Comment by zackmorris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zackmorris | Hacker News Reader

I've been around long enough that I'm realizing we're closer to the end than the beginning. The late 90s were so bright we had to wear shades - then the whole thing came crashing down and set progress back about a decade in the 2000s. Innovation happened by forcing us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, not by cultivating our potential.

Now here we are again, having caught up to where we were in 1999: VR and AI are taking off (it was 3D gaming and online support then), billions of dollars of VC money are being thrown at mundane ideas that a couple teenagers could pull off in their parents' basement (if they weren't stuck working 40 hours a week at call centers), and vacuous claims are made daily by people who won the internet lottery.

This is not the future we're looking for. Or is, when you think about it. The wool has been pulled over our eyes. The rat race has become a marathon, the fruits of our labors are no longer ours to utilize. AI (especially) will be used to maximize profits rather than free us from labor. And unfortunately I'm not seeing acknowledgements of how badly we've flown off the rails, especially at the highest levels of the tech industry.

My predictions: another crash around 2020, populist policies that do the opposite of what's needed (austerity, tax cuts for the wealthy, suppressing the Other, etc etc), little done to reduce consumption or help the environment as a percentage of GDP or even at a personal level, and a revolutionary reaction to all this in the form of protests and cooperatives that have too little capital to mount a meaningful resistance. Playing out over 1 or 2 more lost decades until the endgame in 2040 when corporations finish merging with AI and human beings have lost all autonomy.

Disclaimer: I may have been watching too much Mr. Robot and Handmaid's Tale..

> policies that do the opposite of what’s needed...

The jury is definitely out if democracy can actually “do what’s right” with regard to social issues, the environment, income inequality, etc. In fact it is mainly showing the opposite - that those with $ can buy elections using “weaponized” mis-information directly targeted at emotional humans using Facebook and then do whatever they want.

I am rooting for a real Mr. Robot to take down Facebook et al.

I'm concerned about democracy issues as well (tyranny of the majority, tragedy of the commons, etc) but can't endorse targeting an ever-present Evil Corp, whoever that might be in these times.

Plus I don't think it would work in the long run. I've been having a hard time lately coming to terms with the fact that there is no quick fix. There's probably not much that even Mark Zuckerberg could do at this point to take Facebook in a more equitable direction. It might require a leap of insight even greater than starting it in the first place.

All of the important positive changes in history happened through organizing. It's really up to the employees of Facebook to do their part every day to make things better. If the system doesn't allow that, then they need to work to change the system.

On a personal level, I'm going to vote and donate to positive causes. But I'm concerned that won't be enough to counter the decline in education and civics that I've witnessed over my lifetime. There are fundamentals that we could work on though. For example, the US was founded on public education. I'd ask anyone reading this to ask themselves why they might favor private education over public, and how that basic idea might lead to college that is more expensive, or dogma in our political discourse. Some ideals are timeless and needed now more than ever.

You raise an important point. Society is the sum of all our individual actions and relations. For societal change to happen, each and everyone has to change. I cannot expect a 20% increase in salary every couple of years for myself and at the same time blame society's demise on Zuckerberg, politicians, or the greedy, immoral bankers.

>I cannot expect a 20% increase in salary every couple of years for myself and at the same time blame society's demise on Zuckerberg, politicians, or the greedy, immoral bankers.

yes you can

I think it's silly to think taking down Facebook or any other big player would do anything. This is a self-sustaining system, and people will resist change unless it comes strongly and abruptly. On the other hand, this is something we built ourselves so maybe we like it this way the most.

I was surprised to learn as a grown damn man this past week that Democracy, capital letter political system, was designed and architected to be a more stable political system less prone to systemic ripples, rather than a system designed for the people to govern themselves.

"For the people, by the people" is basically a marketing slogan.

Note that I'm not passing judgement on whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, just that it is, and that I didn't realize it until now.

The critical fact often overlooked by techno-utopia folks is what you've put very well.. 'AI will be used to maximize profits rather than free us from labor.'.

this is my main concern given our current political & economic setup today. as I see it, UBI can only be implemented before AI is realized. Its because once it is there no 'winner' is gonna share the fruit of their hard work with unwashed masses. essentially then there would be no difference between poor people in your own country and rest of the world. So we can use our leader's attitude toward rest of world as a guide for what they are going to do here.

The labor force participation rate is at multi-decade lows and so is the number of hours worked weekly. people are already being freed from labor

Labor participation rate is low because of long term demographic trends. Also the labor wages have been stagnant for last 30 years (adjusted for inflation). overall the benefits of increased productivity from automation has only gone to the upper decile of income. to make ends meet people are just working longer hours.

Also, there has been a fair bit of gaming of how the unemployment numbers are reported so some of those stats dont really represent what they intended to originally. if interested, John Williams of shadowstats does a good job of compiling numbers old style.

> The late 90s were so bright we had to wear shades - then the whole thing came crashing down and set progress back about a decade in the 2000s.

I don't think you'd have to look hard to find people who lived through the explosion of optimism about human progress in the late '60s who would have seen your '90s as a retreat. Or people who lived through the defeat of nationalism by internationalist, technological democracy in the '40s who saw their '60s just as dimly.

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