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Comment by natrius | Hacker News Reader

We engineers live in an information economy. Many, if not most Americans do not (pardon my lack of statistics). They work in service jobs that will be trivially automatable in our lifetimes. Wealthy people will actually own the means of production in a very meaningful way, and those that aren't equipped by their genes, upbringing, or education to participate in the information economy will be unable to earn an income.

Secondly, despite the information economy, it is still very much about what you own. If you are capable of making something amazing, you still need savings or investors who will feed and house you while you make those things and pay the still significant costs of infrastructure that many products require.

Concentration of wealth matters. That doesn't necessarily mean that government intervention is a good idea.

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Spoken like someone in the second 20% who believes that they are in the top 20%.

"We engineers" are barely in that top 20% if at all. It's occupied by corporate CEOs, Wall Street bankers, and lawyers: the people who either write or lobby/bribe the people who write the laws (at least in the plutonomy/plutocracy that we call the United States).

"We engineers" don't control the information. We write the tools that do. The people with the money (see above) use the tools.

Statistically speaking, I imagine that the majority of engineers who participate in a successful startup exit (how else is an engineer going to get into the top 10 or 20%?) are still less well off than a great deal of the above "fat cats".

What separates "we engineers", at least those that read and participate in Hacker News, is that, perhaps, we have just a little more potential for social mobility than the rest.

Bring on them downvotes!

I seriously doubt that there are ~60 million corporate CEOs, Wall Street bankers and lawyers to make up the top 20%. Doctors, middle managers and, yes, engineers probably cover a sizeable chunk of this slice.

Many, if not most Americans do not (pardon my lack of statistics). They work in service jobs that will be trivially automatable in our lifetimes.

Most jobs that truly are "trivially automatable" have already been automatized. I think it's extremely unlikely that most or nearly most of Americans' jobs can be replaced by computers in our lifetimes, barring something like the Singularity happening (which I'm not holding my breath for).

Wealthy people will actually own the means of production in a very meaningful way

Like I said, this is a Marxist bromide. Fundamentally, the means of production is mens' minds. Marx mistakenly believed that production amounted to physical human labor + expensive heavy-industry capital (like factories), which leaves work requiring intelligence and skill (MOST work) out of the picture, and is inaccurate - and is becoming more and more innacurate.

those that aren't equipped by their genes, upbringing, or education to participate in the information economy will be unable to earn an income.

Everyone is equipped to participate, barring exceptionally low IQ. Human beings are not automatons; they are not determined by the environment or their parents or their genes; they exercise choice.

Big projects typically require capital investment, but so what? That can be gotten if you have a good idea. Also, lots of people that work in service jobs and don't need heavy capital investment do important, creative work. My point here is that, no, it's not "very much about what you own." Most people in America are doing just fine, especially those with an education, and most people in America did not inherit a trust fund or something.

Concentration of wealth matters. That doesn't necessarily mean that government intervention is a good idea.

If it has no implications, then by definition, it doesn't matter. So if you claim that it matters, you should give an implication.

> "Most jobs that truly are "trivially automatable" have already been automatized."

Food service. Retail. Automobile repair. Lower-end healthcare jobs. Any job that doesn't require creativity can be automated.

Do you doubt that a McDonalds with zero human employees will exist in our lifetimes? When farming and transportation are automated as well and Big Macs are produced with zero human involvement, will you agree that "owning the means of production" is quite possible?

> "...which leaves work requiring intelligence and skill (MOST work) out of the picture..."

You are very, very wrong. Here are the 15 most common jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/06/the-most-popular-jo...

3.2% of Americans work in retail sales alone. Those jobs are going away. I count two jobs in that list, elementary teachers and general managers, that will be difficult to automate. What careers do you see this huge group of people switching to?

Please stop bringing Marx into this. It's basically an ad hominem argument. You're arguing against him instead of me.

> "Everyone is equipped to participate, barring exceptionally low IQ."

