big that they will definitely earn more money in total before 30. I would be more worried about doctors which start to work independently a lot later and do not earn much in the beginning of their carrier (at least in my country).

In the brave new world of guaranteed income, why would you need a pension?

Because while the basic income would suffice for the basics, the pension allows you to live your retirement in comfort.

The same reason you have pensions now, despite guaranteed state pensions. Whilst $10K is probably liveable, in some places, if you own a house, it's likely not going to be terribly comfortable.

"I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste"

Garbage Disposal people earn over $100k. Software engineers earn about $80k. A job that can be outsourced or automated is not valuable. http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-h...

According to the article "Nationwide, the annual salary for a garbage truck driver is $40,000"

> A job that can be outsourced or automated is not valuable.

Garbage disposal is at this point a lot closer to automation than software development.

> I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste

Do you see a moral justification for paying a doctor more than a receptionist? I see none for paying them the same.

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