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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

There's a fascinating (if strongly worded) article on Recode that touches on this:

http://www.recode.net/2016/12/19/13600538/silicon-valley-gro...

In short: Silicon Valley is going to drive a lot of job losses in the not too distant future. There's a very real danger that will blow back as mass unemployment drives people to extremes, unless people start thinking very seriously about what this new world is going to look like, and how the vast majority of the country will earn a living.

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I really hate the idea that everyone needs to work. I get paid a lot as a software engineer to write stuff. Over the years, I've just seen so much money poured into tech that makes people buy more tech or that does nothing but license intellectual property.

I quit my job for 11 months in 2015 and flew around the world; backpacking off my savings:

http://khanism.org/perspective/minimalism/

It was the happiest time of my life. I'm planning on getting some funding sources for next time (Pateron, grants for OSS projects, etc.) and see if I can make it longer next time. I'd rather just make enough, making content and tech that I like and find useful, supported by peers, than working the the current tech world.

Reynolds envisioned a world like this in his book Army of Davids. I think he painted an overly rosy outlook and neglected to realize how difficult it is to start small businesses or how little time people have after their day jobs to work on things. (You can kinda glaze over those things when you're a UT professor).

I'm visualizing a future world where a million more homeless people are truck-hopping rather than train-hopping. You summon a delivery robo-truck by stealing all the goods off a shop shelf. It's a bit like calling for a sand worm in Dune.

Can't afford Uber? Just hang onto the roof of one.

That idea came up in conversation among some friends just a couple of days ago! As soon as we have reliable robo-taxis, we're going to have teenagers (and drunk adults) reinventing "train surfing".

It's the latest in hipster travel modes. Riding a penny farthing is too tame.... Unless you're skitching off the bumper of a robo-Uber.

The answer doesn't have to be that everyone has a job. It could be universal basic income. It could be any array of things.

But the question is, does Patreon, OSS grants and the like scale to the entire population of a country? My instinct is "no". Yet it's likely that a lot of people will be looking for alternative means by which to live life within our lifetimes, and no-one is really looking for broadly applicable answers.

There's only one (more or less) answer - you can't have a few people owning the output of the machines. The wealth will have to be spread out - whether that's thru some form of Socialism/Communism that doesn't exist yet or not, I don't know.

But once you get to more or less full automation, the only people who would make money under the current system would be the owners - there wouldn't need to be any workers.

I would highly recommend reading Debt the First 5000 Years. It goes into the history of debt, money and slavery (which are all very closely related to war).

I think things will change dramatically if we can solve energy scarcity. Much of our wealth in society is based around the availability of resources. What people forget about with 3D printers is they still need oil; and you can't (easily) print circuit boards. Humanity needs something on the level as replicator technology from Star Trek.

I want to believe, but I don't think that type of alchemy is feasible; at least not until we solve the energy problem. A breakthrough in LENR or tokamak fusion reactors could change the world dramatically.

>some form of Socialism/Communism

Ya, some form of Stalinist USSR, Maoist China or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

It poisons the discourse every time you do this.

This is called "poisoning the well."

I'm curious as to what you think would work?

Instead of depending on the charity of others, why not seek financial independence?

As a (presumably) well-paid tech worker, it's really very achievable. Most engineers could do it in under a decade if they tried.

No they're not. Silicon Valley is hyped and is just an exercise in transition of American business culture and economic classism to reign in "disruptive technology". That is the only "innovation".

More so, there's nothing revolutionary about Silicon Valley. It's 150% marketing hype. Just looking at their direction, they are just not in the position to do anything of real value during the next revolutionary phase.

The only thing they have revolutionized is the acceptance and availability of very in-depth and sophisticated surveillance and the availability of massive amounts of surveillance data for the government and their intelligence/advert agencies.

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