This is extremely wishful thinking with no evidence to back it up. The incentives for training oneself for a job in the information economy is huge today, yet only half of Americans have completed any college coursework.[1] If all of the people doing menial tasks today are capable of doing more intellectual work, why are they ignoring the incentives that exist today to get them to do so?

> "Big projects typically require capital investment, but so what? That can be gotten if you have a good idea."

Your arguments are skewed by your familiarity with the software industry. The businesses normal people start don't get venture capital. They get small business loans on their personal credit. If you have no credit or bad credit because you're poor, you'll never start a business. Concentration of wealth creates more people who are relatively poor.

> "Most people in America are doing just fine, especially those with an education, and most people in America did not inherit a trust fund or something."

I agree. I've been talking about the future, not now.

> "If it has no implications, then by definition, it doesn't matter. So if you claim that it matters, you should give an implication."

Implications:

1) An almost-permanent upper class.

2) An almost-permanent lower class.

3) (1) and (2) lead to civil unrest.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U...

Actually I worked at a McDonalds in high school, did a lot of research on AI and robotics in college, and do automation with robotics now for the biomedical industry.

I've explained it in detail before when someone made your point, but suffice to say that nobody is going to automate a McDonalds anytime soon.

A robot equal to a human costs $50,000 at least. If you have someone working for $10 an hour, that is 5,000 hours or 2.5 years payback on the robot. And the robot is far less flexible (and $50k is a super low number). When you have 3-10 year pay off on a robot, why would you do it?

Robots really aren't built for menial tasks. Where do you see robots in the auto industry? Painting and welding. Painting is a skill job. Welding is a skill job. A good painter or welder is not making far off of what an entry level coder is making (if you don't believe me, find out how much it costs to weld oil pipeline or ship structure). They didn't take over Detroit to displace cheap labor, they did it to increase quality. The reasons for automation are usually increasing quality or doing something humans physically can't (speed, precision, strength etc). Rarely do you see it worthwhile to replace a human with a robot for a menial hand task.

So no, McDonalds will not be taken over by robots. The economics of it just don't make sense.

The economics will make sense in our lifetimes. For a more concrete value, let's say 50 years.

Also, McDonalds is open far more than 40 hours a week. It's more like 6am to 1am, seven days a week. That gets paid off in 8.5 months. The real number would be a little higher than that due to fluctuations in demand throughout the day that would require extra robots that aren't fully utilized. Even if you triple the cost of the robot, that still isn't an unreasonable cost/benefit ratio. Within the next 50 years, it will be a no-brainer.

For a great example of where things are heading, look at RedBox. They've found a way to produce machines that bring more benefit than they cost. It's forseeable that a burger machine could be made in the near future with similar economics.

For what it is worth, Marx spoke of the expenditure of "nerves and brains" as well as simple physical labor. As for the means of production, the game has clearly changed in our sector, where the most important tool has come down so far in price. But still, there has been no complete transformation. For example, the startup I work at needs every scrap of capital it has, as servers and bandwidth are not cheap. Neither is the feeding and housing of all the engineers, and the sales team... You can wave your hands about the ready availability of capital, but generally speaking, it will be in the hands of others, available for use only at their whim. Young people with no dependents and some bravery and disregard for their health can build an idea on a shoe string budget, but there is still usually a large gap between the product of this kind of endeavour and a self sustaining business. For the vast majority of software developers particularly those with a family to raise, the deal will be the same as it is for anyone else. Freely barter your skills and labor with those who would employ it - the holders of capital. And surely enough, the profits from these labors will accumulate with these same people, those who hold the capital. The trade off is sustenance, "security", in exchange for all profit.

If you think capital itself is a virtue that is entitled to the profits of all labor, then I suppose you are in turn entitled to hold that opinion. So long as the lives of those who are in thrall to capital have a "reasonable quality of life", yes? I won't even go down the road of opportunity inequality here, but I will just say I disagree with how readily you discount environmental factors in the development of people, and how readily you discount the influence of privilege.

Partial Baloney!

Fast food joints could be mechanized. I have a scheme for a nearly fully automated department (grocery/walmart/etc) chain. It would take capital and engineering, but it's a solved problem.

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