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Comment by gotocake | Hacker News Reader

Wealth redistribution is a choice of ethics.

If you study world history you’ll quickly realize that it’s ultimately the choice of the mob with the torches and pitchforks. You’d be amazed at how disinterested they are in moral relativism or a chat about Atlas Shrugged. Personally I’d prefer a more equitable redistribution based on planning, rather than a redistribution based on plutocrats being put up against a wall.

What if we start to create better technologies that augment the economic usefulness of the lowest IQ people?

They definitely won’t be amused at the cries of “But wait, I want my tech to add economic value to you, low IQ person! sound of a gun cocking Waaait! Haven’t you even heard of a meritocra- BANG”

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I mean, you can solve that problem with robots and technology, too. Revolting mobs of socialists can be dealt with pretty easily.

(If you’re going to start threatening murder as the premise of your theory of justice, you’d best make sure your side would actually be the one doing the killing.)

I mean, you can solve that problem with robots and technology, too. Revolting mobs of socialists can be dealt with pretty easily. (If you’re going to start threatening murder as the premise of your theory of justice, you’d best make sure your side would actually be the one doing the killing.)

Yeah, that that could never go wrong and backfire horribly. How about we win a war before we decide to design, mass produce, and deploy enough robots to pacify a few hundred million people with guns. Oh, and don’t forget to make it the first hack-proof device ever, or you might find yourself on the wrong end of the robot.

Besides, I’m not threatening murder, I’m literally just describing a repeating and predictable cycle throughout history. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be up against the wall too.

Another repeating and predictable cycle throughout history is that improvements in technology do not take away jobs. If the revolting mob is suddenly incapable of doing productive work due to some sort of AI revolution, it's fallacious to assume that they would be capable of putting anyone against the wall, either.

They do though. Not all the people skilled in the old technology will find a job in the new one, especially if they're older. Some people will fall through the gaps, even if the total amount of jobs is not affected.

>Revolting mobs of socialists can be dealt with pretty easily.

Yes indeed. The solution to the Luddite problem was basically to arrest them. Unemployed people are not a problem if they are in prison or dead.

If you study history, you also quickly learn that there were orders of magnitude more poor people killed by the rich and powerful than the other way around.

Are mobs always morally in the right? Absolutely not. But neither the opposite is true.

If you study history, you also quickly learn that there were orders of magnitude more poor people killed by the rich and powerful than the other way around.

Yes, but considering that there have always been orders of magnitude more poor people than rich and powerful people, your statement is effectively empty. More telling is that the rich and powerful get away with it, until they don’t. In France during the Revolution, in England during the civil war, in Russia when the czar system was torn down.

Push people far enough and they don’t break, they lash out and take their society down with them. It can be hard to predict when that will happen, but if circumstances don’t change it seems that it always does. Ghaddafi could have been forgiven for believing that after decades, he wouldn’t be hunted and killed by his own people. Hosni Mubarak clearly thought he was untouchable, as did Ben Ali in Tunisia.

I’ll say it again, I’d prefer an orderly and plannned redistribution rather than it all being burned to the ground because a handful of elites can’t finish their goddamned history education and ascribe to the “this time it will be different,” school of what could charitably be called “thought.”

>Yes, but considering that there have always been orders of magnitude more poor people than rich and powerful people, your statement is effectively empty.

What are you even talking about? The vast majority of minorities don't hold any power (especially not the power to kill the majority) precisely because there are so few of them and that's exactly the reason why they are oppressed. Rich people are an extremely special minority where this situation is reversed and they have power over the majority.

Completely agree with the orderly redistribution.

I've had many a discussion about Atlas Shrugged, and in fact used to be an adherent to its philosophy. Until I realized something. For a pure Libertarian society to work, those who cannot work must die. If there is absolutely no social safety net, then if you are too sick to work, you can't make money and therefore can't get care and die. Sure, some will live through charity, but there would be far too many people who just can't make a net positive monetary contribution to society. What do those people do?

I think you said the answer right there. They die.

Or they riot and rebel. The surest way to see how violent people can be is to offer them no choice in the matter. This is a country with a lot of guns, tons of space, and a poorly paid police and military. It’s not hard to imagine how the prospect of a quiet, ignominious death would go over. There are already militias and preppers, and I for one want those movements to do something other than flourish and expand.

If they rebel, then either there is a use for some of them for guards, or those we can hire for guards are better (and will win).

The US indeed have a large amount of land and many guns, but that land is already termed "fly-over" country, do you think most people on the coasts care if somebody runs around up in the Apalachian mountains with a gun shouting down with the rich?

If (which I do not believe) those persons will have no value at all, we will deal with them when/if they riot.

If they rebel, then either there is a use for some of them for guards, or those we can hire for guards are better (and will win). The US indeed have a large amount of land and many guns, but that land is already termed "fly-over" country, do you think most people on the coasts care if somebody runs around up in the Apalachian mountains with a gun shouting down with the rich? If (which I do not believe) those persons will have no value at all, we will deal with them when/if they riot.

If only we had some proximal lesson from recent history to look to, as a way of explaining just how deveststing insurgencies can be in the modern world. You know, a lesson involving a bunch of mountain men with guns, fighting from their home turf. Oh well, I can’t think of anything, but if it comes up I’m sure that our record stamping them out quickly, effectively, and without catastrophic loss of life and treasure will speak for itself.

There's quite a few poor in the Bay Area, or in the LA Basin, or in the East Coast megapolis. Some of them are within a day's march of Silicon Valley, or Beverly Hills, or Downtown Manhattan (though it might be more defensible against those not already on the island).

Just being "not in flyover country" isn't going to save the elites if the poor seriously rise.

Only in a culture that does not value family or charity, which all of history proves otherwise.

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