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Comment by anovikov | Hacker News Reader

Why is this a problem? I just can't see any indication of problem here, this is just supply vs demand: world is globalized now and most of what uneducated people could do can be imported from much cheaper places. If we started to look hard for 'fixes' for this we'd end up just breaking the economy. Force businesses to pay them more and even more of these job will evaporate, because there will be no point any longer. And most of these jobs will be automated away anyway.

My advice is: invest money into better law enforcement, including ML and AI-based, like crime prediction and drones. Make sure, by a combination of legislative and informal methods, that poor and well to do communities are better separated from each other. Invest more in stuff which gives poor people something to fill their time with, like video games, so they don't do as much crime. And that's it.

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It seems to me your policy would lead to the creation of permanent two-class society, where moving between the classes is difficult. Besides, do you really want to live in a fortress segregated from the rest of the society?

Why not invest money in education, training and a social security net that gives poorer individuals the means and space to catapult themselves into wealth?

Education - sure. The only purpose these masses can serve is acting as genetic pool for picking the best and uplift them through education. A permanent caste-like system is doomed as next generation of it won't be as performing as the previous one. But we have to understand that only a small majority - a few percent - of the poor will be uplifted. The rest has to be kept at bay in one way or the other.

As for fortress thing - you are exaggerating. There isn't so much crime around these days, much less than 30-40 years ago when things were still going fine according to the article.

In the end, it's just the technology change. 40-50 years ago uneducated masses who were members of solid middle class have been factory workers. They are automated away. There isn't anything which could be done about this. Besides, exactly 40-50 years ago, during Jimmy Carter era, same things were said about farmers who found themselves displaced with great improvements in farming productivity. History just repeats itself.

And yes, classes must be sustainable and moving between them should be difficult, only through exceptional personal (genetic) abilities and a lot of effort. Otherwise they are not classes, just people gambling and some of them winning.

But what is your end goal? What purpose does this caste system serve?

History has shown that once people no longer believe they have a fair chance of achieving prosperity, they revolt. So, even ignoring any other characteristics, your way of social organisation is not stable in the long run.

How do you define 'fair'?

> The only purpose these masses can serve is acting as genetic pool for picking the best and uplift them through education.

This is just social darwinism. Not rly a recipe for sucess I can tell ya.

But this is what every society just becomes, unless someone tries to forcibly skew it otherwise, to the detriment of economic growth, thus worsening outcomes for everyone. This isn't some 'policy' i am suggesting. This is just what the world is. See EU countries who are trying to do otherwise, only outcome is somewhat lower crime and even that is temporary because too many savage immigrants come to feed on unlimited free stuff. Their economies are hopelessly stuck.

You just described every dystopian sci-fi film ever. And I think you can figure out what happens in the end.

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